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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/2398-h.zip b/2398-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..3ad2442 --- /dev/null +++ b/2398-h.zip diff --git a/2398-h/2398-h.htm b/2398-h/2398-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7214c72 --- /dev/null +++ b/2398-h/2398-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,6390 @@ +<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> +<HTML> +<HEAD> + +<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> + +<TITLE> +The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Renaissance, by Walter Pater +</TITLE> + +<STYLE TYPE="text/css"> +BODY { color: Black; + background: White; + margin-right: 10%; + margin-left: 10%; + font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; + text-align: justify } + +P {text-indent: 4% } + +P.noindent {text-indent: 0% } + +P.poem {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10%; + font-size: small } + +P.letter {text-indent: 0%; + font-size: small ; + margin-left: 10% ; + margin-right: 10% } + +P.footnote {font-size: smaller ; + text-indent: 0% ; + margin-left: 10% ; + margin-right: 10% } + +P.finis { font-size: larger ; + text-align: center ; + text-indent: 0% ; + margin-left: 0% ; + margin-right: 0% } + +</STYLE> + +</HEAD> + +<BODY> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Renaissance, by Walter Pater + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Renaissance + Studies in Art and Poetry + +Author: Walter Pater + +Posting Date: March 27, 2009 [EBook #2398] +Release Date: November, 2000 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RENAISSANCE *** + + + + +Produced by Bruce McClintock. HTML version by Al Haines. + + + + + +</pre> + + +<BR> + +<H1 ALIGN="center"> +THE RENAISSANCE +</H1> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +STUDIES IN ART AND POETRY +</H2> + +<BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +by +</H3> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +Walter Pater +</H2> + +<BR><BR> + +<H5 ALIGN="center"> +Sixth Edition +</H5> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> + Dedication<BR> + To C.L.S.<BR> +</H3> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +PREFACE +</H3> + +<P> +Many attempts have been made by writers on art and poetry to define +beauty in the abstract, to express it in the most general terms, to find +a universal formula for it. The value of these attempts has most often +been in the suggestive and penetrating things said by the way. Such +discussions help us very little to enjoy what has been well done in art +or poetry, to discriminate between what is more and what is less +excellent in them, or to use words like beauty, excellence, art, poetry, +with a more precise meaning than they would otherwise have. Beauty, like +all other qualities presented to human experience, is relative; and the +definition of it becomes unmeaning and useless in proportion to its +abstractness. To define beauty, not in the most abstract, but in the +most concrete terms possible, to find, not a universal formula for it, +but the formula which expresses most adequately this or that special +manifestation of it, is the aim of the true student of aesthetics. +</P> + +<P> +"To see the object as in itself it really is," has been justly said to +be the aim of all true criticism whatever; and in aesthetic criticism +the first step towards seeing one's object as it really is, is to know +one's own impression as it really is, to discriminate it, to realise it +distinctly. The objects with which aesthetic criticism deals—music, +poetry, artistic and accomplished forms of human life—are indeed +receptacles of so many powers or forces: they possess, like the products +of nature, so many virtues or qualities. What is this song or picture, +this engaging personality presented in life or in a book, to ME? What +effect does it really produce on me? Does it give me pleasure? and if +so, what sort or degree of pleasure? How is my nature modified by its +presence, and under its influence? The answers to these questions are +the original facts with which the aesthetic critic has to do; and, as in +the study of light, of morals, of number, one must realise such primary +data for oneself, or not at all. And he who experiences these +impressions strongly, and drives directly at the discrimination and +analysis of them, has no need to trouble himself with the abstract +question what beauty is in itself, or what its exact relation to truth +or experience—metaphysical questions, as unprofitable as metaphysical +questions elsewhere. He may pass them all by as being, answerable or +not, of no interest to him. +</P> + +<P> +The aesthetic critic, then, regards all the objects with which he has to +do, all works of art, and the fairer forms of nature and human life, as +powers or forces producing pleasurable sensations, each of a more or +less peculiar or unique kind. This influence he feels, and wishes to +explain, analysing it and reducing it to its elements. To him, the +picture, the landscape, the engaging personality in life or in a book, +La Gioconda, the hills of Carrara, Pico of Mirandola, are valuable for +their virtues, as we say, in speaking of a herb, a wine, a gem; for the +property each has of affecting one with a special, a unique, impression +of pleasure. Our education becomes complete in proportion as our +susceptibility to these impressions increases in depth and variety. And +the function of the aesthetic critic is to distinguish, analyse, and +separate from its adjuncts, the virtue by which a picture, a landscape, +a fair personality in life or in a book, produces this special +impression of beauty or pleasure, to indicate what the source of that +impression is, and under what conditions it is experienced. His end is +reached when he has disengaged that virtue, and noted it, as a chemist +notes some natural element, for himself and others; and the rule for +those who would reach this end is stated with great exactness in the +words of a recent critic of Sainte-Beuve:—De se borner a connaitre de +pres les belles choses, et a s'en nourrir en exquis amateurs, en +humanistes accomplis. +</P> + +<P> +What is important, then, is not that the critic should possess a correct +abstract definition of beauty for the intellect, but a certain kind of +temperament, the power of being deeply moved by the presence of +beautiful objects. He will remember always that beauty exists in many +forms. To him all periods, types, schools of taste, are in themselves +equal. In all ages there have been some excellent workmen, and some +excellent work done. The question he asks is always:—In whom did the +stir, the genius, the sentiment of the period find itself? where was the +receptacle of its refinement, its elevation, its taste? "The ages are +all equal," says William Blake, "but genius is always above its age." +</P> + +<P> +Often it will require great nicety to disengage this virtue from the +commoner elements with which it may be found in combination. Few +artists, not Goethe or Byron even, work quite cleanly, casting off all +debris, and leaving us only what the heat of their imagination has +wholly fused and transformed. Take, for instance, the writings of +Wordsworth. The heat of his genius, entering into the substance of his +work, has crystallised a part, but only a part, of it; and in that great +mass of verse there is much which might well be forgotten. But scattered +up and down it, sometimes fusing and transforming entire compositions, +like the Stanzas on Resolution and Independence, and the Ode on the +Recollections of Childhood, sometimes, as if at random, depositing a +fine crystal here or there, in a matter it does not wholly search +through and transform, we trace the action of his unique, incommunicable +faculty, that strange, mystical sense of a life in natural things, and +of man's life as a part of nature, drawing strength and colour and +character from local influences, from the hills and streams, and from +natural sights and sounds. Well! that is the virtue, the active +principle in Wordsworth's poetry; and then the function of the critic of +Wordsworth is to follow up that active principle, to disengage it, to +mark the degree in which it penetrates his verse. +</P> + +<P> +The subjects of the following studies are taken from the history of the +Renaissance, and touch what I think are the chief points in that +complex, many-sided movement. I have explained in the first of them what +I understand by the word, giving it a much wider scope than was +intended by those who originally used it to denote only that revival of +classical antiquity in the fifteenth century which was but one of many +results of a general excitement and enlightening of the human mind, of +which the great aim and achievements of what, as Christian art, is often +falsely opposed to the Renaissance, were another result. This outbreak +of the human spirit may be traced far into the middle age itself, with +its qualities already clearly pronounced, the care for physical beauty, +the worship of the body, the breaking down of those limits which the +religious system of the middle age imposed on the heart and the +imagination. I have taken as an example of this movement, this earlier +Renaissance within the middle age itself, and as an expression of its +qualities, two little compositions in early French; not because they +constitute the best possible expression of them, but because they help +the unity of my series, inasmuch as the Renaissance ends also in France, +in French poetry, in a phase of which the writings of Joachim du Bellay +are in many ways the most perfect illustration; the Renaissance thus +putting forth in France an aftermath, a wonderful later growth, the +products of which have to the full that subtle and delicate sweetness +which belongs to a refined and comely decadence; just as its earliest +phases have the freshness which belongs to all periods of growth in art, +the charm of ascesis, of the austere and serious girding of the loins in +youth. +</P> + +<P> +But it is in Italy, in the fifteenth century, that the interest of the +Renaissance mainly lies,—in that solemn fifteenth century which can +hardly be studied too much, not merely for its positive results in the +things of the intellect and the imagination, its concrete works of art, +its special and prominent personalities, with their profound aesthetic +charm, but for its general spirit and character, for the ethical +qualities of which it is a consummate type. +</P> + +<P> +The various forms of intellectual activity which together make up the +culture of an age, move for the most part from different +starting-points, and by unconnected roads. As products of the same +generation they partake indeed of a common character, and unconsciously +illustrate each other; but of the producers themselves, each group is +solitary, gaining what advantage or disadvantage there may be in +intellectual isolation. Art and poetry, philosophy and the religious +life, and that other life of refined pleasure and action in the open +places of the world, are each of them confined to its own circle of +ideas, and those who prosecute either of them are generally little +curious of the thoughts of others. There come, however, from time to +time, eras of more favourable conditions, in which the thoughts of men +draw nearer together than is their wont, and the many interests of the +intellectual world combine in one complete type of general culture. The +fifteenth century in Italy is one of these happier eras; and what is +sometimes said of the age of Pericles is true of that of Lorenzo:—it is +an age productive in personalities, many-sided, centralised, complete. +Here, artists and philosophers and those whom the action of the world +has elevated and made keen, do not live in isolation, but breathe a +common air, and catch light and heat from each other's thoughts. There +is a spirit of general elevation and enlightenment in which all alike +communicate. It is the unity of this spirit which gives unity to all the +various products of the Renaissance; and it is to this intimate alliance +with mind, this participation in the best thoughts which that age +produced, that the art of Italy in the fifteenth century owes much of +its grave dignity and influence. +</P> + +<P> +I have added an essay on Winckelmann, as not incongruous with the +studies which precede it, because Winckelmann, coming in the eighteenth +century, really belongs in spirit to an earlier age. By his enthusiasm +for the things of the intellect and the imagination for their own sake, +by his Hellenism, his life-long struggle to attain to the Greek spirit, +he is in sympathy with the humanists of an earlier century. He is the +last fruit of the Renaissance, and explains in a striking way its motive +and tendencies. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +CONTENTS +</H2> + +<H4> + <A HREF="#early">TWO EARLY FRENCH STORIES</A><BR> + <A HREF="#mirandola">PICO DELLA MIRANDOLA</A><BR> + <A HREF="#botticelli">SANDRO BOTTICELLI</A><BR> + <A HREF="#robbia">LUCA DELLA ROBBIA</A><BR> + <A HREF="#michelangelo">THE POETRY OF MICHELANGELO</A><BR> + <A HREF="#leonardo">LEONARDO DA VINCI</A><BR> + <A HREF="#giorgione">THE SCHOOL OF GIORGIONE</A><BR> + <A HREF="#joachim">JOACHIM DU BELLAY</A><BR> + <A HREF="#winckelmann">WINCKELMANN</A><BR> + <A HREF="#conclusion">CONCLUSION</A><BR> +</H4> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="early"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +TWO EARLY FRENCH STORIES +</H3> + +<P> +The history of the Renaissance ends in France, and carries us away from +Italy to the beautiful cities of the country of the Loire. But it was in +France also, in a very important sense, that the Renaissance had begun; +and French writers, who are so fond of connecting the creations of +Italian genius with a French origin, who tell us how Francis of Assisi +took not his name only, but all those notions of chivalry and romantic +love which so deeply penetrated his thoughts, from a French source, how +Boccaccio borrowed the outlines of his stories from the old French +fabliaux, and how Dante himself expressly connects the origin of the art +of miniature-painting with the city of Paris, have often dwelt on this +notion of a Renaissance in the end of the twelfth and the beginning of +the thirteenth century, a Renaissance within the limits of the middle +age itself—a brilliant, but in part abortive effort to do for human +life and the human mind what was afterwards done in the fifteenth. The +word Renaissance, indeed, is now generally used to denote not merely +that revival of classical antiquity which took place in the fifteenth +century, and to which the word was first applied, but a whole complex +movement, of which that revival of classical antiquity was but one +element or symptom. For us the Renaissance is the name of a many-sided +but yet united movement, in which the love of the things of the +intellect and the imagination for their own sake, the desire for a more +liberal and comely way of conceiving life, make themselves felt, urging +those who experience this desire to search out first one and then +another means of intellectual or imaginative enjoyment, and directing +them not merely to the discovery of old and forgotten sources of this +enjoyment, but to the divination of fresh sources thereof—new +experiences, new subjects of poetry, new forms of art. Of such feeling +there was a great outbreak in the end of the twelfth and the beginning +of the following century. Here and there, under rare and happy +conditions, in Pointed architecture, in the doctrines of romantic love, +in the poetry of Provence, the rude strength of the middle age turns to +sweetness; and the taste for sweetness generated there becomes the seed +of the classical revival in it, prompting it constantly to seek after +the springs of perfect sweetness in the Hellenic world. And coming after +a long period in which this instinct had been crushed, that true "dark +age," in which so many sources of intellectual and imaginative enjoyment +had actually disappeared, this outbreak is rightly called a Renaissance, +a revival. +</P> + +<P> +Theories which bring into connexion with each other modes of thought and +feeling, periods of taste, forms of art and poetry, which the narrowness +of men's minds constantly tends to oppose to each other, have a great +stimulus for the intellect, and are almost always worth understanding. +It is so with this theory of a Renaissance within the middle age, which +seeks to establish a continuity between the most characteristic work of +the middle age, the sculpture of Chartres and the windows of Le Mans, +and the work of the later Renaissance, the work of Jean Cousin and +Germain Pilon, and thus heals that rupture between the middle age and +the Renaissance which has so often been exaggerated. But it is not so +much the ecclesiastical art of the middle age, its sculpture and +painting—work certainly done in a great measure for pleasure's sake, in +which even a secular, a rebellious spirit often betrays itself—but +rather the profane poetry of the middle age, the poetry of Provence, and +the magnificent after-growth of that poetry in Italy and France, which +those French writers have in view, when they speak of this Renaissance +within the middle age. In that poetry, earthly passion, with its +intimacy, its freedom, its variety—the liberty of the heart—makes +itself felt; and the name of Abelard, the great clerk and the great +lover, connects the expression of this liberty of heart with the free +play of human intelligence around all subjects presented to it, with the +liberty of the intellect, as that age understood it. Every one knows the +legend of Abelard, a legend hardly less passionate, certainly not less +characteristic of the middle age, than the legend of Tannhaeuser; how +the famous and comely clerk, in whom Wisdom herself, self-possessed, +pleasant, and discreet, seemed to sit enthroned, came to live in the +house of a canon of the church of Notre-Dame, where dwelt a girl +Heloise, believed to be the old priest's orphan niece, his love for whom +he had testified by giving her an education then unrivalled, so that +rumour even asserted that, through the knowledge of languages, enabling +her to penetrate into the mysteries of the older world, she had become a +sorceress, like the Celtic druidesses; and how as Abelard and Heloise +sat together at home there, to refine a little further on the nature of +abstract ideas, "Love made himself of the party with them." You conceive +the temptations of the scholar, who, in such dreamy tranquillity, amid +the bright and busy spectacle of the "Island," lived in a world of +something like shadows; and that for one who knew so well how to assign +its exact value to every abstract idea, those restraints which lie on +the consciences of other men had been relaxed. It appears that he +composed many verses in the vulgar tongue: already the young men sang +them on the quay below the house. Those songs, says M. de Remusat, were +probably in the taste of the Trouveres, of whom he was one of the first +in date, or, so to speak, the predecessor. It is the same spirit which +has moulded the famous "letters," written in the quaint Latin of the +middle age. At the foot of that early Gothic tower, which the next +generation raised to grace the precincts of Abelard's school, on the +"Mountain of Saint Genevieve," the historian Michelet sees in thought "a +terrible assembly; not the hearers of Abelard alone, fifty bishops, +twenty cardinals, two popes, the whole body of scholastic philosophy; +not only the learned Heloise, the teaching of languages, and the +Renaissance; but Arnold of Brescia—that is to say, the revolution." And +so from the rooms of this shadowy house by the Seine side we see that +spirit going abroad, with its qualities already well defined, its +intimacy, its languid sweetness, its rebellion, its subtle skill in +dividing the elements of human passion, its care for physical beauty, +its worship of the body, which penetrated the early literature of Italy, +and finds an echo in Dante. +</P> + +<P> +That Abelard is not mentioned in the Divine Comedy may appear a singular +omission to the reader of Dante, who seems to have inwoven into the +texture of his work whatever had impressed him as either effective in +colour or spiritually significant among the recorded incidents of actual +life. Nowhere in his great poem do we find the name, nor so much as an +allusion to the story of one who had left so deep a mark on the +philosophy of which Dante was an eager student, of whom in the Latin +Quarter, and from the lips of scholar or teacher in the University of +Paris, during his sojourn among them, he can hardly have failed to hear. +We can only suppose that he had indeed considered the story and the man, +and had abstained from passing judgment as to his place in the scheme +of "eternal justice." In the famous legend of Tannhaeuser, the erring +knight makes his way to Rome, to seek absolution at what was then the +centre of Christian religion. "So soon," thought and said the Pope, "as +the staff in his hand should bud and blossom, so soon might the soul of +Tannhaeuser be saved, and no sooner; and it came to pass not long after +that the dry wood of a staff which the Pope had carried in his hand was +covered with leaves and flowers." So, in the cloister of Godstow a +petrified tree was shown, of which the nuns told that the fair Rosamond, +who had died among them, had declared that, the tree being then alive +and green, it would be changed into stone at the hour of her salvation. +When Abelard died, like Tannhaeuser, he was on his way to Rome: what +might have happened had he reached his journey's end is uncertain; and +it is in this uncertain twilight that his relation to the general +beliefs of his age has always remained. In this, as in other things, he +prefigures the character of the Renaissance, that movement in which, in +various ways, the human mind wins for itself a new kingdom of feeling +and sensation and thought, not opposed to, but only beyond and +independent of the spiritual system then actually realised. The +opposition into which Abelard is thrown, which gives its colour to his +career, which breaks his soul to pieces, is a no less subtle opposition +than that between the merely professional, official, hireling ministers +of that system, with their ignorant worship of system for its own sake, +and the true child of light, the humanist, with reason and heart and +senses quick, while theirs were almost dead. He reaches out towards, he +attains, modes of ideal living, beyond the prescribed limits of that +system, though possibly contained in essential germ within it. As always +happens, the adherents of the poorer and narrower culture had no +sympathy with, because no understanding of, a culture richer and more +ample than their own: after the discovery of wheat they would still live +upon acorns—apres l'invention du ble ils voulaient encore vivre du +gland; and would hear of no service to the higher needs of humanity with +instruments not of their forging. +</P> + +<P> +But the human spirit, bold through those needs, was too strong for them. +Abelard and Heloise write their letters—letters with a wonderful +outpouring of soul—in medieval Latin; and Abelard, though he composes +songs in the vulgar tongue, writes also in Latin those treatises in +which he tries to find a ground of reality below the abstractions of +philosophy, as one bent on trying all things by their congruity with +human experience, who had felt the hand of Heloise, and looked into her +eyes, and tested the resources of humanity in her great and energetic +nature. Yet it is only a little later, early in the thirteenth century, +that French prose romance begins; and in one of the pretty volumes of +the Bibliotheque Elzevirienne some of the most striking fragments of it +may be found, edited with much intelligence. In one of these +thirteenth-century stories, Li Amitiez de Ami et Amile, that free play +of human affection, of the claims of which Abelard's story is an +assertion, makes itself felt in the incidents of a great friendship, a +friendship pure and generous, pushed to a sort of passionate exaltation, +and more than faithful unto death. Such comradeship, though instances of +it are to be found everywhere, is still especially a classical motive; +Chaucer expressing the sentiment of it so strongly in an antique tale, +that one knows not whether the love of both Palamon and Arcite for +Emelya, or of those two for each other, is the chiefer subject of the +Knight's Tale— +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + He cast his eyen upon Emelya,<BR> + And therewithal he bleynte and cried, ah!<BR> + As that he stongen were unto the herte.<BR> +</P> + +<P> +What reader does not refer part of the bitterness of that cry to the +spoiling, already foreseen, of that fair friendship, which had hitherto +made the prison of the two lads sweet with its daily offices—though the +friendship is saved at last? +</P> + +<P> +The friendship of Amis and Amile is deepened by the romantic +circumstance of an entire personal resemblance between the two heroes, +so that they pass for each other again and again, and thereby into many +strange adventures; that curious interest of the Doppelgaenger, which +begins among the stars with the Dioscuri, being entwined in and out +through all the incidents of the story, like an outward token of the +inward similitude of their souls. With this, again, like a second +reflexion of that inward similitude, is connected the conceit of two +marvellously beautiful cups, also exactly like each other—children's +cups, of wood, but adorned with gold and precious stones. These two +cups, which by their resemblance help to bring the friends together at +critical moments, were given to them by the Pope, when he baptized them +at Rome, whither the parents had taken them for that purpose, in +thankfulness for their birth, and cross and recross in the narrative, +serving the two heroes almost like living things, and with that +well-known effect of a beautiful object kept constantly before the eye +in a story or poem, of keeping sensation well awake, and giving a +certain air of refinement to all the scenes into which it enters; with a +heightening also of that sense of fate, which hangs so much of the +shaping of human life on trivial objects, like Othello's strawberry +handkerchief; and witnessing to the enjoyment of beautiful handiwork by +primitive people, almost dazzled by it, so that they give it an oddly +significant place among the factors of a human history. +</P> + +<P> +Amis and Amile, then, are true to their comradeship through all trials; +and in the end it comes to pass that at a moment of great need Amis +takes the place of Amile in a tournament for life or death. "After this +it happened that a leprosy fell upon Amis, so that his wife would not +approach him, and wrought to strangle him; and he departed from his +home, and at last prayed his servants to carry him to the house of +Amile"; and it is in what follows that the curious strength of the piece +shows itself:— +</P> + +<P> +"His servants, willing to do as he commanded, carried him to the place +where Amile was: and they began to sound their rattles before the court +of Amile's house, as lepers are accustomed to do. And when Amile heard +the noise he commanded one of his servants to carry meat and bread to +the sick man, and the cup which was given to him at Rome filled with +good wine. And when the servant had done as he was commanded, he +returned and said, Sir, if I had not thy cup in my hand, I should +believe that the cup which the sick man has was thine, for they are +alike, the one to the other, in height and fashion. And Amile said, Go +quickly and bring him to me. And when Amis stood before his comrade +Amile demanded of him who he was, and how he had gotten that cup. I am +of Briquam le Chastel, answered Amis, and the cup was given to me by the +Bishop of Rome, who baptized me. And when Amile heard that, he knew that +it was his comrade Amis, who had delivered him from death, and won for +him the daughter of the King of France to be his wife. And straightway +he fell upon him, and began to weep greatly, and kissed him. And when +his wife heard that, she ran out with her hair in disarray, weeping and +distressed exceedingly, for she remembered that it was he who had slain +the false Ardres. And thereupon they placed him in a fair bed, and said +to him, Abide with us until God's will be accomplished in thee, for all +that we have is at thy service. So he and the two servants abode with +them. +</P> + +<P> +"And it came to pass one night, when Amis and Amile lay in one chamber +without other companions, that God sent His angel Raphael to Amis, who +said to him, Amis, art thou asleep? And he, supposing that Amile had +called him, answered and said, I am not asleep, fair comrade! And the +angel said to him, Thou hast answered well, for thou art the comrade of +the heavenly citizens.—I am Raphael, the angel of our Lord, and am come +to tell thee how thou mayest be healed; for thy prayers are heard. Thou +shalt bid Amile, thy comrade, that he slay his two children and wash +thee in their blood, and so thy body shall be made whole. And Amis said +to him, Let not this thing be, that my comrade should become a murderer +for my sake. But the angel said, It is convenient that he do this. And +thereupon the angel departed. +</P> + +<P> +"And Amile also, as if in sleep, heard those words; and he awoke and +said, Who is it, my comrade, that hath spoken with thee? And Amis +answered, No man; only I have prayed to our Lord, as I am accustomed. +And Amile said, Not so! but some one hath spoken with thee. Then he +arose and went to the door of the chamber; and finding it shut he said, +Tell me, my brother, who it was said those words to thee to-night. And +Amis began to weep greatly, and told him that it was Raphael, the angel +of the Lord, who had said to him, Amis, our Lord commands thee that thou +bid Amile slay his two children, and wash thee in their blood, and thou +shalt be healed of thy leprosy. And Amile was greatly disturbed at those +words, and said, I would have given to thee my man-servants and my +maid-servants and all my goods, and thou feignest that an angel hath +spoken to thee that I should slay my two children. And immediately Amis +began to weep, and said, I know that I have spoken to thee a terrible +thing, but constrained thereto; I pray thee cast me not away from the +shelter of thy house. And Amile answered that what he had covenanted +with him, that he would perform, unto the hour of his death: But I +conjure thee, said he, by the faith which there is between me and thee, +and by our comradeship, and by the baptism we received together at Rome, +that thou tell me whether it was man or angel said that to thee. And +Amis answered, So truly as an angel hath spoken to me this night, so may +God deliver me from my infirmity! +</P> + +<P> +"Then Amile began to weep in secret, and thought within himself: If this +man was ready to die before the king for me, shall I not for him slay my +children? Shall I not keep faith with him who was faithful to me even +unto death? And Amile tarried no longer, but departed to the chamber of +his wife, and bade her go hear the Sacred Office. And he took a sword, +and went to the bed where the children were lying, and found them +asleep. And he lay down over them and began to weep bitterly and said, +Hath any man yet heard of a father who of his own will slew his +children? Alas, my children! I am no longer your father, but your cruel +murderer. +</P> + +<P> +"And the children awoke at the tears of their father, which fell upon +them; and they looked up into his face and began to laugh. And as they +were of the age of about three years, he said, Your laughing will be +turned into tears, for your innocent blood must now be shed, and +therewith he cut off their heads. Then he laid them back in the bed, and +put the heads upon the bodies, and covered them as though they were +sleeping: and with the blood which he had taken he washed his comrade, +and said, Lord Jesus Christ! who hast commanded men to keep faith on +earth, and didst heal the leper by Thy word! cleanse now my comrade, for +whose love I have shed the blood of my children. +</P> + +<P> +"Then Amis was cleansed of his leprosy. And Amile clothed his companion +in his best robes; and as they went to the church to give thanks, the +bells, by the will of God, rang of their own accord. And when the people +of the city heard that, they ran together to see the marvel. And the +wife of Amile, when she saw Amis and Amile coming, began to ask which of +the twain was her husband, and said, I know well the vesture of them +both, but I know not which of them is Amile. And Amile said to her, I am +Amile, and my companion is Amis, who is healed of his sickness. And she +was full of wonder, and desired to know in what manner he was healed. +Give thanks to our Lord, answered Amile, but trouble not thyself as to +the manner of the healing. +</P> + +<P> +"Now neither the father nor the mother had yet entered where the +children were; but the father sighed heavily because of their death, and +the mother asked for them, that they might rejoice together; but Amile +said, Dame! Let the children sleep. And it was already the hour of +Tierce. And going in alone to the children to weep over them, he found +them at play in the bed; only, in the place of the sword-cuts about +their throats was as it were a thread of crimson. And he took them in +his arms and carried them to his wife and said, Rejoice greatly, for thy +children whom I had slain by the commandment of the angel are alive, and +by their blood is Amis healed." +</P> + +<P> +There, as I said, is the strength of the old French story. For the +Renaissance has not only the sweetness which it derives from the +classical world, but also that curious strength of which there are great +resources in the true middle age. And as I have illustrated the early +strength of the Renaissance by the story of Amis and Amile, a story +which comes from the North, in which even a certain racy Teutonic +flavour is perceptible, so I shall illustrate that other element of its +early sweetness, a languid excess of sweetness even, by another story +printed in the same volume of the Bibliotheque Elzevirienne, and of +about the same date, a story which comes, characteristically, from the +South, and connects itself with the literature of Provence. +</P> + +<P> +The central love-poetry of Provence, the poetry of the Tenson and the +Aubade, of Bernard de Ventadour and Pierre Vidal, is poetry for the few, +for the elect and peculiar people of the kingdom of sentiment. But below +this intenser poetry there was probably a wide range of literature, less +serious and elevated, reaching, by lightness of form and comparative +homeliness of interest, an audience which the concentrated passion of +those higher lyrics left untouched. This literature has long since +perished, or lives only in later French or Italian versions. One such +version, the only representative of its species, M. Fauriel thought he +detected in the story of Aucassin and Nicolette, written in the French +of the latter half of the thirteenth century, and preserved in a unique +manuscript, in the national library of Paris; and there were reasons +which made him divine for it a still more ancient ancestry, traces in it +of an Arabian origin, as in a leaf lost out of some early Arabian +Nights.* The little book loses none of its interest through the +criticism which finds in it only a traditional subject, handed on by one +people to another; for after passing thus from hand to hand, its outline +is still clear, its surface untarnished; and, like many other stories, +books, literary and artistic conceptions of the middle age, it has come +to have in this way a sort of personal history, almost as full of risk +and adventure as that of its own heroes. The writer himself calls the +piece a cantefable, a tale told in prose, but with its incidents and +sentiment helped forward by songs, inserted at irregular intervals. In +the junctions of the story itself there are signs of roughness and want +of skill, which make one suspect that the prose was only put together to +connect a series of songs—a series of songs so moving and attractive +that people wished to heighten and dignify their effect by a regular +framework or setting. Yet the songs themselves are of the simplest kind, +not rhymed even, but only imperfectly assonant, stanzas of twenty or +thirty lines apiece, all ending with a similar vowel sound. And here, as +elsewhere in that early poetry, much of the interest lies in the +spectacle of the formation of a new artistic sense. A new music is +arising, the music of rhymed poetry, and in the songs of Aucassin and +Nicolette, which seem always on the point of passing into true rhyme, +but which halt somehow, and can never quite take flight, you see people +just growing aware of the elements of a new music in their possession, +and anticipating how pleasant such music might become. The piece was +probably intended to be recited by a company of trained performers, many +of whom, at least for the lesser parts, were probably children. The +songs are introduced by the rubric, Or se cante (ici on chante); and +each division of prose by the rubric, Or dient et content et fabloient +(ici on conte). The musical notes of part of the songs have been +preserved; and some of the details are so descriptive that they +suggested to M. Fauriel the notion that the words had been accompanied +throughout by dramatic action. That mixture of simplicity and refinement +which he was surprised to find in a composition of the thirteenth +century, is shown sometimes in the turn given to some passing expression +or remark; thus, "the Count de Garins was old and frail, his time was +over"—Li quens Garins de Beaucaire estoit vix et frales; si avoit son +tans trespasse. And then, all is so realised! One still sees the ancient +forest, with its disused roads grown deep with grass, and the place +where seven roads meet—u a forkeut set cemin qui s'en vont par le pais; +we hear the light-hearted country people calling each other by their +rustic names, and putting forward, as their spokesman, one among them +who is more eloquent and ready than the rest—li un qui plus fu enparles +des autres; for the little book has its burlesque element also, so that +one hears the faint, far-off laughter still. Rough as it is, the piece +certainly possesses this high quality of poetry, that it aims at a +purely artistic effect. Its subject is a great sorrow, yet it claims to +be a thing of joy and refreshment, to be entertained not for its matter +only, but chiefly for its manner; it is cortois, it tells us, et bien +assis. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +*Recently, Aucassin and Nicolette has been edited and translated into +English, with much graceful scholarship, by Mr. F. W. Bourdillon. More +recently still we have had a translation—a poet's translation—from the +ingenious and versatile pen of Mr. Andrew Lang. The reader should +consult also the chapter on "The Out-door Poetry," in Vernon Lee's most +interesting Euphorion; being Studies of the Antique and Mediaeval in the +Renaissance, a work abounding in knowledge and insight on the subjects +of which it treats. +</P> + +<P> +For the student of manners, and of the old language and literature, it +has much interest of a purely antiquarian order. To say of an ancient +literary composition that it has an antiquarian interest, often means +that it has no distinct aesthetic interest for the reader of to-day. +Antiquarianism, by a purely historical effort, by putting its object in +perspective, and setting the reader in a certain point of view, from +which what gave pleasure to the past is pleasurable for him also, may +often add greatly to the charm we receive from ancient literature. But +the first condition of such aid must be a real, direct, aesthetic charm +in the thing itself; unless it has that charm, unless some purely +artistic quality went to its original making, no merely antiquarian +effort can ever give it an aesthetic value, or make it a proper subject +of aesthetic criticism. This quality, wherever it exists, it is always +pleasant to define, and discriminate from the sort of borrowed interest +which an old play, or an old story, may very likely acquire through a +true antiquarianism. The story of Aucassin and Nicolette has something +of this quality. Aucassin, the only son of Count Garins of Beaucaire, is +passionately in love with Nicolette, a beautiful girl of unknown +parentage, bought of the Saracens, whom his father will not permit him +to marry. The story turns on the adventures of these two lovers, until +at the end of the piece their mutual fidelity is rewarded. These +adventures are of the simplest sort, adventures which seem to be chosen +for the happy occasion they afford of keeping the eye of the fancy, +perhaps the outward eye, fixed on pleasant objects, a garden, a ruined +tower, the little hut of flowers which Nicolette constructs in the +forest whither she has escaped from her enemies, as a token to Aucassin +that she has passed that way. All the charm of the piece is in its +details, in a turn of peculiar lightness and grace given to the +situations and traits of sentiment, especially in its quaint fragments +of early French prose. +</P> + +<P> +All through it one feels the influence of that faint air of overwrought +delicacy, almost of wantonness, which was so strong a characteristic of +the poetry of the Troubadours. The Troubadours themselves were often men +of great rank; they wrote for an exclusive audience, people of much +leisure and great refinement, and they came to value a type of personal +beauty which has in it but little of the influence of the open air and +sunshine. There is a languid Eastern deliciousness in the very scenery +of the story, the full-blown roses, the chamber painted in some +mysterious manner where Nicolette is imprisoned, the cool brown marble, +the almost nameless colours, the odour of plucked grass and flowers. +Nicolette herself well becomes this scenery, and is the best +illustration of the quality I mean—the beautiful, weird, foreign girl, +whom the shepherds take for a fay, who has the knowledge of simples, the +healing and beautifying qualities of leaves and flowers, whose skilful +touch heals Aucassin's sprained shoulder, so that he suddenly leaps from +the ground; the mere sight of whose white flesh, as she passed the place +where he lay, healed a pilgrim stricken with sore disease, so that he +rose up, and returned to his own country. With this girl Aucassin is so +deeply in love that he forgets all his knightly duties. At last +Nicolette is shut up to get her out of his way, and perhaps the +prettiest passage in the whole piece is the fragment of prose which +describes her escape from this place:— +</P> + +<P> +"Aucassin was put in prison, as you have heard, and Nicolette remained +shut up in her chamber. It was summer-time, in the month of May, when +the days are warm and long and clear, and the nights coy and serene. +</P> + +<P> +"One night Nicolette, lying on her bed, saw the moon shine clear through +the little window, and heard the nightingale sing in the garden, and +then came the memory of Aucassin, whom she so much loved. She thought of +the Count Garins of Beaucaire, who so mortally hated her, and, to be rid +of her, might at any moment cause her to be burned or drowned. She +perceived that the old woman who kept her company was asleep; she rose +and put on the fairest gown she had; she took the bed-clothes and the +towels, and knotted them together like a cord, as far as they would go. +Then she tied the end to a pillar of the window, and let herself slip +down quite softly into the garden, and passed straight across it, to +reach the town. +</P> + +<P> +"Her hair was yellow in small curls, her smiling eyes blue-green, her +face clear and feat, the little lips very red, the teeth small and +white; and the daisies which she crushed in passing, holding her skirt +high behind and before, looked dark against her feet; the girl was so +white! +</P> + +<P> +"She came to the garden-gate and opened it, and walked through the +streets of Beaucaire, keeping on the dark side of the way to avoid the +light of the moon, which shone quietly in the sky. She walked as fast as +she could, until she came to the tower where Aucassin was. The tower was +set about with pillars, here and there. She pressed herself against one +of the pillars, wrapped herself closely in her mantle, and putting her +face to a chink of the tower, which was old and ruined, she heard +Aucassin crying bitterly within, and when she had listened awhile she +began to speak." +</P> + +<P> +But scattered up and down through this lighter matter, always tinged +with humour and often passing into burlesque, which makes up the general +substance of the piece, there are morsels of a different quality, +touches of some intenser sentiment, coming it would seem from the +profound and energetic spirit of the Provencal poetry itself, to which +the inspiration of the book has been referred. Let me gather up these +morsels of deeper colour, these expressions of the ideal intensity of +love, the motive which really unites together the fragments of the +little composition. Dante, the perfect flower of ideal love, has +recorded how the tyranny of that "Lord of terrible aspect" became +actually physical, blinding his senses, and suspending his bodily +forces. In this Dante is but the central expression and type of +experiences known well enough to the initiated, in that passionate age. +Aucassin represents this ideal intensity of passion— +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Aucassin, li biax, li blons,<BR> + Li gentix, li amorous;<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +the slim, tall, debonair figure, dansellon, as the singers call him, +with curled yellow hair, and eyes of vair, who faints with love, as +Dante fainted, who rides all day through the forest in search of +Nicolette, while the thorns tear his flesh, so that one night have +traced him by the blood upon the grass, and who weeps at evening because +he has not found her—who has the malady of his love, so that he +neglects all knightly duties. Once he is induced to put himself at the +head of his people, that they, seeing him before them, might have more +heart to defend themselves; then a song relates how the sweet, grave +figure goes forth to battle, in dainty, tight-laced armour. It is the +very image of the Provencal love-god, no longer a child, but grown to +pensive youth, as Pierre Vidal met him, riding on a white horse, fair as +the morning, his vestment embroidered with flowers. He rode on through +the gates into the open plain beyond. But as he went, that great malady +of his love came upon him, so that the bridle fell from his hands; and +like one who sleeps walking, he was carried on into the midst of his +enemies, and heard them talking together how they might most +conveniently kill him. +</P> + +<P> +One of the strongest characteristics of that outbreak of the reason and +the imagination, of that assertion of the liberty of the heart, in the +middle age, which I have termed a medieval Renaissance, was its +antinomianism, its spirit of rebellion and revolt against the moral and +religious ideas of the time. In their search after the pleasures of the +senses and the imagination, in their care for beauty, in their worship +of the body, people were impelled beyond the bounds of the Christian +ideal; and their love became sometimes a strange idolatry, a strange +rival religion. It was the return of that ancient Venus, not dead, but +only hidden for a time in the caves of the Venusberg, of those old pagan +gods still going to and fro on the earth, under all sorts of disguises. +And this element in the middle age, for the most part ignored by those +writers who have treated it pre-eminently as the "Age of Faith"—this +rebellious and antinomian element, the recognition of which has made the +delineation of the middle age by the writers of the Romantic school in +France, by Victor Hugo for instance in Notre-Dame de Paris, so +suggestive and exciting, is found alike in the history of Abelard and +the legend of Tannhaeuser. More and more, as we come to mark changes and +distinctions of temper in what is often in one all-embracing confusion +called the middle age, this rebellious element, this sinister claim for +liberty of heart and thought, comes to the surface. The Albigensian +movement, connected so strangely with the history of Provencal poetry, +is deeply tinged with it. A touch of it makes the Franciscan order, with +its poetry, its mysticism, its "illumination," from the point of view of +religious authority, justly suspect. It influences the thoughts of those +obscure prophetical writers, like Joachim of Flora, strange dreamers in +a world of flowery rhetoric of that third and final dispensation of a +"spirit of freedom," in which law shall have passed away. Of this spirit +Aucassin and Nicolette contains perhaps the most famous expression: it +is the answer Aucassin gives when he is threatened with the pains of +hell, if he makes Nicolette his mistress. A creature wholly of affection +and the senses, he sees on the way to paradise only a feeble company of +aged priests, "clinging day and night to the chapel altars," barefoot or +in patched sandals. With or even without Nicolette, "his sweet mistress +whom he so much loves," he, for his part, is ready to start on the way +to hell, along with "the good scholars," as he says, and the actors, and +the fine horsemen dead in battle, and the men of fashion,* and "the fair +courteous ladies who had two or three chevaliers apiece beside their own +true lords," all gay with music, in their gold and silver and beautiful +furs—"the vair and the grey." +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +*Parage, peerage—which came to signify all that ambitious youth +affected most on the outside of life, in that old world of the +Troubadours, with whom this term is of frequent recurrence. +</P> + +<P> +But in the House Beautiful the saints too have their place; and the +student of the Renaissance has this advantage over the student of the +emancipation of the human mind in the Reformation, or the French +Revolution, that in tracing the footsteps of humanity to higher levels, +he is not beset at every turn by the inflexibilities and antagonisms of +some well-recognised controversy, with rigidly defined opposites, +exhausting the intelligence and limiting one's sympathies. The +opposition of the professional defenders of a mere system to that more +sincere and general play of the forces of human mind and character, +which I have noted as the secret of Abelard's struggle, is indeed always +powerful. But the incompatibility of souls really "fair" is not +essential; and within the enchanted region of the Renaissance, one needs +not be for ever on one's guard: here there are no fixed parties, no +exclusions: all breathes of that unity of culture in which "whatsoever +things are comely" are reconciled, for the elevation and adorning of our +spirits. And just in proportion as those who took part in the +Renaissance become centrally representative of it, just so much the more +is this condition realised in them. The wicked popes, and the loveless +tyrants, who from time to time became its patrons, or mere speculators +in its fortunes, lend themselves easily to disputations, and, from this +side or that, the spirit of controversy lays just hold upon them. But +the painter of the Last Supper, with his kindred, live in a land where +controversy has no breathing-place, and refuse to be classified. In the +story of Aucassin and Nicolette, in the literature which it represents, +the note of defiance, of the opposition of one system to another, is +sometimes harsh: let me conclude with a morsel from Amis and Amile, in +which the harmony of human interests is still entire. For the story of +the great traditional friendship, in which, as I said, the liberty of +the heart makes itself felt, seems, as we have it, to have been written +by a monk—La vie des saints martyrs Amis et Amile. It was not till the +end of the seventeenth century that their names were finally excluded +from the martyrology; and their story ends with this monkish miracle of +earthly comradeship, more than faithful unto death:— +</P> + +<P> +"For, as God had united them in their lives in one accord, so they were +not divided in their death, falling together side by side, with a host +of other brave men, in battle for King Charles at Mortara, so called +from that great slaughter. And the bishops gave counsel to the king and +queen that they should bury the dead, and build a church in that place; +and their counsel pleased the king greatly; and there were built there +two churches, the one by commandment of the king in honour of Saint +Oseige, and the other by commandment of the queen in honour of Saint +Peter. +</P> + +<P> +"And the king caused the two chests of stone to be brought in the which +the bodies of Amis and Amile lay; and Amile was carried to the church of +Saint Peter, and Amis to the church of Saint Oseige; and the other +corpses were buried, some in one place and some in the other. But lo! +next morning, the body of Amile in his coffin was found lying in the +church of Saint Oseige, beside the coffin of Amis his comrade. Behold +then this wondrous amity, which by death could not be dissevered! +</P> + +<P> +"This miracle God did, who gave to His disciples power to remove +mountains. And by reason of this miracle the king and queen remained in +that place for a space of thirty days, and performed the offices of the +dead who were slain, and honoured the said churches with great gifts: +and the bishop ordained many clerks to serve in the church of Saint +Oseige, and commanded them that they should guard duly, with great +devotion, the bodies of the two companions, Amis and Amile." +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +1872. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="mirandola"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +PICO DELLA MIRANDOLA +</H3> + +<P> +No account of the Renaissance can be complete without some notice of the +attempt made by certain Italian scholars of the fifteenth century to +reconcile Christianity with the religion of ancient Greece. To reconcile +forms of sentiment which at first sight seem incompatible, to adjust the +various products of the human mind to each other in one many-sided type +of intellectual culture, to give humanity, for heart and imagination to +feed upon, as much as it could possibly receive, belonged to the +generous instincts of that age. An earlier and simpler generation had +seen in the gods of Greece so many malignant spirits, the defeated but +still living centres of the religion of darkness, struggling, not always +in vain, against the kingdom of light. Little by little, as the natural +charm of pagan story reasserted itself over minds emerging out of +barbarism, the religious significance which had once belonged to it was +lost sight of, and it came to be regarded as the subject of a purely +artistic or poetical treatment. But it was inevitable that from time to +time minds should arise, deeply enough impressed by its beauty and power +to ask themselves whether the religion of Greece was indeed a rival of +the religion of Christ; for the older gods had rehabilitated themselves, +and men's allegiance was divided. And the fifteenth century was an +impassioned age, so ardent and serious in its pursuit of art that it +consecrated everything with which art had to do as a religious object. +The restored Greek literature had made it familiar, at least in Plato, +with a style of expression concerning the earlier gods, which had about +it much of the warmth and unction of a Christian hymn. It was too +familiar with such language to regard mythology as a mere story; and it +was too serious to play with a religion. +</P> + +<P> +"Let me briefly remind the reader"—says Heine, in the Gods in Exile, an +essay full of that strange blending of sentiment which is characteristic +of the traditions of the middle age concerning the pagan religions—"how +the gods of the older world, at the time of the definite triumph of +Christianity, that is, in the third century, fell into painful +embarrassments, which greatly resembled certain tragical situations of +their earlier life. They now found themselves beset by the same +troublesome necessities to which they had once before been exposed +during the primitive ages, in that revolutionary epoch when the Titans +broke out of the custody of Orcus, and, piling Pelion on Ossa, scaled +Olympus. Unfortunate Gods! They had then to take flight ignominiously, +and hide themselves among us here on earth, under all sorts of +disguises. The larger number betook themselves to Egypt, where for +greater security they assumed the forms of animals, as is generally +known. Just in the same way, they had to take flight again, and seek +entertainment in remote hiding-places, when those iconoclastic zealots, +the black brood of monks, broke down all the temples, and pursued the +gods with fire and curses. Many of these unfortunate emigrants, now +entirely deprived of shelter and ambrosia, must needs take to vulgar +handicrafts, as a means of earning their bread. Under these +circumstances, many whose sacred groves had been confiscated, let +themselves out for hire as wood-cutters in Germany, and were forced to +drink beer instead of nectar. Apollo seems to have been content to take +service under graziers, and as he had once kept the cows of Admetus, so +he lived now as a shepherd in Lower Austria. Here, however, having +become suspected on account of his beautiful singing, he was recognised +by a learned monk as one of the old pagan gods, and handed over to the +spiritual tribunal. On the rack he confessed that he was the god Apollo; +and before his execution he begged that he might be suffered to play +once more upon the lyre, and to sing a song. And he played so +touchingly, and sang with such magic, and was withal so beautiful in +form and feature, that all the women wept, and many of them were so +deeply impressed that they shortly afterwards fell sick. And some time +afterwards the people wished to drag him from the grave again, so that a +stake might be driven through his body, in the belief that he had been a +vampire, and that the sick women would by this means recover. But they +found the grave empty." +</P> + +<P> +The Renaissance of the fifteenth century was, in many things, great +rather by what it designed than by what it achieved. Much which it +aspired to do, and did but imperfectly or mistakenly, was accomplished +in what is called the eclaircissement of the eighteenth century, or in +our own generation; and what really belongs to the rival of the +fifteenth century is but the leading instinct, the curiosity, the +initiatory idea. It is so with this very question of the reconciliation +of the religion of antiquity with the religion of Christ. A modern +scholar occupied by this problem might observe that all religions may be +regarded as natural products; that, at least in their origin, their +growth, and decay, they have common laws, and are not to be isolated +from the other movements of the human mind in the periods in which they +respectively prevailed; that they arise spontaneously out of the human +mind, as expressions of the varying phases of its sentiment concerning +the unseen world; that every intellectual product must be judged from +the point of view of the age and the people in which it was produced. +He might go on to observe that each has contributed something to the +development of the religious sense, and ranging them as so many stages +in the gradual education of the human mind, justify the existence of +each. The basis of the reconciliation of the religions of the world +would thus be the inexhaustible activity and creativeness of the human +mind itself, in which all religions alike have their root, and in +which all alike are reconciled; just as the fancies of childhood and the +thoughts of old age meet and are laid to rest, in the experience of the +individual. Far different was the method followed by the scholars of the +fifteenth century. They lacked the very rudiments of the historic sense, +which, by an imaginative act, throws itself back into a world unlike +one's own, and estimates every intellectual creation in its connexion +with the age from which it proceeded; they had no idea of development, +of the differences of ages, of the gradual education of the human race. +In their attempts to reconcile the religions of the world, they were +thus thrown back upon the quicksand of allegorical interpretation. The +religions of the world were to be reconciled, not as successive stages, +in a gradual development of the religious sense, but as subsisting side +by side, and substantially in agreement with each other. And here the +first necessity was to misrepresent the language, the conceptions, the +sentiments, it was proposed to compare and reconcile. Plato and Homer +must be made to speak agreeably to Moses. Set side by side, the mere +surfaces could never unite in any harmony of design. Therefore one must +go below the surface, and bring up the supposed secondary, or still more +remote meaning, that diviner signification held in reserve, in recessu +divinius aliquid, latent in some stray touch of Homer, or figure of +speech in the books of Moses. +</P> + +<P> +And yet as a curiosity of the human mind, a "madhouse-cell," if you +will, into which we peep for a moment, and see it at work weaving +strange fancies, the allegorical interpretation of the fifteenth century +has its interest. With its strange web of imagery, its quaint conceits, +its unexpected combinations and subtle moralising, it is an element in +the local colour of a great age. It illustrates also the faith of that +age in all oracles, its desire to hear all voices, its generous belief +that nothing which had ever interested the human mind could wholly lose +its vitality. It is the counterpart, though certainly the feebler +counterpart, of that practical truce and reconciliation of the gods of +Greece with the Christian religion, which is seen in the art of the +time; and it is for his share in this work, and because his own story is +a sort of analogue or visible equivalent to the expression of this +purpose in his writings, that something of a general interest still +belongs to the name of Pico della Mirandola, whose life, written by his +nephew Francis, seemed worthy, for some touch of sweetness in it, to be +translated out of the original Latin by Sir Thomas More, that great +lover of Italian culture, among whose works this life of Pico, Earl +of Mirandola, and a great lord of Italy, as he calls him, may still be +read, in its quaint, antiquated English. +</P> + +<P> +Marsilio Ficino has told us how Pico came to Florence. It was the very +day—some day probably in the year 1482—on which Ficino had finished +his famous translation of Plato into Latin, the work to which he had +been dedicated from childhood by Cosmo de' Medici, in furtherance of his +desire to resuscitate the knowledge of Plato among his fellow-citizens. +Florence indeed, as M. Renan has pointed out, had always had an affinity +for the mystic and dreamy philosophy of Plato, while the colder and more +practical philosophy of Aristotle had flourished in Padua, and other +cities of the north; and the Florentines, though they knew perhaps very +little about him, had had the name of the great idealist often on their +lips. To increase this knowledge, Cosmo had founded the Platonic +academy, with periodical discussions at the villa of Careggi. The fall +of Constantinople in 1453, and the council in 1438 for the +reconciliation of the Greek and Latin Churches, had brought to Florence +many a needy Greek scholar. And now the work was completed, the door of +the mystical temple lay open to all who could construe Latin, and the +scholar rested from his labour; when there was introduced into his +study, where a lamp burned continually before the bust of Plato, as +other men burned lamps before their favourite saints, a young man fresh +from a journey, "of feature and shape seemly and beauteous, of stature +goodly and high, of flesh tender and soft, his visage lovely and fair, +his colour white, intermingled with comely reds, his eyes grey, and +quick of look, his teeth white and even, his hair yellow and abundant," +and trimmed with more than the usual artifice of the time. It is thus +that Sir Thomas More translates the words of the biographer of Pico, +who, even in outward form and appearance, seems an image of that inward +harmony and completeness, of which he is so perfect an example. The word +mystic has been usually derived from a Greek word which signifies to +shut, as if one shut one's lips, brooding on what cannot be uttered; but +the Platonists themselves derive it rather from the act of shutting the +eyes, that one may see the more, inwardly. Perhaps the eyes of the +mystic Ficino, now long past the midway of life, had come to be thus +half-closed; but when a young man, not unlike the archangel Raphael, as +the Florentines of that age depicted him in his wonderful walk with +Tobit, or Mercury, as he might have appeared in a painting by Sandro +Botticelli or Piero di Cosimo, entered his chamber, he seems to have +thought there was something not wholly earthly about him; at least, he +ever afterwards believed that it was not without the co-operation of the +stars that the stranger had arrived on that day. For it happened that +they fell into a conversation, deeper and more intimate than men usually +fall into at first sight. During this conversation Ficino formed the +design of devoting his remaining years to the translation of Plotinus, +that new Plato, in whom the mystical element in the Platonic philosophy +had been worked out to the utmost limit of vision and ecstasy; and it is +in dedicating this translation to Lorenzo de' Medici that Ficino has +recorded these incidents. +</P> + +<P> +It was after many wanderings, wanderings of the intellect as well as +physical journeys, that Pico came to rest at Florence. He was then about +twenty years old, having been born in 1463. He was called Giovanni at +baptism; Pico, like all his ancestors, from Picus, nephew of the Emperor +Constantine, from whom they claimed to be descended; and Mirandola, from +the place of his birth, a little town afterwards part of the duchy of +Modena, of which small territory his family had long been the feudal +lords. Pico was the youngest of the family, and his mother, delighting +in his wonderful memory, sent him at the age of fourteen to the famous +school of law at Bologna. From the first, indeed, she seems to have had +some presentiment of his future fame, for, with a faith in omens +characteristic of her time, she believed that a strange circumstance had +happened at the time of Pico's birth—the appearance of a circular flame +which suddenly vanished away, on the wall of the chamber where she lay. +He remained two years at Bologna; and then, with an inexhaustible, +unrivalled thirst for knowledge, the strange, confused, uncritical +learning of that age, passed through the principal schools of Italy and +France, penetrating, as he thought, into the secrets of all ancient +philosophies, and many eastern languages. And with this flood of +erudition came the generous hope, so often disabused, of reconciling the +philosophers with each other, and all alike with the Church. At last he +came to Rome. There, like some knight-errant of philosophy, he offered +to defend nine hundred bold paradoxes, drawn from the most opposite +sources, against all comers. But the pontifical court was led to suspect +the orthodoxy of some of these propositions, and even the reading of the +book which contained them was forbidden by the Pope. It was not until +1493 that Pico was finally absolved, by a brief of Alexander the Sixth. +Ten years before that date he had arrived at Florence; an early instance +of those who, after following the vain hope of an impossible +reconciliation from system to system, have at last fallen back +unsatisfied on the simplicities of their childhood's belief. +</P> + +<P> +The oration which Pico composed for the opening of this philosophical +tournament still remains; its subject is the dignity of human nature, +the greatness of man. In common with nearly all medieval speculation, +much of Pico's writing has this for its drift; and in common also with +it, Pico's theory of that dignity is founded on a misconception of the +place in nature both of the earth and of man. For Pico the earth is the +centre of the universe: and around it, as a fixed and motionless point, +the sun and moon and stars revolve, like diligent servants or ministers. +And in the midst of all is placed man, nodus et vinculum mundi, the bond +or copula of the world, and the "interpreter of nature": that famous +expression of Bacon's really belongs to Pico. Tritum est in scholis, he +says, esse hominem minorem mundum, in quo mixtum ex elementis corpus et +spiritus coelestis et plantarum anima vegetalis et brutorum sensus et +ratio et angelica mens et Dei similitudo conspicitur.—"It is a +commonplace of the schools that man is a little world, in which we may +discern a body mingled of earthy elements, and ethereal breath, and the +vegetable life of plants, and the senses of the lower animals, and +reason, and the intelligence of angels, and a likeness to God."—A +commonplace of the schools! But perhaps it had some new significance and +authority, when men heard one like Pico reiterate it; and, false as its +basis was, the theory had its use. For this high dignity of man, thus +bringing the dust under his feet into sensible communion with the +thoughts and affections of the angels, was supposed to belong to him, +not as renewed by a religious system, but by his own natural right. The +proclamation of it was a counterpoise to the increasing tendency of +medieval religion to depreciate man's nature, to sacrifice this or that +element in it, to make it ashamed of itself, to keep the degrading or +painful accidents of it always in view. It helped man onward to that +reassertion of himself, that rehabilitation of human nature, the body, +the senses, the heart, the intelligence, which the Renaissance fulfils. +And yet to read a page of one of Pico's forgotten books is like a glance +into one of those ancient sepulchres, upon which the wanderer in +classical lands has sometimes stumbled, with the old disused ornaments +and furniture of a world wholly unlike ours still fresh in them. That +whole conception of nature is so different from our own. For Pico the +world is a limited place, bounded by actual crystal walls, and a +material firmament; it is like a painted toy, like that map or system of +the world, held, as a great target or shield, in the hands of the +grey-headed father of all things, in one of the earlier frescoes of the +Campo Santo at Pisa. How different from this childish dream is our own +conception of nature, with its unlimited space, its innumerable suns, +and the earth but a mote in the beam; how different the strange new awe, +or superstition, with which it fills our minds! "The silence of those +infinite spaces," says Pascal, contemplating a starlight night, "the +silence of those infinite spaces terrifies me"—Le silence eternel de +ces espaces infinis m'effraie. +</P> + +<P> +He was already almost wearied out when he came to Florence. He had loved +much and been beloved by women, "wandering over the crooked hills of +delicious pleasure"; but their reign over him was over, and long before +Savonarola's famous "bonfire of vanities," he had destroyed those +love-songs in the vulgar tongue, which would have been such a relief to +us, after the scholastic prolixity of his Latin writings. It was in +another spirit that he composed a Platonic commentary, the only work of +his in Italian which has come down to us, on the "Song of Divine +Love"—secondo la mente ed opinione dei Platonici—"according to the +mind and opinion of the Platonists," by his friend Hieronymo Beniveni, +in which, with an ambitious array of every sort of learning, and a +profusion of imagery borrowed indifferently from the astrologers, the +Cabala, and Homer, and Scripture, and Dionysius the Areopagite, he +attempts to define the stages by which the soul passes from the earthly +to the unseen beauty. A change indeed had passed over him, as if the +chilling touch of the abstract and disembodied beauty Platonists profess +to long for was already upon him; and perhaps it was a sense of this, +coupled with that over-brightness which in the popular imagination +always betokens an early death, that made Camilla Rucellai, one of those +prophetic women whom the preaching of Savonarola had raised up in +Florence, declare, seeing him for the first time, that he would depart +in the time of lilies—prematurely, that is, like the field-flowers +which are withered by the scorching sun almost as soon as they are +sprung up. It was now that he wrote down those thoughts on the religious +life which Sir Thomas More turned into English, and which another +English translator thought worthy to be added to the books of the +Imitation. "It is not hard to know God, provided one will not force +oneself to define Him":—has been thought a great saying of Joubert's. +"Love God," Pico writes to Angelo Politian, "we rather may, than either +know Him, or by speech utter Him. And yet had men liefer by knowledge +never find that which they seek, than by love possess that thing, which +also without love were in vain found." +</P> + +<P> +Yet he who had this fine touch for spiritual things did not—and in this +is the enduring interest of his story—even after his conversion, forget +the old gods. He is one of the last who seriously and sincerely +entertained the claims on men's faith of the pagan religions; he is +anxious to ascertain the true significance of the obscurest legend, the +lightest tradition concerning them. With many thoughts and many +influences which led him in that direction, he did not become a monk; +only he became gentle and patient in disputation; retaining "somewhat of +the old plenty, in dainty viand and silver vessel," he gave over the +greater part of his property to his friend, the mystical poet Beniveni, +to be spent by him in works of charity, chiefly in the sweet charity of +providing marriage-dowries for the peasant girls of Florence. His end +came in 1494, when, amid the prayers and sacraments of Savonarola, he +died of fever, on the very day on which Charles the Eighth entered +Florence, the seventeenth of November, yet in the time of lilies—the +lilies of the shield of France, as the people now said, remembering +Camilla's prophecy. He was buried in the cloister at Saint Mark's, in +the hood and white frock of the Dominican order. +</P> + +<P> +It is because the life of Pico, thus lying down to rest in the +Dominican habit, yet amid thoughts of the older gods, himself like one +of those comely divinities, reconciled indeed to the new religion, but +still with a tenderness for the earlier life, and desirous literally to +"bind the ages each to each by natural piety"—it is because this life +is so perfect a parallel to the attempt made in his writings to +reconcile Christianity with the ideas of paganism, that Pico, in spite +of the scholastic character of those writings, is really interesting. +Thus, in the Heptaplus, or Discourse on the Seven Days of the Creation, +he endeavours to reconcile the accounts which pagan philosophy had given +of the origin of the world with the account given in the books of +Moses—the Timaeus of Plato with the book of Genesis. The Heptaplus is +dedicated to Lorenzo the Magnificent, whose interest, the preface tells +us, in the secret wisdom of Moses is well known. If Moses seems in his +writings simple and even popular, rather than either a philosopher or a +theologian, that is because it was an institution with the ancient +philosophers, either not to speak of divine things at all, or to speak +of them dissemblingly: hence their doctrines were called mysteries. +Taught by them, Pythagoras became so great a "master of silence," and +wrote almost nothing, thus hiding the words of God in his heart, and +speaking wisdom only among the perfect. In explaining the harmony +between Plato and Moses, Pico lays hold on every sort of figure and +analogy, on the double meanings of words, the symbols of the Jewish +ritual, the secondary meanings of obscure stories in the later Greek +mythologists. Everywhere there is an unbroken system of correspondences. +Every object in the terrestrial world is an analogue, a symbol or +counterpart, of some higher reality in the starry heavens, and this +again of some law of the angelic life in the world beyond the stars. +There is the element of fire in the material world; the sun is the fire +of heaven; and in the super-celestial world there is the fire of the +seraphic intelligence. "But behold how they differ! The elementary fire +burns, the heavenly fire vivifies, the super-celestial fire loves." In +this way, every natural object, every combination of natural forces, +every accident in the lives of men, is filled with higher meanings. +Omens, prophecies, supernatural coincidences, accompany Pico himself all +through life. There are oracles in every tree and mountain-top, and a +significance in every accidental combination of the events of life. +</P> + +<P> +This constant tendency to symbolism and imagery gives Pico's work a +figured style, by which it has some real resemblance to Plato's, and he +differs from other mystical writers of his time by a real desire to know +his authorities at first hand. He reads Plato in Greek, Moses in Hebrew, +and by this his work really belongs to the higher culture. Above all, we +have a constant sense in reading him, that his thoughts, however little +their positive value may be, are connected with springs beneath them of +deep and passionate emotion; and when he explains the grades or steps by +which the soul passes from the love of a physical object to the love of +unseen beauty, and unfolds the analogies between this process and other +movements upward of human thought, there is a glow and vehemence in his +words which remind one of the manner in which his own brief existence +flamed itself away. +</P> + +<P> +I said that the Renaissance of the fifteenth century was in many things +great, rather by what it designed or aspired to do, than by what it +actually achieved. It remained for a later age to conceive the true +method of effecting a scientific reconciliation of Christian sentiment +with the imagery, the legends, the theories about the world, of pagan +poetry and philosophy. For that age the only possible reconciliation was +an imaginative one, and resulted from the efforts of artists, trained in +Christian schools, to handle pagan subjects; and of this artistic +reconciliation work like Pico's was but the feebler counterpart. +Whatever philosophers had to say on one side or the other, whether they +were successful or not in their attempts to reconcile the old to the +new, and to justify the expenditure of so much care and thought on the +dreams of a dead faith, the imagery of the Greek religion, the direct +charm of its story, were by artists valued and cultivated for their own +sake. Hence a new sort of mythology, with a tone and qualities of its +own. When the ship-load of sacred earth from the soil of Jerusalem was +mingled with the common clay in the Campo Santo at Pisa, a new flower +grew up from it, unlike any flower men had seen before, the anemone with +its concentric rings of strangely blended colour, still to be found by +those who search long enough for it, in the long grass of the Maremma. +Just such a strange flower was that mythology of the Italian +Renaissance, which grew up from the mixture of two traditions, two +sentiments, the sacred and the profane. Classical story was regarded as +so much imaginative material to be received and assimilated. It did not +come into men's minds to ask curiously of science concerning its origin, +its primary form and import, its meaning for those who projected it. It +sank into their minds, to issue forth again with all the tangle about it +of medieval sentiment and ideas. In the Doni Madonna in the Tribune of +the Uffizii, Michelangelo actually brings the pagan religion, and with +it the unveiled human form, the sleepy-looking fauns of a Dionysiac +revel, into the presence of the Madonna, as simpler painters had +introduced there other products of the earth, birds or flowers; and he +has given to that Madonna herself much of the uncouth energy of the +older and more primitive "Mighty Mother." +</P> + +<P> +It is because this picturesque union of contrasts, belonging properly to +the art of the close of the fifteenth century, pervades, in Pico della +Mirandola, an actual person, that the figure of Pico is so attractive. +He will not let one go; he wins one on, in spite of oneself, to turn +again to the pages of his forgotten books, although we know already that +the actual solution proposed in them will satisfy us as little as +perhaps it satisfied him. It is said that in his eagerness for +mysterious learning he once paid a great sum for a collection of +cabalistic manuscripts, which turned out to be forgeries; and the story +might well stand as a parable of all he ever seemed to gain in the way +of actual knowledge. He had sought knowledge, and passed from system to +system, and hazarded much; but less for the sake of positive knowledge +than because he believed there was a spirit of order and beauty in +knowledge, which would come down and unite what men's ignorance had +divided, and renew what time had made dim. And so, while his actual work +has passed away, yet his own qualities are still active, and he himself +remains, as one alive in the grave, caesiis et vigilibus oculis, as his +biographer describes him, and with that sanguine, clear skin, decenti +rubore interspersa, as with the light of morning upon it; and he has a +true place in that group of great Italians who fill the end of the +fifteenth century with their names, he is a true HUMANIST. For the +essence of humanism is that belief of which he seems never to have +doubted, that nothing which has ever interested living men and women can +wholly lose its vitality—no language they have spoken, nor oracle +beside which they have hushed their voices, no dream which has once been +entertained by actual human minds, nothing about which they have ever +been passionate, or expended time and zeal. +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +1871. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="botticelli"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +SANDRO BOTTICELLI +</H3> + +<P> +In Leonardo's treatise on painting only one contemporary is mentioned by +Name—Sandro Botticelli. This pre-eminence may be due to chance only, +but to some will rather appear a result of deliberate judgment; for +people have begun to find out the charm of Botticelli's work, and his +name, little known in the last century, is quietly becoming important. +In the middle of the fifteenth century he had already anticipated much +of that meditative subtlety, which is sometimes supposed peculiar to the +great imaginative workmen of its close. Leaving the simple religion +which had occupied the followers of Giotto for a century, and the simple +naturalism which had grown out of it, a thing of birds and flowers only, +he sought inspiration in what to him were works of the modern world, the +writings of Dante and Boccaccio, and in new readings of his own of +classical stories: or, if he painted religious incidents, painted them +with an under-current of original sentiment, which touches you as the +real matter of the picture through the veil of its ostensible subject. +What is the peculiar sensation, what is the peculiar quality of +pleasure, which his work has the property of exciting in us, and which +we cannot get elsewhere? For this, especially when he has to speak of a +comparatively unknown artist, is always the chief question which a +critic has to answer. +</P> + +<P> +In an age when the lives of artists were full of adventure, his life is +almost colourless. Criticism indeed has cleared away much of the gossip +which Vasari accumulated, has touched the legend of Lippo and Lucrezia, +and rehabilitated the character of Andrea del Castagno; but in +Botticelli's case there is no legend to dissipate. He did not even go by +his true name: Sandro is a nickname, and his true name is Filipepi, +Botticelli being only the name of the goldsmith who first taught him +art. Only two things happened to him, two things which he shared with +other artists:—he was invited to Rome to paint in the Sistine Chapel, +and he fell in later life under the influence of Savonarola, passing +apparently almost out of men's sight in a sort of religious melancholy, +which lasted till his death in 1515, according to the received date. +Vasari says that he plunged into the study of Dante, and even wrote a +comment on the Divine Comedy. But it seems strange that he should have +lived on inactive so long; and one almost wishes that some document +might come to light, which, fixing the date of his death earlier, might +relieve one, in thinking of him, of his dejected old age. +</P> + +<P> +He is before all things a poetical painter, blending the charm of story +and sentiment, the medium of the art of poetry, with the charm of line +and colour, the medium of abstract painting. So he becomes the +illustrator of Dante. In a few rare examples of the edition of 1481, the +blank spaces, left at the beginning of every canto for the hand of the +illuminator, have been filled, as far as the nineteenth canto of the +Inferno, with impressions of engraved plates, seemingly by way of +experiment, for in the copy in the Bodleian Library, one of the three +impressions it contains has been printed upside down, and much awry, in +the midst of the luxurious printed page. Giotto, and the followers of +Giotto, with their almost childish religious aim, had not learned to put +that weight of meaning into outward things, light, colour, everyday +gesture, which the poetry of the Divine Comedy involves, and before the +fifteenth century Dante could hardly have found an illustrator. +Botticelli's illustrations are crowded with incident, blending, with a +naive carelessness of pictorial propriety, three phases of the same +scene into one plate. The grotesques, so often a stumbling-block to +painters who forget that the words of a poet, which only feebly present +an image to the mind, must be lowered in key when translated into form, +make one regret that he has not rather chosen for illustration the more +subdued imagery of the Purgatorio. Yet in the scene of those who "go +down quick into hell," there is an invention about the fire taking hold +on the upturned soles of the feet, which proves that the design is no +mere translation of Dante's words, but a true painter's vision; while +the scene of the Centaurs wins one at once, for, forgetful of the actual +circumstances of their appearance, Botticelli has gone off with delight +on the thought of the Centaurs themselves, bright, small creatures of +the woodland, with arch baby face and mignon forms, drawing tiny bows. +</P> + +<P> +Botticelli lived in a generation of naturalists, and he might have been +a mere naturalist among them. There are traces enough in his work of +that alert sense of outward things, which, in the pictures of that +period, fills the lawns with delicate living creatures, and the +hillsides with pools of water, and the pools of water with flowering +reeds. But this was not enough for him; he is a visionary painter, and +in his visionariness he resembles Dante. Giotto, the tried companion of +Dante, Masaccio, Ghirlandajo even, do but transcribe, with more or less +refining, the outward image; they are dramatic, not visionary painters; +they are almost impassive spectators of the action before them. But the +genius of which Botticelli is the type usurps the data before it as the +exponent of ideas, moods, visions of its own; in this interest it plays +fast and loose with those data, rejecting some and isolating others, and +always combining them anew. To him as to Dante, the scene, the colour, +the outward image or gesture, comes with all its incisive and +importunate reality; but awakes in him, moreover, by some subtle law of +his own structure, a mood which it awakes in no one else, of which it is +the double or repetition, and which it clothes, that all may share it, +with sensuous circumstance. +</P> + +<P> +But he is far enough from accepting the conventional orthodoxy of Dante +which, referring all human action to the simple formula of purgatory, +heaven and hell, leaves an insoluble element of prose in the depths of +Dante's poetry. One picture of his, with the portrait of the donor, +Matteo Palmieri, below, had the credit or discredit of attracting some +shadow of ecclesiastical censure. This Matteo Palmieri—two dim figures +move under that name in contemporary history—was the reputed author of +a poem, still unedited, La Citta Divina, which represented the human +race as an incarnation of those angels who, in the revolt of Lucifer, +were neither for Jehovah nor for His enemies, a fantasy of that earlier +Alexandrian philosophy about which the Florentine intellect in that +century was so curious. Botticelli's picture may have been only one of +those familiar compositions in which religious reverie has recorded its +impressions of the various forms of beatified existence—Glorias, as +they were called, like that in which Giotto painted the portrait of +Dante; but somehow it was suspected of embodying in a picture the +wayward dream of Palmieri, and the chapel where it hung was closed. +Artists so entire as Botticelli are usually careless about philosophical +theories, even when the philosopher is a Florentine of the fifteenth +century, and his work a poem in terza rima. But Botticelli, who wrote a +commentary on Dante, and became the disciple of Savonarola, may well +have let such theories come and go across him. True or false, the story +interprets much of the peculiar sentiment with which he infuses his +profane and sacred persons, comely, and in a certain sense like angels, +but with a sense of displacement or loss about them—the wistfulness of +exiles, conscious of a passion and energy greater than any known issue +of them explains, which runs through all his varied work with a +sentiment of ineffable melancholy. +</P> + +<P> +So just what Dante scorns as unworthy alike of heaven and hell, +Botticelli accepts, that middle world in which men take no side in great +conflicts, and decide no great causes, and make great refusals. He thus +sets for himself the limits within which art, undisturbed by any moral +ambition, does its most sincere and surest work. His interest is neither +in the untempered goodness of Angelico's saints, nor the untempered evil +of Orcagna's Inferno; but with men and women, in their mixed and +uncertain condition, always attractive, clothed sometimes by passion +with a character of loveliness and energy, but saddened perpetually by +the shadow upon them of the great things from which they shrink. His +morality is all sympathy; and it is this sympathy, conveying into his +work somewhat more than is usual of the true complexion of humanity, +which makes him, visionary as he is, so forcible a realist. +</P> + +<P> +It is this which gives to his Madonnas their unique expression and +charm. He has worked out in them a distinct and peculiar type, definite +enough in his own mind, for he has painted it over and over again, +sometimes one might think almost mechanically, as a pastime during that +dark period when his thoughts were so heavy upon him. Hardly any +collection of note is without one of these circular pictures, into which +the attendant angels depress their heads so naively. Perhaps you have +sometimes wondered why those peevish-looking Madonnas, conformed to no +acknowledged or obvious type of beauty, attract you more and more, and +often come back to you when the Sistine Madonna and the Virgins of Fra +Angelico are forgotten. At first, contrasting them with those, you may +have thought that there was something in them mean or abject even, for +the abstract lines of the face have little nobleness, and the colour is +wan. For with Botticelli she too, though she holds in her hands the +"Desire of all nations," is one of those who are neither for Jehovah nor +for His enemies; and her choice is on her face. The white light on it is +cast up hard and cheerless from below, as when snow lies upon the +ground, and the children look up with surprise at the strange whiteness +of the ceiling. Her trouble is in the very caress of the mysterious +child, whose gaze is always far from her, and who has already that sweet +look of devotion which men have never been able altogether to love, and +which still makes the born saint an object almost of suspicion to his +earthly brethren. Once, indeed, he guides her hand to transcribe in a +book the words of her exaltation, the Ave, and the Magnificat, and the +Gaude Maria, and the young angels, glad to rouse her for a moment from +Her dejection, are eager to hold the inkhorn and to support the book; +but the pen almost drops from her hand, and the high cold words have no +meaning for her, and her true children are those others, among whom in +her rude home, the intolerable honour came to her, with that look of +wistful inquiry on their irregular faces which you see in startled +animals—gipsy children, such as those who, in Apennine villages, still +hold out their long brown arms to beg of you, but on Sundays become +enfants du choeur, with their thick black hair nicely combed, and fair +white linen on their sunburnt throats. +</P> + +<P> +What is strangest is that he carries this sentiment into classical +subjects, its most complete expression being a picture in the Uffizii, +of Venus rising from the sea, in which the grotesque emblems of the +middle age, and a landscape full of its peculiar feeling, and even its +strange draperies, powdered all over in the Gothic manner with a quaint +conceit of daisies, frame a figure that reminds you of the faultless +nude studies of Ingres. At first, perhaps, you are attracted only by a +quaintness of design, which seems to recall all at once whatever you +have read of Florence in the fifteenth century; afterwards you may think +that this quaintness must be incongruous with the subject, and that the +colour is cadaverous or at least cold. And yet, the more you come to +understand what imaginative colouring really is, that all colour is no +mere delightful quality of natural things, but a spirit upon them by +which they become expressive to the spirit, the better you will like +this peculiar quality of colour; and you will find that quaint design of +Botticelli's a more direct inlet into the Greek temper than the works of +the Greeks themselves even of the finest period. Of the Greeks as they +really were, of their difference from ourselves, of the aspects of their +outward life, we know far more than Botticelli, or his most learned +contemporaries; but for us long familiarity has taken off the edge of +the lesson, and we are hardly conscious of what we owe to the Hellenic +spirit. But in pictures like this of Botticelli's you have a record of +the first impression made by it on minds turned back towards it, in +almost painful aspiration, from a world in which it had been ignored so +long; and in the passion, the energy, the industry of realisation, with +which Botticelli carries out his intention, is the exact measure of the +legitimate influence over the human mind of the imaginative system of +which this is the central myth. The light is indeed cold—mere sunless +dawn; but a later painter would have cloyed you with sunshine; and you +can see the better for that quietness in the morning air each long +promontory, as it slopes down to the water's edge. Men go forth to their +labours until the evening; but she is awake before them, and you might +think that the sorrow in her face was at the thought of the whole long +day of love yet to come. An emblematical figure of the wind blows hard +across the grey water, moving forward the dainty-lipped shell on which +she sails, the sea "showing his teeth" as it moves in thin lines of +foam, and sucking in, one by one, the falling roses, each severe in +outline, plucked off short at the stalk but embrowned a little, as +Botticelli's flowers always are. Botticelli meant all that imagery to be +altogether pleasurable; and it was partly an incompleteness of +resources, inseparable from the art of that time, that subdued and +chilled it; but his predilection for minor tones counts also; and what +is unmistakable is the sadness with which he has conceived the goddess +of pleasure, as the depositary of a great power over the lives of men. +</P> + +<P> +I have said that the peculiar character of Botticelli is the result of a +blending in him of a sympathy for humanity in its uncertain condition, +its attractiveness, its investiture at rarer moments in a character of +loveliness and energy, with his consciousness of the shadow upon it of +the great things from which it shrinks, and that this conveys into his +work somewhat more than painting usually attains of the true complexion +of humanity. He paints the story of the goddess of pleasure in other +episodes besides that of her birth from the sea, but never without some +shadow of death in the grey flesh and wan flowers. He paints Madonnas, +but they shrink from the pressure of the divine child, and plead in +unmistakable undertones for a warmer, lower humanity. The same +figure—tradition connects it with Simonetta, the Mistress of Giuliano +de' Medici—appears again as Judith, returning home across the hill +country, when the great deed is over, and the moment of revulsion come, +when the olive branch in her hand is becoming a burthen; as Justice, +sitting on a throne, but with a fixed look of self-hatred which makes +the sword in her hand seem that of a suicide; and again as Veritas, in +the allegorical picture of Calumnia, where one may note in passing the +suggestiveness of an accident which identifies the image of Truth with +the person of Venus. We might trace the same sentiment through his +engravings; but his share in them is doubtful, and the object of this +brief study has been attained, if I have defined aright the temper in +which he worked. +</P> + +<P> +But, after all, it may be asked, is a painter like Botticelli—a +secondary painter—a proper subject for general criticism? There are a +few great painters, like Michelangelo or Leonardo, whose work has become +a force in general culture, partly for this very reason that they have +absorbed into themselves all such workmen as Sandro Botticelli; and, +over and above mere technical or antiquarian criticism, general +criticism may be very well employed in that sort of interpretation which +adjusts the position of these men to general culture, whereas smaller +men can be the proper subjects only of technical or antiquarian +treatment. But, besides those great men, there is a certain number of +artists who have a distinct faculty of their own by which they convey to +us a peculiar quality of pleasure which we cannot get elsewhere; and +these, too, have their place in general culture, and must be interpreted +to it by those who have felt their charm strongly, and are often the +objects of a special diligence and a consideration wholly affectionate, +just because there is not about them the stress of a great name and +authority. Of this select number Botticelli is one; he has the +freshness, the uncertain and diffident promise which belongs to the +earlier Renaissance itself, and makes it perhaps the most interesting +period in the history of the mind: in studying his work one begins to +understand to how great a place in human culture the art of Italy had +been called. +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +1870. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="robbia"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +LUCA DELLA ROBBIA +</H3> + +<P> +The Italian sculptors of the earlier half of the fifteenth century are +more than mere forerunners of the great masters of its close, and often +reach perfection, within the narrow limits which they chose to impose on +their work. Their sculpture shares with the paintings of Botticelli and +the churches of Brunelleschi that profound expressiveness, that intimate +impress of an indwelling soul, which is the peculiar fascination of the +art of Italy in that century. Their works have been much neglected, and +often almost hidden away amid the frippery of modern decoration, and we +come with some surprise on the places where their fire still smoulders. +One longs to penetrate into the lives of the men who have given +expression to so much power and sweetness; but it is part of the +reserve, the austere dignity and simplicity of their existence, that +their histories are for the most part lost, or told but briefly. From +their lives, as from their work, all tumult of sound and colour has +passed away. Mino, the Raffaelle of sculpture, Maso del Rodario, whose +works add a new grace to the church of Como, Donatello even—one asks in +vain for more than a shadowy outline of their actual days. +</P> + +<P> +Something more remains of Luca della Robbia; something more of a +history, of outward changes and fortunes, is expressed through his work. +I suppose nothing brings the real air of a Tuscan town so vividly to +mind as those pieces of pale blue and white earthenware, by which he is +best known, like fragments of the milky sky itself, fallen into the cool +streets, and breaking into the darkened churches. And no work is less +imitable; like Tuscan wine, it loses its savour when moved from its +birthplace, from the crumbling walls where it was first placed. Part of +the charm of this work, its grace and purity and finish of expression, +is common to all the Tuscan sculptors of the fifteenth century; for Luca +was first of all a worker in marble, and his works in earthenware only +transfer to a different material the principles of his sculpture. +</P> + +<P> +These Tuscan sculptors of the fifteenth century worked for the most part +in low relief, giving even to their monumental effigies something of its +depression of surface, getting into them by this means a pathetic +suggestion of the wasting and etherealisation of death. They are haters +of all heaviness and emphasis, of strongly-opposed light and shade, and +seek their means of expression among those last refinements of shadow, +which are almost invisible except in a strong light, and which the +finest pencil can hardly follow. The whole essence of their work is +EXPRESSION, the passing of a smile over the face of a child, the ripple +of the air on a still day over the curtain of a window ajar. +</P> + +<P> +What is the precise value of this system of sculpture, this low relief? +Luca della Robbia, and the other sculptors of the school to which he +belongs, have before them the universal problem of their art; and this +system of low relief is the means by which they meet and overcome the +special limitation of sculpture—a limitation resulting from the +material and the essential conditions of all sculptured work, and which +consists in the tendency of this work to a hard realism, a one-sided +presentment of mere form, that solid material frame which only motion +can relieve, a thing of heavy shadows, and an individuality of +expression pushed to caricature. Against this tendency to the hard +presentment of mere form trying vainly to compete with the reality of +nature itself, all noble sculpture constantly struggles: each great +system of sculpture resisting it in its own way, etherealising, +spiritualising, relieving its hardness, its heaviness and death. The use +of colour in sculpture is but an unskilful contrivance to effect, by +borrowing from another art, what the nobler sculpture effects by +strictly appropriate means. To get not colour, but the equivalent of +colour; to secure the expression and the play of life; to expand the too +fixed individuality of pure, unrelieved, uncoloured form—this is the +problem which the three great styles in sculpture have solved in three +different ways. +</P> + +<P> +Allgemeinheit—breadth, generality, universality—is the word chosen by +Winckelmann, and after him by Goethe and many German critics, to express +that law of the most excellent Greek sculptors, of Pheidias and his +pupils, which prompted them constantly to seek the type in the +individual, to abstract and express only what is structural and +permanent, to purge from the individual all that belongs only to him, +all the accidents, the feelings, and actions of the special moment, all +that (because in its own nature it endures but for a moment) is apt to +look like a frozen thing if one arrests it. +</P> + +<P> +In this way their works came to be like some subtle extract or essence, +or almost like pure thoughts or ideas: and hence the breadth of humanity +in them, that detachment from the conditions of a particular place or +people, which has carried their influence far beyond the age which +produced them, and insured them universal acceptance. +</P> + +<P> +That was the Greek way of relieving the hardness and unspirituality of +pure form. But it involved to a certain degree the sacrifice of what we +call expression; and a system of abstraction which aimed always at the +broad and general type, at the purging away from the individual of what +belonged only to him, and of the mere accidents of a particular time +and place, imposed upon the range of effects open to the Greek sculptor +limits somewhat narrowly defined; and when Michelangelo came, with a +genius spiritualised by the reverie of the middle age, penetrated by its +spirit of inwardness and introspection, living not a mere outward life +like the Greek, but a life full of inward experiences, sorrows, +consolations, a system which sacrificed so much of what was inward and +unseen could not satisfy him. To him, lover and student of Greek +sculpture as he was, work which did not bring what was inward to the +surface, which was not concerned with individual expression, with +individual character and feeling, the special history of the special +soul, was not worth doing at all. +</P> + +<P> +And so, in a way quite personal and peculiar to himself, which often is, +and always seems, the effect of accident, he secured for his work +individuality and intensity of expression, while he avoided a too hard +realism, that tendency to harden into caricature which the +representation of feeling in sculpture must always have. What time and +accident, its centuries of darkness under the furrows of the "little +Melian farm," have done with singular felicity of touch for the Venus of +Melos, fraying its surface and softening its lines, so that some spirit +in the thing seems always on the point of breaking out, as though in it +classical sculpture had advanced already one step into the mystical +Christian age, its expression being in the whole range of ancient work +most like that of Michelangelo's own:—this effect Michelangelo gains by +leaving nearly all his sculpture in a puzzling sort of incompleteness, +which suggests rather than realises actual form. Something of the +wasting of that snow-image which he moulded at the command of Piero de' +Medici, when the snow lay one night in the court of the Pitti palace, +almost always lurks about it, as if he had determined to make the +quality of a task, exacted from him half in derision, the pride of all +his work. Many have wondered at that incompleteness, suspecting, +however, that Michelangelo himself loved and was loath to change it, and +feeling at the same time that they too would lose something if the +half-realised form ever quite emerged from the stone, so rough hewn +here, so delicately finished there; and they have wished to fathom the +charm of this incompleteness. Well! that incompleteness is +Michelangelo's equivalent for colour in sculpture; it is his way of +etherealising pure form, of relieving its hard realism, and +communicating to it breath, pulsation, the effect of life. It was a +characteristic too which fell in with his peculiar temper and mode of +life, his disappointments and hesitations. And it was in reality perfect +finish. In this way he combines the utmost amount of passion and +intensity with the sense of a yielding and flexible life: he gets not +vitality merely, but a wonderful force of expression. +</P> + +<P> +Midway between these two systems—the system of the Greek sculptors and +the system of Michelangelo—comes the system of Luca della Robbia. And +the other Tuscan sculptors of the fifteenth century, partaking both of +the Allgemeinheit of the Greeks, their way of extracting certain select +elements only of pure form and sacrificing all the rest, and the studied +incompleteness of Michelangelo, relieving that expression of intensity, +passion, energy, which might otherwise have hardened into caricature. +Like Michelangelo, these sculptors fill their works with intense and +individualised expression: their noblest works are the studied +sepulchral portraits of particular persons—the monument of Conte Ugo in +the Badia of Florence, of the youthful Medea Colleoni, with the +wonderful, long throat, in the chapel on the cool north side of the +Church of Santa Maria Maggiore at Bergamo—monuments which abound in the +churches of Rome, inexhaustible in suggestions of repose, of a subdued +Sabbatic joy, a kind of sacred grace and refinement:—and they unite +these elements of tranquillity, of repose, to that intense and +individual expression by a system of conventionalism as skilful and +subtle as that of the Greeks, subduing all such curves as indicate solid +form, and throwing the whole into lower relief. +</P> + +<P> +The life of Luca, a life of labour and frugality, with no adventure and +no excitement except what belongs to the trial of new artistic +processes, the struggle with new artistic difficulties, the solution of +purely artistic problems, fills the first seventy years of the fifteenth +century. After producing many works in marble for the Duomo and the +Campanile of Florence, which place him among the foremost sculptors of +that age, he became desirous to realise the spirit and manner of that +sculpture, in a humbler material, to unite its science, its exquisite +and expressive system of low relief, to the homely art of pottery, to +introduce those high qualities into common things, to adorn and +cultivate daily household life. In this he is profoundly characteristic +of the Florence of that century, of that in it which lay below its +superficial vanity and caprice, a certain old-world modesty and +seriousness and simplicity. People had not yet begun to think that what +was good art for churches was not so good, or less fitted, for their own +houses. Luca's new work was in plain white earthenware at first, a mere +rough imitation of the costly, laboriously wrought marble, finished in a +few hours. But on this humble path he found his way to a fresh success, +to another artistic grace. The fame of the oriental pottery, with its +strange, bright colours—colours of art, colours not to be attained in +the natural stone—mingled with the tradition of the old Roman pottery +of the neighbourhood. The little red, coral-like jars of Arezzo, dug up +in that district from time to time, are still famous. These colours +haunted Luca's fancy. "He still continued seeking something more," his +biographer says of him; "and instead of making his figures of baked +earth simply white, he added the further invention of giving them +colour, to the astonishment and delight of all who beheld them"—Cosa +singolare, e multo utile per la state!—a curious thing, and very useful +for summertime, full of coolness and repose for hand and eye. Luca loved +the forms of various fruits, and wrought them into all sorts of +marvellous frames and garlands, giving them their natural colours, only +subdued a little, a little paler than nature. But in his nobler +terra-cotta work he never introduces colour into the flesh, keeping +mostly to blue and white, the colours of the Virgin Mary. +</P> + +<P> +I said that the work of Luca della Robbia possessed in an unusual +measure that special characteristic which belongs to all the workmen of +his school, a characteristic which, even in the absence of much positive +information about their actual history, seems to bring those workmen +themselves very near to us—the impress of a personal quality, a +profound expressiveness, what the French call intimite, by which is +meant some subtler sense of originality—the seal on a man's work of +what is most inward and peculiar in his moods, and manner of +apprehension: it is what we call expression, carried to its highest +intensity of degree. That characteristic is rare in poetry, rarer still +in art, rarest of all in the abstract art of sculpture; yet essentially, +perhaps, it is the quality which alone makes works in the imaginative +and moral order really worth having at all. It is because the works of +the artists of the fifteenth century possess this quality in an +unmistakable way that one is anxious to know all that can be known about +them, and explain to oneself the secret of their charm. +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +1872. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="michelangelo"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE POETRY OF MICHELANGELO +</H3> + +<P> +Critics of Michelangelo have sometimes spoken as if the only +characteristic of his genius were a wonderful strength, verging, as in +the things of the imagination great strength always does, on what is +singular or strange. A certain strangeness, something of the blossoming +of the aloe, is indeed an element in all true works of art; that they +shall excite or surprise us is indispensable. But that they shall give +pleasure and exert a charm over us is indispensable too; and this +strangeness must be sweet also—a lovely strangeness. And to the true +admirers of Michelangelo this is the true type of the +Michelangelesque—sweetness and strength, pleasure with surprise, an +energy of conception which seems at every moment about to break through +all the conditions of comely form, recovering, touch by touch, a +loveliness found usually only in the simplest natural things—ex forti +dulcedo. +</P> + +<P> +In this way he sums up for them the whole character of medieval art +itself in that which distinguishes it most clearly from classical work, +the presence of a convulsive energy in it, becoming in lower hands +merely monstrous or forbidding, but felt, even in its most graceful +products, as a subdued quaintness or grotesque. Yet those who feel this +grace or sweetness in Michelangelo might at the first moment be puzzled +if they were asked wherein precisely the quality resided. Men of +inventive temperament—Victor Hugo, for instance, in whom, as in +Michelangelo, people have for the most part been attracted or repelled +by the strength, while few have understood his sweetness—have sometimes +relieved conceptions of merely moral or spiritual greatness, but with +little aesthetic charm of their own, by lovely accidents or accessories, +like the butterfly which alights on the blood-stained barricade in Les +Miserables, or those sea-birds for which the monstrous Gilliatt comes to +be as some wild natural thing, so that they are no longer afraid of him, +in Les Travailleurs de la Mer. But the austere genius of Michelangelo +will not depend for its sweetness on any mere accessories like these. +The world of natural things has almost no existence for him; "When one +speaks of him," says Grimm, "woods, clouds, seas, and mountains +disappear, and only what is formed by the spirit of man remains behind"; +and he quotes a few slight words from a letter of his to Vasari as the +single expression in all he has left of a feeling for nature. He has +traced no flowers, like those with which Leonardo stars over his +gloomiest rocks; nothing like the fretwork of wings and flames in which +Blake frames his most startling conceptions; no forest-scenery like +Titian's fills his backgrounds, but only blank ranges of rock, and dim +vegetable forms as blank as they, as in a world before the creation of +the first five days. +</P> + +<P> +Of the whole story of the creation he has painted only the creation of +the first man and woman, and, for him at least, feebly, the creation of +light. It belongs to the quality of his genius thus to concern itself +almost exclusively with the creation of man. For him it is not, as in +the story itself, the last and crowning act of a series of developments, +but the first and unique act, the creation of life itself in its supreme +form, off-hand and immediately, in the cold and lifeless stone. With him +the beginning of life has all the characteristics of resurrection; it is +like the recovery of suspended health or animation, with its gratitude, +its effusion, and eloquence. Fair as the young men of the Elgin marbles, +the Adam of the Sistine Chapel is unlike them in a total absence of that +balance and completeness which express so well the sentiment of a +self-contained, independent life. In that languid figure there is +something rude and satyr-like, something akin to the rugged hillside on +which it lies. His whole form is gathered into an expression of mere +expectation and reception; he has hardly strength enough to lift his +finger to touch the finger of the creator; yet a touch of the +finger-tips will suffice. +</P> + +<P> +This creation of life—life coming always as relief or recovery, and +always in strong contrast with the rough-hewn mass in which it is +kindled—is in various ways the motive of all his work, whether its +immediate subject be Pagan or Christian, legend or allegory; and this, +although at least one-half of his work was designed for the adornment of +tombs—the tomb of Julius, the tombs of the Medici. Not the Judgment but +the Resurrection is the real subject of his last work in the Sistine +Chapel; and his favourite Pagan subject is the legend of Leda, the +delight of the world breaking from the egg of a bird. As I have already +pointed out, he secures that ideality of expression which in Greek +sculpture depends on a delicate system of abstraction, and in early +Italian sculpture on lowness of relief, by an incompleteness, which is +surely not always undesigned, and which I suppose no one regrets, and +trusts to the spectator to complete the half-emergent form. And as his +persons have something of the unwrought stone about them, so, as if to +realise the expression by which the old Florentine records describe a +sculptor—master of live stone—with him the very rocks seem to have +life; they have but to cast away the dust and scurf that they may rise +and stand on their feet. He loved the very quarries of Carrara, those +strange grey peaks which even at mid-day convey into any scene from +which they are visible something of the solemnity and stillness of +evening, sometimes wandering among them month after month, till at last +their pale ashen colours seem to have passed into his painting; and on +the crown of the head of the David there still remains a morsel of uncut +stone, as if by one touch to maintain its connexion with the place from +which it was hewn. +</P> + +<P> +And it is in this penetrative suggestion of life that the secret of that +sweetness of his is to be found. He gives us indeed no lovely natural +objects like Leonardo or Titian, but only the coldest, most elementary +shadowing of rock or tree; no lovely draperies and comely gestures of +life, but only the austere truths of human nature; "simple persons"—as +he replied in his rough way to the querulous criticism of Julius the +Second, that there was no gold on the figures of the Sistine +Chapel—"simple persons, who wore no gold on their garments"; but he +penetrates us with a sense of that power which we associate with all the +warmth and fulness of the world, and the sense of which brings into +one's thoughts a swarm of birds and flowers and insects. The brooding +spirit of life itself is there; and the summer may burst out in a +moment. +</P> + +<P> +He was born in an interval of a rapid midnight journey in March, at a +place in the neighbourhood of Arezzo, the thin, clear air of which, as +was then thought, being favourable to the birth of children of great +parts. He came of a race of grave and dignified men, who, claiming +kinship with the family of Canossa, and some colour of imperial blood in +their veins, had, generation after generation, received honourable +employment under the government of Florence. His mother, a girl of +nineteen years, put him out to nurse at a country house among the hills +of Settignano, where every other inhabitant is a worker in the marble +quarries, and the child early became familiar with that strange first +stage in the sculptor's art. To this succeeded the influence of the +sweetest and most placid master Florence had yet seen, Domenico +Ghirlandajo. At fifteen he was at work among the curiosities of the +garden of the Medici, copying and restoring antiques, winning the +condescending notice of the great Lorenzo. He knew too how to excite +strong hatreds; and it was at this time that in a quarrel with a +fellow-student he received a blow on the face which deprived him for +ever of the comeliness of outward form. It was through an accident that +he came to study those works of the early Italian sculptors which +suggested much of his own grandest work, and impressed it with so deep a +sweetness. He believed in dreams and omens. One of his friends dreamed +twice that Lorenzo, then lately dead, appeared to him in grey and dusty +apparel. To Michelangelo this dream seemed to portend the troubles which +afterwards really came, and with the suddenness which was characteristic +of all his movements, he left Florence. Having occasion to pass through +Bologna, he neglected to procure the little seal of red wax which the +stranger entering Bologna must carry on the thumb of his right hand. He +had no money to pay the fine, and would have been thrown into prison had +not one of the magistrates interposed. He remained in this man's house a +whole year, rewarding his hospitality by readings from the Italian poets +whom he loved. Bologna, with its endless colonnades and fantastic +leaning towers, can never have been one of the lovelier cities of Italy. +But about the portals of its vast unfinished churches and its dark +shrines, half hidden by votive flowers and candles, lie some of the +sweetest works of the early Tuscan sculptors, Giovanni da Pisa and +Jacopo della Quercia, things as winsome as flowers; and the year which +Michelangelo spent in copying these works was not a lost year. It was +now, on returning to Florence, that he put forth that unique presentment +of Bacchus, which expresses, not the mirthfulness of the god of wine, +but his sleepy seriousness, his enthusiasm, his capacity for profound +dreaming. No one ever expressed more truly than Michelangelo the notion +of inspired sleep, of faces charged with dreams. A vast fragment of +marble had long lain below the Loggia of Orcagna, and many a sculptor +had had his thoughts of a design which should just fill this famous +block of stone, cutting the diamond, as it were, without loss. Under +Michelangelo's hand it became the David which stood till lately on the +steps of the Palazzo Vecchio, when it was replaced below the Loggia. +Michelangelo was now thirty years old, and his reputation was +established. Three great works fill the remainder of his life—three +works often interrupted, carried on through a thousand hesitations, a +thousand disappointments, quarrels with his patrons, quarrels with his +family, quarrels perhaps most of all with himself—the Sistine Chapel, +the Mausoleum of Julius the Second, and the Sacristy of San Lorenzo. +</P> + +<P> +In the story of Michelangelo's life the strength, often turning to +bitterness, is not far to seek; a discordant note sounds throughout it +which almost spoils the music. He "treats the Pope as the King of France +himself would not dare to treat him"; he goes along the streets of Rome +"like an executioner," Raffaelle says of him. Once he seems to have shut +himself up with the intention of starving himself to death. As we come +in reading his life on its harsh, untempered incidents, the thought +again and again arises that he is one of those who incur the judgment of +Dante, as having "wilfully lived in sadness." Even his tenderness and +pity are embittered by their strength. What passionate weeping in that +mysterious figure which, in the Creation of Adam, crouches below the +image of the Almighty, as he comes with the forms of things to be, woman +and her progeny, in the fold of his garment! What a sense of wrong in +those two captive youths, who feel the chains like scalding water on +their proud and delicate flesh! The idealist who became a reformer with +Savonarola, and a republican superintending the fortification of +Florence—the nest where he was born, il nido ove naqqu'io, as he calls +it once, in a sudden throb of affection—in its last struggle for +liberty, yet believed always that he had imperial blood in his veins and +was of the kindred of the great Matilda, had within the depths of his +nature some secret spring of indignation or sorrow. We know little of +his youth, but all tends to make one believe in the vehemence of its +passions. Beneath the Platonic calm of the sonnets there is latent a +deep delight in carnal form and colour. There, and still more in the +madrigals, he often falls into the language of less tranquil affections; +while some of them have the colour of penitence, as from a wanderer +returning home. He who spoke so decisively of the supremacy in the +imaginative world of the unveiled human form had not been always, we may +think, a mere Platonic lover. Vague and wayward his loves may have been; +but they partook of the strength of his nature, and sometimes, it may +be, would by no means become music, so that the comely order of his days +was quite put out: par che amaro ogni mio dolce io senta. +</P> + +<P> +But his genius is in harmony with itself; and just as in the products of +his art we find resources of sweetness within their exceeding strength, +so in his own story also, bitter as the ordinary sense of it may be, +there are select pages shut in among the rest—pages one might easily +turn over too lightly, but which yet sweeten the whole volume. The +interest of Michelangelo's poems is that they make us spectators of this +struggle; the struggle of a strong nature to adorn and attune itself; +the struggle of a desolating passion, which yearns to be resigned and +sweet and pensive, as Dante's was. It is a consequence of the occasional +and informal character of his poetry, that it brings us nearer to +himself, his own mind and temper, than any work done only to support a +literary reputation could possibly do. His letters tell us little that +is worth knowing about him—a few poor quarrels about money and +commissions. But it is quite otherwise with these songs and sonnets, +written down at odd moments, sometimes on the margins of his sketches, +themselves often unfinished sketches, arresting some salient feeling or +unpremeditated idea as it passed. And it happens that a true study of +these has become within the last few years for the first time possible. +A few of the sonnets circulated widely in manuscript, and became almost +within Michelangelo's own lifetime a subject of academical discourses. +But they were first collected in a volume in 1623 by the great-nephew of +Michelangelo, Michelangelo Buonarroti the younger. He omitted much, +re-wrote the sonnets in part, and sometimes compressed two or more +compositions into one, always losing something of the force and +incisiveness of the original. So the book remained, neglected even by +Italians themselves in the last century, through the influence of that +French taste which despised all compositions of the kind, as it despised +and neglected Dante. "His reputation will ever be on the increase, +because he is so little read," says Voltaire of Dante.—But in 1858 the +last of the Buonarroti bequeathed to the municipality of Florence the +curiosities of his family. Among them was a precious volume containing +the autograph of the sonnets. A learned Italian, Signor Cesare Guasti, +undertook to collate this autograph with other manuscripts at the +Vatican and elsewhere, and in 1863 published a true version of +Michelangelo's poems, with dissertations and a paraphrase.* +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +*The sonnets have been translated into English, with much poetic taste +and skill, by Mr. J. A. Symonds. +</P> + +<P> +People have often spoken of these poems as if they were a mere cry of +distress, a lover's complaint over the obduracy of Vittoria Colonna. But +those who speak thus forget that though it is quite possible that +Michelangelo had seen Vittoria, that somewhat shadowy figure, as early +as 1537, yet their closer intimacy did not begin till about the year +1542, when Michelangelo was nearly seventy years old. Vittoria herself, +an ardent neo-catholic, vowed to perpetual widowhood since the news had +reached her, seventeen years before, that her husband, the youthful and +princely Marquess of Pescara, lay dead of the wounds he had received in +the battle of Pavia, was then no longer an object of great passion. In a +dialogue written by the painter, Francesco d'Ollanda, we catch a glimpse +of them together in an empty church at Rome, one Sunday afternoon, +discussing indeed the characteristics of various schools of art, but +still more the writings of Saint Paul, already following the ways and +tasting the sunless pleasures of weary people, whose hold on outward +things is slackening. In a letter still extant he regrets that when he +visited her after death he had kissed her hands only. He made, or set to +work to make, a crucifix for her use, and two drawings, perhaps in +preparation for it, are now in Oxford. From allusions in the sonnets, we +may divine that when they first approached each other he had debated +much with himself whether this last passion would be the most +unsoftening, the most desolating of all—un dolce amaro, un si e no mi +muovi; is it carnal affection, or, del suo prestino stato (Plato's +ante-natal state) il raggio ardente? The older, conventional criticism, +dealing with the text of 1623, had lightly assumed that all or nearly +all the sonnets were actually addressed to Vittoria herself; but Signor +Guasti finds only four, or at most five, which can be so attributed on +genuine authority. Still, there are reasons which make him assign the +majority of them to the period between 1542 and 1547, and we may regard +the volume as a record of this resting-place in Michelangelo's story. We +know how Goethe escaped from the stress of sentiments too strong for him +by making a book about them; and for Michelangelo, to write down his +passionate thoughts at all, to make sonnets about them, was already in +some measure to command, and have his way with them— +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + La vita del mia amor non e il cor mio,<BR> + Ch'amor, di quel ch'io t'amo, e senza core.<BR> +</P> + +<P> +It was just because Vittoria raised no great passion that the space in +his life where she reigns has such peculiar suavity; and the spirit of +the sonnets is lost if we once take them out of that dreamy atmosphere +in which men have things as they will, because the hold of all outward +things upon them is faint and thin. Their prevailing tone is a calm and +meditative sweetness. The cry of distress is indeed there, but as a mere +residue, a trace of bracing chalybeate salt, just discernible in the +song which rises as a clear, sweet spring from a charmed space in his +life. +</P> + +<P> +This charmed and temperate space in Michelangelo's life, without which +its excessive strength would have been so imperfect, which saves him +from the judgment of Dante on those who "wilfully lived in sadness," is +then a well-defined period there, reaching from the year 1542 to the +year 1547, the year of Vittoria's death. In it the lifelong effort to +tranquillise his vehement emotions by withdrawing them into the region +of ideal sentiment, becomes successful; and the significance of Vittoria +there is, that she realises for him a type of affection which even in +disappointment may charm and sweeten his spirit. In this effort to +tranquillise and sweeten life by idealising its vehement sentiments, +there were two great traditional types, either of which an Italian of +the sixteenth century might have followed. There was Dante, whose little +book of the Vita Nuova had early become a pattern of imaginative love, +maintained somewhat feebly by the later followers of Petrarch; and since +Plato had become something more than a name in Italy by the publication +of the Latin translation of his works by Marsilio Ficino, there was the +Platonic tradition also. Dante's belief in the resurrection of the body, +through which, even in heaven, Beatrice loses for him no tinge of +flesh-colour, or fold of raiment even—and the Platonic dream of the +passage of the soul through one form of life after another, with its +passionate haste to escape from the burden of bodily form +altogether—are, for all effects of art or poetry, principles +diametrically opposite; and it is the Platonic tradition rather than +Dante's that has moulded Michelangelo's verse. In many ways no sentiment +could have been less like Dante's love for Beatrice than Michelangelo's +for Vittoria Colonna. Dante's comes in early youth: Beatrice is a child, +with the wistful, ambiguous vision of a child, with a character still +unaccentuated by the influence of outward circumstances, almost +expressionless. Vittoria is a woman already weary, in advanced age, of +grave intellectual qualities. Dante's story is a piece of figured wood, +inlaid with lovely incidents. In Michelangelo's poems, frost and fire +are almost the only images—the refining fire of the goldsmith; once or +twice the phoenix; ice melting at the fire; fire struck from the rock +which it afterwards consumes. Except one doubtful allusion to a journey, +there are almost no incidents. But there is much of the bright, sharp, +unerring skill, with which in boyhood he gave the look of age to the +head of a faun by chipping a tooth from its jaw with a single stroke of +the hammer. For Dante, the amiable and devout materialism of the middle +age sanctifies all that is presented by hand and eye. Michelangelo is +always pressing forward from the outward beauty—il bel del fuor che +agli occhi piace—to apprehend the unseen beauty; trascenda nella forma +universale—that abstract form of beauty, about which the Platonists +reason. And this gives the impression in him of something flitting and +unfixed, of the houseless and complaining spirit, almost clairvoyant +through the frail and yielding flesh. He accounts for love at first +sight by a previous state of existence—la dove io t'amai prima. +</P> + +<P> +And yet there are many points in which he is really like Dante, and +comes very near to the original image, beyond those later and feebler +followers of Petrarch. He learns from Dante rather than from Plato, that +for lovers, the surfeiting of desire—ove gran desir gran copia affrena, +is a state less happy than misery full of hope—una miseria di speranza +piena. He recalls him in the repetition of the words gentile and +cortesia, in the personification of Amor, in the tendency to dwell +minutely on the physical effects of the presence of a beloved object on +the pulses and the heart. Above all, he resembles Dante in the warmth +and intensity of his political utterances, for the lady of one of his +noblest sonnets was from the first understood to be the city of +Florence; and he avers that all must be asleep in heaven, if she, who +was created "of angelic form," for a thousand lovers, is appropriated by +one alone, some Piero, or Alessandro de' Medici. Once and again he +introduces Love and Death, who dispute concerning him; for, like Dante +and all the nobler souls of Italy, he is much occupied with thoughts of +the grave, and his true mistress is death; death at first as the worst +of all sorrows and disgraces, with a clod of the field for its brain; +afterwards, death in its high distinction, its detachment from vulgar +needs, the angry stains of life and action escaping fast. +</P> + +<P> +Some of those whom the gods love die young. This man, because the gods +loved him, lingered on to be of immense, patriarchal age, till the +sweetness it had taken so long to secrete in him was found at last. Out +of the strong came forth sweetness, ex forti dulcedo. The world had +changed around him. The New-catholicism had taken the place of the +Renaissance. The spirit of the Roman Church had changed: in the vast +world's cathedral which his skill had helped to raise for it, it looked +stronger than ever. Some of the first members of the Oratory were among +his intimate associates. They were of a spirit as unlike as possible +from that of Lorenzo, or Savonarola even. The opposition of the +Reformation to art has been often enlarged upon; far greater was that of +the Catholic revival. But in thus fixing itself in a frozen orthodoxy, +the Roman Catholic Church has passed beyond him, and he was a stranger +to it. In earlier days, when its beliefs had been in a fluid state, he +too might have been drawn into the controversy; he might have been for +spiritualising the papal sovereignty, like Savonarola; or for adjusting +the dreams of Plato and Homer with the words of Christ, like Pico of +Mirandola. But things had moved onward, and such adjustments were no +longer possible. For himself, he had long since fallen back on that +divine ideal, which above the wear and tear of creeds has been forming +itself for ages as the possession of nobler souls. And now he began to +feel the soothing influence which since that time the Roman Church has +often exerted over spirits too independent to be its subjects, yet +brought within the neighbourhood of its action; consoled and +tranquillised, as a traveller might be, resting for one evening in a +strange city, by its stately aspect, and the sentiment of its many +fortunes, just because with those fortunes he has nothing to do. So he +lingers on; a revenant, as the French say, a ghost out of another age, +in a world too coarse to touch his faint sensibilities too closely; +dreaming, in a worn-out society, theatrical in its life, theatrical in +its art, theatrical even in its devotion, on the morning of the world's +history, on the primitive form of man, on the images under which that +primitive world had conceived of spiritual forces. +</P> + +<P> +I have dwelt on the thought of Michelangelo as thus lingering beyond his +time in a world not his own, because, if one is to distinguish the +peculiar savour of his work, he must be approached, not through his +followers, but through his predecessors; not through the marbles of +Saint Peter's, but through the work of the sculptors of the fifteenth +century over the tombs and altars of Tuscany. He is the last of the +Florentines, of those on whom the peculiar sentiment of the Florence of +Dante and Giotto descended: he is the consummate representative of the +form that sentiment took in the fifteenth century with men like Luca +Signorelli and Mino da Fiesole. Up to him the tradition of sentiment is +unbroken, the progress towards surer and more mature methods of +expressing that sentiment continuous. But his professed disciples did +not share this temper; they are in love with his strength only, and seem +not to feel his grave and temperate sweetness. Theatricality is their +chief characteristic; and that is a quality as little attributable to +Michelangelo as to Mino or Luca Signorelli. With him, as with them, all +Is serious, passionate, impulsive. +</P> + +<P> +This discipleship of Michelangelo, this dependence of his on the +tradition of the Florentine schools, is nowhere seen more clearly than +in his treatment of the Creation. The Creation of Man had haunted the +mind of the middle age like a dream; and weaving it into a hundred +carved ornaments of capital or doorway, the Italian sculptors had early +impressed upon it that pregnancy of expression which seems to give it +many veiled meanings. As with other artistic conceptions of the middle +age, its treatment became almost conventional, handed on from artist to +artist, with slight changes, till it came to have almost an independent, +abstract existence of its own. It was characteristic of the medieval +mind thus to give an independent traditional existence to a special +pictorial conception, or to a legend, like that of Tristram or +Tannhaeuser, or even to the very thoughts and substance of a book, like +the Imitation, so that no single workman could claim it as his own, and +the book, the image, the legend, had itself a legend, and its fortunes, +and a personal history; and it is a sign of the medievalism of +Michelangelo, that he thus receives from tradition his central +conception, and does but add the last touches, in transferring it to the +frescoes of the Sistine Chapel. +</P> + +<P> +But there was another tradition of those earlier more serious +Florentines, of which Michelangelo is the inheritor, to which he gives +the final expression, and which centres in the sacristy of San Lorenzo, +as the tradition of the Creation centres in the Sistine Chapel. It has +been said that all the great Florentines were preoccupied with death. +Outre-tombe! Outre-tombe!—is the burden of their thoughts, from Dante +to Savonarola. Even the gay and licentious Boccaccio gives a keener edge +to his stories by putting them in the mouths of a party of people who +had taken refuge from the danger of death by plague, in a country-house. +It was to this inherited sentiment, this practical decision that to be +pre-occupied with the thought of death was in itself dignifying, and a +note of high quality, that the seriousness of the great Florentines of +the fifteenth century was partly due; and it was reinforced in them by +the actual sorrows of their times. How often, and in what various ways, +had they seen life stricken down, in their streets and houses! La bella +Simonetta dies in early youth, and is borne to the grave with uncovered +face. The young Cardinal Jacopo di Portogallo dies on a visit to +Florence—insignis forma fui et mirabili modestia—his epitaph dares to +say. Antonio Rossellino carves his tomb in the church of San Miniato, +with care for the shapely hands and feet, and sacred attire; Luca della +Robbia puts his skyeyest works there; and the tomb of the youthful and +princely prelate became the strangest and most beautiful thing in that +strange and beautiful place. After the execution of the Pazzi +conspirators, Botticelli is employed to paint their portraits. This +preoccupation with serious thoughts and sad images might easily have +resulted, as it did, for instance, in the gloomy villages of the Rhine, +or in the overcrowded parts of medieval Paris, as it still does in many +a village of the Alps, in something merely morbid or grotesque, in the +Danse Macabre of many French and German painters, or the grim inventions +of Duerer. From such a result the Florentine masters of the fifteenth +century were saved by their high Italian dignity and culture, and still +more by their tender pity for the thing itself. They must often have +leaned over the lifeless body, when all was at length quiet and smoothed +out. After death, it is said, the traces of slighter and more +superficial dispositions disappear; the lines become more simple and +dignified; only the abstract lines remain, in a great indifference. +They came thus to see death in its distinction; and following it perhaps +one stage further, dwelling for a moment on the point where all that +transitory dignity must break up, and discerning with no clearness a new +body, they paused just in time, and abstained, with a sentiment of +profound pity. +</P> + +<P> +Of all this sentiment Michelangelo is the achievement; and first of all, +of pity. Pieta—pity—the pity of the Virgin Mother over the dead body +of Christ, expanded into the pity of all mothers over all dead sons, the +entombment, with its cruel "hard stones"—that is the subject of his +predilection. He has left it in many forms, sketches, half-finished +designs, finished and unfinished groups of sculpture; but always as a +hopeless, rayless, almost heathen sorrow—no divine sorrow, but mere +pity and awe at the stiff limbs and colourless lips. There is a drawing +of his at Oxford, in which the dead body has sunk to the earth between +the mother's feet, with the arms extended over her knees. The tombs in +the sacristy of San Lorenzo are memorials, not of any of the nobler and +greater Medici, but of Giuliano, and Lorenzo the younger, noticeable +chiefly for their somewhat early death. It is mere human nature +therefore which has prompted the sentiment here. The titles assigned +traditionally to the four symbolical figures, Night and Day, The +Twilight and The Dawn, are far too definite for them; for these figures +come much nearer to the mind and spirit of their author, and are a more +direct expression of his thoughts, than any merely symbolical +conceptions could possibly have been. They concentrate and express, less +by way of definite conceptions than by the touches, the promptings of a +piece of music, all those vague fancies, misgivings, presentiments, +which shift and mix and define themselves and fade again, whenever the +thoughts try to fix themselves with sincerity on the conditions and +surroundings of the disembodied spirit. I suppose no one would come to +the sacristy of San Lorenzo for consolation; for seriousness, for +solemnity, for dignity of impression, perhaps, but not for consolation. +It is a place neither of terrible nor consoling thoughts, but of vague +and wistful speculation. Here, again, Michelangelo is the disciple not +so much of Dante as of the Platonists. Dante's belief in immortality is +formal, precise, and firm, as much so almost as that of a child, who +thinks the dead will hear if you cry loud enough. But in Michelangelo +you have maturity, the mind of the grown man, dealing cautiously and +dispassionately with serious things; and what hope he has is based on +the consciousness of ignorance—ignorance of man, ignorance of the +nature of the mind, its origin and capacities. Michelangelo is so +ignorant of the spiritual world, of the new body and its laws, that he +does not surely know whether the consecrated Host may not be the body of +Christ. And of all that range of sentiment he is the poet, a poet still +alive, and in possession of our inmost thoughts—dumb inquiry over the +relapse after death into the formlessness which preceded life, the +change, the revolt from that change, then the correcting, hallowing, +consoling rush of pity; at last, far off, thin and vague, yet not more +vague than the most definite thoughts men have had through three +centuries on a matter that has been so near their hearts, the new +body—a passing light, a mere intangible, external effect, over those +too rigid, or too formless faces; a dream that lingers a moment, +retreating in the dawn, incomplete, aimless, helpless; a thing with +faint hearing, faint memory, faint power of touch; a breath, a flame in +the doorway, a feather in the wind. +</P> + +<P> +The qualities of the great masters in art or literature, the combination +of those qualities, the laws by which they moderate, support, relieve +each other, are not peculiar to them; but most often typical standards, +or revealing instances, of the laws by which certain aesthetic effects +are produced. The old masters indeed are simpler; their characteristics +are written larger, and are easier to read, than their analogues in all +the mixed, confused productions of the modern mind. But when once we +have succeeded in defining for ourselves those characteristics, and the +law of their combination, we have acquired a standard or measure which +helps us to put in its right place many a vagrant genius, many an +unclassified talent, many precious though imperfect products of art. It +is so with the components of the true character of Michelangelo. That +strange interfusion of sweetness and strength is not to be found in +those who claimed to be his followers; but it is found in many of those +who worked before him, and in many others down to our own time, in +William Blake, for instance, and Victor Hugo, who, though not of his +school, and unaware, are his true sons, and help us to understand him, +as he in turn interprets and justifies them. Perhaps this is the chief +use in studying old masters. +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +1871. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="leonardo"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +LEONARDO DA VINCI +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +HOMO MINISTER ET INTERPRES NATURAE +</H4> + +<BR> + +<P> +In Vasari's life of Leonardo da Vinci as we now read it there are some +variations from the first edition. There, the painter who has fixed the +outward type of Christ for succeeding centuries was a bold speculator, +holding lightly by other men's beliefs, setting philosophy above +Christianity. Words of his, trenchant enough to justify this impression, +are not recorded, and would have been out of keeping with a genius of +which one characteristic is the tendency to lose itself in a refined and +graceful mystery. The suspicion was but the time-honoured mode in which +the world stamps its appreciation of one who has thoughts for himself +alone, his high indifference, his intolerance of the common forms of +things; and in the second edition the image was changed into something +fainter and more conventional. But it is still by a certain mystery in +his work, and something enigmatical beyond the usual measure of great +men, that he fascinates, or perhaps half repels. His life is one of +sudden revolts, with intervals in which he works not at all, or apart +from the main scope of his work. By a strange fortune the works on which +his more popular fame rested disappeared early from the world, as the +Battle of the Standard; or are mixed obscurely with the work of meaner +hands, as the Last Supper. His type of beauty is so exotic that it +fascinates a larger number than it delights, and seems more than that of +any other artist to reflect ideas and views and some scheme of the world +within; so that he seemed to his contemporaries to be the possessor of +some unsanctified and sacred wisdom; as to Michelet and others to have +anticipated modern ideas. He trifles with his genius, and crowds all his +chief work into a few tormented years of later life; yet he is so +possessed by his genius that he passes unmoved through the most tragic +events, overwhelming his country and friends, like one who comes across +them by chance on some secret errand. +</P> + +<P> +His legend, as the French say, with the anecdotes which every one knows, +is one of the most brilliant in Vasari. Later writers merely copied it, +until, in 1804, Carlo Amoretti applied to it a criticism which left +hardly a date fixed, and not one of those anecdotes untouched. The +various questions thus raised have since that time become, one after +another, subjects of special study, and mere antiquarianism has in this +direction little more to do. For others remain the editing of the +thirteen books of his manuscripts, and the separation by technical +criticism of what in his reputed works is really his, from what is only +half his, or the work of his pupils. But a lover of strange souls may +still analyse for himself the impression made on him by those works, and +try to reach through it a definition of the chief elements of Leonardo's +genius. The legend, corrected and enlarged by its critics, may now and +then intervene to support the results of this analysis. +</P> + +<P> +His life has three divisions—thirty years at Florence, nearly twenty +years at Milan, then nineteen years of wandering, till he sinks to rest +under the protection of Francis the First at the Chateau de Clou. The +dishonour of illegitimacy hangs over his birth. Piero Antonio, his +father, was of a noble Florentine house, of Vinci in the Val d'Arno, and +Leonardo, brought up delicately among the true children of that house, +was the love-child of his youth, with the keen, puissant nature such +children often have. We see him in his youth fascinating all men by his +beauty, improvising music and songs, buying the caged birds and setting +them free, as he walked the streets of Florence, fond of odd bright +dresses and spirited horses. +</P> + +<P> +From his earliest years he designed many objects, and constructed models +in relief, of which Vasari mentions some of women smiling. His father, +pondering over this promise in the child, took him to the workshop of +Andrea del Verrocchio, then the most famous artist in Florence. +Beautiful objects lay about there—reliquaries, pyxes, silver images for +the pope's chapel at Rome, strange fancy-work of the middle age, keeping +odd company with fragments of antiquity, then but lately discovered. +Another student Leonardo may have seen there—a boy into whose soul the +level light and aerial illusions of Italian sunsets had passed, in after +days famous as Perugino. Verrocchio was an artist of the earlier +Florentine type, carver, painter, and worker in metals, in one; +designer, not of pictures only, but of all things for sacred or +household use, drinking-vessels, ambries, instruments of music, making +them all fair to look upon, filling the common ways of life with the +reflexion of some far-off brightness; and years of patience had refined +his hand till his work was now sought after from distant places. +</P> + +<P> +It happened that Verrocchio was employed by the brethren of Vallombrosa +to paint the Baptism of Christ, and Leonardo was allowed to finish an +angel in the left hand corner. It was one of those moments in which the +progress of a great thing—here, that of the art of Italy—presses hard +and sharp on the happiness of an individual, through whose +discouragement and decrease, humanity, in more fortunate persons, comes +a step nearer to its final success. +</P> + +<P> +For beneath the cheerful exterior of the mere well-paid craftsman, +chasing brooches for the copes of Santa Maria Novella, or twisting metal +screens for the tombs of the Medici, lay the ambitious desire of +expanding the destiny of Italian art by a larger knowledge and insight +into things, a purpose in art not unlike Leonardo's still unconscious +purpose; and often, in the modelling of drapery, or of a lifted arm, or +of hair cast back from the face, there came to him something of the +freer manner and richer humanity of a later age. But in this Baptism the +pupil had surpassed the master; and Verrocchio turned away as one +stunned, and as if his sweet earlier work must thereafter be distasteful +to him, from the bright animated angel of Leonardo's hand. +</P> + +<P> +The angel may still be seen in Florence, a space of sunlight in the +cold, laboured old picture; but the legend is true only in sentiment, +for painting had always been the art by which Verrocchio set least +store. And as in a sense he anticipates Leonardo, so to the last +Leonardo recalls the studio of Verrocchio, in the love of beautiful +toys, such as the vessel of water for a mirror, and lovely needle-work +about the implicated hands in the Modesty and Vanity, and of reliefs +like those cameos which in the Virgin of the Balances hang all round the +girdle of Saint Michael, and of bright variegated stones, such as the +agates in the Saint Anne, and in a hieratic preciseness and grace, as of +a sanctuary swept and garnished. Amid all the cunning and intricacy of +his Lombard manner this never left him. Much of it there must have been +in that lost picture of Paradise, which he prepared as a cartoon for +tapestry, to be woven in the looms of Flanders. It was the perfection of +the older Florentine style of miniature-painting, with patient putting +of each leaf upon the trees and each flower in the grass, where the +first man and woman were standing. +</P> + +<P> +And because it was the perfection of that style, it awoke in Leonardo +some seed of discontent which lay in the secret places of his nature. +For the way to perfection is through a series of disgusts; and this +picture—all that he had done so far in his life at Florence—was after +all in the old slight manner. His art, if it was to be something in the +world, must be weighted with more of the meaning of nature and purpose +of humanity. Nature was "the true mistress of higher intelligences." So +he plunged into the study of nature. And in doing this he followed the +manner of the older students; he brooded over the hidden virtues of +plants and crystals, the lines traced by the stars as they moved in the +sky, over the correspondences which exist between the different orders +of living things, through which, to eyes opened, they interpret each +other; and for years he seemed to those about him as one listening to a +voice, silent for other men. +</P> + +<P> +He learned here the art of going deep, of tracking the sources of +expression to their subtlest retreats, the power of an intimate presence +in the things he handled. He did not at once or entirely desert his art; +only he was no longer the cheerful, objective painter, through whose +soul, as through clear glass, the bright figures of Florentine life, +only made a little mellower and more pensive by the transit, passed on +to the white wall. He wasted many days in curious tricks of design, +seeming to lose himself in the spinning of intricate devices of lines +and colours. He was smitten with a love of the impossible—the +perforation of mountains, changing the course of rivers, raising great +buildings, such as the church of San Giovanni, in the air; all those +feats for the performance of which natural magic professed to have the +key. Later writers, indeed, see in these efforts an anticipation of +modern mechanics; in him they were rather dreams, thrown off by the +overwrought and labouring brain. Two ideas were especially fixed in him, +as reflexes of things that had touched his brain in childhood beyond the +measure of other impressions—the smiling of women and the motion of +great waters. +</P> + +<P> +And in such studies some interfusion of the extremes of beauty and +terror shaped itself, as an image that might be seen and touched, in the +mind of this gracious youth, so fixed that for the rest of his life it +never left him; and as catching glimpses of it in the strange eyes or +hair of chance people, he would follow such about the streets of +Florence till the sun went down, of whom many sketches of his remain. +Some of these are full of a curious beauty, that remote beauty +apprehended only by those who have sought it carefully; who, starting +with acknowledged types of beauty, have refined as far upon these, as +these refine upon the world of common forms. But mingled inextricably +with this there is an element of mockery also; so that, whether in +sorrow or scorn, he caricatures Dante even. Legions of grotesques sweep +under his hand; for has not nature too her grotesques—the rent rock, +the distorting light of evening on lonely roads, the unveiled structure +of man in the embryo, or the skeleton? +</P> + +<P> +All these swarming fancies unite in the Medusa of the Uffizii. Vasari's +story of an earlier Medusa, painted on a wooden shield, is perhaps an +invention; and yet, properly told, has more of the air of truth about it +than any-thing else in the whole legend. For its real subject is not the +serious work of a man, but the experiment of a child. The lizards and +glow-worms and other strange small creatures which haunt an Italian +vineyard bring before one the whole picture of a child's life in a +Tuscan dwelling—half castle, half farm—and are as true to nature as +the pretended astonishment of the father for whom the boy has prepared a +surprise. It was not in play that he painted that other Medusa, the one +great picture which he left behind him in Florence. The subject has been +treated in various ways; Leonardo alone cuts to its centre; he alone +realises it as the head of a corpse, exercising its powers through all +the circumstances of death. What may be called the fascination of +corruption penetrates in every touch its exquisitely finished beauty. +About the dainty lines of the cheek the bat flits unheeded. The delicate +snakes seem literally strangling each other in terrified struggle to +escape from the Medusa brain. The hue which violent death always brings +with it is in the features: features singularly massive and grand, as we +catch them inverted, in a dexterous foreshortening, sloping upwards, +almost sliding down upon us, crown foremost, like a great calm stone +against which the wave of serpents breaks. But it is a subject that may +well be left to the beautiful verses of Shelley. +</P> + +<P> +The science of that age was all divination, clairvoyance, unsubjected to +our exact modern formulas, seeking in an instant of vision to +concentrate a thousand experiences. Later writers, thinking only of the +well-ordered treatise on painting which a Frenchman, Raffaelle du +Fresne, a hundred years afterwards, compiled from Leonardo's bewildered +manuscripts, written strangely, as his manner was, from right to left, +have imagined a rigid order in his inquiries. But this rigid order was +little in accordance with the restlessness of his character; and if we +think of him as the mere reasoner who subjects design to anatomy, and +composition to mathematical rules, we shall hardly have of him that +impression which those about him received from him. Poring over his +crucibles, making experiments with colour, trying, by a strange +variation of the alchemist's dream, to discover the secret, not of an +elixir to make man's natural life immortal, but rather of giving +immortality to the subtlest and most delicate effects of painting, he +seemed to them rather the sorcerer or the magician, possessed of curious +secrets and a hidden knowledge, living in a world of which he alone +possessed the key. What his philosophy seems to have been most like is +that of Paracelsus or Cardan; and much of the spirit of the older +alchemy still hangs about it, with its confidence in short cuts and odd +byways to knowledge. To him philosophy was to be something giving +strange swiftness and double sight, divining the sources of springs +beneath the earth or of expression beneath the human countenance, +clairvoyant of occult gifts in common or uncommon things, in the reed at +the brook-side, or the star which draws near to us but once in a +century. How, in this way, the clear purpose was overclouded, the fine +chaser's hand perplexed, we but dimly see; the mystery which at no point +quite lifts from Leonardo's life is deepest here. But it is certain that +at one period of his life he had almost ceased to be an artist. +</P> + +<P> +The year 1483—the year of the birth of Raffaelle and the thirty-first +of Leonardo's life—is fixed as the date of his visit to Milan by the +letter in which he recommends himself to Ludovico Sforza, and offers to +tell him, for a price, strange secrets in the art of war. It was that +Sforza who murdered his young nephew by slow poison, yet was so +susceptible of religious impressions that he blended mere earthly +passions with a sort of religious sentimentalism, and who took for his +device the mulberry-tree—symbol, in its long delay and sudden yielding +of flowers and fruit together, of a wisdom which economises all forces +for an opportunity of sudden and sure effect. The fame of Leonardo had +gone before him, and he was to model a colossal statue of Francesco, the +first Duke of Milan. As for Leonardo himself, he came not as an artist +at all, or careful of the fame of one; but as a player on the harp, a +strange harp of silver of his own construction, shaped in some curious +likeness to a horse's skull. The capricious spirit of Ludovico was +susceptible also of the charm of music, and Leonardo's nature had a kind +of spell in it. Fascination is always the word descriptive of him. No +portrait of his youth remains; but all tends to make us believe that up +to this time some charm of voice and aspect, strong enough to balance +the disadvantage of his birth, had played about him. His physical +strength was great; it was said that he could bend a horse-shoe like a +coil of lead. +</P> + +<P> +The Duomo, the work of artists from beyond the Alps, so fantastic to the +eye of a Florentine used to the mellow, unbroken surfaces of Giotto and +Arnolfo, was then in all its freshness; and below, in the streets of +Milan, moved a people as fantastic, changeful and dreamlike. To Leonardo +least of all men could there be anything poisonous in the exotic flowers +of sentiment which grew there. It was a life of brilliant sins and +exquisite amusements: Leonardo became a celebrated designer of pageants: +and it suited the quality of his genius, composed in almost equal parts +of curiosity and the desire of beauty, to take things as they came. +</P> + +<P> +Curiosity and the desire of beauty—these are the two elementary forces +in Leonardo's genius; curiosity often in conflict with the desire of +beauty, but generating, in union with it, a type of subtle and curious +grace. +</P> + +<P> +The movement of the fifteenth century was twofold; partly the +Renaissance, partly also the coming of what is called the "modern +spirit," with its realism, its appeal to experience: it comprehended a +return to antiquity, and a return to nature. Raffaelle represents the +return to antiquity, and Leonardo the return to nature. In this return +to nature, he was seeking to satisfy a boundless curiosity by her +perpetual surprises, a microscopic sense of finish by her finesse, or +delicacy of operation, that subtilitas naturae which Bacon notices. So +we find him often in intimate relations with men of science,—with Fra +Luca Poccioli the mathematician, and the anatomist Marc Antonio della +Torre. His observations and experiments fill thirteen volumes of +manuscript; and those who can judge describe him as anticipating long +before, by rapid intuition, the later ideas of science. He explained the +obscure light of the unilluminated part of the moon, knew that the sea +had once covered the mountains which contain shells, and the gathering +of the equatorial waters above the polar. +</P> + +<P> +He who thus penetrated into the most secret parts of nature preferred +always the more to the less remote, what, seeming exceptional, was an +instance of law more refined, the construction about things of a +peculiar atmosphere and mixed lights. He paints flowers with such +curious felicity that different writers have attributed to him a +fondness for particular flowers, as Clement the cyclamen, and Rio the +jasmin; while, at Venice, there is a stray leaf from his portfolio +dotted all over with studies of violets and the wild rose. In him first +appears the taste for what is bizarre or recherche in landscape; hollow +places full of the green shadow of bituminous rocks, ridged reefs of +trap-rock which cut the water into quaint sheets of light—their exact +antitype is in our own western seas; all the solemn effects of moving +water; you may follow it springing from its distant source among the +rocks on the heath of the Madonna of the Balances, passing, as a little +fall, into the treacherous calm of the Madonna of the Lake, next, as a +goodly river, below the cliffs of the Madonna of the Rocks, washing the +white walls of its distant villages, stealing out in a network of +divided streams in La Gioconda to the seashore of the Saint Anne—that +delicate place, where the wind passes like the hand of some fine etcher +over the surface, and the untorn shells are lying thick upon the sand, +and the tops of the rocks, to which the waves never rise, are green with +grass, grown fine as hair. It is the landscape, not of dreams or of +fancy, but of places far withdrawn, and hours selected from a thousand +with a miracle of finesse. Through Leonardo's strange veil of sight +things reach him so; in no ordinary night or day, but as in faint light +of eclipse, or in some brief interval of falling rain at daybreak, or +through deep water. +</P> + +<P> +And not into nature only; but he plunged also into human personality, +and became above all a painter of portraits; faces of a modelling more +skilful than has been seen before or since, embodied with a reality +which almost amounts to illusion, on dark air. To take a character as it +was, and delicately sound its stops, suited one so curious in +observation, curious in invention. So he painted the portraits of +Ludovico's mistresses, Lucretia Crivelli and Cecilia Galerani the +poetess, of Ludovico himself, and the Duchess Beatrice. The portrait of +Cecilia Galerani is lost; but that of Lucretia Crivelli has been +identified with La Belle Feroniere of the Louvre, and Ludovico's pale, +anxious face still remains in the Ambrosian library. Opposite is the +portrait of Beatrice d'Este, in whom Leonardo seems to have caught some +presentiment of early death, painting her precise and grave, full of the +refinement of the dead, in sad earth-coloured raiment, set with pale +stones. +</P> + +<P> +Sometimes this curiosity came in conflict with the desire of beauty; it +tended to make him go too far below that outside of things in which art +begins and ends. This struggle between the reason and its ideas, and the +senses, the desire of beauty, is the key to Leonardo's life at +Milan—his restlessness, his endless re-touchings, his odd experiments +with colour. How much must he leave unfinished, how much recommence! +His problem was the transmutation of ideas into images. What he had +attained so far had been the mastery of that earlier Florentine style, +with its naive and limited sensuousness. Now he was to entertain in this +narrow medium those divinations of a humanity too wide for it, that +larger vision of the opening world, which is only not too much for the +great, irregular art of Shakspere; and everywhere the effort is visible +in the work of his hands. This agitation, this perpetual delay, give him +an air of weariness and ennui. To others he seems to be aiming at an +impossible effect, to do something that art, that painting, can never +do. Often the expression of physical beauty at this or that point seems +strained and marred in the effort, as in those heavy German +foreheads—too German and heavy for perfect beauty. +</P> + +<P> +For there was a touch of Germany in that genius which, as Goethe said, +had "thought itself weary"—muede sich gedacht. What an anticipation of +modern Germany, for instance, in that debate on the question whether +sculpture or painting is the nobler art.* But there is this difference +between him and the German, that, with all that curious science, the +German would have thought nothing more was needed; and the name of +Goethe himself reminds one how great for the artist may be the danger of +overmuch science; how Goethe, who, in the Elective Affinities and the +first part of Faust, does transmute ideas into images, who wrought many +such transmutations, did not invariably find the spell-word, and in the +second part of Faust presents us with a mass of science which has almost +no artistic character at all. But Leonardo will never work till the +happy moment comes—that moment of bien-etre, which to imaginative men +is a moment of invention. On this moment he waits; other moments are but +a preparation, or after-taste of it. Few men distinguish between them as +jealously as he did. Hence so many flaws even in the choicest work. But +for Leonardo the distinction is absolute, and, in the moment of +bien-etre, the alchemy complete: the idea is stricken into colour and +imagery: a cloudy mysticism is refined to a subdued and graceful +mystery, and painting pleases the eye while it satisfies the soul. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +*How princely, how characteristic of Leonardo, the answer, Quanto piu, +un'arte porta seco fatica di corpo, tanto piu e vile! +</P> + +<P> +This curious beauty is seen above all in his drawings, and in these +chiefly in the abstract grace of the bounding lines. Let us take some of +these drawings, and pause over them awhile; and, first, one of those at +Florence—the heads of a woman and a little child, set side by side, but +each in its own separate frame. First of all, there is much pathos in +the reappearance in the fuller curves of the face of the child, of the +sharper, more chastened lines of the worn and older face, which leaves +no doubt that the heads are those of a little child and its mother. A +feeling for maternity is indeed always characteristic of Leonardo; and +this feeling is further indicated here by the half-humorous pathos of +the diminutive, rounded shoulders of the child. You may note a like +pathetic power in drawings of a young man seated in a stooping posture, +his face in his hands, as in sorrow; of a slave sitting in an uneasy +inclined posture, in some brief interval of rest; of a small Madonna and +Child, peeping sideways in half-reassured terror, as a mighty griffin +with batlike wings, one of Leonardo's finest inventions, descends +suddenly from the air to snatch up a lion wandering near them. But note +in these, as that which especially belongs to art, the contour of the +young man's hair, the poise of the slave's arm above his head, and the +curves of the head of the child, following the little skull within, thin +and fine as some seashell worn by the wind. +</P> + +<P> +Take again another head, still more full of sentiment, but of a +different kind, a little drawing in red chalk which every one remembers +who has examined at all carefully the drawings by old masters at the +Louvre. It is a face of doubtful sex, set in the shadow of its own hair, +the cheek-line in high light against it, with something voluptuous and +full in the eyelids and the lips. Another drawing might pass for the +same face in childhood, with parched and feverish lips, but with much +sweetness in the loose, short-waisted childish dress, with necklace and +bulla, and in the daintily bound hair. We might take the thread of +suggestion which these two drawings offer, when thus set side by side, +and, following it through the drawings at Florence, Venice, and Milan, +construct a sort of series, illustrating better than anything else +Leonardo's type of womanly beauty. Daughters of Herodias, with their +fantastic head-dresses knotted and folded so strangely to leave the +dainty oval of the face disengaged, they are not of the Christian +family, or of Raffaelle's. They are the clairvoyants, through whom, as +through delicate instruments, one becomes aware of the subtler forces of +nature, and the modes of their action, all that is magnetic in it, all +those finer conditions wherein material things rise to that subtlety of +operation which constitutes them spiritual, where only the finer nerve +and the keener touch can follow: it is as if in certain revealing +instances we actually saw them at their work on human flesh. Nervous, +electric, faint always with some inexplicable faintness, they seem to be +subject to exceptional conditions, to feel powers at work in the common +air unfelt by others, to become, as it were, receptacles of them, and +pass them on to us in a chain of secret influences. +</P> + +<P> +But among the more youthful heads there is one at Florence which Love +chooses for its own—the head of a young man, which may well be the +likeness of Andrea Salaino, beloved of Leonardo for his curled and +waving hair—belli capelli ricci e inanellati—and afterwards his +favourite pupil and servant. Of all the interests in living men and +women which may have filled his life at Milan, this attachment alone is +recorded; and in return Salaino identified himself so entirely with +Leonardo, that the picture of Saint Anne, in the Louvre, has been +attributed to him. It illustrates Leonardo's usual choice of pupils, men +of some natural charm of person or intercourse like Salaino, or men of +birth and princely habits of life like Francesco Melzi—men with just +enough genius to be capable of initiation into his secret, for the sake +of which they were ready to efface their own individuality. Among them, +retiring often to the Villa of the Melzi at Canonica al Vaprio, he +worked at his fugitive manuscripts and sketches, working for the present +hour, and for a few only, perhaps chiefly for himself. Other artists +have been as careless of present or future applause, in +self-forgetfulness, or because they set moral or political ends above +the ends of art; but in him this solitary culture of beauty seems to +have hung upon a kind of self-love, and a carelessness in the work of +art of all but art itself. Out of the secret places of a unique +temperament he brought strange blossoms and fruits hitherto unknown; and +for him, the novel impression conveyed, the exquisite effect woven, +counted as an end in itself—a perfect end. +</P> + +<P> +And these pupils of his acquired his manner so thoroughly, that though +the number of Leonardo's authentic works is very small indeed, there is +a multitude of other men's pictures through which we undoubtedly see +him, and come very near to his genius. Sometimes, as in the little +picture of the Madonna of the Balances, in which, from the bosom of His +mother, Christ weighs the pebbles of the brooks against the sins of men, +we have a hand, rough enough by contrast, working upon some fine hint or +sketch of his. Sometimes, as in the subjects of the Daughter of Herodias +and the Head of John the Baptist, the lost originals have been re-echoed +and varied upon again and again by Luini and others. At other times the +original remains, but has been a mere theme or motive, a type of which +the accessories might be modified or changed; and these variations have +but brought out the more the purpose, or expression of the original. It +is so with the so-called Saint John the Baptist of the Louvre—one of +the few naked figures Leonardo painted—whose delicate brown flesh and +woman's hair no one would go out into the wilderness to seek, and whose +treacherous smile would have us understand something far beyond the +outward gesture or circumstance. But the long, reedlike cross in the +hand, which suggests Saint John the Baptist, becomes faint in a copy at +the Ambrosian Library, and disappears altogether in another, in the +Palazzo Rosso at Genoa. Returning from the last to the original, we are +no longer surprised by Saint John's strange likeness to the Bacchus +which hangs near it, which set Theophile Gautier thinking of Heine's +notion of decayed gods, who, to maintain themselves, after the fall of +paganism, took employment in the new religion. We recognise one of those +symbolical inventions in which the ostensible subject is used, not as +matter for definite pictorial realisation, but as the starting-point of +a train of sentiment as subtle and vague as a piece of music. No one +ever ruled over his subject more entirely than Leonardo, or bent it more +dexterously to purely artistic ends. And so it comes to pass that though +he handles sacred subjects continually, he is the most profane of +painters; the given person or subject, Saint John in the Desert, or the +Virgin on the knees of Saint Anne, is often merely the pretext for a +kind of work which carries one quite out of the range of its +conventional associations. +</P> + +<P> +About the Last Supper, its decay and restorations, a whole literature +has risen up, Goethe's pensive sketch of its sad fortunes being far the +best. The death in childbirth of the Duchess Beatrice was followed in +Ludovico by one of those paroxysms of religious feeling which in him +were constitutional. The low, gloomy Dominican church of Saint Mary of +the Graces had been the favourite shrine of Beatrice. She had spent her +last days there, full of sinister presentiments; at last it had been +almost necessary to remove her from it by force; and now it was here +that mass was said a hundred times a day for her repose. On the damp +wall of the refectory, oozing with mineral salts, Leonardo painted the +Last Supper. A hundred anecdotes were told about it, his retouchings and +delays. They show him refusing to work except at the moment of +invention, scornful of whoever thought that art was a work of mere +industry and rule, often coming the whole length of Milan to give a +single touch. He painted it, not in fresco, where all must be impromptu, +but in oils, the new method which he had been one of the first to +welcome, because it allowed of so many afterthoughts, so refined a +working out of perfection. It turned out that on a plastered wall no +process could have been less durable. Within fifty years it had fallen +into decay. And now we have to turn back to Leonardo's own studies, +above all to one drawing of the central head at the Brera, which, in a +union of tenderness and severity in the face-lines, reminds one of the +monumental work of Mino da Fiesole, to trace it as it was. +</P> + +<P> +It was another effort to lift a given subject out of the range of its +conventional associations. Strange, after all the misrepresentations of +the middle age, was the effort to see it, not as the pale Host of the +altar, but as one taking leave of his friends. Five years afterwards the +young Raffaelle, at Florence, painted it with sweet and solemn effect in +the refectory of Saint Onofrio; but still with all the mystical +unreality of the school of Perugino. Vasari pretends that the central +head was never finished; but finished or unfinished, or owing part of +its effect to a mellowing decay, this central head does but consummate +the sentiment of the whole company—ghosts through which you see the +wall, faint as the shadows of the leaves upon the wall, on autumn +afternoons; this figure is but the faintest, most spectral of them all. +It is the image of what the history it symbolises has more and more +become for the world, paler and paler as it recedes into the distance. +Criticism came with its appeal from mystical unrealities to originals, +and restored no lifelike reality but these transparent shadows, spirits +which have not flesh and bones. +</P> + +<P> +The Last Supper was finished in 1497; in 1498 the French entered Milan, +and whether or not the Gascon bowmen used it as a mark for their arrows, +the model of Francesco Sforza certainly did not survive. What, in that +age, such work was capable of being—of what nobility, amid what racy +truthfulness to fact—we may judge from the bronze statue of Bartolomeo +Colleoni on horseback, modelled by Leonardo's master, Verrocchio (he +died of grief, it was said, because, the mould accidentally failing, he +was unable himself to complete it), still standing in the piazza of +Saint John and Saint Paul at Venice. Some traces of the thing may remain +in certain of Leonardo's drawings, and also, perhaps, by a singular +circumstance, in a far-off town of France. For Ludovico became a +prisoner, and ended his days at Loches in Touraine;—allowed at last, it +is said, to breathe fresher air for awhile in one of the rooms of a high +tower there, after many years of captivity in the dungeons below, where +all seems sick with barbarous feudal memories, and where his prison is +still shown, its walls covered with strange painted arabesques, ascribed +by tradition to his hand, amused a little, in this way, through the +tedious years:—vast helmets and faces and pieces of armour, among +which, in great letters, the motto Infelix Sum is woven in and out, and +in which, perhaps, it is not too fanciful to see the fruit of a wistful +after-dreaming over all those experiments with Leonardo on the armed +figure of the great duke, that had occupied the two so often during the +days of his good fortune at Milan. +</P> + +<P> +The remaining years of Leonardo's life are more or less years of +wandering. From his brilliant life at court he had saved nothing, and he +returned to Florence a poor man. Perhaps necessity kept his spirit +excited: the next four years are one prolonged rapture or ecstasy of +invention. He painted the pictures of the Louvre, his most authentic +works, which came there straight from the cabinet of Francis the First, +at Fontainebleau. One picture of his, the Saint Anne—not the Saint Anne +of the Louvre, but a mere cartoon, now in London—revived for a moment a +sort of appreciation more common in an earlier time, when good pictures +had still seemed miraculous; and for two days a crowd of people of all +qualities passed in naive excitement through the chamber where it hung, +and gave Leonardo a taste of Cimabue's triumph. But his work was less +with the saints than with the living women of Florence; for he lived +still in the polished society that he loved, and in the houses of +Florence, left perhaps a little subject to light thoughts by the death +of Savonarola—the latest gossip (1869) is of an undraped Monna Lisa, +found in some out-of-the-way corner of the late Orleans collection—he +saw Ginevra di Benci, and Lisa, the young third wife of Francesco del +Giocondo. As we have seen him using incidents of sacred story, not for +their own sake, or as mere subjects for pictorial realisation, but as a +symbolical language for fancies all his own, so now he found a vent for +his thoughts in taking one of these languid women, and raising her, as +Leda or Pomona, Modesty or Vanity, to the seventh heaven of symbolical +expression. +</P> + +<P> +La Gioconda is, in the truest sense, Leonardo's masterpiece, the +revealing instance of his mode of thought and work. In suggestiveness, +only the Melancholia of Duerer is comparable to it; and no crude +symbolism disturbs the effect of its subdued and graceful mystery. We +all know the face and hands of the figure, set in its marble chair, in +that cirque of fantastic rocks, as in some faint light under sea. +Perhaps of all ancient pictures time has chilled it least.* As often +happens with works in which invention seems to reach its limits, there +is an element in it given to, not invented by, the master. In that +inestimable folio of drawings, once in the possession of Vasari, were +certain designs by Verrocchio, faces of such impressive beauty that +Leonardo in his boyhood copied them many times. It is hard not to +connect with these designs of the elder, by-past master, as with its +germinal principle, the unfathomable smile, always with a touch of +something sinister in it, which plays over all Leonardo's work. +Besides, the picture is a portrait. From childhood we see this image +defining itself on the fabric of his dreams; and but for express +historical testimony, we might fancy that this was but his ideal lady, +embodied and beheld at last. What was the relationship of a living +Florentine to this creature of his thought? By means of what strange +affinities had the person and the dream grown up thus apart, and yet so +closely together? Present from the first incorporeally in Leonardo's +thought, dimly traced in the designs of Verrocchio, she is found present +at last in Il Giocondo's house. That there is much of mere portraiture +in the picture is attested by the legend that by artificial means, the +presence of mimes and flute-players, that subtle expression was +protracted on the face. Again, was it in four years and by renewed +labour never really completed, or in four months and as by stroke of +magic, that the image was projected? +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +*Yet for Vasari there was some further magic of crimson in the lips and +cheeks, lost for us. +</P> + +<P> +The presence that thus rose so strangely beside the waters, is +expressive of what in the ways of a thousand years men had come to +desire. Hers is the head upon which all "the ends of the world are +come," and the eyelids are a little weary. It is a beauty wrought out +from within upon the flesh, the deposit, little cell by cell, of strange +thoughts and fantastic reveries and exquisite passions. Set it for a +moment beside one of those white Greek goddesses or beautiful women of +antiquity, and how would they be troubled by this beauty, into which the +soul with all its maladies has passed! All the thoughts and experience +of the world have etched and moulded there, in that which they have of +power to refine and make expressive the outward form, the animalism of +Greece, the lust of Rome, the reverie of the middle age with its +spiritual ambition and imaginative loves, the return of the Pagan world, +the sins of the Borgias. She is older than the rocks among which she +sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the +secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their +fallen day about her; and trafficked for strange webs with Eastern +merchants: and, as Leda, was the mother of Helen of Troy, and, as Saint +Anne, the mother of Mary; and all this has been to her but as the sound +of lyres and flutes, and lives only in the delicacy with which it has +moulded the changing lineaments, and tinged the eyelids and the hands. +The fancy of a perpetual life, sweeping together ten thousand +experiences, is an old one; and modern thought has conceived the idea of +humanity as wrought upon by, and summing up in itself, all modes of +thought and life. Certainly Lady Lisa might stand as the embodiment of +the old fancy, the symbol of the modern idea. +</P> + +<P> +During these years at Florence Leonardo's history is the history of his +art; he himself is lost in the bright cloud of it. The outward history +begins again in 1502, with a wild journey through central Italy, which +he makes as the chief engineer of Caesar Borgia. The biographer, putting +together the stray jottings of his manuscripts, may follow him through +every day of it, up the strange tower of Siena, which looks towards +Rome, elastic like a bent bow, down to the seashore at Piombino, each +place appearing as fitfully as in a fever dream. +</P> + +<P> +One other great work was left for him to do, a work all trace of which +soon vanished, The Battle of the Standard, in which he had Michelangelo +for his rival. The citizens of Florence, desiring to decorate the walls +of the great council-chamber, had offered the work for competition, and +any subject might be chosen from the Florentine wars of the fifteenth +century. Michelangelo chose for his cartoon an incident of the war with +Pisa, in which the Florentine soldiers, bathing in the Arno, are +surprised by the sound of trumpets, and run to arms. His design has +reached us only in an old engraving, which perhaps helps us less than +what we remember of the background of his Holy Family in the Uffizii to +imagine in what superhuman form, such as might have beguiled the heart +of an earlier world, those figures may have risen from the water. +Leonardo chose an incident from the battle of Anghiari, in which two +parties of soldiers fight for a standard. Like Michelangelo's, his +cartoon is lost, and has come to us only in sketches, and in a fragment +of Rubens. Through the accounts given we may discern some lust of +terrible things in it, so that even the horses tore each other with +their teeth; and yet one fragment of it, in a drawing of his at +Florence, is far different—a waving field of lovely armour, the chased +edgings running like lines of sunlight from side to side. Michelangelo +was twenty-seven years old; Leonardo more than fifty; and Raffaelle, +then nineteen years old, visiting Florence for the first time, came and +watched them as they worked. +</P> + +<P> +We catch a glimpse of him again, at Rome in 1514, surrounded by his +mirrors and vials and furnaces, making strange toys that seemed alive of +wax and quicksilver. The hesitation which had haunted him all through +life, and made him like one under a spell, was upon him now with double +force. No one had ever carried political indifferentism farther; it had +always been his philosophy to "fly before the storm"; he is for the +Sforzas, or against them, as the tide of their fortune turns. Yet now in +the political society of Rome, he came to be suspected of concealed +French sympathies. It paralysed him to find himself among enemies; and +he turned wholly to France, which had long courted him. +</P> + +<P> +France was about to become an Italy more Italian than Italy itself. +Francis the First, like Lewis the Twelfth before him, was attracted by +the finesse of Leonardo's work; La Gioconda was already in his cabinet, +and he offered Leonardo the little Chateau de Clou, with its vineyards +and meadows, in the pleasant valley of the Masse, just outside the walls +of the town of Amboise, where, especially in the hunting season, the +court then frequently resided. A Monsieur Lyonard, peinteur du Roy pour +Amboyse—so the letter of Francis the First is headed. It opens a +prospect, one of the most interesting in the history of art, where, +under a strange mixture of lights, Italian art dies away as a French +exotic. +</P> + +<P> +Two questions remain, after much busy antiquarianism, concerning +Leonardo's death—the question of the precise form of his religion, and +the question whether Francis the First was present at the time. They are +of about equally little importance in the estimate of Leonardo's genius. +The directions in his will about the thirty masses and the great candles +for the church of Saint Florentin are things of course, their real +purpose being immediate and practical; and on no theory of religion +could these hurried offices be of much consequence. We forget them in +speculating how one who had been always so desirous of beauty, but +desired it always in such definite and precise forms, as hands or +flowers or hair, looked forward now into the vague land, and experienced +the last curiosity. +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +1869. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="giorgione"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE SCHOOL OF GIORGIONE +</H3> + +<P> +It is the mistake of much popular criticism to regard poetry, music, and +Painting—all the various products of art—as but translations into +different languages of one and the same fixed quantity of imaginative +thought, supplemented by certain technical qualities of colour, in +painting—of sound, in music—of rhythmical words, in poetry. In this +way, the sensuous element in art, and with it almost everything in art +that is essentially artistic, is made a matter of indifference; and a +clear apprehension of the opposite principle—that the sensuous material +of each art brings with it a special phase or quality of beauty, +untranslatable into the forms of any other, an order of impressions +distinct in kind—is the beginning of all true aesthetic criticism. For, +as art addresses not pure sense, still less the pure intellect, but the +"imaginative reason" through the senses, there are differences of kind +in aesthetic beauty, corresponding to the differences in kind of the +gifts of sense themselves. Each art, therefore, having its own peculiar +and incommunicable sensuous charm, has its own special mode of reaching +the imagination, its own special responsibilities to its material. One +of the functions of aesthetic criticism is to define these limitations; +to estimate the degree in which a given work of art fulfils its +responsibilities to its special material; to note in a picture that true +pictorial charm, which is neither a mere poetical thought nor sentiment, +on the one hand, nor a mere result of communicable technical skill in +colour or design, on the other; to define in a poem that true poetical +quality, which is neither descriptive nor meditative merely, but comes +of an inventive handling of rhythmical language—the element of song in +the singing; to note in music the musical charm—that essential music, +which presents no words, no matter of sentiment or thought, separable +from the special form in which it is conveyed to us. +</P> + +<P> +To such a philosophy of the variations of the beautiful, Lessing's +analysis of the spheres of sculpture and poetry, in the Laocoon, was a +very important contribution. But a true appreciation of these things is +possible only in the light of a whole system of such art-casuistries. +And it is in the criticism of painting that this truth most needs +enforcing, for it is in popular judgments on pictures that that false +generalisation of all art into forms of poetry is most prevalent. To +suppose that all is mere technical acquirement in delineation or touch, +working through and addressing itself to the intelligence, on the one +side, or a merely poetical, or what may be called literary interest, +addressed also to the pure intelligence, on the other;—this is the way +of most spectators, and of many critics, who have never caught sight, +all the time, of that true pictorial quality which lies between (unique +pledge of the possession of the pictorial gift) the inventive or +creative handling of pure line and colour, which, as almost always in +Dutch painting, as often also in the works of Titian or Veronese, is +quite independent of anything definitely poetical in the subject it +accompanies. It is the drawing—the design projected from that peculiar +pictorial temperament or constitution, in which, while it may possibly +be ignorant of true anatomical proportions, all things whatever, all +poetry, every idea however abstract or obscure, floats up as a visible +scene, or image: it is the colouring—that weaving as of just +perceptible gold threads of light through the dress, the flesh, the +atmosphere, in Titian's Lace-girl—the staining of the whole fabric of +the thing with a new, delightful physical quality. This drawing, +then—the arabesque traced in the air by Tintoret's flying figures, by +Titian's forest branches; this colouring—the magic conditions of light +and hue in the atmosphere of Titian's Lace-girl, or Rubens's Descent +from the Cross—these essential pictorial qualities must first of all +delight the sense, delight it as directly and sensuously as a fragment +of Venetian glass; and through this delight only be the medium of +whatever poetry or science may lie beyond them, in the intention of the +composer. In its primary aspect, a great picture has no more definite +message for us than an accidental play of sunlight and shadow for a +moment, on the wall or floor: is itself, in truth, a space of such +fallen light, caught as the colours are caught in an Eastern carpet, but +refined upon, and dealt with more subtly and exquisitely than by nature +itself. And this primary and essential condition fulfilled, we may trace +the coming of poetry into painting, by fine gradations upwards; from +Japanese fan-painting, for instance, where we get, first, only abstract +colour; then, just a little interfused sense of the poetry of flowers; +then, sometimes, perfect flower-painting; and so, onwards, until in +Titian we have, as his poetry in the Ariadne, so actually a touch of +true childlike humour in the diminutive, quaint figure with its silk +gown, which ascends the temple stairs, in his picture of the +Presentation of the Virgin, at Venice. +</P> + +<P> +But although each art has thus its own specific order of impressions, +and an untranslatable charm, while a just apprehension of the ultimate +differences of the arts is the beginning of aesthetic criticism; yet it +is noticeable that, in its special mode of handling its given material, +each art may be observed to pass into the condition of some other art, +by what German critics term an Anders-streben—a partial alienation from +its own limitations, by which the arts are able, not indeed to supply +the place of each other, but reciprocally to lend each other new forces. +</P> + +<P> +Thus some of the most delightful music seems to be always approaching to +figure, to pictorial definition. Architecture, again, though it has its +own laws—laws esoteric enough, as the true architect knows only too +well—yet sometimes aims at fulfilling the conditions of a picture, as +in the Arena chapel; or of sculpture, as in the flawless unity of +Giotto's tower at Florence; and often finds a true poetry, as in those +strangely twisted staircases of the chateaux of the country of the +Loire, as if it were intended that among their odd turnings the actors +in a wild life might pass each other unseen: there being a poetry also +of memory and of the mere effect of time, by which it often profits +greatly. Thus, again, sculpture aspires out of the hard limitation of +pure form towards colour, or its equivalent; poetry also, in many ways, +finding guidance from the other arts, the analogy between a Greek +tragedy and a work of Greek sculpture, between a sonnet and a relief, of +French poetry generally with the art of engraving, being more than mere +figures of speech; and all the arts in common aspiring towards the +principle of music; music being the typical, or ideally consummate art, +the object of the great Anders-streben of all art, of all that is +artistic, or partakes of artistic qualities. +</P> + +<P> +All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music. For while in +all other works of art it is possible to distinguish the matter from the +form, and the understanding can always make this distinction, yet it is +the constant effort of art to obliterate it. That the mere matter of a +poem, for instance—its subject, its given incidents or situation; that +the mere matter of a picture—the actual circumstances of an event, the +actual topography of a landscape—should be nothing without the form, +the spirit, of the handling; that this form, this mode of handling, +should become an end in itself, should penetrate every part of the +matter:—this is what all art constantly strives after, and achieves in +different degrees. +</P> + +<P> +This abstract language becomes clear enough, if we think of actual +examples. In an actual landscape we see a long white road, lost suddenly +on the hill-verge. That is the matter of one of the etchings of M. +Legros: only, in this etching, it is informed by an indwelling solemnity +of expression, seen upon it or half-seen, within the limits of an +exceptional moment, or caught from his own mood perhaps, but which he +maintains as the very essence of the thing, throughout his work. +Sometimes a momentary tint of stormy light may invest a homely or too +familiar scene with a character which might well have been drawn from +the deep places of the imagination. Then we might say that this +particular effect of light, this sudden inweaving of gold thread through +the texture of the haystack, and the poplars, and the grass, gives the +scene artistic qualities; that it is like a picture. And such tricks of +circumstance are commonest in landscape which has little salient +character of its own; because, in such scenery, all the material details +are so easily absorbed by that informing expression of passing light, +and elevated, throughout their whole extent, to a new and delightful +effect by it. And hence the superiority, for most conditions of the +picturesque, of a river-side in France to a Swiss valley, because, on +the French river-side, mere topography, the simple material, counts for +so little, and, all being so pure, untouched, and tranquil in itself, +mere light and shade have such easy work in modulating it to one +dominant tone. The Venetian landscape, on the other hand, has in its +material conditions much which is hard, or harshly definite; but the +masters of the Venetian school have shown themselves little burdened by +them. Of its Alpine background they retain certain abstracted elements +only, of cool colour and tranquillising line; and they use its actual +details, the brown windy turrets, the straw-coloured fields, the forest +arabesques, but as the notes of a music which duly accompanies the +presence of their men and women, presenting us with the spirit or +essence only of a certain sort of landscape—a country of the pure +reason or half-imaginative memory. +</P> + +<P> +Poetry, again, works with words addressed in the first instance to the +mere intelligence; and it deals, most often, with a definite subject or +situation. Sometimes it may find a noble and quite legitimate function +in the expression of moral or political aspiration, as often in the +poetry of Victor Hugo. In such instances it is easy enough for the +understanding to distinguish between the matter and the form, however +much the matter, the subject, the element which is addressed to the mere +intelligence, has been penetrated by the informing, artistic spirit. +But the ideal types of poetry are those in which this distinction is +reduced to its minimum; so that lyrical poetry, precisely because in it +we are least able to detach the matter from the form, without a +deduction of something from that matter itself, is, at least +artistically, the highest and most complete form of poetry. And the very +perfection of such poetry often seems to depend, in part, on a certain +suppression or vagueness of mere subject, so that the meaning reaches us +through ways not distinctly traceable by the understanding, as in some +of the most imaginative compositions of William Blake, and often in +Shakspere's songs, as pre-eminently in that song of Mariana's page in +Measure for Measure, in which the kindling force and poetry of the whole +play seems to pass for a moment into an actual strain of music. +</P> + +<P> +And this principle holds good of all things that partake in any degree +of artistic qualities, of the furniture of our houses, and of dress, for +instance, of life itself, of gesture and speech, and the details of +daily intercourse; these also, for the wise, being susceptible of a +suavity and charm, caught from the way in which they are done, which +gives them a worth in themselves; wherein, indeed, lies what is valuable +and justly attractive, in what is called the fashion of a time, which +elevates the trivialities of speech, and manner, and dress, into "ends +in themselves," and gives them a mysterious grace and attractiveness in +the doing of them. +</P> + +<P> +Art, then, is thus always striving to be independent of the mere +intelligence, to become a matter of pure perception, to get rid of its +responsibilities to its subject or material; the ideal examples of +poetry and painting being those in which the constituent elements of the +composition are so welded together, that the material or subject no +longer strikes the intellect only; nor the form, the eye or the ear +only; but form and matter, in their union or identity, present one +single effect to the "imaginative reason," that complex faculty for +which every thought and feeling is twin-born with its sensible analogue +or symbol. +</P> + +<P> +It is the art of music which most completely realises this artistic +ideal, this perfect identification of form and matter. In its ideal, +consummate moments, the end is not distinct from the means, the form +from the matter, the subject from the expression; they inhere in and +completely saturate each other; and to it, therefore, to the condition +of its perfect moments, all the arts may be supposed constantly to tend +and aspire. Music, then, and not poetry, as is so often supposed, is the +true type or measure of perfected art. Therefore, although each art has +its incommunicable element, its untranslatable order of impressions, its +unique mode of reaching the "imaginative reason," yet the arts may be +represented as continually struggling after the law or principle of +music, to a condition which music alone completely realises; and one of +the chief functions of aesthetic criticism, dealing with the products of +art, new or old, is to estimate the degree in which each of those +products approaches, in this sense, to musical law. +</P> + +<P> +By no school of painters have, the necessary limitations of the art of +painting been so unerringly though instinctively apprehended, and the +essence of what is pictorial in a picture so justly conceived, as by the +school of Venice; and the train of thought suggested in what has been +now said is, perhaps, a not unfitting introduction to a few pages about +Giorgione, who, though much has been taken by recent criticism from what +was reputed to be his work, yet, more entirely than any other painter, +sums up, in what we know of himself and his art, the spirit of the +Venetian school. +</P> + +<P> +The beginnings of Venetian painting link themselves to the last, stiff, +half-barbaric splendours of Byzantine decoration, and are but the +introduction into the crust of marble and gold on the walls of the Duomo +of Murano, or of Saint Mark's, of a little more of human expression. And +throughout the course of its later development, always subordinate to +architectural effect, the work of the Venetian school never escaped from +the influence of its beginnings. Unassisted, and therefore unperplexed, +by naturalism, religious mysticism, philosophical theories, it had no +Giotto, no Angelico, no Botticelli. Exempt from the stress of thought +and sentiment, which taxed so severely the resources of the generations +of Florentine artists, those earlier Venetian painters, down to +Carpaccio and the Bellini, seem never for a moment to have been tempted +even to lose sight of the scope of their art in its strictness, or to +forget that painting must be, before all things decorative, a thing for +the eye; a space of colour on the wall, only more dexterously blent than +the marking of its precious stone or the chance interchange of sun and +shade upon it—this, to begin and end with—whatever higher matter of +thought, or poetry, or religious reverie might play its part therein, +between. At last, with final mastery of all the technical secrets of his +art, and with somewhat more than "a spark of the divine fire" to his +share, comes Giorgione. He is the inventor of genre, of those easily +movable pictures which serve neither for uses of devotion, nor of +allegorical or historic teaching—little groups of real men and women, +amid congruous furniture or landscape—morsels of actual life, +conversation or music or play, refined upon or idealised, till they come +to seem like glimpses of life from afar. Those spaces of more cunningly +blent colour, obediently filling their places, hitherto, in a mere +architectural scheme, Giorgione detaches from the wall; he frames them +by the hands of some skilful carver, so that people may move them +readily and take with them where they go, like a poem in manuscript, or +a musical instrument, to be used, at will, as a means of self-education, +stimulus or solace, coming like an animated presence, into one's +cabinet, to enrich the air as with some choice aroma, and, like persons, +live with us, for a day or a lifetime. Of all art like this, art which +has played so large a part in men's culture since that time, Giorgione +is the initiator. Yet in him too that old Venetian clearness or justice, +in the apprehension of the essential limitations of the pictorial art, +is still undisturbed; and, while he interfuses his painted work with a +high-strung sort of poetry, caught directly from a singularly rich and +high-strung sort of life, yet in his selection of subject, or phase of +subject, in the subordination of mere subject to pictorial design, to +the main purpose of a picture, he is typical of that aspiration of all +the arts towards music, which I have endeavoured to explain,—towards +the perfect identification of matter and form. +</P> + +<P> +Born so near to Titian, though a little before him, that these two +companion pupils of the aged Giovanni Bellini may almost be called +contemporaries, Giorgione stands to Titian in something like the +relationship of Sordello to Dante, in Mr. Browning's poem. Titian, when +he leaves Bellini, becomes, in turn, the pupil of Giorgione; he lives in +constant labour more than sixty years after Giorgione is in his grave; +and with such fruit, that hardly one of the greater towns of Europe is +without some fragment of it. But the slightly older man, with his so +limited actual product (what remains to us of it seeming, when narrowly +examined, to reduce itself to almost one picture, like Sordello's one +fragment of lovely verse), yet expresses, in elementary motive and +principle, that spirit—itself the final acquisition of all the long +endeavours of Venetian art—which Titian spreads over his whole life's +activity. +</P> + +<P> +And, as we might expect, something fabulous and illusive has always +mingled itself in the brilliancy of Giorgione's fame. The exact +relationship to him of many works—drawings, portraits, painted +idylls—often fascinating enough, which in various collections went by +his name, was from the first uncertain. Still, six or eight famous +pictures at Dresden, Florence and the Louvre, were undoubtedly +attributed to him, and in these, if anywhere, something of the splendour +of the old Venetian humanity seemed to have been preserved. But of those +six or eight famous pictures it is now known that only one is certainly +from Giorgione's hand. The accomplished science of the subject has come +at last, and, as in other instances, has not made the past more real for +us, but assured us that we possess of it less than we seemed to possess. +Much of the work on which Giorgione's immediate fame depended, work done +for instantaneous effect, in all probability passed away almost within +his own age, like the frescoes on the facade of the fondaco dei Tedeschi +at Venice, some crimson traces of which, however, still give a strange +additional touch of splendour to the scene of the Rialto. And then there +is a barrier or borderland, a period about the middle of the sixteenth +century, in passing through which the tradition miscarries, and the true +outlines of Giorgione's work and person become obscured. It became +fashionable for wealthy lovers of art, with no critical standard of +authenticity, to collect so-called works of Giorgione, and a multitude +of imitations came into circulation. And now, in the "new Vasari,"* the +great traditional reputation, woven with so profuse demand on men's +admiration, has been scrutinised thread by thread; and what remains of +the most vivid and stimulating of Venetian masters, a live flame, as it +seemed, in those old shadowy times, has been reduced almost to a name by +his most recent critics. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +*Crowe and Cavalcaselle: History of Painting in North Italy. +</P> + +<P> +Yet enough remains to explain why the legend grew up, above the name, +why the name attached itself, in many instances, to the bravest work of +other men. The Concert in the Pitti Palace, in which a monk, with cowl +and tonsure, touches the keys of a harpsichord, while a clerk, placed +behind him, grasps the handle of the viol, and a third, with hat and +plume, seems to wait upon the true interval for beginning to sing, is +undoubtedly Giorgione's. The outline of the lifted finger, the trace of +the plume, the very threads of the fine linen, which fasten themselves +on the memory, in the moment before they are lost altogether in that +calm unearthly glow, the skill which has caught the waves of wandering +sound, and fixed them for ever on the lips and hands—these are indeed +the master's own; and the criticism which, while dismissing so much +hitherto believed to be Giorgione's, has established the claims of this +one picture, has left it among the most precious things in the world of +art. +</P> + +<P> +It is noticeable that the "distinction" of this Concert, its sustained +evenness of perfection, alike in design, in execution, and in choice of +personal type, becomes for the "new Vasari" the standard of Giorgione's +genuine work. Finding here enough to explain his influence, and the true +seal of mastery, its authors assign to Pellegrino da San Daniele the +Holy Family in the Louvre, for certain points in which it comes short of +that standard, but which will hardly diminish the spectator's enjoyment +of a singular charm of liquid air, with which the whole picture seems +instinct, filling the eyes and lips, the very garments, of its sacred +personages, with some wind-searched brightness and energy; of which fine +air the blue peak, clearly defined in the distance, is, as it were, the +visible pledge. Similarly, another favourite picture in the Louvre, the +subject of a Sonnet by a poet whose own painted work often comes to mind +as one ponders over these precious things—the Fete Champetre, is +assigned to an imitator of Sebastian del Piombo; and the Tempest, in the +Academy at Venice (a slighter loss, perhaps, though not without its +pleasant effect of clearing weather, towards the left, its one untouched +morsel), to Paris Bordone, or perhaps to "some advanced craftsman of the +sixteenth century." From the gallery at Dresden, the Knight embracing a +Lady, where the knight's broken gauntlets seem to mark some well-known +pause in a story we would willingly hear the rest of; is conceded to "a +Brescian hand," and Jacob meeting Rachel to a pupil of Palma; and, +whatever their charm, we are called on to give up the Ordeal and the +Finding of Moses with its jewel-like pools of water, perhaps to Bellini. +</P> + +<P> +Nor has the criticism, which thus so freely diminishes the number of his +authentic works, added anything important to the well-known outline of +the life and personality of the man: only, it has fixed one or two +dates, one or two circumstances, a little more exactly. Giorgione was +born before the year 1477, and spent his childhood at Castelfranco, +where the last crags of the Venetian Alps break down romantically, with +something of parklike grace, to the plain. A natural child of the family +of the Barbarelli by a peasant-girl of Vedelago, he finds his way early +into the circle of notable persons—people of courtesy; and becomes +initiated into those differences of personal type, manner, and even of +dress, which are best understood there—that "distinction" of the +Concert of the Pitti Palace. Not far from his home lives Catherine of +Cornara, formerly Queen of Cyprus; and, up in the towers which still +remain, Tuzio Costanzo, the famous condottiere—a picturesque remnant of +medieval manners, amid a civilisation rapidly changing. Giorgione paints +their portraits; and when Tuzio's son, Matteo, dies in early youth, +adorns in his memory a chapel in the church of Castelfranco, painting on +this occasion, perhaps, the altar-piece, foremost among his authentic +works, still to be seen there, with the figure of the warrior-saint, +Liberale, of which the original little study in oil, with the delicately +gleaming, silver-grey armour, is one of the greater treasures of the +National Gallery, and in which, as in some other knightly personages +attributed to him, people have supposed the likeness of his own +presumably gracious presence. Thither, at last, he is himself brought +home from Venice, early dead, but celebrated. It happened, about his +thirty-fourth year, that in one of those parties at which he entertained +his friends with music, he met a certain lady of whom he became greatly +enamoured, and "they rejoiced greatly," says Vasari, "the one and the +other, in their loves." And two quite different legends concerning it +agree in this, that it was through this lady he came by his death: +Ridolfi relating that, being robbed of her by one of his pupils, he died +of grief at the double treason;—Vasari, that she being secretly +stricken of the plague, and he making his visits to her as usual, he +took the sickness from her mortally, along with her kisses, and so +briefly departed. +</P> + +<P> +But, although the number of Giorgione's extant works has been thus +limited by recent criticism, all is not done when the real and the +traditional elements in what concerns him have been discriminated; for, +in what is connected with a great name, much that is not real is often +very stimulating; and, for the aesthetic philosopher, over and above the +real Giorgione and his authentic extant works, there remains the +Giorgionesque also—an influence, a spirit or type in art, active in men +so different as those to whom many of his supposed works are really +assignable—a veritable school, which grew together out of all those +fascinating works rightly or wrongly attributed to him; out of many +copies from, or variations on him, by unknown or uncertain workmen, +whose drawings and designs were, for various reasons, prized as his; out +of the immediate impression he made upon his contemporaries, and with +which he continued in men's minds; out of many traditions of subject and +treatment, which really descend from him to our own time, and by +retracing which we fill out the original image; Giorgione thus becoming +a sort of impersonation of Venice itself, its projected reflex or ideal, +all that was intense or desirable in it thus crystallising about the +memory of this wonderful young man. +</P> + +<P> +And now, finally, let me illustrate some of the characteristics of this +School of Giorgione, as we may call it, which, for most of us, +notwithstanding all that negative criticism of the "new Vasari," will +still identify itself with those famous pictures at Florence, Dresden +and Paris; and in which a certain artistic ideal is defined for us—the +conception of a peculiar aim and procedure in art, which we may +understand as the Giorgionesque, wherever we find it, whether in +Venetian work generally, or in work of our own time—and of which the +Concert, that undoubted work of Giorgione in the Pitti Palace, is the +typical instance, and a pledge authenticating the connexion of the +school with the master. +</P> + +<P> +I have spoken of a certain interpretation of the matter or subject of a +work of art with the form of it, a condition realised absolutely only in +music, as the condition to which every form of art is perpetually +aspiring. In the art of painting, the attainment of this ideal +condition, this perfect interpretation of the subject with colour and +design, depends, of course, in great measure, on dexterous choice of +that subject, or phase of subject; and such choice is one of the secrets +of Giorgione's school. It is the school of genre, and employs itself +mainly with "painted idylls," but, in the production of this pictorial +poetry, exercises a wonderful tact in the selecting of such matter as +lends itself most readily and entirely to pictorial form, to complete +expression by drawing and colour. For although its productions are +painted poems, they belong to a sort of poetry which tells itself +without an articulated story. The master is pre-eminent for the +resolution, the ease and quickness, with which he reproduces +instantaneous motion—the lacing-on of armour, with the head bent back +so stately—the fainting lady—the embrace, rapid as the kiss caught, +with death itself, from dying lips—the momentary conjunction of mirrors +and polished armour and still water, by which all the sides of a solid +image are presented at once, solving that casuistical question whether +painting can present an object as completely as sculpture. The sudden +act, the rapid transition of thought, the passing expression—this he +arrests with that vivacity which Vasari has attributed to him, il fuoco +Giorgionesco, as he terms it. Now it is part of the ideality of the +highest sort of dramatic poetry, that it presents us with a kind of +profoundly significant and animated instants, a mere gesture, a look, a +smile, perhaps—some brief and wholly concrete moment—into which, +however, all the motives, all the interests and effects of a long +history, have condensed themselves, and which seem to absorb past and +future in an intense consciousness of the present. Such ideal instants +the school of Giorgione selects, with its admirable tact, from that +feverish, tumultuously coloured life of the old citizens of +Venice—exquisite pauses in time, in which, arrested thus, we seem to be +spectators of all the fulness of existence, and which are like some +consummate extract or quintessence of life. +</P> + +<P> +It is to the law or condition of music, as I said, that all art like +this is really aspiring and, in the school of Giorgione, the perfect +moments of music itself, the making or hearing of music, song or its +accompaniment, are themselves prominent as subjects. On that background +of the silence of Venice, which the visitor there finds so impressive, +the world of Italian music was then forming. In choice of subject, as in +all besides, the Concert of the Pitti Palace is typical of all that +Giorgione, himself an admirable musician, touched with his influence; +and in sketch or finished picture, in various collections, we may follow +it through many intricate variations—men fainting at music, music heard +at the pool-side while people fish, or mingled with the sound of the +pitcher in the well, or heard across running water, or among the flocks; +the tuning of instruments—people with intent faces, as if listening, +like those described by Plato in an ingenious passage, to detect the +smallest interval of musical sound, the smallest undulation in the air, +or feeling for music in thought on a stringless instrument, ear and +finger refining themselves infinitely, in the appetite for sweet +sound—a momentary touch of an instrument in the twilight, as one passes +through some unfamiliar room, in a chance company. +</P> + +<P> +In such favourite incidents, then, of Giorgione's school, music or +music-like intervals in our existence, life itself is conceived as a +sort of listening—listening to music, to the reading of Bandello's +novels, to the sound of water, to time as it flies. Often such moments +are really our moments of play, and we are surprised at the unexpected +blessedness of what may seem our least important part of time; not +merely because play is in many instances that to which people really +apply their own best powers, but also because at such times, the stress +of our servile, everyday attentiveness being relaxed, the happier powers +in things without us are permitted free passage, and have their way with +us. And so, from music, the school of Giorgione passes often to the play +which is like music; to those masques in which men avowedly do but play +at real life, like children "dressing up," disguised in the strange old +Italian dresses, parti-coloured, or fantastic with embroidery and furs, +of which the master was so curious a designer, and which, above all the +spotless white linen at wrist and throat, he painted so dexterously. +</P> + +<P> +And when people are happy in this thirsty land water will not be far +off; and in the school of Giorgione, the presence of water—the well, or +marble-rimmed pool, the drawing or pouring of water, as the woman pours +it from a pitcher with her jewelled hand in the Fete Champetre, +listening, perhaps, to the cool sound as it falls, blent with the music +of the pipes—is as characteristic, and almost as suggestive, as that of +music itself. And the landscape feels, and is glad of it also—a +landscape full of clearness, of the effects of water, of fresh rain +newly passed through the air, and collected into the grassy channels; +the air, too, in the school of Giorgione, seeming as vivid as the people +who breathe it, and literally empyrean, all impurities being burnt out +of it, and no taint, no floating particle of anything but its own proper +elements allowed to subsist within it. +</P> + +<P> +Its scenery is such as in England we call "park scenery," with some +elusive refinement felt about the rustic buildings, the choice grass, +the grouped trees, the undulations deftly economised for graceful +effect. Only, in Italy all natural things are, as it were, woven through +and through with gold thread, even the cypress revealing it among the +folds of its blackness. And it is with gold dust, or gold thread, that +these Venetian painters seem to work, spinning its fine filaments, +through the solemn human flesh, away into the white plastered walls of +the thatched huts. The harsher details of the mountains recede to a +harmonious distance, the one peak of rich blue above the horizon +remaining but as the visible warrant of that due coolness which is all +we need ask here of the Alps, with their dark rains and streams. Yet +what real, airy space, as the eye passes from level to level, through +the long-drawn valley in which Jacob embraces Rachel among the flocks! +Nowhere is there a truer instance of that balance, that modulated unison +of landscape and persons—of the human image and its +accessories—already noticed as characteristic of the Venetian school, +so that, in it, neither personage nor scenery is ever a mere pretext for +the other. +</P> + +<P> +Something like this seems to me to be the vraie verite about Giorgione, +if I may adopt a serviceable expression, by which the French recognise +those more liberal and durable impressions which, in respect of any +really considerable person or subject, anything that has at all +intricately occupied men's attention, lie beyond, and must supplement, +the narrower range of the strictly ascertained facts about it. In this, +Giorgione is but an illustration of a valuable general caution we may +abide by in all criticism. As regards Giorgione himself, we have indeed +to take note of all those negations and exceptions, by which, at first +sight, a "new Vasari" seems merely to have confused our apprehension of +a delightful object, to have explained away out of our inheritance from +past time what seemed of high value there. Yet it is not with a full +understanding even of those exceptions that one can leave off just at +this point. Properly qualified, such exceptions are but a salt of +genuineness in our knowledge; and beyond all those strictly ascertained +facts, we must take note of that indirect influence by which one like +Giorgione, for instance, enlarges his permanent efficacy and really +makes himself felt in our culture. In a just impression of that, is the +essential truth, the vraie verite concerning him. +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +1877. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="joachim"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +JOACHIM DU BELLAY +</H3> + +<P> +In the middle of the sixteenth century, when the spirit of the +Renaissance was everywhere, and people had begun to look back with +distaste on the works of the middle age, the old Gothic manner had still +one chance more, in borrowing something from the rival which was about +to supplant it. In this way there was produced, chiefly in France, a new +and peculiar phase of taste with qualities and a charm of its own, +blending the somewhat attenuated grace of Italian ornament with the +general outlines of Northern design. It produced the Chateau de Gaillon, +as you may still see it in the delicate engravings of Israel +Silvestre—a Gothic donjon veiled faintly by a surface of dainty Italian +traceries—Chenonceaux, Blois, Chambord, and the church of Brou. In +painting, there came from Italy workmen like Maitre Roux and the masters +of the school of Fontainebleau, to have their later Italian +voluptuousness attempered by the naive and silvery qualities of the +native style; and it was characteristic of these painters that they were +most successful in painting on glass, an art so essentially medieval. +Taking it up where the middle age had left it, they found their whole +work among the last subtleties of colour and line; and keeping within +the true limits of their material, they got quite a new order of effects +from it, and felt their way to refinements on colour never dreamed of by +those older workmen, the glass-painters of Chartres or Le Mans. What is +called the Renaissance in France is thus not so much the introduction of +a wholly new taste ready-made from Italy, but rather the finest and +subtlest phase of the middle age itself, its last fleeting splendour and +temperate Saint Martin's summer. In poetry, the Gothic spirit in France +had produced a thousand songs; and in the Renaissance, French poetry too +did but borrow something to blend with a native growth, and the poems of +Ronsard, with their ingenuity, their delicately figured surfaces, their +slightness, their fanciful combinations of rhyme, are but the +correlative of the traceries of the house of Jacques Coeur at Bourges, +or the Maison de Justice at Rouen. +</P> + +<P> +There was indeed something in the native French taste naturally akin to +that Italian finesse. The characteristic of French work had always been +a certain nicety, a remarkable daintiness of hand, une nettete +remarquable d'execution. In the paintings of Francois Clouet, for +example, or rather of the Clouets—for there was a whole family of +them—painters remarkable for their resistance to Italian influences, +there is a silveriness of colour and a clearness of expression which +distinguish them very definitely from their Flemish neighbours, Hemling +or the Van Eycks. And this nicety is not less characteristic of old +French poetry. A light, aerial delicacy, a simple elegance—une nettete +remarquable d'execution:—these are essential characteristics alike of +Villon's poetry, and of the Hours of Anne of Brittany. They are +characteristic too of a hundred French Gothic carvings and traceries. +Alike in the old Gothic cathedrals, and in their counterpart, the old +Gothic chansons de geste, the rough and ponderous mass becomes, as if by +passing for a moment into happier conditions, or through a more gracious +stratum of air, graceful and refined, like the carved ferneries on the +granite church at Folgoat, or the lines which describe the fair priestly +hands of Archbishop Turpin, in the song of Roland; although below both +alike there is a fund of mere Gothic strength, or heaviness.* +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +*The purely artistic aspects of this subject have been interpreted, in a +work of great taste and learning, by Mrs. Mark Pattison:—The +Renaissance of Art in France. +</P> + +<P> +And Villon's songs and Clouet's paintings are like these. It is the +higher touch making itself felt here and there, betraying itself, like +nobler blood in a lower stock, by a fine line or gesture or expression, +the turn of a wrist, the tapering of a finger. In Ronsard's time that +rougher element seemed likely to predominate. No one can turn over the +pages of Rabelais without feeling how much need there was of softening, +of castigation. To effect this softening is the object of the revolution +in poetry which is connected with Ronsard's name. Casting about for the +means of thus refining upon and saving the character of French +literature, he accepted that influx of Renaissance taste, which, leaving +the buildings, the language, the art, the poetry of France, at bottom, +what they were, old French Gothic still, gilds their surfaces with a +strange, delightful, foreign aspect passing over all that Northern land, +in itself neither deeper nor more permanent than a chance effect of +light. He reinforces, he doubles the French daintiness by Italian +finesse. Thereupon, nearly all the force and all the seriousness of +French work disappear; only the elegance, the aerial touch, the perfect +manner remain. But this elegance, this manner, this daintiness of +execution are consummate, and have an unmistakable aesthetic value. +</P> + +<P> +So the old French chanson, which, like the old Northern Gothic ornament, +though it sometimes refined itself into a sort of weird elegance, was +often, in its essence, something rude and formless, became in the hands +of Ronsard a Pindaric ode. He gave it structure, a sustained system, +strophe and antistrophe, and taught it a changefulness and variety of +metre which keep the curiosity always excited, so that the very aspect +of it, as it lies written on the page, carries the eye lightly onwards, +and of which this is a good instance:— +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Avril, la grace, et le ris<BR> + De Cypris,<BR> + Le flair et la douce haleine;<BR> + Avril, le parfum des dieux,<BR> + Qui, des cieux,<BR> + Sentent l'odeur de la plaine;<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + C'est toy, courteis et gentil,<BR> + Qui, d'exil<BR> + Retire ces passageres,<BR> + Ces arondelles qui vont,<BR> + Et qui sont<BR> + Du printemps les messageres.<BR> +</P> + +<P> +That is not by Ronsard, but by Remy Belleau, for Ronsard soon came to +have a school. Six other poets threw in their lot with him in his +literary revolution—this Remy Belleau, Antoine de Baif, Pontus de +Tyard, Etienne Jodelle, Jean Daurat, and lastly Joachim du Bellay; and +with that strange love of emblems which is characteristic of the time, +which covered all the works of Francis the First with the salamander, +and all the works of Henry the Second with the double crescent, and all +the works of Anne of Brittany with the knotted cord, they called +themselves the Pleiad; seven in all, although, as happens with the +celestial Pleiad, if you scrutinise this constellation of poets more +carefully you may find there a great number of minor stars. +</P> + +<P> +The first note of this literary revolution was struck by Joachim du +Bellay in a little tract written at the early age of twenty-four, which +coming to us through three centuries seems of yesterday, so full is it +of those delicate critical distinctions which are sometimes supposed +peculiar to modern writers. The piece has for its title La Deffense et +Illustration de la langue Francoyse; and its problem is how to +illustrate or ennoble the French language, to give it lustre. We are +accustomed to speak of the varied critical and creative movement of the +fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as the Renaissance, and because we +have a single name for it we may sometimes fancy that there was more +unity in the thing itself than there really was. Even the Reformation, +that other great movement of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, had +far less unity, far less of combined action, than is at first sight +supposed; and the Renaissance was infinitely less united, less conscious +of combined action, than the Reformation. But if anywhere the +Renaissance became conscious, as a German philosopher might say, if ever +it was understood as a systematic movement by those who took part in it, +it is in this little book of Joachim du Bellay's, which it is impossible +to read without feeling the excitement, the animation, of change, of +discovery. "It is a remarkable fact," says M. Sainte-Beuve, "and an +inversion of what is true of other languages, that, in French, prose has +always had the precedence over poetry." Du Bellay's prose is perfectly +transparent, flexible, and chaste. In many ways it is a more +characteristic example of the culture of the Pleiad than any of its +verse; and those who love the whole movement of which the Pleiad is a +part, for a weird foreign grace in it, and may be looking about for a +true specimen of it, cannot have a better than Joachim du Bellay and +this little treatise of his. +</P> + +<P> +Du Bellay's object is to adjust the existing French culture to the +rediscovered classical culture; and in discussing this problem, and +developing the theories of the Pleiad, he has lighted upon many +principles of permanent truth and applicability. There were some who +despaired of the French language altogether, who thought it naturally +incapable of the fulness and elegance of Greek and Latin—cette elegance +et copie qui est en la langue Grecque et Romaine—that science could be +adequately discussed, and poetry nobly written, only in the dead +languages. "Those who speak thus," says Du Bellay, "make me think of +those relics which one may only see through a little pane of glass, and +must not touch with one's hands. That is what these people do with all +branches of culture, which they keep shut up in Greek and Latin books, +not permitting one to see them otherwise, or transport them out of dead +words into those which are alive, and wing their way daily through the +months of men." "Languages," he says again, "are not born like plants +and trees, some naturally feeble and sickly, others healthy and strong +and apter to bear the weight of men's conceptions, but all their virtue +is generated in the world of choice and men's freewill concerning them. +Therefore, I cannot blame too strongly the rashness of some of our +countrymen, who being anything rather than Greeks or Latins, depreciate +and reject with more than stoical disdain everything written in French; +nor can I express my surprise at the odd opinion of some learned men who +think that our vulgar tongue is wholly incapable of erudition and good +literature." +</P> + +<P> +It was an age of translations. Du Bellay himself translated two books of +the Aeneid, and other poetry, old and new, and there were some who +thought that the translation of the classical literature was the true +means of ennobling the French language:—strangers are ever favourites +with us—nous favorisons toujours les etrangers. Du Bellay moderates +their expectations. "I do not believe that one can learn the right use +of them"—he is speaking of figures and ornament in language—"from +translations, because it is impossible to reproduce them with the same +grace with which the original author used them. For each language has, I +know not what peculiarity of its own; and if you force yourself to +express the naturalness (le naif) of this, in another language, +observing the law of translation, which is, not to expatiate beyond the +limits of the author himself; your words will be constrained, cold and +ungraceful." Then he fixes the test of all good translation:—"To prove +this, read me Demosthenes and Homer in Latin, Cicero and Virgil in +French, and see whether they produce in you the same affections which +you experience in reading those authors in the original." +</P> + +<P> +In this effort to ennoble the French language, to give it grace, number, +perfection, and as painters do to their pictures, that last, so +desirable, touch—cette derniere main que nous desirons—what Du Bellay +is pleading for is his mother-tongue, the language, that is, in which +one will have the utmost degree of what is moving and passionate. He +recognised of what force the music and dignity of languages are, how +they enter into the inmost part of things; and in pleading for the +cultivation of the French language, he is pleading for no merely +scholastic interest, but for freedom, impulse, reality, not in +literature merely, but in daily communion of speech. After all, it was +impossible to have this impulse in Greek and Latin, dead languages shut +up in books as in reliquaries—peris et mises en reliquaires de livres. +By aid of this starveling stock—pauvre plante et vergette—of the +French language, he must speak delicately, movingly, if he is ever to +speak so at all: that, or none, must be for him the medium of what he +calls, in one of his great phrases, le discours fatal des choses +mondaines—that discourse about affairs which decides men's fates. And +it is his patriotism not to despair of it; he sees it already perfect in +all elegance and beauty of words—parfait en toute elegance et venuste +de paroles. +</P> + +<P> +Du Bellay was born in the disastrous year 1525, the year of the battle +of Pavia, and the captivity of Francis the First. . His parents died +early, and to him, as the younger son, his mother's little estate, ce +petit Lire, the beloved place of his birth, descended. He was brought up +by a brother only a little older than himself; and left to themselves, +the two boys passed their lives in day-dreams of military glory. Their +education was neglected; "The time of my youth," says Du Bellay, "was +lost, like the flower which no shower waters, and no hand cultivates." +He was just twenty years old when the elder brother died, leaving +Joachim to be the guardian of his child. It was with regret, with a +shrinking feeling of incapacity, that he took upon him the burden of +this responsibility. Hitherto he had looked forward to the profession of +a soldier, hereditary in his family. But at this time a sickness +attacked him which brought him cruel sufferings, and seemed likely to be +mortal. It was then for the first time that he read the Greek and Latin +poets. These studies came too late to make him what he so much desired +to be, a trifler in Greek and Latin verse, like so many others of his +time now forgotten; instead, they made him a lover of his own homely +native tongue, that poor starveling stock of the French language. It was +through this fortunate shortcoming in his education that he became +national and modern; and he learned afterwards to look back on that wild +garden of his youth with only a half regret. A certain Cardinal du +Bellay was the successful member of the family, a man often employed in +high official affairs. It was to him that the thoughts of Joachim turned +when it became necessary to choose a profession, and in 1552 he +accompanied the Cardinal to Rome. He remained there nearly five years, +burdened with the weight of affairs, and languishing with home-sickness. +Yet it was under these circumstances that his genius yielded its best +fruits. From Rome, which to most men of an imaginative temperament such +as his would have yielded so many pleasurable sensations, with all the +curiosities of the Renaissance still fresh there, his thoughts went back +painfully, longingly, to the country of the Loire, with its wide +expanses of waving corn, its homely pointed roofs of grey slate, and its +far-off scent of the sea. He reached home at last, but only to die +there, quite suddenly, one wintry day, at the early age of thirty-five. +</P> + +<P> +Much of Du Bellay's poetry illustrates rather the age and school to +which he belonged than his own temper and genius. As with the writings +of Ronsard and the other poets of the Pleiad, its interest depends not +so much on the impress of individual genius upon it, as on the +circumstance that it was once poetry a la mode, that it is part of the +manner of a time—a time which made much of manner, and carried it to a +high degree of perfection. It is one of the decorations of an age which +threw much of its energy into the work of decoration. We feel a pensive +pleasure in seeing these faded decorations, and observing how a group of +actual men and women pleased themselves long ago. Ronsard's poems are a +kind of epitome of his age. Of one side of that age, it is true, of the +strenuous, the progressive, the serious movement, which was then going +on, there is little; but of the catholic side, the losing side, the +forlorn hope, hardly a figure is absent. The Queen of Scots, at whose +desire Ronsard published his odes, reading him in her northern prison, +felt that he was bringing back to her the true flavour of her early days +in the court of Catherine at the Louvre, with its exotic Italian +gaieties. Those who disliked that poetry, disliked it because they found +that age itself distasteful. The poetry of Malherbe came, with its +sustained style and weighty sentiment, but with nothing that set people +singing; and the lovers of such poetry saw in the poetry of the Pleiad +only the latest trumpery of the middle age. But the time came also when +the school of Malherbe had had its day; and the Romanticists, who in +their eagerness for excitement, for strange music and imagery, went back +to the works of the middle age, accepted the Pleiad too with the rest; +and in that new middle age which their genius has evoked, the poetry of +the Pleiad has found its place. At first, with Malherbe, you may find +it, like the architecture, the whole mode of life, the very dresses of +that time, fantastic, faded, rococo. But if you look long enough to +understand it, to conceive its sentiment, you will find that those +wanton lines have a spirit guiding their caprices. For there is style +there; one temper has shaped the whole; and everything that has style, +that has been done as no other man or age could have done it, as it +could never, for all our trying, be done again, has its true value and +interest. Let us dwell upon it for a moment, and try to gather from it +that special flower, ce fleur particulier, which Ronsard himself tells +us every garden has. +</P> + +<P> +It is poetry not for the people, but for a confined circle, for +courtiers, great lords and erudite persons, people who desire to be +humoured, to gratify a certain refined voluptuousness they have in them. +Ronsard loves, or dreams that he loves, a rare and peculiar type of +beauty, la petite pucelle Angevine, with golden hair and dark eyes. But +he has the ambition not only of being a courtier and a lover, but a +great scholar also; he is anxious about orthography, about the letter e +Grecque, the true spelling of Latin names in French writing, and the +restoration of the letter i to its primitive liberty—del' i voyelle en +sa premiere liberte. His poetry is full of quaint, remote learning. He +is just a little pedantic, true always to his own express judgment, that +to be natural is not enough for one who in poetry desires to produce +work worthy of immortality. And therewithal a certain number of Greek +words, which charmed Ronsard and his circle by their gaiety and +daintiness, and a certain air of foreign elegance about them, crept into +the French language: and there were other strange words which the poets +of the Pleiad forged for themselves, and which had only an ephemeral +existence. +</P> + +<P> +With this was mixed the desire to taste a more exquisite and various +music than that of the older French verse, or of the classical poets. +The music of the measured, scanned verse of Latin and Greek poetry is +one thing; the music of the rhymed, unscanned verse of Villon and the +old French poets, la poesie chantee, is another. To unite together these +two kinds of music in a new school of French poetry, to make verse which +should scan and rhyme as well, to search out and harmonise the measure +of every syllable, and unite it to the swift, flitting, swallow-like +motion of rhyme, to penetrate their poetry with a double music—this was +the ambition of the Pleiad. They are insatiable of music, they cannot +have enough of it; they desire a music of greater compass perhaps than +words can possibly yield, to drain out the last drops of sweetness which +a certain note or accent contains. +</P> + +<P> +This eagerness for music is almost the only serious thing in the poetry +of the Pleiad; and it was Goudimel, the severe and protestant Goudimel, +who set Ronsard's songs to music. But except in this matter these poets +seem never quite in earnest. The old Greek and Roman mythology, which +for the great Italians had been a motive so weighty and severe, becomes +with them a mere toy. That "Lord of terrible aspect," Amor, has become +Love, the boy or the babe. They are full of fine railleries; they +delight in diminutives, ondelette, fontelette, doucelette, Cassandrette. +Their loves are only half real, a vain effort to prolong the imaginative +loves of the middle age beyond their natural lifetime. They write +love-poems for hire. Like that party of people who tell the tales in +Boccaccio's Decameron, they form a circle which in an age of great +troubles, losses, anxieties, amuses itself with art, poetry, intrigue. +But they amuse themselves with wonderful elegance; and sometimes their +gaiety becomes satiric, for, as they play, real passions insinuate +themselves, and at least the reality of death; their dejection at the +thought of leaving this fair abode of our common daylight—le beau +sejour du commun jour—is expressed by them with almost wearisome +reiteration. But with this sentiment too they are able to trifle: the +imagery of death serves for delicate ornament, and they weave into the +airy nothingness of their verses their trite reflexions on the vanity of +life; just as the grotesques of the charnel-house nest themselves, +together with birds and flowers and the fancies of the pagan mythology, +in the traceries of the architecture of that time, which wantons in its +delicate arabesques with the images of old age and death. +</P> + +<P> +Ronsard became deaf at sixteen; and it was this circumstance which +finally determined him to be a man of letters instead of a diplomatist, +significantly, one might fancy; of a certain premature agedness, and of +the tranquil, temperate sweetness appropriate to that, in the school of +poetry which he founded. Its charm is that of a thing not vigorous or +original, but full of the grace that comes of long study and reiterated +refinements, and many steps repeated, and many angles worn down, with an +exquisite faintness, une fadeur exquise, a certain tenuity and caducity, +as for those who can bear nothing vehement or strong; for princes weary +of love, like Francis the First, or of pleasure, like Henry the Third, +or of action, like Henry the Fourth. Its merits are those of the +old,—grace and finish, perfect in minute detail. For these people are a +little jaded, and have a constant desire for a subdued and delicate +excitement, to warm their creeping fancy a little. They love a constant +change of rhyme in poetry, and in their houses that strange, fantastic +interweaving of thin, reed-like lines, which are a kind of rhetoric in +architecture. +</P> + +<P> +But the poetry of the Pleiad is true not only to the physiognomy of its +age, but also to its country—ce pays du Vendomois—the names and scenery +of which so often recur in it; the great Loire, with its long spaces of +white sand; the little river Loir; the heathy, upland country, with its +scattered pools of water and waste road-sides, and retired manors, with +their crazy old feudal defences half fallen into decay; La Beauce, the +granary of France, where the vast rolling fields of corn seem to +anticipate the great western sea itself. It is full of the traits of that +country. We see Du Bellay and Ronsard gardening, or hunting with their +dogs, or watch the pastimes of a rainy day; and with this is connected a +domesticity, a homeliness and simple goodness, by which this Northern +country gains upon the South. They have the love of the aged for warmth, +and understand the poetry of winter; for they are not far from the +Atlantic, and the west wind which comes up from it, turning the poplars +white, spares not this new Italy in France. So the fireside often +appears, with the pleasures of winter, about the vast emblazoned chimneys +of the time, and with a bonhomie as of little children, or old people. +</P> + +<P> +It is in Du Bellay's Olive, a collection of sonnets in praise of a +half-imaginary lady, Sonnetz a la louange d'Olive, that these +characteristics are most abundant. Here is a perfectly crystallised +specimen:— +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + D'amour, de grace, et de haulte valeur<BR> + Les feux divins estoient ceinctz et les cieulx<BR> + S'estoient vestuz d'un manteau precieux<BR> + A raiz ardens di diverse couleur:<BR> + Tout estoit plein de beaute, de bonheur,<BR> + La mer tranquille, et le vent gracieulx,<BR> + Quand celle la nasquit en ces bas lieux<BR> + Qui a pille du monde tout l'honneur.<BR> + Ell' prist son teint des beux lyz blanchissans,<BR> + Son chef de l'or, ses deux levres des rozes,<BR> + Et du soleil ses yeux resplandissans:<BR> + Le ciel usant de liberalite,<BR> + Mist en l'esprit ses semences encloses,<BR> + Son nom des Dieux prist l'immortalite.<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +That he is thus a characteristic specimen of the poetical taste of that +age, is indeed Du Bellay's chief interest. But if his work is to have the +highest sort of interest, if it is to do something more than satisfy +curiosity, if it is to have an aesthetic as distinct from an historical +value, it is not enough for a poet to have been the true child of his +age, to have conformed to its aesthetic conditions, and by so conforming +to have charmed and stimulated that age; it is necessary that there +should be perceptible in his work something individual, inventive, +unique, the impress there of the writer's own temper and personality. +This impress M. Sainte-Beuve thought he found in the Antiquites de Rome, +and the Regrets, which he ranks as what has been called poesie intime, +that intensely modern sort of poetry in which the writer has for his aim +the portraiture of his own most intimate moods, and to take the reader +into his confidence. That generation had other instances of this intimacy +of sentiment: Montaigne's Essays are full of it, the carvings of the +church of Brou are full of it. M. Sainte-Beuve has perhaps exaggerated +the influence of this quality in Du Bellay's Regrets; but the very name +of the book has a touch of Rousseau about it, and reminds one of a whole +generation of self-pitying poets in modern times. It was in the +atmosphere of Rome, to him so strange and mournful, that these pale +flowers grew up; for that journey to Italy, which he deplored as the +greatest misfortune of his life, put him in full possession of his +talent, and brought out all its originality. And in effect you do find +intimacy, intimite, here. The trouble of his life is analysed, and the +sentiment of it conveyed directly to our minds; not a great sorrow or +passion, but only the sense of loss in passing days, the ennui of a +dreamer who has to plunge into the world's affairs, the opposition +between actual life and the ideal, a longing for rest, nostalgia, +home-sickness—that pre-eminently childish, but so suggestive sorrow, as +significant of the final regret of all human creatures for the familiar +earth and limited sky. The feeling for landscape is often described as a +modern one; still more so is that for antiquity, the sentiment of ruins. +Du Bellay has this sentiment. The duration of the hard, sharp outlines of +things is a grief to him, and passing his wearisome days among the ruins +of ancient Rome, he is consoled by the thought that all must one day end, +by the sentiment of the grandeur of nothingness—la grandeur du rien. +With a strange touch of far-off mysticism, he thinks that the great +whole—le grand tout—into which all other things pass and lose +themselves, ought itself sometimes to perish and pass away. Nothing less +can relieve his weariness. From the stately aspects of Rome his thoughts +went back continually to France, to the smoking chimneys of his little +village, the longer twilight of the North, the soft climate of Anjou—la +douceur Angevine; yet not so much to the real France, we may be sure, +with its dark streets and its roofs of rough-hewn slate, as to that other +country, with slenderer towers, and more winding rivers, and trees like +flowers, and with softer sunshine on more gracefully-proportioned fields +and ways, which the fancy of the exile, and the pilgrim, and of the +schoolboy far from home, and of those kept at home unwillingly, +everywhere builds up before or behind them. +</P> + +<P> +He came home at last, through the Grisons, by slow journeys; and there, +in the cooler air of his own country, under its skies of milkier blue, +the sweetest flower of his genius sprang up. There have been poets whose +whole fame has rested on one poem, as Gray's on the Elegy in a Country +Churchyard, or Ronsard's, as many critics have thought, on the eighteen +lines of one famous ode. Du Bellay has almost been the poet of one poem; +and this one poem of his is an Italian thing transplanted into that green +country of Anjou; out of the Latin verses of Andrea Navagero, into +French: but it is a thing in which the matter is almost nothing, and the +form almost everything; and the form of the poem as it stands, written in +old French, is all Du Bellay's own. It is a song which the winnowers are +supposed to sing as they winnow the corn, and they invoke the winds to +lie lightly on the grain. +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +D'UN VANNEUR DE BLE AUX VENTS* +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + A vous trouppe legere<BR> + Qui d'aile passagere<BR> + Par le monde volez,<BR> + Et d'un sifflant murmure<BR> + L'ombrageuse verdure<BR> + Doulcement esbranlez.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + J'offre ces violettes,<BR> + Ces lis & ces fleurettes,<BR> + Et ces roses icy,<BR> + Ces vermeillettes roses<BR> + Sont freschement ecloses,<BR> + Et ces oelliets aussi.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + De vostre doulce haleine,<BR> + Eventez ceste plaine<BR> + Eventez ce sejour;<BR> + Ce pendant que j'ahanne<BR> + A mon ble que je vanne<BR> + A la chaleur du jour.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +*A graceful translation of this and some other poems of the Pleiad may be +found in Ballads and Lyrics of old France, by Mr. Andrew Lang. +</P> + +<P> +That has, in the highest degree, the qualities, the value, of the whole +Pleiad school of poetry, of the whole phase of taste from which that +school derives—a certain silvery grace of fancy, nearly all the +pleasures of which is in the surprise at the happy and dexterous way in +which a thing slight in itself is handled. The sweetness of it is by no +means to be got at by crushing, as you crush wild herbs to get at their +perfume. One seems to hear the measured falling of the fans, with a +child's pleasure on coming across the incident for the first time, in one +of those great barns of Du Bellay's own country, La Beauce, the granary +of France. A sudden light transfigures a trivial thing, a weather-vane, a +windmill, a winnowing flail, the dust in the barn door: a moment—and the +thing has vanished, because it was pure effect; but it leaves a relish +behind it, a longing that the accident may happen again. +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +1872. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="winckelmann"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +WINCKELMANN +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +ET EGO IN ARCADIA FUI +</H4> + +<P> +Goethe's fragments of art-criticism contain a few pages of strange +pregnancy on the character of Winckelmann. He speaks of the teacher who +had made his career possible, but whom he had never seen, as of an +abstract type of culture, consummate, tranquil, withdrawn already into +the region of ideals, yet retaining colour from the incidents of a +passionate intellectual life. He classes him with certain works of art, +possessing an inexhaustible gift of suggestion, to which criticism may +return again and again with renewed freshness. Hegel, in his lectures on +the Philosophy of Art, estimating the work of his predecessors, has also +passed a remarkable judgment on Winckelmann's writings:—"Winckelmann, by +contemplation of the ideal works of the ancients, received a sort of +inspiration, through which he opened a new sense for the study of art. +He is to be regarded as one of those who, in the sphere of art, have +known how to initiate a new organ for the human spirit." That it has +given a new sense, that it has laid open a new organ, is the highest that +can be said of any critical effort. It is interesting then to ask what +kind of man it was who thus laid open a new organ. Under what conditions +was that effected? +</P> + +<P> +Johann Joachim Winckelmann was born at Stendal, in Brandenburg, in the +year 1717. The child of a poor tradesman, he passed through many +struggles in early youth, the memory of which ever remained in him as a +fitful cause of dejection. In 1763, in the full emancipation of his +spirit, looking over the beautiful Roman prospect, he writes—"One gets +spoiled here; but God owed me this; in my youth I suffered too much." +Destined to assert and interpret the charm of the Hellenic spirit, he +served first a painful apprenticeship in the tarnished intellectual world +of Germany in the earlier half of the eighteenth century. Passing out of +that into the happy light of the antique, he had a sense of exhilaration +almost physical. We find him as a child in the dusky precincts of a +German school, hungrily feeding on a few colourless books. The master of +this school grows blind; Winckelmann becomes his famulus. The old man +would have had him study theology. Winckelmann, free of the master's +library, chooses rather to become familiar with the Greek classics. +Herodotus and Homer win, with their "vowelled" Greek, his warmest +enthusiasm; whole nights of fever are devoted to them; disturbing dreams +of an Odyssey of his own come to him. "He felt in himself," says Madame +de Stael, "an ardent attraction towards the South." In German +imaginations even now traces are often to be found of that love of the +sun, that weariness of the North (cette fatigue du nord), which carried +the northern peoples away into those countries of the South. A fine sky +brings to birth sentiments not unlike the love of one's Fatherland. +</P> + +<P> +To most of us, after all our steps towards it, the antique world, in +spite of its intense outlines, its perfect self-expression, still remains +faint and remote. To him, closely limited except on the one side of the +ideal, building for his dark poverty "a house not made with hands," it +early came to seem more real than the present. In the fantastic plans of +foreign travel continually passing through his mind, to Egypt, for +instance, and to France, there seems always to be rather a wistful sense +of something lost to be regained, than the desire of discovering anything +new. Goethe has told us how, in his eagerness actually to handle the +antique, he became interested in the insignificant vestiges of it which +the neighbourhood of Strasburg contained. So we hear of Winckelmann's +boyish antiquarian wanderings among the ugly Brandenburg sandhills. Such +a conformity between himself and Winckelmann, Goethe would have gladly +noted. +</P> + +<P> +At twenty-one he enters the University at Halle, to study theology, as +his friends desire; instead, he becomes the enthusiastic translator of +Herodotus. The condition of Greek learning in German schools and +universities had fallen, and there were no professors at Halle who could +satisfy his sharp, intellectual craving. Of his professional education he +always speaks with scorn, claiming to have been his own teacher from +first to last. His appointed teachers did not perceive that a new source +of culture was within their hands. Homo vagus et inconstans!—one of them +pedantically reports of the future pilgrim to Rome, unaware on which side +his irony was whetted. When professional education confers nothing but +irritation on a Schiller, no one ought to be surprised; for Schiller, and +such as he, are primarily spiritual adventurers. But that Winckelmann, +the votary of the gravest of intellectual traditions, should get nothing +but an attempt at suppression from the professional guardians of +learning, is what may well surprise us. +</P> + +<P> +In 1743 he became master of a school at Seehausen. This was the most +wearisome period of his life. Notwithstanding a success in dealing with +children, which seems to testify to something simple and primeval in his +nature, he found the work of teaching very depressing. Engaged in this +work, he writes that he still has within him a longing desire to attain +to the knowledge of beauty—sehnlich wuenschte zur Kenntniss des Schoenen +zu gelangen. He had to shorten his nights, sleeping only four hours, to +gain time for reading. And here Winckelmann made a step forward in +culture. He multiplied his intellectual force by detaching from it all +flaccid interests. He renounced mathematics and law, in which his reading +had been considerable,—all but the literature of the arts. Nothing was +to enter into his life unpenetrated by its central enthusiasm. At this +time he undergoes the charm of Voltaire. Voltaire belongs to that +flimsier, more artificial, classical tradition, which Winckelmann was one +day to supplant, by the clear ring, the eternal outline of the genuine +antique. But it proves the authority of such a gift as Voltaire's that it +allures and wins even those born to supplant it. Voltaire's impression on +Winckelmann was never effaced; and it gave him a consideration for French +literature which contrasts with his contempt for the literary products of +Germany. German literature transformed, siderealised, as we see it in +Goethe, reckons Winckelmann among its initiators. But Germany at that +time presented nothing in which he could have anticipated Iphigenie, and +the formation of an effective classical tradition in German literature. +</P> + +<P> +Under this purely literary influence, Winckelmann protests against +Christian Wolff and the philosophers. Goethe, in speaking of this +protest, alludes to his own obligations to Emmanuel Kant. Kant's +influence over the culture of Goethe, which he tells us could not have +been resisted by him without loss, consisted in a severe limitation to +the concrete. But he adds, that in born antiquaries, like Winckelmann, +constant handling of the antique, with its eternal outline, maintains +that limitation as effectually as a critical philosophy. Plato, however, +saved so often for his redeeming literary manner, is excepted from +Winckelmann's proscription of the philosophers. The modern student most +often meets Plato on that side which seems to pass beyond Plato into a +world no longer pagan, based on the conception of a spiritual life. But +the element of affinity which he presents to Winckelmann is that which is +wholly Greek, and alien from the Christian world, represented by that +group of brilliant youths in the Lysis, still uninfected by any spiritual +sickness, finding the end of all endeavour in the aspects of the human +form, the continual stir and motion of a comely human life. +</P> + +<P> +This new-found interest in Plato's dialogues could not fail to increase +his desire to visit the countries of the classical tradition. "It is my +misfortune," he writes, "that I was not born to great place, wherein I +might have had cultivation, and the opportunity of following my instinct +and forming myself." A visit to Rome probably was already purposed, and +he silently preparing for it. Count Buenau, the author of an historical +work then of note, had collected at Noethenitz a valuable library, now +part of the library of Dresden. In 1784 Winckelmann wrote to Buenau in +halting French:—He is emboldened, he says, by Buenau's indulgence for +needy men of letters. He desires only to devote himself to study, having +never allowed himself to be dazzled by favourable prospects of the +Church. He hints at his doubtful position "in a metaphysical age, when +humane literature is trampled under foot. At present," he goes on, +"little value is set on Greek literature, to which I have devoted myself +so far as I could penetrate, when good books are so scarce and +expensive." Finally, he desires a place in some corner of Buenau's +library. "Perhaps, at some future time, I shall become more useful to the +public, if, drawn from obscurity in whatever way, I can find means to +maintain myself in the capital." +</P> + +<P> +Soon afterwards we find Winckelmann in the library at Noethenitz. Thence +he made many visits to the collection of antiquities at Dresden. He +became acquainted with many artists, above all with Oeser, Goethe's +future friend and master, who, uniting a high culture with the practical +knowledge of art, was fitted to minister to Winckelmann's culture. And +now there opened for him a new way of communion with the Greek life. +Hitherto he had handled the words only of Greek poetry, stirred indeed +and roused by them, yet divining beyond the words an unexpressed +pulsation of sensuous life. Suddenly he is in contact with that life, +still fervent in the relics of plastic art. Filled as our culture is with +the classical spirit, we can hardly imagine how deeply the human mind was +moved, when, at the Renaissance, in the midst of a frozen world, the +buried fire of ancient art rose up from under the soil. Winckelmann here +reproduces for us the earlier sentiment of the Renaissance. On a sudden +the imagination feels itself free. How facile and direct, it seems to +say, is this life of the senses and the understanding, when once we have +apprehended it! Here, surely, is the more liberal life we have been +seeking so long, so near to us all the while. How mistaken and roundabout +have been our efforts to reach it by mystic passion, and monastic +reverie; how they have deflowered the flesh; how little they have +emancipated us! Hermione melts from her stony posture, and the lost +proportions of life right themselves. Here, then, we see in vivid +realisation the native tendency of Winckelmann to escape from abstract +theory to intuition, to the exercise of sight and touch. Lessing, in the +Laocoon, has theorised finely on the relation of poetry to sculpture; and +philosophy can give us theoretical reasons why not poetry but sculpture +should be the most sincere and exact expression of the Greek ideal. By a +happy, unperplexed dexterity, Winckelmann solves the question in the +concrete. It is what Goethe calls his Gewahrwerden der griechischen +Kunst, his FINDING of Greek art. +</P> + +<P> +Through the tumultuous richness of Goethe's culture, the influence of +Winckelmann is always discernible, as the strong, regulative +under-current of a clear, antique motive. "One learns nothing from him," +he says to Eckermann, "but one becomes something." If we ask what the +secret of this influence was, Goethe himself will tell us—elasticity, +wholeness, intellectual integrity. And yet these expressions, because +they fit Goethe, with his universal culture, so well, seem hardly to +describe the narrow, exclusive interest of Winckelmann. Doubtless +Winckelmann's perfection is a narrow perfection: his feverish nursing of +the one motive of his life is a contrast to Goethe's various energy. But +what affected Goethe, what instructed him and ministered to his culture, +was the integrity, the truth to its type, of the given force. The +development of his force was the single interest of Winckelmann, +unembarrassed by anything else in him. Other interests, practical or +intellectual, those slighter talents and motives not supreme, which in +most men are the waste part of nature, and drain away their vitality, he +plucked out and cast from him. The protracted longing of his youth is not +a vague, romantic longing: he knows what he longs for, what he wills. +Within its severe limits his enthusiasm burns like lava. "You know," says +Lavater, speaking of Winckelmann's countenance, "that I consider ardour +and indifference by no means incompatible in the same character. If ever +there was a striking instance of that union, it is in the countenance +before us." "A lowly childhood," says Goethe, "insufficient instruction +in youth, broken, distracted studies in early manhood, the burden of +school-keeping! He was thirty years old before he enjoyed a single favour +of fortune: but as soon as he had attained to an adequate condition of +freedom, he appears before us consummate and entire, complete in the +ancient sense." +</P> + +<P> +But his hair is turning grey, and he has not yet reached the south. The +Saxon court had become Roman Catholic, and the way to favour at Dresden +was through Romish ecclesiastics. Probably the thought of a profession of +the Romish religion was not new to Winckelmann. At one time he had +thought of begging his way to Rome, from cloister to cloister, under the +pretence of a disposition to change his faith. In 1751, the papal nuncio, +Archinto, was one of the visitors at Noethenitz. He suggested Rome as the +fitting stage for Winckelmann's attainments, and held out the hope of a +place in the papal library. Cardinal Passionei, charmed with +Winckelmann's beautiful Greek writing, was ready to play the part of +Maecenas, on condition that the necessary change should be made. +Winckelmann accepted the bribe, and visited the nuncio at Dresden. +Unquiet still at the word "profession," not without a struggle, he joined +the Romish Church, July the 11th, 1754. +</P> + +<P> +Goethe boldly pleads that Winckelmann was a pagan, that the landmarks of +Christendom meant nothing to him. It is clear that he intended to deceive +no one by his disguise; fears of the inquisition are sometimes visible +during his life in Rome; he entered Rome notoriously with the works of +Voltaire in his possession; the thought of what Count Buenau might be +thinking of him seems to have been his greatest difficulty. On the other +hand, he may have had a sense of a certain antique, and as it were pagan +grandeur in the Roman Catholic religion. Turning from the crabbed +Protestantism, which had been the weariness of his youth, he might +reflect that while Rome had reconciled itself to the Renaissance, the +Protestant principle in art had cut off Germany from the supreme +tradition of beauty. And yet to that transparent nature, with its +simplicity as of the earlier world, the loss of absolute sincerity must +have been a real loss. Goethe understands that Winckelmann had made this +sacrifice. Yet at the bar of the highest criticism, perhaps, Winckelmann +may be absolved. The insincerity of his religious profession was only one +incident of a culture in which the moral instinct, like the religious or +political, was merged in the artistic. But then the artistic interest was +that by desperate faithfulness to which Winckelmann was saved from the +mediocrity, which, breaking through no bounds, moves ever in a bloodless +routine, and misses its one chance in the life of the spirit and the +intellect. There have been instances of culture developed by every high +motive in turn, and yet intense at every point; and the aim of our +culture should be to attain not only as intense but as complete a life as +possible. But often the higher life is only possible at all, on condition +of the selection of that in which one's motive is native and strong; and +this selection involves the renunciation of a crown reserved for others. +Which is better?—to lay open a new sense, to initiate a new organ for +the human spirit, or to cultivate many types of perfection up to a point +which leaves us still beyond the range of their transforming power? +Savonarola is one type of success; Winckelmann is another; criticism can +reject neither, because each is true to itself. Winckelmann himself +explains the motive of his life when he says, "It will be my highest +reward, if posterity acknowledges that I have written worthily." +</P> + +<P> +For a time he remained at Dresden. There his first book appeared, +Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Works of Art in Painting and +Sculpture. Full of obscurities as it was, obscurities which baffled but +did not offend Goethe when he first turned to art-criticism, its purpose +was direct—an appeal from the artificial classicism of the day to the +study of the antique. The book was well received, and a pension supplied +through the king's confessor. In September 1755 he started for Rome, in +the company of a young Jesuit. He was introduced to Raphael Mengs, a +painter then of note, and found a home near him, in the artists' quarter, +in a place where he could "overlook, far and wide, the eternal city." At +first he was perplexed with the sense of being a stranger on what was to +him, spiritually, native soil. "Unhappily," he cries in French, often +selected by him as the vehicle of strong feeling, "I am one of those whom +the Greeks call opsimatheis.—I have come into the world and into Italy +too late." More than thirty years afterwards, Goethe also, after many +aspirations and severe preparation of mind, visited Italy. In early +manhood, just as he too was FINDING Greek art, the rumour of that high +artist's life of Winckelmann in Italy had strongly moved him. At Rome, +spending a whole year drawing from the antique, in preparation for +Iphigenie, he finds the stimulus of Winckelmann's memory ever active. +Winckelmann's Roman life was simple, primeval, Greek. His delicate +constitution permitted him the use only of bread and wine. Condemned by +many as a renegade, he had no desire for places of honour, but only to +see his merits acknowledged, and existence assured to him. He was simple +without being niggardly; he desired to be neither poor nor rich. +</P> + +<P> +Winckelmann's first years in Rome present all the elements of an +intellectual situation of the highest interest. The beating of the +intellect against its bars, the sombre aspect, the alien traditions, the +still barbarous literature of Germany, are afar off; before him are +adequate conditions of culture, the sacred soil itself, the first tokens +of the advent of the new German literature, with its broad horizons, its +boundless intellectual promise. Dante, passing from the darkness of the +Inferno, is filled with a sharp and joyful sense of light, which makes +him deal with it, in the opening of the Purgatorio, in a wonderfully +touching and penetrative way. Hellenism, which is the principle +pre-eminently of intellectual light (our modern culture may have more +colour, the medieval spirit greater heat and profundity, but Hellenism is +pre-eminent for light), has always been most effectively conceived by +those who have crept into it out of an intellectual world in which the +sombre elements predominate. So it had been in the ages of the +Renaissance. This repression, removed at last, gave force and glow to +Winckelmann's native affinity to the Hellenic spirit. "There had been +known before him," says Madame de Stael, "learned men who might be +consulted like books; but no one had, if I may say so, made himself a +pagan for the purpose of penetrating antiquity." "One is always a poor +executant of conceptions not one's own."—On execute mal ce qu'on n'a pas +concu soi-meme*—words spoken on so high an occasion—are true in their +measure of every genuine enthusiasm. Enthusiasm—that, in the broad +Platonic sense of the Phaedrus, was the secret of his divinatory power +over the Hellenic world. This enthusiasm, dependent as it is to a great +degree on bodily temperament, has a power of re-enforcing the purer +emotions of the intellect with an almost physical excitement. That his +affinity with Hellenism was not merely intellectual, that the subtler +threads of temperament were inwoven in it, is proved by his romantic, +fervent friendships with young men. He has known, he says, many young men +more beautiful than Guido's archangel. These friendships, bringing him in +contact with the pride of human form, and staining his thoughts with its +bloom, perfected his reconciliation with the spirit of Greek sculpture. +A letter on taste, addressed from Rome to a young nobleman, Friedrich von +Berg, is the record of such a friendship. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +*Words of Charlotte Corday before the Convention. +</P> + +<P> +"I shall excuse my delay," he begins, "in fulfilling my promise of an +essay on the taste for beauty in works of art, in the words of Pindar. He +says to Agesidamus, a youth of Locri—ideai te kalon, horai te +kekramenon—whom he had kept waiting for an intended ode, that a debt +paid with usury is the end of reproach. This may win your good-nature on +behalf of my present essay, which has turned out far more detailed and +circumstantial than I had at first intended. +</P> + +<P> +"It is from yourself that the subject is taken. Our intercourse has been +short, too short both for you and me; but the first time I saw you, the +affinity of our spirits was revealed to me: your culture proved that my +hope was not groundless; and I found in a beautiful body a soul created +for nobleness, gifted with the sense of beauty. My parting from you was +therefore one of the most painful in my life; and that this feeling +continues our common friend is witness, for your separation from me +leaves me no hope of seeing you again. Let this essay be a memorial of +our friendship, which, on my side, is free from every selfish motive, and +ever remains subject and dedicate to yourself alone." +</P> + +<P> +The following passage is characteristic— +</P> + +<P> +"As it is confessedly the beauty of man which is to be conceived under +one general idea, so I have noticed that those who are observant of +beauty only in women, and are moved little or not at all by the beauty of +men, seldom have an impartial, vital, inborn instinct for beauty in art. +To such persons the beauty of Greek art will ever seem wanting, because +its supreme beauty is rather male than female. But the beauty of art +demands a higher sensibility than the beauty of nature, because the +beauty of art, like tears shed at a play, gives no pain, is without life, +and must be awakened and repaired by culture. Now, as the spirit of +culture is much more ardent in youth than in manhood, the instinct of +which I am speaking must be exercised and directed to what is beautiful, +before that age is reached, at which one would be afraid to confess that +one had no taste for it." +</P> + +<P> +Certainly, of that beauty of living form which regulated Winckelmann's +friendships, it could not be said that it gave no pain. One notable +friendship, the fortune of which we may trace through his letters, begins +with an antique, chivalrous letter in French, and ends noisily in a burst +of angry fire. Far from reaching the quietism, the bland indifference of +art, such attachments are nevertheless more susceptible than any others +of equal strength of a purely intellectual culture. Of passion, of +physical excitement, they contain only just so much as stimulates the eye +to the finest delicacies of colour and form. These friendships, often the +caprices of a moment, make Winckelmann's letters, with their troubled +colouring, an instructive but bizarre addition to the History of Art, +that shrine of grave and mellow light for the mute Olympian family. The +impression which Winckelmann's literary life conveyed to those about him +was that of excitement, intuition, inspiration, rather than the +contemplative evolution of general principles. The quick, susceptible +enthusiast, betraying his temperament even in appearance, by his olive +complexion, his deep-seated, piercing eyes, his rapid movements, +apprehended the subtlest principles of the Hellenic manner, not through +the understanding, but by instinct or touch. A German biographer of +Winckelmann has compared him to Columbus. That is not the aptest of +comparisons; but it reminds one of a passage in which M. Edgar Quinet +describes the great discoverer's famous voyage. His science was often at +fault; but he had a way of estimating at once the slightest indication of +land, in a floating weed or passing bird; he seemed actually to come +nearer to nature than other men. And that world in which others had moved +with so much embarrassment, seems to call out in Winckelmann new senses +fitted to deal with it. He is in touch with it; it penetrates him, and +becomes part of his temperament. He remodels his writings with constant +renewal of insight; he catches the thread of a whole sequence of laws in +some hollowing of the hand, or dividing of the hair; he seems to realise +that fancy of the reminiscence of a forgotten knowledge hidden for a time +in the mind itself; as if the mind of one, lover and philosopher at once +in some phase of pre-existence-philosophesas pote met' erotos—fallen +into a new cycle, were beginning its intellectual culture over again, yet +with a certain power of anticipating its results. So comes the truth of +Goethe's judgments on his works; they are a life, a living thing, +designed for those who are alive—ein Lebendiges fuer die Lebendigen +geschrieben, ein Leben selbst. +</P> + +<P> +In 1785 Cardinal Albani, who possessed in his Roman villa a precious +collection of antiquities, became Winckelmann's patron. Pompeii had just +opened its treasures; Winckelmann gathered its first-fruits. But his plan +of a visit to Greece remained unfulfilled. From his first arrival in Rome +he had kept the History of Ancient Art ever in view. All his other +writings were a preparation for that. It appeared, finally, in 1764; but +even after its publication Winckelmann was still employed in perfecting +it. It is since his time that many of the most significant examples of +Greek art have been submitted to criticism. He had seen little or nothing +of what we ascribe to the age of Pheidias; and his conception of Greek +art tends, therefore, to put the mere elegance of the imperial society of +ancient Rome in place of the severe and chastened grace of the palaestra. +For the most part he had to penetrate to Greek art through copies, +imitations, and later Roman art itself; and it is not surprising that +this turbid medium has left in Winckelmann's actual results much that a +more privileged criticism can correct. +</P> + +<P> +He had been twelve years in Rome. Admiring Germany had many calls to him; +at last, in 1768, he set out to revisit the country of his birth; and as +he left Rome, a strange, inverted home-sickness, a strange reluctance to +leave it at all, came over him. He reached Vienna: there he was loaded +with honours and presents: other cities were awaiting him. Goethe, then +nineteen years old, studying art at Leipsic, was expecting his coming, +with that wistful eagerness which marked his youth, when the news of +Winckelmann's murder arrived. All that "weariness of the North" had +revived with double force. He left Vienna, intending to hasten back to +Rome. At Trieste a delay of a few days occurred. With characteristic +openness, Winckelmann had confided his plans to a fellow-traveller, a man +named Arcangeli, and had shown him the gold medals received at Vienna. +Arcangeli's avarice was aroused. One morning he entered Winckelmann's +room, under pretence of taking leave; Winckelmann was then writing +"memoranda for the future editor of the History of Art," still seeking +the perfection of his great work. Arcangeli begged to see the medals once +more. As Winckelmann stooped down to take them from the chest, a cord was +thrown round his neck. Some time afterwards, a child whose friendship +Winckelmann had made to beguile the delay, knocked at the door, and +receiving no answer, gave an alarm. Winckelmann was found dangerously +wounded, and died a few hours later, after receiving the sacraments of +the Romish Church. It seemed as if the gods, in reward for his devotion +to them, had given him a death which, for its swiftness and its +opportunity, he might well have desired. "He has," says Goethe, "the +advantage of figuring in the memory of posterity, as one eternally able +and strong; for the image in which one leaves the world is that in which +one moves among the shadows." Yet, perhaps, it is not fanciful to regret +that the meeting with Goethe did not take place. Goethe, then in all the +pregnancy of his wonderful youth, still unruffled by the press and storm +of his earlier manhood, was awaiting Winckelmann with a curiosity of the +worthiest kind. As it was, Winckelmann became to him something like what +Virgil was to Dante. And Winckelmann, with his fiery friendships, had +reached that age and that period of culture at which emotions hitherto +fitful, sometimes concentrate themselves in a vital, unchangeable +relationship. German literary history seems to have lost the chance of +one of those famous friendships, the very tradition of which becomes a +stimulus to culture, and exercises an imperishable influence. +</P> + +<P> +In one of the frescoes of the Vatican, Raffaelle has commemorated the +tradition of the Catholic religion. Against a strip of peaceful sky, +broken in upon by the beatific vision, are ranged the great personages +of. Christian history, with the Sacrament in the midst. Another fresco of +Raffaelle in the same apartment presents a very different company, Dante +alone appearing in both. Surrounded by the muses of Greek mythology, +under a thicket of myrtles, sits Apollo, with the sources of Castalia at +his feet. On either side are grouped those on whom the spirit of Apollo +descended, the classical and Renaissance poets, to whom the waters of +Castalia come down, a river making glad this other city of God. In this +fresco it is the classical tradition, the orthodoxy of taste, that +Raffaelle commemorates. Winckelmann's intellectual history authenticates +the claims of this tradition in human culture. In the countries where +that tradition arose, where it still lurked about its own artistic +relics, and changes of language had not broken its continuity, national +pride might sometimes light up anew an enthusiasm for it. Aliens might +imitate that enthusiasm, and classicism become from time to time an +intellectual fashion. But Winckelmann was not further removed by +language, than by local aspects and associations, from those vestiges of +the classical spirit; and he lived at a time when, in Germany, classical +studies were out of favour. Yet, remote in time and place, he feels after +the Hellenic world, divines the veins of ancient art, in which its life +still circulates, and, like Scyles, the half-barbarous yet Hellenising +king, in the beautiful story of Herodotus, is irresistibly attracted by +it. This testimony to the authority of the Hellenic tradition, its +fitness to satisfy some vital requirement of the intellect, which +Winckelmann contributes as a solitary man of genius, is offered also by +the general history of culture. The spiritual forces of the past, which +have prompted and informed the culture of a succeeding age, live, indeed, +within that culture, but with an absorbed, underground life. The Hellenic +element alone has not been so absorbed, or content with this underground +life; from time to time it has started to the surface; culture has been +drawn back to its sources to be clarified and corrected. Hellenism is not +merely an absorbed element in our intellectual life; it is a conscious +tradition in it. +</P> + +<P> +Again, individual genius works ever under conditions of time and place: +its products are coloured by the varying aspects of nature, and type of +human form, and outward manners of life. There is thus an element of +change in art; criticism must never for a moment forget that "the artist +is the child of his time." But besides these conditions of time and +place, and independent of them, there is also an element of permanence, a +standard of taste, which genius confesses. This standard is maintained in +a purely intellectual tradition; it acts upon the artist, not as one of +the influences of his own age, but by means of the artistic products of +the previous generation, which in youth have excited, and at the same +time directed into a particular channel, his sense of beauty. The supreme +artistic products of each generation thus form a series of elevated +points, taking each from each the reflexion of a strange light, the +source of which is not in the atmosphere around and above them, but in a +stage of society remote from ours. This standard takes its rise in +Greece, at a definite historical period. A tradition for all succeeding +generations, it originates in a spontaneous growth out of the influences +of Greek society. What were the conditions under which this ideal, this +standard of artistic orthodoxy, was generated? How was Greece enabled to +force its thought upon Europe? +</P> + +<P> +Greek art, when we first catch sight of it, is entangled with Greek +religion. We are accustomed to think of Greek religion as the religion of +art and beauty, the religion of which the Olympian Zeus and the Athena +Polias are the idols, the poems of Homer the sacred books. Thus Cardinal +Newman speaks of "the classical polytheism which was gay and graceful, as +was natural in a civilised age." Yet such a view is only a partial one; +in it the eye is fixed on the sharp, bright edge of high Hellenic culture +but loses sight of the sombre world across which it strikes. Greek +religion, where we can observe it most distinctly, is at once a +magnificent ritualistic system, and a cycle of poetical conceptions. +Religions, as they grow by natural laws out of man's life, are modified +by whatever modifies his life. They brighten under a bright sky, they +become liberal as the social range widens, they grow intense and shrill +in the clefts of human life, where the spirit is narrow and confined, and +the stars are visible at noonday; and a fine analysis of these +differences is one of the gravest functions of religious criticism. +Still, the broad foundation, in mere human nature, of all religions as +they exist for the greatest number, is a universal pagan sentiment, a +paganism which existed before the Greek religion, and has lingered far +onward into the Christian world, ineradicable, like some persistent +vegetable growth, because its seed is an element of the very soil out of +which it springs. This pagan sentiment measures the sadness with which +the human mind is filled, whenever its thoughts wander far from what is +here, and now. It is beset by notions of irresistible natural powers, for +the most part ranged against man, but the secret also of his fortune, +making the earth golden and the grape fiery for him. He makes gods in his +own image, gods smiling and flower-crowned, or bleeding by some sad +fatality, to console him by their wounds, never closed from generation to +generation. It is with a rush of home-sickness that the thought of death +presents itself. He would remain at home for ever on the earth if he +could: as it loses its colour and the senses fail, he clings ever closer +to it; but since the mouldering of bones and flesh must go on to the end, +he is careful for charms and talismans, that may chance to have some +friendly power in them, when the inevitable shipwreck comes. Such +sentiment is a part of the eternal basis of all religions, modified +indeed by changes of time and place, but indestructible, because its root +is so deep in the earth of man's nature. The breath of religious +initiators passes over them; a few "rise up with wings as eagles," but +the broad level of religious life is not permanently changed. Religious +progress, like all purely spiritual progress, is confined to a few. This +sentiment fixes itself in the earliest times to certain usages of +patriarchal life, the kindling of fire, the washing of the body, the +slaughter of the flock, the gathering of harvest, holidays and dances. +Here are the beginnings of a ritual, at first as occasional and unfixed +as the sentiment which it expresses, but destined to become the permanent +element of religious life. The usages of patriarchal life change; but +this germ of ritual remains, developing, but always in a religious +interest, losing its domestic character, and therefore becoming more and +more inexplicable with each generation. This pagan worship, in spite of +local variations, essentially one, is an element in all religions. It is +the anodyne which the religious principle, like one administering opiates +to the incurable, has added to the law which makes life sombre for the +vast majority of mankind. +</P> + +<P> +More definite religious conceptions come from other sources, and fix +themselves upon this ritual in various ways, changing it, and giving it +new meanings. In Greece they were derived from mythology, itself not due +to a religious source at all, but developing in the course of time into a +body of religious conceptions, entirely human in form and character. To +the unprogressive ritual element it brought these conceptions, +itself—he pterou dunamis, the power of the wing—an element of +refinement, of ascension, with the promise of an endless destiny. While +the ritual remains fixed, the aesthetic element, only accidentally +connected with it, expands with the freedom and mobility of the things of +the intellect. Always, the fixed element is the religious observance; the +fluid, unfixed element is the myth, the religious conception. This +religion is itself pagan, and has in any broad view of it the pagan +sadness. It does not at once, and for the majority, become the higher +Hellenic religion. The country people, of course, cherish the unlovely +idols of an earlier time, such as those which Pausanias found still +devoutly preserved in Arcadia. Athenaeus tells the story of one who, +coming to a temple of Latona, had expected to find some worthy +presentment of the mother of Apollo, and laughed on seeing only a +shapeless wooden figure. The wilder people have wilder gods, which, +however, in Athens, or Corinth, or Lacedaemon, changing ever with the +worshippers in whom they live and move and have their being, borrow +something of the lordliness and distinction of human nature there. Greek +religion too has its mendicants, its purifications, its antinomian +mysticism, its garments offered to the gods, its statues worn with +kissing, its exaggerated superstitions for the vulgar only, its worship +of sorrow, its addolorata, its mournful mysteries. Scarcely a wild or +melancholy note of the medieval church but was anticipated by Greek +polytheism! What should we have thought of the vertiginous prophetess at +the very centre of Greek religion? The supreme Hellenic culture is a +sharp edge of light across this gloom. The fiery, stupefying wine becomes +in a happier region clear and exhilarating. The Dorian worship of Apollo, +rational, chastened, debonair, with his unbroken daylight, always opposed +to the sad Chthonian divinities, is the aspiring element, by force and +spring of which Greek religion sublimes itself. Out of Greek religion, +under happy conditions, arises Greek art, to minister to human culture. +It was the privilege of Greek religion to be able to transform itself +into an artistic ideal. +</P> + +<P> +For the thoughts of the Greeks about themselves, and their relation to +the world generally, were ever in the happiest readiness to be +transformed into objects for the senses. In this lies the main +distinction between Greek art and the mystical art of the Christian +middle age, which is always struggling to express thoughts beyond itself. +Take, for instance, a characteristic work of the middle age, Angelico's +Coronation of the Virgin, in the cloister of Saint Mark's at Florence. In +some strange halo of a moon Christ and the Virgin Mary are sitting, clad +in mystical white raiment, half shroud, half priestly linen. Our Lord, +with rosy nimbus and the long pale hair—tanquam lana alba et tanquam +nix—of the figure in the Apocalypse, sets with slender finger-tips a +crown of pearl on the head of his mother, who, corpse-like in her +refinement, is bending forward to receive it, the light lying like snow +upon her forehead. Certainly, it cannot be said of Angelico's fresco that +it throws into a sensible form our highest thoughts about man and his +relation to the world; but it did not do this adequately even for +Angelico. For him, all that is outward or sensible in his work—the hair +like wool, the rosy nimbus, the crown of pearl—is only the symbol or +type of an inexpressible world, to which he wishes to direct the +thoughts; he would have shrunk from the notion that what the eye +apprehended was all. Such forms of art, then, are inadequate to the +matter they clothe; they remain ever below its level. Something of this +kind is true also of oriental art. As in the middle age from an +exaggerated inwardness, so in the East from a vagueness, a want of +definition, in thought, the matter presented to art is unmanageable: +forms of sense struggle vainly with it. The many-headed gods of the East, +the orientalised Diana of Ephesus, with its numerous breasts, like +Angelico's fresco, are at best overcharged symbols, a means of hinting at +an idea which art cannot adequately express, which still remains in the +world of shadows. +</P> + +<P> +But take a work of Greek art,—the Venus of Melos. That is in no sense a +symbol, a suggestion of anything beyond its own victorious fairness. The +mind begins and ends with the finite image, yet loses no part of the +spiritual motive. That motive is not lightly and loosely attached to the +sensuous form, as the meaning to the allegory, but saturates and is +identical with it. The Greek mind had advanced to a particular stage of +self-reflexion, but was careful not to pass beyond it. In oriental +thought there is a vague conception of life everywhere, but no true +appreciation of itself by the mind, no knowledge of the distinction of +man's nature: in its consciousness of itself, humanity is still confused +with the fantastic, indeterminate life of the animal and vegetable world. +In Greek thought the "lordship of the soul" is recognised; that lordship +gives authority and divinity to human eyes and hands and feet; inanimate +nature is thrown into the background. But there Greek thought finds its +happy limit; it has not yet become too inward; the mind has not begun to +boast of its independence of the flesh; the spirit has not yet absorbed +everything with its emotions, nor reflected its own colour everywhere. +It has indeed committed itself to a train of reflexion which must end in +a defiance of form, of all that is outward, in an exaggerated idealism. +But that end is still distant: it has not yet plunged into the depths of +religious mysticism. +</P> + +<P> +This ideal art, in which the thought does not outstrip or lie beyond its +sensible embodiment, could not have arisen out of a phase of life that +was uncomely or poor. That delicate pause in Greek reflexion was joined, +by some supreme good luck, to the perfect animal nature of the Greeks. +Here are the two conditions of an artistic ideal. The influences which +perfected the animal nature of the Greeks are part of the process by +which the ideal was evolved. Those "Mothers" who, in the second part of +Faust, mould and remould the typical forms which appear in human history, +preside, at the beginning of Greek culture, over such a concourse of +happy physical conditions as ever generates by natural laws some rare +type of intellectual or spiritual life. That delicate air, "nimbly and +sweetly recommending itself" to the senses, the finer aspects of nature, +the finer lime and clay of the human form, and modelling of the dainty +framework of the human countenance:—these are the good luck of the Greek +when he enters upon life. Beauty becomes a distinction, like genius, or +noble place. +</P> + +<P> +"By no people," says Winckelmann, "has beauty been so highly esteemed as +by the Greeks. The priests of a youthful Jupiter at Aegae, of the +Ismenian Apollo, and the priest who at Tanagra led the procession of +Mercury, bearing a lamb upon his shoulders, were always youths to whom +the prize of beauty had been awarded. The citizens of Egesta, in Sicily, +erected a monument to a certain Philip, who was not their fellow-citizen, +but of Croton, for his distinguished beauty; and the people made +offerings at it. In an ancient song, ascribed to Simonides or Epicharmus, +of four wishes, the first was health, the second beauty. And as beauty +was so longed for and prized by the Greeks, every beautiful person sought +to become known to the whole people by this distinction, and above all to +approve himself to the artists, because they awarded the prize; and this +was for the artists an opportunity of having supreme beauty ever before +their eyes. Beauty even gave a right to fame; and we find in Greek +histories the most beautiful people distinguished. Some were famous for +the beauty of one single part of their form; as Demetrius Phalereus, for +his beautiful eyebrows, was called Charito-blepharos. It seems even to +have been thought that the procreation of beautiful children might be +promoted by prizes: this is shown by the existence of contests for +beauty, which in ancient times were established by Cypselus, King of +Arcadia, by the river Alpheus; and, at the feast of Apollo of Philae, a +prize was offered to the youths for the deftest kiss. This was decided by +an umpire; as also at Megara, by the grave of Diodes. At Sparta, and at +Lesbos, in the temple of Juno, and among the Parrhasii, there were +contests for beauty among women. The general esteem for beauty went so +far, that the Spartan women set up in their bedchambers a Nireus, a +Narcissus, or a Hyacinth, that they might bear beautiful children." +</P> + +<P> +So, from a few stray antiquarianisms, a few faces cast up sharply from +the waves, Winckelmann, as his manner is, divines the temperament of the +antique world, and that in which it had delight. It has passed away with +that distant age, and we may venture to dwell upon it. What sharpness and +reality it has is the sharpness and reality of suddenly arrested life. +The Greek system of gymnastics originated as part of a religious ritual. +The worshipper was to recommend himself to the gods by becoming fleet and +fair, white and red, like them. The beauty of the palaestra, and the +beauty of the artist's studio, reacted on each other. The youth tried to +rival his gods; and his increased beauty passed back into them.—"I take +the gods to witness, I had rather have a fair body than a king's +crown"—Omnumi pantas theous me helesthai an ten basileos arkhen anti tou +kalos einai.—That is the form in which one age of the world chose the +higher life—a perfect world, if the gods could have seemed for ever only +fleet and fair, white and red. Let us not regret that this unperplexed +youth of humanity, seeing itself and satisfied, passed, at the due +moment, into a mournful maturity; for already the deep joy was in store +for the spirit, of finding the ideal of that youth still red with life in +the grave. +</P> + +<P> +It followed that the Greek ideal expressed itself pre-eminently in +sculpture. All art has a sensuous element, colour, form, sound—in poetry +a dexterous recalling of these, together with the profound, joyful +sensuousness of motion: each of these may be a medium for the ideal: it +is partly accident which in any individual case makes the born artist, +poet, or painter rather than sculptor. But as the mind itself has had an +historical development, one form of art, by the very limitations of its +material, may be more adequate than another for the expression of any one +phase of its experience. Different attitudes of the imagination have a +native affinity with different types of sensuous form, so that they +combine, with completeness and ease. The arts may thus be ranged in a +series, which corresponds to a series of developments in the human mind +itself. Architecture, which begins in a practical need, can only express +by vague hint or symbol the spirit or mind of the artist. He closes his +sadness over him, or wanders in the perplexed intricacies of things, or +projects his purpose from him clean-cut and sincere, or bares himself to +the sunlight. But these spiritualities, felt rather than seen, can but +lurk about architectural form as volatile effects, to be gathered from it +by reflexion; their expression is not really sensuous at all. As human +form is not the subject with which it deals, architecture is the mode in +which the artistic effort centres, when the thoughts of man concerning +himself are still indistinct, when he is still little preoccupied with +those harmonies, storms, victories, of the unseen and intellectual world, +which, wrought out into the bodily form, give it an interest and +significance communicable to it alone. The art of Egypt, with its supreme +architectural effects, is, according to Hegel's beautiful comparison, a +Memnon waiting for the day, the day of the Greek spirit, the humanistic +spirit, with its power of speech. Again, painting, music, and poetry, +with their endless power of complexity, are the special arts of the +romantic and modern ages. Into these, with the utmost attenuation of +detail, may be translated every delicacy of thought and feeling, +incidental to a consciousness brooding with delight over itself. Through +their gradations of shade, their exquisite intervals, they project in an +external form that which is most inward in humour, passion, sentiment. +Between architecture and the romantic arts of painting, music, and +poetry, comes sculpture, which, unlike architecture, deals immediately +with man, while it contrasts with the romantic arts, because it is not +self-analytical. It has to do more exclusively than any other art with +the human form, itself one entire medium of spiritual expression, +trembling, blushing, melting into dew, with inward excitement. That +spirituality which only lurks about architecture as a volatile effect, in +sculpture takes up the whole given material, and penetrates it with an +imaginative motive; and at first sight sculpture, with its solidity of +form, seems a thing more real and full than the faint, abstract world of +poetry or painting. Still the fact is the reverse. Discourse and action +show man as he is, more directly than the springing of the muscles and +the moulding of the flesh; and over these poetry has command. Painting, +by the flushing of colour in the face and dilatation of light in the +eye—music, by its subtle range of tones—can refine most delicately upon +a single moment of passion, unravelling its finest threads. +</P> + +<P> +But why should sculpture thus limit itself to pure form? Because, by this +limitation, it becomes a perfect medium of expression for one peculiar +motive of the imaginative intellect. It therefore renounces all these +attributes of its material which do not help forward that motive. It has +had, indeed, from the beginning an unfixed claim to colour; but this +element of colour in it has always been more or less conventional, with +no melting or modulation of tones, never admitting more than a very +limited realism. It was maintained chiefly as a religious tradition. In +proportion as the art of sculpture ceased to be merely decorative, and +subordinate to architecture, it threw itself upon pure form. It renounces +the power of expression by sinking or heightening tones. In it, no member +of the human form is more significant than the rest; the eye is wide, and +without pupil; the lips and brow are hardly less significant than hands, +and breasts, and feet. The limitation of its resources is part of its +pride it has no backgrounds, no sky or atmosphere, to suggest and +interpret a train of feeling; a little of suggested motion, and much of +pure light on its gleaming surfaces, with pure form—only these. And it +gains more than it loses by this limitation to its own distinguishing +motives; it unveils man in the repose of his unchanging characteristics. +Its white light, purged from the angry, bloodlike stains of action and +passion, reveals, not what is accidental in man, but the god in him, as +opposed to man's restless movement. The art of sculpture records the +first naive, unperplexed recognition of man by himself; and it is a proof +of the high artistic capacity of the Greeks, that they apprehended and +remained true to these exquisite limitations, yet, in spite of them, gave +to their creations a vital and mobile individuality. +</P> + +<P> +Heiterkeit—blitheness or repose, and Allgemeinheit—generality or +breadth, are, then, the supreme characteristics of the Hellenic ideal. +But that generality or breadth has nothing in common with the lax +observation, the unlearned thought, the flaccid execution, which have +sometimes claimed superiority in art, on the plea of being "broad" or +"general." Hellenic breadth and generality come of a culture minute, +severe, constantly renewed, rectifying and concentrating its impressions +into certain pregnant types. The base of all artistic genius is the power +of conceiving humanity in a new, striking, rejoicing way, of putting a +happy world of its own creation in place of the meaner world of common +days, of generating around itself an atmosphere with a novel power of +refraction, selecting, transforming, recombining the images it transmits, +according to the choice of the imaginative intellect. In exercising this +power, painting and poetry have a choice of subject almost unlimited. +The range of characters or persons open to them is as various as life +itself; no character, however trivial, misshapen, or unlovely, can resist +their magic. That is because those arts can accomplish their function in +the choice and development of some special situation, which lifts or +glorifies a character, in itself not poetical. To realise this situation, +to define in a chill and empty atmosphere, the focus where rays, in +themselves pale and impotent, unite and begin to burn, the artist has to +employ the most cunning detail, to complicate and refine upon thought and +passion a thousand-fold. The poems of Robert Browning supply brilliant +examples of this power. His poetry is pre-eminently the poetry of +situations. The characters themselves are always of secondary importance; +often they are characters in themselves of little interest; they seem to +come to him by strange accidents from the ends of the world. His gift is +shown by the way in which he accepts such a character, and throws it into +some situation, or apprehends it in some delicate pause of life, in which +for a moment it becomes ideal. Take an instance from Dramatis Personae. +In the poem entitled Le Byron de nos Jours, we have a single moment of +passion thrown into relief in this exquisite way. Those two jaded +Parisians are not intrinsically interesting; they only begin to interest +us when thrown into a choice situation. But to discriminate that moment, +to make it appreciable by us, that we may "find" it, what a cobweb of +allusions, what double and treble reflexions of the mind upon itself, +what an artificial light is constructed and broken over the chosen +situation; on how fine a needle's point that little world of passion is +balanced! Yet, in spite of this intricacy, the poem has the clear ring of +a central motive; we receive from it the impression of one imaginative +tone, of a single creative act. +</P> + +<P> +To produce such effects at all requires all the resources of painting, +with its power of indirect expression, of subordinate but significant +detail, its atmosphere, its foregrounds and backgrounds. To produce them +in a pre-eminent degree requires all the resources of poetry, language in +its most purged form, its remote associations and suggestions, its double +and treble lights. These appliances sculpture cannot command. In it, +therefore, not the special situation, but the type, the general character +of the subject to be delineated, is all-important. In poetry and +painting, the situation predominates over the character; in sculpture, +the character over the situation. Excluded by the limitations of its +material from the development of exquisite situations, it has to choose +from a select number of types intrinsically interesting—interesting, +that is, independently of any special situation into which they may be +thrown. Sculpture finds the secret of its power in presenting these +types, in their broad, central, incisive lines. This it effects not by +accumulation of detail, but by abstracting from it. All that is +accidental, all that distracts the simple effect upon us of the supreme +types of humanity, all traces in them of the commonness of the world, it +gradually purges away. +</P> + +<P> +Works of art produced under this law, and only these, are really +characterised by Hellenic generality or breadth. In every direction it is +a law of limitation; it keeps passion always below that degree of +intensity at which it must necessarily be transitory, never winding up +the features to one note of anger, or desire, or surprise. In some of the +feebler allegorical designs of the middle age, we find isolated qualities +portrayed as by so many masks; its religious art has familiarised us with +faces fixed immovably into blank types of placid reverie; and men and +women, in the hurry of life, often wear the sharp impress of one +absorbing motive, from which it is said death sets their features free. +All such instances may be ranged under the grotesque; and the Hellenic +ideal has nothing in common with the grotesque. It allows passion to play +lightly over the surface of the individual form, losing thereby nothing +of its central impassivity, its depth and repose. To all but the highest +culture, the reserved faces of the gods will ever have something of +insipidity. Again, in the best Greek sculpture, the archaic immobility +has been thawed, its forms are in motion; but it is a motion ever kept in +reserve, which is very seldom committed to any definite action. Endless +as are the attitudes of Greek sculpture, exquisite as is the invention of +the Greeks in this direction, the actions or situations it permits are +simple and few. There is no Greek Madonna; the goddesses are always +childless. The actions selected are those which would be without +significance, except in a divine person—binding on a sandal or preparing +for the bath. When a more complex and significant action is permitted, it +is most often represented as just finished, so that eager expectancy is +excluded, as in the image of Apollo just after the slaughter of the +Python, or of Venus with the apple of Paris already in her hand. The +Laocoon, with all that patient science through which it has triumphed +over an almost unmanageable subject, marks a period in which sculpture +has begun to aim at effects legitimate, because delightful, only in +painting. The hair, so rich a source of expression in painting, because, +relatively to the eye or to the lip, it is mere drapery, is withdrawn +from attention; its texture, as well as the colour, is lost, its +arrangement faintly and severely indicated, with no enmeshed or broken +light. The eyes are wide and directionless, not fixing anything with +their gaze, or riveting the brain to any special external object; the +brows without hair. It deals almost exclusively with youth, where the +moulding of the bodily organs is still as if suspended between growth and +completion, indicated but not emphasised; where the transition from curve +to curve is so delicate and elusive, that Winckelmann compares it to a +quiet sea, which, although we understand it to be in motion, we +nevertheless regard as an image of repose; where, therefore, the exact +degree of development is so hard to apprehend. If one had to choose a +single product of Hellenic art, to save in the wreck of all the rest, one +would choose from the "beautiful multitude" of the Panathenaic frieze, +that line of youths on horseback, with their level glances, their proud, +patient lips, their chastened reins, their whole bodies in exquisite +service. This colourless, unclassified purity of life, with its blending +and interpenetration of intellectual, spiritual, and physical elements, +still folded together, pregnant with the possibilities of a whole world +closed within it, is the highest expression of that indifference which +lies beyond all that is relative or partial. Everywhere there is the +effect of an awaking, of a child's sleep just disturbed. All these +effects are united in a single instance—the adorante of the museum of +Berlin, a youth who has gained the wrestler's prize, with hands lifted +and open, in praise for the victory. Fresh, unperplexed, it is the image +of man as he springs first from the sleep of nature; his white light +taking no colour from any one-sided experience, characterless, so far as +character involves subjection to the accidental influences of life. +</P> + +<P> +"This sense," says Hegel, "for the consummate modelling of divine and +human forms was pre-eminently at home in Greece. In its poets and +orators, its historians and philosophers, Greece cannot be conceived from +a central point, unless one brings, as a key to the understanding of it, +an insight into the ideal forms of sculpture, and regards the images of +statesmen and philosophers, as well as epic and dramatic heroes, from the +artistic point of view; for those who act, as well as those who create +and think, have, in those beautiful days of Greece, this plastic +character. They are great and free, and have grown up on the soil of +their own individuality, creating themselves out of themselves, and +moulding themselves to what they were, and willed to be. The age of +Pericles was rich in such characters; Pericles himself, Pheidias, Plato, +above all Sophocles, Thucydides also, Xenophon and Socrates, each in his +own order, the perfection of one remaining undiminished by that of the +others. They are ideal artists of themselves, cast each in one flawless +mould, works of art, which stand before us as an immortal presentment of +the gods. Of this modelling also are those bodily works of art, the +victors in the Olympic games; yes, and even Phryne, who, as the most +beautiful of women, ascended naked out of the water, in the presence of +assembled Greece." +</P> + +<P> +This key to the understanding of the Greek spirit, Winckelmann possessed +in his own nature, itself like a relic of classical antiquity, laid open +by accident to our alien modern atmosphere. To the criticism of that +consummate Greek modelling he brought not only his culture but his +temperament. We have seen how definite was the leading motive of his +culture; how, like some central root-fibre, it maintained the +well-rounded unity of his life through a thousand distractions. +Interests not his, nor meant for him, never disturbed him. In morals, as +in criticism, he followed the clue of an unerring instinct. Penetrating +into the antique world by his passion, his temperament, he enunciates no +formal principles, always hard and one-sided. Minute and anxious as his +culture was, he never became one-sidedly self-analytical. Occupied ever +with himself, perfecting himself and cultivating his genius, he was not +content, as so often happens with such natures, that the atmosphere +between him and other minds should be thick and clouded; he was ever +jealously refining his meaning into a form, express, clear, objective. +This temperament he nurtured and invigorated by friendships which kept +him ever in direct contact with the spirit of youth. The beauty of the +Greek statues was a sexless beauty; the statues of the gods had the least +traces of sex. Here there is a moral sexlessness, a kind of ineffectual +wholeness of nature, yet with a true beauty and significance of its own. +</P> + +<P> +One result of this temperament is a serenity—Heiterkeit—which +characterises Winckelmann's handling of the sensuous side of Greek art. +This serenity is, perhaps, in great measure, a negative quality; it is +the absence of any sense of want, or corruption, or shame. With the +sensuous element in Greek art he deals in the pagan manner; and what is +implied in that? It has been sometimes said that art is a means of escape +from "the tyranny of the senses." It may be so for the spectator; he may +find that the spectacle of supreme works of art takes from the life of +the senses something of its turbid fever. But this is possible for the +spectator only because the artist, in producing those works, has +gradually sunk his intellectual and spiritual ideas in sensuous form. He +may live, as Keats lived, a pure life; but his soul, like that of Plato's +false astronomer, becomes more and more immersed in sense, until nothing +which lacks an appeal to sense has interest for him. How could such an +one ever again endure the greyness of the ideal or spiritual world? The +spiritualist is satisfied in seeing the sensuous elements escape from his +conceptions; his interest grows, as the dyed garment bleaches in the +keener air. But the artist steeps his thought again and again into the +fire of colour. To the Greek this immersion in the sensuous was +indifferent. Greek sensuousness, therefore, does not fever the blood; it +is shameless and childlike. Christian asceticism, on the other hand, +discrediting the slightest touch of sense, has from time to time provoked +into strong emphasis the contrast or antagonism to itself, of the +artistic life, with its inevitable sensuousness.—I did but taste a +little honey with the end of the rod that was in mine hand, and lo, I +must die!—It has sometimes seemed hard to pursue that life without +something of conscious disavowal of a spiritual world; and this imparts +to genuine artistic interests a kind of intoxication. From this +intoxication Winckelmann is free; he fingers those pagan marbles with +unsinged hands, with no sense of shame or loss. That is to deal with the +sensuous side of art in the pagan manner. +</P> + +<P> +The longer we contemplate that Hellenic ideal, in which man is at unity +with himself, with his physical nature, with the outward world, the more +we may be inclined to regret that he should ever have passed beyond it, +to contend for a perfection that makes the blood turbid, and frets the +flesh, and discredits the actual world about us. But if he was to be +saved from the ennui which ever attaches itself to realisation, even the +realisation of perfection, it was necessary that a conflict should come, +and some sharper note grieve the perfect harmony, to the end that the +spirit chafed by it might beat out at last a larger and profounder music. +In Greek tragedy this conflict has begun; man finds himself face to face +with rival claims. Greek tragedy shows how such a conflict may be treated +with serenity, how the evolution of it may be a spectacle of the dignity, +not of the impotence, of the human spirit. But it is not only in tragedy +that the Greek spirit showed itself capable of thus winning joy out of +matter in itself full of discouragements. Theocritus, too, often strikes +a note of romantic sadness. But what a blithe and steady poise, above +these discouragements, in a clear and sunny stratum of the air! +</P> + +<P> +Into this stage of Greek achievement Winckelmann did not enter. Supreme +as he is where his true interest lay, his insight into the typical unity +and repose of the highest sort of sculpture seems to have involved +limitation in another direction. His conception of art excludes that +bolder type of it which deals confidently and serenely with life, +conflict, evil. Living in a world of exquisite but abstract and +colourless form, he could hardly have conceived of the subtle and +penetrative, but somewhat grotesque art of the modern world. What would +he have thought of Gilliatt, in Victor Hugo's Travailleurs de la Mer, or +of the bleeding mouth of Fantine in the first part of Les Miserables, +penetrated as it is with a sense of beauty, as lively and transparent as +that of a Greek? There is even a sort of preparation for the romantic +temper within the limits of the Greek ideal itself, which Winckelmann +failed to see. For Greek religion has not merely its mournful mysteries +of Adonis, of Hyacinthus, of Demeter, but it is conscious also of the +fall of earlier divine dynasties. Hyperion gives way to Apollo, Oceanus +to Poseidon. Around the feet of that tranquil Olympian family still crowd +the weary shadows of an earlier, more formless, divine world. Even their +still minds are troubled with thoughts of a limit to duration, of +inevitable decay, of dispossession. Again, the supreme and colourless +abstraction of those divine forms, which is the secret of their repose, +is also a premonition of the fleshless, consumptive refinements of the +pale medieval artists. That high indifference to the outward, that +impassivity, has already a touch of the corpse in it; we see already +Angelico and the Master of the Passion in the artistic future. The +crushing of the sensuous, the shutting of the door upon it, the ascetic +interest, is already traceable. Those abstracted gods, "ready to melt out +their essence fine into the winds," who can fold up their flesh as a +garment, and still remain themselves, seem already to feel that bleak +air, in which, like Helen of Troy, they wander as the spectres of the +middle age. +</P> + +<P> +Gradually, as the world came into the church, an artistic interest, +native in the human soul, reasserted its claims. But Christian art was +still dependent on pagan examples, building the shafts of pagan temples +into its churches, perpetuating the form of the basilica, in later times +working the disused amphitheatres as quarries. The sensuous expression of +conceptions which unreservedly discredit the world of sense, was the +delicate problem which Christian art had before it. If we think of +medieval painting, as it ranges from the early German schools, still with +something of the air of the charnel-house about them, to the clear +loveliness of Perugino, we shall see how that problem was solved. Even in +the worship of sorrow the native blitheness of art asserted itself; the +religious spirit, as Hegel says, "smiled through its tears." So perfectly +did the young Raffaelle infuse that Heiterkeit, that pagan blitheness, +into religious works, that his picture of Saint Agatha at Bologna became +to Goethe a step in the evolution of Iphigenie.* But in proportion as +this power of smiling was found again, there came also an aspiration +towards that lost antique art, some relics of which Christian art had +buried in itself, ready to work wonders when their day came. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +*Italiaenische Reise. Bologna, 19 Oct. 1776. +</P> + +<P> +The history of art has suffered as much as any history by trenchant and +absolute divisions. Pagan and Christian art are sometimes harshly +opposed, and the Renaissance is represented as a fashion which set in at +a definite period. That is the superficial view: the deeper view is that +which preserves the identity of European culture. The two are really +continuous; and there is a sense in which it may be said that the +Renaissance was an uninterrupted effort of the middle age, that it was +ever taking place. When the actual relics of the antique were restored to +the world, in the view of the Christian ascetic it was as if an ancient +plague-pit had been opened: all the world took the contagion of the life +of nature and of the senses. And now it was seen that the medieval spirit +too had done something for the destiny of the antique. By hastening the +decline of art, by withdrawing interest from it, and yet keeping unbroken +the thread of its traditions, it had suffered the human mind to repose +that it might awake when day came, with eyes refreshed, to those antique +forms. +</P> + +<P> +The aim of a right criticism is to place Winckelmann in an intellectual +perspective, of which Goethe is the foreground. For, after all, he is +infinitely less than Goethe; it is chiefly because at certain points he +comes in contact with Goethe, that criticism entertains consideration of +him. His relation to modern culture is a peculiar one. He is not of the +modern world; nor is he of the eighteenth century, although so much of +his outer life is characteristic of it. But that note of revolt against +the eighteenth century, which we detect in Goethe, was struck by +Winckelmann. Goethe illustrates that union of the Romantic spirit, in its +adventure, its variety, its profound subjectivity of soul, with +Hellenism, in its transparency, its rationality, its desire of +Beauty—that marriage of Faust and Helena—of which the art of the +nineteenth century is the child, the beautiful lad Euphorion, as Goethe +conceives him, on the crags, in the "splendour of battle and in harness +as for victory," his brows bound with light.* Goethe illustrates, too, +the preponderance in this marriage of the Hellenic element; and that +element, in its true essence, was made known to him by Winckelmann. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +*Faust, Th. ii. Act. 3. +</P> + +<P> +Breadth, centrality, with blitheness and repose, are the marks of +Hellenic culture. Is that culture a lost art? The local, accidental +colouring of its own age has passed from it; the greatness that is dead +looks greater when every link with what is slight and vulgar has been +severed; we can only see it at all in the reflected, refined light which +a high education creates for us. Can we bring down that ideal into the +gaudy, perplexed light of modern life? +</P> + +<P> +Certainly, for us of the modern world, with its conflicting claims, its +entangled interests, distracted by so many sorrows, so many +preoccupations, so bewildering an experience, the problem of unity with +ourselves, in blitheness and repose, is far harder than it was for the +Greek within the simple terms of antique life. Yet, not less than ever, +the intellect demands completeness, centrality. It is this which +Winckelmann imprints on the imagination of Goethe, at the beginning of +his culture, in its original and simplest form, as in a fragment of Greek +art itself, stranded on that littered, indeterminate shore of Germany in +the eighteenth century. In Winckelmann, this type comes to him, not as in +a book or a theory, but importunately, in a passionate life or +personality. For Goethe, possessing all modern interests, ready to be +lost in the perplexed currents of modern thought, he defines, in clearest +outline, the problem of culture—balance, unity with oneself, consummate +Greek modelling. +</P> + +<P> +It could no longer be solved, as in Phryne ascending naked out of the +water, by perfection of bodily form, or any joyful union with the world +without: the shadows had grown too long, the light too solemn, for that. +It could hardly be solved, as in Pericles or Pheidias, by the direct +exercise of any single talent: amid the manifold claims of modern +culture, that could only have ended in a thin, one-sided growth. Goethe's +Hellenism was of another order, the Allgemeinheit and Heiterkeit, the +completeness and serenity, of a watchful, exigent intellectualism. Im +Ganzen, Guten, Wahren, resolut zu leben—is Goethe's description of his +own higher life; and what is meant by life in the whole—im Ganzen? It +means the life of one for whom, over and over again, what was once +precious has become indifferent. Every one who aims at the life of +culture is met by many forms of it, arising out of the intense, +laborious, one-sided development of some special talent. They are the +brightest enthusiasms the world has to show. It is not their part to +weigh the claims which this or that alien form of culture makes upon +them. But the pure instinct of self-culture cares not so much to reap all +that these forms of culture can give, as to find in them its own +strength. The demand of the intellect is to feel itself alive. It must +see into the laws, the operation, the intellectual reward of every +divided form of culture; but only that it may measure the relation +between itself and them. It struggles with those forms till its secret is +won from each, and then lets each fall back into its place; in the +supreme, artistic view of life. With a kind of passionate coldness, such +natures rejoice to be away from and past their former selves. Above all, +they are jealous of that abandonment to one special gift which really +limits their capabilities. It would have been easy for Goethe, with the +gift of a sensuous nature, to let it overgrow him. It comes easily and +naturally, perhaps, to certain "other-worldly" natures to be even as the +Schoene Seele, that ideal of gentle pietism, in Wilhelm Meister: but to +the large vision of Goethe, that seemed to be a phase of life that a man +might feel all round, and leave behind him. Again, it is easy to indulge +the commonplace metaphysical instinct. But a taste for metaphysics may be +one of those things which we must renounce, if we mean to mould our lives +to artistic perfection. Philosophy serves culture, not by the fancied +gift of absolute or transcendental knowledge, but by suggesting questions +which help one to detect the passion, and strangeness, and dramatic +contrasts of life. +</P> + +<P> +But Goethe's culture did not remain "behind the veil"; it ever emerged in +the practical functions of art, in actual production. For him the problem +came to be:—Can the blitheness and universality of the antique ideal be +communicated to artistic productions, which shall contain the fulness of +the experience of the modern world? We have seen that the development of +the various forms of art has corresponded to the development of the +thoughts of man concerning himself, to the growing revelation of the mind +to itself. Sculpture corresponds to the unperplexed, emphatic outlines of +Hellenic humanism; painting to the mystic depth and intricacy of the +middle age; music and poetry have their fortune in the modern world. Let +us understand by poetry all literary production which attains the power +of giving pleasure by its form, as distinct from its matter. Only in this +varied literary form can art command that width, variety, delicacy of +resources, which will enable it to deal with the conditions of modern +life. What modern art has to do in the service of culture is so to +rearrange the details of modern life, so to reflect it, that it may +satisfy the spirit. And what does the spirit need in the face of modern +life? The sense of freedom. That naive, rough sense of freedom, which +supposes man's will to be limited, if at all, only by a will stronger +than his, he can never have again. The attempt to represent it in art +would have so little verisimilitude that it would be flat and +uninteresting. The chief factor in the thoughts of the modern mind +concerning itself is the intricacy, the universality of natural law, even +in the moral order. For us, necessity is not, as of old, a sort of +mythological personage without us, with whom we can do warfare: it is a +magic web woven through and through us, like that magnetic system of +which modern science speaks, penetrating us with a network, subtler than +our subtlest nerves, yet bearing in it the central forces of the world. +Can art represent men and women in these bewildering toils so as to give +the spirit at least an equivalent for the sense of freedom? Certainly, in +Goethe's romances, and even more in the romances of Victor Hugo, there +are high examples of modern art dealing thus with modern life, regarding +that life as the modern mind must regard it, yet reflecting upon +blitheness and repose. Natural laws we shall never modify, embarrass us +as they may; but there is still something in the nobler or less noble +attitude with which we watch their fatal combinations. In those romances +of Goethe and Victor Hugo, in some excellent work done after them, this +entanglement, this network of law, becomes the tragic situation, in which +certain groups of noble men and women work out for themselves a supreme +Denouement. Who, if he saw through all, would fret against the chain of +circumstance which endows one at the end with those great experiences? +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +1867. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="conclusion"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CONCLUSION* +</H3> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +*This brief "Conclusion" was omitted in the second edition of this book, +as I conceived it might possibly mislead some of those young men into +whose hands it might fall. On the whole, I have thought it best to +reprint it here, with some slight changes which bring it closer to my +original meaning. I have dealt more fully in Marius the Epicurean with +the thoughts suggested by it. +<BR><BR> +Legei pou Herakleitos hoti panta khorei kai ouden menei. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +To regard all things and principles of things as inconstant modes or +fashions has more and more become the tendency of modern thought. Let us +begin with that which is without—our physical life. Fix upon it in one +of its more exquisite intervals, the moment, for instance, of delicious +recoil from the flood of water in summer heat. What is the whole physical +life in that moment but a combination of natural elements to which +science gives their names? But these elements, phosphorus and lime and +delicate fibres, are present not in the human body alone: we detect them +in places most remote from it. Our physical life is a perpetual motion of +them—the passage of the blood, the wasting and repairing of the lenses +of the eye, the modification of the tissues of the brain by every ray of +light and sound—processes which science reduces to simpler and more +elementary forces. Like the elements of which we are composed, the action +of these forces extends beyond us; it rusts iron and ripens corn. Far out +on every side of us those elements are broadcast, driven by many forces; +and birth and gesture and death and the springing of violets from the +grave are but a few out of ten thousand resultant combinations. That +clear, perpetual outline of face and limb is but an image of ours, under +which we group them—a design in a web, the actual threads of which pass +out beyond it. This at least of flamelike our life has, that it is but +the concurrence, renewed from moment to moment, of forces parting sooner +or later on their ways. +</P> + +<P> +Or if we begin with the inward world of thought and feeling, the +whirlpool is still more rapid, the flame more eager and devouring. There +it is no longer the gradual darkening of the eye and fading of colour +from the wall,—the movement of the shore-side, where the water flows +down indeed, though in apparent rest,—but the race of the mid-stream, a +drift of momentary acts of sight and passion and thought. At first sight +experience seems to bury us under a flood of external objects, pressing +upon us with a sharp and importunate reality, calling us out of ourselves +in a thousand forms of action. But when reflexion begins to act upon +those objects they are dissipated under its influence; the cohesive force +seems suspended like a trick of magic; each object is loosed into a group +of impressions—colour, odour, texture—in the mind of the observer. And +if we continue to dwell in thought on this world, not of objects in the +solidity with which language invests them, but of impressions unstable, +flickering, inconsistent, which burn and are extinguished with our +consciousness of them, it contracts still further; the whole scope of +observation is dwarfed to the narrow chamber of the individual mind. +Experience, already reduced to a swarm of impressions, is ringed round +for each one of us by that thick wall of personality through which no +real voice has ever pierced on its way to us, or from us to that which we +can only conjecture to be without. Every one of those impressions is the +impression of the individual in his isolation, each mind keeping as a +solitary prisoner its own dream of a world. Analysis goes a step farther +still, and assures us that those impressions of the individual mind to +which, for each one of us, experience dwindles down, are in perpetual +flight; that each of them is limited by time, and that as time is +infinitely divisible, each of them is infinitely divisible also; all that +is actual in it being a single moment, gone while we try to apprehend it, +of which it may ever be more truly said that it has ceased to be than +that it is. To such a tremulous wisp constantly re-forming itself on the +stream, to a single sharp impression, with a sense in it, a relic more or +less fleeting, of such moments gone by, what is real in our life fines +itself down. It is with this movement, with the passage and dissolution +of impressions, images, sensations, that analysis leaves off—that +continual vanishing away, that strange, perpetual weaving and unweaving +of ourselves. +</P> + +<P> +Philosophiren, says Novalis, ist dephlegmatisiren vivificiren. The +service of philosophy, of speculative culture, towards the human spirit +is to rouse, to startle it into sharp and eager observation. Every moment +some form grows perfect in hand or face; some tone on the hills or the +sea is choicer than the rest; some mood of passion or insight or +intellectual excitement is irresistibly real and attractive for us,—for +that moment only. Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is +the end. A counted number of pulses only is given to us of a variegated, +dramatic life. How may we see in them all that is to be seen in them by +the finest senses? How shall we pass most swiftly from point to point, +and be present always at the focus where the greatest number of vital +forces unite in their purest energy? +</P> + +<P> +To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, +is success in life. In a sense it might even be said that our failure is +to form habits: for, after all, habit is relative to a stereotyped world, +and meantime it is only the roughness of the eye that makes any two +persons, things, situations, seem alike. While all melts under our feet, +we may well catch at any exquisite passion, or any contribution to +knowledge that seems by a lifted horizon to set the spirit free for a +moment, or any stirring of the senses, strange dyes, strange colours, and +curious odours, or work of the artist's hands, or the face of one's +friend. Not to discriminate every moment some passionate attitude in +those about us, and in the brilliancy of their gifts some tragic dividing +of forces on their ways, is, on this short day of frost and sun, to sleep +before evening. With this sense of the splendour of our experience and of +its awful brevity, gathering all we are into one desperate effort to see +and touch, we shall hardly have time to make theories about the things we +see and touch. What we have to do is to be for ever curiously testing new +opinions and courting new impressions, never acquiescing in a facile +orthodoxy of Comte, or of Hegel, or of our own. Philosophical theories or +ideas, as points of view, instruments of criticism, may help us to gather +up what might otherwise pass unregarded by us. "Philosophy is the +microscope of thought." The theory or idea or system which requires of us +the sacrifice of any part of this experience, in consideration of some +interest into which we cannot enter, or some abstract theory we have not +identified with ourselves, or what is only conventional, has no real +claim upon us. +</P> + +<P> +One of the most beautiful passages in the writings of Rousseau is that in +the sixth book of the Confessions, where he describes the awakening in +him of the literary sense. An undefinable taint of death had always clung +about him, and now in early manhood he believed himself smitten by mortal +disease. He asked himself how he might make as much as possible of the +interval that remained; and he was not biassed by anything in his +previous life when he decided that it must be by intellectual excitement, +which he found just then in the clear, fresh writings of Voltaire. Well! +we are all condamnes, as Victor Hugo says: we are all under sentence of +death but with a sort of indefinite reprieve—les hommes sont tous +condamnes a mort avec des sursis indefinis: we have an interval, and then +our place knows us no more. Some spend this interval in listlessness, +some in high passions, the wisest, at least among "the children of this +world," in art and song. For our one chance lies in expanding that +interval, in getting as many pulsations as possible into the given time. +Great passions may give us this quickened sense of life, ecstasy and +sorrow of love, the various forms of enthusiastic activity, disinterested +or otherwise, which come naturally to many of us. Only be sure it is +passion—that it does yield you this fruit of a quickened, multiplied +consciousness. Of this wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire of beauty, +the love of art for art's sake, has most; for art comes to you professing +frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they +pass, and simply for those moments' sake. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR><BR> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Renaissance, by Walter Pater + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RENAISSANCE *** + +***** This file should be named 2398-h.htm or 2398-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/2/3/9/2398/ + +Produced by Bruce McClintock. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Renaissance + Studies in Art and Poetry + +Author: Walter Pater + +Posting Date: March 27, 2009 [EBook #2398] +Release Date: November, 2000 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RENAISSANCE *** + + + + +Produced by Bruce McClintock. HTML version by Al Haines. + + + + + + + + + +THE RENAISSANCE + +STUDIES IN ART AND POETRY + + +by + +Walter Pater + + + +Sixth Edition + + + + + Dedication + To C.L.S. + + + + +PREFACE + +Many attempts have been made by writers on art and poetry to define +beauty in the abstract, to express it in the most general terms, to find +a universal formula for it. The value of these attempts has most often +been in the suggestive and penetrating things said by the way. Such +discussions help us very little to enjoy what has been well done in art +or poetry, to discriminate between what is more and what is less +excellent in them, or to use words like beauty, excellence, art, poetry, +with a more precise meaning than they would otherwise have. Beauty, like +all other qualities presented to human experience, is relative; and the +definition of it becomes unmeaning and useless in proportion to its +abstractness. To define beauty, not in the most abstract, but in the +most concrete terms possible, to find, not a universal formula for it, +but the formula which expresses most adequately this or that special +manifestation of it, is the aim of the true student of aesthetics. + +"To see the object as in itself it really is," has been justly said to +be the aim of all true criticism whatever; and in aesthetic criticism +the first step towards seeing one's object as it really is, is to know +one's own impression as it really is, to discriminate it, to realise it +distinctly. The objects with which aesthetic criticism deals--music, +poetry, artistic and accomplished forms of human life--are indeed +receptacles of so many powers or forces: they possess, like the products +of nature, so many virtues or qualities. What is this song or picture, +this engaging personality presented in life or in a book, to ME? What +effect does it really produce on me? Does it give me pleasure? and if +so, what sort or degree of pleasure? How is my nature modified by its +presence, and under its influence? The answers to these questions are +the original facts with which the aesthetic critic has to do; and, as in +the study of light, of morals, of number, one must realise such primary +data for oneself, or not at all. And he who experiences these +impressions strongly, and drives directly at the discrimination and +analysis of them, has no need to trouble himself with the abstract +question what beauty is in itself, or what its exact relation to truth +or experience--metaphysical questions, as unprofitable as metaphysical +questions elsewhere. He may pass them all by as being, answerable or +not, of no interest to him. + +The aesthetic critic, then, regards all the objects with which he has to +do, all works of art, and the fairer forms of nature and human life, as +powers or forces producing pleasurable sensations, each of a more or +less peculiar or unique kind. This influence he feels, and wishes to +explain, analysing it and reducing it to its elements. To him, the +picture, the landscape, the engaging personality in life or in a book, +La Gioconda, the hills of Carrara, Pico of Mirandola, are valuable for +their virtues, as we say, in speaking of a herb, a wine, a gem; for the +property each has of affecting one with a special, a unique, impression +of pleasure. Our education becomes complete in proportion as our +susceptibility to these impressions increases in depth and variety. And +the function of the aesthetic critic is to distinguish, analyse, and +separate from its adjuncts, the virtue by which a picture, a landscape, +a fair personality in life or in a book, produces this special +impression of beauty or pleasure, to indicate what the source of that +impression is, and under what conditions it is experienced. His end is +reached when he has disengaged that virtue, and noted it, as a chemist +notes some natural element, for himself and others; and the rule for +those who would reach this end is stated with great exactness in the +words of a recent critic of Sainte-Beuve:--De se borner a connaitre de +pres les belles choses, et a s'en nourrir en exquis amateurs, en +humanistes accomplis. + +What is important, then, is not that the critic should possess a correct +abstract definition of beauty for the intellect, but a certain kind of +temperament, the power of being deeply moved by the presence of +beautiful objects. He will remember always that beauty exists in many +forms. To him all periods, types, schools of taste, are in themselves +equal. In all ages there have been some excellent workmen, and some +excellent work done. The question he asks is always:--In whom did the +stir, the genius, the sentiment of the period find itself? where was the +receptacle of its refinement, its elevation, its taste? "The ages are +all equal," says William Blake, "but genius is always above its age." + +Often it will require great nicety to disengage this virtue from the +commoner elements with which it may be found in combination. Few +artists, not Goethe or Byron even, work quite cleanly, casting off all +debris, and leaving us only what the heat of their imagination has +wholly fused and transformed. Take, for instance, the writings of +Wordsworth. The heat of his genius, entering into the substance of his +work, has crystallised a part, but only a part, of it; and in that great +mass of verse there is much which might well be forgotten. But scattered +up and down it, sometimes fusing and transforming entire compositions, +like the Stanzas on Resolution and Independence, and the Ode on the +Recollections of Childhood, sometimes, as if at random, depositing a +fine crystal here or there, in a matter it does not wholly search +through and transform, we trace the action of his unique, incommunicable +faculty, that strange, mystical sense of a life in natural things, and +of man's life as a part of nature, drawing strength and colour and +character from local influences, from the hills and streams, and from +natural sights and sounds. Well! that is the virtue, the active +principle in Wordsworth's poetry; and then the function of the critic of +Wordsworth is to follow up that active principle, to disengage it, to +mark the degree in which it penetrates his verse. + +The subjects of the following studies are taken from the history of the +Renaissance, and touch what I think are the chief points in that +complex, many-sided movement. I have explained in the first of them what +I understand by the word, giving it a much wider scope than was +intended by those who originally used it to denote only that revival of +classical antiquity in the fifteenth century which was but one of many +results of a general excitement and enlightening of the human mind, of +which the great aim and achievements of what, as Christian art, is often +falsely opposed to the Renaissance, were another result. This outbreak +of the human spirit may be traced far into the middle age itself, with +its qualities already clearly pronounced, the care for physical beauty, +the worship of the body, the breaking down of those limits which the +religious system of the middle age imposed on the heart and the +imagination. I have taken as an example of this movement, this earlier +Renaissance within the middle age itself, and as an expression of its +qualities, two little compositions in early French; not because they +constitute the best possible expression of them, but because they help +the unity of my series, inasmuch as the Renaissance ends also in France, +in French poetry, in a phase of which the writings of Joachim du Bellay +are in many ways the most perfect illustration; the Renaissance thus +putting forth in France an aftermath, a wonderful later growth, the +products of which have to the full that subtle and delicate sweetness +which belongs to a refined and comely decadence; just as its earliest +phases have the freshness which belongs to all periods of growth in art, +the charm of ascesis, of the austere and serious girding of the loins in +youth. + +But it is in Italy, in the fifteenth century, that the interest of the +Renaissance mainly lies,--in that solemn fifteenth century which can +hardly be studied too much, not merely for its positive results in the +things of the intellect and the imagination, its concrete works of art, +its special and prominent personalities, with their profound aesthetic +charm, but for its general spirit and character, for the ethical +qualities of which it is a consummate type. + +The various forms of intellectual activity which together make up the +culture of an age, move for the most part from different +starting-points, and by unconnected roads. As products of the same +generation they partake indeed of a common character, and unconsciously +illustrate each other; but of the producers themselves, each group is +solitary, gaining what advantage or disadvantage there may be in +intellectual isolation. Art and poetry, philosophy and the religious +life, and that other life of refined pleasure and action in the open +places of the world, are each of them confined to its own circle of +ideas, and those who prosecute either of them are generally little +curious of the thoughts of others. There come, however, from time to +time, eras of more favourable conditions, in which the thoughts of men +draw nearer together than is their wont, and the many interests of the +intellectual world combine in one complete type of general culture. The +fifteenth century in Italy is one of these happier eras; and what is +sometimes said of the age of Pericles is true of that of Lorenzo:--it is +an age productive in personalities, many-sided, centralised, complete. +Here, artists and philosophers and those whom the action of the world +has elevated and made keen, do not live in isolation, but breathe a +common air, and catch light and heat from each other's thoughts. There +is a spirit of general elevation and enlightenment in which all alike +communicate. It is the unity of this spirit which gives unity to all the +various products of the Renaissance; and it is to this intimate alliance +with mind, this participation in the best thoughts which that age +produced, that the art of Italy in the fifteenth century owes much of +its grave dignity and influence. + +I have added an essay on Winckelmann, as not incongruous with the +studies which precede it, because Winckelmann, coming in the eighteenth +century, really belongs in spirit to an earlier age. By his enthusiasm +for the things of the intellect and the imagination for their own sake, +by his Hellenism, his life-long struggle to attain to the Greek spirit, +he is in sympathy with the humanists of an earlier century. He is the +last fruit of the Renaissance, and explains in a striking way its motive +and tendencies. + + + + +CONTENTS + + TWO EARLY FRENCH STORIES + PICO DELLA MIRANDOLA + SANDRO BOTTICELLI + LUCA DELLA ROBBIA + THE POETRY OF MICHELANGELO + LEONARDO DA VINCI + THE SCHOOL OF GIORGIONE + JOACHIM DU BELLAY + WINCKELMANN + CONCLUSION + + + +TWO EARLY FRENCH STORIES + +The history of the Renaissance ends in France, and carries us away from +Italy to the beautiful cities of the country of the Loire. But it was in +France also, in a very important sense, that the Renaissance had begun; +and French writers, who are so fond of connecting the creations of +Italian genius with a French origin, who tell us how Francis of Assisi +took not his name only, but all those notions of chivalry and romantic +love which so deeply penetrated his thoughts, from a French source, how +Boccaccio borrowed the outlines of his stories from the old French +fabliaux, and how Dante himself expressly connects the origin of the art +of miniature-painting with the city of Paris, have often dwelt on this +notion of a Renaissance in the end of the twelfth and the beginning of +the thirteenth century, a Renaissance within the limits of the middle +age itself--a brilliant, but in part abortive effort to do for human +life and the human mind what was afterwards done in the fifteenth. The +word Renaissance, indeed, is now generally used to denote not merely +that revival of classical antiquity which took place in the fifteenth +century, and to which the word was first applied, but a whole complex +movement, of which that revival of classical antiquity was but one +element or symptom. For us the Renaissance is the name of a many-sided +but yet united movement, in which the love of the things of the +intellect and the imagination for their own sake, the desire for a more +liberal and comely way of conceiving life, make themselves felt, urging +those who experience this desire to search out first one and then +another means of intellectual or imaginative enjoyment, and directing +them not merely to the discovery of old and forgotten sources of this +enjoyment, but to the divination of fresh sources thereof--new +experiences, new subjects of poetry, new forms of art. Of such feeling +there was a great outbreak in the end of the twelfth and the beginning +of the following century. Here and there, under rare and happy +conditions, in Pointed architecture, in the doctrines of romantic love, +in the poetry of Provence, the rude strength of the middle age turns to +sweetness; and the taste for sweetness generated there becomes the seed +of the classical revival in it, prompting it constantly to seek after +the springs of perfect sweetness in the Hellenic world. And coming after +a long period in which this instinct had been crushed, that true "dark +age," in which so many sources of intellectual and imaginative enjoyment +had actually disappeared, this outbreak is rightly called a Renaissance, +a revival. + +Theories which bring into connexion with each other modes of thought and +feeling, periods of taste, forms of art and poetry, which the narrowness +of men's minds constantly tends to oppose to each other, have a great +stimulus for the intellect, and are almost always worth understanding. +It is so with this theory of a Renaissance within the middle age, which +seeks to establish a continuity between the most characteristic work of +the middle age, the sculpture of Chartres and the windows of Le Mans, +and the work of the later Renaissance, the work of Jean Cousin and +Germain Pilon, and thus heals that rupture between the middle age and +the Renaissance which has so often been exaggerated. But it is not so +much the ecclesiastical art of the middle age, its sculpture and +painting--work certainly done in a great measure for pleasure's sake, in +which even a secular, a rebellious spirit often betrays itself--but +rather the profane poetry of the middle age, the poetry of Provence, and +the magnificent after-growth of that poetry in Italy and France, which +those French writers have in view, when they speak of this Renaissance +within the middle age. In that poetry, earthly passion, with its +intimacy, its freedom, its variety--the liberty of the heart--makes +itself felt; and the name of Abelard, the great clerk and the great +lover, connects the expression of this liberty of heart with the free +play of human intelligence around all subjects presented to it, with the +liberty of the intellect, as that age understood it. Every one knows the +legend of Abelard, a legend hardly less passionate, certainly not less +characteristic of the middle age, than the legend of Tannhaeuser; how +the famous and comely clerk, in whom Wisdom herself, self-possessed, +pleasant, and discreet, seemed to sit enthroned, came to live in the +house of a canon of the church of Notre-Dame, where dwelt a girl +Heloise, believed to be the old priest's orphan niece, his love for whom +he had testified by giving her an education then unrivalled, so that +rumour even asserted that, through the knowledge of languages, enabling +her to penetrate into the mysteries of the older world, she had become a +sorceress, like the Celtic druidesses; and how as Abelard and Heloise +sat together at home there, to refine a little further on the nature of +abstract ideas, "Love made himself of the party with them." You conceive +the temptations of the scholar, who, in such dreamy tranquillity, amid +the bright and busy spectacle of the "Island," lived in a world of +something like shadows; and that for one who knew so well how to assign +its exact value to every abstract idea, those restraints which lie on +the consciences of other men had been relaxed. It appears that he +composed many verses in the vulgar tongue: already the young men sang +them on the quay below the house. Those songs, says M. de Remusat, were +probably in the taste of the Trouveres, of whom he was one of the first +in date, or, so to speak, the predecessor. It is the same spirit which +has moulded the famous "letters," written in the quaint Latin of the +middle age. At the foot of that early Gothic tower, which the next +generation raised to grace the precincts of Abelard's school, on the +"Mountain of Saint Genevieve," the historian Michelet sees in thought "a +terrible assembly; not the hearers of Abelard alone, fifty bishops, +twenty cardinals, two popes, the whole body of scholastic philosophy; +not only the learned Heloise, the teaching of languages, and the +Renaissance; but Arnold of Brescia--that is to say, the revolution." And +so from the rooms of this shadowy house by the Seine side we see that +spirit going abroad, with its qualities already well defined, its +intimacy, its languid sweetness, its rebellion, its subtle skill in +dividing the elements of human passion, its care for physical beauty, +its worship of the body, which penetrated the early literature of Italy, +and finds an echo in Dante. + +That Abelard is not mentioned in the Divine Comedy may appear a singular +omission to the reader of Dante, who seems to have inwoven into the +texture of his work whatever had impressed him as either effective in +colour or spiritually significant among the recorded incidents of actual +life. Nowhere in his great poem do we find the name, nor so much as an +allusion to the story of one who had left so deep a mark on the +philosophy of which Dante was an eager student, of whom in the Latin +Quarter, and from the lips of scholar or teacher in the University of +Paris, during his sojourn among them, he can hardly have failed to hear. +We can only suppose that he had indeed considered the story and the man, +and had abstained from passing judgment as to his place in the scheme +of "eternal justice." In the famous legend of Tannhaeuser, the erring +knight makes his way to Rome, to seek absolution at what was then the +centre of Christian religion. "So soon," thought and said the Pope, "as +the staff in his hand should bud and blossom, so soon might the soul of +Tannhaeuser be saved, and no sooner; and it came to pass not long after +that the dry wood of a staff which the Pope had carried in his hand was +covered with leaves and flowers." So, in the cloister of Godstow a +petrified tree was shown, of which the nuns told that the fair Rosamond, +who had died among them, had declared that, the tree being then alive +and green, it would be changed into stone at the hour of her salvation. +When Abelard died, like Tannhaeuser, he was on his way to Rome: what +might have happened had he reached his journey's end is uncertain; and +it is in this uncertain twilight that his relation to the general +beliefs of his age has always remained. In this, as in other things, he +prefigures the character of the Renaissance, that movement in which, in +various ways, the human mind wins for itself a new kingdom of feeling +and sensation and thought, not opposed to, but only beyond and +independent of the spiritual system then actually realised. The +opposition into which Abelard is thrown, which gives its colour to his +career, which breaks his soul to pieces, is a no less subtle opposition +than that between the merely professional, official, hireling ministers +of that system, with their ignorant worship of system for its own sake, +and the true child of light, the humanist, with reason and heart and +senses quick, while theirs were almost dead. He reaches out towards, he +attains, modes of ideal living, beyond the prescribed limits of that +system, though possibly contained in essential germ within it. As always +happens, the adherents of the poorer and narrower culture had no +sympathy with, because no understanding of, a culture richer and more +ample than their own: after the discovery of wheat they would still live +upon acorns--apres l'invention du ble ils voulaient encore vivre du +gland; and would hear of no service to the higher needs of humanity with +instruments not of their forging. + +But the human spirit, bold through those needs, was too strong for them. +Abelard and Heloise write their letters--letters with a wonderful +outpouring of soul--in medieval Latin; and Abelard, though he composes +songs in the vulgar tongue, writes also in Latin those treatises in +which he tries to find a ground of reality below the abstractions of +philosophy, as one bent on trying all things by their congruity with +human experience, who had felt the hand of Heloise, and looked into her +eyes, and tested the resources of humanity in her great and energetic +nature. Yet it is only a little later, early in the thirteenth century, +that French prose romance begins; and in one of the pretty volumes of +the Bibliotheque Elzevirienne some of the most striking fragments of it +may be found, edited with much intelligence. In one of these +thirteenth-century stories, Li Amitiez de Ami et Amile, that free play +of human affection, of the claims of which Abelard's story is an +assertion, makes itself felt in the incidents of a great friendship, a +friendship pure and generous, pushed to a sort of passionate exaltation, +and more than faithful unto death. Such comradeship, though instances of +it are to be found everywhere, is still especially a classical motive; +Chaucer expressing the sentiment of it so strongly in an antique tale, +that one knows not whether the love of both Palamon and Arcite for +Emelya, or of those two for each other, is the chiefer subject of the +Knight's Tale-- + + He cast his eyen upon Emelya, + And therewithal he bleynte and cried, ah! + As that he stongen were unto the herte. + +What reader does not refer part of the bitterness of that cry to the +spoiling, already foreseen, of that fair friendship, which had hitherto +made the prison of the two lads sweet with its daily offices--though the +friendship is saved at last? + +The friendship of Amis and Amile is deepened by the romantic +circumstance of an entire personal resemblance between the two heroes, +so that they pass for each other again and again, and thereby into many +strange adventures; that curious interest of the Doppelgaenger, which +begins among the stars with the Dioscuri, being entwined in and out +through all the incidents of the story, like an outward token of the +inward similitude of their souls. With this, again, like a second +reflexion of that inward similitude, is connected the conceit of two +marvellously beautiful cups, also exactly like each other--children's +cups, of wood, but adorned with gold and precious stones. These two +cups, which by their resemblance help to bring the friends together at +critical moments, were given to them by the Pope, when he baptized them +at Rome, whither the parents had taken them for that purpose, in +thankfulness for their birth, and cross and recross in the narrative, +serving the two heroes almost like living things, and with that +well-known effect of a beautiful object kept constantly before the eye +in a story or poem, of keeping sensation well awake, and giving a +certain air of refinement to all the scenes into which it enters; with a +heightening also of that sense of fate, which hangs so much of the +shaping of human life on trivial objects, like Othello's strawberry +handkerchief; and witnessing to the enjoyment of beautiful handiwork by +primitive people, almost dazzled by it, so that they give it an oddly +significant place among the factors of a human history. + +Amis and Amile, then, are true to their comradeship through all trials; +and in the end it comes to pass that at a moment of great need Amis +takes the place of Amile in a tournament for life or death. "After this +it happened that a leprosy fell upon Amis, so that his wife would not +approach him, and wrought to strangle him; and he departed from his +home, and at last prayed his servants to carry him to the house of +Amile"; and it is in what follows that the curious strength of the piece +shows itself:-- + +"His servants, willing to do as he commanded, carried him to the place +where Amile was: and they began to sound their rattles before the court +of Amile's house, as lepers are accustomed to do. And when Amile heard +the noise he commanded one of his servants to carry meat and bread to +the sick man, and the cup which was given to him at Rome filled with +good wine. And when the servant had done as he was commanded, he +returned and said, Sir, if I had not thy cup in my hand, I should +believe that the cup which the sick man has was thine, for they are +alike, the one to the other, in height and fashion. And Amile said, Go +quickly and bring him to me. And when Amis stood before his comrade +Amile demanded of him who he was, and how he had gotten that cup. I am +of Briquam le Chastel, answered Amis, and the cup was given to me by the +Bishop of Rome, who baptized me. And when Amile heard that, he knew that +it was his comrade Amis, who had delivered him from death, and won for +him the daughter of the King of France to be his wife. And straightway +he fell upon him, and began to weep greatly, and kissed him. And when +his wife heard that, she ran out with her hair in disarray, weeping and +distressed exceedingly, for she remembered that it was he who had slain +the false Ardres. And thereupon they placed him in a fair bed, and said +to him, Abide with us until God's will be accomplished in thee, for all +that we have is at thy service. So he and the two servants abode with +them. + +"And it came to pass one night, when Amis and Amile lay in one chamber +without other companions, that God sent His angel Raphael to Amis, who +said to him, Amis, art thou asleep? And he, supposing that Amile had +called him, answered and said, I am not asleep, fair comrade! And the +angel said to him, Thou hast answered well, for thou art the comrade of +the heavenly citizens.--I am Raphael, the angel of our Lord, and am come +to tell thee how thou mayest be healed; for thy prayers are heard. Thou +shalt bid Amile, thy comrade, that he slay his two children and wash +thee in their blood, and so thy body shall be made whole. And Amis said +to him, Let not this thing be, that my comrade should become a murderer +for my sake. But the angel said, It is convenient that he do this. And +thereupon the angel departed. + +"And Amile also, as if in sleep, heard those words; and he awoke and +said, Who is it, my comrade, that hath spoken with thee? And Amis +answered, No man; only I have prayed to our Lord, as I am accustomed. +And Amile said, Not so! but some one hath spoken with thee. Then he +arose and went to the door of the chamber; and finding it shut he said, +Tell me, my brother, who it was said those words to thee to-night. And +Amis began to weep greatly, and told him that it was Raphael, the angel +of the Lord, who had said to him, Amis, our Lord commands thee that thou +bid Amile slay his two children, and wash thee in their blood, and thou +shalt be healed of thy leprosy. And Amile was greatly disturbed at those +words, and said, I would have given to thee my man-servants and my +maid-servants and all my goods, and thou feignest that an angel hath +spoken to thee that I should slay my two children. And immediately Amis +began to weep, and said, I know that I have spoken to thee a terrible +thing, but constrained thereto; I pray thee cast me not away from the +shelter of thy house. And Amile answered that what he had covenanted +with him, that he would perform, unto the hour of his death: But I +conjure thee, said he, by the faith which there is between me and thee, +and by our comradeship, and by the baptism we received together at Rome, +that thou tell me whether it was man or angel said that to thee. And +Amis answered, So truly as an angel hath spoken to me this night, so may +God deliver me from my infirmity! + +"Then Amile began to weep in secret, and thought within himself: If this +man was ready to die before the king for me, shall I not for him slay my +children? Shall I not keep faith with him who was faithful to me even +unto death? And Amile tarried no longer, but departed to the chamber of +his wife, and bade her go hear the Sacred Office. And he took a sword, +and went to the bed where the children were lying, and found them +asleep. And he lay down over them and began to weep bitterly and said, +Hath any man yet heard of a father who of his own will slew his +children? Alas, my children! I am no longer your father, but your cruel +murderer. + +"And the children awoke at the tears of their father, which fell upon +them; and they looked up into his face and began to laugh. And as they +were of the age of about three years, he said, Your laughing will be +turned into tears, for your innocent blood must now be shed, and +therewith he cut off their heads. Then he laid them back in the bed, and +put the heads upon the bodies, and covered them as though they were +sleeping: and with the blood which he had taken he washed his comrade, +and said, Lord Jesus Christ! who hast commanded men to keep faith on +earth, and didst heal the leper by Thy word! cleanse now my comrade, for +whose love I have shed the blood of my children. + +"Then Amis was cleansed of his leprosy. And Amile clothed his companion +in his best robes; and as they went to the church to give thanks, the +bells, by the will of God, rang of their own accord. And when the people +of the city heard that, they ran together to see the marvel. And the +wife of Amile, when she saw Amis and Amile coming, began to ask which of +the twain was her husband, and said, I know well the vesture of them +both, but I know not which of them is Amile. And Amile said to her, I am +Amile, and my companion is Amis, who is healed of his sickness. And she +was full of wonder, and desired to know in what manner he was healed. +Give thanks to our Lord, answered Amile, but trouble not thyself as to +the manner of the healing. + +"Now neither the father nor the mother had yet entered where the +children were; but the father sighed heavily because of their death, and +the mother asked for them, that they might rejoice together; but Amile +said, Dame! Let the children sleep. And it was already the hour of +Tierce. And going in alone to the children to weep over them, he found +them at play in the bed; only, in the place of the sword-cuts about +their throats was as it were a thread of crimson. And he took them in +his arms and carried them to his wife and said, Rejoice greatly, for thy +children whom I had slain by the commandment of the angel are alive, and +by their blood is Amis healed." + +There, as I said, is the strength of the old French story. For the +Renaissance has not only the sweetness which it derives from the +classical world, but also that curious strength of which there are great +resources in the true middle age. And as I have illustrated the early +strength of the Renaissance by the story of Amis and Amile, a story +which comes from the North, in which even a certain racy Teutonic +flavour is perceptible, so I shall illustrate that other element of its +early sweetness, a languid excess of sweetness even, by another story +printed in the same volume of the Bibliotheque Elzevirienne, and of +about the same date, a story which comes, characteristically, from the +South, and connects itself with the literature of Provence. + +The central love-poetry of Provence, the poetry of the Tenson and the +Aubade, of Bernard de Ventadour and Pierre Vidal, is poetry for the few, +for the elect and peculiar people of the kingdom of sentiment. But below +this intenser poetry there was probably a wide range of literature, less +serious and elevated, reaching, by lightness of form and comparative +homeliness of interest, an audience which the concentrated passion of +those higher lyrics left untouched. This literature has long since +perished, or lives only in later French or Italian versions. One such +version, the only representative of its species, M. Fauriel thought he +detected in the story of Aucassin and Nicolette, written in the French +of the latter half of the thirteenth century, and preserved in a unique +manuscript, in the national library of Paris; and there were reasons +which made him divine for it a still more ancient ancestry, traces in it +of an Arabian origin, as in a leaf lost out of some early Arabian +Nights.* The little book loses none of its interest through the +criticism which finds in it only a traditional subject, handed on by one +people to another; for after passing thus from hand to hand, its outline +is still clear, its surface untarnished; and, like many other stories, +books, literary and artistic conceptions of the middle age, it has come +to have in this way a sort of personal history, almost as full of risk +and adventure as that of its own heroes. The writer himself calls the +piece a cantefable, a tale told in prose, but with its incidents and +sentiment helped forward by songs, inserted at irregular intervals. In +the junctions of the story itself there are signs of roughness and want +of skill, which make one suspect that the prose was only put together to +connect a series of songs--a series of songs so moving and attractive +that people wished to heighten and dignify their effect by a regular +framework or setting. Yet the songs themselves are of the simplest kind, +not rhymed even, but only imperfectly assonant, stanzas of twenty or +thirty lines apiece, all ending with a similar vowel sound. And here, as +elsewhere in that early poetry, much of the interest lies in the +spectacle of the formation of a new artistic sense. A new music is +arising, the music of rhymed poetry, and in the songs of Aucassin and +Nicolette, which seem always on the point of passing into true rhyme, +but which halt somehow, and can never quite take flight, you see people +just growing aware of the elements of a new music in their possession, +and anticipating how pleasant such music might become. The piece was +probably intended to be recited by a company of trained performers, many +of whom, at least for the lesser parts, were probably children. The +songs are introduced by the rubric, Or se cante (ici on chante); and +each division of prose by the rubric, Or dient et content et fabloient +(ici on conte). The musical notes of part of the songs have been +preserved; and some of the details are so descriptive that they +suggested to M. Fauriel the notion that the words had been accompanied +throughout by dramatic action. That mixture of simplicity and refinement +which he was surprised to find in a composition of the thirteenth +century, is shown sometimes in the turn given to some passing expression +or remark; thus, "the Count de Garins was old and frail, his time was +over"--Li quens Garins de Beaucaire estoit vix et frales; si avoit son +tans trespasse. And then, all is so realised! One still sees the ancient +forest, with its disused roads grown deep with grass, and the place +where seven roads meet--u a forkeut set cemin qui s'en vont par le pais; +we hear the light-hearted country people calling each other by their +rustic names, and putting forward, as their spokesman, one among them +who is more eloquent and ready than the rest--li un qui plus fu enparles +des autres; for the little book has its burlesque element also, so that +one hears the faint, far-off laughter still. Rough as it is, the piece +certainly possesses this high quality of poetry, that it aims at a +purely artistic effect. Its subject is a great sorrow, yet it claims to +be a thing of joy and refreshment, to be entertained not for its matter +only, but chiefly for its manner; it is cortois, it tells us, et bien +assis. + +*Recently, Aucassin and Nicolette has been edited and translated into +English, with much graceful scholarship, by Mr. F. W. Bourdillon. More +recently still we have had a translation--a poet's translation--from the +ingenious and versatile pen of Mr. Andrew Lang. The reader should +consult also the chapter on "The Out-door Poetry," in Vernon Lee's most +interesting Euphorion; being Studies of the Antique and Mediaeval in the +Renaissance, a work abounding in knowledge and insight on the subjects +of which it treats. + +For the student of manners, and of the old language and literature, it +has much interest of a purely antiquarian order. To say of an ancient +literary composition that it has an antiquarian interest, often means +that it has no distinct aesthetic interest for the reader of to-day. +Antiquarianism, by a purely historical effort, by putting its object in +perspective, and setting the reader in a certain point of view, from +which what gave pleasure to the past is pleasurable for him also, may +often add greatly to the charm we receive from ancient literature. But +the first condition of such aid must be a real, direct, aesthetic charm +in the thing itself; unless it has that charm, unless some purely +artistic quality went to its original making, no merely antiquarian +effort can ever give it an aesthetic value, or make it a proper subject +of aesthetic criticism. This quality, wherever it exists, it is always +pleasant to define, and discriminate from the sort of borrowed interest +which an old play, or an old story, may very likely acquire through a +true antiquarianism. The story of Aucassin and Nicolette has something +of this quality. Aucassin, the only son of Count Garins of Beaucaire, is +passionately in love with Nicolette, a beautiful girl of unknown +parentage, bought of the Saracens, whom his father will not permit him +to marry. The story turns on the adventures of these two lovers, until +at the end of the piece their mutual fidelity is rewarded. These +adventures are of the simplest sort, adventures which seem to be chosen +for the happy occasion they afford of keeping the eye of the fancy, +perhaps the outward eye, fixed on pleasant objects, a garden, a ruined +tower, the little hut of flowers which Nicolette constructs in the +forest whither she has escaped from her enemies, as a token to Aucassin +that she has passed that way. All the charm of the piece is in its +details, in a turn of peculiar lightness and grace given to the +situations and traits of sentiment, especially in its quaint fragments +of early French prose. + +All through it one feels the influence of that faint air of overwrought +delicacy, almost of wantonness, which was so strong a characteristic of +the poetry of the Troubadours. The Troubadours themselves were often men +of great rank; they wrote for an exclusive audience, people of much +leisure and great refinement, and they came to value a type of personal +beauty which has in it but little of the influence of the open air and +sunshine. There is a languid Eastern deliciousness in the very scenery +of the story, the full-blown roses, the chamber painted in some +mysterious manner where Nicolette is imprisoned, the cool brown marble, +the almost nameless colours, the odour of plucked grass and flowers. +Nicolette herself well becomes this scenery, and is the best +illustration of the quality I mean--the beautiful, weird, foreign girl, +whom the shepherds take for a fay, who has the knowledge of simples, the +healing and beautifying qualities of leaves and flowers, whose skilful +touch heals Aucassin's sprained shoulder, so that he suddenly leaps from +the ground; the mere sight of whose white flesh, as she passed the place +where he lay, healed a pilgrim stricken with sore disease, so that he +rose up, and returned to his own country. With this girl Aucassin is so +deeply in love that he forgets all his knightly duties. At last +Nicolette is shut up to get her out of his way, and perhaps the +prettiest passage in the whole piece is the fragment of prose which +describes her escape from this place:-- + +"Aucassin was put in prison, as you have heard, and Nicolette remained +shut up in her chamber. It was summer-time, in the month of May, when +the days are warm and long and clear, and the nights coy and serene. + +"One night Nicolette, lying on her bed, saw the moon shine clear through +the little window, and heard the nightingale sing in the garden, and +then came the memory of Aucassin, whom she so much loved. She thought of +the Count Garins of Beaucaire, who so mortally hated her, and, to be rid +of her, might at any moment cause her to be burned or drowned. She +perceived that the old woman who kept her company was asleep; she rose +and put on the fairest gown she had; she took the bed-clothes and the +towels, and knotted them together like a cord, as far as they would go. +Then she tied the end to a pillar of the window, and let herself slip +down quite softly into the garden, and passed straight across it, to +reach the town. + +"Her hair was yellow in small curls, her smiling eyes blue-green, her +face clear and feat, the little lips very red, the teeth small and +white; and the daisies which she crushed in passing, holding her skirt +high behind and before, looked dark against her feet; the girl was so +white! + +"She came to the garden-gate and opened it, and walked through the +streets of Beaucaire, keeping on the dark side of the way to avoid the +light of the moon, which shone quietly in the sky. She walked as fast as +she could, until she came to the tower where Aucassin was. The tower was +set about with pillars, here and there. She pressed herself against one +of the pillars, wrapped herself closely in her mantle, and putting her +face to a chink of the tower, which was old and ruined, she heard +Aucassin crying bitterly within, and when she had listened awhile she +began to speak." + +But scattered up and down through this lighter matter, always tinged +with humour and often passing into burlesque, which makes up the general +substance of the piece, there are morsels of a different quality, +touches of some intenser sentiment, coming it would seem from the +profound and energetic spirit of the Provencal poetry itself, to which +the inspiration of the book has been referred. Let me gather up these +morsels of deeper colour, these expressions of the ideal intensity of +love, the motive which really unites together the fragments of the +little composition. Dante, the perfect flower of ideal love, has +recorded how the tyranny of that "Lord of terrible aspect" became +actually physical, blinding his senses, and suspending his bodily +forces. In this Dante is but the central expression and type of +experiences known well enough to the initiated, in that passionate age. +Aucassin represents this ideal intensity of passion-- + + Aucassin, li biax, li blons, + Li gentix, li amorous; + +the slim, tall, debonair figure, dansellon, as the singers call him, +with curled yellow hair, and eyes of vair, who faints with love, as +Dante fainted, who rides all day through the forest in search of +Nicolette, while the thorns tear his flesh, so that one night have +traced him by the blood upon the grass, and who weeps at evening because +he has not found her--who has the malady of his love, so that he +neglects all knightly duties. Once he is induced to put himself at the +head of his people, that they, seeing him before them, might have more +heart to defend themselves; then a song relates how the sweet, grave +figure goes forth to battle, in dainty, tight-laced armour. It is the +very image of the Provencal love-god, no longer a child, but grown to +pensive youth, as Pierre Vidal met him, riding on a white horse, fair as +the morning, his vestment embroidered with flowers. He rode on through +the gates into the open plain beyond. But as he went, that great malady +of his love came upon him, so that the bridle fell from his hands; and +like one who sleeps walking, he was carried on into the midst of his +enemies, and heard them talking together how they might most +conveniently kill him. + +One of the strongest characteristics of that outbreak of the reason and +the imagination, of that assertion of the liberty of the heart, in the +middle age, which I have termed a medieval Renaissance, was its +antinomianism, its spirit of rebellion and revolt against the moral and +religious ideas of the time. In their search after the pleasures of the +senses and the imagination, in their care for beauty, in their worship +of the body, people were impelled beyond the bounds of the Christian +ideal; and their love became sometimes a strange idolatry, a strange +rival religion. It was the return of that ancient Venus, not dead, but +only hidden for a time in the caves of the Venusberg, of those old pagan +gods still going to and fro on the earth, under all sorts of disguises. +And this element in the middle age, for the most part ignored by those +writers who have treated it pre-eminently as the "Age of Faith"--this +rebellious and antinomian element, the recognition of which has made the +delineation of the middle age by the writers of the Romantic school in +France, by Victor Hugo for instance in Notre-Dame de Paris, so +suggestive and exciting, is found alike in the history of Abelard and +the legend of Tannhaeuser. More and more, as we come to mark changes and +distinctions of temper in what is often in one all-embracing confusion +called the middle age, this rebellious element, this sinister claim for +liberty of heart and thought, comes to the surface. The Albigensian +movement, connected so strangely with the history of Provencal poetry, +is deeply tinged with it. A touch of it makes the Franciscan order, with +its poetry, its mysticism, its "illumination," from the point of view of +religious authority, justly suspect. It influences the thoughts of those +obscure prophetical writers, like Joachim of Flora, strange dreamers in +a world of flowery rhetoric of that third and final dispensation of a +"spirit of freedom," in which law shall have passed away. Of this spirit +Aucassin and Nicolette contains perhaps the most famous expression: it +is the answer Aucassin gives when he is threatened with the pains of +hell, if he makes Nicolette his mistress. A creature wholly of affection +and the senses, he sees on the way to paradise only a feeble company of +aged priests, "clinging day and night to the chapel altars," barefoot or +in patched sandals. With or even without Nicolette, "his sweet mistress +whom he so much loves," he, for his part, is ready to start on the way +to hell, along with "the good scholars," as he says, and the actors, and +the fine horsemen dead in battle, and the men of fashion,* and "the fair +courteous ladies who had two or three chevaliers apiece beside their own +true lords," all gay with music, in their gold and silver and beautiful +furs--"the vair and the grey." + +*Parage, peerage--which came to signify all that ambitious youth +affected most on the outside of life, in that old world of the +Troubadours, with whom this term is of frequent recurrence. + +But in the House Beautiful the saints too have their place; and the +student of the Renaissance has this advantage over the student of the +emancipation of the human mind in the Reformation, or the French +Revolution, that in tracing the footsteps of humanity to higher levels, +he is not beset at every turn by the inflexibilities and antagonisms of +some well-recognised controversy, with rigidly defined opposites, +exhausting the intelligence and limiting one's sympathies. The +opposition of the professional defenders of a mere system to that more +sincere and general play of the forces of human mind and character, +which I have noted as the secret of Abelard's struggle, is indeed always +powerful. But the incompatibility of souls really "fair" is not +essential; and within the enchanted region of the Renaissance, one needs +not be for ever on one's guard: here there are no fixed parties, no +exclusions: all breathes of that unity of culture in which "whatsoever +things are comely" are reconciled, for the elevation and adorning of our +spirits. And just in proportion as those who took part in the +Renaissance become centrally representative of it, just so much the more +is this condition realised in them. The wicked popes, and the loveless +tyrants, who from time to time became its patrons, or mere speculators +in its fortunes, lend themselves easily to disputations, and, from this +side or that, the spirit of controversy lays just hold upon them. But +the painter of the Last Supper, with his kindred, live in a land where +controversy has no breathing-place, and refuse to be classified. In the +story of Aucassin and Nicolette, in the literature which it represents, +the note of defiance, of the opposition of one system to another, is +sometimes harsh: let me conclude with a morsel from Amis and Amile, in +which the harmony of human interests is still entire. For the story of +the great traditional friendship, in which, as I said, the liberty of +the heart makes itself felt, seems, as we have it, to have been written +by a monk--La vie des saints martyrs Amis et Amile. It was not till the +end of the seventeenth century that their names were finally excluded +from the martyrology; and their story ends with this monkish miracle of +earthly comradeship, more than faithful unto death:-- + +"For, as God had united them in their lives in one accord, so they were +not divided in their death, falling together side by side, with a host +of other brave men, in battle for King Charles at Mortara, so called +from that great slaughter. And the bishops gave counsel to the king and +queen that they should bury the dead, and build a church in that place; +and their counsel pleased the king greatly; and there were built there +two churches, the one by commandment of the king in honour of Saint +Oseige, and the other by commandment of the queen in honour of Saint +Peter. + +"And the king caused the two chests of stone to be brought in the which +the bodies of Amis and Amile lay; and Amile was carried to the church of +Saint Peter, and Amis to the church of Saint Oseige; and the other +corpses were buried, some in one place and some in the other. But lo! +next morning, the body of Amile in his coffin was found lying in the +church of Saint Oseige, beside the coffin of Amis his comrade. Behold +then this wondrous amity, which by death could not be dissevered! + +"This miracle God did, who gave to His disciples power to remove +mountains. And by reason of this miracle the king and queen remained in +that place for a space of thirty days, and performed the offices of the +dead who were slain, and honoured the said churches with great gifts: +and the bishop ordained many clerks to serve in the church of Saint +Oseige, and commanded them that they should guard duly, with great +devotion, the bodies of the two companions, Amis and Amile." + +1872. + + + +PICO DELLA MIRANDOLA + +No account of the Renaissance can be complete without some notice of the +attempt made by certain Italian scholars of the fifteenth century to +reconcile Christianity with the religion of ancient Greece. To reconcile +forms of sentiment which at first sight seem incompatible, to adjust the +various products of the human mind to each other in one many-sided type +of intellectual culture, to give humanity, for heart and imagination to +feed upon, as much as it could possibly receive, belonged to the +generous instincts of that age. An earlier and simpler generation had +seen in the gods of Greece so many malignant spirits, the defeated but +still living centres of the religion of darkness, struggling, not always +in vain, against the kingdom of light. Little by little, as the natural +charm of pagan story reasserted itself over minds emerging out of +barbarism, the religious significance which had once belonged to it was +lost sight of, and it came to be regarded as the subject of a purely +artistic or poetical treatment. But it was inevitable that from time to +time minds should arise, deeply enough impressed by its beauty and power +to ask themselves whether the religion of Greece was indeed a rival of +the religion of Christ; for the older gods had rehabilitated themselves, +and men's allegiance was divided. And the fifteenth century was an +impassioned age, so ardent and serious in its pursuit of art that it +consecrated everything with which art had to do as a religious object. +The restored Greek literature had made it familiar, at least in Plato, +with a style of expression concerning the earlier gods, which had about +it much of the warmth and unction of a Christian hymn. It was too +familiar with such language to regard mythology as a mere story; and it +was too serious to play with a religion. + +"Let me briefly remind the reader"--says Heine, in the Gods in Exile, an +essay full of that strange blending of sentiment which is characteristic +of the traditions of the middle age concerning the pagan religions--"how +the gods of the older world, at the time of the definite triumph of +Christianity, that is, in the third century, fell into painful +embarrassments, which greatly resembled certain tragical situations of +their earlier life. They now found themselves beset by the same +troublesome necessities to which they had once before been exposed +during the primitive ages, in that revolutionary epoch when the Titans +broke out of the custody of Orcus, and, piling Pelion on Ossa, scaled +Olympus. Unfortunate Gods! They had then to take flight ignominiously, +and hide themselves among us here on earth, under all sorts of +disguises. The larger number betook themselves to Egypt, where for +greater security they assumed the forms of animals, as is generally +known. Just in the same way, they had to take flight again, and seek +entertainment in remote hiding-places, when those iconoclastic zealots, +the black brood of monks, broke down all the temples, and pursued the +gods with fire and curses. Many of these unfortunate emigrants, now +entirely deprived of shelter and ambrosia, must needs take to vulgar +handicrafts, as a means of earning their bread. Under these +circumstances, many whose sacred groves had been confiscated, let +themselves out for hire as wood-cutters in Germany, and were forced to +drink beer instead of nectar. Apollo seems to have been content to take +service under graziers, and as he had once kept the cows of Admetus, so +he lived now as a shepherd in Lower Austria. Here, however, having +become suspected on account of his beautiful singing, he was recognised +by a learned monk as one of the old pagan gods, and handed over to the +spiritual tribunal. On the rack he confessed that he was the god Apollo; +and before his execution he begged that he might be suffered to play +once more upon the lyre, and to sing a song. And he played so +touchingly, and sang with such magic, and was withal so beautiful in +form and feature, that all the women wept, and many of them were so +deeply impressed that they shortly afterwards fell sick. And some time +afterwards the people wished to drag him from the grave again, so that a +stake might be driven through his body, in the belief that he had been a +vampire, and that the sick women would by this means recover. But they +found the grave empty." + +The Renaissance of the fifteenth century was, in many things, great +rather by what it designed than by what it achieved. Much which it +aspired to do, and did but imperfectly or mistakenly, was accomplished +in what is called the eclaircissement of the eighteenth century, or in +our own generation; and what really belongs to the rival of the +fifteenth century is but the leading instinct, the curiosity, the +initiatory idea. It is so with this very question of the reconciliation +of the religion of antiquity with the religion of Christ. A modern +scholar occupied by this problem might observe that all religions may be +regarded as natural products; that, at least in their origin, their +growth, and decay, they have common laws, and are not to be isolated +from the other movements of the human mind in the periods in which they +respectively prevailed; that they arise spontaneously out of the human +mind, as expressions of the varying phases of its sentiment concerning +the unseen world; that every intellectual product must be judged from +the point of view of the age and the people in which it was produced. +He might go on to observe that each has contributed something to the +development of the religious sense, and ranging them as so many stages +in the gradual education of the human mind, justify the existence of +each. The basis of the reconciliation of the religions of the world +would thus be the inexhaustible activity and creativeness of the human +mind itself, in which all religions alike have their root, and in +which all alike are reconciled; just as the fancies of childhood and the +thoughts of old age meet and are laid to rest, in the experience of the +individual. Far different was the method followed by the scholars of the +fifteenth century. They lacked the very rudiments of the historic sense, +which, by an imaginative act, throws itself back into a world unlike +one's own, and estimates every intellectual creation in its connexion +with the age from which it proceeded; they had no idea of development, +of the differences of ages, of the gradual education of the human race. +In their attempts to reconcile the religions of the world, they were +thus thrown back upon the quicksand of allegorical interpretation. The +religions of the world were to be reconciled, not as successive stages, +in a gradual development of the religious sense, but as subsisting side +by side, and substantially in agreement with each other. And here the +first necessity was to misrepresent the language, the conceptions, the +sentiments, it was proposed to compare and reconcile. Plato and Homer +must be made to speak agreeably to Moses. Set side by side, the mere +surfaces could never unite in any harmony of design. Therefore one must +go below the surface, and bring up the supposed secondary, or still more +remote meaning, that diviner signification held in reserve, in recessu +divinius aliquid, latent in some stray touch of Homer, or figure of +speech in the books of Moses. + +And yet as a curiosity of the human mind, a "madhouse-cell," if you +will, into which we peep for a moment, and see it at work weaving +strange fancies, the allegorical interpretation of the fifteenth century +has its interest. With its strange web of imagery, its quaint conceits, +its unexpected combinations and subtle moralising, it is an element in +the local colour of a great age. It illustrates also the faith of that +age in all oracles, its desire to hear all voices, its generous belief +that nothing which had ever interested the human mind could wholly lose +its vitality. It is the counterpart, though certainly the feebler +counterpart, of that practical truce and reconciliation of the gods of +Greece with the Christian religion, which is seen in the art of the +time; and it is for his share in this work, and because his own story is +a sort of analogue or visible equivalent to the expression of this +purpose in his writings, that something of a general interest still +belongs to the name of Pico della Mirandola, whose life, written by his +nephew Francis, seemed worthy, for some touch of sweetness in it, to be +translated out of the original Latin by Sir Thomas More, that great +lover of Italian culture, among whose works this life of Pico, Earl +of Mirandola, and a great lord of Italy, as he calls him, may still be +read, in its quaint, antiquated English. + +Marsilio Ficino has told us how Pico came to Florence. It was the very +day--some day probably in the year 1482--on which Ficino had finished +his famous translation of Plato into Latin, the work to which he had +been dedicated from childhood by Cosmo de' Medici, in furtherance of his +desire to resuscitate the knowledge of Plato among his fellow-citizens. +Florence indeed, as M. Renan has pointed out, had always had an affinity +for the mystic and dreamy philosophy of Plato, while the colder and more +practical philosophy of Aristotle had flourished in Padua, and other +cities of the north; and the Florentines, though they knew perhaps very +little about him, had had the name of the great idealist often on their +lips. To increase this knowledge, Cosmo had founded the Platonic +academy, with periodical discussions at the villa of Careggi. The fall +of Constantinople in 1453, and the council in 1438 for the +reconciliation of the Greek and Latin Churches, had brought to Florence +many a needy Greek scholar. And now the work was completed, the door of +the mystical temple lay open to all who could construe Latin, and the +scholar rested from his labour; when there was introduced into his +study, where a lamp burned continually before the bust of Plato, as +other men burned lamps before their favourite saints, a young man fresh +from a journey, "of feature and shape seemly and beauteous, of stature +goodly and high, of flesh tender and soft, his visage lovely and fair, +his colour white, intermingled with comely reds, his eyes grey, and +quick of look, his teeth white and even, his hair yellow and abundant," +and trimmed with more than the usual artifice of the time. It is thus +that Sir Thomas More translates the words of the biographer of Pico, +who, even in outward form and appearance, seems an image of that inward +harmony and completeness, of which he is so perfect an example. The word +mystic has been usually derived from a Greek word which signifies to +shut, as if one shut one's lips, brooding on what cannot be uttered; but +the Platonists themselves derive it rather from the act of shutting the +eyes, that one may see the more, inwardly. Perhaps the eyes of the +mystic Ficino, now long past the midway of life, had come to be thus +half-closed; but when a young man, not unlike the archangel Raphael, as +the Florentines of that age depicted him in his wonderful walk with +Tobit, or Mercury, as he might have appeared in a painting by Sandro +Botticelli or Piero di Cosimo, entered his chamber, he seems to have +thought there was something not wholly earthly about him; at least, he +ever afterwards believed that it was not without the co-operation of the +stars that the stranger had arrived on that day. For it happened that +they fell into a conversation, deeper and more intimate than men usually +fall into at first sight. During this conversation Ficino formed the +design of devoting his remaining years to the translation of Plotinus, +that new Plato, in whom the mystical element in the Platonic philosophy +had been worked out to the utmost limit of vision and ecstasy; and it is +in dedicating this translation to Lorenzo de' Medici that Ficino has +recorded these incidents. + +It was after many wanderings, wanderings of the intellect as well as +physical journeys, that Pico came to rest at Florence. He was then about +twenty years old, having been born in 1463. He was called Giovanni at +baptism; Pico, like all his ancestors, from Picus, nephew of the Emperor +Constantine, from whom they claimed to be descended; and Mirandola, from +the place of his birth, a little town afterwards part of the duchy of +Modena, of which small territory his family had long been the feudal +lords. Pico was the youngest of the family, and his mother, delighting +in his wonderful memory, sent him at the age of fourteen to the famous +school of law at Bologna. From the first, indeed, she seems to have had +some presentiment of his future fame, for, with a faith in omens +characteristic of her time, she believed that a strange circumstance had +happened at the time of Pico's birth--the appearance of a circular flame +which suddenly vanished away, on the wall of the chamber where she lay. +He remained two years at Bologna; and then, with an inexhaustible, +unrivalled thirst for knowledge, the strange, confused, uncritical +learning of that age, passed through the principal schools of Italy and +France, penetrating, as he thought, into the secrets of all ancient +philosophies, and many eastern languages. And with this flood of +erudition came the generous hope, so often disabused, of reconciling the +philosophers with each other, and all alike with the Church. At last he +came to Rome. There, like some knight-errant of philosophy, he offered +to defend nine hundred bold paradoxes, drawn from the most opposite +sources, against all comers. But the pontifical court was led to suspect +the orthodoxy of some of these propositions, and even the reading of the +book which contained them was forbidden by the Pope. It was not until +1493 that Pico was finally absolved, by a brief of Alexander the Sixth. +Ten years before that date he had arrived at Florence; an early instance +of those who, after following the vain hope of an impossible +reconciliation from system to system, have at last fallen back +unsatisfied on the simplicities of their childhood's belief. + +The oration which Pico composed for the opening of this philosophical +tournament still remains; its subject is the dignity of human nature, +the greatness of man. In common with nearly all medieval speculation, +much of Pico's writing has this for its drift; and in common also with +it, Pico's theory of that dignity is founded on a misconception of the +place in nature both of the earth and of man. For Pico the earth is the +centre of the universe: and around it, as a fixed and motionless point, +the sun and moon and stars revolve, like diligent servants or ministers. +And in the midst of all is placed man, nodus et vinculum mundi, the bond +or copula of the world, and the "interpreter of nature": that famous +expression of Bacon's really belongs to Pico. Tritum est in scholis, he +says, esse hominem minorem mundum, in quo mixtum ex elementis corpus et +spiritus coelestis et plantarum anima vegetalis et brutorum sensus et +ratio et angelica mens et Dei similitudo conspicitur.--"It is a +commonplace of the schools that man is a little world, in which we may +discern a body mingled of earthy elements, and ethereal breath, and the +vegetable life of plants, and the senses of the lower animals, and +reason, and the intelligence of angels, and a likeness to God."--A +commonplace of the schools! But perhaps it had some new significance and +authority, when men heard one like Pico reiterate it; and, false as its +basis was, the theory had its use. For this high dignity of man, thus +bringing the dust under his feet into sensible communion with the +thoughts and affections of the angels, was supposed to belong to him, +not as renewed by a religious system, but by his own natural right. The +proclamation of it was a counterpoise to the increasing tendency of +medieval religion to depreciate man's nature, to sacrifice this or that +element in it, to make it ashamed of itself, to keep the degrading or +painful accidents of it always in view. It helped man onward to that +reassertion of himself, that rehabilitation of human nature, the body, +the senses, the heart, the intelligence, which the Renaissance fulfils. +And yet to read a page of one of Pico's forgotten books is like a glance +into one of those ancient sepulchres, upon which the wanderer in +classical lands has sometimes stumbled, with the old disused ornaments +and furniture of a world wholly unlike ours still fresh in them. That +whole conception of nature is so different from our own. For Pico the +world is a limited place, bounded by actual crystal walls, and a +material firmament; it is like a painted toy, like that map or system of +the world, held, as a great target or shield, in the hands of the +grey-headed father of all things, in one of the earlier frescoes of the +Campo Santo at Pisa. How different from this childish dream is our own +conception of nature, with its unlimited space, its innumerable suns, +and the earth but a mote in the beam; how different the strange new awe, +or superstition, with which it fills our minds! "The silence of those +infinite spaces," says Pascal, contemplating a starlight night, "the +silence of those infinite spaces terrifies me"--Le silence eternel de +ces espaces infinis m'effraie. + +He was already almost wearied out when he came to Florence. He had loved +much and been beloved by women, "wandering over the crooked hills of +delicious pleasure"; but their reign over him was over, and long before +Savonarola's famous "bonfire of vanities," he had destroyed those +love-songs in the vulgar tongue, which would have been such a relief to +us, after the scholastic prolixity of his Latin writings. It was in +another spirit that he composed a Platonic commentary, the only work of +his in Italian which has come down to us, on the "Song of Divine +Love"--secondo la mente ed opinione dei Platonici--"according to the +mind and opinion of the Platonists," by his friend Hieronymo Beniveni, +in which, with an ambitious array of every sort of learning, and a +profusion of imagery borrowed indifferently from the astrologers, the +Cabala, and Homer, and Scripture, and Dionysius the Areopagite, he +attempts to define the stages by which the soul passes from the earthly +to the unseen beauty. A change indeed had passed over him, as if the +chilling touch of the abstract and disembodied beauty Platonists profess +to long for was already upon him; and perhaps it was a sense of this, +coupled with that over-brightness which in the popular imagination +always betokens an early death, that made Camilla Rucellai, one of those +prophetic women whom the preaching of Savonarola had raised up in +Florence, declare, seeing him for the first time, that he would depart +in the time of lilies--prematurely, that is, like the field-flowers +which are withered by the scorching sun almost as soon as they are +sprung up. It was now that he wrote down those thoughts on the religious +life which Sir Thomas More turned into English, and which another +English translator thought worthy to be added to the books of the +Imitation. "It is not hard to know God, provided one will not force +oneself to define Him":--has been thought a great saying of Joubert's. +"Love God," Pico writes to Angelo Politian, "we rather may, than either +know Him, or by speech utter Him. And yet had men liefer by knowledge +never find that which they seek, than by love possess that thing, which +also without love were in vain found." + +Yet he who had this fine touch for spiritual things did not--and in this +is the enduring interest of his story--even after his conversion, forget +the old gods. He is one of the last who seriously and sincerely +entertained the claims on men's faith of the pagan religions; he is +anxious to ascertain the true significance of the obscurest legend, the +lightest tradition concerning them. With many thoughts and many +influences which led him in that direction, he did not become a monk; +only he became gentle and patient in disputation; retaining "somewhat of +the old plenty, in dainty viand and silver vessel," he gave over the +greater part of his property to his friend, the mystical poet Beniveni, +to be spent by him in works of charity, chiefly in the sweet charity of +providing marriage-dowries for the peasant girls of Florence. His end +came in 1494, when, amid the prayers and sacraments of Savonarola, he +died of fever, on the very day on which Charles the Eighth entered +Florence, the seventeenth of November, yet in the time of lilies--the +lilies of the shield of France, as the people now said, remembering +Camilla's prophecy. He was buried in the cloister at Saint Mark's, in +the hood and white frock of the Dominican order. + +It is because the life of Pico, thus lying down to rest in the +Dominican habit, yet amid thoughts of the older gods, himself like one +of those comely divinities, reconciled indeed to the new religion, but +still with a tenderness for the earlier life, and desirous literally to +"bind the ages each to each by natural piety"--it is because this life +is so perfect a parallel to the attempt made in his writings to +reconcile Christianity with the ideas of paganism, that Pico, in spite +of the scholastic character of those writings, is really interesting. +Thus, in the Heptaplus, or Discourse on the Seven Days of the Creation, +he endeavours to reconcile the accounts which pagan philosophy had given +of the origin of the world with the account given in the books of +Moses--the Timaeus of Plato with the book of Genesis. The Heptaplus is +dedicated to Lorenzo the Magnificent, whose interest, the preface tells +us, in the secret wisdom of Moses is well known. If Moses seems in his +writings simple and even popular, rather than either a philosopher or a +theologian, that is because it was an institution with the ancient +philosophers, either not to speak of divine things at all, or to speak +of them dissemblingly: hence their doctrines were called mysteries. +Taught by them, Pythagoras became so great a "master of silence," and +wrote almost nothing, thus hiding the words of God in his heart, and +speaking wisdom only among the perfect. In explaining the harmony +between Plato and Moses, Pico lays hold on every sort of figure and +analogy, on the double meanings of words, the symbols of the Jewish +ritual, the secondary meanings of obscure stories in the later Greek +mythologists. Everywhere there is an unbroken system of correspondences. +Every object in the terrestrial world is an analogue, a symbol or +counterpart, of some higher reality in the starry heavens, and this +again of some law of the angelic life in the world beyond the stars. +There is the element of fire in the material world; the sun is the fire +of heaven; and in the super-celestial world there is the fire of the +seraphic intelligence. "But behold how they differ! The elementary fire +burns, the heavenly fire vivifies, the super-celestial fire loves." In +this way, every natural object, every combination of natural forces, +every accident in the lives of men, is filled with higher meanings. +Omens, prophecies, supernatural coincidences, accompany Pico himself all +through life. There are oracles in every tree and mountain-top, and a +significance in every accidental combination of the events of life. + +This constant tendency to symbolism and imagery gives Pico's work a +figured style, by which it has some real resemblance to Plato's, and he +differs from other mystical writers of his time by a real desire to know +his authorities at first hand. He reads Plato in Greek, Moses in Hebrew, +and by this his work really belongs to the higher culture. Above all, we +have a constant sense in reading him, that his thoughts, however little +their positive value may be, are connected with springs beneath them of +deep and passionate emotion; and when he explains the grades or steps by +which the soul passes from the love of a physical object to the love of +unseen beauty, and unfolds the analogies between this process and other +movements upward of human thought, there is a glow and vehemence in his +words which remind one of the manner in which his own brief existence +flamed itself away. + +I said that the Renaissance of the fifteenth century was in many things +great, rather by what it designed or aspired to do, than by what it +actually achieved. It remained for a later age to conceive the true +method of effecting a scientific reconciliation of Christian sentiment +with the imagery, the legends, the theories about the world, of pagan +poetry and philosophy. For that age the only possible reconciliation was +an imaginative one, and resulted from the efforts of artists, trained in +Christian schools, to handle pagan subjects; and of this artistic +reconciliation work like Pico's was but the feebler counterpart. +Whatever philosophers had to say on one side or the other, whether they +were successful or not in their attempts to reconcile the old to the +new, and to justify the expenditure of so much care and thought on the +dreams of a dead faith, the imagery of the Greek religion, the direct +charm of its story, were by artists valued and cultivated for their own +sake. Hence a new sort of mythology, with a tone and qualities of its +own. When the ship-load of sacred earth from the soil of Jerusalem was +mingled with the common clay in the Campo Santo at Pisa, a new flower +grew up from it, unlike any flower men had seen before, the anemone with +its concentric rings of strangely blended colour, still to be found by +those who search long enough for it, in the long grass of the Maremma. +Just such a strange flower was that mythology of the Italian +Renaissance, which grew up from the mixture of two traditions, two +sentiments, the sacred and the profane. Classical story was regarded as +so much imaginative material to be received and assimilated. It did not +come into men's minds to ask curiously of science concerning its origin, +its primary form and import, its meaning for those who projected it. It +sank into their minds, to issue forth again with all the tangle about it +of medieval sentiment and ideas. In the Doni Madonna in the Tribune of +the Uffizii, Michelangelo actually brings the pagan religion, and with +it the unveiled human form, the sleepy-looking fauns of a Dionysiac +revel, into the presence of the Madonna, as simpler painters had +introduced there other products of the earth, birds or flowers; and he +has given to that Madonna herself much of the uncouth energy of the +older and more primitive "Mighty Mother." + +It is because this picturesque union of contrasts, belonging properly to +the art of the close of the fifteenth century, pervades, in Pico della +Mirandola, an actual person, that the figure of Pico is so attractive. +He will not let one go; he wins one on, in spite of oneself, to turn +again to the pages of his forgotten books, although we know already that +the actual solution proposed in them will satisfy us as little as +perhaps it satisfied him. It is said that in his eagerness for +mysterious learning he once paid a great sum for a collection of +cabalistic manuscripts, which turned out to be forgeries; and the story +might well stand as a parable of all he ever seemed to gain in the way +of actual knowledge. He had sought knowledge, and passed from system to +system, and hazarded much; but less for the sake of positive knowledge +than because he believed there was a spirit of order and beauty in +knowledge, which would come down and unite what men's ignorance had +divided, and renew what time had made dim. And so, while his actual work +has passed away, yet his own qualities are still active, and he himself +remains, as one alive in the grave, caesiis et vigilibus oculis, as his +biographer describes him, and with that sanguine, clear skin, decenti +rubore interspersa, as with the light of morning upon it; and he has a +true place in that group of great Italians who fill the end of the +fifteenth century with their names, he is a true HUMANIST. For the +essence of humanism is that belief of which he seems never to have +doubted, that nothing which has ever interested living men and women can +wholly lose its vitality--no language they have spoken, nor oracle +beside which they have hushed their voices, no dream which has once been +entertained by actual human minds, nothing about which they have ever +been passionate, or expended time and zeal. + +1871. + + + +SANDRO BOTTICELLI + +In Leonardo's treatise on painting only one contemporary is mentioned by +Name--Sandro Botticelli. This pre-eminence may be due to chance only, +but to some will rather appear a result of deliberate judgment; for +people have begun to find out the charm of Botticelli's work, and his +name, little known in the last century, is quietly becoming important. +In the middle of the fifteenth century he had already anticipated much +of that meditative subtlety, which is sometimes supposed peculiar to the +great imaginative workmen of its close. Leaving the simple religion +which had occupied the followers of Giotto for a century, and the simple +naturalism which had grown out of it, a thing of birds and flowers only, +he sought inspiration in what to him were works of the modern world, the +writings of Dante and Boccaccio, and in new readings of his own of +classical stories: or, if he painted religious incidents, painted them +with an under-current of original sentiment, which touches you as the +real matter of the picture through the veil of its ostensible subject. +What is the peculiar sensation, what is the peculiar quality of +pleasure, which his work has the property of exciting in us, and which +we cannot get elsewhere? For this, especially when he has to speak of a +comparatively unknown artist, is always the chief question which a +critic has to answer. + +In an age when the lives of artists were full of adventure, his life is +almost colourless. Criticism indeed has cleared away much of the gossip +which Vasari accumulated, has touched the legend of Lippo and Lucrezia, +and rehabilitated the character of Andrea del Castagno; but in +Botticelli's case there is no legend to dissipate. He did not even go by +his true name: Sandro is a nickname, and his true name is Filipepi, +Botticelli being only the name of the goldsmith who first taught him +art. Only two things happened to him, two things which he shared with +other artists:--he was invited to Rome to paint in the Sistine Chapel, +and he fell in later life under the influence of Savonarola, passing +apparently almost out of men's sight in a sort of religious melancholy, +which lasted till his death in 1515, according to the received date. +Vasari says that he plunged into the study of Dante, and even wrote a +comment on the Divine Comedy. But it seems strange that he should have +lived on inactive so long; and one almost wishes that some document +might come to light, which, fixing the date of his death earlier, might +relieve one, in thinking of him, of his dejected old age. + +He is before all things a poetical painter, blending the charm of story +and sentiment, the medium of the art of poetry, with the charm of line +and colour, the medium of abstract painting. So he becomes the +illustrator of Dante. In a few rare examples of the edition of 1481, the +blank spaces, left at the beginning of every canto for the hand of the +illuminator, have been filled, as far as the nineteenth canto of the +Inferno, with impressions of engraved plates, seemingly by way of +experiment, for in the copy in the Bodleian Library, one of the three +impressions it contains has been printed upside down, and much awry, in +the midst of the luxurious printed page. Giotto, and the followers of +Giotto, with their almost childish religious aim, had not learned to put +that weight of meaning into outward things, light, colour, everyday +gesture, which the poetry of the Divine Comedy involves, and before the +fifteenth century Dante could hardly have found an illustrator. +Botticelli's illustrations are crowded with incident, blending, with a +naive carelessness of pictorial propriety, three phases of the same +scene into one plate. The grotesques, so often a stumbling-block to +painters who forget that the words of a poet, which only feebly present +an image to the mind, must be lowered in key when translated into form, +make one regret that he has not rather chosen for illustration the more +subdued imagery of the Purgatorio. Yet in the scene of those who "go +down quick into hell," there is an invention about the fire taking hold +on the upturned soles of the feet, which proves that the design is no +mere translation of Dante's words, but a true painter's vision; while +the scene of the Centaurs wins one at once, for, forgetful of the actual +circumstances of their appearance, Botticelli has gone off with delight +on the thought of the Centaurs themselves, bright, small creatures of +the woodland, with arch baby face and mignon forms, drawing tiny bows. + +Botticelli lived in a generation of naturalists, and he might have been +a mere naturalist among them. There are traces enough in his work of +that alert sense of outward things, which, in the pictures of that +period, fills the lawns with delicate living creatures, and the +hillsides with pools of water, and the pools of water with flowering +reeds. But this was not enough for him; he is a visionary painter, and +in his visionariness he resembles Dante. Giotto, the tried companion of +Dante, Masaccio, Ghirlandajo even, do but transcribe, with more or less +refining, the outward image; they are dramatic, not visionary painters; +they are almost impassive spectators of the action before them. But the +genius of which Botticelli is the type usurps the data before it as the +exponent of ideas, moods, visions of its own; in this interest it plays +fast and loose with those data, rejecting some and isolating others, and +always combining them anew. To him as to Dante, the scene, the colour, +the outward image or gesture, comes with all its incisive and +importunate reality; but awakes in him, moreover, by some subtle law of +his own structure, a mood which it awakes in no one else, of which it is +the double or repetition, and which it clothes, that all may share it, +with sensuous circumstance. + +But he is far enough from accepting the conventional orthodoxy of Dante +which, referring all human action to the simple formula of purgatory, +heaven and hell, leaves an insoluble element of prose in the depths of +Dante's poetry. One picture of his, with the portrait of the donor, +Matteo Palmieri, below, had the credit or discredit of attracting some +shadow of ecclesiastical censure. This Matteo Palmieri--two dim figures +move under that name in contemporary history--was the reputed author of +a poem, still unedited, La Citta Divina, which represented the human +race as an incarnation of those angels who, in the revolt of Lucifer, +were neither for Jehovah nor for His enemies, a fantasy of that earlier +Alexandrian philosophy about which the Florentine intellect in that +century was so curious. Botticelli's picture may have been only one of +those familiar compositions in which religious reverie has recorded its +impressions of the various forms of beatified existence--Glorias, as +they were called, like that in which Giotto painted the portrait of +Dante; but somehow it was suspected of embodying in a picture the +wayward dream of Palmieri, and the chapel where it hung was closed. +Artists so entire as Botticelli are usually careless about philosophical +theories, even when the philosopher is a Florentine of the fifteenth +century, and his work a poem in terza rima. But Botticelli, who wrote a +commentary on Dante, and became the disciple of Savonarola, may well +have let such theories come and go across him. True or false, the story +interprets much of the peculiar sentiment with which he infuses his +profane and sacred persons, comely, and in a certain sense like angels, +but with a sense of displacement or loss about them--the wistfulness of +exiles, conscious of a passion and energy greater than any known issue +of them explains, which runs through all his varied work with a +sentiment of ineffable melancholy. + +So just what Dante scorns as unworthy alike of heaven and hell, +Botticelli accepts, that middle world in which men take no side in great +conflicts, and decide no great causes, and make great refusals. He thus +sets for himself the limits within which art, undisturbed by any moral +ambition, does its most sincere and surest work. His interest is neither +in the untempered goodness of Angelico's saints, nor the untempered evil +of Orcagna's Inferno; but with men and women, in their mixed and +uncertain condition, always attractive, clothed sometimes by passion +with a character of loveliness and energy, but saddened perpetually by +the shadow upon them of the great things from which they shrink. His +morality is all sympathy; and it is this sympathy, conveying into his +work somewhat more than is usual of the true complexion of humanity, +which makes him, visionary as he is, so forcible a realist. + +It is this which gives to his Madonnas their unique expression and +charm. He has worked out in them a distinct and peculiar type, definite +enough in his own mind, for he has painted it over and over again, +sometimes one might think almost mechanically, as a pastime during that +dark period when his thoughts were so heavy upon him. Hardly any +collection of note is without one of these circular pictures, into which +the attendant angels depress their heads so naively. Perhaps you have +sometimes wondered why those peevish-looking Madonnas, conformed to no +acknowledged or obvious type of beauty, attract you more and more, and +often come back to you when the Sistine Madonna and the Virgins of Fra +Angelico are forgotten. At first, contrasting them with those, you may +have thought that there was something in them mean or abject even, for +the abstract lines of the face have little nobleness, and the colour is +wan. For with Botticelli she too, though she holds in her hands the +"Desire of all nations," is one of those who are neither for Jehovah nor +for His enemies; and her choice is on her face. The white light on it is +cast up hard and cheerless from below, as when snow lies upon the +ground, and the children look up with surprise at the strange whiteness +of the ceiling. Her trouble is in the very caress of the mysterious +child, whose gaze is always far from her, and who has already that sweet +look of devotion which men have never been able altogether to love, and +which still makes the born saint an object almost of suspicion to his +earthly brethren. Once, indeed, he guides her hand to transcribe in a +book the words of her exaltation, the Ave, and the Magnificat, and the +Gaude Maria, and the young angels, glad to rouse her for a moment from +Her dejection, are eager to hold the inkhorn and to support the book; +but the pen almost drops from her hand, and the high cold words have no +meaning for her, and her true children are those others, among whom in +her rude home, the intolerable honour came to her, with that look of +wistful inquiry on their irregular faces which you see in startled +animals--gipsy children, such as those who, in Apennine villages, still +hold out their long brown arms to beg of you, but on Sundays become +enfants du choeur, with their thick black hair nicely combed, and fair +white linen on their sunburnt throats. + +What is strangest is that he carries this sentiment into classical +subjects, its most complete expression being a picture in the Uffizii, +of Venus rising from the sea, in which the grotesque emblems of the +middle age, and a landscape full of its peculiar feeling, and even its +strange draperies, powdered all over in the Gothic manner with a quaint +conceit of daisies, frame a figure that reminds you of the faultless +nude studies of Ingres. At first, perhaps, you are attracted only by a +quaintness of design, which seems to recall all at once whatever you +have read of Florence in the fifteenth century; afterwards you may think +that this quaintness must be incongruous with the subject, and that the +colour is cadaverous or at least cold. And yet, the more you come to +understand what imaginative colouring really is, that all colour is no +mere delightful quality of natural things, but a spirit upon them by +which they become expressive to the spirit, the better you will like +this peculiar quality of colour; and you will find that quaint design of +Botticelli's a more direct inlet into the Greek temper than the works of +the Greeks themselves even of the finest period. Of the Greeks as they +really were, of their difference from ourselves, of the aspects of their +outward life, we know far more than Botticelli, or his most learned +contemporaries; but for us long familiarity has taken off the edge of +the lesson, and we are hardly conscious of what we owe to the Hellenic +spirit. But in pictures like this of Botticelli's you have a record of +the first impression made by it on minds turned back towards it, in +almost painful aspiration, from a world in which it had been ignored so +long; and in the passion, the energy, the industry of realisation, with +which Botticelli carries out his intention, is the exact measure of the +legitimate influence over the human mind of the imaginative system of +which this is the central myth. The light is indeed cold--mere sunless +dawn; but a later painter would have cloyed you with sunshine; and you +can see the better for that quietness in the morning air each long +promontory, as it slopes down to the water's edge. Men go forth to their +labours until the evening; but she is awake before them, and you might +think that the sorrow in her face was at the thought of the whole long +day of love yet to come. An emblematical figure of the wind blows hard +across the grey water, moving forward the dainty-lipped shell on which +she sails, the sea "showing his teeth" as it moves in thin lines of +foam, and sucking in, one by one, the falling roses, each severe in +outline, plucked off short at the stalk but embrowned a little, as +Botticelli's flowers always are. Botticelli meant all that imagery to be +altogether pleasurable; and it was partly an incompleteness of +resources, inseparable from the art of that time, that subdued and +chilled it; but his predilection for minor tones counts also; and what +is unmistakable is the sadness with which he has conceived the goddess +of pleasure, as the depositary of a great power over the lives of men. + +I have said that the peculiar character of Botticelli is the result of a +blending in him of a sympathy for humanity in its uncertain condition, +its attractiveness, its investiture at rarer moments in a character of +loveliness and energy, with his consciousness of the shadow upon it of +the great things from which it shrinks, and that this conveys into his +work somewhat more than painting usually attains of the true complexion +of humanity. He paints the story of the goddess of pleasure in other +episodes besides that of her birth from the sea, but never without some +shadow of death in the grey flesh and wan flowers. He paints Madonnas, +but they shrink from the pressure of the divine child, and plead in +unmistakable undertones for a warmer, lower humanity. The same +figure--tradition connects it with Simonetta, the Mistress of Giuliano +de' Medici--appears again as Judith, returning home across the hill +country, when the great deed is over, and the moment of revulsion come, +when the olive branch in her hand is becoming a burthen; as Justice, +sitting on a throne, but with a fixed look of self-hatred which makes +the sword in her hand seem that of a suicide; and again as Veritas, in +the allegorical picture of Calumnia, where one may note in passing the +suggestiveness of an accident which identifies the image of Truth with +the person of Venus. We might trace the same sentiment through his +engravings; but his share in them is doubtful, and the object of this +brief study has been attained, if I have defined aright the temper in +which he worked. + +But, after all, it may be asked, is a painter like Botticelli--a +secondary painter--a proper subject for general criticism? There are a +few great painters, like Michelangelo or Leonardo, whose work has become +a force in general culture, partly for this very reason that they have +absorbed into themselves all such workmen as Sandro Botticelli; and, +over and above mere technical or antiquarian criticism, general +criticism may be very well employed in that sort of interpretation which +adjusts the position of these men to general culture, whereas smaller +men can be the proper subjects only of technical or antiquarian +treatment. But, besides those great men, there is a certain number of +artists who have a distinct faculty of their own by which they convey to +us a peculiar quality of pleasure which we cannot get elsewhere; and +these, too, have their place in general culture, and must be interpreted +to it by those who have felt their charm strongly, and are often the +objects of a special diligence and a consideration wholly affectionate, +just because there is not about them the stress of a great name and +authority. Of this select number Botticelli is one; he has the +freshness, the uncertain and diffident promise which belongs to the +earlier Renaissance itself, and makes it perhaps the most interesting +period in the history of the mind: in studying his work one begins to +understand to how great a place in human culture the art of Italy had +been called. + +1870. + + + +LUCA DELLA ROBBIA + +The Italian sculptors of the earlier half of the fifteenth century are +more than mere forerunners of the great masters of its close, and often +reach perfection, within the narrow limits which they chose to impose on +their work. Their sculpture shares with the paintings of Botticelli and +the churches of Brunelleschi that profound expressiveness, that intimate +impress of an indwelling soul, which is the peculiar fascination of the +art of Italy in that century. Their works have been much neglected, and +often almost hidden away amid the frippery of modern decoration, and we +come with some surprise on the places where their fire still smoulders. +One longs to penetrate into the lives of the men who have given +expression to so much power and sweetness; but it is part of the +reserve, the austere dignity and simplicity of their existence, that +their histories are for the most part lost, or told but briefly. From +their lives, as from their work, all tumult of sound and colour has +passed away. Mino, the Raffaelle of sculpture, Maso del Rodario, whose +works add a new grace to the church of Como, Donatello even--one asks in +vain for more than a shadowy outline of their actual days. + +Something more remains of Luca della Robbia; something more of a +history, of outward changes and fortunes, is expressed through his work. +I suppose nothing brings the real air of a Tuscan town so vividly to +mind as those pieces of pale blue and white earthenware, by which he is +best known, like fragments of the milky sky itself, fallen into the cool +streets, and breaking into the darkened churches. And no work is less +imitable; like Tuscan wine, it loses its savour when moved from its +birthplace, from the crumbling walls where it was first placed. Part of +the charm of this work, its grace and purity and finish of expression, +is common to all the Tuscan sculptors of the fifteenth century; for Luca +was first of all a worker in marble, and his works in earthenware only +transfer to a different material the principles of his sculpture. + +These Tuscan sculptors of the fifteenth century worked for the most part +in low relief, giving even to their monumental effigies something of its +depression of surface, getting into them by this means a pathetic +suggestion of the wasting and etherealisation of death. They are haters +of all heaviness and emphasis, of strongly-opposed light and shade, and +seek their means of expression among those last refinements of shadow, +which are almost invisible except in a strong light, and which the +finest pencil can hardly follow. The whole essence of their work is +EXPRESSION, the passing of a smile over the face of a child, the ripple +of the air on a still day over the curtain of a window ajar. + +What is the precise value of this system of sculpture, this low relief? +Luca della Robbia, and the other sculptors of the school to which he +belongs, have before them the universal problem of their art; and this +system of low relief is the means by which they meet and overcome the +special limitation of sculpture--a limitation resulting from the +material and the essential conditions of all sculptured work, and which +consists in the tendency of this work to a hard realism, a one-sided +presentment of mere form, that solid material frame which only motion +can relieve, a thing of heavy shadows, and an individuality of +expression pushed to caricature. Against this tendency to the hard +presentment of mere form trying vainly to compete with the reality of +nature itself, all noble sculpture constantly struggles: each great +system of sculpture resisting it in its own way, etherealising, +spiritualising, relieving its hardness, its heaviness and death. The use +of colour in sculpture is but an unskilful contrivance to effect, by +borrowing from another art, what the nobler sculpture effects by +strictly appropriate means. To get not colour, but the equivalent of +colour; to secure the expression and the play of life; to expand the too +fixed individuality of pure, unrelieved, uncoloured form--this is the +problem which the three great styles in sculpture have solved in three +different ways. + +Allgemeinheit--breadth, generality, universality--is the word chosen by +Winckelmann, and after him by Goethe and many German critics, to express +that law of the most excellent Greek sculptors, of Pheidias and his +pupils, which prompted them constantly to seek the type in the +individual, to abstract and express only what is structural and +permanent, to purge from the individual all that belongs only to him, +all the accidents, the feelings, and actions of the special moment, all +that (because in its own nature it endures but for a moment) is apt to +look like a frozen thing if one arrests it. + +In this way their works came to be like some subtle extract or essence, +or almost like pure thoughts or ideas: and hence the breadth of humanity +in them, that detachment from the conditions of a particular place or +people, which has carried their influence far beyond the age which +produced them, and insured them universal acceptance. + +That was the Greek way of relieving the hardness and unspirituality of +pure form. But it involved to a certain degree the sacrifice of what we +call expression; and a system of abstraction which aimed always at the +broad and general type, at the purging away from the individual of what +belonged only to him, and of the mere accidents of a particular time +and place, imposed upon the range of effects open to the Greek sculptor +limits somewhat narrowly defined; and when Michelangelo came, with a +genius spiritualised by the reverie of the middle age, penetrated by its +spirit of inwardness and introspection, living not a mere outward life +like the Greek, but a life full of inward experiences, sorrows, +consolations, a system which sacrificed so much of what was inward and +unseen could not satisfy him. To him, lover and student of Greek +sculpture as he was, work which did not bring what was inward to the +surface, which was not concerned with individual expression, with +individual character and feeling, the special history of the special +soul, was not worth doing at all. + +And so, in a way quite personal and peculiar to himself, which often is, +and always seems, the effect of accident, he secured for his work +individuality and intensity of expression, while he avoided a too hard +realism, that tendency to harden into caricature which the +representation of feeling in sculpture must always have. What time and +accident, its centuries of darkness under the furrows of the "little +Melian farm," have done with singular felicity of touch for the Venus of +Melos, fraying its surface and softening its lines, so that some spirit +in the thing seems always on the point of breaking out, as though in it +classical sculpture had advanced already one step into the mystical +Christian age, its expression being in the whole range of ancient work +most like that of Michelangelo's own:--this effect Michelangelo gains by +leaving nearly all his sculpture in a puzzling sort of incompleteness, +which suggests rather than realises actual form. Something of the +wasting of that snow-image which he moulded at the command of Piero de' +Medici, when the snow lay one night in the court of the Pitti palace, +almost always lurks about it, as if he had determined to make the +quality of a task, exacted from him half in derision, the pride of all +his work. Many have wondered at that incompleteness, suspecting, +however, that Michelangelo himself loved and was loath to change it, and +feeling at the same time that they too would lose something if the +half-realised form ever quite emerged from the stone, so rough hewn +here, so delicately finished there; and they have wished to fathom the +charm of this incompleteness. Well! that incompleteness is +Michelangelo's equivalent for colour in sculpture; it is his way of +etherealising pure form, of relieving its hard realism, and +communicating to it breath, pulsation, the effect of life. It was a +characteristic too which fell in with his peculiar temper and mode of +life, his disappointments and hesitations. And it was in reality perfect +finish. In this way he combines the utmost amount of passion and +intensity with the sense of a yielding and flexible life: he gets not +vitality merely, but a wonderful force of expression. + +Midway between these two systems--the system of the Greek sculptors and +the system of Michelangelo--comes the system of Luca della Robbia. And +the other Tuscan sculptors of the fifteenth century, partaking both of +the Allgemeinheit of the Greeks, their way of extracting certain select +elements only of pure form and sacrificing all the rest, and the studied +incompleteness of Michelangelo, relieving that expression of intensity, +passion, energy, which might otherwise have hardened into caricature. +Like Michelangelo, these sculptors fill their works with intense and +individualised expression: their noblest works are the studied +sepulchral portraits of particular persons--the monument of Conte Ugo in +the Badia of Florence, of the youthful Medea Colleoni, with the +wonderful, long throat, in the chapel on the cool north side of the +Church of Santa Maria Maggiore at Bergamo--monuments which abound in the +churches of Rome, inexhaustible in suggestions of repose, of a subdued +Sabbatic joy, a kind of sacred grace and refinement:--and they unite +these elements of tranquillity, of repose, to that intense and +individual expression by a system of conventionalism as skilful and +subtle as that of the Greeks, subduing all such curves as indicate solid +form, and throwing the whole into lower relief. + +The life of Luca, a life of labour and frugality, with no adventure and +no excitement except what belongs to the trial of new artistic +processes, the struggle with new artistic difficulties, the solution of +purely artistic problems, fills the first seventy years of the fifteenth +century. After producing many works in marble for the Duomo and the +Campanile of Florence, which place him among the foremost sculptors of +that age, he became desirous to realise the spirit and manner of that +sculpture, in a humbler material, to unite its science, its exquisite +and expressive system of low relief, to the homely art of pottery, to +introduce those high qualities into common things, to adorn and +cultivate daily household life. In this he is profoundly characteristic +of the Florence of that century, of that in it which lay below its +superficial vanity and caprice, a certain old-world modesty and +seriousness and simplicity. People had not yet begun to think that what +was good art for churches was not so good, or less fitted, for their own +houses. Luca's new work was in plain white earthenware at first, a mere +rough imitation of the costly, laboriously wrought marble, finished in a +few hours. But on this humble path he found his way to a fresh success, +to another artistic grace. The fame of the oriental pottery, with its +strange, bright colours--colours of art, colours not to be attained in +the natural stone--mingled with the tradition of the old Roman pottery +of the neighbourhood. The little red, coral-like jars of Arezzo, dug up +in that district from time to time, are still famous. These colours +haunted Luca's fancy. "He still continued seeking something more," his +biographer says of him; "and instead of making his figures of baked +earth simply white, he added the further invention of giving them +colour, to the astonishment and delight of all who beheld them"--Cosa +singolare, e multo utile per la state!--a curious thing, and very useful +for summertime, full of coolness and repose for hand and eye. Luca loved +the forms of various fruits, and wrought them into all sorts of +marvellous frames and garlands, giving them their natural colours, only +subdued a little, a little paler than nature. But in his nobler +terra-cotta work he never introduces colour into the flesh, keeping +mostly to blue and white, the colours of the Virgin Mary. + +I said that the work of Luca della Robbia possessed in an unusual +measure that special characteristic which belongs to all the workmen of +his school, a characteristic which, even in the absence of much positive +information about their actual history, seems to bring those workmen +themselves very near to us--the impress of a personal quality, a +profound expressiveness, what the French call intimite, by which is +meant some subtler sense of originality--the seal on a man's work of +what is most inward and peculiar in his moods, and manner of +apprehension: it is what we call expression, carried to its highest +intensity of degree. That characteristic is rare in poetry, rarer still +in art, rarest of all in the abstract art of sculpture; yet essentially, +perhaps, it is the quality which alone makes works in the imaginative +and moral order really worth having at all. It is because the works of +the artists of the fifteenth century possess this quality in an +unmistakable way that one is anxious to know all that can be known about +them, and explain to oneself the secret of their charm. + +1872. + + + +THE POETRY OF MICHELANGELO + +Critics of Michelangelo have sometimes spoken as if the only +characteristic of his genius were a wonderful strength, verging, as in +the things of the imagination great strength always does, on what is +singular or strange. A certain strangeness, something of the blossoming +of the aloe, is indeed an element in all true works of art; that they +shall excite or surprise us is indispensable. But that they shall give +pleasure and exert a charm over us is indispensable too; and this +strangeness must be sweet also--a lovely strangeness. And to the true +admirers of Michelangelo this is the true type of the +Michelangelesque--sweetness and strength, pleasure with surprise, an +energy of conception which seems at every moment about to break through +all the conditions of comely form, recovering, touch by touch, a +loveliness found usually only in the simplest natural things--ex forti +dulcedo. + +In this way he sums up for them the whole character of medieval art +itself in that which distinguishes it most clearly from classical work, +the presence of a convulsive energy in it, becoming in lower hands +merely monstrous or forbidding, but felt, even in its most graceful +products, as a subdued quaintness or grotesque. Yet those who feel this +grace or sweetness in Michelangelo might at the first moment be puzzled +if they were asked wherein precisely the quality resided. Men of +inventive temperament--Victor Hugo, for instance, in whom, as in +Michelangelo, people have for the most part been attracted or repelled +by the strength, while few have understood his sweetness--have sometimes +relieved conceptions of merely moral or spiritual greatness, but with +little aesthetic charm of their own, by lovely accidents or accessories, +like the butterfly which alights on the blood-stained barricade in Les +Miserables, or those sea-birds for which the monstrous Gilliatt comes to +be as some wild natural thing, so that they are no longer afraid of him, +in Les Travailleurs de la Mer. But the austere genius of Michelangelo +will not depend for its sweetness on any mere accessories like these. +The world of natural things has almost no existence for him; "When one +speaks of him," says Grimm, "woods, clouds, seas, and mountains +disappear, and only what is formed by the spirit of man remains behind"; +and he quotes a few slight words from a letter of his to Vasari as the +single expression in all he has left of a feeling for nature. He has +traced no flowers, like those with which Leonardo stars over his +gloomiest rocks; nothing like the fretwork of wings and flames in which +Blake frames his most startling conceptions; no forest-scenery like +Titian's fills his backgrounds, but only blank ranges of rock, and dim +vegetable forms as blank as they, as in a world before the creation of +the first five days. + +Of the whole story of the creation he has painted only the creation of +the first man and woman, and, for him at least, feebly, the creation of +light. It belongs to the quality of his genius thus to concern itself +almost exclusively with the creation of man. For him it is not, as in +the story itself, the last and crowning act of a series of developments, +but the first and unique act, the creation of life itself in its supreme +form, off-hand and immediately, in the cold and lifeless stone. With him +the beginning of life has all the characteristics of resurrection; it is +like the recovery of suspended health or animation, with its gratitude, +its effusion, and eloquence. Fair as the young men of the Elgin marbles, +the Adam of the Sistine Chapel is unlike them in a total absence of that +balance and completeness which express so well the sentiment of a +self-contained, independent life. In that languid figure there is +something rude and satyr-like, something akin to the rugged hillside on +which it lies. His whole form is gathered into an expression of mere +expectation and reception; he has hardly strength enough to lift his +finger to touch the finger of the creator; yet a touch of the +finger-tips will suffice. + +This creation of life--life coming always as relief or recovery, and +always in strong contrast with the rough-hewn mass in which it is +kindled--is in various ways the motive of all his work, whether its +immediate subject be Pagan or Christian, legend or allegory; and this, +although at least one-half of his work was designed for the adornment of +tombs--the tomb of Julius, the tombs of the Medici. Not the Judgment but +the Resurrection is the real subject of his last work in the Sistine +Chapel; and his favourite Pagan subject is the legend of Leda, the +delight of the world breaking from the egg of a bird. As I have already +pointed out, he secures that ideality of expression which in Greek +sculpture depends on a delicate system of abstraction, and in early +Italian sculpture on lowness of relief, by an incompleteness, which is +surely not always undesigned, and which I suppose no one regrets, and +trusts to the spectator to complete the half-emergent form. And as his +persons have something of the unwrought stone about them, so, as if to +realise the expression by which the old Florentine records describe a +sculptor--master of live stone--with him the very rocks seem to have +life; they have but to cast away the dust and scurf that they may rise +and stand on their feet. He loved the very quarries of Carrara, those +strange grey peaks which even at mid-day convey into any scene from +which they are visible something of the solemnity and stillness of +evening, sometimes wandering among them month after month, till at last +their pale ashen colours seem to have passed into his painting; and on +the crown of the head of the David there still remains a morsel of uncut +stone, as if by one touch to maintain its connexion with the place from +which it was hewn. + +And it is in this penetrative suggestion of life that the secret of that +sweetness of his is to be found. He gives us indeed no lovely natural +objects like Leonardo or Titian, but only the coldest, most elementary +shadowing of rock or tree; no lovely draperies and comely gestures of +life, but only the austere truths of human nature; "simple persons"--as +he replied in his rough way to the querulous criticism of Julius the +Second, that there was no gold on the figures of the Sistine +Chapel--"simple persons, who wore no gold on their garments"; but he +penetrates us with a sense of that power which we associate with all the +warmth and fulness of the world, and the sense of which brings into +one's thoughts a swarm of birds and flowers and insects. The brooding +spirit of life itself is there; and the summer may burst out in a +moment. + +He was born in an interval of a rapid midnight journey in March, at a +place in the neighbourhood of Arezzo, the thin, clear air of which, as +was then thought, being favourable to the birth of children of great +parts. He came of a race of grave and dignified men, who, claiming +kinship with the family of Canossa, and some colour of imperial blood in +their veins, had, generation after generation, received honourable +employment under the government of Florence. His mother, a girl of +nineteen years, put him out to nurse at a country house among the hills +of Settignano, where every other inhabitant is a worker in the marble +quarries, and the child early became familiar with that strange first +stage in the sculptor's art. To this succeeded the influence of the +sweetest and most placid master Florence had yet seen, Domenico +Ghirlandajo. At fifteen he was at work among the curiosities of the +garden of the Medici, copying and restoring antiques, winning the +condescending notice of the great Lorenzo. He knew too how to excite +strong hatreds; and it was at this time that in a quarrel with a +fellow-student he received a blow on the face which deprived him for +ever of the comeliness of outward form. It was through an accident that +he came to study those works of the early Italian sculptors which +suggested much of his own grandest work, and impressed it with so deep a +sweetness. He believed in dreams and omens. One of his friends dreamed +twice that Lorenzo, then lately dead, appeared to him in grey and dusty +apparel. To Michelangelo this dream seemed to portend the troubles which +afterwards really came, and with the suddenness which was characteristic +of all his movements, he left Florence. Having occasion to pass through +Bologna, he neglected to procure the little seal of red wax which the +stranger entering Bologna must carry on the thumb of his right hand. He +had no money to pay the fine, and would have been thrown into prison had +not one of the magistrates interposed. He remained in this man's house a +whole year, rewarding his hospitality by readings from the Italian poets +whom he loved. Bologna, with its endless colonnades and fantastic +leaning towers, can never have been one of the lovelier cities of Italy. +But about the portals of its vast unfinished churches and its dark +shrines, half hidden by votive flowers and candles, lie some of the +sweetest works of the early Tuscan sculptors, Giovanni da Pisa and +Jacopo della Quercia, things as winsome as flowers; and the year which +Michelangelo spent in copying these works was not a lost year. It was +now, on returning to Florence, that he put forth that unique presentment +of Bacchus, which expresses, not the mirthfulness of the god of wine, +but his sleepy seriousness, his enthusiasm, his capacity for profound +dreaming. No one ever expressed more truly than Michelangelo the notion +of inspired sleep, of faces charged with dreams. A vast fragment of +marble had long lain below the Loggia of Orcagna, and many a sculptor +had had his thoughts of a design which should just fill this famous +block of stone, cutting the diamond, as it were, without loss. Under +Michelangelo's hand it became the David which stood till lately on the +steps of the Palazzo Vecchio, when it was replaced below the Loggia. +Michelangelo was now thirty years old, and his reputation was +established. Three great works fill the remainder of his life--three +works often interrupted, carried on through a thousand hesitations, a +thousand disappointments, quarrels with his patrons, quarrels with his +family, quarrels perhaps most of all with himself--the Sistine Chapel, +the Mausoleum of Julius the Second, and the Sacristy of San Lorenzo. + +In the story of Michelangelo's life the strength, often turning to +bitterness, is not far to seek; a discordant note sounds throughout it +which almost spoils the music. He "treats the Pope as the King of France +himself would not dare to treat him"; he goes along the streets of Rome +"like an executioner," Raffaelle says of him. Once he seems to have shut +himself up with the intention of starving himself to death. As we come +in reading his life on its harsh, untempered incidents, the thought +again and again arises that he is one of those who incur the judgment of +Dante, as having "wilfully lived in sadness." Even his tenderness and +pity are embittered by their strength. What passionate weeping in that +mysterious figure which, in the Creation of Adam, crouches below the +image of the Almighty, as he comes with the forms of things to be, woman +and her progeny, in the fold of his garment! What a sense of wrong in +those two captive youths, who feel the chains like scalding water on +their proud and delicate flesh! The idealist who became a reformer with +Savonarola, and a republican superintending the fortification of +Florence--the nest where he was born, il nido ove naqqu'io, as he calls +it once, in a sudden throb of affection--in its last struggle for +liberty, yet believed always that he had imperial blood in his veins and +was of the kindred of the great Matilda, had within the depths of his +nature some secret spring of indignation or sorrow. We know little of +his youth, but all tends to make one believe in the vehemence of its +passions. Beneath the Platonic calm of the sonnets there is latent a +deep delight in carnal form and colour. There, and still more in the +madrigals, he often falls into the language of less tranquil affections; +while some of them have the colour of penitence, as from a wanderer +returning home. He who spoke so decisively of the supremacy in the +imaginative world of the unveiled human form had not been always, we may +think, a mere Platonic lover. Vague and wayward his loves may have been; +but they partook of the strength of his nature, and sometimes, it may +be, would by no means become music, so that the comely order of his days +was quite put out: par che amaro ogni mio dolce io senta. + +But his genius is in harmony with itself; and just as in the products of +his art we find resources of sweetness within their exceeding strength, +so in his own story also, bitter as the ordinary sense of it may be, +there are select pages shut in among the rest--pages one might easily +turn over too lightly, but which yet sweeten the whole volume. The +interest of Michelangelo's poems is that they make us spectators of this +struggle; the struggle of a strong nature to adorn and attune itself; +the struggle of a desolating passion, which yearns to be resigned and +sweet and pensive, as Dante's was. It is a consequence of the occasional +and informal character of his poetry, that it brings us nearer to +himself, his own mind and temper, than any work done only to support a +literary reputation could possibly do. His letters tell us little that +is worth knowing about him--a few poor quarrels about money and +commissions. But it is quite otherwise with these songs and sonnets, +written down at odd moments, sometimes on the margins of his sketches, +themselves often unfinished sketches, arresting some salient feeling or +unpremeditated idea as it passed. And it happens that a true study of +these has become within the last few years for the first time possible. +A few of the sonnets circulated widely in manuscript, and became almost +within Michelangelo's own lifetime a subject of academical discourses. +But they were first collected in a volume in 1623 by the great-nephew of +Michelangelo, Michelangelo Buonarroti the younger. He omitted much, +re-wrote the sonnets in part, and sometimes compressed two or more +compositions into one, always losing something of the force and +incisiveness of the original. So the book remained, neglected even by +Italians themselves in the last century, through the influence of that +French taste which despised all compositions of the kind, as it despised +and neglected Dante. "His reputation will ever be on the increase, +because he is so little read," says Voltaire of Dante.--But in 1858 the +last of the Buonarroti bequeathed to the municipality of Florence the +curiosities of his family. Among them was a precious volume containing +the autograph of the sonnets. A learned Italian, Signor Cesare Guasti, +undertook to collate this autograph with other manuscripts at the +Vatican and elsewhere, and in 1863 published a true version of +Michelangelo's poems, with dissertations and a paraphrase.* + +*The sonnets have been translated into English, with much poetic taste +and skill, by Mr. J. A. Symonds. + +People have often spoken of these poems as if they were a mere cry of +distress, a lover's complaint over the obduracy of Vittoria Colonna. But +those who speak thus forget that though it is quite possible that +Michelangelo had seen Vittoria, that somewhat shadowy figure, as early +as 1537, yet their closer intimacy did not begin till about the year +1542, when Michelangelo was nearly seventy years old. Vittoria herself, +an ardent neo-catholic, vowed to perpetual widowhood since the news had +reached her, seventeen years before, that her husband, the youthful and +princely Marquess of Pescara, lay dead of the wounds he had received in +the battle of Pavia, was then no longer an object of great passion. In a +dialogue written by the painter, Francesco d'Ollanda, we catch a glimpse +of them together in an empty church at Rome, one Sunday afternoon, +discussing indeed the characteristics of various schools of art, but +still more the writings of Saint Paul, already following the ways and +tasting the sunless pleasures of weary people, whose hold on outward +things is slackening. In a letter still extant he regrets that when he +visited her after death he had kissed her hands only. He made, or set to +work to make, a crucifix for her use, and two drawings, perhaps in +preparation for it, are now in Oxford. From allusions in the sonnets, we +may divine that when they first approached each other he had debated +much with himself whether this last passion would be the most +unsoftening, the most desolating of all--un dolce amaro, un si e no mi +muovi; is it carnal affection, or, del suo prestino stato (Plato's +ante-natal state) il raggio ardente? The older, conventional criticism, +dealing with the text of 1623, had lightly assumed that all or nearly +all the sonnets were actually addressed to Vittoria herself; but Signor +Guasti finds only four, or at most five, which can be so attributed on +genuine authority. Still, there are reasons which make him assign the +majority of them to the period between 1542 and 1547, and we may regard +the volume as a record of this resting-place in Michelangelo's story. We +know how Goethe escaped from the stress of sentiments too strong for him +by making a book about them; and for Michelangelo, to write down his +passionate thoughts at all, to make sonnets about them, was already in +some measure to command, and have his way with them-- + + La vita del mia amor non e il cor mio, + Ch'amor, di quel ch'io t'amo, e senza core. + +It was just because Vittoria raised no great passion that the space in +his life where she reigns has such peculiar suavity; and the spirit of +the sonnets is lost if we once take them out of that dreamy atmosphere +in which men have things as they will, because the hold of all outward +things upon them is faint and thin. Their prevailing tone is a calm and +meditative sweetness. The cry of distress is indeed there, but as a mere +residue, a trace of bracing chalybeate salt, just discernible in the +song which rises as a clear, sweet spring from a charmed space in his +life. + +This charmed and temperate space in Michelangelo's life, without which +its excessive strength would have been so imperfect, which saves him +from the judgment of Dante on those who "wilfully lived in sadness," is +then a well-defined period there, reaching from the year 1542 to the +year 1547, the year of Vittoria's death. In it the lifelong effort to +tranquillise his vehement emotions by withdrawing them into the region +of ideal sentiment, becomes successful; and the significance of Vittoria +there is, that she realises for him a type of affection which even in +disappointment may charm and sweeten his spirit. In this effort to +tranquillise and sweeten life by idealising its vehement sentiments, +there were two great traditional types, either of which an Italian of +the sixteenth century might have followed. There was Dante, whose little +book of the Vita Nuova had early become a pattern of imaginative love, +maintained somewhat feebly by the later followers of Petrarch; and since +Plato had become something more than a name in Italy by the publication +of the Latin translation of his works by Marsilio Ficino, there was the +Platonic tradition also. Dante's belief in the resurrection of the body, +through which, even in heaven, Beatrice loses for him no tinge of +flesh-colour, or fold of raiment even--and the Platonic dream of the +passage of the soul through one form of life after another, with its +passionate haste to escape from the burden of bodily form +altogether--are, for all effects of art or poetry, principles +diametrically opposite; and it is the Platonic tradition rather than +Dante's that has moulded Michelangelo's verse. In many ways no sentiment +could have been less like Dante's love for Beatrice than Michelangelo's +for Vittoria Colonna. Dante's comes in early youth: Beatrice is a child, +with the wistful, ambiguous vision of a child, with a character still +unaccentuated by the influence of outward circumstances, almost +expressionless. Vittoria is a woman already weary, in advanced age, of +grave intellectual qualities. Dante's story is a piece of figured wood, +inlaid with lovely incidents. In Michelangelo's poems, frost and fire +are almost the only images--the refining fire of the goldsmith; once or +twice the phoenix; ice melting at the fire; fire struck from the rock +which it afterwards consumes. Except one doubtful allusion to a journey, +there are almost no incidents. But there is much of the bright, sharp, +unerring skill, with which in boyhood he gave the look of age to the +head of a faun by chipping a tooth from its jaw with a single stroke of +the hammer. For Dante, the amiable and devout materialism of the middle +age sanctifies all that is presented by hand and eye. Michelangelo is +always pressing forward from the outward beauty--il bel del fuor che +agli occhi piace--to apprehend the unseen beauty; trascenda nella forma +universale--that abstract form of beauty, about which the Platonists +reason. And this gives the impression in him of something flitting and +unfixed, of the houseless and complaining spirit, almost clairvoyant +through the frail and yielding flesh. He accounts for love at first +sight by a previous state of existence--la dove io t'amai prima. + +And yet there are many points in which he is really like Dante, and +comes very near to the original image, beyond those later and feebler +followers of Petrarch. He learns from Dante rather than from Plato, that +for lovers, the surfeiting of desire--ove gran desir gran copia affrena, +is a state less happy than misery full of hope--una miseria di speranza +piena. He recalls him in the repetition of the words gentile and +cortesia, in the personification of Amor, in the tendency to dwell +minutely on the physical effects of the presence of a beloved object on +the pulses and the heart. Above all, he resembles Dante in the warmth +and intensity of his political utterances, for the lady of one of his +noblest sonnets was from the first understood to be the city of +Florence; and he avers that all must be asleep in heaven, if she, who +was created "of angelic form," for a thousand lovers, is appropriated by +one alone, some Piero, or Alessandro de' Medici. Once and again he +introduces Love and Death, who dispute concerning him; for, like Dante +and all the nobler souls of Italy, he is much occupied with thoughts of +the grave, and his true mistress is death; death at first as the worst +of all sorrows and disgraces, with a clod of the field for its brain; +afterwards, death in its high distinction, its detachment from vulgar +needs, the angry stains of life and action escaping fast. + +Some of those whom the gods love die young. This man, because the gods +loved him, lingered on to be of immense, patriarchal age, till the +sweetness it had taken so long to secrete in him was found at last. Out +of the strong came forth sweetness, ex forti dulcedo. The world had +changed around him. The New-catholicism had taken the place of the +Renaissance. The spirit of the Roman Church had changed: in the vast +world's cathedral which his skill had helped to raise for it, it looked +stronger than ever. Some of the first members of the Oratory were among +his intimate associates. They were of a spirit as unlike as possible +from that of Lorenzo, or Savonarola even. The opposition of the +Reformation to art has been often enlarged upon; far greater was that of +the Catholic revival. But in thus fixing itself in a frozen orthodoxy, +the Roman Catholic Church has passed beyond him, and he was a stranger +to it. In earlier days, when its beliefs had been in a fluid state, he +too might have been drawn into the controversy; he might have been for +spiritualising the papal sovereignty, like Savonarola; or for adjusting +the dreams of Plato and Homer with the words of Christ, like Pico of +Mirandola. But things had moved onward, and such adjustments were no +longer possible. For himself, he had long since fallen back on that +divine ideal, which above the wear and tear of creeds has been forming +itself for ages as the possession of nobler souls. And now he began to +feel the soothing influence which since that time the Roman Church has +often exerted over spirits too independent to be its subjects, yet +brought within the neighbourhood of its action; consoled and +tranquillised, as a traveller might be, resting for one evening in a +strange city, by its stately aspect, and the sentiment of its many +fortunes, just because with those fortunes he has nothing to do. So he +lingers on; a revenant, as the French say, a ghost out of another age, +in a world too coarse to touch his faint sensibilities too closely; +dreaming, in a worn-out society, theatrical in its life, theatrical in +its art, theatrical even in its devotion, on the morning of the world's +history, on the primitive form of man, on the images under which that +primitive world had conceived of spiritual forces. + +I have dwelt on the thought of Michelangelo as thus lingering beyond his +time in a world not his own, because, if one is to distinguish the +peculiar savour of his work, he must be approached, not through his +followers, but through his predecessors; not through the marbles of +Saint Peter's, but through the work of the sculptors of the fifteenth +century over the tombs and altars of Tuscany. He is the last of the +Florentines, of those on whom the peculiar sentiment of the Florence of +Dante and Giotto descended: he is the consummate representative of the +form that sentiment took in the fifteenth century with men like Luca +Signorelli and Mino da Fiesole. Up to him the tradition of sentiment is +unbroken, the progress towards surer and more mature methods of +expressing that sentiment continuous. But his professed disciples did +not share this temper; they are in love with his strength only, and seem +not to feel his grave and temperate sweetness. Theatricality is their +chief characteristic; and that is a quality as little attributable to +Michelangelo as to Mino or Luca Signorelli. With him, as with them, all +Is serious, passionate, impulsive. + +This discipleship of Michelangelo, this dependence of his on the +tradition of the Florentine schools, is nowhere seen more clearly than +in his treatment of the Creation. The Creation of Man had haunted the +mind of the middle age like a dream; and weaving it into a hundred +carved ornaments of capital or doorway, the Italian sculptors had early +impressed upon it that pregnancy of expression which seems to give it +many veiled meanings. As with other artistic conceptions of the middle +age, its treatment became almost conventional, handed on from artist to +artist, with slight changes, till it came to have almost an independent, +abstract existence of its own. It was characteristic of the medieval +mind thus to give an independent traditional existence to a special +pictorial conception, or to a legend, like that of Tristram or +Tannhaeuser, or even to the very thoughts and substance of a book, like +the Imitation, so that no single workman could claim it as his own, and +the book, the image, the legend, had itself a legend, and its fortunes, +and a personal history; and it is a sign of the medievalism of +Michelangelo, that he thus receives from tradition his central +conception, and does but add the last touches, in transferring it to the +frescoes of the Sistine Chapel. + +But there was another tradition of those earlier more serious +Florentines, of which Michelangelo is the inheritor, to which he gives +the final expression, and which centres in the sacristy of San Lorenzo, +as the tradition of the Creation centres in the Sistine Chapel. It has +been said that all the great Florentines were preoccupied with death. +Outre-tombe! Outre-tombe!--is the burden of their thoughts, from Dante +to Savonarola. Even the gay and licentious Boccaccio gives a keener edge +to his stories by putting them in the mouths of a party of people who +had taken refuge from the danger of death by plague, in a country-house. +It was to this inherited sentiment, this practical decision that to be +pre-occupied with the thought of death was in itself dignifying, and a +note of high quality, that the seriousness of the great Florentines of +the fifteenth century was partly due; and it was reinforced in them by +the actual sorrows of their times. How often, and in what various ways, +had they seen life stricken down, in their streets and houses! La bella +Simonetta dies in early youth, and is borne to the grave with uncovered +face. The young Cardinal Jacopo di Portogallo dies on a visit to +Florence--insignis forma fui et mirabili modestia--his epitaph dares to +say. Antonio Rossellino carves his tomb in the church of San Miniato, +with care for the shapely hands and feet, and sacred attire; Luca della +Robbia puts his skyeyest works there; and the tomb of the youthful and +princely prelate became the strangest and most beautiful thing in that +strange and beautiful place. After the execution of the Pazzi +conspirators, Botticelli is employed to paint their portraits. This +preoccupation with serious thoughts and sad images might easily have +resulted, as it did, for instance, in the gloomy villages of the Rhine, +or in the overcrowded parts of medieval Paris, as it still does in many +a village of the Alps, in something merely morbid or grotesque, in the +Danse Macabre of many French and German painters, or the grim inventions +of Duerer. From such a result the Florentine masters of the fifteenth +century were saved by their high Italian dignity and culture, and still +more by their tender pity for the thing itself. They must often have +leaned over the lifeless body, when all was at length quiet and smoothed +out. After death, it is said, the traces of slighter and more +superficial dispositions disappear; the lines become more simple and +dignified; only the abstract lines remain, in a great indifference. +They came thus to see death in its distinction; and following it perhaps +one stage further, dwelling for a moment on the point where all that +transitory dignity must break up, and discerning with no clearness a new +body, they paused just in time, and abstained, with a sentiment of +profound pity. + +Of all this sentiment Michelangelo is the achievement; and first of all, +of pity. Pieta--pity--the pity of the Virgin Mother over the dead body +of Christ, expanded into the pity of all mothers over all dead sons, the +entombment, with its cruel "hard stones"--that is the subject of his +predilection. He has left it in many forms, sketches, half-finished +designs, finished and unfinished groups of sculpture; but always as a +hopeless, rayless, almost heathen sorrow--no divine sorrow, but mere +pity and awe at the stiff limbs and colourless lips. There is a drawing +of his at Oxford, in which the dead body has sunk to the earth between +the mother's feet, with the arms extended over her knees. The tombs in +the sacristy of San Lorenzo are memorials, not of any of the nobler and +greater Medici, but of Giuliano, and Lorenzo the younger, noticeable +chiefly for their somewhat early death. It is mere human nature +therefore which has prompted the sentiment here. The titles assigned +traditionally to the four symbolical figures, Night and Day, The +Twilight and The Dawn, are far too definite for them; for these figures +come much nearer to the mind and spirit of their author, and are a more +direct expression of his thoughts, than any merely symbolical +conceptions could possibly have been. They concentrate and express, less +by way of definite conceptions than by the touches, the promptings of a +piece of music, all those vague fancies, misgivings, presentiments, +which shift and mix and define themselves and fade again, whenever the +thoughts try to fix themselves with sincerity on the conditions and +surroundings of the disembodied spirit. I suppose no one would come to +the sacristy of San Lorenzo for consolation; for seriousness, for +solemnity, for dignity of impression, perhaps, but not for consolation. +It is a place neither of terrible nor consoling thoughts, but of vague +and wistful speculation. Here, again, Michelangelo is the disciple not +so much of Dante as of the Platonists. Dante's belief in immortality is +formal, precise, and firm, as much so almost as that of a child, who +thinks the dead will hear if you cry loud enough. But in Michelangelo +you have maturity, the mind of the grown man, dealing cautiously and +dispassionately with serious things; and what hope he has is based on +the consciousness of ignorance--ignorance of man, ignorance of the +nature of the mind, its origin and capacities. Michelangelo is so +ignorant of the spiritual world, of the new body and its laws, that he +does not surely know whether the consecrated Host may not be the body of +Christ. And of all that range of sentiment he is the poet, a poet still +alive, and in possession of our inmost thoughts--dumb inquiry over the +relapse after death into the formlessness which preceded life, the +change, the revolt from that change, then the correcting, hallowing, +consoling rush of pity; at last, far off, thin and vague, yet not more +vague than the most definite thoughts men have had through three +centuries on a matter that has been so near their hearts, the new +body--a passing light, a mere intangible, external effect, over those +too rigid, or too formless faces; a dream that lingers a moment, +retreating in the dawn, incomplete, aimless, helpless; a thing with +faint hearing, faint memory, faint power of touch; a breath, a flame in +the doorway, a feather in the wind. + +The qualities of the great masters in art or literature, the combination +of those qualities, the laws by which they moderate, support, relieve +each other, are not peculiar to them; but most often typical standards, +or revealing instances, of the laws by which certain aesthetic effects +are produced. The old masters indeed are simpler; their characteristics +are written larger, and are easier to read, than their analogues in all +the mixed, confused productions of the modern mind. But when once we +have succeeded in defining for ourselves those characteristics, and the +law of their combination, we have acquired a standard or measure which +helps us to put in its right place many a vagrant genius, many an +unclassified talent, many precious though imperfect products of art. It +is so with the components of the true character of Michelangelo. That +strange interfusion of sweetness and strength is not to be found in +those who claimed to be his followers; but it is found in many of those +who worked before him, and in many others down to our own time, in +William Blake, for instance, and Victor Hugo, who, though not of his +school, and unaware, are his true sons, and help us to understand him, +as he in turn interprets and justifies them. Perhaps this is the chief +use in studying old masters. + +1871. + + + +LEONARDO DA VINCI + +HOMO MINISTER ET INTERPRES NATURAE + + +In Vasari's life of Leonardo da Vinci as we now read it there are some +variations from the first edition. There, the painter who has fixed the +outward type of Christ for succeeding centuries was a bold speculator, +holding lightly by other men's beliefs, setting philosophy above +Christianity. Words of his, trenchant enough to justify this impression, +are not recorded, and would have been out of keeping with a genius of +which one characteristic is the tendency to lose itself in a refined and +graceful mystery. The suspicion was but the time-honoured mode in which +the world stamps its appreciation of one who has thoughts for himself +alone, his high indifference, his intolerance of the common forms of +things; and in the second edition the image was changed into something +fainter and more conventional. But it is still by a certain mystery in +his work, and something enigmatical beyond the usual measure of great +men, that he fascinates, or perhaps half repels. His life is one of +sudden revolts, with intervals in which he works not at all, or apart +from the main scope of his work. By a strange fortune the works on which +his more popular fame rested disappeared early from the world, as the +Battle of the Standard; or are mixed obscurely with the work of meaner +hands, as the Last Supper. His type of beauty is so exotic that it +fascinates a larger number than it delights, and seems more than that of +any other artist to reflect ideas and views and some scheme of the world +within; so that he seemed to his contemporaries to be the possessor of +some unsanctified and sacred wisdom; as to Michelet and others to have +anticipated modern ideas. He trifles with his genius, and crowds all his +chief work into a few tormented years of later life; yet he is so +possessed by his genius that he passes unmoved through the most tragic +events, overwhelming his country and friends, like one who comes across +them by chance on some secret errand. + +His legend, as the French say, with the anecdotes which every one knows, +is one of the most brilliant in Vasari. Later writers merely copied it, +until, in 1804, Carlo Amoretti applied to it a criticism which left +hardly a date fixed, and not one of those anecdotes untouched. The +various questions thus raised have since that time become, one after +another, subjects of special study, and mere antiquarianism has in this +direction little more to do. For others remain the editing of the +thirteen books of his manuscripts, and the separation by technical +criticism of what in his reputed works is really his, from what is only +half his, or the work of his pupils. But a lover of strange souls may +still analyse for himself the impression made on him by those works, and +try to reach through it a definition of the chief elements of Leonardo's +genius. The legend, corrected and enlarged by its critics, may now and +then intervene to support the results of this analysis. + +His life has three divisions--thirty years at Florence, nearly twenty +years at Milan, then nineteen years of wandering, till he sinks to rest +under the protection of Francis the First at the Chateau de Clou. The +dishonour of illegitimacy hangs over his birth. Piero Antonio, his +father, was of a noble Florentine house, of Vinci in the Val d'Arno, and +Leonardo, brought up delicately among the true children of that house, +was the love-child of his youth, with the keen, puissant nature such +children often have. We see him in his youth fascinating all men by his +beauty, improvising music and songs, buying the caged birds and setting +them free, as he walked the streets of Florence, fond of odd bright +dresses and spirited horses. + +From his earliest years he designed many objects, and constructed models +in relief, of which Vasari mentions some of women smiling. His father, +pondering over this promise in the child, took him to the workshop of +Andrea del Verrocchio, then the most famous artist in Florence. +Beautiful objects lay about there--reliquaries, pyxes, silver images for +the pope's chapel at Rome, strange fancy-work of the middle age, keeping +odd company with fragments of antiquity, then but lately discovered. +Another student Leonardo may have seen there--a boy into whose soul the +level light and aerial illusions of Italian sunsets had passed, in after +days famous as Perugino. Verrocchio was an artist of the earlier +Florentine type, carver, painter, and worker in metals, in one; +designer, not of pictures only, but of all things for sacred or +household use, drinking-vessels, ambries, instruments of music, making +them all fair to look upon, filling the common ways of life with the +reflexion of some far-off brightness; and years of patience had refined +his hand till his work was now sought after from distant places. + +It happened that Verrocchio was employed by the brethren of Vallombrosa +to paint the Baptism of Christ, and Leonardo was allowed to finish an +angel in the left hand corner. It was one of those moments in which the +progress of a great thing--here, that of the art of Italy--presses hard +and sharp on the happiness of an individual, through whose +discouragement and decrease, humanity, in more fortunate persons, comes +a step nearer to its final success. + +For beneath the cheerful exterior of the mere well-paid craftsman, +chasing brooches for the copes of Santa Maria Novella, or twisting metal +screens for the tombs of the Medici, lay the ambitious desire of +expanding the destiny of Italian art by a larger knowledge and insight +into things, a purpose in art not unlike Leonardo's still unconscious +purpose; and often, in the modelling of drapery, or of a lifted arm, or +of hair cast back from the face, there came to him something of the +freer manner and richer humanity of a later age. But in this Baptism the +pupil had surpassed the master; and Verrocchio turned away as one +stunned, and as if his sweet earlier work must thereafter be distasteful +to him, from the bright animated angel of Leonardo's hand. + +The angel may still be seen in Florence, a space of sunlight in the +cold, laboured old picture; but the legend is true only in sentiment, +for painting had always been the art by which Verrocchio set least +store. And as in a sense he anticipates Leonardo, so to the last +Leonardo recalls the studio of Verrocchio, in the love of beautiful +toys, such as the vessel of water for a mirror, and lovely needle-work +about the implicated hands in the Modesty and Vanity, and of reliefs +like those cameos which in the Virgin of the Balances hang all round the +girdle of Saint Michael, and of bright variegated stones, such as the +agates in the Saint Anne, and in a hieratic preciseness and grace, as of +a sanctuary swept and garnished. Amid all the cunning and intricacy of +his Lombard manner this never left him. Much of it there must have been +in that lost picture of Paradise, which he prepared as a cartoon for +tapestry, to be woven in the looms of Flanders. It was the perfection of +the older Florentine style of miniature-painting, with patient putting +of each leaf upon the trees and each flower in the grass, where the +first man and woman were standing. + +And because it was the perfection of that style, it awoke in Leonardo +some seed of discontent which lay in the secret places of his nature. +For the way to perfection is through a series of disgusts; and this +picture--all that he had done so far in his life at Florence--was after +all in the old slight manner. His art, if it was to be something in the +world, must be weighted with more of the meaning of nature and purpose +of humanity. Nature was "the true mistress of higher intelligences." So +he plunged into the study of nature. And in doing this he followed the +manner of the older students; he brooded over the hidden virtues of +plants and crystals, the lines traced by the stars as they moved in the +sky, over the correspondences which exist between the different orders +of living things, through which, to eyes opened, they interpret each +other; and for years he seemed to those about him as one listening to a +voice, silent for other men. + +He learned here the art of going deep, of tracking the sources of +expression to their subtlest retreats, the power of an intimate presence +in the things he handled. He did not at once or entirely desert his art; +only he was no longer the cheerful, objective painter, through whose +soul, as through clear glass, the bright figures of Florentine life, +only made a little mellower and more pensive by the transit, passed on +to the white wall. He wasted many days in curious tricks of design, +seeming to lose himself in the spinning of intricate devices of lines +and colours. He was smitten with a love of the impossible--the +perforation of mountains, changing the course of rivers, raising great +buildings, such as the church of San Giovanni, in the air; all those +feats for the performance of which natural magic professed to have the +key. Later writers, indeed, see in these efforts an anticipation of +modern mechanics; in him they were rather dreams, thrown off by the +overwrought and labouring brain. Two ideas were especially fixed in him, +as reflexes of things that had touched his brain in childhood beyond the +measure of other impressions--the smiling of women and the motion of +great waters. + +And in such studies some interfusion of the extremes of beauty and +terror shaped itself, as an image that might be seen and touched, in the +mind of this gracious youth, so fixed that for the rest of his life it +never left him; and as catching glimpses of it in the strange eyes or +hair of chance people, he would follow such about the streets of +Florence till the sun went down, of whom many sketches of his remain. +Some of these are full of a curious beauty, that remote beauty +apprehended only by those who have sought it carefully; who, starting +with acknowledged types of beauty, have refined as far upon these, as +these refine upon the world of common forms. But mingled inextricably +with this there is an element of mockery also; so that, whether in +sorrow or scorn, he caricatures Dante even. Legions of grotesques sweep +under his hand; for has not nature too her grotesques--the rent rock, +the distorting light of evening on lonely roads, the unveiled structure +of man in the embryo, or the skeleton? + +All these swarming fancies unite in the Medusa of the Uffizii. Vasari's +story of an earlier Medusa, painted on a wooden shield, is perhaps an +invention; and yet, properly told, has more of the air of truth about it +than any-thing else in the whole legend. For its real subject is not the +serious work of a man, but the experiment of a child. The lizards and +glow-worms and other strange small creatures which haunt an Italian +vineyard bring before one the whole picture of a child's life in a +Tuscan dwelling--half castle, half farm--and are as true to nature as +the pretended astonishment of the father for whom the boy has prepared a +surprise. It was not in play that he painted that other Medusa, the one +great picture which he left behind him in Florence. The subject has been +treated in various ways; Leonardo alone cuts to its centre; he alone +realises it as the head of a corpse, exercising its powers through all +the circumstances of death. What may be called the fascination of +corruption penetrates in every touch its exquisitely finished beauty. +About the dainty lines of the cheek the bat flits unheeded. The delicate +snakes seem literally strangling each other in terrified struggle to +escape from the Medusa brain. The hue which violent death always brings +with it is in the features: features singularly massive and grand, as we +catch them inverted, in a dexterous foreshortening, sloping upwards, +almost sliding down upon us, crown foremost, like a great calm stone +against which the wave of serpents breaks. But it is a subject that may +well be left to the beautiful verses of Shelley. + +The science of that age was all divination, clairvoyance, unsubjected to +our exact modern formulas, seeking in an instant of vision to +concentrate a thousand experiences. Later writers, thinking only of the +well-ordered treatise on painting which a Frenchman, Raffaelle du +Fresne, a hundred years afterwards, compiled from Leonardo's bewildered +manuscripts, written strangely, as his manner was, from right to left, +have imagined a rigid order in his inquiries. But this rigid order was +little in accordance with the restlessness of his character; and if we +think of him as the mere reasoner who subjects design to anatomy, and +composition to mathematical rules, we shall hardly have of him that +impression which those about him received from him. Poring over his +crucibles, making experiments with colour, trying, by a strange +variation of the alchemist's dream, to discover the secret, not of an +elixir to make man's natural life immortal, but rather of giving +immortality to the subtlest and most delicate effects of painting, he +seemed to them rather the sorcerer or the magician, possessed of curious +secrets and a hidden knowledge, living in a world of which he alone +possessed the key. What his philosophy seems to have been most like is +that of Paracelsus or Cardan; and much of the spirit of the older +alchemy still hangs about it, with its confidence in short cuts and odd +byways to knowledge. To him philosophy was to be something giving +strange swiftness and double sight, divining the sources of springs +beneath the earth or of expression beneath the human countenance, +clairvoyant of occult gifts in common or uncommon things, in the reed at +the brook-side, or the star which draws near to us but once in a +century. How, in this way, the clear purpose was overclouded, the fine +chaser's hand perplexed, we but dimly see; the mystery which at no point +quite lifts from Leonardo's life is deepest here. But it is certain that +at one period of his life he had almost ceased to be an artist. + +The year 1483--the year of the birth of Raffaelle and the thirty-first +of Leonardo's life--is fixed as the date of his visit to Milan by the +letter in which he recommends himself to Ludovico Sforza, and offers to +tell him, for a price, strange secrets in the art of war. It was that +Sforza who murdered his young nephew by slow poison, yet was so +susceptible of religious impressions that he blended mere earthly +passions with a sort of religious sentimentalism, and who took for his +device the mulberry-tree--symbol, in its long delay and sudden yielding +of flowers and fruit together, of a wisdom which economises all forces +for an opportunity of sudden and sure effect. The fame of Leonardo had +gone before him, and he was to model a colossal statue of Francesco, the +first Duke of Milan. As for Leonardo himself, he came not as an artist +at all, or careful of the fame of one; but as a player on the harp, a +strange harp of silver of his own construction, shaped in some curious +likeness to a horse's skull. The capricious spirit of Ludovico was +susceptible also of the charm of music, and Leonardo's nature had a kind +of spell in it. Fascination is always the word descriptive of him. No +portrait of his youth remains; but all tends to make us believe that up +to this time some charm of voice and aspect, strong enough to balance +the disadvantage of his birth, had played about him. His physical +strength was great; it was said that he could bend a horse-shoe like a +coil of lead. + +The Duomo, the work of artists from beyond the Alps, so fantastic to the +eye of a Florentine used to the mellow, unbroken surfaces of Giotto and +Arnolfo, was then in all its freshness; and below, in the streets of +Milan, moved a people as fantastic, changeful and dreamlike. To Leonardo +least of all men could there be anything poisonous in the exotic flowers +of sentiment which grew there. It was a life of brilliant sins and +exquisite amusements: Leonardo became a celebrated designer of pageants: +and it suited the quality of his genius, composed in almost equal parts +of curiosity and the desire of beauty, to take things as they came. + +Curiosity and the desire of beauty--these are the two elementary forces +in Leonardo's genius; curiosity often in conflict with the desire of +beauty, but generating, in union with it, a type of subtle and curious +grace. + +The movement of the fifteenth century was twofold; partly the +Renaissance, partly also the coming of what is called the "modern +spirit," with its realism, its appeal to experience: it comprehended a +return to antiquity, and a return to nature. Raffaelle represents the +return to antiquity, and Leonardo the return to nature. In this return +to nature, he was seeking to satisfy a boundless curiosity by her +perpetual surprises, a microscopic sense of finish by her finesse, or +delicacy of operation, that subtilitas naturae which Bacon notices. So +we find him often in intimate relations with men of science,--with Fra +Luca Poccioli the mathematician, and the anatomist Marc Antonio della +Torre. His observations and experiments fill thirteen volumes of +manuscript; and those who can judge describe him as anticipating long +before, by rapid intuition, the later ideas of science. He explained the +obscure light of the unilluminated part of the moon, knew that the sea +had once covered the mountains which contain shells, and the gathering +of the equatorial waters above the polar. + +He who thus penetrated into the most secret parts of nature preferred +always the more to the less remote, what, seeming exceptional, was an +instance of law more refined, the construction about things of a +peculiar atmosphere and mixed lights. He paints flowers with such +curious felicity that different writers have attributed to him a +fondness for particular flowers, as Clement the cyclamen, and Rio the +jasmin; while, at Venice, there is a stray leaf from his portfolio +dotted all over with studies of violets and the wild rose. In him first +appears the taste for what is bizarre or recherche in landscape; hollow +places full of the green shadow of bituminous rocks, ridged reefs of +trap-rock which cut the water into quaint sheets of light--their exact +antitype is in our own western seas; all the solemn effects of moving +water; you may follow it springing from its distant source among the +rocks on the heath of the Madonna of the Balances, passing, as a little +fall, into the treacherous calm of the Madonna of the Lake, next, as a +goodly river, below the cliffs of the Madonna of the Rocks, washing the +white walls of its distant villages, stealing out in a network of +divided streams in La Gioconda to the seashore of the Saint Anne--that +delicate place, where the wind passes like the hand of some fine etcher +over the surface, and the untorn shells are lying thick upon the sand, +and the tops of the rocks, to which the waves never rise, are green with +grass, grown fine as hair. It is the landscape, not of dreams or of +fancy, but of places far withdrawn, and hours selected from a thousand +with a miracle of finesse. Through Leonardo's strange veil of sight +things reach him so; in no ordinary night or day, but as in faint light +of eclipse, or in some brief interval of falling rain at daybreak, or +through deep water. + +And not into nature only; but he plunged also into human personality, +and became above all a painter of portraits; faces of a modelling more +skilful than has been seen before or since, embodied with a reality +which almost amounts to illusion, on dark air. To take a character as it +was, and delicately sound its stops, suited one so curious in +observation, curious in invention. So he painted the portraits of +Ludovico's mistresses, Lucretia Crivelli and Cecilia Galerani the +poetess, of Ludovico himself, and the Duchess Beatrice. The portrait of +Cecilia Galerani is lost; but that of Lucretia Crivelli has been +identified with La Belle Feroniere of the Louvre, and Ludovico's pale, +anxious face still remains in the Ambrosian library. Opposite is the +portrait of Beatrice d'Este, in whom Leonardo seems to have caught some +presentiment of early death, painting her precise and grave, full of the +refinement of the dead, in sad earth-coloured raiment, set with pale +stones. + +Sometimes this curiosity came in conflict with the desire of beauty; it +tended to make him go too far below that outside of things in which art +begins and ends. This struggle between the reason and its ideas, and the +senses, the desire of beauty, is the key to Leonardo's life at +Milan--his restlessness, his endless re-touchings, his odd experiments +with colour. How much must he leave unfinished, how much recommence! +His problem was the transmutation of ideas into images. What he had +attained so far had been the mastery of that earlier Florentine style, +with its naive and limited sensuousness. Now he was to entertain in this +narrow medium those divinations of a humanity too wide for it, that +larger vision of the opening world, which is only not too much for the +great, irregular art of Shakspere; and everywhere the effort is visible +in the work of his hands. This agitation, this perpetual delay, give him +an air of weariness and ennui. To others he seems to be aiming at an +impossible effect, to do something that art, that painting, can never +do. Often the expression of physical beauty at this or that point seems +strained and marred in the effort, as in those heavy German +foreheads--too German and heavy for perfect beauty. + +For there was a touch of Germany in that genius which, as Goethe said, +had "thought itself weary"--muede sich gedacht. What an anticipation of +modern Germany, for instance, in that debate on the question whether +sculpture or painting is the nobler art.* But there is this difference +between him and the German, that, with all that curious science, the +German would have thought nothing more was needed; and the name of +Goethe himself reminds one how great for the artist may be the danger of +overmuch science; how Goethe, who, in the Elective Affinities and the +first part of Faust, does transmute ideas into images, who wrought many +such transmutations, did not invariably find the spell-word, and in the +second part of Faust presents us with a mass of science which has almost +no artistic character at all. But Leonardo will never work till the +happy moment comes--that moment of bien-etre, which to imaginative men +is a moment of invention. On this moment he waits; other moments are but +a preparation, or after-taste of it. Few men distinguish between them as +jealously as he did. Hence so many flaws even in the choicest work. But +for Leonardo the distinction is absolute, and, in the moment of +bien-etre, the alchemy complete: the idea is stricken into colour and +imagery: a cloudy mysticism is refined to a subdued and graceful +mystery, and painting pleases the eye while it satisfies the soul. + +*How princely, how characteristic of Leonardo, the answer, Quanto piu, +un'arte porta seco fatica di corpo, tanto piu e vile! + +This curious beauty is seen above all in his drawings, and in these +chiefly in the abstract grace of the bounding lines. Let us take some of +these drawings, and pause over them awhile; and, first, one of those at +Florence--the heads of a woman and a little child, set side by side, but +each in its own separate frame. First of all, there is much pathos in +the reappearance in the fuller curves of the face of the child, of the +sharper, more chastened lines of the worn and older face, which leaves +no doubt that the heads are those of a little child and its mother. A +feeling for maternity is indeed always characteristic of Leonardo; and +this feeling is further indicated here by the half-humorous pathos of +the diminutive, rounded shoulders of the child. You may note a like +pathetic power in drawings of a young man seated in a stooping posture, +his face in his hands, as in sorrow; of a slave sitting in an uneasy +inclined posture, in some brief interval of rest; of a small Madonna and +Child, peeping sideways in half-reassured terror, as a mighty griffin +with batlike wings, one of Leonardo's finest inventions, descends +suddenly from the air to snatch up a lion wandering near them. But note +in these, as that which especially belongs to art, the contour of the +young man's hair, the poise of the slave's arm above his head, and the +curves of the head of the child, following the little skull within, thin +and fine as some seashell worn by the wind. + +Take again another head, still more full of sentiment, but of a +different kind, a little drawing in red chalk which every one remembers +who has examined at all carefully the drawings by old masters at the +Louvre. It is a face of doubtful sex, set in the shadow of its own hair, +the cheek-line in high light against it, with something voluptuous and +full in the eyelids and the lips. Another drawing might pass for the +same face in childhood, with parched and feverish lips, but with much +sweetness in the loose, short-waisted childish dress, with necklace and +bulla, and in the daintily bound hair. We might take the thread of +suggestion which these two drawings offer, when thus set side by side, +and, following it through the drawings at Florence, Venice, and Milan, +construct a sort of series, illustrating better than anything else +Leonardo's type of womanly beauty. Daughters of Herodias, with their +fantastic head-dresses knotted and folded so strangely to leave the +dainty oval of the face disengaged, they are not of the Christian +family, or of Raffaelle's. They are the clairvoyants, through whom, as +through delicate instruments, one becomes aware of the subtler forces of +nature, and the modes of their action, all that is magnetic in it, all +those finer conditions wherein material things rise to that subtlety of +operation which constitutes them spiritual, where only the finer nerve +and the keener touch can follow: it is as if in certain revealing +instances we actually saw them at their work on human flesh. Nervous, +electric, faint always with some inexplicable faintness, they seem to be +subject to exceptional conditions, to feel powers at work in the common +air unfelt by others, to become, as it were, receptacles of them, and +pass them on to us in a chain of secret influences. + +But among the more youthful heads there is one at Florence which Love +chooses for its own--the head of a young man, which may well be the +likeness of Andrea Salaino, beloved of Leonardo for his curled and +waving hair--belli capelli ricci e inanellati--and afterwards his +favourite pupil and servant. Of all the interests in living men and +women which may have filled his life at Milan, this attachment alone is +recorded; and in return Salaino identified himself so entirely with +Leonardo, that the picture of Saint Anne, in the Louvre, has been +attributed to him. It illustrates Leonardo's usual choice of pupils, men +of some natural charm of person or intercourse like Salaino, or men of +birth and princely habits of life like Francesco Melzi--men with just +enough genius to be capable of initiation into his secret, for the sake +of which they were ready to efface their own individuality. Among them, +retiring often to the Villa of the Melzi at Canonica al Vaprio, he +worked at his fugitive manuscripts and sketches, working for the present +hour, and for a few only, perhaps chiefly for himself. Other artists +have been as careless of present or future applause, in +self-forgetfulness, or because they set moral or political ends above +the ends of art; but in him this solitary culture of beauty seems to +have hung upon a kind of self-love, and a carelessness in the work of +art of all but art itself. Out of the secret places of a unique +temperament he brought strange blossoms and fruits hitherto unknown; and +for him, the novel impression conveyed, the exquisite effect woven, +counted as an end in itself--a perfect end. + +And these pupils of his acquired his manner so thoroughly, that though +the number of Leonardo's authentic works is very small indeed, there is +a multitude of other men's pictures through which we undoubtedly see +him, and come very near to his genius. Sometimes, as in the little +picture of the Madonna of the Balances, in which, from the bosom of His +mother, Christ weighs the pebbles of the brooks against the sins of men, +we have a hand, rough enough by contrast, working upon some fine hint or +sketch of his. Sometimes, as in the subjects of the Daughter of Herodias +and the Head of John the Baptist, the lost originals have been re-echoed +and varied upon again and again by Luini and others. At other times the +original remains, but has been a mere theme or motive, a type of which +the accessories might be modified or changed; and these variations have +but brought out the more the purpose, or expression of the original. It +is so with the so-called Saint John the Baptist of the Louvre--one of +the few naked figures Leonardo painted--whose delicate brown flesh and +woman's hair no one would go out into the wilderness to seek, and whose +treacherous smile would have us understand something far beyond the +outward gesture or circumstance. But the long, reedlike cross in the +hand, which suggests Saint John the Baptist, becomes faint in a copy at +the Ambrosian Library, and disappears altogether in another, in the +Palazzo Rosso at Genoa. Returning from the last to the original, we are +no longer surprised by Saint John's strange likeness to the Bacchus +which hangs near it, which set Theophile Gautier thinking of Heine's +notion of decayed gods, who, to maintain themselves, after the fall of +paganism, took employment in the new religion. We recognise one of those +symbolical inventions in which the ostensible subject is used, not as +matter for definite pictorial realisation, but as the starting-point of +a train of sentiment as subtle and vague as a piece of music. No one +ever ruled over his subject more entirely than Leonardo, or bent it more +dexterously to purely artistic ends. And so it comes to pass that though +he handles sacred subjects continually, he is the most profane of +painters; the given person or subject, Saint John in the Desert, or the +Virgin on the knees of Saint Anne, is often merely the pretext for a +kind of work which carries one quite out of the range of its +conventional associations. + +About the Last Supper, its decay and restorations, a whole literature +has risen up, Goethe's pensive sketch of its sad fortunes being far the +best. The death in childbirth of the Duchess Beatrice was followed in +Ludovico by one of those paroxysms of religious feeling which in him +were constitutional. The low, gloomy Dominican church of Saint Mary of +the Graces had been the favourite shrine of Beatrice. She had spent her +last days there, full of sinister presentiments; at last it had been +almost necessary to remove her from it by force; and now it was here +that mass was said a hundred times a day for her repose. On the damp +wall of the refectory, oozing with mineral salts, Leonardo painted the +Last Supper. A hundred anecdotes were told about it, his retouchings and +delays. They show him refusing to work except at the moment of +invention, scornful of whoever thought that art was a work of mere +industry and rule, often coming the whole length of Milan to give a +single touch. He painted it, not in fresco, where all must be impromptu, +but in oils, the new method which he had been one of the first to +welcome, because it allowed of so many afterthoughts, so refined a +working out of perfection. It turned out that on a plastered wall no +process could have been less durable. Within fifty years it had fallen +into decay. And now we have to turn back to Leonardo's own studies, +above all to one drawing of the central head at the Brera, which, in a +union of tenderness and severity in the face-lines, reminds one of the +monumental work of Mino da Fiesole, to trace it as it was. + +It was another effort to lift a given subject out of the range of its +conventional associations. Strange, after all the misrepresentations of +the middle age, was the effort to see it, not as the pale Host of the +altar, but as one taking leave of his friends. Five years afterwards the +young Raffaelle, at Florence, painted it with sweet and solemn effect in +the refectory of Saint Onofrio; but still with all the mystical +unreality of the school of Perugino. Vasari pretends that the central +head was never finished; but finished or unfinished, or owing part of +its effect to a mellowing decay, this central head does but consummate +the sentiment of the whole company--ghosts through which you see the +wall, faint as the shadows of the leaves upon the wall, on autumn +afternoons; this figure is but the faintest, most spectral of them all. +It is the image of what the history it symbolises has more and more +become for the world, paler and paler as it recedes into the distance. +Criticism came with its appeal from mystical unrealities to originals, +and restored no lifelike reality but these transparent shadows, spirits +which have not flesh and bones. + +The Last Supper was finished in 1497; in 1498 the French entered Milan, +and whether or not the Gascon bowmen used it as a mark for their arrows, +the model of Francesco Sforza certainly did not survive. What, in that +age, such work was capable of being--of what nobility, amid what racy +truthfulness to fact--we may judge from the bronze statue of Bartolomeo +Colleoni on horseback, modelled by Leonardo's master, Verrocchio (he +died of grief, it was said, because, the mould accidentally failing, he +was unable himself to complete it), still standing in the piazza of +Saint John and Saint Paul at Venice. Some traces of the thing may remain +in certain of Leonardo's drawings, and also, perhaps, by a singular +circumstance, in a far-off town of France. For Ludovico became a +prisoner, and ended his days at Loches in Touraine;--allowed at last, it +is said, to breathe fresher air for awhile in one of the rooms of a high +tower there, after many years of captivity in the dungeons below, where +all seems sick with barbarous feudal memories, and where his prison is +still shown, its walls covered with strange painted arabesques, ascribed +by tradition to his hand, amused a little, in this way, through the +tedious years:--vast helmets and faces and pieces of armour, among +which, in great letters, the motto Infelix Sum is woven in and out, and +in which, perhaps, it is not too fanciful to see the fruit of a wistful +after-dreaming over all those experiments with Leonardo on the armed +figure of the great duke, that had occupied the two so often during the +days of his good fortune at Milan. + +The remaining years of Leonardo's life are more or less years of +wandering. From his brilliant life at court he had saved nothing, and he +returned to Florence a poor man. Perhaps necessity kept his spirit +excited: the next four years are one prolonged rapture or ecstasy of +invention. He painted the pictures of the Louvre, his most authentic +works, which came there straight from the cabinet of Francis the First, +at Fontainebleau. One picture of his, the Saint Anne--not the Saint Anne +of the Louvre, but a mere cartoon, now in London--revived for a moment a +sort of appreciation more common in an earlier time, when good pictures +had still seemed miraculous; and for two days a crowd of people of all +qualities passed in naive excitement through the chamber where it hung, +and gave Leonardo a taste of Cimabue's triumph. But his work was less +with the saints than with the living women of Florence; for he lived +still in the polished society that he loved, and in the houses of +Florence, left perhaps a little subject to light thoughts by the death +of Savonarola--the latest gossip (1869) is of an undraped Monna Lisa, +found in some out-of-the-way corner of the late Orleans collection--he +saw Ginevra di Benci, and Lisa, the young third wife of Francesco del +Giocondo. As we have seen him using incidents of sacred story, not for +their own sake, or as mere subjects for pictorial realisation, but as a +symbolical language for fancies all his own, so now he found a vent for +his thoughts in taking one of these languid women, and raising her, as +Leda or Pomona, Modesty or Vanity, to the seventh heaven of symbolical +expression. + +La Gioconda is, in the truest sense, Leonardo's masterpiece, the +revealing instance of his mode of thought and work. In suggestiveness, +only the Melancholia of Duerer is comparable to it; and no crude +symbolism disturbs the effect of its subdued and graceful mystery. We +all know the face and hands of the figure, set in its marble chair, in +that cirque of fantastic rocks, as in some faint light under sea. +Perhaps of all ancient pictures time has chilled it least.* As often +happens with works in which invention seems to reach its limits, there +is an element in it given to, not invented by, the master. In that +inestimable folio of drawings, once in the possession of Vasari, were +certain designs by Verrocchio, faces of such impressive beauty that +Leonardo in his boyhood copied them many times. It is hard not to +connect with these designs of the elder, by-past master, as with its +germinal principle, the unfathomable smile, always with a touch of +something sinister in it, which plays over all Leonardo's work. +Besides, the picture is a portrait. From childhood we see this image +defining itself on the fabric of his dreams; and but for express +historical testimony, we might fancy that this was but his ideal lady, +embodied and beheld at last. What was the relationship of a living +Florentine to this creature of his thought? By means of what strange +affinities had the person and the dream grown up thus apart, and yet so +closely together? Present from the first incorporeally in Leonardo's +thought, dimly traced in the designs of Verrocchio, she is found present +at last in Il Giocondo's house. That there is much of mere portraiture +in the picture is attested by the legend that by artificial means, the +presence of mimes and flute-players, that subtle expression was +protracted on the face. Again, was it in four years and by renewed +labour never really completed, or in four months and as by stroke of +magic, that the image was projected? + +*Yet for Vasari there was some further magic of crimson in the lips and +cheeks, lost for us. + +The presence that thus rose so strangely beside the waters, is +expressive of what in the ways of a thousand years men had come to +desire. Hers is the head upon which all "the ends of the world are +come," and the eyelids are a little weary. It is a beauty wrought out +from within upon the flesh, the deposit, little cell by cell, of strange +thoughts and fantastic reveries and exquisite passions. Set it for a +moment beside one of those white Greek goddesses or beautiful women of +antiquity, and how would they be troubled by this beauty, into which the +soul with all its maladies has passed! All the thoughts and experience +of the world have etched and moulded there, in that which they have of +power to refine and make expressive the outward form, the animalism of +Greece, the lust of Rome, the reverie of the middle age with its +spiritual ambition and imaginative loves, the return of the Pagan world, +the sins of the Borgias. She is older than the rocks among which she +sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the +secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their +fallen day about her; and trafficked for strange webs with Eastern +merchants: and, as Leda, was the mother of Helen of Troy, and, as Saint +Anne, the mother of Mary; and all this has been to her but as the sound +of lyres and flutes, and lives only in the delicacy with which it has +moulded the changing lineaments, and tinged the eyelids and the hands. +The fancy of a perpetual life, sweeping together ten thousand +experiences, is an old one; and modern thought has conceived the idea of +humanity as wrought upon by, and summing up in itself, all modes of +thought and life. Certainly Lady Lisa might stand as the embodiment of +the old fancy, the symbol of the modern idea. + +During these years at Florence Leonardo's history is the history of his +art; he himself is lost in the bright cloud of it. The outward history +begins again in 1502, with a wild journey through central Italy, which +he makes as the chief engineer of Caesar Borgia. The biographer, putting +together the stray jottings of his manuscripts, may follow him through +every day of it, up the strange tower of Siena, which looks towards +Rome, elastic like a bent bow, down to the seashore at Piombino, each +place appearing as fitfully as in a fever dream. + +One other great work was left for him to do, a work all trace of which +soon vanished, The Battle of the Standard, in which he had Michelangelo +for his rival. The citizens of Florence, desiring to decorate the walls +of the great council-chamber, had offered the work for competition, and +any subject might be chosen from the Florentine wars of the fifteenth +century. Michelangelo chose for his cartoon an incident of the war with +Pisa, in which the Florentine soldiers, bathing in the Arno, are +surprised by the sound of trumpets, and run to arms. His design has +reached us only in an old engraving, which perhaps helps us less than +what we remember of the background of his Holy Family in the Uffizii to +imagine in what superhuman form, such as might have beguiled the heart +of an earlier world, those figures may have risen from the water. +Leonardo chose an incident from the battle of Anghiari, in which two +parties of soldiers fight for a standard. Like Michelangelo's, his +cartoon is lost, and has come to us only in sketches, and in a fragment +of Rubens. Through the accounts given we may discern some lust of +terrible things in it, so that even the horses tore each other with +their teeth; and yet one fragment of it, in a drawing of his at +Florence, is far different--a waving field of lovely armour, the chased +edgings running like lines of sunlight from side to side. Michelangelo +was twenty-seven years old; Leonardo more than fifty; and Raffaelle, +then nineteen years old, visiting Florence for the first time, came and +watched them as they worked. + +We catch a glimpse of him again, at Rome in 1514, surrounded by his +mirrors and vials and furnaces, making strange toys that seemed alive of +wax and quicksilver. The hesitation which had haunted him all through +life, and made him like one under a spell, was upon him now with double +force. No one had ever carried political indifferentism farther; it had +always been his philosophy to "fly before the storm"; he is for the +Sforzas, or against them, as the tide of their fortune turns. Yet now in +the political society of Rome, he came to be suspected of concealed +French sympathies. It paralysed him to find himself among enemies; and +he turned wholly to France, which had long courted him. + +France was about to become an Italy more Italian than Italy itself. +Francis the First, like Lewis the Twelfth before him, was attracted by +the finesse of Leonardo's work; La Gioconda was already in his cabinet, +and he offered Leonardo the little Chateau de Clou, with its vineyards +and meadows, in the pleasant valley of the Masse, just outside the walls +of the town of Amboise, where, especially in the hunting season, the +court then frequently resided. A Monsieur Lyonard, peinteur du Roy pour +Amboyse--so the letter of Francis the First is headed. It opens a +prospect, one of the most interesting in the history of art, where, +under a strange mixture of lights, Italian art dies away as a French +exotic. + +Two questions remain, after much busy antiquarianism, concerning +Leonardo's death--the question of the precise form of his religion, and +the question whether Francis the First was present at the time. They are +of about equally little importance in the estimate of Leonardo's genius. +The directions in his will about the thirty masses and the great candles +for the church of Saint Florentin are things of course, their real +purpose being immediate and practical; and on no theory of religion +could these hurried offices be of much consequence. We forget them in +speculating how one who had been always so desirous of beauty, but +desired it always in such definite and precise forms, as hands or +flowers or hair, looked forward now into the vague land, and experienced +the last curiosity. + +1869. + + + +THE SCHOOL OF GIORGIONE + +It is the mistake of much popular criticism to regard poetry, music, and +Painting--all the various products of art--as but translations into +different languages of one and the same fixed quantity of imaginative +thought, supplemented by certain technical qualities of colour, in +painting--of sound, in music--of rhythmical words, in poetry. In this +way, the sensuous element in art, and with it almost everything in art +that is essentially artistic, is made a matter of indifference; and a +clear apprehension of the opposite principle--that the sensuous material +of each art brings with it a special phase or quality of beauty, +untranslatable into the forms of any other, an order of impressions +distinct in kind--is the beginning of all true aesthetic criticism. For, +as art addresses not pure sense, still less the pure intellect, but the +"imaginative reason" through the senses, there are differences of kind +in aesthetic beauty, corresponding to the differences in kind of the +gifts of sense themselves. Each art, therefore, having its own peculiar +and incommunicable sensuous charm, has its own special mode of reaching +the imagination, its own special responsibilities to its material. One +of the functions of aesthetic criticism is to define these limitations; +to estimate the degree in which a given work of art fulfils its +responsibilities to its special material; to note in a picture that true +pictorial charm, which is neither a mere poetical thought nor sentiment, +on the one hand, nor a mere result of communicable technical skill in +colour or design, on the other; to define in a poem that true poetical +quality, which is neither descriptive nor meditative merely, but comes +of an inventive handling of rhythmical language--the element of song in +the singing; to note in music the musical charm--that essential music, +which presents no words, no matter of sentiment or thought, separable +from the special form in which it is conveyed to us. + +To such a philosophy of the variations of the beautiful, Lessing's +analysis of the spheres of sculpture and poetry, in the Laocoon, was a +very important contribution. But a true appreciation of these things is +possible only in the light of a whole system of such art-casuistries. +And it is in the criticism of painting that this truth most needs +enforcing, for it is in popular judgments on pictures that that false +generalisation of all art into forms of poetry is most prevalent. To +suppose that all is mere technical acquirement in delineation or touch, +working through and addressing itself to the intelligence, on the one +side, or a merely poetical, or what may be called literary interest, +addressed also to the pure intelligence, on the other;--this is the way +of most spectators, and of many critics, who have never caught sight, +all the time, of that true pictorial quality which lies between (unique +pledge of the possession of the pictorial gift) the inventive or +creative handling of pure line and colour, which, as almost always in +Dutch painting, as often also in the works of Titian or Veronese, is +quite independent of anything definitely poetical in the subject it +accompanies. It is the drawing--the design projected from that peculiar +pictorial temperament or constitution, in which, while it may possibly +be ignorant of true anatomical proportions, all things whatever, all +poetry, every idea however abstract or obscure, floats up as a visible +scene, or image: it is the colouring--that weaving as of just +perceptible gold threads of light through the dress, the flesh, the +atmosphere, in Titian's Lace-girl--the staining of the whole fabric of +the thing with a new, delightful physical quality. This drawing, +then--the arabesque traced in the air by Tintoret's flying figures, by +Titian's forest branches; this colouring--the magic conditions of light +and hue in the atmosphere of Titian's Lace-girl, or Rubens's Descent +from the Cross--these essential pictorial qualities must first of all +delight the sense, delight it as directly and sensuously as a fragment +of Venetian glass; and through this delight only be the medium of +whatever poetry or science may lie beyond them, in the intention of the +composer. In its primary aspect, a great picture has no more definite +message for us than an accidental play of sunlight and shadow for a +moment, on the wall or floor: is itself, in truth, a space of such +fallen light, caught as the colours are caught in an Eastern carpet, but +refined upon, and dealt with more subtly and exquisitely than by nature +itself. And this primary and essential condition fulfilled, we may trace +the coming of poetry into painting, by fine gradations upwards; from +Japanese fan-painting, for instance, where we get, first, only abstract +colour; then, just a little interfused sense of the poetry of flowers; +then, sometimes, perfect flower-painting; and so, onwards, until in +Titian we have, as his poetry in the Ariadne, so actually a touch of +true childlike humour in the diminutive, quaint figure with its silk +gown, which ascends the temple stairs, in his picture of the +Presentation of the Virgin, at Venice. + +But although each art has thus its own specific order of impressions, +and an untranslatable charm, while a just apprehension of the ultimate +differences of the arts is the beginning of aesthetic criticism; yet it +is noticeable that, in its special mode of handling its given material, +each art may be observed to pass into the condition of some other art, +by what German critics term an Anders-streben--a partial alienation from +its own limitations, by which the arts are able, not indeed to supply +the place of each other, but reciprocally to lend each other new forces. + +Thus some of the most delightful music seems to be always approaching to +figure, to pictorial definition. Architecture, again, though it has its +own laws--laws esoteric enough, as the true architect knows only too +well--yet sometimes aims at fulfilling the conditions of a picture, as +in the Arena chapel; or of sculpture, as in the flawless unity of +Giotto's tower at Florence; and often finds a true poetry, as in those +strangely twisted staircases of the chateaux of the country of the +Loire, as if it were intended that among their odd turnings the actors +in a wild life might pass each other unseen: there being a poetry also +of memory and of the mere effect of time, by which it often profits +greatly. Thus, again, sculpture aspires out of the hard limitation of +pure form towards colour, or its equivalent; poetry also, in many ways, +finding guidance from the other arts, the analogy between a Greek +tragedy and a work of Greek sculpture, between a sonnet and a relief, of +French poetry generally with the art of engraving, being more than mere +figures of speech; and all the arts in common aspiring towards the +principle of music; music being the typical, or ideally consummate art, +the object of the great Anders-streben of all art, of all that is +artistic, or partakes of artistic qualities. + +All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music. For while in +all other works of art it is possible to distinguish the matter from the +form, and the understanding can always make this distinction, yet it is +the constant effort of art to obliterate it. That the mere matter of a +poem, for instance--its subject, its given incidents or situation; that +the mere matter of a picture--the actual circumstances of an event, the +actual topography of a landscape--should be nothing without the form, +the spirit, of the handling; that this form, this mode of handling, +should become an end in itself, should penetrate every part of the +matter:--this is what all art constantly strives after, and achieves in +different degrees. + +This abstract language becomes clear enough, if we think of actual +examples. In an actual landscape we see a long white road, lost suddenly +on the hill-verge. That is the matter of one of the etchings of M. +Legros: only, in this etching, it is informed by an indwelling solemnity +of expression, seen upon it or half-seen, within the limits of an +exceptional moment, or caught from his own mood perhaps, but which he +maintains as the very essence of the thing, throughout his work. +Sometimes a momentary tint of stormy light may invest a homely or too +familiar scene with a character which might well have been drawn from +the deep places of the imagination. Then we might say that this +particular effect of light, this sudden inweaving of gold thread through +the texture of the haystack, and the poplars, and the grass, gives the +scene artistic qualities; that it is like a picture. And such tricks of +circumstance are commonest in landscape which has little salient +character of its own; because, in such scenery, all the material details +are so easily absorbed by that informing expression of passing light, +and elevated, throughout their whole extent, to a new and delightful +effect by it. And hence the superiority, for most conditions of the +picturesque, of a river-side in France to a Swiss valley, because, on +the French river-side, mere topography, the simple material, counts for +so little, and, all being so pure, untouched, and tranquil in itself, +mere light and shade have such easy work in modulating it to one +dominant tone. The Venetian landscape, on the other hand, has in its +material conditions much which is hard, or harshly definite; but the +masters of the Venetian school have shown themselves little burdened by +them. Of its Alpine background they retain certain abstracted elements +only, of cool colour and tranquillising line; and they use its actual +details, the brown windy turrets, the straw-coloured fields, the forest +arabesques, but as the notes of a music which duly accompanies the +presence of their men and women, presenting us with the spirit or +essence only of a certain sort of landscape--a country of the pure +reason or half-imaginative memory. + +Poetry, again, works with words addressed in the first instance to the +mere intelligence; and it deals, most often, with a definite subject or +situation. Sometimes it may find a noble and quite legitimate function +in the expression of moral or political aspiration, as often in the +poetry of Victor Hugo. In such instances it is easy enough for the +understanding to distinguish between the matter and the form, however +much the matter, the subject, the element which is addressed to the mere +intelligence, has been penetrated by the informing, artistic spirit. +But the ideal types of poetry are those in which this distinction is +reduced to its minimum; so that lyrical poetry, precisely because in it +we are least able to detach the matter from the form, without a +deduction of something from that matter itself, is, at least +artistically, the highest and most complete form of poetry. And the very +perfection of such poetry often seems to depend, in part, on a certain +suppression or vagueness of mere subject, so that the meaning reaches us +through ways not distinctly traceable by the understanding, as in some +of the most imaginative compositions of William Blake, and often in +Shakspere's songs, as pre-eminently in that song of Mariana's page in +Measure for Measure, in which the kindling force and poetry of the whole +play seems to pass for a moment into an actual strain of music. + +And this principle holds good of all things that partake in any degree +of artistic qualities, of the furniture of our houses, and of dress, for +instance, of life itself, of gesture and speech, and the details of +daily intercourse; these also, for the wise, being susceptible of a +suavity and charm, caught from the way in which they are done, which +gives them a worth in themselves; wherein, indeed, lies what is valuable +and justly attractive, in what is called the fashion of a time, which +elevates the trivialities of speech, and manner, and dress, into "ends +in themselves," and gives them a mysterious grace and attractiveness in +the doing of them. + +Art, then, is thus always striving to be independent of the mere +intelligence, to become a matter of pure perception, to get rid of its +responsibilities to its subject or material; the ideal examples of +poetry and painting being those in which the constituent elements of the +composition are so welded together, that the material or subject no +longer strikes the intellect only; nor the form, the eye or the ear +only; but form and matter, in their union or identity, present one +single effect to the "imaginative reason," that complex faculty for +which every thought and feeling is twin-born with its sensible analogue +or symbol. + +It is the art of music which most completely realises this artistic +ideal, this perfect identification of form and matter. In its ideal, +consummate moments, the end is not distinct from the means, the form +from the matter, the subject from the expression; they inhere in and +completely saturate each other; and to it, therefore, to the condition +of its perfect moments, all the arts may be supposed constantly to tend +and aspire. Music, then, and not poetry, as is so often supposed, is the +true type or measure of perfected art. Therefore, although each art has +its incommunicable element, its untranslatable order of impressions, its +unique mode of reaching the "imaginative reason," yet the arts may be +represented as continually struggling after the law or principle of +music, to a condition which music alone completely realises; and one of +the chief functions of aesthetic criticism, dealing with the products of +art, new or old, is to estimate the degree in which each of those +products approaches, in this sense, to musical law. + +By no school of painters have, the necessary limitations of the art of +painting been so unerringly though instinctively apprehended, and the +essence of what is pictorial in a picture so justly conceived, as by the +school of Venice; and the train of thought suggested in what has been +now said is, perhaps, a not unfitting introduction to a few pages about +Giorgione, who, though much has been taken by recent criticism from what +was reputed to be his work, yet, more entirely than any other painter, +sums up, in what we know of himself and his art, the spirit of the +Venetian school. + +The beginnings of Venetian painting link themselves to the last, stiff, +half-barbaric splendours of Byzantine decoration, and are but the +introduction into the crust of marble and gold on the walls of the Duomo +of Murano, or of Saint Mark's, of a little more of human expression. And +throughout the course of its later development, always subordinate to +architectural effect, the work of the Venetian school never escaped from +the influence of its beginnings. Unassisted, and therefore unperplexed, +by naturalism, religious mysticism, philosophical theories, it had no +Giotto, no Angelico, no Botticelli. Exempt from the stress of thought +and sentiment, which taxed so severely the resources of the generations +of Florentine artists, those earlier Venetian painters, down to +Carpaccio and the Bellini, seem never for a moment to have been tempted +even to lose sight of the scope of their art in its strictness, or to +forget that painting must be, before all things decorative, a thing for +the eye; a space of colour on the wall, only more dexterously blent than +the marking of its precious stone or the chance interchange of sun and +shade upon it--this, to begin and end with--whatever higher matter of +thought, or poetry, or religious reverie might play its part therein, +between. At last, with final mastery of all the technical secrets of his +art, and with somewhat more than "a spark of the divine fire" to his +share, comes Giorgione. He is the inventor of genre, of those easily +movable pictures which serve neither for uses of devotion, nor of +allegorical or historic teaching--little groups of real men and women, +amid congruous furniture or landscape--morsels of actual life, +conversation or music or play, refined upon or idealised, till they come +to seem like glimpses of life from afar. Those spaces of more cunningly +blent colour, obediently filling their places, hitherto, in a mere +architectural scheme, Giorgione detaches from the wall; he frames them +by the hands of some skilful carver, so that people may move them +readily and take with them where they go, like a poem in manuscript, or +a musical instrument, to be used, at will, as a means of self-education, +stimulus or solace, coming like an animated presence, into one's +cabinet, to enrich the air as with some choice aroma, and, like persons, +live with us, for a day or a lifetime. Of all art like this, art which +has played so large a part in men's culture since that time, Giorgione +is the initiator. Yet in him too that old Venetian clearness or justice, +in the apprehension of the essential limitations of the pictorial art, +is still undisturbed; and, while he interfuses his painted work with a +high-strung sort of poetry, caught directly from a singularly rich and +high-strung sort of life, yet in his selection of subject, or phase of +subject, in the subordination of mere subject to pictorial design, to +the main purpose of a picture, he is typical of that aspiration of all +the arts towards music, which I have endeavoured to explain,--towards +the perfect identification of matter and form. + +Born so near to Titian, though a little before him, that these two +companion pupils of the aged Giovanni Bellini may almost be called +contemporaries, Giorgione stands to Titian in something like the +relationship of Sordello to Dante, in Mr. Browning's poem. Titian, when +he leaves Bellini, becomes, in turn, the pupil of Giorgione; he lives in +constant labour more than sixty years after Giorgione is in his grave; +and with such fruit, that hardly one of the greater towns of Europe is +without some fragment of it. But the slightly older man, with his so +limited actual product (what remains to us of it seeming, when narrowly +examined, to reduce itself to almost one picture, like Sordello's one +fragment of lovely verse), yet expresses, in elementary motive and +principle, that spirit--itself the final acquisition of all the long +endeavours of Venetian art--which Titian spreads over his whole life's +activity. + +And, as we might expect, something fabulous and illusive has always +mingled itself in the brilliancy of Giorgione's fame. The exact +relationship to him of many works--drawings, portraits, painted +idylls--often fascinating enough, which in various collections went by +his name, was from the first uncertain. Still, six or eight famous +pictures at Dresden, Florence and the Louvre, were undoubtedly +attributed to him, and in these, if anywhere, something of the splendour +of the old Venetian humanity seemed to have been preserved. But of those +six or eight famous pictures it is now known that only one is certainly +from Giorgione's hand. The accomplished science of the subject has come +at last, and, as in other instances, has not made the past more real for +us, but assured us that we possess of it less than we seemed to possess. +Much of the work on which Giorgione's immediate fame depended, work done +for instantaneous effect, in all probability passed away almost within +his own age, like the frescoes on the facade of the fondaco dei Tedeschi +at Venice, some crimson traces of which, however, still give a strange +additional touch of splendour to the scene of the Rialto. And then there +is a barrier or borderland, a period about the middle of the sixteenth +century, in passing through which the tradition miscarries, and the true +outlines of Giorgione's work and person become obscured. It became +fashionable for wealthy lovers of art, with no critical standard of +authenticity, to collect so-called works of Giorgione, and a multitude +of imitations came into circulation. And now, in the "new Vasari,"* the +great traditional reputation, woven with so profuse demand on men's +admiration, has been scrutinised thread by thread; and what remains of +the most vivid and stimulating of Venetian masters, a live flame, as it +seemed, in those old shadowy times, has been reduced almost to a name by +his most recent critics. + +*Crowe and Cavalcaselle: History of Painting in North Italy. + +Yet enough remains to explain why the legend grew up, above the name, +why the name attached itself, in many instances, to the bravest work of +other men. The Concert in the Pitti Palace, in which a monk, with cowl +and tonsure, touches the keys of a harpsichord, while a clerk, placed +behind him, grasps the handle of the viol, and a third, with hat and +plume, seems to wait upon the true interval for beginning to sing, is +undoubtedly Giorgione's. The outline of the lifted finger, the trace of +the plume, the very threads of the fine linen, which fasten themselves +on the memory, in the moment before they are lost altogether in that +calm unearthly glow, the skill which has caught the waves of wandering +sound, and fixed them for ever on the lips and hands--these are indeed +the master's own; and the criticism which, while dismissing so much +hitherto believed to be Giorgione's, has established the claims of this +one picture, has left it among the most precious things in the world of +art. + +It is noticeable that the "distinction" of this Concert, its sustained +evenness of perfection, alike in design, in execution, and in choice of +personal type, becomes for the "new Vasari" the standard of Giorgione's +genuine work. Finding here enough to explain his influence, and the true +seal of mastery, its authors assign to Pellegrino da San Daniele the +Holy Family in the Louvre, for certain points in which it comes short of +that standard, but which will hardly diminish the spectator's enjoyment +of a singular charm of liquid air, with which the whole picture seems +instinct, filling the eyes and lips, the very garments, of its sacred +personages, with some wind-searched brightness and energy; of which fine +air the blue peak, clearly defined in the distance, is, as it were, the +visible pledge. Similarly, another favourite picture in the Louvre, the +subject of a Sonnet by a poet whose own painted work often comes to mind +as one ponders over these precious things--the Fete Champetre, is +assigned to an imitator of Sebastian del Piombo; and the Tempest, in the +Academy at Venice (a slighter loss, perhaps, though not without its +pleasant effect of clearing weather, towards the left, its one untouched +morsel), to Paris Bordone, or perhaps to "some advanced craftsman of the +sixteenth century." From the gallery at Dresden, the Knight embracing a +Lady, where the knight's broken gauntlets seem to mark some well-known +pause in a story we would willingly hear the rest of; is conceded to "a +Brescian hand," and Jacob meeting Rachel to a pupil of Palma; and, +whatever their charm, we are called on to give up the Ordeal and the +Finding of Moses with its jewel-like pools of water, perhaps to Bellini. + +Nor has the criticism, which thus so freely diminishes the number of his +authentic works, added anything important to the well-known outline of +the life and personality of the man: only, it has fixed one or two +dates, one or two circumstances, a little more exactly. Giorgione was +born before the year 1477, and spent his childhood at Castelfranco, +where the last crags of the Venetian Alps break down romantically, with +something of parklike grace, to the plain. A natural child of the family +of the Barbarelli by a peasant-girl of Vedelago, he finds his way early +into the circle of notable persons--people of courtesy; and becomes +initiated into those differences of personal type, manner, and even of +dress, which are best understood there--that "distinction" of the +Concert of the Pitti Palace. Not far from his home lives Catherine of +Cornara, formerly Queen of Cyprus; and, up in the towers which still +remain, Tuzio Costanzo, the famous condottiere--a picturesque remnant of +medieval manners, amid a civilisation rapidly changing. Giorgione paints +their portraits; and when Tuzio's son, Matteo, dies in early youth, +adorns in his memory a chapel in the church of Castelfranco, painting on +this occasion, perhaps, the altar-piece, foremost among his authentic +works, still to be seen there, with the figure of the warrior-saint, +Liberale, of which the original little study in oil, with the delicately +gleaming, silver-grey armour, is one of the greater treasures of the +National Gallery, and in which, as in some other knightly personages +attributed to him, people have supposed the likeness of his own +presumably gracious presence. Thither, at last, he is himself brought +home from Venice, early dead, but celebrated. It happened, about his +thirty-fourth year, that in one of those parties at which he entertained +his friends with music, he met a certain lady of whom he became greatly +enamoured, and "they rejoiced greatly," says Vasari, "the one and the +other, in their loves." And two quite different legends concerning it +agree in this, that it was through this lady he came by his death: +Ridolfi relating that, being robbed of her by one of his pupils, he died +of grief at the double treason;--Vasari, that she being secretly +stricken of the plague, and he making his visits to her as usual, he +took the sickness from her mortally, along with her kisses, and so +briefly departed. + +But, although the number of Giorgione's extant works has been thus +limited by recent criticism, all is not done when the real and the +traditional elements in what concerns him have been discriminated; for, +in what is connected with a great name, much that is not real is often +very stimulating; and, for the aesthetic philosopher, over and above the +real Giorgione and his authentic extant works, there remains the +Giorgionesque also--an influence, a spirit or type in art, active in men +so different as those to whom many of his supposed works are really +assignable--a veritable school, which grew together out of all those +fascinating works rightly or wrongly attributed to him; out of many +copies from, or variations on him, by unknown or uncertain workmen, +whose drawings and designs were, for various reasons, prized as his; out +of the immediate impression he made upon his contemporaries, and with +which he continued in men's minds; out of many traditions of subject and +treatment, which really descend from him to our own time, and by +retracing which we fill out the original image; Giorgione thus becoming +a sort of impersonation of Venice itself, its projected reflex or ideal, +all that was intense or desirable in it thus crystallising about the +memory of this wonderful young man. + +And now, finally, let me illustrate some of the characteristics of this +School of Giorgione, as we may call it, which, for most of us, +notwithstanding all that negative criticism of the "new Vasari," will +still identify itself with those famous pictures at Florence, Dresden +and Paris; and in which a certain artistic ideal is defined for us--the +conception of a peculiar aim and procedure in art, which we may +understand as the Giorgionesque, wherever we find it, whether in +Venetian work generally, or in work of our own time--and of which the +Concert, that undoubted work of Giorgione in the Pitti Palace, is the +typical instance, and a pledge authenticating the connexion of the +school with the master. + +I have spoken of a certain interpretation of the matter or subject of a +work of art with the form of it, a condition realised absolutely only in +music, as the condition to which every form of art is perpetually +aspiring. In the art of painting, the attainment of this ideal +condition, this perfect interpretation of the subject with colour and +design, depends, of course, in great measure, on dexterous choice of +that subject, or phase of subject; and such choice is one of the secrets +of Giorgione's school. It is the school of genre, and employs itself +mainly with "painted idylls," but, in the production of this pictorial +poetry, exercises a wonderful tact in the selecting of such matter as +lends itself most readily and entirely to pictorial form, to complete +expression by drawing and colour. For although its productions are +painted poems, they belong to a sort of poetry which tells itself +without an articulated story. The master is pre-eminent for the +resolution, the ease and quickness, with which he reproduces +instantaneous motion--the lacing-on of armour, with the head bent back +so stately--the fainting lady--the embrace, rapid as the kiss caught, +with death itself, from dying lips--the momentary conjunction of mirrors +and polished armour and still water, by which all the sides of a solid +image are presented at once, solving that casuistical question whether +painting can present an object as completely as sculpture. The sudden +act, the rapid transition of thought, the passing expression--this he +arrests with that vivacity which Vasari has attributed to him, il fuoco +Giorgionesco, as he terms it. Now it is part of the ideality of the +highest sort of dramatic poetry, that it presents us with a kind of +profoundly significant and animated instants, a mere gesture, a look, a +smile, perhaps--some brief and wholly concrete moment--into which, +however, all the motives, all the interests and effects of a long +history, have condensed themselves, and which seem to absorb past and +future in an intense consciousness of the present. Such ideal instants +the school of Giorgione selects, with its admirable tact, from that +feverish, tumultuously coloured life of the old citizens of +Venice--exquisite pauses in time, in which, arrested thus, we seem to be +spectators of all the fulness of existence, and which are like some +consummate extract or quintessence of life. + +It is to the law or condition of music, as I said, that all art like +this is really aspiring and, in the school of Giorgione, the perfect +moments of music itself, the making or hearing of music, song or its +accompaniment, are themselves prominent as subjects. On that background +of the silence of Venice, which the visitor there finds so impressive, +the world of Italian music was then forming. In choice of subject, as in +all besides, the Concert of the Pitti Palace is typical of all that +Giorgione, himself an admirable musician, touched with his influence; +and in sketch or finished picture, in various collections, we may follow +it through many intricate variations--men fainting at music, music heard +at the pool-side while people fish, or mingled with the sound of the +pitcher in the well, or heard across running water, or among the flocks; +the tuning of instruments--people with intent faces, as if listening, +like those described by Plato in an ingenious passage, to detect the +smallest interval of musical sound, the smallest undulation in the air, +or feeling for music in thought on a stringless instrument, ear and +finger refining themselves infinitely, in the appetite for sweet +sound--a momentary touch of an instrument in the twilight, as one passes +through some unfamiliar room, in a chance company. + +In such favourite incidents, then, of Giorgione's school, music or +music-like intervals in our existence, life itself is conceived as a +sort of listening--listening to music, to the reading of Bandello's +novels, to the sound of water, to time as it flies. Often such moments +are really our moments of play, and we are surprised at the unexpected +blessedness of what may seem our least important part of time; not +merely because play is in many instances that to which people really +apply their own best powers, but also because at such times, the stress +of our servile, everyday attentiveness being relaxed, the happier powers +in things without us are permitted free passage, and have their way with +us. And so, from music, the school of Giorgione passes often to the play +which is like music; to those masques in which men avowedly do but play +at real life, like children "dressing up," disguised in the strange old +Italian dresses, parti-coloured, or fantastic with embroidery and furs, +of which the master was so curious a designer, and which, above all the +spotless white linen at wrist and throat, he painted so dexterously. + +And when people are happy in this thirsty land water will not be far +off; and in the school of Giorgione, the presence of water--the well, or +marble-rimmed pool, the drawing or pouring of water, as the woman pours +it from a pitcher with her jewelled hand in the Fete Champetre, +listening, perhaps, to the cool sound as it falls, blent with the music +of the pipes--is as characteristic, and almost as suggestive, as that of +music itself. And the landscape feels, and is glad of it also--a +landscape full of clearness, of the effects of water, of fresh rain +newly passed through the air, and collected into the grassy channels; +the air, too, in the school of Giorgione, seeming as vivid as the people +who breathe it, and literally empyrean, all impurities being burnt out +of it, and no taint, no floating particle of anything but its own proper +elements allowed to subsist within it. + +Its scenery is such as in England we call "park scenery," with some +elusive refinement felt about the rustic buildings, the choice grass, +the grouped trees, the undulations deftly economised for graceful +effect. Only, in Italy all natural things are, as it were, woven through +and through with gold thread, even the cypress revealing it among the +folds of its blackness. And it is with gold dust, or gold thread, that +these Venetian painters seem to work, spinning its fine filaments, +through the solemn human flesh, away into the white plastered walls of +the thatched huts. The harsher details of the mountains recede to a +harmonious distance, the one peak of rich blue above the horizon +remaining but as the visible warrant of that due coolness which is all +we need ask here of the Alps, with their dark rains and streams. Yet +what real, airy space, as the eye passes from level to level, through +the long-drawn valley in which Jacob embraces Rachel among the flocks! +Nowhere is there a truer instance of that balance, that modulated unison +of landscape and persons--of the human image and its +accessories--already noticed as characteristic of the Venetian school, +so that, in it, neither personage nor scenery is ever a mere pretext for +the other. + +Something like this seems to me to be the vraie verite about Giorgione, +if I may adopt a serviceable expression, by which the French recognise +those more liberal and durable impressions which, in respect of any +really considerable person or subject, anything that has at all +intricately occupied men's attention, lie beyond, and must supplement, +the narrower range of the strictly ascertained facts about it. In this, +Giorgione is but an illustration of a valuable general caution we may +abide by in all criticism. As regards Giorgione himself, we have indeed +to take note of all those negations and exceptions, by which, at first +sight, a "new Vasari" seems merely to have confused our apprehension of +a delightful object, to have explained away out of our inheritance from +past time what seemed of high value there. Yet it is not with a full +understanding even of those exceptions that one can leave off just at +this point. Properly qualified, such exceptions are but a salt of +genuineness in our knowledge; and beyond all those strictly ascertained +facts, we must take note of that indirect influence by which one like +Giorgione, for instance, enlarges his permanent efficacy and really +makes himself felt in our culture. In a just impression of that, is the +essential truth, the vraie verite concerning him. + +1877. + + + +JOACHIM DU BELLAY + +In the middle of the sixteenth century, when the spirit of the +Renaissance was everywhere, and people had begun to look back with +distaste on the works of the middle age, the old Gothic manner had still +one chance more, in borrowing something from the rival which was about +to supplant it. In this way there was produced, chiefly in France, a new +and peculiar phase of taste with qualities and a charm of its own, +blending the somewhat attenuated grace of Italian ornament with the +general outlines of Northern design. It produced the Chateau de Gaillon, +as you may still see it in the delicate engravings of Israel +Silvestre--a Gothic donjon veiled faintly by a surface of dainty Italian +traceries--Chenonceaux, Blois, Chambord, and the church of Brou. In +painting, there came from Italy workmen like Maitre Roux and the masters +of the school of Fontainebleau, to have their later Italian +voluptuousness attempered by the naive and silvery qualities of the +native style; and it was characteristic of these painters that they were +most successful in painting on glass, an art so essentially medieval. +Taking it up where the middle age had left it, they found their whole +work among the last subtleties of colour and line; and keeping within +the true limits of their material, they got quite a new order of effects +from it, and felt their way to refinements on colour never dreamed of by +those older workmen, the glass-painters of Chartres or Le Mans. What is +called the Renaissance in France is thus not so much the introduction of +a wholly new taste ready-made from Italy, but rather the finest and +subtlest phase of the middle age itself, its last fleeting splendour and +temperate Saint Martin's summer. In poetry, the Gothic spirit in France +had produced a thousand songs; and in the Renaissance, French poetry too +did but borrow something to blend with a native growth, and the poems of +Ronsard, with their ingenuity, their delicately figured surfaces, their +slightness, their fanciful combinations of rhyme, are but the +correlative of the traceries of the house of Jacques Coeur at Bourges, +or the Maison de Justice at Rouen. + +There was indeed something in the native French taste naturally akin to +that Italian finesse. The characteristic of French work had always been +a certain nicety, a remarkable daintiness of hand, une nettete +remarquable d'execution. In the paintings of Francois Clouet, for +example, or rather of the Clouets--for there was a whole family of +them--painters remarkable for their resistance to Italian influences, +there is a silveriness of colour and a clearness of expression which +distinguish them very definitely from their Flemish neighbours, Hemling +or the Van Eycks. And this nicety is not less characteristic of old +French poetry. A light, aerial delicacy, a simple elegance--une nettete +remarquable d'execution:--these are essential characteristics alike of +Villon's poetry, and of the Hours of Anne of Brittany. They are +characteristic too of a hundred French Gothic carvings and traceries. +Alike in the old Gothic cathedrals, and in their counterpart, the old +Gothic chansons de geste, the rough and ponderous mass becomes, as if by +passing for a moment into happier conditions, or through a more gracious +stratum of air, graceful and refined, like the carved ferneries on the +granite church at Folgoat, or the lines which describe the fair priestly +hands of Archbishop Turpin, in the song of Roland; although below both +alike there is a fund of mere Gothic strength, or heaviness.* + +*The purely artistic aspects of this subject have been interpreted, in a +work of great taste and learning, by Mrs. Mark Pattison:--The +Renaissance of Art in France. + +And Villon's songs and Clouet's paintings are like these. It is the +higher touch making itself felt here and there, betraying itself, like +nobler blood in a lower stock, by a fine line or gesture or expression, +the turn of a wrist, the tapering of a finger. In Ronsard's time that +rougher element seemed likely to predominate. No one can turn over the +pages of Rabelais without feeling how much need there was of softening, +of castigation. To effect this softening is the object of the revolution +in poetry which is connected with Ronsard's name. Casting about for the +means of thus refining upon and saving the character of French +literature, he accepted that influx of Renaissance taste, which, leaving +the buildings, the language, the art, the poetry of France, at bottom, +what they were, old French Gothic still, gilds their surfaces with a +strange, delightful, foreign aspect passing over all that Northern land, +in itself neither deeper nor more permanent than a chance effect of +light. He reinforces, he doubles the French daintiness by Italian +finesse. Thereupon, nearly all the force and all the seriousness of +French work disappear; only the elegance, the aerial touch, the perfect +manner remain. But this elegance, this manner, this daintiness of +execution are consummate, and have an unmistakable aesthetic value. + +So the old French chanson, which, like the old Northern Gothic ornament, +though it sometimes refined itself into a sort of weird elegance, was +often, in its essence, something rude and formless, became in the hands +of Ronsard a Pindaric ode. He gave it structure, a sustained system, +strophe and antistrophe, and taught it a changefulness and variety of +metre which keep the curiosity always excited, so that the very aspect +of it, as it lies written on the page, carries the eye lightly onwards, +and of which this is a good instance:-- + + Avril, la grace, et le ris + De Cypris, + Le flair et la douce haleine; + Avril, le parfum des dieux, + Qui, des cieux, + Sentent l'odeur de la plaine; + + C'est toy, courteis et gentil, + Qui, d'exil + Retire ces passageres, + Ces arondelles qui vont, + Et qui sont + Du printemps les messageres. + +That is not by Ronsard, but by Remy Belleau, for Ronsard soon came to +have a school. Six other poets threw in their lot with him in his +literary revolution--this Remy Belleau, Antoine de Baif, Pontus de +Tyard, Etienne Jodelle, Jean Daurat, and lastly Joachim du Bellay; and +with that strange love of emblems which is characteristic of the time, +which covered all the works of Francis the First with the salamander, +and all the works of Henry the Second with the double crescent, and all +the works of Anne of Brittany with the knotted cord, they called +themselves the Pleiad; seven in all, although, as happens with the +celestial Pleiad, if you scrutinise this constellation of poets more +carefully you may find there a great number of minor stars. + +The first note of this literary revolution was struck by Joachim du +Bellay in a little tract written at the early age of twenty-four, which +coming to us through three centuries seems of yesterday, so full is it +of those delicate critical distinctions which are sometimes supposed +peculiar to modern writers. The piece has for its title La Deffense et +Illustration de la langue Francoyse; and its problem is how to +illustrate or ennoble the French language, to give it lustre. We are +accustomed to speak of the varied critical and creative movement of the +fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as the Renaissance, and because we +have a single name for it we may sometimes fancy that there was more +unity in the thing itself than there really was. Even the Reformation, +that other great movement of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, had +far less unity, far less of combined action, than is at first sight +supposed; and the Renaissance was infinitely less united, less conscious +of combined action, than the Reformation. But if anywhere the +Renaissance became conscious, as a German philosopher might say, if ever +it was understood as a systematic movement by those who took part in it, +it is in this little book of Joachim du Bellay's, which it is impossible +to read without feeling the excitement, the animation, of change, of +discovery. "It is a remarkable fact," says M. Sainte-Beuve, "and an +inversion of what is true of other languages, that, in French, prose has +always had the precedence over poetry." Du Bellay's prose is perfectly +transparent, flexible, and chaste. In many ways it is a more +characteristic example of the culture of the Pleiad than any of its +verse; and those who love the whole movement of which the Pleiad is a +part, for a weird foreign grace in it, and may be looking about for a +true specimen of it, cannot have a better than Joachim du Bellay and +this little treatise of his. + +Du Bellay's object is to adjust the existing French culture to the +rediscovered classical culture; and in discussing this problem, and +developing the theories of the Pleiad, he has lighted upon many +principles of permanent truth and applicability. There were some who +despaired of the French language altogether, who thought it naturally +incapable of the fulness and elegance of Greek and Latin--cette elegance +et copie qui est en la langue Grecque et Romaine--that science could be +adequately discussed, and poetry nobly written, only in the dead +languages. "Those who speak thus," says Du Bellay, "make me think of +those relics which one may only see through a little pane of glass, and +must not touch with one's hands. That is what these people do with all +branches of culture, which they keep shut up in Greek and Latin books, +not permitting one to see them otherwise, or transport them out of dead +words into those which are alive, and wing their way daily through the +months of men." "Languages," he says again, "are not born like plants +and trees, some naturally feeble and sickly, others healthy and strong +and apter to bear the weight of men's conceptions, but all their virtue +is generated in the world of choice and men's freewill concerning them. +Therefore, I cannot blame too strongly the rashness of some of our +countrymen, who being anything rather than Greeks or Latins, depreciate +and reject with more than stoical disdain everything written in French; +nor can I express my surprise at the odd opinion of some learned men who +think that our vulgar tongue is wholly incapable of erudition and good +literature." + +It was an age of translations. Du Bellay himself translated two books of +the Aeneid, and other poetry, old and new, and there were some who +thought that the translation of the classical literature was the true +means of ennobling the French language:--strangers are ever favourites +with us--nous favorisons toujours les etrangers. Du Bellay moderates +their expectations. "I do not believe that one can learn the right use +of them"--he is speaking of figures and ornament in language--"from +translations, because it is impossible to reproduce them with the same +grace with which the original author used them. For each language has, I +know not what peculiarity of its own; and if you force yourself to +express the naturalness (le naif) of this, in another language, +observing the law of translation, which is, not to expatiate beyond the +limits of the author himself; your words will be constrained, cold and +ungraceful." Then he fixes the test of all good translation:--"To prove +this, read me Demosthenes and Homer in Latin, Cicero and Virgil in +French, and see whether they produce in you the same affections which +you experience in reading those authors in the original." + +In this effort to ennoble the French language, to give it grace, number, +perfection, and as painters do to their pictures, that last, so +desirable, touch--cette derniere main que nous desirons--what Du Bellay +is pleading for is his mother-tongue, the language, that is, in which +one will have the utmost degree of what is moving and passionate. He +recognised of what force the music and dignity of languages are, how +they enter into the inmost part of things; and in pleading for the +cultivation of the French language, he is pleading for no merely +scholastic interest, but for freedom, impulse, reality, not in +literature merely, but in daily communion of speech. After all, it was +impossible to have this impulse in Greek and Latin, dead languages shut +up in books as in reliquaries--peris et mises en reliquaires de livres. +By aid of this starveling stock--pauvre plante et vergette--of the +French language, he must speak delicately, movingly, if he is ever to +speak so at all: that, or none, must be for him the medium of what he +calls, in one of his great phrases, le discours fatal des choses +mondaines--that discourse about affairs which decides men's fates. And +it is his patriotism not to despair of it; he sees it already perfect in +all elegance and beauty of words--parfait en toute elegance et venuste +de paroles. + +Du Bellay was born in the disastrous year 1525, the year of the battle +of Pavia, and the captivity of Francis the First. . His parents died +early, and to him, as the younger son, his mother's little estate, ce +petit Lire, the beloved place of his birth, descended. He was brought up +by a brother only a little older than himself; and left to themselves, +the two boys passed their lives in day-dreams of military glory. Their +education was neglected; "The time of my youth," says Du Bellay, "was +lost, like the flower which no shower waters, and no hand cultivates." +He was just twenty years old when the elder brother died, leaving +Joachim to be the guardian of his child. It was with regret, with a +shrinking feeling of incapacity, that he took upon him the burden of +this responsibility. Hitherto he had looked forward to the profession of +a soldier, hereditary in his family. But at this time a sickness +attacked him which brought him cruel sufferings, and seemed likely to be +mortal. It was then for the first time that he read the Greek and Latin +poets. These studies came too late to make him what he so much desired +to be, a trifler in Greek and Latin verse, like so many others of his +time now forgotten; instead, they made him a lover of his own homely +native tongue, that poor starveling stock of the French language. It was +through this fortunate shortcoming in his education that he became +national and modern; and he learned afterwards to look back on that wild +garden of his youth with only a half regret. A certain Cardinal du +Bellay was the successful member of the family, a man often employed in +high official affairs. It was to him that the thoughts of Joachim turned +when it became necessary to choose a profession, and in 1552 he +accompanied the Cardinal to Rome. He remained there nearly five years, +burdened with the weight of affairs, and languishing with home-sickness. +Yet it was under these circumstances that his genius yielded its best +fruits. From Rome, which to most men of an imaginative temperament such +as his would have yielded so many pleasurable sensations, with all the +curiosities of the Renaissance still fresh there, his thoughts went back +painfully, longingly, to the country of the Loire, with its wide +expanses of waving corn, its homely pointed roofs of grey slate, and its +far-off scent of the sea. He reached home at last, but only to die +there, quite suddenly, one wintry day, at the early age of thirty-five. + +Much of Du Bellay's poetry illustrates rather the age and school to +which he belonged than his own temper and genius. As with the writings +of Ronsard and the other poets of the Pleiad, its interest depends not +so much on the impress of individual genius upon it, as on the +circumstance that it was once poetry a la mode, that it is part of the +manner of a time--a time which made much of manner, and carried it to a +high degree of perfection. It is one of the decorations of an age which +threw much of its energy into the work of decoration. We feel a pensive +pleasure in seeing these faded decorations, and observing how a group of +actual men and women pleased themselves long ago. Ronsard's poems are a +kind of epitome of his age. Of one side of that age, it is true, of the +strenuous, the progressive, the serious movement, which was then going +on, there is little; but of the catholic side, the losing side, the +forlorn hope, hardly a figure is absent. The Queen of Scots, at whose +desire Ronsard published his odes, reading him in her northern prison, +felt that he was bringing back to her the true flavour of her early days +in the court of Catherine at the Louvre, with its exotic Italian +gaieties. Those who disliked that poetry, disliked it because they found +that age itself distasteful. The poetry of Malherbe came, with its +sustained style and weighty sentiment, but with nothing that set people +singing; and the lovers of such poetry saw in the poetry of the Pleiad +only the latest trumpery of the middle age. But the time came also when +the school of Malherbe had had its day; and the Romanticists, who in +their eagerness for excitement, for strange music and imagery, went back +to the works of the middle age, accepted the Pleiad too with the rest; +and in that new middle age which their genius has evoked, the poetry of +the Pleiad has found its place. At first, with Malherbe, you may find +it, like the architecture, the whole mode of life, the very dresses of +that time, fantastic, faded, rococo. But if you look long enough to +understand it, to conceive its sentiment, you will find that those +wanton lines have a spirit guiding their caprices. For there is style +there; one temper has shaped the whole; and everything that has style, +that has been done as no other man or age could have done it, as it +could never, for all our trying, be done again, has its true value and +interest. Let us dwell upon it for a moment, and try to gather from it +that special flower, ce fleur particulier, which Ronsard himself tells +us every garden has. + +It is poetry not for the people, but for a confined circle, for +courtiers, great lords and erudite persons, people who desire to be +humoured, to gratify a certain refined voluptuousness they have in them. +Ronsard loves, or dreams that he loves, a rare and peculiar type of +beauty, la petite pucelle Angevine, with golden hair and dark eyes. But +he has the ambition not only of being a courtier and a lover, but a +great scholar also; he is anxious about orthography, about the letter e +Grecque, the true spelling of Latin names in French writing, and the +restoration of the letter i to its primitive liberty--del' i voyelle en +sa premiere liberte. His poetry is full of quaint, remote learning. He +is just a little pedantic, true always to his own express judgment, that +to be natural is not enough for one who in poetry desires to produce +work worthy of immortality. And therewithal a certain number of Greek +words, which charmed Ronsard and his circle by their gaiety and +daintiness, and a certain air of foreign elegance about them, crept into +the French language: and there were other strange words which the poets +of the Pleiad forged for themselves, and which had only an ephemeral +existence. + +With this was mixed the desire to taste a more exquisite and various +music than that of the older French verse, or of the classical poets. +The music of the measured, scanned verse of Latin and Greek poetry is +one thing; the music of the rhymed, unscanned verse of Villon and the +old French poets, la poesie chantee, is another. To unite together these +two kinds of music in a new school of French poetry, to make verse which +should scan and rhyme as well, to search out and harmonise the measure +of every syllable, and unite it to the swift, flitting, swallow-like +motion of rhyme, to penetrate their poetry with a double music--this was +the ambition of the Pleiad. They are insatiable of music, they cannot +have enough of it; they desire a music of greater compass perhaps than +words can possibly yield, to drain out the last drops of sweetness which +a certain note or accent contains. + +This eagerness for music is almost the only serious thing in the poetry +of the Pleiad; and it was Goudimel, the severe and protestant Goudimel, +who set Ronsard's songs to music. But except in this matter these poets +seem never quite in earnest. The old Greek and Roman mythology, which +for the great Italians had been a motive so weighty and severe, becomes +with them a mere toy. That "Lord of terrible aspect," Amor, has become +Love, the boy or the babe. They are full of fine railleries; they +delight in diminutives, ondelette, fontelette, doucelette, Cassandrette. +Their loves are only half real, a vain effort to prolong the imaginative +loves of the middle age beyond their natural lifetime. They write +love-poems for hire. Like that party of people who tell the tales in +Boccaccio's Decameron, they form a circle which in an age of great +troubles, losses, anxieties, amuses itself with art, poetry, intrigue. +But they amuse themselves with wonderful elegance; and sometimes their +gaiety becomes satiric, for, as they play, real passions insinuate +themselves, and at least the reality of death; their dejection at the +thought of leaving this fair abode of our common daylight--le beau +sejour du commun jour--is expressed by them with almost wearisome +reiteration. But with this sentiment too they are able to trifle: the +imagery of death serves for delicate ornament, and they weave into the +airy nothingness of their verses their trite reflexions on the vanity of +life; just as the grotesques of the charnel-house nest themselves, +together with birds and flowers and the fancies of the pagan mythology, +in the traceries of the architecture of that time, which wantons in its +delicate arabesques with the images of old age and death. + +Ronsard became deaf at sixteen; and it was this circumstance which +finally determined him to be a man of letters instead of a diplomatist, +significantly, one might fancy; of a certain premature agedness, and of +the tranquil, temperate sweetness appropriate to that, in the school of +poetry which he founded. Its charm is that of a thing not vigorous or +original, but full of the grace that comes of long study and reiterated +refinements, and many steps repeated, and many angles worn down, with an +exquisite faintness, une fadeur exquise, a certain tenuity and caducity, +as for those who can bear nothing vehement or strong; for princes weary +of love, like Francis the First, or of pleasure, like Henry the Third, +or of action, like Henry the Fourth. Its merits are those of the +old,--grace and finish, perfect in minute detail. For these people are a +little jaded, and have a constant desire for a subdued and delicate +excitement, to warm their creeping fancy a little. They love a constant +change of rhyme in poetry, and in their houses that strange, fantastic +interweaving of thin, reed-like lines, which are a kind of rhetoric in +architecture. + +But the poetry of the Pleiad is true not only to the physiognomy of its +age, but also to its country--ce pays du Vendomois--the names and scenery +of which so often recur in it; the great Loire, with its long spaces of +white sand; the little river Loir; the heathy, upland country, with its +scattered pools of water and waste road-sides, and retired manors, with +their crazy old feudal defences half fallen into decay; La Beauce, the +granary of France, where the vast rolling fields of corn seem to +anticipate the great western sea itself. It is full of the traits of that +country. We see Du Bellay and Ronsard gardening, or hunting with their +dogs, or watch the pastimes of a rainy day; and with this is connected a +domesticity, a homeliness and simple goodness, by which this Northern +country gains upon the South. They have the love of the aged for warmth, +and understand the poetry of winter; for they are not far from the +Atlantic, and the west wind which comes up from it, turning the poplars +white, spares not this new Italy in France. So the fireside often +appears, with the pleasures of winter, about the vast emblazoned chimneys +of the time, and with a bonhomie as of little children, or old people. + +It is in Du Bellay's Olive, a collection of sonnets in praise of a +half-imaginary lady, Sonnetz a la louange d'Olive, that these +characteristics are most abundant. Here is a perfectly crystallised +specimen:-- + + D'amour, de grace, et de haulte valeur + Les feux divins estoient ceinctz et les cieulx + S'estoient vestuz d'un manteau precieux + A raiz ardens di diverse couleur: + Tout estoit plein de beaute, de bonheur, + La mer tranquille, et le vent gracieulx, + Quand celle la nasquit en ces bas lieux + Qui a pille du monde tout l'honneur. + Ell' prist son teint des beux lyz blanchissans, + Son chef de l'or, ses deux levres des rozes, + Et du soleil ses yeux resplandissans: + Le ciel usant de liberalite, + Mist en l'esprit ses semences encloses, + Son nom des Dieux prist l'immortalite. + + +That he is thus a characteristic specimen of the poetical taste of that +age, is indeed Du Bellay's chief interest. But if his work is to have the +highest sort of interest, if it is to do something more than satisfy +curiosity, if it is to have an aesthetic as distinct from an historical +value, it is not enough for a poet to have been the true child of his +age, to have conformed to its aesthetic conditions, and by so conforming +to have charmed and stimulated that age; it is necessary that there +should be perceptible in his work something individual, inventive, +unique, the impress there of the writer's own temper and personality. +This impress M. Sainte-Beuve thought he found in the Antiquites de Rome, +and the Regrets, which he ranks as what has been called poesie intime, +that intensely modern sort of poetry in which the writer has for his aim +the portraiture of his own most intimate moods, and to take the reader +into his confidence. That generation had other instances of this intimacy +of sentiment: Montaigne's Essays are full of it, the carvings of the +church of Brou are full of it. M. Sainte-Beuve has perhaps exaggerated +the influence of this quality in Du Bellay's Regrets; but the very name +of the book has a touch of Rousseau about it, and reminds one of a whole +generation of self-pitying poets in modern times. It was in the +atmosphere of Rome, to him so strange and mournful, that these pale +flowers grew up; for that journey to Italy, which he deplored as the +greatest misfortune of his life, put him in full possession of his +talent, and brought out all its originality. And in effect you do find +intimacy, intimite, here. The trouble of his life is analysed, and the +sentiment of it conveyed directly to our minds; not a great sorrow or +passion, but only the sense of loss in passing days, the ennui of a +dreamer who has to plunge into the world's affairs, the opposition +between actual life and the ideal, a longing for rest, nostalgia, +home-sickness--that pre-eminently childish, but so suggestive sorrow, as +significant of the final regret of all human creatures for the familiar +earth and limited sky. The feeling for landscape is often described as a +modern one; still more so is that for antiquity, the sentiment of ruins. +Du Bellay has this sentiment. The duration of the hard, sharp outlines of +things is a grief to him, and passing his wearisome days among the ruins +of ancient Rome, he is consoled by the thought that all must one day end, +by the sentiment of the grandeur of nothingness--la grandeur du rien. +With a strange touch of far-off mysticism, he thinks that the great +whole--le grand tout--into which all other things pass and lose +themselves, ought itself sometimes to perish and pass away. Nothing less +can relieve his weariness. From the stately aspects of Rome his thoughts +went back continually to France, to the smoking chimneys of his little +village, the longer twilight of the North, the soft climate of Anjou--la +douceur Angevine; yet not so much to the real France, we may be sure, +with its dark streets and its roofs of rough-hewn slate, as to that other +country, with slenderer towers, and more winding rivers, and trees like +flowers, and with softer sunshine on more gracefully-proportioned fields +and ways, which the fancy of the exile, and the pilgrim, and of the +schoolboy far from home, and of those kept at home unwillingly, +everywhere builds up before or behind them. + +He came home at last, through the Grisons, by slow journeys; and there, +in the cooler air of his own country, under its skies of milkier blue, +the sweetest flower of his genius sprang up. There have been poets whose +whole fame has rested on one poem, as Gray's on the Elegy in a Country +Churchyard, or Ronsard's, as many critics have thought, on the eighteen +lines of one famous ode. Du Bellay has almost been the poet of one poem; +and this one poem of his is an Italian thing transplanted into that green +country of Anjou; out of the Latin verses of Andrea Navagero, into +French: but it is a thing in which the matter is almost nothing, and the +form almost everything; and the form of the poem as it stands, written in +old French, is all Du Bellay's own. It is a song which the winnowers are +supposed to sing as they winnow the corn, and they invoke the winds to +lie lightly on the grain. + +D'UN VANNEUR DE BLE AUX VENTS* + + A vous trouppe legere + Qui d'aile passagere + Par le monde volez, + Et d'un sifflant murmure + L'ombrageuse verdure + Doulcement esbranlez. + + J'offre ces violettes, + Ces lis & ces fleurettes, + Et ces roses icy, + Ces vermeillettes roses + Sont freschement ecloses, + Et ces oelliets aussi. + + De vostre doulce haleine, + Eventez ceste plaine + Eventez ce sejour; + Ce pendant que j'ahanne + A mon ble que je vanne + A la chaleur du jour. + +*A graceful translation of this and some other poems of the Pleiad may be +found in Ballads and Lyrics of old France, by Mr. Andrew Lang. + +That has, in the highest degree, the qualities, the value, of the whole +Pleiad school of poetry, of the whole phase of taste from which that +school derives--a certain silvery grace of fancy, nearly all the +pleasures of which is in the surprise at the happy and dexterous way in +which a thing slight in itself is handled. The sweetness of it is by no +means to be got at by crushing, as you crush wild herbs to get at their +perfume. One seems to hear the measured falling of the fans, with a +child's pleasure on coming across the incident for the first time, in one +of those great barns of Du Bellay's own country, La Beauce, the granary +of France. A sudden light transfigures a trivial thing, a weather-vane, a +windmill, a winnowing flail, the dust in the barn door: a moment--and the +thing has vanished, because it was pure effect; but it leaves a relish +behind it, a longing that the accident may happen again. + +1872. + + + +WINCKELMANN + +ET EGO IN ARCADIA FUI + +Goethe's fragments of art-criticism contain a few pages of strange +pregnancy on the character of Winckelmann. He speaks of the teacher who +had made his career possible, but whom he had never seen, as of an +abstract type of culture, consummate, tranquil, withdrawn already into +the region of ideals, yet retaining colour from the incidents of a +passionate intellectual life. He classes him with certain works of art, +possessing an inexhaustible gift of suggestion, to which criticism may +return again and again with renewed freshness. Hegel, in his lectures on +the Philosophy of Art, estimating the work of his predecessors, has also +passed a remarkable judgment on Winckelmann's writings:--"Winckelmann, by +contemplation of the ideal works of the ancients, received a sort of +inspiration, through which he opened a new sense for the study of art. +He is to be regarded as one of those who, in the sphere of art, have +known how to initiate a new organ for the human spirit." That it has +given a new sense, that it has laid open a new organ, is the highest that +can be said of any critical effort. It is interesting then to ask what +kind of man it was who thus laid open a new organ. Under what conditions +was that effected? + +Johann Joachim Winckelmann was born at Stendal, in Brandenburg, in the +year 1717. The child of a poor tradesman, he passed through many +struggles in early youth, the memory of which ever remained in him as a +fitful cause of dejection. In 1763, in the full emancipation of his +spirit, looking over the beautiful Roman prospect, he writes--"One gets +spoiled here; but God owed me this; in my youth I suffered too much." +Destined to assert and interpret the charm of the Hellenic spirit, he +served first a painful apprenticeship in the tarnished intellectual world +of Germany in the earlier half of the eighteenth century. Passing out of +that into the happy light of the antique, he had a sense of exhilaration +almost physical. We find him as a child in the dusky precincts of a +German school, hungrily feeding on a few colourless books. The master of +this school grows blind; Winckelmann becomes his famulus. The old man +would have had him study theology. Winckelmann, free of the master's +library, chooses rather to become familiar with the Greek classics. +Herodotus and Homer win, with their "vowelled" Greek, his warmest +enthusiasm; whole nights of fever are devoted to them; disturbing dreams +of an Odyssey of his own come to him. "He felt in himself," says Madame +de Stael, "an ardent attraction towards the South." In German +imaginations even now traces are often to be found of that love of the +sun, that weariness of the North (cette fatigue du nord), which carried +the northern peoples away into those countries of the South. A fine sky +brings to birth sentiments not unlike the love of one's Fatherland. + +To most of us, after all our steps towards it, the antique world, in +spite of its intense outlines, its perfect self-expression, still remains +faint and remote. To him, closely limited except on the one side of the +ideal, building for his dark poverty "a house not made with hands," it +early came to seem more real than the present. In the fantastic plans of +foreign travel continually passing through his mind, to Egypt, for +instance, and to France, there seems always to be rather a wistful sense +of something lost to be regained, than the desire of discovering anything +new. Goethe has told us how, in his eagerness actually to handle the +antique, he became interested in the insignificant vestiges of it which +the neighbourhood of Strasburg contained. So we hear of Winckelmann's +boyish antiquarian wanderings among the ugly Brandenburg sandhills. Such +a conformity between himself and Winckelmann, Goethe would have gladly +noted. + +At twenty-one he enters the University at Halle, to study theology, as +his friends desire; instead, he becomes the enthusiastic translator of +Herodotus. The condition of Greek learning in German schools and +universities had fallen, and there were no professors at Halle who could +satisfy his sharp, intellectual craving. Of his professional education he +always speaks with scorn, claiming to have been his own teacher from +first to last. His appointed teachers did not perceive that a new source +of culture was within their hands. Homo vagus et inconstans!--one of them +pedantically reports of the future pilgrim to Rome, unaware on which side +his irony was whetted. When professional education confers nothing but +irritation on a Schiller, no one ought to be surprised; for Schiller, and +such as he, are primarily spiritual adventurers. But that Winckelmann, +the votary of the gravest of intellectual traditions, should get nothing +but an attempt at suppression from the professional guardians of +learning, is what may well surprise us. + +In 1743 he became master of a school at Seehausen. This was the most +wearisome period of his life. Notwithstanding a success in dealing with +children, which seems to testify to something simple and primeval in his +nature, he found the work of teaching very depressing. Engaged in this +work, he writes that he still has within him a longing desire to attain +to the knowledge of beauty--sehnlich wuenschte zur Kenntniss des Schoenen +zu gelangen. He had to shorten his nights, sleeping only four hours, to +gain time for reading. And here Winckelmann made a step forward in +culture. He multiplied his intellectual force by detaching from it all +flaccid interests. He renounced mathematics and law, in which his reading +had been considerable,--all but the literature of the arts. Nothing was +to enter into his life unpenetrated by its central enthusiasm. At this +time he undergoes the charm of Voltaire. Voltaire belongs to that +flimsier, more artificial, classical tradition, which Winckelmann was one +day to supplant, by the clear ring, the eternal outline of the genuine +antique. But it proves the authority of such a gift as Voltaire's that it +allures and wins even those born to supplant it. Voltaire's impression on +Winckelmann was never effaced; and it gave him a consideration for French +literature which contrasts with his contempt for the literary products of +Germany. German literature transformed, siderealised, as we see it in +Goethe, reckons Winckelmann among its initiators. But Germany at that +time presented nothing in which he could have anticipated Iphigenie, and +the formation of an effective classical tradition in German literature. + +Under this purely literary influence, Winckelmann protests against +Christian Wolff and the philosophers. Goethe, in speaking of this +protest, alludes to his own obligations to Emmanuel Kant. Kant's +influence over the culture of Goethe, which he tells us could not have +been resisted by him without loss, consisted in a severe limitation to +the concrete. But he adds, that in born antiquaries, like Winckelmann, +constant handling of the antique, with its eternal outline, maintains +that limitation as effectually as a critical philosophy. Plato, however, +saved so often for his redeeming literary manner, is excepted from +Winckelmann's proscription of the philosophers. The modern student most +often meets Plato on that side which seems to pass beyond Plato into a +world no longer pagan, based on the conception of a spiritual life. But +the element of affinity which he presents to Winckelmann is that which is +wholly Greek, and alien from the Christian world, represented by that +group of brilliant youths in the Lysis, still uninfected by any spiritual +sickness, finding the end of all endeavour in the aspects of the human +form, the continual stir and motion of a comely human life. + +This new-found interest in Plato's dialogues could not fail to increase +his desire to visit the countries of the classical tradition. "It is my +misfortune," he writes, "that I was not born to great place, wherein I +might have had cultivation, and the opportunity of following my instinct +and forming myself." A visit to Rome probably was already purposed, and +he silently preparing for it. Count Buenau, the author of an historical +work then of note, had collected at Noethenitz a valuable library, now +part of the library of Dresden. In 1784 Winckelmann wrote to Buenau in +halting French:--He is emboldened, he says, by Buenau's indulgence for +needy men of letters. He desires only to devote himself to study, having +never allowed himself to be dazzled by favourable prospects of the +Church. He hints at his doubtful position "in a metaphysical age, when +humane literature is trampled under foot. At present," he goes on, +"little value is set on Greek literature, to which I have devoted myself +so far as I could penetrate, when good books are so scarce and +expensive." Finally, he desires a place in some corner of Buenau's +library. "Perhaps, at some future time, I shall become more useful to the +public, if, drawn from obscurity in whatever way, I can find means to +maintain myself in the capital." + +Soon afterwards we find Winckelmann in the library at Noethenitz. Thence +he made many visits to the collection of antiquities at Dresden. He +became acquainted with many artists, above all with Oeser, Goethe's +future friend and master, who, uniting a high culture with the practical +knowledge of art, was fitted to minister to Winckelmann's culture. And +now there opened for him a new way of communion with the Greek life. +Hitherto he had handled the words only of Greek poetry, stirred indeed +and roused by them, yet divining beyond the words an unexpressed +pulsation of sensuous life. Suddenly he is in contact with that life, +still fervent in the relics of plastic art. Filled as our culture is with +the classical spirit, we can hardly imagine how deeply the human mind was +moved, when, at the Renaissance, in the midst of a frozen world, the +buried fire of ancient art rose up from under the soil. Winckelmann here +reproduces for us the earlier sentiment of the Renaissance. On a sudden +the imagination feels itself free. How facile and direct, it seems to +say, is this life of the senses and the understanding, when once we have +apprehended it! Here, surely, is the more liberal life we have been +seeking so long, so near to us all the while. How mistaken and roundabout +have been our efforts to reach it by mystic passion, and monastic +reverie; how they have deflowered the flesh; how little they have +emancipated us! Hermione melts from her stony posture, and the lost +proportions of life right themselves. Here, then, we see in vivid +realisation the native tendency of Winckelmann to escape from abstract +theory to intuition, to the exercise of sight and touch. Lessing, in the +Laocoon, has theorised finely on the relation of poetry to sculpture; and +philosophy can give us theoretical reasons why not poetry but sculpture +should be the most sincere and exact expression of the Greek ideal. By a +happy, unperplexed dexterity, Winckelmann solves the question in the +concrete. It is what Goethe calls his Gewahrwerden der griechischen +Kunst, his FINDING of Greek art. + +Through the tumultuous richness of Goethe's culture, the influence of +Winckelmann is always discernible, as the strong, regulative +under-current of a clear, antique motive. "One learns nothing from him," +he says to Eckermann, "but one becomes something." If we ask what the +secret of this influence was, Goethe himself will tell us--elasticity, +wholeness, intellectual integrity. And yet these expressions, because +they fit Goethe, with his universal culture, so well, seem hardly to +describe the narrow, exclusive interest of Winckelmann. Doubtless +Winckelmann's perfection is a narrow perfection: his feverish nursing of +the one motive of his life is a contrast to Goethe's various energy. But +what affected Goethe, what instructed him and ministered to his culture, +was the integrity, the truth to its type, of the given force. The +development of his force was the single interest of Winckelmann, +unembarrassed by anything else in him. Other interests, practical or +intellectual, those slighter talents and motives not supreme, which in +most men are the waste part of nature, and drain away their vitality, he +plucked out and cast from him. The protracted longing of his youth is not +a vague, romantic longing: he knows what he longs for, what he wills. +Within its severe limits his enthusiasm burns like lava. "You know," says +Lavater, speaking of Winckelmann's countenance, "that I consider ardour +and indifference by no means incompatible in the same character. If ever +there was a striking instance of that union, it is in the countenance +before us." "A lowly childhood," says Goethe, "insufficient instruction +in youth, broken, distracted studies in early manhood, the burden of +school-keeping! He was thirty years old before he enjoyed a single favour +of fortune: but as soon as he had attained to an adequate condition of +freedom, he appears before us consummate and entire, complete in the +ancient sense." + +But his hair is turning grey, and he has not yet reached the south. The +Saxon court had become Roman Catholic, and the way to favour at Dresden +was through Romish ecclesiastics. Probably the thought of a profession of +the Romish religion was not new to Winckelmann. At one time he had +thought of begging his way to Rome, from cloister to cloister, under the +pretence of a disposition to change his faith. In 1751, the papal nuncio, +Archinto, was one of the visitors at Noethenitz. He suggested Rome as the +fitting stage for Winckelmann's attainments, and held out the hope of a +place in the papal library. Cardinal Passionei, charmed with +Winckelmann's beautiful Greek writing, was ready to play the part of +Maecenas, on condition that the necessary change should be made. +Winckelmann accepted the bribe, and visited the nuncio at Dresden. +Unquiet still at the word "profession," not without a struggle, he joined +the Romish Church, July the 11th, 1754. + +Goethe boldly pleads that Winckelmann was a pagan, that the landmarks of +Christendom meant nothing to him. It is clear that he intended to deceive +no one by his disguise; fears of the inquisition are sometimes visible +during his life in Rome; he entered Rome notoriously with the works of +Voltaire in his possession; the thought of what Count Buenau might be +thinking of him seems to have been his greatest difficulty. On the other +hand, he may have had a sense of a certain antique, and as it were pagan +grandeur in the Roman Catholic religion. Turning from the crabbed +Protestantism, which had been the weariness of his youth, he might +reflect that while Rome had reconciled itself to the Renaissance, the +Protestant principle in art had cut off Germany from the supreme +tradition of beauty. And yet to that transparent nature, with its +simplicity as of the earlier world, the loss of absolute sincerity must +have been a real loss. Goethe understands that Winckelmann had made this +sacrifice. Yet at the bar of the highest criticism, perhaps, Winckelmann +may be absolved. The insincerity of his religious profession was only one +incident of a culture in which the moral instinct, like the religious or +political, was merged in the artistic. But then the artistic interest was +that by desperate faithfulness to which Winckelmann was saved from the +mediocrity, which, breaking through no bounds, moves ever in a bloodless +routine, and misses its one chance in the life of the spirit and the +intellect. There have been instances of culture developed by every high +motive in turn, and yet intense at every point; and the aim of our +culture should be to attain not only as intense but as complete a life as +possible. But often the higher life is only possible at all, on condition +of the selection of that in which one's motive is native and strong; and +this selection involves the renunciation of a crown reserved for others. +Which is better?--to lay open a new sense, to initiate a new organ for +the human spirit, or to cultivate many types of perfection up to a point +which leaves us still beyond the range of their transforming power? +Savonarola is one type of success; Winckelmann is another; criticism can +reject neither, because each is true to itself. Winckelmann himself +explains the motive of his life when he says, "It will be my highest +reward, if posterity acknowledges that I have written worthily." + +For a time he remained at Dresden. There his first book appeared, +Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Works of Art in Painting and +Sculpture. Full of obscurities as it was, obscurities which baffled but +did not offend Goethe when he first turned to art-criticism, its purpose +was direct--an appeal from the artificial classicism of the day to the +study of the antique. The book was well received, and a pension supplied +through the king's confessor. In September 1755 he started for Rome, in +the company of a young Jesuit. He was introduced to Raphael Mengs, a +painter then of note, and found a home near him, in the artists' quarter, +in a place where he could "overlook, far and wide, the eternal city." At +first he was perplexed with the sense of being a stranger on what was to +him, spiritually, native soil. "Unhappily," he cries in French, often +selected by him as the vehicle of strong feeling, "I am one of those whom +the Greeks call opsimatheis.--I have come into the world and into Italy +too late." More than thirty years afterwards, Goethe also, after many +aspirations and severe preparation of mind, visited Italy. In early +manhood, just as he too was FINDING Greek art, the rumour of that high +artist's life of Winckelmann in Italy had strongly moved him. At Rome, +spending a whole year drawing from the antique, in preparation for +Iphigenie, he finds the stimulus of Winckelmann's memory ever active. +Winckelmann's Roman life was simple, primeval, Greek. His delicate +constitution permitted him the use only of bread and wine. Condemned by +many as a renegade, he had no desire for places of honour, but only to +see his merits acknowledged, and existence assured to him. He was simple +without being niggardly; he desired to be neither poor nor rich. + +Winckelmann's first years in Rome present all the elements of an +intellectual situation of the highest interest. The beating of the +intellect against its bars, the sombre aspect, the alien traditions, the +still barbarous literature of Germany, are afar off; before him are +adequate conditions of culture, the sacred soil itself, the first tokens +of the advent of the new German literature, with its broad horizons, its +boundless intellectual promise. Dante, passing from the darkness of the +Inferno, is filled with a sharp and joyful sense of light, which makes +him deal with it, in the opening of the Purgatorio, in a wonderfully +touching and penetrative way. Hellenism, which is the principle +pre-eminently of intellectual light (our modern culture may have more +colour, the medieval spirit greater heat and profundity, but Hellenism is +pre-eminent for light), has always been most effectively conceived by +those who have crept into it out of an intellectual world in which the +sombre elements predominate. So it had been in the ages of the +Renaissance. This repression, removed at last, gave force and glow to +Winckelmann's native affinity to the Hellenic spirit. "There had been +known before him," says Madame de Stael, "learned men who might be +consulted like books; but no one had, if I may say so, made himself a +pagan for the purpose of penetrating antiquity." "One is always a poor +executant of conceptions not one's own."--On execute mal ce qu'on n'a pas +concu soi-meme*--words spoken on so high an occasion--are true in their +measure of every genuine enthusiasm. Enthusiasm--that, in the broad +Platonic sense of the Phaedrus, was the secret of his divinatory power +over the Hellenic world. This enthusiasm, dependent as it is to a great +degree on bodily temperament, has a power of re-enforcing the purer +emotions of the intellect with an almost physical excitement. That his +affinity with Hellenism was not merely intellectual, that the subtler +threads of temperament were inwoven in it, is proved by his romantic, +fervent friendships with young men. He has known, he says, many young men +more beautiful than Guido's archangel. These friendships, bringing him in +contact with the pride of human form, and staining his thoughts with its +bloom, perfected his reconciliation with the spirit of Greek sculpture. +A letter on taste, addressed from Rome to a young nobleman, Friedrich von +Berg, is the record of such a friendship. + +*Words of Charlotte Corday before the Convention. + +"I shall excuse my delay," he begins, "in fulfilling my promise of an +essay on the taste for beauty in works of art, in the words of Pindar. He +says to Agesidamus, a youth of Locri--ideai te kalon, horai te +kekramenon--whom he had kept waiting for an intended ode, that a debt +paid with usury is the end of reproach. This may win your good-nature on +behalf of my present essay, which has turned out far more detailed and +circumstantial than I had at first intended. + +"It is from yourself that the subject is taken. Our intercourse has been +short, too short both for you and me; but the first time I saw you, the +affinity of our spirits was revealed to me: your culture proved that my +hope was not groundless; and I found in a beautiful body a soul created +for nobleness, gifted with the sense of beauty. My parting from you was +therefore one of the most painful in my life; and that this feeling +continues our common friend is witness, for your separation from me +leaves me no hope of seeing you again. Let this essay be a memorial of +our friendship, which, on my side, is free from every selfish motive, and +ever remains subject and dedicate to yourself alone." + +The following passage is characteristic-- + +"As it is confessedly the beauty of man which is to be conceived under +one general idea, so I have noticed that those who are observant of +beauty only in women, and are moved little or not at all by the beauty of +men, seldom have an impartial, vital, inborn instinct for beauty in art. +To such persons the beauty of Greek art will ever seem wanting, because +its supreme beauty is rather male than female. But the beauty of art +demands a higher sensibility than the beauty of nature, because the +beauty of art, like tears shed at a play, gives no pain, is without life, +and must be awakened and repaired by culture. Now, as the spirit of +culture is much more ardent in youth than in manhood, the instinct of +which I am speaking must be exercised and directed to what is beautiful, +before that age is reached, at which one would be afraid to confess that +one had no taste for it." + +Certainly, of that beauty of living form which regulated Winckelmann's +friendships, it could not be said that it gave no pain. One notable +friendship, the fortune of which we may trace through his letters, begins +with an antique, chivalrous letter in French, and ends noisily in a burst +of angry fire. Far from reaching the quietism, the bland indifference of +art, such attachments are nevertheless more susceptible than any others +of equal strength of a purely intellectual culture. Of passion, of +physical excitement, they contain only just so much as stimulates the eye +to the finest delicacies of colour and form. These friendships, often the +caprices of a moment, make Winckelmann's letters, with their troubled +colouring, an instructive but bizarre addition to the History of Art, +that shrine of grave and mellow light for the mute Olympian family. The +impression which Winckelmann's literary life conveyed to those about him +was that of excitement, intuition, inspiration, rather than the +contemplative evolution of general principles. The quick, susceptible +enthusiast, betraying his temperament even in appearance, by his olive +complexion, his deep-seated, piercing eyes, his rapid movements, +apprehended the subtlest principles of the Hellenic manner, not through +the understanding, but by instinct or touch. A German biographer of +Winckelmann has compared him to Columbus. That is not the aptest of +comparisons; but it reminds one of a passage in which M. Edgar Quinet +describes the great discoverer's famous voyage. His science was often at +fault; but he had a way of estimating at once the slightest indication of +land, in a floating weed or passing bird; he seemed actually to come +nearer to nature than other men. And that world in which others had moved +with so much embarrassment, seems to call out in Winckelmann new senses +fitted to deal with it. He is in touch with it; it penetrates him, and +becomes part of his temperament. He remodels his writings with constant +renewal of insight; he catches the thread of a whole sequence of laws in +some hollowing of the hand, or dividing of the hair; he seems to realise +that fancy of the reminiscence of a forgotten knowledge hidden for a time +in the mind itself; as if the mind of one, lover and philosopher at once +in some phase of pre-existence-philosophesas pote met' erotos--fallen +into a new cycle, were beginning its intellectual culture over again, yet +with a certain power of anticipating its results. So comes the truth of +Goethe's judgments on his works; they are a life, a living thing, +designed for those who are alive--ein Lebendiges fuer die Lebendigen +geschrieben, ein Leben selbst. + +In 1785 Cardinal Albani, who possessed in his Roman villa a precious +collection of antiquities, became Winckelmann's patron. Pompeii had just +opened its treasures; Winckelmann gathered its first-fruits. But his plan +of a visit to Greece remained unfulfilled. From his first arrival in Rome +he had kept the History of Ancient Art ever in view. All his other +writings were a preparation for that. It appeared, finally, in 1764; but +even after its publication Winckelmann was still employed in perfecting +it. It is since his time that many of the most significant examples of +Greek art have been submitted to criticism. He had seen little or nothing +of what we ascribe to the age of Pheidias; and his conception of Greek +art tends, therefore, to put the mere elegance of the imperial society of +ancient Rome in place of the severe and chastened grace of the palaestra. +For the most part he had to penetrate to Greek art through copies, +imitations, and later Roman art itself; and it is not surprising that +this turbid medium has left in Winckelmann's actual results much that a +more privileged criticism can correct. + +He had been twelve years in Rome. Admiring Germany had many calls to him; +at last, in 1768, he set out to revisit the country of his birth; and as +he left Rome, a strange, inverted home-sickness, a strange reluctance to +leave it at all, came over him. He reached Vienna: there he was loaded +with honours and presents: other cities were awaiting him. Goethe, then +nineteen years old, studying art at Leipsic, was expecting his coming, +with that wistful eagerness which marked his youth, when the news of +Winckelmann's murder arrived. All that "weariness of the North" had +revived with double force. He left Vienna, intending to hasten back to +Rome. At Trieste a delay of a few days occurred. With characteristic +openness, Winckelmann had confided his plans to a fellow-traveller, a man +named Arcangeli, and had shown him the gold medals received at Vienna. +Arcangeli's avarice was aroused. One morning he entered Winckelmann's +room, under pretence of taking leave; Winckelmann was then writing +"memoranda for the future editor of the History of Art," still seeking +the perfection of his great work. Arcangeli begged to see the medals once +more. As Winckelmann stooped down to take them from the chest, a cord was +thrown round his neck. Some time afterwards, a child whose friendship +Winckelmann had made to beguile the delay, knocked at the door, and +receiving no answer, gave an alarm. Winckelmann was found dangerously +wounded, and died a few hours later, after receiving the sacraments of +the Romish Church. It seemed as if the gods, in reward for his devotion +to them, had given him a death which, for its swiftness and its +opportunity, he might well have desired. "He has," says Goethe, "the +advantage of figuring in the memory of posterity, as one eternally able +and strong; for the image in which one leaves the world is that in which +one moves among the shadows." Yet, perhaps, it is not fanciful to regret +that the meeting with Goethe did not take place. Goethe, then in all the +pregnancy of his wonderful youth, still unruffled by the press and storm +of his earlier manhood, was awaiting Winckelmann with a curiosity of the +worthiest kind. As it was, Winckelmann became to him something like what +Virgil was to Dante. And Winckelmann, with his fiery friendships, had +reached that age and that period of culture at which emotions hitherto +fitful, sometimes concentrate themselves in a vital, unchangeable +relationship. German literary history seems to have lost the chance of +one of those famous friendships, the very tradition of which becomes a +stimulus to culture, and exercises an imperishable influence. + +In one of the frescoes of the Vatican, Raffaelle has commemorated the +tradition of the Catholic religion. Against a strip of peaceful sky, +broken in upon by the beatific vision, are ranged the great personages +of. Christian history, with the Sacrament in the midst. Another fresco of +Raffaelle in the same apartment presents a very different company, Dante +alone appearing in both. Surrounded by the muses of Greek mythology, +under a thicket of myrtles, sits Apollo, with the sources of Castalia at +his feet. On either side are grouped those on whom the spirit of Apollo +descended, the classical and Renaissance poets, to whom the waters of +Castalia come down, a river making glad this other city of God. In this +fresco it is the classical tradition, the orthodoxy of taste, that +Raffaelle commemorates. Winckelmann's intellectual history authenticates +the claims of this tradition in human culture. In the countries where +that tradition arose, where it still lurked about its own artistic +relics, and changes of language had not broken its continuity, national +pride might sometimes light up anew an enthusiasm for it. Aliens might +imitate that enthusiasm, and classicism become from time to time an +intellectual fashion. But Winckelmann was not further removed by +language, than by local aspects and associations, from those vestiges of +the classical spirit; and he lived at a time when, in Germany, classical +studies were out of favour. Yet, remote in time and place, he feels after +the Hellenic world, divines the veins of ancient art, in which its life +still circulates, and, like Scyles, the half-barbarous yet Hellenising +king, in the beautiful story of Herodotus, is irresistibly attracted by +it. This testimony to the authority of the Hellenic tradition, its +fitness to satisfy some vital requirement of the intellect, which +Winckelmann contributes as a solitary man of genius, is offered also by +the general history of culture. The spiritual forces of the past, which +have prompted and informed the culture of a succeeding age, live, indeed, +within that culture, but with an absorbed, underground life. The Hellenic +element alone has not been so absorbed, or content with this underground +life; from time to time it has started to the surface; culture has been +drawn back to its sources to be clarified and corrected. Hellenism is not +merely an absorbed element in our intellectual life; it is a conscious +tradition in it. + +Again, individual genius works ever under conditions of time and place: +its products are coloured by the varying aspects of nature, and type of +human form, and outward manners of life. There is thus an element of +change in art; criticism must never for a moment forget that "the artist +is the child of his time." But besides these conditions of time and +place, and independent of them, there is also an element of permanence, a +standard of taste, which genius confesses. This standard is maintained in +a purely intellectual tradition; it acts upon the artist, not as one of +the influences of his own age, but by means of the artistic products of +the previous generation, which in youth have excited, and at the same +time directed into a particular channel, his sense of beauty. The supreme +artistic products of each generation thus form a series of elevated +points, taking each from each the reflexion of a strange light, the +source of which is not in the atmosphere around and above them, but in a +stage of society remote from ours. This standard takes its rise in +Greece, at a definite historical period. A tradition for all succeeding +generations, it originates in a spontaneous growth out of the influences +of Greek society. What were the conditions under which this ideal, this +standard of artistic orthodoxy, was generated? How was Greece enabled to +force its thought upon Europe? + +Greek art, when we first catch sight of it, is entangled with Greek +religion. We are accustomed to think of Greek religion as the religion of +art and beauty, the religion of which the Olympian Zeus and the Athena +Polias are the idols, the poems of Homer the sacred books. Thus Cardinal +Newman speaks of "the classical polytheism which was gay and graceful, as +was natural in a civilised age." Yet such a view is only a partial one; +in it the eye is fixed on the sharp, bright edge of high Hellenic culture +but loses sight of the sombre world across which it strikes. Greek +religion, where we can observe it most distinctly, is at once a +magnificent ritualistic system, and a cycle of poetical conceptions. +Religions, as they grow by natural laws out of man's life, are modified +by whatever modifies his life. They brighten under a bright sky, they +become liberal as the social range widens, they grow intense and shrill +in the clefts of human life, where the spirit is narrow and confined, and +the stars are visible at noonday; and a fine analysis of these +differences is one of the gravest functions of religious criticism. +Still, the broad foundation, in mere human nature, of all religions as +they exist for the greatest number, is a universal pagan sentiment, a +paganism which existed before the Greek religion, and has lingered far +onward into the Christian world, ineradicable, like some persistent +vegetable growth, because its seed is an element of the very soil out of +which it springs. This pagan sentiment measures the sadness with which +the human mind is filled, whenever its thoughts wander far from what is +here, and now. It is beset by notions of irresistible natural powers, for +the most part ranged against man, but the secret also of his fortune, +making the earth golden and the grape fiery for him. He makes gods in his +own image, gods smiling and flower-crowned, or bleeding by some sad +fatality, to console him by their wounds, never closed from generation to +generation. It is with a rush of home-sickness that the thought of death +presents itself. He would remain at home for ever on the earth if he +could: as it loses its colour and the senses fail, he clings ever closer +to it; but since the mouldering of bones and flesh must go on to the end, +he is careful for charms and talismans, that may chance to have some +friendly power in them, when the inevitable shipwreck comes. Such +sentiment is a part of the eternal basis of all religions, modified +indeed by changes of time and place, but indestructible, because its root +is so deep in the earth of man's nature. The breath of religious +initiators passes over them; a few "rise up with wings as eagles," but +the broad level of religious life is not permanently changed. Religious +progress, like all purely spiritual progress, is confined to a few. This +sentiment fixes itself in the earliest times to certain usages of +patriarchal life, the kindling of fire, the washing of the body, the +slaughter of the flock, the gathering of harvest, holidays and dances. +Here are the beginnings of a ritual, at first as occasional and unfixed +as the sentiment which it expresses, but destined to become the permanent +element of religious life. The usages of patriarchal life change; but +this germ of ritual remains, developing, but always in a religious +interest, losing its domestic character, and therefore becoming more and +more inexplicable with each generation. This pagan worship, in spite of +local variations, essentially one, is an element in all religions. It is +the anodyne which the religious principle, like one administering opiates +to the incurable, has added to the law which makes life sombre for the +vast majority of mankind. + +More definite religious conceptions come from other sources, and fix +themselves upon this ritual in various ways, changing it, and giving it +new meanings. In Greece they were derived from mythology, itself not due +to a religious source at all, but developing in the course of time into a +body of religious conceptions, entirely human in form and character. To +the unprogressive ritual element it brought these conceptions, +itself--he pterou dunamis, the power of the wing--an element of +refinement, of ascension, with the promise of an endless destiny. While +the ritual remains fixed, the aesthetic element, only accidentally +connected with it, expands with the freedom and mobility of the things of +the intellect. Always, the fixed element is the religious observance; the +fluid, unfixed element is the myth, the religious conception. This +religion is itself pagan, and has in any broad view of it the pagan +sadness. It does not at once, and for the majority, become the higher +Hellenic religion. The country people, of course, cherish the unlovely +idols of an earlier time, such as those which Pausanias found still +devoutly preserved in Arcadia. Athenaeus tells the story of one who, +coming to a temple of Latona, had expected to find some worthy +presentment of the mother of Apollo, and laughed on seeing only a +shapeless wooden figure. The wilder people have wilder gods, which, +however, in Athens, or Corinth, or Lacedaemon, changing ever with the +worshippers in whom they live and move and have their being, borrow +something of the lordliness and distinction of human nature there. Greek +religion too has its mendicants, its purifications, its antinomian +mysticism, its garments offered to the gods, its statues worn with +kissing, its exaggerated superstitions for the vulgar only, its worship +of sorrow, its addolorata, its mournful mysteries. Scarcely a wild or +melancholy note of the medieval church but was anticipated by Greek +polytheism! What should we have thought of the vertiginous prophetess at +the very centre of Greek religion? The supreme Hellenic culture is a +sharp edge of light across this gloom. The fiery, stupefying wine becomes +in a happier region clear and exhilarating. The Dorian worship of Apollo, +rational, chastened, debonair, with his unbroken daylight, always opposed +to the sad Chthonian divinities, is the aspiring element, by force and +spring of which Greek religion sublimes itself. Out of Greek religion, +under happy conditions, arises Greek art, to minister to human culture. +It was the privilege of Greek religion to be able to transform itself +into an artistic ideal. + +For the thoughts of the Greeks about themselves, and their relation to +the world generally, were ever in the happiest readiness to be +transformed into objects for the senses. In this lies the main +distinction between Greek art and the mystical art of the Christian +middle age, which is always struggling to express thoughts beyond itself. +Take, for instance, a characteristic work of the middle age, Angelico's +Coronation of the Virgin, in the cloister of Saint Mark's at Florence. In +some strange halo of a moon Christ and the Virgin Mary are sitting, clad +in mystical white raiment, half shroud, half priestly linen. Our Lord, +with rosy nimbus and the long pale hair--tanquam lana alba et tanquam +nix--of the figure in the Apocalypse, sets with slender finger-tips a +crown of pearl on the head of his mother, who, corpse-like in her +refinement, is bending forward to receive it, the light lying like snow +upon her forehead. Certainly, it cannot be said of Angelico's fresco that +it throws into a sensible form our highest thoughts about man and his +relation to the world; but it did not do this adequately even for +Angelico. For him, all that is outward or sensible in his work--the hair +like wool, the rosy nimbus, the crown of pearl--is only the symbol or +type of an inexpressible world, to which he wishes to direct the +thoughts; he would have shrunk from the notion that what the eye +apprehended was all. Such forms of art, then, are inadequate to the +matter they clothe; they remain ever below its level. Something of this +kind is true also of oriental art. As in the middle age from an +exaggerated inwardness, so in the East from a vagueness, a want of +definition, in thought, the matter presented to art is unmanageable: +forms of sense struggle vainly with it. The many-headed gods of the East, +the orientalised Diana of Ephesus, with its numerous breasts, like +Angelico's fresco, are at best overcharged symbols, a means of hinting at +an idea which art cannot adequately express, which still remains in the +world of shadows. + +But take a work of Greek art,--the Venus of Melos. That is in no sense a +symbol, a suggestion of anything beyond its own victorious fairness. The +mind begins and ends with the finite image, yet loses no part of the +spiritual motive. That motive is not lightly and loosely attached to the +sensuous form, as the meaning to the allegory, but saturates and is +identical with it. The Greek mind had advanced to a particular stage of +self-reflexion, but was careful not to pass beyond it. In oriental +thought there is a vague conception of life everywhere, but no true +appreciation of itself by the mind, no knowledge of the distinction of +man's nature: in its consciousness of itself, humanity is still confused +with the fantastic, indeterminate life of the animal and vegetable world. +In Greek thought the "lordship of the soul" is recognised; that lordship +gives authority and divinity to human eyes and hands and feet; inanimate +nature is thrown into the background. But there Greek thought finds its +happy limit; it has not yet become too inward; the mind has not begun to +boast of its independence of the flesh; the spirit has not yet absorbed +everything with its emotions, nor reflected its own colour everywhere. +It has indeed committed itself to a train of reflexion which must end in +a defiance of form, of all that is outward, in an exaggerated idealism. +But that end is still distant: it has not yet plunged into the depths of +religious mysticism. + +This ideal art, in which the thought does not outstrip or lie beyond its +sensible embodiment, could not have arisen out of a phase of life that +was uncomely or poor. That delicate pause in Greek reflexion was joined, +by some supreme good luck, to the perfect animal nature of the Greeks. +Here are the two conditions of an artistic ideal. The influences which +perfected the animal nature of the Greeks are part of the process by +which the ideal was evolved. Those "Mothers" who, in the second part of +Faust, mould and remould the typical forms which appear in human history, +preside, at the beginning of Greek culture, over such a concourse of +happy physical conditions as ever generates by natural laws some rare +type of intellectual or spiritual life. That delicate air, "nimbly and +sweetly recommending itself" to the senses, the finer aspects of nature, +the finer lime and clay of the human form, and modelling of the dainty +framework of the human countenance:--these are the good luck of the Greek +when he enters upon life. Beauty becomes a distinction, like genius, or +noble place. + +"By no people," says Winckelmann, "has beauty been so highly esteemed as +by the Greeks. The priests of a youthful Jupiter at Aegae, of the +Ismenian Apollo, and the priest who at Tanagra led the procession of +Mercury, bearing a lamb upon his shoulders, were always youths to whom +the prize of beauty had been awarded. The citizens of Egesta, in Sicily, +erected a monument to a certain Philip, who was not their fellow-citizen, +but of Croton, for his distinguished beauty; and the people made +offerings at it. In an ancient song, ascribed to Simonides or Epicharmus, +of four wishes, the first was health, the second beauty. And as beauty +was so longed for and prized by the Greeks, every beautiful person sought +to become known to the whole people by this distinction, and above all to +approve himself to the artists, because they awarded the prize; and this +was for the artists an opportunity of having supreme beauty ever before +their eyes. Beauty even gave a right to fame; and we find in Greek +histories the most beautiful people distinguished. Some were famous for +the beauty of one single part of their form; as Demetrius Phalereus, for +his beautiful eyebrows, was called Charito-blepharos. It seems even to +have been thought that the procreation of beautiful children might be +promoted by prizes: this is shown by the existence of contests for +beauty, which in ancient times were established by Cypselus, King of +Arcadia, by the river Alpheus; and, at the feast of Apollo of Philae, a +prize was offered to the youths for the deftest kiss. This was decided by +an umpire; as also at Megara, by the grave of Diodes. At Sparta, and at +Lesbos, in the temple of Juno, and among the Parrhasii, there were +contests for beauty among women. The general esteem for beauty went so +far, that the Spartan women set up in their bedchambers a Nireus, a +Narcissus, or a Hyacinth, that they might bear beautiful children." + +So, from a few stray antiquarianisms, a few faces cast up sharply from +the waves, Winckelmann, as his manner is, divines the temperament of the +antique world, and that in which it had delight. It has passed away with +that distant age, and we may venture to dwell upon it. What sharpness and +reality it has is the sharpness and reality of suddenly arrested life. +The Greek system of gymnastics originated as part of a religious ritual. +The worshipper was to recommend himself to the gods by becoming fleet and +fair, white and red, like them. The beauty of the palaestra, and the +beauty of the artist's studio, reacted on each other. The youth tried to +rival his gods; and his increased beauty passed back into them.--"I take +the gods to witness, I had rather have a fair body than a king's +crown"--Omnumi pantas theous me helesthai an ten basileos arkhen anti tou +kalos einai.--That is the form in which one age of the world chose the +higher life--a perfect world, if the gods could have seemed for ever only +fleet and fair, white and red. Let us not regret that this unperplexed +youth of humanity, seeing itself and satisfied, passed, at the due +moment, into a mournful maturity; for already the deep joy was in store +for the spirit, of finding the ideal of that youth still red with life in +the grave. + +It followed that the Greek ideal expressed itself pre-eminently in +sculpture. All art has a sensuous element, colour, form, sound--in poetry +a dexterous recalling of these, together with the profound, joyful +sensuousness of motion: each of these may be a medium for the ideal: it +is partly accident which in any individual case makes the born artist, +poet, or painter rather than sculptor. But as the mind itself has had an +historical development, one form of art, by the very limitations of its +material, may be more adequate than another for the expression of any one +phase of its experience. Different attitudes of the imagination have a +native affinity with different types of sensuous form, so that they +combine, with completeness and ease. The arts may thus be ranged in a +series, which corresponds to a series of developments in the human mind +itself. Architecture, which begins in a practical need, can only express +by vague hint or symbol the spirit or mind of the artist. He closes his +sadness over him, or wanders in the perplexed intricacies of things, or +projects his purpose from him clean-cut and sincere, or bares himself to +the sunlight. But these spiritualities, felt rather than seen, can but +lurk about architectural form as volatile effects, to be gathered from it +by reflexion; their expression is not really sensuous at all. As human +form is not the subject with which it deals, architecture is the mode in +which the artistic effort centres, when the thoughts of man concerning +himself are still indistinct, when he is still little preoccupied with +those harmonies, storms, victories, of the unseen and intellectual world, +which, wrought out into the bodily form, give it an interest and +significance communicable to it alone. The art of Egypt, with its supreme +architectural effects, is, according to Hegel's beautiful comparison, a +Memnon waiting for the day, the day of the Greek spirit, the humanistic +spirit, with its power of speech. Again, painting, music, and poetry, +with their endless power of complexity, are the special arts of the +romantic and modern ages. Into these, with the utmost attenuation of +detail, may be translated every delicacy of thought and feeling, +incidental to a consciousness brooding with delight over itself. Through +their gradations of shade, their exquisite intervals, they project in an +external form that which is most inward in humour, passion, sentiment. +Between architecture and the romantic arts of painting, music, and +poetry, comes sculpture, which, unlike architecture, deals immediately +with man, while it contrasts with the romantic arts, because it is not +self-analytical. It has to do more exclusively than any other art with +the human form, itself one entire medium of spiritual expression, +trembling, blushing, melting into dew, with inward excitement. That +spirituality which only lurks about architecture as a volatile effect, in +sculpture takes up the whole given material, and penetrates it with an +imaginative motive; and at first sight sculpture, with its solidity of +form, seems a thing more real and full than the faint, abstract world of +poetry or painting. Still the fact is the reverse. Discourse and action +show man as he is, more directly than the springing of the muscles and +the moulding of the flesh; and over these poetry has command. Painting, +by the flushing of colour in the face and dilatation of light in the +eye--music, by its subtle range of tones--can refine most delicately upon +a single moment of passion, unravelling its finest threads. + +But why should sculpture thus limit itself to pure form? Because, by this +limitation, it becomes a perfect medium of expression for one peculiar +motive of the imaginative intellect. It therefore renounces all these +attributes of its material which do not help forward that motive. It has +had, indeed, from the beginning an unfixed claim to colour; but this +element of colour in it has always been more or less conventional, with +no melting or modulation of tones, never admitting more than a very +limited realism. It was maintained chiefly as a religious tradition. In +proportion as the art of sculpture ceased to be merely decorative, and +subordinate to architecture, it threw itself upon pure form. It renounces +the power of expression by sinking or heightening tones. In it, no member +of the human form is more significant than the rest; the eye is wide, and +without pupil; the lips and brow are hardly less significant than hands, +and breasts, and feet. The limitation of its resources is part of its +pride it has no backgrounds, no sky or atmosphere, to suggest and +interpret a train of feeling; a little of suggested motion, and much of +pure light on its gleaming surfaces, with pure form--only these. And it +gains more than it loses by this limitation to its own distinguishing +motives; it unveils man in the repose of his unchanging characteristics. +Its white light, purged from the angry, bloodlike stains of action and +passion, reveals, not what is accidental in man, but the god in him, as +opposed to man's restless movement. The art of sculpture records the +first naive, unperplexed recognition of man by himself; and it is a proof +of the high artistic capacity of the Greeks, that they apprehended and +remained true to these exquisite limitations, yet, in spite of them, gave +to their creations a vital and mobile individuality. + +Heiterkeit--blitheness or repose, and Allgemeinheit--generality or +breadth, are, then, the supreme characteristics of the Hellenic ideal. +But that generality or breadth has nothing in common with the lax +observation, the unlearned thought, the flaccid execution, which have +sometimes claimed superiority in art, on the plea of being "broad" or +"general." Hellenic breadth and generality come of a culture minute, +severe, constantly renewed, rectifying and concentrating its impressions +into certain pregnant types. The base of all artistic genius is the power +of conceiving humanity in a new, striking, rejoicing way, of putting a +happy world of its own creation in place of the meaner world of common +days, of generating around itself an atmosphere with a novel power of +refraction, selecting, transforming, recombining the images it transmits, +according to the choice of the imaginative intellect. In exercising this +power, painting and poetry have a choice of subject almost unlimited. +The range of characters or persons open to them is as various as life +itself; no character, however trivial, misshapen, or unlovely, can resist +their magic. That is because those arts can accomplish their function in +the choice and development of some special situation, which lifts or +glorifies a character, in itself not poetical. To realise this situation, +to define in a chill and empty atmosphere, the focus where rays, in +themselves pale and impotent, unite and begin to burn, the artist has to +employ the most cunning detail, to complicate and refine upon thought and +passion a thousand-fold. The poems of Robert Browning supply brilliant +examples of this power. His poetry is pre-eminently the poetry of +situations. The characters themselves are always of secondary importance; +often they are characters in themselves of little interest; they seem to +come to him by strange accidents from the ends of the world. His gift is +shown by the way in which he accepts such a character, and throws it into +some situation, or apprehends it in some delicate pause of life, in which +for a moment it becomes ideal. Take an instance from Dramatis Personae. +In the poem entitled Le Byron de nos Jours, we have a single moment of +passion thrown into relief in this exquisite way. Those two jaded +Parisians are not intrinsically interesting; they only begin to interest +us when thrown into a choice situation. But to discriminate that moment, +to make it appreciable by us, that we may "find" it, what a cobweb of +allusions, what double and treble reflexions of the mind upon itself, +what an artificial light is constructed and broken over the chosen +situation; on how fine a needle's point that little world of passion is +balanced! Yet, in spite of this intricacy, the poem has the clear ring of +a central motive; we receive from it the impression of one imaginative +tone, of a single creative act. + +To produce such effects at all requires all the resources of painting, +with its power of indirect expression, of subordinate but significant +detail, its atmosphere, its foregrounds and backgrounds. To produce them +in a pre-eminent degree requires all the resources of poetry, language in +its most purged form, its remote associations and suggestions, its double +and treble lights. These appliances sculpture cannot command. In it, +therefore, not the special situation, but the type, the general character +of the subject to be delineated, is all-important. In poetry and +painting, the situation predominates over the character; in sculpture, +the character over the situation. Excluded by the limitations of its +material from the development of exquisite situations, it has to choose +from a select number of types intrinsically interesting--interesting, +that is, independently of any special situation into which they may be +thrown. Sculpture finds the secret of its power in presenting these +types, in their broad, central, incisive lines. This it effects not by +accumulation of detail, but by abstracting from it. All that is +accidental, all that distracts the simple effect upon us of the supreme +types of humanity, all traces in them of the commonness of the world, it +gradually purges away. + +Works of art produced under this law, and only these, are really +characterised by Hellenic generality or breadth. In every direction it is +a law of limitation; it keeps passion always below that degree of +intensity at which it must necessarily be transitory, never winding up +the features to one note of anger, or desire, or surprise. In some of the +feebler allegorical designs of the middle age, we find isolated qualities +portrayed as by so many masks; its religious art has familiarised us with +faces fixed immovably into blank types of placid reverie; and men and +women, in the hurry of life, often wear the sharp impress of one +absorbing motive, from which it is said death sets their features free. +All such instances may be ranged under the grotesque; and the Hellenic +ideal has nothing in common with the grotesque. It allows passion to play +lightly over the surface of the individual form, losing thereby nothing +of its central impassivity, its depth and repose. To all but the highest +culture, the reserved faces of the gods will ever have something of +insipidity. Again, in the best Greek sculpture, the archaic immobility +has been thawed, its forms are in motion; but it is a motion ever kept in +reserve, which is very seldom committed to any definite action. Endless +as are the attitudes of Greek sculpture, exquisite as is the invention of +the Greeks in this direction, the actions or situations it permits are +simple and few. There is no Greek Madonna; the goddesses are always +childless. The actions selected are those which would be without +significance, except in a divine person--binding on a sandal or preparing +for the bath. When a more complex and significant action is permitted, it +is most often represented as just finished, so that eager expectancy is +excluded, as in the image of Apollo just after the slaughter of the +Python, or of Venus with the apple of Paris already in her hand. The +Laocoon, with all that patient science through which it has triumphed +over an almost unmanageable subject, marks a period in which sculpture +has begun to aim at effects legitimate, because delightful, only in +painting. The hair, so rich a source of expression in painting, because, +relatively to the eye or to the lip, it is mere drapery, is withdrawn +from attention; its texture, as well as the colour, is lost, its +arrangement faintly and severely indicated, with no enmeshed or broken +light. The eyes are wide and directionless, not fixing anything with +their gaze, or riveting the brain to any special external object; the +brows without hair. It deals almost exclusively with youth, where the +moulding of the bodily organs is still as if suspended between growth and +completion, indicated but not emphasised; where the transition from curve +to curve is so delicate and elusive, that Winckelmann compares it to a +quiet sea, which, although we understand it to be in motion, we +nevertheless regard as an image of repose; where, therefore, the exact +degree of development is so hard to apprehend. If one had to choose a +single product of Hellenic art, to save in the wreck of all the rest, one +would choose from the "beautiful multitude" of the Panathenaic frieze, +that line of youths on horseback, with their level glances, their proud, +patient lips, their chastened reins, their whole bodies in exquisite +service. This colourless, unclassified purity of life, with its blending +and interpenetration of intellectual, spiritual, and physical elements, +still folded together, pregnant with the possibilities of a whole world +closed within it, is the highest expression of that indifference which +lies beyond all that is relative or partial. Everywhere there is the +effect of an awaking, of a child's sleep just disturbed. All these +effects are united in a single instance--the adorante of the museum of +Berlin, a youth who has gained the wrestler's prize, with hands lifted +and open, in praise for the victory. Fresh, unperplexed, it is the image +of man as he springs first from the sleep of nature; his white light +taking no colour from any one-sided experience, characterless, so far as +character involves subjection to the accidental influences of life. + +"This sense," says Hegel, "for the consummate modelling of divine and +human forms was pre-eminently at home in Greece. In its poets and +orators, its historians and philosophers, Greece cannot be conceived from +a central point, unless one brings, as a key to the understanding of it, +an insight into the ideal forms of sculpture, and regards the images of +statesmen and philosophers, as well as epic and dramatic heroes, from the +artistic point of view; for those who act, as well as those who create +and think, have, in those beautiful days of Greece, this plastic +character. They are great and free, and have grown up on the soil of +their own individuality, creating themselves out of themselves, and +moulding themselves to what they were, and willed to be. The age of +Pericles was rich in such characters; Pericles himself, Pheidias, Plato, +above all Sophocles, Thucydides also, Xenophon and Socrates, each in his +own order, the perfection of one remaining undiminished by that of the +others. They are ideal artists of themselves, cast each in one flawless +mould, works of art, which stand before us as an immortal presentment of +the gods. Of this modelling also are those bodily works of art, the +victors in the Olympic games; yes, and even Phryne, who, as the most +beautiful of women, ascended naked out of the water, in the presence of +assembled Greece." + +This key to the understanding of the Greek spirit, Winckelmann possessed +in his own nature, itself like a relic of classical antiquity, laid open +by accident to our alien modern atmosphere. To the criticism of that +consummate Greek modelling he brought not only his culture but his +temperament. We have seen how definite was the leading motive of his +culture; how, like some central root-fibre, it maintained the +well-rounded unity of his life through a thousand distractions. +Interests not his, nor meant for him, never disturbed him. In morals, as +in criticism, he followed the clue of an unerring instinct. Penetrating +into the antique world by his passion, his temperament, he enunciates no +formal principles, always hard and one-sided. Minute and anxious as his +culture was, he never became one-sidedly self-analytical. Occupied ever +with himself, perfecting himself and cultivating his genius, he was not +content, as so often happens with such natures, that the atmosphere +between him and other minds should be thick and clouded; he was ever +jealously refining his meaning into a form, express, clear, objective. +This temperament he nurtured and invigorated by friendships which kept +him ever in direct contact with the spirit of youth. The beauty of the +Greek statues was a sexless beauty; the statues of the gods had the least +traces of sex. Here there is a moral sexlessness, a kind of ineffectual +wholeness of nature, yet with a true beauty and significance of its own. + +One result of this temperament is a serenity--Heiterkeit--which +characterises Winckelmann's handling of the sensuous side of Greek art. +This serenity is, perhaps, in great measure, a negative quality; it is +the absence of any sense of want, or corruption, or shame. With the +sensuous element in Greek art he deals in the pagan manner; and what is +implied in that? It has been sometimes said that art is a means of escape +from "the tyranny of the senses." It may be so for the spectator; he may +find that the spectacle of supreme works of art takes from the life of +the senses something of its turbid fever. But this is possible for the +spectator only because the artist, in producing those works, has +gradually sunk his intellectual and spiritual ideas in sensuous form. He +may live, as Keats lived, a pure life; but his soul, like that of Plato's +false astronomer, becomes more and more immersed in sense, until nothing +which lacks an appeal to sense has interest for him. How could such an +one ever again endure the greyness of the ideal or spiritual world? The +spiritualist is satisfied in seeing the sensuous elements escape from his +conceptions; his interest grows, as the dyed garment bleaches in the +keener air. But the artist steeps his thought again and again into the +fire of colour. To the Greek this immersion in the sensuous was +indifferent. Greek sensuousness, therefore, does not fever the blood; it +is shameless and childlike. Christian asceticism, on the other hand, +discrediting the slightest touch of sense, has from time to time provoked +into strong emphasis the contrast or antagonism to itself, of the +artistic life, with its inevitable sensuousness.--I did but taste a +little honey with the end of the rod that was in mine hand, and lo, I +must die!--It has sometimes seemed hard to pursue that life without +something of conscious disavowal of a spiritual world; and this imparts +to genuine artistic interests a kind of intoxication. From this +intoxication Winckelmann is free; he fingers those pagan marbles with +unsinged hands, with no sense of shame or loss. That is to deal with the +sensuous side of art in the pagan manner. + +The longer we contemplate that Hellenic ideal, in which man is at unity +with himself, with his physical nature, with the outward world, the more +we may be inclined to regret that he should ever have passed beyond it, +to contend for a perfection that makes the blood turbid, and frets the +flesh, and discredits the actual world about us. But if he was to be +saved from the ennui which ever attaches itself to realisation, even the +realisation of perfection, it was necessary that a conflict should come, +and some sharper note grieve the perfect harmony, to the end that the +spirit chafed by it might beat out at last a larger and profounder music. +In Greek tragedy this conflict has begun; man finds himself face to face +with rival claims. Greek tragedy shows how such a conflict may be treated +with serenity, how the evolution of it may be a spectacle of the dignity, +not of the impotence, of the human spirit. But it is not only in tragedy +that the Greek spirit showed itself capable of thus winning joy out of +matter in itself full of discouragements. Theocritus, too, often strikes +a note of romantic sadness. But what a blithe and steady poise, above +these discouragements, in a clear and sunny stratum of the air! + +Into this stage of Greek achievement Winckelmann did not enter. Supreme +as he is where his true interest lay, his insight into the typical unity +and repose of the highest sort of sculpture seems to have involved +limitation in another direction. His conception of art excludes that +bolder type of it which deals confidently and serenely with life, +conflict, evil. Living in a world of exquisite but abstract and +colourless form, he could hardly have conceived of the subtle and +penetrative, but somewhat grotesque art of the modern world. What would +he have thought of Gilliatt, in Victor Hugo's Travailleurs de la Mer, or +of the bleeding mouth of Fantine in the first part of Les Miserables, +penetrated as it is with a sense of beauty, as lively and transparent as +that of a Greek? There is even a sort of preparation for the romantic +temper within the limits of the Greek ideal itself, which Winckelmann +failed to see. For Greek religion has not merely its mournful mysteries +of Adonis, of Hyacinthus, of Demeter, but it is conscious also of the +fall of earlier divine dynasties. Hyperion gives way to Apollo, Oceanus +to Poseidon. Around the feet of that tranquil Olympian family still crowd +the weary shadows of an earlier, more formless, divine world. Even their +still minds are troubled with thoughts of a limit to duration, of +inevitable decay, of dispossession. Again, the supreme and colourless +abstraction of those divine forms, which is the secret of their repose, +is also a premonition of the fleshless, consumptive refinements of the +pale medieval artists. That high indifference to the outward, that +impassivity, has already a touch of the corpse in it; we see already +Angelico and the Master of the Passion in the artistic future. The +crushing of the sensuous, the shutting of the door upon it, the ascetic +interest, is already traceable. Those abstracted gods, "ready to melt out +their essence fine into the winds," who can fold up their flesh as a +garment, and still remain themselves, seem already to feel that bleak +air, in which, like Helen of Troy, they wander as the spectres of the +middle age. + +Gradually, as the world came into the church, an artistic interest, +native in the human soul, reasserted its claims. But Christian art was +still dependent on pagan examples, building the shafts of pagan temples +into its churches, perpetuating the form of the basilica, in later times +working the disused amphitheatres as quarries. The sensuous expression of +conceptions which unreservedly discredit the world of sense, was the +delicate problem which Christian art had before it. If we think of +medieval painting, as it ranges from the early German schools, still with +something of the air of the charnel-house about them, to the clear +loveliness of Perugino, we shall see how that problem was solved. Even in +the worship of sorrow the native blitheness of art asserted itself; the +religious spirit, as Hegel says, "smiled through its tears." So perfectly +did the young Raffaelle infuse that Heiterkeit, that pagan blitheness, +into religious works, that his picture of Saint Agatha at Bologna became +to Goethe a step in the evolution of Iphigenie.* But in proportion as +this power of smiling was found again, there came also an aspiration +towards that lost antique art, some relics of which Christian art had +buried in itself, ready to work wonders when their day came. + +*Italiaenische Reise. Bologna, 19 Oct. 1776. + +The history of art has suffered as much as any history by trenchant and +absolute divisions. Pagan and Christian art are sometimes harshly +opposed, and the Renaissance is represented as a fashion which set in at +a definite period. That is the superficial view: the deeper view is that +which preserves the identity of European culture. The two are really +continuous; and there is a sense in which it may be said that the +Renaissance was an uninterrupted effort of the middle age, that it was +ever taking place. When the actual relics of the antique were restored to +the world, in the view of the Christian ascetic it was as if an ancient +plague-pit had been opened: all the world took the contagion of the life +of nature and of the senses. And now it was seen that the medieval spirit +too had done something for the destiny of the antique. By hastening the +decline of art, by withdrawing interest from it, and yet keeping unbroken +the thread of its traditions, it had suffered the human mind to repose +that it might awake when day came, with eyes refreshed, to those antique +forms. + +The aim of a right criticism is to place Winckelmann in an intellectual +perspective, of which Goethe is the foreground. For, after all, he is +infinitely less than Goethe; it is chiefly because at certain points he +comes in contact with Goethe, that criticism entertains consideration of +him. His relation to modern culture is a peculiar one. He is not of the +modern world; nor is he of the eighteenth century, although so much of +his outer life is characteristic of it. But that note of revolt against +the eighteenth century, which we detect in Goethe, was struck by +Winckelmann. Goethe illustrates that union of the Romantic spirit, in its +adventure, its variety, its profound subjectivity of soul, with +Hellenism, in its transparency, its rationality, its desire of +Beauty--that marriage of Faust and Helena--of which the art of the +nineteenth century is the child, the beautiful lad Euphorion, as Goethe +conceives him, on the crags, in the "splendour of battle and in harness +as for victory," his brows bound with light.* Goethe illustrates, too, +the preponderance in this marriage of the Hellenic element; and that +element, in its true essence, was made known to him by Winckelmann. + +*Faust, Th. ii. Act. 3. + +Breadth, centrality, with blitheness and repose, are the marks of +Hellenic culture. Is that culture a lost art? The local, accidental +colouring of its own age has passed from it; the greatness that is dead +looks greater when every link with what is slight and vulgar has been +severed; we can only see it at all in the reflected, refined light which +a high education creates for us. Can we bring down that ideal into the +gaudy, perplexed light of modern life? + +Certainly, for us of the modern world, with its conflicting claims, its +entangled interests, distracted by so many sorrows, so many +preoccupations, so bewildering an experience, the problem of unity with +ourselves, in blitheness and repose, is far harder than it was for the +Greek within the simple terms of antique life. Yet, not less than ever, +the intellect demands completeness, centrality. It is this which +Winckelmann imprints on the imagination of Goethe, at the beginning of +his culture, in its original and simplest form, as in a fragment of Greek +art itself, stranded on that littered, indeterminate shore of Germany in +the eighteenth century. In Winckelmann, this type comes to him, not as in +a book or a theory, but importunately, in a passionate life or +personality. For Goethe, possessing all modern interests, ready to be +lost in the perplexed currents of modern thought, he defines, in clearest +outline, the problem of culture--balance, unity with oneself, consummate +Greek modelling. + +It could no longer be solved, as in Phryne ascending naked out of the +water, by perfection of bodily form, or any joyful union with the world +without: the shadows had grown too long, the light too solemn, for that. +It could hardly be solved, as in Pericles or Pheidias, by the direct +exercise of any single talent: amid the manifold claims of modern +culture, that could only have ended in a thin, one-sided growth. Goethe's +Hellenism was of another order, the Allgemeinheit and Heiterkeit, the +completeness and serenity, of a watchful, exigent intellectualism. Im +Ganzen, Guten, Wahren, resolut zu leben--is Goethe's description of his +own higher life; and what is meant by life in the whole--im Ganzen? It +means the life of one for whom, over and over again, what was once +precious has become indifferent. Every one who aims at the life of +culture is met by many forms of it, arising out of the intense, +laborious, one-sided development of some special talent. They are the +brightest enthusiasms the world has to show. It is not their part to +weigh the claims which this or that alien form of culture makes upon +them. But the pure instinct of self-culture cares not so much to reap all +that these forms of culture can give, as to find in them its own +strength. The demand of the intellect is to feel itself alive. It must +see into the laws, the operation, the intellectual reward of every +divided form of culture; but only that it may measure the relation +between itself and them. It struggles with those forms till its secret is +won from each, and then lets each fall back into its place; in the +supreme, artistic view of life. With a kind of passionate coldness, such +natures rejoice to be away from and past their former selves. Above all, +they are jealous of that abandonment to one special gift which really +limits their capabilities. It would have been easy for Goethe, with the +gift of a sensuous nature, to let it overgrow him. It comes easily and +naturally, perhaps, to certain "other-worldly" natures to be even as the +Schoene Seele, that ideal of gentle pietism, in Wilhelm Meister: but to +the large vision of Goethe, that seemed to be a phase of life that a man +might feel all round, and leave behind him. Again, it is easy to indulge +the commonplace metaphysical instinct. But a taste for metaphysics may be +one of those things which we must renounce, if we mean to mould our lives +to artistic perfection. Philosophy serves culture, not by the fancied +gift of absolute or transcendental knowledge, but by suggesting questions +which help one to detect the passion, and strangeness, and dramatic +contrasts of life. + +But Goethe's culture did not remain "behind the veil"; it ever emerged in +the practical functions of art, in actual production. For him the problem +came to be:--Can the blitheness and universality of the antique ideal be +communicated to artistic productions, which shall contain the fulness of +the experience of the modern world? We have seen that the development of +the various forms of art has corresponded to the development of the +thoughts of man concerning himself, to the growing revelation of the mind +to itself. Sculpture corresponds to the unperplexed, emphatic outlines of +Hellenic humanism; painting to the mystic depth and intricacy of the +middle age; music and poetry have their fortune in the modern world. Let +us understand by poetry all literary production which attains the power +of giving pleasure by its form, as distinct from its matter. Only in this +varied literary form can art command that width, variety, delicacy of +resources, which will enable it to deal with the conditions of modern +life. What modern art has to do in the service of culture is so to +rearrange the details of modern life, so to reflect it, that it may +satisfy the spirit. And what does the spirit need in the face of modern +life? The sense of freedom. That naive, rough sense of freedom, which +supposes man's will to be limited, if at all, only by a will stronger +than his, he can never have again. The attempt to represent it in art +would have so little verisimilitude that it would be flat and +uninteresting. The chief factor in the thoughts of the modern mind +concerning itself is the intricacy, the universality of natural law, even +in the moral order. For us, necessity is not, as of old, a sort of +mythological personage without us, with whom we can do warfare: it is a +magic web woven through and through us, like that magnetic system of +which modern science speaks, penetrating us with a network, subtler than +our subtlest nerves, yet bearing in it the central forces of the world. +Can art represent men and women in these bewildering toils so as to give +the spirit at least an equivalent for the sense of freedom? Certainly, in +Goethe's romances, and even more in the romances of Victor Hugo, there +are high examples of modern art dealing thus with modern life, regarding +that life as the modern mind must regard it, yet reflecting upon +blitheness and repose. Natural laws we shall never modify, embarrass us +as they may; but there is still something in the nobler or less noble +attitude with which we watch their fatal combinations. In those romances +of Goethe and Victor Hugo, in some excellent work done after them, this +entanglement, this network of law, becomes the tragic situation, in which +certain groups of noble men and women work out for themselves a supreme +Denouement. Who, if he saw through all, would fret against the chain of +circumstance which endows one at the end with those great experiences? + +1867. + + + +CONCLUSION* + +*This brief "Conclusion" was omitted in the second edition of this book, +as I conceived it might possibly mislead some of those young men into +whose hands it might fall. On the whole, I have thought it best to +reprint it here, with some slight changes which bring it closer to my +original meaning. I have dealt more fully in Marius the Epicurean with +the thoughts suggested by it. + +Legei pou Herakleitos hoti panta khorei kai ouden menei. + + +To regard all things and principles of things as inconstant modes or +fashions has more and more become the tendency of modern thought. Let us +begin with that which is without--our physical life. Fix upon it in one +of its more exquisite intervals, the moment, for instance, of delicious +recoil from the flood of water in summer heat. What is the whole physical +life in that moment but a combination of natural elements to which +science gives their names? But these elements, phosphorus and lime and +delicate fibres, are present not in the human body alone: we detect them +in places most remote from it. Our physical life is a perpetual motion of +them--the passage of the blood, the wasting and repairing of the lenses +of the eye, the modification of the tissues of the brain by every ray of +light and sound--processes which science reduces to simpler and more +elementary forces. Like the elements of which we are composed, the action +of these forces extends beyond us; it rusts iron and ripens corn. Far out +on every side of us those elements are broadcast, driven by many forces; +and birth and gesture and death and the springing of violets from the +grave are but a few out of ten thousand resultant combinations. That +clear, perpetual outline of face and limb is but an image of ours, under +which we group them--a design in a web, the actual threads of which pass +out beyond it. This at least of flamelike our life has, that it is but +the concurrence, renewed from moment to moment, of forces parting sooner +or later on their ways. + +Or if we begin with the inward world of thought and feeling, the +whirlpool is still more rapid, the flame more eager and devouring. There +it is no longer the gradual darkening of the eye and fading of colour +from the wall,--the movement of the shore-side, where the water flows +down indeed, though in apparent rest,--but the race of the mid-stream, a +drift of momentary acts of sight and passion and thought. At first sight +experience seems to bury us under a flood of external objects, pressing +upon us with a sharp and importunate reality, calling us out of ourselves +in a thousand forms of action. But when reflexion begins to act upon +those objects they are dissipated under its influence; the cohesive force +seems suspended like a trick of magic; each object is loosed into a group +of impressions--colour, odour, texture--in the mind of the observer. And +if we continue to dwell in thought on this world, not of objects in the +solidity with which language invests them, but of impressions unstable, +flickering, inconsistent, which burn and are extinguished with our +consciousness of them, it contracts still further; the whole scope of +observation is dwarfed to the narrow chamber of the individual mind. +Experience, already reduced to a swarm of impressions, is ringed round +for each one of us by that thick wall of personality through which no +real voice has ever pierced on its way to us, or from us to that which we +can only conjecture to be without. Every one of those impressions is the +impression of the individual in his isolation, each mind keeping as a +solitary prisoner its own dream of a world. Analysis goes a step farther +still, and assures us that those impressions of the individual mind to +which, for each one of us, experience dwindles down, are in perpetual +flight; that each of them is limited by time, and that as time is +infinitely divisible, each of them is infinitely divisible also; all that +is actual in it being a single moment, gone while we try to apprehend it, +of which it may ever be more truly said that it has ceased to be than +that it is. To such a tremulous wisp constantly re-forming itself on the +stream, to a single sharp impression, with a sense in it, a relic more or +less fleeting, of such moments gone by, what is real in our life fines +itself down. It is with this movement, with the passage and dissolution +of impressions, images, sensations, that analysis leaves off--that +continual vanishing away, that strange, perpetual weaving and unweaving +of ourselves. + +Philosophiren, says Novalis, ist dephlegmatisiren vivificiren. The +service of philosophy, of speculative culture, towards the human spirit +is to rouse, to startle it into sharp and eager observation. Every moment +some form grows perfect in hand or face; some tone on the hills or the +sea is choicer than the rest; some mood of passion or insight or +intellectual excitement is irresistibly real and attractive for us,--for +that moment only. Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is +the end. A counted number of pulses only is given to us of a variegated, +dramatic life. How may we see in them all that is to be seen in them by +the finest senses? How shall we pass most swiftly from point to point, +and be present always at the focus where the greatest number of vital +forces unite in their purest energy? + +To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, +is success in life. In a sense it might even be said that our failure is +to form habits: for, after all, habit is relative to a stereotyped world, +and meantime it is only the roughness of the eye that makes any two +persons, things, situations, seem alike. While all melts under our feet, +we may well catch at any exquisite passion, or any contribution to +knowledge that seems by a lifted horizon to set the spirit free for a +moment, or any stirring of the senses, strange dyes, strange colours, and +curious odours, or work of the artist's hands, or the face of one's +friend. Not to discriminate every moment some passionate attitude in +those about us, and in the brilliancy of their gifts some tragic dividing +of forces on their ways, is, on this short day of frost and sun, to sleep +before evening. With this sense of the splendour of our experience and of +its awful brevity, gathering all we are into one desperate effort to see +and touch, we shall hardly have time to make theories about the things we +see and touch. What we have to do is to be for ever curiously testing new +opinions and courting new impressions, never acquiescing in a facile +orthodoxy of Comte, or of Hegel, or of our own. Philosophical theories or +ideas, as points of view, instruments of criticism, may help us to gather +up what might otherwise pass unregarded by us. "Philosophy is the +microscope of thought." The theory or idea or system which requires of us +the sacrifice of any part of this experience, in consideration of some +interest into which we cannot enter, or some abstract theory we have not +identified with ourselves, or what is only conventional, has no real +claim upon us. + +One of the most beautiful passages in the writings of Rousseau is that in +the sixth book of the Confessions, where he describes the awakening in +him of the literary sense. An undefinable taint of death had always clung +about him, and now in early manhood he believed himself smitten by mortal +disease. He asked himself how he might make as much as possible of the +interval that remained; and he was not biassed by anything in his +previous life when he decided that it must be by intellectual excitement, +which he found just then in the clear, fresh writings of Voltaire. Well! +we are all condamnes, as Victor Hugo says: we are all under sentence of +death but with a sort of indefinite reprieve--les hommes sont tous +condamnes a mort avec des sursis indefinis: we have an interval, and then +our place knows us no more. Some spend this interval in listlessness, +some in high passions, the wisest, at least among "the children of this +world," in art and song. For our one chance lies in expanding that +interval, in getting as many pulsations as possible into the given time. +Great passions may give us this quickened sense of life, ecstasy and +sorrow of love, the various forms of enthusiastic activity, disinterested +or otherwise, which come naturally to many of us. Only be sure it is +passion--that it does yield you this fruit of a quickened, multiplied +consciousness. Of this wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire of beauty, +the love of art for art's sake, has most; for art comes to you professing +frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they +pass, and simply for those moments' sake. + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Renaissance, by Walter Pater + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RENAISSANCE *** + +***** This file should be named 2398.txt or 2398.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/2/3/9/2398/ + +Produced by Bruce McClintock. HTML version by Al Haines. + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + + + + + +This etext was prepared by Bruce McClintock, +email brucemcc@cygnus.uwa.edu.au + + + + + +THE RENAISSANCE +STUDIES IN ART AND POETRY +by Walter Pater + +Sixth Edition + + + + +Dedication +To C.L.S. + + + +PREFACE + +Many attempts have been made by writers on art and poetry to define +beauty in the abstract, to express it in the most general terms, to find +a universal formula for it. The value of these attempts has most often +been in the suggestive and penetrating things said by the way. Such +discussions help us very little to enjoy what has been well done in art +or poetry, to discriminate between what is more and what is less +excellent in them, or to use words like beauty, excellence, art, poetry, +with a more precise meaning than they would otherwise have. Beauty, like +all other qualities presented to human experience, is relative; and the +definition of it becomes unmeaning and useless in proportion to its +abstractness. To define beauty, not in the most abstract, but in the +most concrete terms possible, to find, not a universal formula for it, +but the formula which expresses most adequately this or that special +manifestation of it, is the aim of the true student of aesthetics. + +"To see the object as in itself it really is," has been justly said to +be the aim of all true criticism whatever; and in aesthetic criticism +the first step towards seeing one's object as it really is, is to know +one's own impression as it really is, to discriminate it, to realise it +distinctly. The objects with which aesthetic criticism deals--music, +poetry, artistic and accomplished forms of human life--are indeed +receptacles of so many powers or forces: they possess, like the products +of nature, so many virtues or qualities. What is this song or picture, +this engaging personality presented in life or in a book, to ME? What +effect does it really produce on me? Does it give me pleasure? and if +so, what sort or degree of pleasure? How is my nature modified by its +presence, and under its influence? The answers to these questions are +the original facts with which the aesthetic critic has to do; and, as in +the study of light, of morals, of number, one must realise such primary +data for oneself, or not at all. And he who experiences these +impressions strongly, and drives directly at the discrimination and +analysis of them, has no need to trouble himself with the abstract +question what beauty is in itself, or what its exact relation to truth +or experience--metaphysical questions, as unprofitable as metaphysical +questions elsewhere. He may pass them all by as being, answerable or +not, of no interest to him. + +The aesthetic critic, then, regards all the objects with which he has to +do, all works of art, and the fairer forms of nature and human life, as +powers or forces producing pleasurable sensations, each of a more or +less peculiar or unique kind. This influence he feels, and wishes to +explain, analysing it and reducing it to its elements. To him, the +picture, the landscape, the engaging personality in life or in a book, +La Gioconda, the hills of Carrara, Pico of Mirandola, are valuable for +their virtues, as we say, in speaking of a herb, a wine, a gem; for the +property each has of affecting one with a special, a unique, impression +of pleasure. Our education becomes complete in proportion as our +susceptibility to these impressions increases in depth and variety. And +the function of the aesthetic critic is to distinguish, analyse, and +separate from its adjuncts, the virtue by which a picture, a landscape, +a fair personality in life or in a book, produces this special +impression of beauty or pleasure, to indicate what the source of that +impression is, and under what conditions it is experienced. His end is +reached when he has disengaged that virtue, and noted it, as a chemist +notes some natural element, for himself and others; and the rule for +those who would reach this end is stated with great exactness in the +words of a recent critic of Sainte-Beuve:--De se borner a connaitre de +pres les belles choses, et a s'en nourrir en exquis amateurs, en +humanistes accomplis. + +What is important, then, is not that the critic should possess a correct +abstract definition of beauty for the intellect, but a certain kind of +temperament, the power of being deeply moved by the presence of +beautiful objects. He will remember always that beauty exists in many +forms. To him all periods, types, schools of taste, are in themselves +equal. In all ages there have been some excellent workmen, and some +excellent work done. The question he asks is always:--In whom did the +stir, the genius, the sentiment of the period find itself? where was the +receptacle of its refinement, its elevation, its taste? "The ages are +all equal," says William Blake, "but genius is always above its age." + +Often it will require great nicety to disengage this virtue from the +commoner elements with which it may be found in combination. Few +artists, not Goethe or Byron even, work quite cleanly, casting off all +debris, and leaving us only what the heat of their imagination has +wholly fused and transformed. Take, for instance, the writings of +Wordsworth. The heat of his genius, entering into the substance of his +work, has crystallised a part, but only a part, of it; and in that great +mass of verse there is much which might well be forgotten. But scattered +up and down it, sometimes fusing and transforming entire compositions, +like the Stanzas on Resolution and Independence, and the Ode on the +Recollections of Childhood, sometimes, as if at random, depositing a +fine crystal here or there, in a matter it does not wholly search +through and transform, we trace the action of his unique, incommunicable +faculty, that strange, mystical sense of a life in natural things, and +of man's life as a part of nature, drawing strength and colour and +character from local influences, from the hills and streams, and from +natural sights and sounds. Well! that is the virtue, the active +principle in Wordsworth's poetry; and then the function of the critic of +Wordsworth is to follow up that active principle, to disengage it, to +mark the degree in which it penetrates his verse. + +The subjects of the following studies are taken from the history of the +Renaissance, and touch what I think are the chief points in that +complex, many-sided movement. I have explained in the first of them what +I understand by the word, giving it a much wider scope than was +intended by those who originally used it to denote only that revival of +classical antiquity in the fifteenth century which was but one of many +results of a general excitement and enlightening of the human mind, of +which the great aim and achievements of what, as Christian art, is often +falsely opposed to the Renaissance, were another result. This outbreak +of the human spirit may be traced far into the middle age itself, with +its qualities already clearly pronounced, the care for physical beauty, +the worship of the body, the breaking down of those limits which the +religious system of the middle age imposed on the heart and the +imagination. I have taken as an example of this movement, this earlier +Renaissance within the middle age itself, and as an expression of its +qualities, two little compositions in early French; not because they +constitute the best possible expression of them, but because they help +the unity of my series, inasmuch as the Renaissance ends also in France, +in French poetry, in a phase of which the writings of Joachim du Bellay +are in many ways the most perfect illustration; the Renaissance thus +putting forth in France an aftermath, a wonderful later growth, the +products of which have to the full that subtle and delicate sweetness +which belongs to a refined and comely decadence; just as its earliest +phases have the freshness which belongs to all periods of growth in art, +the charm of ascesis, of the austere and serious girding of the loins in +youth. + +But it is in Italy, in the fifteenth century, that the interest of the +Renaissance mainly lies,--in that solemn fifteenth century which can +hardly be studied too much, not merely for its positive results in the +things of the intellect and the imagination, its concrete works of art, +its special and prominent personalities, with their profound aesthetic +charm, but for its general spirit and character, for the ethical +qualities of which it is a consummate type. + +The various forms of intellectual activity which together make up the +culture of an age, move for the most part from different +starting-points, and by unconnected roads. As products of the same +generation they partake indeed of a common character, and unconsciously +illustrate each other; but of the producers themselves, each group is +solitary, gaining what advantage or disadvantage there may be in +intellectual isolation. Art and poetry, philosophy and the religious +life, and that other life of refined pleasure and action in the open +places of the world, are each of them confined to its own circle of +ideas, and those who prosecute either of them are generally little +curious of the thoughts of others. There come, however, from time to +time, eras of more favourable conditions, in which the thoughts of men +draw nearer together than is their wont, and the many interests of the +intellectual world combine in one complete type of general culture. The +fifteenth century in Italy is one of these happier eras; and what is +sometimes said of the age of Pericles is true of that of Lorenzo:--it is +an age productive in personalities, many-sided, centralised, complete. +Here, artists and philosophers and those whom the action of the world +has elevated and made keen, do not live in isolation, but breathe a +common air, and catch light and heat from each other's thoughts. There +is a spirit of general elevation and enlightenment in which all alike +communicate. It is the unity of this spirit which gives unity to all the +various products of the Renaissance; and it is to this intimate alliance +with mind, this participation in the best thoughts which that age +produced, that the art of Italy in the fifteenth century owes much of +its grave dignity and influence. + +I have added an essay on Winckelmann, as not incongruous with the +studies which precede it, because Winckelmann, coming in the eighteenth +century, really belongs in spirit to an earlier age. By his enthusiasm +for the things of the intellect and the imagination for their own sake, +by his Hellenism, his life-long struggle to attain to the Greek spirit, +he is in sympathy with the humanists of an earlier century. He is the +last fruit of the Renaissance, and explains in a striking way its motive +and tendencies. + + + + +CONTENTS + + +TWO EARLY FRENCH STORIES + +PICO DELLA MIRANDOLA + +SANDRO BOTTICELLI + +LUCA DELLA ROBBIA + +THE POETRY OF MICHELANGELO + +LEONARDO DA VINCI + +THE SCHOOL OF GIORGIONE + +JOACHIM DU BELLAY + +WINCKELMANN + +CONCLUSION + + + +TWO EARLY FRENCH STORIES + +The history of the Renaissance ends in France, and carries us away from +Italy to the beautiful cities of the country of the Loire. But it was in +France also, in a very important sense, that the Renaissance had begun; +and French writers, who are so fond of connecting the creations of +Italian genius with a French origin, who tell us how Francis of Assisi +took not his name only, but all those notions of chivalry and romantic +love which so deeply penetrated his thoughts, from a French source, how +Boccaccio borrowed the outlines of his stories from the old French +fabliaux, and how Dante himself expressly connects the origin of the art +of miniature-painting with the city of Paris, have often dwelt on this +notion of a Renaissance in the end of the twelfth and the beginning of +the thirteenth century, a Renaissance within the limits of the middle +age itself--a brilliant, but in part abortive effort to do for human +life and the human mind what was afterwards done in the fifteenth. The +word Renaissance, indeed, is now generally used to denote not merely +that revival of classical antiquity which took place in the fifteenth +century, and to which the word was first applied, but a whole complex +movement, of which that revival of classical antiquity was but one +element or symptom. For us the Renaissance is the name of a many-sided +but yet united movement, in which the love of the things of the +intellect and the imagination for their own sake, the desire for a more +liberal and comely way of conceiving life, make themselves felt, urging +those who experience this desire to search out first one and then +another means of intellectual or imaginative enjoyment, and directing +them not merely to the discovery of old and forgotten sources of this +enjoyment, but to the divination of fresh sources thereof--new +experiences, new subjects of poetry, new forms of art. Of such feeling +there was a great outbreak in the end of the twelfth and the beginning +of the following century. Here and there, under rare and happy +conditions, in Pointed architecture, in the doctrines of romantic love, +in the poetry of Provence, the rude strength of the middle age turns to +sweetness; and the taste for sweetness generated there becomes the seed +of the classical revival in it, prompting it constantly to seek after +the springs of perfect sweetness in the Hellenic world. And coming after +a long period in which this instinct had been crushed, that true "dark +age," in which so many sources of intellectual and imaginative enjoyment +had actually disappeared, this outbreak is rightly called a Renaissance, +a revival. + +Theories which bring into connexion with each other modes of thought and +feeling, periods of taste, forms of art and poetry, which the narrowness +of men's minds constantly tends to oppose to each other, have a great +stimulus for the intellect, and are almost always worth understanding. +It is so with this theory of a Renaissance within the middle age, which +seeks to establish a continuity between the most characteristic work of +the middle age, the sculpture of Chartres and the windows of Le Mans, +and the work of the later Renaissance, the work of Jean Cousin and +Germain Pilon, and thus heals that rupture between the middle age and +the Renaissance which has so often been exaggerated. But it is not so +much the ecclesiastical art of the middle age, its sculpture and +painting--work certainly done in a great measure for pleasure's sake, in +which even a secular, a rebellious spirit often betrays itself--but +rather the profane poetry of the middle age, the poetry of Provence, and +the magnificent after-growth of that poetry in Italy and France, which +those French writers have in view, when they speak of this Renaissance +within the middle age. In that poetry, earthly passion, with its +intimacy, its freedom, its variety--the liberty of the heart--makes +itself felt; and the name of Abelard, the great clerk and the great +lover, connects the expression of this liberty of heart with the free +play of human intelligence around all subjects presented to it, with the +liberty of the intellect, as that age understood it. Every one knows the +legend of Abelard, a legend hardly less passionate, certainly not less +characteristic of the middle age, than the legend of Tannhaeuser; how +the famous and comely clerk, in whom Wisdom herself, self-possessed, +pleasant, and discreet, seemed to sit enthroned, came to live in the +house of a canon of the church of Notre-Dame, where dwelt a girl +Heloise, believed to be the old priest's orphan niece, his love for whom +he had testified by giving her an education then unrivalled, so that +rumour even asserted that, through the knowledge of languages, enabling +her to penetrate into the mysteries of the older world, she had become a +sorceress, like the Celtic druidesses; and how as Abelard and Heloise +sat together at home there, to refine a little further on the nature of +abstract ideas, "Love made himself of the party with them." You conceive +the temptations of the scholar, who, in such dreamy tranquillity, amid +the bright and busy spectacle of the "Island," lived in a world of +something like shadows; and that for one who knew so well how to assign +its exact value to every abstract idea, those restraints which lie on +the consciences of other men had been relaxed. It appears that he +composed many verses in the vulgar tongue: already the young men sang +them on the quay below the house. Those songs, says M. de Remusat, were +probably in the taste of the Trouveres, of whom he was one of the first +in date, or, so to speak, the predecessor. It is the same spirit which +has moulded the famous "letters," written in the quaint Latin of the +middle age. At the foot of that early Gothic tower, which the next +generation raised to grace the precincts of Abelard's school, on the +"Mountain of Saint Genevieve," the historian Michelet sees in thought "a +terrible assembly; not the hearers of Abelard alone, fifty bishops, +twenty cardinals, two popes, the whole body of scholastic philosophy; +not only the learned Heloise, the teaching of languages, and the +Renaissance; but Arnold of Brescia--that is to say, the revolution." And +so from the rooms of this shadowy house by the Seine side we see that +spirit going abroad, with its qualities already well defined, its +intimacy, its languid sweetness, its rebellion, its subtle skill in +dividing the elements of human passion, its care for physical beauty, +its worship of the body, which penetrated the early literature of Italy, +and finds an echo in Dante. + +That Abelard is not mentioned in the Divine Comedy may appear a singular +omission to the reader of Dante, who seems to have inwoven into the +texture of his work whatever had impressed him as either effective in +colour or spiritually significant among the recorded incidents of actual +life. Nowhere in his great poem do we find the name, nor so much as an +allusion to the story of one who had left so deep a mark on the +philosophy of which Dante was an eager student, of whom in the Latin +Quarter, and from the lips of scholar or teacher in the University of +Paris, during his sojourn among them, he can hardly have failed to hear. +We can only suppose that he had indeed considered the story and the man, +and had abstained from passing judgment as to his place in the scheme +of "eternal justice." In the famous legend of Tannhaeuser, the erring +knight makes his way to Rome, to seek absolution at what was then the +centre of Christian religion. "So soon," thought and said the Pope, "as +the staff in his hand should bud and blossom, so soon might the soul of +Tannhaeuser be saved, and no sooner; and it came to pass not long after +that the dry wood of a staff which the Pope had carried in his hand was +covered with leaves and flowers." So, in the cloister of Godstow a +petrified tree was shown, of which the nuns told that the fair Rosamond, +who had died among them, had declared that, the tree being then alive +and green, it would be changed into stone at the hour of her salvation. +When Abelard died, like Tannhaeuser, he was on his way to Rome: what +might have happened had he reached his journey's end is uncertain; and +it is in this uncertain twilight that his relation to the general +beliefs of his age has always remained. In this, as in other things, he +prefigures the character of the Renaissance, that movement in which, in +various ways, the human mind wins for itself a new kingdom of feeling +and sensation and thought, not opposed to, but only beyond and +independent of the spiritual system then actually realised. The +opposition into which Abelard is thrown, which gives its colour to his +career, which breaks his soul to pieces, is a no less subtle opposition +than that between the merely professional, official, hireling ministers +of that system, with their ignorant worship of system for its own sake, +and the true child of light, the humanist, with reason and heart and +senses quick, while theirs were almost dead. He reaches out towards, he +attains, modes of ideal living, beyond the prescribed limits of that +system, though possibly contained in essential germ within it. As always +happens, the adherents of the poorer and narrower culture had no +sympathy with, because no understanding of, a culture richer and more +ample than their own: after the discovery of wheat they would still live +upon acorns--apres l'invention du ble ils voulaient encore vivre du +gland; and would hear of no service to the higher needs of humanity with +instruments not of their forging. + +But the human spirit, bold through those needs, was too strong for them. +Abelard and Heloise write their letters--letters with a wonderful +outpouring of soul--in medieval Latin; and Abelard, though he composes +songs in the vulgar tongue, writes also in Latin those treatises in +which he tries to find a ground of reality below the abstractions of +philosophy, as one bent on trying all things by their congruity with +human experience, who had felt the hand of Heloise, and looked into her +eyes, and tested the resources of humanity in her great and energetic +nature. Yet it is only a little later, early in the thirteenth century, +that French prose romance begins; and in one of the pretty volumes of +the Bibliotheque Elzevirienne some of the most striking fragments of it +may be found, edited with much intelligence. In one of these +thirteenth-century stories, Li Amitiez de Ami et Amile, that free play +of human affection, of the claims of which Abelard's story is an +assertion, makes itself felt in the incidents of a great friendship, a +friendship pure and generous, pushed to a sort of passionate exaltation, +and more than faithful unto death. Such comradeship, though instances of +it are to be found everywhere, is still especially a classical motive; +Chaucer expressing the sentiment of it so strongly in an antique tale, +that one knows not whether the love of both Palamon and Arcite for +Emelya, or of those two for each other, is the chiefer subject of the +Knight's Tale-- + He cast his eyen upon Emelya, + And therewithal he bleynte and cried, ah! + As that he stongen were unto the herte. +What reader does not refer part of the bitterness of that cry to the +spoiling, already foreseen, of that fair friendship, which had hitherto +made the prison of the two lads sweet with its daily offices--though the +friendship is saved at last? + +The friendship of Amis and Amile is deepened by the romantic +circumstance of an entire personal resemblance between the two heroes, +so that they pass for each other again and again, and thereby into many +strange adventures; that curious interest of the Doppelgaenger, which +begins among the stars with the Dioscuri, being entwined in and out +through all the incidents of the story, like an outward token of the +inward similitude of their souls. With this, again, like a second +reflexion of that inward similitude, is connected the conceit of two +marvellously beautiful cups, also exactly like each other--children's +cups, of wood, but adorned with gold and precious stones. These two +cups, which by their resemblance help to bring the friends together at +critical moments, were given to them by the Pope, when he baptized them +at Rome, whither the parents had taken them for that purpose, in +thankfulness for their birth, and cross and recross in the narrative, +serving the two heroes almost like living things, and with that +well-known effect of a beautiful object kept constantly before the eye +in a story or poem, of keeping sensation well awake, and giving a +certain air of refinement to all the scenes into which it enters; with a +heightening also of that sense of fate, which hangs so much of the +shaping of human life on trivial objects, like Othello's strawberry +handkerchief; and witnessing to the enjoyment of beautiful handiwork by +primitive people, almost dazzled by it, so that they give it an oddly +significant place among the factors of a human history. + +Amis and Amile, then, are true to their comradeship through all trials; +and in the end it comes to pass that at a moment of great need Amis +takes the place of Amile in a tournament for life or death. "After this +it happened that a leprosy fell upon Amis, so that his wife would not +approach him, and wrought to strangle him; and he departed from his +home, and at last prayed his servants to carry him to the house of +Amile"; and it is in what follows that the curious strength of the piece +shows itself:-- + +"His servants, willing to do as he commanded, carried him to the place +where Amile was: and they began to sound their rattles before the court +of Amile's house, as lepers are accustomed to do. And when Amile heard +the noise he commanded one of his servants to carry meat and bread to +the sick man, and the cup which was given to him at Rome filled with +good wine. And when the servant had done as he was commanded, he +returned and said, Sir, if I had not thy cup in my hand, I should +believe that the cup which the sick man has was thine, for they are +alike, the one to the other, in height and fashion. And Amile said, Go +quickly and bring him to me. And when Amis stood before his comrade +Amile demanded of him who he was, and how he had gotten that cup. I am +of Briquam le Chastel, answered Amis, and the cup was given to me by the +Bishop of Rome, who baptized me. And when Amile heard that, he knew that +it was his comrade Amis, who had delivered him from death, and won for +him the daughter of the King of France to be his wife. And straightway +he fell upon him, and began to weep greatly, and kissed him. And when +his wife heard that, she ran out with her hair in disarray, weeping and +distressed exceedingly, for she remembered that it was he who had slain +the false Ardres. And thereupon they placed him in a fair bed, and said +to him, Abide with us until God's will be accomplished in thee, for all +that we have is at thy service. So he and the two servants abode with +them. + +"And it came to pass one night, when Amis and Amile lay in one chamber +without other companions, that God sent His angel Raphael to Amis, who +said to him, Amis, art thou asleep? And he, supposing that Amile had +called him, answered and said, I am not asleep, fair comrade! And the +angel said to him, Thou hast answered well, for thou art the comrade of +the heavenly citizens.--I am Raphael, the angel of our Lord, and am come +to tell thee how thou mayest be healed; for thy prayers are heard. Thou +shalt bid Amile, thy comrade, that he slay his two children and wash +thee in their blood, and so thy body shall be made whole. And Amis said +to him, Let not this thing be, that my comrade should become a murderer +for my sake. But the angel said, It is convenient that he do this. And +thereupon the angel departed. + +"And Amile also, as if in sleep, heard those words; and he awoke and +said, Who is it, my comrade, that hath spoken with thee? And Amis +answered, No man; only I have prayed to our Lord, as I am accustomed. +And Amile said, Not so! but some one hath spoken with thee. Then he +arose and went to the door of the chamber; and finding it shut he said, +Tell me, my brother, who it was said those words to thee to-night. And +Amis began to weep greatly, and told him that it was Raphael, the angel +of the Lord, who had said to him, Amis, our Lord commands thee that thou +bid Amile slay his two children, and wash thee in their blood, and thou +shalt be healed of thy leprosy. And Amile was greatly disturbed at those +words, and said, I would have given to thee my man-servants and my +maid-servants and all my goods, and thou feignest that an angel hath +spoken to thee that I should slay my two children. And immediately Amis +began to weep, and said, I know that I have spoken to thee a terrible +thing, but constrained thereto; I pray thee cast me not away from the +shelter of thy house. And Amile answered that what he had covenanted +with him, that he would perform, unto the hour of his death: But I +conjure thee, said he, by the faith which there is between me and thee, +and by our comradeship, and by the baptism we received together at Rome, +that thou tell me whether it was man or angel said that to thee. And +Amis answered, So truly as an angel hath spoken to me this night, so may +God deliver me from my infirmity! + +"Then Amile began to weep in secret, and thought within himself: If this +man was ready to die before the king for me, shall I not for him slay my +children? Shall I not keep faith with him who was faithful to me even +unto death? And Amile tarried no longer, but departed to the chamber of +his wife, and bade her go hear the Sacred Office. And he took a sword, +and went to the bed where the children were lying, and found them +asleep. And he lay down over them and began to weep bitterly and said, +Hath any man yet heard of a father who of his own will slew his +children? Alas, my children! I am no longer your father, but your cruel +murderer. + +"And the children awoke at the tears of their father, which fell upon +them; and they looked up into his face and began to laugh. And as they +were of the age of about three years, he said, Your laughing will be +turned into tears, for your innocent blood must now be shed, and +therewith he cut off their heads. Then he laid them back in the bed, and +put the heads upon the bodies, and covered them as though they were +sleeping: and with the blood which he had taken he washed his comrade, +and said, Lord Jesus Christ! who hast commanded men to keep faith on +earth, and didst heal the leper by Thy word! cleanse now my comrade, for +whose love I have shed the blood of my children. + +"Then Amis was cleansed of his leprosy. And Amile clothed his companion +in his best robes; and as they went to the church to give thanks, the +bells, by the will of God, rang of their own accord. And when the people +of the city heard that, they ran together to see the marvel. And the +wife of Amile, when she saw Amis and Amile coming, began to ask which of +the twain was her husband, and said, I know well the vesture of them +both, but I know not which of them is Amile. And Amile said to her, I am +Amile, and my companion is Amis, who is healed of his sickness. And she +was full of wonder, and desired to know in what manner he was healed. +Give thanks to our Lord, answered Amile, but trouble not thyself as to +the manner of the healing. + +"Now neither the father nor the mother had yet entered where the +children were; but the father sighed heavily because of their death, and +the mother asked for them, that they might rejoice together; but Amile +said, Dame! Let the children sleep. And it was already the hour of +Tierce. And going in alone to the children to weep over them, he found +them at play in the bed; only, in the place of the sword-cuts about +their throats was as it were a thread of crimson. And he took them in +his arms and carried them to his wife and said, Rejoice greatly, for thy +children whom I had slain by the commandment of the angel are alive, and +by their blood is Amis healed." + +There, as I said, is the strength of the old French story. For the +Renaissance has not only the sweetness which it derives from the +classical world, but also that curious strength of which there are great +resources in the true middle age. And as I have illustrated the early +strength of the Renaissance by the story of Amis and Amile, a story +which comes from the North, in which even a certain racy Teutonic +flavour is perceptible, so I shall illustrate that other element of its +early sweetness, a languid excess of sweetness even, by another story +printed in the same volume of the Bibliotheque Elzevirienne, and of +about the same date, a story which comes, characteristically, from the +South, and connects itself with the literature of Provence. + +The central love-poetry of Provence, the poetry of the Tenson and the +Aubade, of Bernard de Ventadour and Pierre Vidal, is poetry for the few, +for the elect and peculiar people of the kingdom of sentiment. But below +this intenser poetry there was probably a wide range of literature, less +serious and elevated, reaching, by lightness of form and comparative +homeliness of interest, an audience which the concentrated passion of +those higher lyrics left untouched. This literature has long since +perished, or lives only in later French or Italian versions. One such +version, the only representative of its species, M. Fauriel thought he +detected in the story of Aucassin and Nicolette, written in the French +of the latter half of the thirteenth century, and preserved in a unique +manuscript, in the national library of Paris; and there were reasons +which made him divine for it a still more ancient ancestry, traces in it +of an Arabian origin, as in a leaf lost out of some early Arabian +Nights.* The little book loses none of its interest through the +criticism which finds in it only a traditional subject, handed on by one +people to another; for after passing thus from hand to hand, its outline +is still clear, its surface untarnished; and, like many other stories, +books, literary and artistic conceptions of the middle age, it has come +to have in this way a sort of personal history, almost as full of risk +and adventure as that of its own heroes. The writer himself calls the +piece a cantefable, a tale told in prose, but with its incidents and +sentiment helped forward by songs, inserted at irregular intervals. In +the junctions of the story itself there are signs of roughness and want +of skill, which make one suspect that the prose was only put together to +connect a series of songs--a series of songs so moving and attractive +that people wished to heighten and dignify their effect by a regular +framework or setting. Yet the songs themselves are of the simplest kind, +not rhymed even, but only imperfectly assonant, stanzas of twenty or +thirty lines apiece, all ending with a similar vowel sound. And here, as +elsewhere in that early poetry, much of the interest lies in the +spectacle of the formation of a new artistic sense. A new music is +arising, the music of rhymed poetry, and in the songs of Aucassin and +Nicolette, which seem always on the point of passing into true rhyme, +but which halt somehow, and can never quite take flight, you see people +just growing aware of the elements of a new music in their possession, +and anticipating how pleasant such music might become. The piece was +probably intended to be recited by a company of trained performers, many +of whom, at least for the lesser parts, were probably children. The +songs are introduced by the rubric, Or se cante (ici on chante); and +each division of prose by the rubric, Or dient et content et fabloient +(ici on conte). The musical notes of part of the songs have been +preserved; and some of the details are so descriptive that they +suggested to M. Fauriel the notion that the words had been accompanied +throughout by dramatic action. That mixture of simplicity and refinement +which he was surprised to find in a composition of the thirteenth +century, is shown sometimes in the turn given to some passing expression +or remark; thus, "the Count de Garins was old and frail, his time was +over"--Li quens Garins de Beaucaire estoit vix et frales; si avoit son +tans trespasse. And then, all is so realised! One still sees the ancient +forest, with its disused roads grown deep with grass, and the place +where seven roads meet--u a forkeut set cemin qui s'en vont par le pais; +we hear the light-hearted country people calling each other by their +rustic names, and putting forward, as their spokesman, one among them +who is more eloquent and ready than the rest--li un qui plus fu enparles +des autres; for the little book has its burlesque element also, so that +one hears the faint, far-off laughter still. Rough as it is, the piece +certainly possesses this high quality of poetry, that it aims at a +purely artistic effect. Its subject is a great sorrow, yet it claims to +be a thing of joy and refreshment, to be entertained not for its matter +only, but chiefly for its manner; it is cortois, it tells us, et bien +assis. + +*Recently, Aucassin and Nicolette has been edited and translated into +English, with much graceful scholarship, by Mr. F. W. Bourdillon. More +recently still we have had a translation--a poet's translation--from the +ingenious and versatile pen of Mr. Andrew Lang. The reader should +consult also the chapter on "The Out-door Poetry," in Vernon Lee's most +interesting Euphorion; being Studies of the Antique and Mediaeval in the +Renaissance, a work abounding in knowledge and insight on the subjects +of which it treats. + +For the student of manners, and of the old language and literature, it +has much interest of a purely antiquarian order. To say of an ancient +literary composition that it has an antiquarian interest, often means +that it has no distinct aesthetic interest for the reader of to-day. +Antiquarianism, by a purely historical effort, by putting its object in +perspective, and setting the reader in a certain point of view, from +which what gave pleasure to the past is pleasurable for him also, may +often add greatly to the charm we receive from ancient literature. But +the first condition of such aid must be a real, direct, aesthetic charm +in the thing itself; unless it has that charm, unless some purely +artistic quality went to its original making, no merely antiquarian +effort can ever give it an aesthetic value, or make it a proper subject +of aesthetic criticism. This quality, wherever it exists, it is always +pleasant to define, and discriminate from the sort of borrowed interest +which an old play, or an old story, may very likely acquire through a +true antiquarianism. The story of Aucassin and Nicolette has something +of this quality. Aucassin, the only son of Count Garins of Beaucaire, is +passionately in love with Nicolette, a beautiful girl of unknown +parentage, bought of the Saracens, whom his father will not permit him +to marry. The story turns on the adventures of these two lovers, until +at the end of the piece their mutual fidelity is rewarded. These +adventures are of the simplest sort, adventures which seem to be chosen +for the happy occasion they afford of keeping the eye of the fancy, +perhaps the outward eye, fixed on pleasant objects, a garden, a ruined +tower, the little hut of flowers which Nicolette constructs in the +forest whither she has escaped from her enemies, as a token to Aucassin +that she has passed that way. All the charm of the piece is in its +details, in a turn of peculiar lightness and grace given to the +situations and traits of sentiment, especially in its quaint fragments +of early French prose. + +All through it one feels the influence of that faint air of overwrought +delicacy, almost of wantonness, which was so strong a characteristic of +the poetry of the Troubadours. The Troubadours themselves were often men +of great rank; they wrote for an exclusive audience, people of much +leisure and great refinement, and they came to value a type of personal +beauty which has in it but little of the influence of the open air and +sunshine. There is a languid Eastern deliciousness in the very scenery +of the story, the full-blown roses, the chamber painted in some +mysterious manner where Nicolette is imprisoned, the cool brown marble, +the almost nameless colours, the odour of plucked grass and flowers. +Nicolette herself well becomes this scenery, and is the best +illustration of the quality I mean--the beautiful, weird, foreign girl, +whom the shepherds take for a fay, who has the knowledge of simples, the +healing and beautifying qualities of leaves and flowers, whose skilful +touch heals Aucassin's sprained shoulder, so that he suddenly leaps from +the ground; the mere sight of whose white flesh, as she passed the place +where he lay, healed a pilgrim stricken with sore disease, so that he +rose up, and returned to his own country. With this girl Aucassin is so +deeply in love that he forgets all his knightly duties. At last +Nicolette is shut up to get her out of his way, and perhaps the +prettiest passage in the whole piece is the fragment of prose which +describes her escape from this place:-- + +"Aucassin was put in prison, as you have heard, and Nicolette remained +shut up in her chamber. It was summer-time, in the month of May, when +the days are warm and long and clear, and the nights coy and serene. + +"One night Nicolette, lying on her bed, saw the moon shine clear through +the little window, and heard the nightingale sing in the garden, and +then came the memory of Aucassin, whom she so much loved. She thought of +the Count Garins of Beaucaire, who so mortally hated her, and, to be rid +of her, might at any moment cause her to be burned or drowned. She +perceived that the old woman who kept her company was asleep; she rose +and put on the fairest gown she had; she took the bed-clothes and the +towels, and knotted them together like a cord, as far as they would go. +Then she tied the end to a pillar of the window, and let herself slip +down quite softly into the garden, and passed straight across it, to +reach the town. + +"Her hair was yellow in small curls, her smiling eyes blue-green, her +face clear and feat, the little lips very red, the teeth small and +white; and the daisies which she crushed in passing, holding her skirt +high behind and before, looked dark against her feet; the girl was so +white! + +"She came to the garden-gate and opened it, and walked through the +streets of Beaucaire, keeping on the dark side of the way to avoid the +light of the moon, which shone quietly in the sky. She walked as fast as +she could, until she came to the tower where Aucassin was. The tower was +set about with pillars, here and there. She pressed herself against one +of the pillars, wrapped herself closely in her mantle, and putting her +face to a chink of the tower, which was old and ruined, she heard +Aucassin crying bitterly within, and when she had listened awhile she +began to speak." + +But scattered up and down through this lighter matter, always tinged +with humour and often passing into burlesque, which makes up the general +substance of the piece, there are morsels of a different quality, +touches of some intenser sentiment, coming it would seem from the +profound and energetic spirit of the Provencal poetry itself, to which +the inspiration of the book has been referred. Let me gather up these +morsels of deeper colour, these expressions of the ideal intensity of +love, the motive which really unites together the fragments of the +little composition. Dante, the perfect flower of ideal love, has +recorded how the tyranny of that "Lord of terrible aspect" became +actually physical, blinding his senses, and suspending his bodily +forces. In this Dante is but the central expression and type of +experiences known well enough to the initiated, in that passionate age. +Aucassin represents this ideal intensity of passion-- + Aucassin, li biax, li blons, + Li gentix, li amorous; +the slim, tall, debonair figure, dansellon, as the singers call him, +with curled yellow hair, and eyes of vair, who faints with love, as +Dante fainted, who rides all day through the forest in search of +Nicolette, while the thorns tear his flesh, so that one night have +traced him by the blood upon the grass, and who weeps at evening because +he has not found her--who has the malady of his love, so that he +neglects all knightly duties. Once he is induced to put himself at the +head of his people, that they, seeing him before them, might have more +heart to defend themselves; then a song relates how the sweet, grave +figure goes forth to battle, in dainty, tight-laced armour. It is the +very image of the Provencal love-god, no longer a child, but grown to +pensive youth, as Pierre Vidal met him, riding on a white horse, fair as +the morning, his vestment embroidered with flowers. He rode on through +the gates into the open plain beyond. But as he went, that great malady +of his love came upon him, so that the bridle fell from his hands; and +like one who sleeps walking, he was carried on into the midst of his +enemies, and heard them talking together how they might most +conveniently kill him. + +One of the strongest characteristics of that outbreak of the reason and +the imagination, of that assertion of the liberty of the heart, in the +middle age, which I have termed a medieval Renaissance, was its +antinomianism, its spirit of rebellion and revolt against the moral and +religious ideas of the time. In their search after the pleasures of the +senses and the imagination, in their care for beauty, in their worship +of the body, people were impelled beyond the bounds of the Christian +ideal; and their love became sometimes a strange idolatry, a strange +rival religion. It was the return of that ancient Venus, not dead, but +only hidden for a time in the caves of the Venusberg, of those old pagan +gods still going to and fro on the earth, under all sorts of disguises. +And this element in the middle age, for the most part ignored by those +writers who have treated it pre-eminently as the "Age of Faith"--this +rebellious and antinomian element, the recognition of which has made the +delineation of the middle age by the writers of the Romantic school in +France, by Victor Hugo for instance in Notre-Dame de Paris, so +suggestive and exciting, is found alike in the history of Abelard and +the legend of Tannhaeuser. More and more, as we come to mark changes and +distinctions of temper in what is often in one all-embracing confusion +called the middle age, this rebellious element, this sinister claim for +liberty of heart and thought, comes to the surface. The Albigensian +movement, connected so strangely with the history of Provencal poetry, +is deeply tinged with it. A touch of it makes the Franciscan order, with +its poetry, its mysticism, its "illumination," from the point of view of +religious authority, justly suspect. It influences the thoughts of those +obscure prophetical writers, like Joachim of Flora, strange dreamers in +a world of flowery rhetoric of that third and final dispensation of a +"spirit of freedom," in which law shall have passed away. Of this spirit +Aucassin and Nicolette contains perhaps the most famous expression: it +is the answer Aucassin gives when he is threatened with the pains of +hell, if he makes Nicolette his mistress. A creature wholly of affection +and the senses, he sees on the way to paradise only a feeble company of +aged priests, "clinging day and night to the chapel altars," barefoot or +in patched sandals. With or even without Nicolette, "his sweet mistress +whom he so much loves," he, for his part, is ready to start on the way +to hell, along with "the good scholars," as he says, and the actors, and +the fine horsemen dead in battle, and the men of fashion,* and "the fair +courteous ladies who had two or three chevaliers apiece beside their own +true lords," all gay with music, in their gold and silver and beautiful +furs--"the vair and the grey." + +*Parage, peerage--which came to signify all that ambitious youth +affected most on the outside of life, in that old world of the +Troubadours, with whom this term is of frequent recurrence. + +But in the House Beautiful the saints too have their place; and the +student of the Renaissance has this advantage over the student of the +emancipation of the human mind in the Reformation, or the French +Revolution, that in tracing the footsteps of humanity to higher levels, +he is not beset at every turn by the inflexibilities and antagonisms of +some well-recognised controversy, with rigidly defined opposites, +exhausting the intelligence and limiting one's sympathies. The +opposition of the professional defenders of a mere system to that more +sincere and general play of the forces of human mind and character, +which I have noted as the secret of Abelard's struggle, is indeed always +powerful. But the incompatibility of souls really "fair" is not +essential; and within the enchanted region of the Renaissance, one needs +not be for ever on one's guard: here there are no fixed parties, no +exclusions: all breathes of that unity of culture in which "whatsoever +things are comely" are reconciled, for the elevation and adorning of our +spirits. And just in proportion as those who took part in the +Renaissance become centrally representative of it, just so much the more +is this condition realised in them. The wicked popes, and the loveless +tyrants, who from time to time became its patrons, or mere speculators +in its fortunes, lend themselves easily to disputations, and, from this +side or that, the spirit of controversy lays just hold upon them. But +the painter of the Last Supper, with his kindred, live in a land where +controversy has no breathing-place, and refuse to be classified. In the +story of Aucassin and Nicolette, in the literature which it represents, +the note of defiance, of the opposition of one system to another, is +sometimes harsh: let me conclude with a morsel from Amis and Amile, in +which the harmony of human interests is still entire. For the story of +the great traditional friendship, in which, as I said, the liberty of +the heart makes itself felt, seems, as we have it, to have been written +by a monk--La vie des saints martyrs Amis et Amile. It was not till the +end of the seventeenth century that their names were finally excluded +from the martyrology; and their story ends with this monkish miracle of +earthly comradeship, more than faithful unto death:-- + +"For, as God had united them in their lives in one accord, so they were +not divided in their death, falling together side by side, with a host +of other brave men, in battle for King Charles at Mortara, so called +from that great slaughter. And the bishops gave counsel to the king and +queen that they should bury the dead, and build a church in that place; +and their counsel pleased the king greatly; and there were built there +two churches, the one by commandment of the king in honour of Saint +Oseige, and the other by commandment of the queen in honour of Saint +Peter. + +"And the king caused the two chests of stone to be brought in the which +the bodies of Amis and Amile lay; and Amile was carried to the church of +Saint Peter, and Amis to the church of Saint Oseige; and the other +corpses were buried, some in one place and some in the other. But lo! +next morning, the body of Amile in his coffin was found lying in the +church of Saint Oseige, beside the coffin of Amis his comrade. Behold +then this wondrous amity, which by death could not be dissevered! + +"This miracle God did, who gave to His disciples power to remove +mountains. And by reason of this miracle the king and queen remained in +that place for a space of thirty days, and performed the offices of the +dead who were slain, and honoured the said churches with great gifts: +and the bishop ordained many clerks to serve in the church of Saint +Oseige, and commanded them that they should guard duly, with great +devotion, the bodies of the two companions, Amis and Amile." + +1872. + + + +PICO DELLA MIRANDOLA + +No account of the Renaissance can be complete without some notice of the +attempt made by certain Italian scholars of the fifteenth century to +reconcile Christianity with the religion of ancient Greece. To reconcile +forms of sentiment which at first sight seem incompatible, to adjust the +various products of the human mind to each other in one many-sided type +of intellectual culture, to give humanity, for heart and imagination to +feed upon, as much as it could possibly receive, belonged to the +generous instincts of that age. An earlier and simpler generation had +seen in the gods of Greece so many malignant spirits, the defeated but +still living centres of the religion of darkness, struggling, not always +in vain, against the kingdom of light. Little by little, as the natural +charm of pagan story reasserted itself over minds emerging out of +barbarism, the religious significance which had once belonged to it was +lost sight of, and it came to be regarded as the subject of a purely +artistic or poetical treatment. But it was inevitable that from time to +time minds should arise, deeply enough impressed by its beauty and power +to ask themselves whether the religion of Greece was indeed a rival of +the religion of Christ; for the older gods had rehabilitated themselves, +and men's allegiance was divided. And the fifteenth century was an +impassioned age, so ardent and serious in its pursuit of art that it +consecrated everything with which art had to do as a religious object. +The restored Greek literature had made it familiar, at least in Plato, +with a style of expression concerning the earlier gods, which had about +it much of the warmth and unction of a Christian hymn. It was too +familiar with such language to regard mythology as a mere story; and it +was too serious to play with a religion. + +"Let me briefly remind the reader"--says Heine, in the Gods in Exile, an +essay full of that strange blending of sentiment which is characteristic +of the traditions of the middle age concerning the pagan religions--"how +the gods of the older world, at the time of the definite triumph of +Christianity, that is, in the third century, fell into painful +embarrassments, which greatly resembled certain tragical situations of +their earlier life. They now found themselves beset by the same +troublesome necessities to which they had once before been exposed +during the primitive ages, in that revolutionary epoch when the Titans +broke out of the custody of Orcus, and, piling Pelion on Ossa, scaled +Olympus. Unfortunate Gods! They had then to take flight ignominiously, +and hide themselves among us here on earth, under all sorts of +disguises. The larger number betook themselves to Egypt, where for +greater security they assumed the forms of animals, as is generally +known. Just in the same way, they had to take flight again, and seek +entertainment in remote hiding-places, when those iconoclastic zealots, +the black brood of monks, broke down all the temples, and pursued the +gods with fire and curses. Many of these unfortunate emigrants, now +entirely deprived of shelter and ambrosia, must needs take to vulgar +handicrafts, as a means of earning their bread. Under these +circumstances, many whose sacred groves had been confiscated, let +themselves out for hire as wood-cutters in Germany, and were forced to +drink beer instead of nectar. Apollo seems to have been content to take +service under graziers, and as he had once kept the cows of Admetus, so +he lived now as a shepherd in Lower Austria. Here, however, having +become suspected on account of his beautiful singing, he was recognised +by a learned monk as one of the old pagan gods, and handed over to the +spiritual tribunal. On the rack he confessed that he was the god Apollo; +and before his execution he begged that he might be suffered to play +once more upon the lyre, and to sing a song. And he played so +touchingly, and sang with such magic, and was withal so beautiful in +form and feature, that all the women wept, and many of them were so +deeply impressed that they shortly afterwards fell sick. And some time +afterwards the people wished to drag him from the grave again, so that a +stake might be driven through his body, in the belief that he had been a +vampire, and that the sick women would by this means recover. But they +found the grave empty." + +The Renaissance of the fifteenth century was, in many things, great +rather by what it designed than by what it achieved. Much which it +aspired to do, and did but imperfectly or mistakenly, was accomplished +in what is called the eclaircissement of the eighteenth century, or in +our own generation; and what really belongs to the rival of the +fifteenth century is but the leading instinct, the curiosity, the +initiatory idea. It is so with this very question of the reconciliation +of the religion of antiquity with the religion of Christ. A modern +scholar occupied by this problem might observe that all religions may be +regarded as natural products; that, at least in their origin, their +growth, and decay, they have common laws, and are not to be isolated +from the other movements of the human mind in the periods in which they +respectively prevailed; that they arise spontaneously out of the human +mind, as expressions of the varying phases of its sentiment concerning +the unseen world; that every intellectual product must be judged from +the point of view of the age and the people in which it was produced. +He might go on to observe that each has contributed something to the +development of the religious sense, and ranging them as so many stages +in the gradual education of the human mind, justify the existence of +each. The basis of the reconciliation of the religions of the world +would thus be the inexhaustible activity and creativeness of the human +mind itself, in which all religions alike have their root, and in +which all alike are reconciled; just as the fancies of childhood and the +thoughts of old age meet and are laid to rest, in the experience of the +individual. Far different was the method followed by the scholars of the +fifteenth century. They lacked the very rudiments of the historic sense, +which, by an imaginative act, throws itself back into a world unlike +one's own, and estimates every intellectual creation in its connexion +with the age from which it proceeded; they had no idea of development, +of the differences of ages, of the gradual education of the human race. +In their attempts to reconcile the religions of the world, they were +thus thrown back upon the quicksand of allegorical interpretation. The +religions of the world were to be reconciled, not as successive stages, +in a gradual development of the religious sense, but as subsisting side +by side, and substantially in agreement with each other. And here the +first necessity was to misrepresent the language, the conceptions, the +sentiments, it was proposed to compare and reconcile. Plato and Homer +must be made to speak agreeably to Moses. Set side by side, the mere +surfaces could never unite in any harmony of design. Therefore one must +go below the surface, and bring up the supposed secondary, or still more +remote meaning, that diviner signification held in reserve, in recessu +divinius aliquid, latent in some stray touch of Homer, or figure of +speech in the books of Moses. + +And yet as a curiosity of the human mind, a "madhouse-cell," if you +will, into which we peep for a moment, and see it at work weaving +strange fancies, the allegorical interpretation of the fifteenth century +has its interest. With its strange web of imagery, its quaint conceits, +its unexpected combinations and subtle moralising, it is an element in +the local colour of a great age. It illustrates also the faith of that +age in all oracles, its desire to hear all voices, its generous belief +that nothing which had ever interested the human mind could wholly lose +its vitality. It is the counterpart, though certainly the feebler +counterpart, of that practical truce and reconciliation of the gods of +Greece with the Christian religion, which is seen in the art of the +time; and it is for his share in this work, and because his own story is +a sort of analogue or visible equivalent to the expression of this +purpose in his writings, that something of a general interest still +belongs to the name of Pico della Mirandola, whose life, written by his +nephew Francis, seemed worthy, for some touch of sweetness in it, to be +translated out of the original Latin by Sir Thomas More, that great +lover of Italian culture, among whose works this life of Pico, Earl +of Mirandola, and a great lord of Italy, as he calls him, may still be +read, in its quaint, antiquated English. + +Marsilio Ficino has told us how Pico came to Florence. It was the very +day--some day probably in the year 1482--on which Ficino had finished +his famous translation of Plato into Latin, the work to which he had +been dedicated from childhood by Cosmo de' Medici, in furtherance of his +desire to resuscitate the knowledge of Plato among his fellow-citizens. +Florence indeed, as M. Renan has pointed out, had always had an affinity +for the mystic and dreamy philosophy of Plato, while the colder and more +practical philosophy of Aristotle had flourished in Padua, and other +cities of the north; and the Florentines, though they knew perhaps very +little about him, had had the name of the great idealist often on their +lips. To increase this knowledge, Cosmo had founded the Platonic +academy, with periodical discussions at the villa of Careggi. The fall +of Constantinople in 1453, and the council in 1438 for the +reconciliation of the Greek and Latin Churches, had brought to Florence +many a needy Greek scholar. And now the work was completed, the door of +the mystical temple lay open to all who could construe Latin, and the +scholar rested from his labour; when there was introduced into his +study, where a lamp burned continually before the bust of Plato, as +other men burned lamps before their favourite saints, a young man fresh +from a journey, "of feature and shape seemly and beauteous, of stature +goodly and high, of flesh tender and soft, his visage lovely and fair, +his colour white, intermingled with comely reds, his eyes grey, and +quick of look, his teeth white and even, his hair yellow and abundant," +and trimmed with more than the usual artifice of the time. It is thus +that Sir Thomas More translates the words of the biographer of Pico, +who, even in outward form and appearance, seems an image of that inward +harmony and completeness, of which he is so perfect an example. The word +mystic has been usually derived from a Greek word which signifies to +shut, as if one shut one's lips, brooding on what cannot be uttered; but +the Platonists themselves derive it rather from the act of shutting the +eyes, that one may see the more, inwardly. Perhaps the eyes of the +mystic Ficino, now long past the midway of life, had come to be thus +half-closed; but when a young man, not unlike the archangel Raphael, as +the Florentines of that age depicted him in his wonderful walk with +Tobit, or Mercury, as he might have appeared in a painting by Sandro +Botticelli or Piero di Cosimo, entered his chamber, he seems to have +thought there was something not wholly earthly about him; at least, he +ever afterwards believed that it was not without the co-operation of the +stars that the stranger had arrived on that day. For it happened that +they fell into a conversation, deeper and more intimate than men usually +fall into at first sight. During this conversation Ficino formed the +design of devoting his remaining years to the translation of Plotinus, +that new Plato, in whom the mystical element in the Platonic philosophy +had been worked out to the utmost limit of vision and ecstasy; and it is +in dedicating this translation to Lorenzo de' Medici that Ficino has +recorded these incidents. + +It was after many wanderings, wanderings of the intellect as well as +physical journeys, that Pico came to rest at Florence. He was then about +twenty years old, having been born in 1463. He was called Giovanni at +baptism; Pico, like all his ancestors, from Picus, nephew of the Emperor +Constantine, from whom they claimed to be descended; and Mirandola, from +the place of his birth, a little town afterwards part of the duchy of +Modena, of which small territory his family had long been the feudal +lords. Pico was the youngest of the family, and his mother, delighting +in his wonderful memory, sent him at the age of fourteen to the famous +school of law at Bologna. From the first, indeed, she seems to have had +some presentiment of his future fame, for, with a faith in omens +characteristic of her time, she believed that a strange circumstance had +happened at the time of Pico's birth--the appearance of a circular flame +which suddenly vanished away, on the wall of the chamber where she lay. +He remained two years at Bologna; and then, with an inexhaustible, +unrivalled thirst for knowledge, the strange, confused, uncritical +learning of that age, passed through the principal schools of Italy and +France, penetrating, as he thought, into the secrets of all ancient +philosophies, and many eastern languages. And with this flood of +erudition came the generous hope, so often disabused, of reconciling the +philosophers with each other, and all alike with the Church. At last he +came to Rome. There, like some knight-errant of philosophy, he offered +to defend nine hundred bold paradoxes, drawn from the most opposite +sources, against all comers. But the pontifical court was led to suspect +the orthodoxy of some of these propositions, and even the reading of the +book which contained them was forbidden by the Pope. It was not until +1493 that Pico was finally absolved, by a brief of Alexander the Sixth. +Ten years before that date he had arrived at Florence; an early instance +of those who, after following the vain hope of an impossible +reconciliation from system to system, have at last fallen back +unsatisfied on the simplicities of their childhood's belief. + +The oration which Pico composed for the opening of this philosophical +tournament still remains; its subject is the dignity of human nature, +the greatness of man. In common with nearly all medieval speculation, +much of Pico's writing has this for its drift; and in common also with +it, Pico's theory of that dignity is founded on a misconception of the +place in nature both of the earth and of man. For Pico the earth is the +centre of the universe: and around it, as a fixed and motionless point, +the sun and moon and stars revolve, like diligent servants or ministers. +And in the midst of all is placed man, nodus et vinculum mundi, the bond +or copula of the world, and the "interpreter of nature": that famous +expression of Bacon's really belongs to Pico. Tritum est in scholis, he +says, esse hominem minorem mundum, in quo mixtum ex elementis corpus et +spiritus coelestis et plantarum anima vegetalis et brutorum sensus et +ratio et angelica mens et Dei similitudo conspicitur.--"It is a +commonplace of the schools that man is a little world, in which we may +discern a body mingled of earthy elements, and ethereal breath, and the +vegetable life of plants, and the senses of the lower animals, and +reason, and the intelligence of angels, and a likeness to God."--A +commonplace of the schools! But perhaps it had some new significance and +authority, when men heard one like Pico reiterate it; and, false as its +basis was, the theory had its use. For this high dignity of man, thus +bringing the dust under his feet into sensible communion with the +thoughts and affections of the angels, was supposed to belong to him, +not as renewed by a religious system, but by his own natural right. The +proclamation of it was a counterpoise to the increasing tendency of +medieval religion to depreciate man's nature, to sacrifice this or that +element in it, to make it ashamed of itself, to keep the degrading or +painful accidents of it always in view. It helped man onward to that +reassertion of himself, that rehabilitation of human nature, the body, +the senses, the heart, the intelligence, which the Renaissance fulfils. +And yet to read a page of one of Pico's forgotten books is like a glance +into one of those ancient sepulchres, upon which the wanderer in +classical lands has sometimes stumbled, with the old disused ornaments +and furniture of a world wholly unlike ours still fresh in them. That +whole conception of nature is so different from our own. For Pico the +world is a limited place, bounded by actual crystal walls, and a +material firmament; it is like a painted toy, like that map or system of +the world, held, as a great target or shield, in the hands of the +grey-headed father of all things, in one of the earlier frescoes of the +Campo Santo at Pisa. How different from this childish dream is our own +conception of nature, with its unlimited space, its innumerable suns, +and the earth but a mote in the beam; how different the strange new awe, +or superstition, with which it fills our minds! "The silence of those +infinite spaces," says Pascal, contemplating a starlight night, "the +silence of those infinite spaces terrifies me"--Le silence eternel de +ces espaces infinis m'effraie. + +He was already almost wearied out when he came to Florence. He had loved +much and been beloved by women, "wandering over the crooked hills of +delicious pleasure"; but their reign over him was over, and long before +Savonarola's famous "bonfire of vanities," he had destroyed those +love-songs in the vulgar tongue, which would have been such a relief to +us, after the scholastic prolixity of his Latin writings. It was in +another spirit that he composed a Platonic commentary, the only work of +his in Italian which has come down to us, on the "Song of Divine +Love"--secondo la mente ed opinione dei Platonici--"according to the +mind and opinion of the Platonists," by his friend Hieronymo Beniveni, +in which, with an ambitious array of every sort of learning, and a +profusion of imagery borrowed indifferently from the astrologers, the +Cabala, and Homer, and Scripture, and Dionysius the Areopagite, he +attempts to define the stages by which the soul passes from the earthly +to the unseen beauty. A change indeed had passed over him, as if the +chilling touch of the abstract and disembodied beauty Platonists profess +to long for was already upon him; and perhaps it was a sense of this, +coupled with that over-brightness which in the popular imagination +always betokens an early death, that made Camilla Rucellai, one of those +prophetic women whom the preaching of Savonarola had raised up in +Florence, declare, seeing him for the first time, that he would depart +in the time of lilies--prematurely, that is, like the field-flowers +which are withered by the scorching sun almost as soon as they are +sprung up. It was now that he wrote down those thoughts on the religious +life which Sir Thomas More turned into English, and which another +English translator thought worthy to be added to the books of the +Imitation. "It is not hard to know God, provided one will not force +oneself to define Him":--has been thought a great saying of Joubert's. +"Love God," Pico writes to Angelo Politian, "we rather may, than either +know Him, or by speech utter Him. And yet had men liefer by knowledge +never find that which they seek, than by love possess that thing, which +also without love were in vain found." + +Yet he who had this fine touch for spiritual things did not--and in this +is the enduring interest of his story--even after his conversion, forget +the old gods. He is one of the last who seriously and sincerely +entertained the claims on men's faith of the pagan religions; he is +anxious to ascertain the true significance of the obscurest legend, the +lightest tradition concerning them. With many thoughts and many +influences which led him in that direction, he did not become a monk; +only he became gentle and patient in disputation; retaining "somewhat of +the old plenty, in dainty viand and silver vessel," he gave over the +greater part of his property to his friend, the mystical poet Beniveni, +to be spent by him in works of charity, chiefly in the sweet charity of +providing marriage-dowries for the peasant girls of Florence. His end +came in 1494, when, amid the prayers and sacraments of Savonarola, he +died of fever, on the very day on which Charles the Eighth entered +Florence, the seventeenth of November, yet in the time of lilies--the +lilies of the shield of France, as the people now said, remembering +Camilla's prophecy. He was buried in the cloister at Saint Mark's, in +the hood and white frock of the Dominican order. + +It is because the life of Pico, thus lying down to rest in the +Dominican habit, yet amid thoughts of the older gods, himself like one +of those comely divinities, reconciled indeed to the new religion, but +still with a tenderness for the earlier life, and desirous literally to +"bind the ages each to each by natural piety"--it is because this life +is so perfect a parallel to the attempt made in his writings to +reconcile Christianity with the ideas of paganism, that Pico, in spite +of the scholastic character of those writings, is really interesting. +Thus, in the Heptaplus, or Discourse on the Seven Days of the Creation, +he endeavours to reconcile the accounts which pagan philosophy had given +of the origin of the world with the account given in the books of +Moses--the Timaeus of Plato with the book of Genesis. The Heptaplus is +dedicated to Lorenzo the Magnificent, whose interest, the preface tells +us, in the secret wisdom of Moses is well known. If Moses seems in his +writings simple and even popular, rather than either a philosopher or a +theologian, that is because it was an institution with the ancient +philosophers, either not to speak of divine things at all, or to speak +of them dissemblingly: hence their doctrines were called mysteries. +Taught by them, Pythagoras became so great a "master of silence," and +wrote almost nothing, thus hiding the words of God in his heart, and +speaking wisdom only among the perfect. In explaining the harmony +between Plato and Moses, Pico lays hold on every sort of figure and +analogy, on the double meanings of words, the symbols of the Jewish +ritual, the secondary meanings of obscure stories in the later Greek +mythologists. Everywhere there is an unbroken system of correspondences. +Every object in the terrestrial world is an analogue, a symbol or +counterpart, of some higher reality in the starry heavens, and this +again of some law of the angelic life in the world beyond the stars. +There is the element of fire in the material world; the sun is the fire +of heaven; and in the super-celestial world there is the fire of the +seraphic intelligence. "But behold how they differ! The elementary fire +burns, the heavenly fire vivifies, the super-celestial fire loves." In +this way, every natural object, every combination of natural forces, +every accident in the lives of men, is filled with higher meanings. +Omens, prophecies, supernatural coincidences, accompany Pico himself all +through life. There are oracles in every tree and mountain-top, and a +significance in every accidental combination of the events of life. + +This constant tendency to symbolism and imagery gives Pico's work a +figured style, by which it has some real resemblance to Plato's, and he +differs from other mystical writers of his time by a real desire to know +his authorities at first hand. He reads Plato in Greek, Moses in Hebrew, +and by this his work really belongs to the higher culture. Above all, we +have a constant sense in reading him, that his thoughts, however little +their positive value may be, are connected with springs beneath them of +deep and passionate emotion; and when he explains the grades or steps by +which the soul passes from the love of a physical object to the love of +unseen beauty, and unfolds the analogies between this process and other +movements upward of human thought, there is a glow and vehemence in his +words which remind one of the manner in which his own brief existence +flamed itself away. + +I said that the Renaissance of the fifteenth century was in many things +great, rather by what it designed or aspired to do, than by what it +actually achieved. It remained for a later age to conceive the true +method of effecting a scientific reconciliation of Christian sentiment +with the imagery, the legends, the theories about the world, of pagan +poetry and philosophy. For that age the only possible reconciliation was +an imaginative one, and resulted from the efforts of artists, trained in +Christian schools, to handle pagan subjects; and of this artistic +reconciliation work like Pico's was but the feebler counterpart. +Whatever philosophers had to say on one side or the other, whether they +were successful or not in their attempts to reconcile the old to the +new, and to justify the expenditure of so much care and thought on the +dreams of a dead faith, the imagery of the Greek religion, the direct +charm of its story, were by artists valued and cultivated for their own +sake. Hence a new sort of mythology, with a tone and qualities of its +own. When the ship-load of sacred earth from the soil of Jerusalem was +mingled with the common clay in the Campo Santo at Pisa, a new flower +grew up from it, unlike any flower men had seen before, the anemone with +its concentric rings of strangely blended colour, still to be found by +those who search long enough for it, in the long grass of the Maremma. +Just such a strange flower was that mythology of the Italian +Renaissance, which grew up from the mixture of two traditions, two +sentiments, the sacred and the profane. Classical story was regarded as +so much imaginative material to be received and assimilated. It did not +come into men's minds to ask curiously of science concerning its origin, +its primary form and import, its meaning for those who projected it. It +sank into their minds, to issue forth again with all the tangle about it +of medieval sentiment and ideas. In the Doni Madonna in the Tribune of +the Uffizii, Michelangelo actually brings the pagan religion, and with +it the unveiled human form, the sleepy-looking fauns of a Dionysiac +revel, into the presence of the Madonna, as simpler painters had +introduced there other products of the earth, birds or flowers; and he +has given to that Madonna herself much of the uncouth energy of the +older and more primitive "Mighty Mother." + +It is because this picturesque union of contrasts, belonging properly to +the art of the close of the fifteenth century, pervades, in Pico della +Mirandola, an actual person, that the figure of Pico is so attractive. +He will not let one go; he wins one on, in spite of oneself, to turn +again to the pages of his forgotten books, although we know already that +the actual solution proposed in them will satisfy us as little as +perhaps it satisfied him. It is said that in his eagerness for +mysterious learning he once paid a great sum for a collection of +cabalistic manuscripts, which turned out to be forgeries; and the story +might well stand as a parable of all he ever seemed to gain in the way +of actual knowledge. He had sought knowledge, and passed from system to +system, and hazarded much; but less for the sake of positive knowledge +than because he believed there was a spirit of order and beauty in +knowledge, which would come down and unite what men's ignorance had +divided, and renew what time had made dim. And so, while his actual work +has passed away, yet his own qualities are still active, and he himself +remains, as one alive in the grave, caesiis et vigilibus oculis, as his +biographer describes him, and with that sanguine, clear skin, decenti +rubore interspersa, as with the light of morning upon it; and he has a +true place in that group of great Italians who fill the end of the +fifteenth century with their names, he is a true HUMANIST. For the +essence of humanism is that belief of which he seems never to have +doubted, that nothing which has ever interested living men and women can +wholly lose its vitality--no language they have spoken, nor oracle +beside which they have hushed their voices, no dream which has once been +entertained by actual human minds, nothing about which they have ever +been passionate, or expended time and zeal. + +1871. + + + +SANDRO BOTTICELLI + +In Leonardo's treatise on painting only one contemporary is mentioned by +Name--Sandro Botticelli. This pre-eminence may be due to chance only, +but to some will rather appear a result of deliberate judgment; for +people have begun to find out the charm of Botticelli's work, and his +name, little known in the last century, is quietly becoming important. +In the middle of the fifteenth century he had already anticipated much +of that meditative subtlety, which is sometimes supposed peculiar to the +great imaginative workmen of its close. Leaving the simple religion +which had occupied the followers of Giotto for a century, and the simple +naturalism which had grown out of it, a thing of birds and flowers only, +he sought inspiration in what to him were works of the modern world, the +writings of Dante and Boccaccio, and in new readings of his own of +classical stories: or, if he painted religious incidents, painted them +with an under-current of original sentiment, which touches you as the +real matter of the picture through the veil of its ostensible subject. +What is the peculiar sensation, what is the peculiar quality of +pleasure, which his work has the property of exciting in us, and which +we cannot get elsewhere? For this, especially when he has to speak of a +comparatively unknown artist, is always the chief question which a +critic has to answer. + +In an age when the lives of artists were full of adventure, his life is +almost colourless. Criticism indeed has cleared away much of the gossip +which Vasari accumulated, has touched the legend of Lippo and Lucrezia, +and rehabilitated the character of Andrea del Castagno; but in +Botticelli's case there is no legend to dissipate. He did not even go by +his true name: Sandro is a nickname, and his true name is Filipepi, +Botticelli being only the name of the goldsmith who first taught him +art. Only two things happened to him, two things which he shared with +other artists:--he was invited to Rome to paint in the Sistine Chapel, +and he fell in later life under the influence of Savonarola, passing +apparently almost out of men's sight in a sort of religious melancholy, +which lasted till his death in 1515, according to the received date. +Vasari says that he plunged into the study of Dante, and even wrote a +comment on the Divine Comedy. But it seems strange that he should have +lived on inactive so long; and one almost wishes that some document +might come to light, which, fixing the date of his death earlier, might +relieve one, in thinking of him, of his dejected old age. + +He is before all things a poetical painter, blending the charm of story +and sentiment, the medium of the art of poetry, with the charm of line +and colour, the medium of abstract painting. So he becomes the +illustrator of Dante. In a few rare examples of the edition of 1481, the +blank spaces, left at the beginning of every canto for the hand of the +illuminator, have been filled, as far as the nineteenth canto of the +Inferno, with impressions of engraved plates, seemingly by way of +experiment, for in the copy in the Bodleian Library, one of the three +impressions it contains has been printed upside down, and much awry, in +the midst of the luxurious printed page. Giotto, and the followers of +Giotto, with their almost childish religious aim, had not learned to put +that weight of meaning into outward things, light, colour, everyday +gesture, which the poetry of the Divine Comedy involves, and before the +fifteenth century Dante could hardly have found an illustrator. +Botticelli's illustrations are crowded with incident, blending, with a +naive carelessness of pictorial propriety, three phases of the same +scene into one plate. The grotesques, so often a stumbling-block to +painters who forget that the words of a poet, which only feebly present +an image to the mind, must be lowered in key when translated into form, +make one regret that he has not rather chosen for illustration the more +subdued imagery of the Purgatorio. Yet in the scene of those who "go +down quick into hell," there is an invention about the fire taking hold +on the upturned soles of the feet, which proves that the design is no +mere translation of Dante's words, but a true painter's vision; while +the scene of the Centaurs wins one at once, for, forgetful of the actual +circumstances of their appearance, Botticelli has gone off with delight +on the thought of the Centaurs themselves, bright, small creatures of +the woodland, with arch baby face and mignon forms, drawing tiny bows. + +Botticelli lived in a generation of naturalists, and he might have been +a mere naturalist among them. There are traces enough in his work of +that alert sense of outward things, which, in the pictures of that +period, fills the lawns with delicate living creatures, and the +hillsides with pools of water, and the pools of water with flowering +reeds. But this was not enough for him; he is a visionary painter, and +in his visionariness he resembles Dante. Giotto, the tried companion of +Dante, Masaccio, Ghirlandajo even, do but transcribe, with more or less +refining, the outward image; they are dramatic, not visionary painters; +they are almost impassive spectators of the action before them. But the +genius of which Botticelli is the type usurps the data before it as the +exponent of ideas, moods, visions of its own; in this interest it plays +fast and loose with those data, rejecting some and isolating others, and +always combining them anew. To him as to Dante, the scene, the colour, +the outward image or gesture, comes with all its incisive and +importunate reality; but awakes in him, moreover, by some subtle law of +his own structure, a mood which it awakes in no one else, of which it is +the double or repetition, and which it clothes, that all may share it, +with sensuous circumstance. + +But he is far enough from accepting the conventional orthodoxy of Dante +which, referring all human action to the simple formula of purgatory, +heaven and hell, leaves an insoluble element of prose in the depths of +Dante's poetry. One picture of his, with the portrait of the donor, +Matteo Palmieri, below, had the credit or discredit of attracting some +shadow of ecclesiastical censure. This Matteo Palmieri--two dim figures +move under that name in contemporary history--was the reputed author of +a poem, still unedited, La Citta Divina, which represented the human +race as an incarnation of those angels who, in the revolt of Lucifer, +were neither for Jehovah nor for His enemies, a fantasy of that earlier +Alexandrian philosophy about which the Florentine intellect in that +century was so curious. Botticelli's picture may have been only one of +those familiar compositions in which religious reverie has recorded its +impressions of the various forms of beatified existence--Glorias, as +they were called, like that in which Giotto painted the portrait of +Dante; but somehow it was suspected of embodying in a picture the +wayward dream of Palmieri, and the chapel where it hung was closed. +Artists so entire as Botticelli are usually careless about philosophical +theories, even when the philosopher is a Florentine of the fifteenth +century, and his work a poem in terza rima. But Botticelli, who wrote a +commentary on Dante, and became the disciple of Savonarola, may well +have let such theories come and go across him. True or false, the story +interprets much of the peculiar sentiment with which he infuses his +profane and sacred persons, comely, and in a certain sense like angels, +but with a sense of displacement or loss about them--the wistfulness of +exiles, conscious of a passion and energy greater than any known issue +of them explains, which runs through all his varied work with a +sentiment of ineffable melancholy. + +So just what Dante scorns as unworthy alike of heaven and hell, +Botticelli accepts, that middle world in which men take no side in great +conflicts, and decide no great causes, and make great refusals. He thus +sets for himself the limits within which art, undisturbed by any moral +ambition, does its most sincere and surest work. His interest is neither +in the untempered goodness of Angelico's saints, nor the untempered evil +of Orcagna's Inferno; but with men and women, in their mixed and +uncertain condition, always attractive, clothed sometimes by passion +with a character of loveliness and energy, but saddened perpetually by +the shadow upon them of the great things from which they shrink. His +morality is all sympathy; and it is this sympathy, conveying into his +work somewhat more than is usual of the true complexion of humanity, +which makes him, visionary as he is, so forcible a realist. + +It is this which gives to his Madonnas their unique expression and +charm. He has worked out in them a distinct and peculiar type, definite +enough in his own mind, for he has painted it over and over again, +sometimes one might think almost mechanically, as a pastime during that +dark period when his thoughts were so heavy upon him. Hardly any +collection of note is without one of these circular pictures, into which +the attendant angels depress their heads so naively. Perhaps you have +sometimes wondered why those peevish-looking Madonnas, conformed to no +acknowledged or obvious type of beauty, attract you more and more, and +often come back to you when the Sistine Madonna and the Virgins of Fra +Angelico are forgotten. At first, contrasting them with those, you may +have thought that there was something in them mean or abject even, for +the abstract lines of the face have little nobleness, and the colour is +wan. For with Botticelli she too, though she holds in her hands the +"Desire of all nations," is one of those who are neither for Jehovah nor +for His enemies; and her choice is on her face. The white light on it is +cast up hard and cheerless from below, as when snow lies upon the +ground, and the children look up with surprise at the strange whiteness +of the ceiling. Her trouble is in the very caress of the mysterious +child, whose gaze is always far from her, and who has already that sweet +look of devotion which men have never been able altogether to love, and +which still makes the born saint an object almost of suspicion to his +earthly brethren. Once, indeed, he guides her hand to transcribe in a +book the words of her exaltation, the Ave, and the Magnificat, and the +Gaude Maria, and the young angels, glad to rouse her for a moment from +Her dejection, are eager to hold the inkhorn and to support the book; +but the pen almost drops from her hand, and the high cold words have no +meaning for her, and her true children are those others, among whom in +her rude home, the intolerable honour came to her, with that look of +wistful inquiry on their irregular faces which you see in startled +animals--gipsy children, such as those who, in Apennine villages, still +hold out their long brown arms to beg of you, but on Sundays become +enfants du choeur, with their thick black hair nicely combed, and fair +white linen on their sunburnt throats. + +What is strangest is that he carries this sentiment into classical +subjects, its most complete expression being a picture in the Uffizii, +of Venus rising from the sea, in which the grotesque emblems of the +middle age, and a landscape full of its peculiar feeling, and even its +strange draperies, powdered all over in the Gothic manner with a quaint +conceit of daisies, frame a figure that reminds you of the faultless +nude studies of Ingres. At first, perhaps, you are attracted only by a +quaintness of design, which seems to recall all at once whatever you +have read of Florence in the fifteenth century; afterwards you may think +that this quaintness must be incongruous with the subject, and that the +colour is cadaverous or at least cold. And yet, the more you come to +understand what imaginative colouring really is, that all colour is no +mere delightful quality of natural things, but a spirit upon them by +which they become expressive to the spirit, the better you will like +this peculiar quality of colour; and you will find that quaint design of +Botticelli's a more direct inlet into the Greek temper than the works of +the Greeks themselves even of the finest period. Of the Greeks as they +really were, of their difference from ourselves, of the aspects of their +outward life, we know far more than Botticelli, or his most learned +contemporaries; but for us long familiarity has taken off the edge of +the lesson, and we are hardly conscious of what we owe to the Hellenic +spirit. But in pictures like this of Botticelli's you have a record of +the first impression made by it on minds turned back towards it, in +almost painful aspiration, from a world in which it had been ignored so +long; and in the passion, the energy, the industry of realisation, with +which Botticelli carries out his intention, is the exact measure of the +legitimate influence over the human mind of the imaginative system of +which this is the central myth. The light is indeed cold--mere sunless +dawn; but a later painter would have cloyed you with sunshine; and you +can see the better for that quietness in the morning air each long +promontory, as it slopes down to the water's edge. Men go forth to their +labours until the evening; but she is awake before them, and you might +think that the sorrow in her face was at the thought of the whole long +day of love yet to come. An emblematical figure of the wind blows hard +across the grey water, moving forward the dainty-lipped shell on which +she sails, the sea "showing his teeth" as it moves in thin lines of +foam, and sucking in, one by one, the falling roses, each severe in +outline, plucked off short at the stalk but embrowned a little, as +Botticelli's flowers always are. Botticelli meant all that imagery to be +altogether pleasurable; and it was partly an incompleteness of +resources, inseparable from the art of that time, that subdued and +chilled it; but his predilection for minor tones counts also; and what +is unmistakable is the sadness with which he has conceived the goddess +of pleasure, as the depositary of a great power over the lives of men. + +I have said that the peculiar character of Botticelli is the result of a +blending in him of a sympathy for humanity in its uncertain condition, +its attractiveness, its investiture at rarer moments in a character of +loveliness and energy, with his consciousness of the shadow upon it of +the great things from which it shrinks, and that this conveys into his +work somewhat more than painting usually attains of the true complexion +of humanity. He paints the story of the goddess of pleasure in other +episodes besides that of her birth from the sea, but never without some +shadow of death in the grey flesh and wan flowers. He paints Madonnas, +but they shrink from the pressure of the divine child, and plead in +unmistakable undertones for a warmer, lower humanity. The same +figure--tradition connects it with Simonetta, the Mistress of Giuliano +de' Medici--appears again as Judith, returning home across the hill +country, when the great deed is over, and the moment of revulsion come, +when the olive branch in her hand is becoming a burthen; as Justice, +sitting on a throne, but with a fixed look of self-hatred which makes +the sword in her hand seem that of a suicide; and again as Veritas, in +the allegorical picture of Calumnia, where one may note in passing the +suggestiveness of an accident which identifies the image of Truth with +the person of Venus. We might trace the same sentiment through his +engravings; but his share in them is doubtful, and the object of this +brief study has been attained, if I have defined aright the temper in +which he worked. + +But, after all, it may be asked, is a painter like Botticelli--a +secondary painter--a proper subject for general criticism? There are a +few great painters, like Michelangelo or Leonardo, whose work has become +a force in general culture, partly for this very reason that they have +absorbed into themselves all such workmen as Sandro Botticelli; and, +over and above mere technical or antiquarian criticism, general +criticism may be very well employed in that sort of interpretation which +adjusts the position of these men to general culture, whereas smaller +men can be the proper subjects only of technical or antiquarian +treatment. But, besides those great men, there is a certain number of +artists who have a distinct faculty of their own by which they convey to +us a peculiar quality of pleasure which we cannot get elsewhere; and +these, too, have their place in general culture, and must be interpreted +to it by those who have felt their charm strongly, and are often the +objects of a special diligence and a consideration wholly affectionate, +just because there is not about them the stress of a great name and +authority. Of this select number Botticelli is one; he has the +freshness, the uncertain and diffident promise which belongs to the +earlier Renaissance itself, and makes it perhaps the most interesting +period in the history of the mind: in studying his work one begins to +understand to how great a place in human culture the art of Italy had +been called. + +1870. + + + +LUCA DELLA ROBBIA + +The Italian sculptors of the earlier half of the fifteenth century are +more than mere forerunners of the great masters of its close, and often +reach perfection, within the narrow limits which they chose to impose on +their work. Their sculpture shares with the paintings of Botticelli and +the churches of Brunelleschi that profound expressiveness, that intimate +impress of an indwelling soul, which is the peculiar fascination of the +art of Italy in that century. Their works have been much neglected, and +often almost hidden away amid the frippery of modern decoration, and we +come with some surprise on the places where their fire still smoulders. +One longs to penetrate into the lives of the men who have given +expression to so much power and sweetness; but it is part of the +reserve, the austere dignity and simplicity of their existence, that +their histories are for the most part lost, or told but briefly. From +their lives, as from their work, all tumult of sound and colour has +passed away. Mino, the Raffaelle of sculpture, Maso del Rodario, whose +works add a new grace to the church of Como, Donatello even--one asks in +vain for more than a shadowy outline of their actual days. + +Something more remains of Luca della Robbia; something more of a +history, of outward changes and fortunes, is expressed through his work. +I suppose nothing brings the real air of a Tuscan town so vividly to +mind as those pieces of pale blue and white earthenware, by which he is +best known, like fragments of the milky sky itself, fallen into the cool +streets, and breaking into the darkened churches. And no work is less +imitable; like Tuscan wine, it loses its savour when moved from its +birthplace, from the crumbling walls where it was first placed. Part of +the charm of this work, its grace and purity and finish of expression, +is common to all the Tuscan sculptors of the fifteenth century; for Luca +was first of all a worker in marble, and his works in earthenware only +transfer to a different material the principles of his sculpture. + +These Tuscan sculptors of the fifteenth century worked for the most part +in low relief, giving even to their monumental effigies something of its +depression of surface, getting into them by this means a pathetic +suggestion of the wasting and etherealisation of death. They are haters +of all heaviness and emphasis, of strongly-opposed light and shade, and +seek their means of expression among those last refinements of shadow, +which are almost invisible except in a strong light, and which the +finest pencil can hardly follow. The whole essence of their work is +EXPRESSION, the passing of a smile over the face of a child, the ripple +of the air on a still day over the curtain of a window ajar. + +What is the precise value of this system of sculpture, this low relief? +Luca della Robbia, and the other sculptors of the school to which he +belongs, have before them the universal problem of their art; and this +system of low relief is the means by which they meet and overcome the +special limitation of sculpture--a limitation resulting from the +material and the essential conditions of all sculptured work, and which +consists in the tendency of this work to a hard realism, a one-sided +presentment of mere form, that solid material frame which only motion +can relieve, a thing of heavy shadows, and an individuality of +expression pushed to caricature. Against this tendency to the hard +presentment of mere form trying vainly to compete with the reality of +nature itself, all noble sculpture constantly struggles: each great +system of sculpture resisting it in its own way, etherealising, +spiritualising, relieving its hardness, its heaviness and death. The use +of colour in sculpture is but an unskilful contrivance to effect, by +borrowing from another art, what the nobler sculpture effects by +strictly appropriate means. To get not colour, but the equivalent of +colour; to secure the expression and the play of life; to expand the too +fixed individuality of pure, unrelieved, uncoloured form--this is the +problem which the three great styles in sculpture have solved in three +different ways. + +Allgemeinheit--breadth, generality, universality--is the word chosen by +Winckelmann, and after him by Goethe and many German critics, to express +that law of the most excellent Greek sculptors, of Pheidias and his +pupils, which prompted them constantly to seek the type in the +individual, to abstract and express only what is structural and +permanent, to purge from the individual all that belongs only to him, +all the accidents, the feelings, and actions of the special moment, all +that (because in its own nature it endures but for a moment) is apt to +look like a frozen thing if one arrests it. + +In this way their works came to be like some subtle extract or essence, +or almost like pure thoughts or ideas: and hence the breadth of humanity +in them, that detachment from the conditions of a particular place or +people, which has carried their influence far beyond the age which +produced them, and insured them universal acceptance. + +That was the Greek way of relieving the hardness and unspirituality of +pure form. But it involved to a certain degree the sacrifice of what we +call expression; and a system of abstraction which aimed always at the +broad and general type, at the purging away from the individual of what +belonged only to him, and of the mere accidents of a particular time +and place, imposed upon the range of effects open to the Greek sculptor +limits somewhat narrowly defined; and when Michelangelo came, with a +genius spiritualised by the reverie of the middle age, penetrated by its +spirit of inwardness and introspection, living not a mere outward life +like the Greek, but a life full of inward experiences, sorrows, +consolations, a system which sacrificed so much of what was inward and +unseen could not satisfy him. To him, lover and student of Greek +sculpture as he was, work which did not bring what was inward to the +surface, which was not concerned with individual expression, with +individual character and feeling, the special history of the special +soul, was not worth doing at all. + +And so, in a way quite personal and peculiar to himself, which often is, +and always seems, the effect of accident, he secured for his work +individuality and intensity of expression, while he avoided a too hard +realism, that tendency to harden into caricature which the +representation of feeling in sculpture must always have. What time and +accident, its centuries of darkness under the furrows of the "little +Melian farm," have done with singular felicity of touch for the Venus of +Melos, fraying its surface and softening its lines, so that some spirit +in the thing seems always on the point of breaking out, as though in it +classical sculpture had advanced already one step into the mystical +Christian age, its expression being in the whole range of ancient work +most like that of Michelangelo's own:--this effect Michelangelo gains by +leaving nearly all his sculpture in a puzzling sort of incompleteness, +which suggests rather than realises actual form. Something of the +wasting of that snow-image which he moulded at the command of Piero de' +Medici, when the snow lay one night in the court of the Pitti palace, +almost always lurks about it, as if he had determined to make the +quality of a task, exacted from him half in derision, the pride of all +his work. Many have wondered at that incompleteness, suspecting, +however, that Michelangelo himself loved and was loath to change it, and +feeling at the same time that they too would lose something if the +half-realised form ever quite emerged from the stone, so rough hewn +here, so delicately finished there; and they have wished to fathom the +charm of this incompleteness. Well! that incompleteness is +Michelangelo's equivalent for colour in sculpture; it is his way of +etherealising pure form, of relieving its hard realism, and +communicating to it breath, pulsation, the effect of life. It was a +characteristic too which fell in with his peculiar temper and mode of +life, his disappointments and hesitations. And it was in reality perfect +finish. In this way he combines the utmost amount of passion and +intensity with the sense of a yielding and flexible life: he gets not +vitality merely, but a wonderful force of expression. + +Midway between these two systems--the system of the Greek sculptors and +the system of Michelangelo--comes the system of Luca della Robbia. And +the other Tuscan sculptors of the fifteenth century, partaking both of +the Allgemeinheit of the Greeks, their way of extracting certain select +elements only of pure form and sacrificing all the rest, and the studied +incompleteness of Michelangelo, relieving that expression of intensity, +passion, energy, which might otherwise have hardened into caricature. +Like Michelangelo, these sculptors fill their works with intense and +individualised expression: their noblest works are the studied +sepulchral portraits of particular persons--the monument of Conte Ugo in +the Badia of Florence, of the youthful Medea Colleoni, with the +wonderful, long throat, in the chapel on the cool north side of the +Church of Santa Maria Maggiore at Bergamo--monuments which abound in the +churches of Rome, inexhaustible in suggestions of repose, of a subdued +Sabbatic joy, a kind of sacred grace and refinement:--and they unite +these elements of tranquillity, of repose, to that intense and +individual expression by a system of conventionalism as skilful and +subtle as that of the Greeks, subduing all such curves as indicate solid +form, and throwing the whole into lower relief. + +The life of Luca, a life of labour and frugality, with no adventure and +no excitement except what belongs to the trial of new artistic +processes, the struggle with new artistic difficulties, the solution of +purely artistic problems, fills the first seventy years of the fifteenth +century. After producing many works in marble for the Duomo and the +Campanile of Florence, which place him among the foremost sculptors of +that age, he became desirous to realise the spirit and manner of that +sculpture, in a humbler material, to unite its science, its exquisite +and expressive system of low relief, to the homely art of pottery, to +introduce those high qualities into common things, to adorn and +cultivate daily household life. In this he is profoundly characteristic +of the Florence of that century, of that in it which lay below its +superficial vanity and caprice, a certain old-world modesty and +seriousness and simplicity. People had not yet begun to think that what +was good art for churches was not so good, or less fitted, for their own +houses. Luca's new work was in plain white earthenware at first, a mere +rough imitation of the costly, laboriously wrought marble, finished in a +few hours. But on this humble path he found his way to a fresh success, +to another artistic grace. The fame of the oriental pottery, with its +strange, bright colours--colours of art, colours not to be attained in +the natural stone--mingled with the tradition of the old Roman pottery +of the neighbourhood. The little red, coral-like jars of Arezzo, dug up +in that district from time to time, are still famous. These colours +haunted Luca's fancy. "He still continued seeking something more," his +biographer says of him; "and instead of making his figures of baked +earth simply white, he added the further invention of giving them +colour, to the astonishment and delight of all who beheld them"--Cosa +singolare, e multo utile per la state!--a curious thing, and very useful +for summertime, full of coolness and repose for hand and eye. Luca loved +the forms of various fruits, and wrought them into all sorts of +marvellous frames and garlands, giving them their natural colours, only +subdued a little, a little paler than nature. But in his nobler +terra-cotta work he never introduces colour into the flesh, keeping +mostly to blue and white, the colours of the Virgin Mary. + +I said that the work of Luca della Robbia possessed in an unusual +measure that special characteristic which belongs to all the workmen of +his school, a characteristic which, even in the absence of much positive +information about their actual history, seems to bring those workmen +themselves very near to us--the impress of a personal quality, a +profound expressiveness, what the French call intimite, by which is +meant some subtler sense of originality--the seal on a man's work of +what is most inward and peculiar in his moods, and manner of +apprehension: it is what we call expression, carried to its highest +intensity of degree. That characteristic is rare in poetry, rarer still +in art, rarest of all in the abstract art of sculpture; yet essentially, +perhaps, it is the quality which alone makes works in the imaginative +and moral order really worth having at all. It is because the works of +the artists of the fifteenth century possess this quality in an +unmistakable way that one is anxious to know all that can be known about +them, and explain to oneself the secret of their charm. + +1872. + + + +THE POETRY OF MICHELANGELO + +Critics of Michelangelo have sometimes spoken as if the only +characteristic of his genius were a wonderful strength, verging, as in +the things of the imagination great strength always does, on what is +singular or strange. A certain strangeness, something of the blossoming +of the aloe, is indeed an element in all true works of art; that they +shall excite or surprise us is indispensable. But that they shall give +pleasure and exert a charm over us is indispensable too; and this +strangeness must be sweet also--a lovely strangeness. And to the true +admirers of Michelangelo this is the true type of the +Michelangelesque--sweetness and strength, pleasure with surprise, an +energy of conception which seems at every moment about to break through +all the conditions of comely form, recovering, touch by touch, a +loveliness found usually only in the simplest natural things--ex forti +dulcedo. + +In this way he sums up for them the whole character of medieval art +itself in that which distinguishes it most clearly from classical work, +the presence of a convulsive energy in it, becoming in lower hands +merely monstrous or forbidding, but felt, even in its most graceful +products, as a subdued quaintness or grotesque. Yet those who feel this +grace or sweetness in Michelangelo might at the first moment be puzzled +if they were asked wherein precisely the quality resided. Men of +inventive temperament--Victor Hugo, for instance, in whom, as in +Michelangelo, people have for the most part been attracted or repelled +by the strength, while few have understood his sweetness--have sometimes +relieved conceptions of merely moral or spiritual greatness, but with +little aesthetic charm of their own, by lovely accidents or accessories, +like the butterfly which alights on the blood-stained barricade in Les +Miserables, or those sea-birds for which the monstrous Gilliatt comes to +be as some wild natural thing, so that they are no longer afraid of him, +in Les Travailleurs de la Mer. But the austere genius of Michelangelo +will not depend for its sweetness on any mere accessories like these. +The world of natural things has almost no existence for him; "When one +speaks of him," says Grimm, "woods, clouds, seas, and mountains +disappear, and only what is formed by the spirit of man remains behind"; +and he quotes a few slight words from a letter of his to Vasari as the +single expression in all he has left of a feeling for nature. He has +traced no flowers, like those with which Leonardo stars over his +gloomiest rocks; nothing like the fretwork of wings and flames in which +Blake frames his most startling conceptions; no forest-scenery like +Titian's fills his backgrounds, but only blank ranges of rock, and dim +vegetable forms as blank as they, as in a world before the creation of +the first five days. + +Of the whole story of the creation he has painted only the creation of +the first man and woman, and, for him at least, feebly, the creation of +light. It belongs to the quality of his genius thus to concern itself +almost exclusively with the creation of man. For him it is not, as in +the story itself, the last and crowning act of a series of developments, +but the first and unique act, the creation of life itself in its supreme +form, off-hand and immediately, in the cold and lifeless stone. With him +the beginning of life has all the characteristics of resurrection; it is +like the recovery of suspended health or animation, with its gratitude, +its effusion, and eloquence. Fair as the young men of the Elgin marbles, +the Adam of the Sistine Chapel is unlike them in a total absence of that +balance and completeness which express so well the sentiment of a +self-contained, independent life. In that languid figure there is +something rude and satyr-like, something akin to the rugged hillside on +which it lies. His whole form is gathered into an expression of mere +expectation and reception; he has hardly strength enough to lift his +finger to touch the finger of the creator; yet a touch of the +finger-tips will suffice. + +This creation of life--life coming always as relief or recovery, and +always in strong contrast with the rough-hewn mass in which it is +kindled--is in various ways the motive of all his work, whether its +immediate subject be Pagan or Christian, legend or allegory; and this, +although at least one-half of his work was designed for the adornment of +tombs--the tomb of Julius, the tombs of the Medici. Not the Judgment but +the Resurrection is the real subject of his last work in the Sistine +Chapel; and his favourite Pagan subject is the legend of Leda, the +delight of the world breaking from the egg of a bird. As I have already +pointed out, he secures that ideality of expression which in Greek +sculpture depends on a delicate system of abstraction, and in early +Italian sculpture on lowness of relief, by an incompleteness, which is +surely not always undesigned, and which I suppose no one regrets, and +trusts to the spectator to complete the half-emergent form. And as his +persons have something of the unwrought stone about them, so, as if to +realise the expression by which the old Florentine records describe a +sculptor--master of live stone--with him the very rocks seem to have +life; they have but to cast away the dust and scurf that they may rise +and stand on their feet. He loved the very quarries of Carrara, those +strange grey peaks which even at mid-day convey into any scene from +which they are visible something of the solemnity and stillness of +evening, sometimes wandering among them month after month, till at last +their pale ashen colours seem to have passed into his painting; and on +the crown of the head of the David there still remains a morsel of uncut +stone, as if by one touch to maintain its connexion with the place from +which it was hewn. + +And it is in this penetrative suggestion of life that the secret of that +sweetness of his is to be found. He gives us indeed no lovely natural +objects like Leonardo or Titian, but only the coldest, most elementary +shadowing of rock or tree; no lovely draperies and comely gestures of +life, but only the austere truths of human nature; "simple persons"--as +he replied in his rough way to the querulous criticism of Julius the +Second, that there was no gold on the figures of the Sistine +Chapel--"simple persons, who wore no gold on their garments"; but he +penetrates us with a sense of that power which we associate with all the +warmth and fulness of the world, and the sense of which brings into +one's thoughts a swarm of birds and flowers and insects. The brooding +spirit of life itself is there; and the summer may burst out in a +moment. + +He was born in an interval of a rapid midnight journey in March, at a +place in the neighbourhood of Arezzo, the thin, clear air of which, as +was then thought, being favourable to the birth of children of great +parts. He came of a race of grave and dignified men, who, claiming +kinship with the family of Canossa, and some colour of imperial blood in +their veins, had, generation after generation, received honourable +employment under the government of Florence. His mother, a girl of +nineteen years, put him out to nurse at a country house among the hills +of Settignano, where every other inhabitant is a worker in the marble +quarries, and the child early became familiar with that strange first +stage in the sculptor's art. To this succeeded the influence of the +sweetest and most placid master Florence had yet seen, Domenico +Ghirlandajo. At fifteen he was at work among the curiosities of the +garden of the Medici, copying and restoring antiques, winning the +condescending notice of the great Lorenzo. He knew too how to excite +strong hatreds; and it was at this time that in a quarrel with a +fellow-student he received a blow on the face which deprived him for +ever of the comeliness of outward form. It was through an accident that +he came to study those works of the early Italian sculptors which +suggested much of his own grandest work, and impressed it with so deep a +sweetness. He believed in dreams and omens. One of his friends dreamed +twice that Lorenzo, then lately dead, appeared to him in grey and dusty +apparel. To Michelangelo this dream seemed to portend the troubles which +afterwards really came, and with the suddenness which was characteristic +of all his movements, he left Florence. Having occasion to pass through +Bologna, he neglected to procure the little seal of red wax which the +stranger entering Bologna must carry on the thumb of his right hand. He +had no money to pay the fine, and would have been thrown into prison had +not one of the magistrates interposed. He remained in this man's house a +whole year, rewarding his hospitality by readings from the Italian poets +whom he loved. Bologna, with its endless colonnades and fantastic +leaning towers, can never have been one of the lovelier cities of Italy. +But about the portals of its vast unfinished churches and its dark +shrines, half hidden by votive flowers and candles, lie some of the +sweetest works of the early Tuscan sculptors, Giovanni da Pisa and +Jacopo della Quercia, things as winsome as flowers; and the year which +Michelangelo spent in copying these works was not a lost year. It was +now, on returning to Florence, that he put forth that unique presentment +of Bacchus, which expresses, not the mirthfulness of the god of wine, +but his sleepy seriousness, his enthusiasm, his capacity for profound +dreaming. No one ever expressed more truly than Michelangelo the notion +of inspired sleep, of faces charged with dreams. A vast fragment of +marble had long lain below the Loggia of Orcagna, and many a sculptor +had had his thoughts of a design which should just fill this famous +block of stone, cutting the diamond, as it were, without loss. Under +Michelangelo's hand it became the David which stood till lately on the +steps of the Palazzo Vecchio, when it was replaced below the Loggia. +Michelangelo was now thirty years old, and his reputation was +established. Three great works fill the remainder of his life--three +works often interrupted, carried on through a thousand hesitations, a +thousand disappointments, quarrels with his patrons, quarrels with his +family, quarrels perhaps most of all with himself--the Sistine Chapel, +the Mausoleum of Julius the Second, and the Sacristy of San Lorenzo. + +In the story of Michelangelo's life the strength, often turning to +bitterness, is not far to seek; a discordant note sounds throughout it +which almost spoils the music. He "treats the Pope as the King of France +himself would not dare to treat him"; he goes along the streets of Rome +"like an executioner," Raffaelle says of him. Once he seems to have shut +himself up with the intention of starving himself to death. As we come +in reading his life on its harsh, untempered incidents, the thought +again and again arises that he is one of those who incur the judgment of +Dante, as having "wilfully lived in sadness." Even his tenderness and +pity are embittered by their strength. What passionate weeping in that +mysterious figure which, in the Creation of Adam, crouches below the +image of the Almighty, as he comes with the forms of things to be, woman +and her progeny, in the fold of his garment! What a sense of wrong in +those two captive youths, who feel the chains like scalding water on +their proud and delicate flesh! The idealist who became a reformer with +Savonarola, and a republican superintending the fortification of +Florence--the nest where he was born, il nido ove naqqu'io, as he calls +it once, in a sudden throb of affection--in its last struggle for +liberty, yet believed always that he had imperial blood in his veins and +was of the kindred of the great Matilda, had within the depths of his +nature some secret spring of indignation or sorrow. We know little of +his youth, but all tends to make one believe in the vehemence of its +passions. Beneath the Platonic calm of the sonnets there is latent a +deep delight in carnal form and colour. There, and still more in the +madrigals, he often falls into the language of less tranquil affections; +while some of them have the colour of penitence, as from a wanderer +returning home. He who spoke so decisively of the supremacy in the +imaginative world of the unveiled human form had not been always, we may +think, a mere Platonic lover. Vague and wayward his loves may have been; +but they partook of the strength of his nature, and sometimes, it may +be, would by no means become music, so that the comely order of his days +was quite put out: par che amaro ogni mio dolce io senta. + +But his genius is in harmony with itself; and just as in the products of +his art we find resources of sweetness within their exceeding strength, +so in his own story also, bitter as the ordinary sense of it may be, +there are select pages shut in among the rest--pages one might easily +turn over too lightly, but which yet sweeten the whole volume. The +interest of Michelangelo's poems is that they make us spectators of this +struggle; the struggle of a strong nature to adorn and attune itself; +the struggle of a desolating passion, which yearns to be resigned and +sweet and pensive, as Dante's was. It is a consequence of the occasional +and informal character of his poetry, that it brings us nearer to +himself, his own mind and temper, than any work done only to support a +literary reputation could possibly do. His letters tell us little that +is worth knowing about him--a few poor quarrels about money and +commissions. But it is quite otherwise with these songs and sonnets, +written down at odd moments, sometimes on the margins of his sketches, +themselves often unfinished sketches, arresting some salient feeling or +unpremeditated idea as it passed. And it happens that a true study of +these has become within the last few years for the first time possible. +A few of the sonnets circulated widely in manuscript, and became almost +within Michelangelo's own lifetime a subject of academical discourses. +But they were first collected in a volume in 1623 by the great-nephew of +Michelangelo, Michelangelo Buonarroti the younger. He omitted much, +re-wrote the sonnets in part, and sometimes compressed two or more +compositions into one, always losing something of the force and +incisiveness of the original. So the book remained, neglected even by +Italians themselves in the last century, through the influence of that +French taste which despised all compositions of the kind, as it despised +and neglected Dante. "His reputation will ever be on the increase, +because he is so little read," says Voltaire of Dante.--But in 1858 the +last of the Buonarroti bequeathed to the municipality of Florence the +curiosities of his family. Among them was a precious volume containing +the autograph of the sonnets. A learned Italian, Signor Cesare Guasti, +undertook to collate this autograph with other manuscripts at the +Vatican and elsewhere, and in 1863 published a true version of +Michelangelo's poems, with dissertations and a paraphrase.* + +*The sonnets have been translated into English, with much poetic taste +and skill, by Mr. J. A. Symonds. + +People have often spoken of these poems as if they were a mere cry of +distress, a lover's complaint over the obduracy of Vittoria Colonna. But +those who speak thus forget that though it is quite possible that +Michelangelo had seen Vittoria, that somewhat shadowy figure, as early +as 1537, yet their closer intimacy did not begin till about the year +1542, when Michelangelo was nearly seventy years old. Vittoria herself, +an ardent neo-catholic, vowed to perpetual widowhood since the news had +reached her, seventeen years before, that her husband, the youthful and +princely Marquess of Pescara, lay dead of the wounds he had received in +the battle of Pavia, was then no longer an object of great passion. In a +dialogue written by the painter, Francesco d'Ollanda, we catch a glimpse +of them together in an empty church at Rome, one Sunday afternoon, +discussing indeed the characteristics of various schools of art, but +still more the writings of Saint Paul, already following the ways and +tasting the sunless pleasures of weary people, whose hold on outward +things is slackening. In a letter still extant he regrets that when he +visited her after death he had kissed her hands only. He made, or set to +work to make, a crucifix for her use, and two drawings, perhaps in +preparation for it, are now in Oxford. From allusions in the sonnets, we +may divine that when they first approached each other he had debated +much with himself whether this last passion would be the most +unsoftening, the most desolating of all--un dolce amaro, un si e no mi +muovi; is it carnal affection, or, del suo prestino stato (Plato's +ante-natal state) il raggio ardente? The older, conventional criticism, +dealing with the text of 1623, had lightly assumed that all or nearly +all the sonnets were actually addressed to Vittoria herself; but Signor +Guasti finds only four, or at most five, which can be so attributed on +genuine authority. Still, there are reasons which make him assign the +majority of them to the period between 1542 and 1547, and we may regard +the volume as a record of this resting-place in Michelangelo's story. We +know how Goethe escaped from the stress of sentiments too strong for him +by making a book about them; and for Michelangelo, to write down his +passionate thoughts at all, to make sonnets about them, was already in +some measure to command, and have his way with them-- + La vita del mia amor non e il cor mio, + Ch'amor, di quel ch'io t'amo, e senza core. +It was just because Vittoria raised no great passion that the space in +his life where she reigns has such peculiar suavity; and the spirit of +the sonnets is lost if we once take them out of that dreamy atmosphere +in which men have things as they will, because the hold of all outward +things upon them is faint and thin. Their prevailing tone is a calm and +meditative sweetness. The cry of distress is indeed there, but as a mere +residue, a trace of bracing chalybeate salt, just discernible in the +song which rises as a clear, sweet spring from a charmed space in his +life. + +This charmed and temperate space in Michelangelo's life, without which +its excessive strength would have been so imperfect, which saves him +from the judgment of Dante on those who "wilfully lived in sadness," is +then a well-defined period there, reaching from the year 1542 to the +year 1547, the year of Vittoria's death. In it the lifelong effort to +tranquillise his vehement emotions by withdrawing them into the region +of ideal sentiment, becomes successful; and the significance of Vittoria +there is, that she realises for him a type of affection which even in +disappointment may charm and sweeten his spirit. In this effort to +tranquillise and sweeten life by idealising its vehement sentiments, +there were two great traditional types, either of which an Italian of +the sixteenth century might have followed. There was Dante, whose little +book of the Vita Nuova had early become a pattern of imaginative love, +maintained somewhat feebly by the later followers of Petrarch; and since +Plato had become something more than a name in Italy by the publication +of the Latin translation of his works by Marsilio Ficino, there was the +Platonic tradition also. Dante's belief in the resurrection of the body, +through which, even in heaven, Beatrice loses for him no tinge of +flesh-colour, or fold of raiment even--and the Platonic dream of the +passage of the soul through one form of life after another, with its +passionate haste to escape from the burden of bodily form +altogether--are, for all effects of art or poetry, principles +diametrically opposite; and it is the Platonic tradition rather than +Dante's that has moulded Michelangelo's verse. In many ways no sentiment +could have been less like Dante's love for Beatrice than Michelangelo's +for Vittoria Colonna. Dante's comes in early youth: Beatrice is a child, +with the wistful, ambiguous vision of a child, with a character still +unaccentuated by the influence of outward circumstances, almost +expressionless. Vittoria is a woman already weary, in advanced age, of +grave intellectual qualities. Dante's story is a piece of figured wood, +inlaid with lovely incidents. In Michelangelo's poems, frost and fire +are almost the only images--the refining fire of the goldsmith; once or +twice the phoenix; ice melting at the fire; fire struck from the rock +which it afterwards consumes. Except one doubtful allusion to a journey, +there are almost no incidents. But there is much of the bright, sharp, +unerring skill, with which in boyhood he gave the look of age to the +head of a faun by chipping a tooth from its jaw with a single stroke of +the hammer. For Dante, the amiable and devout materialism of the middle +age sanctifies all that is presented by hand and eye. Michelangelo is +always pressing forward from the outward beauty--il bel del fuor che +agli occhi piace--to apprehend the unseen beauty; trascenda nella forma +universale--that abstract form of beauty, about which the Platonists +reason. And this gives the impression in him of something flitting and +unfixed, of the houseless and complaining spirit, almost clairvoyant +through the frail and yielding flesh. He accounts for love at first +sight by a previous state of existence--la dove io t'amai prima. + +And yet there are many points in which he is really like Dante, and +comes very near to the original image, beyond those later and feebler +followers of Petrarch. He learns from Dante rather than from Plato, that +for lovers, the surfeiting of desire--ove gran desir gran copia affrena, +is a state less happy than misery full of hope--una miseria di speranza +piena. He recalls him in the repetition of the words gentile and +cortesia, in the personification of Amor, in the tendency to dwell +minutely on the physical effects of the presence of a beloved object on +the pulses and the heart. Above all, he resembles Dante in the warmth +and intensity of his political utterances, for the lady of one of his +noblest sonnets was from the first understood to be the city of +Florence; and he avers that all must be asleep in heaven, if she, who +was created "of angelic form," for a thousand lovers, is appropriated by +one alone, some Piero, or Alessandro de' Medici. Once and again he +introduces Love and Death, who dispute concerning him; for, like Dante +and all the nobler souls of Italy, he is much occupied with thoughts of +the grave, and his true mistress is death; death at first as the worst +of all sorrows and disgraces, with a clod of the field for its brain; +afterwards, death in its high distinction, its detachment from vulgar +needs, the angry stains of life and action escaping fast. + +Some of those whom the gods love die young. This man, because the gods +loved him, lingered on to be of immense, patriarchal age, till the +sweetness it had taken so long to secrete in him was found at last. Out +of the strong came forth sweetness, ex forti dulcedo. The world had +changed around him. The New-catholicism had taken the place of the +Renaissance. The spirit of the Roman Church had changed: in the vast +world's cathedral which his skill had helped to raise for it, it looked +stronger than ever. Some of the first members of the Oratory were among +his intimate associates. They were of a spirit as unlike as possible +from that of Lorenzo, or Savonarola even. The opposition of the +Reformation to art has been often enlarged upon; far greater was that of +the Catholic revival. But in thus fixing itself in a frozen orthodoxy, +the Roman Catholic Church has passed beyond him, and he was a stranger +to it. In earlier days, when its beliefs had been in a fluid state, he +too might have been drawn into the controversy; he might have been for +spiritualising the papal sovereignty, like Savonarola; or for adjusting +the dreams of Plato and Homer with the words of Christ, like Pico of +Mirandola. But things had moved onward, and such adjustments were no +longer possible. For himself, he had long since fallen back on that +divine ideal, which above the wear and tear of creeds has been forming +itself for ages as the possession of nobler souls. And now he began to +feel the soothing influence which since that time the Roman Church has +often exerted over spirits too independent to be its subjects, yet +brought within the neighbourhood of its action; consoled and +tranquillised, as a traveller might be, resting for one evening in a +strange city, by its stately aspect, and the sentiment of its many +fortunes, just because with those fortunes he has nothing to do. So he +lingers on; a revenant, as the French say, a ghost out of another age, +in a world too coarse to touch his faint sensibilities too closely; +dreaming, in a worn-out society, theatrical in its life, theatrical in +its art, theatrical even in its devotion, on the morning of the world's +history, on the primitive form of man, on the images under which that +primitive world had conceived of spiritual forces. + +I have dwelt on the thought of Michelangelo as thus lingering beyond his +time in a world not his own, because, if one is to distinguish the +peculiar savour of his work, he must be approached, not through his +followers, but through his predecessors; not through the marbles of +Saint Peter's, but through the work of the sculptors of the fifteenth +century over the tombs and altars of Tuscany. He is the last of the +Florentines, of those on whom the peculiar sentiment of the Florence of +Dante and Giotto descended: he is the consummate representative of the +form that sentiment took in the fifteenth century with men like Luca +Signorelli and Mino da Fiesole. Up to him the tradition of sentiment is +unbroken, the progress towards surer and more mature methods of +expressing that sentiment continuous. But his professed disciples did +not share this temper; they are in love with his strength only, and seem +not to feel his grave and temperate sweetness. Theatricality is their +chief characteristic; and that is a quality as little attributable to +Michelangelo as to Mino or Luca Signorelli. With him, as with them, all +Is serious, passionate, impulsive. + +This discipleship of Michelangelo, this dependence of his on the +tradition of the Florentine schools, is nowhere seen more clearly than +in his treatment of the Creation. The Creation of Man had haunted the +mind of the middle age like a dream; and weaving it into a hundred +carved ornaments of capital or doorway, the Italian sculptors had early +impressed upon it that pregnancy of expression which seems to give it +many veiled meanings. As with other artistic conceptions of the middle +age, its treatment became almost conventional, handed on from artist to +artist, with slight changes, till it came to have almost an independent, +abstract existence of its own. It was characteristic of the medieval +mind thus to give an independent traditional existence to a special +pictorial conception, or to a legend, like that of Tristram or +Tannhaeuser, or even to the very thoughts and substance of a book, like +the Imitation, so that no single workman could claim it as his own, and +the book, the image, the legend, had itself a legend, and its fortunes, +and a personal history; and it is a sign of the medievalism of +Michelangelo, that he thus receives from tradition his central +conception, and does but add the last touches, in transferring it to the +frescoes of the Sistine Chapel. + +But there was another tradition of those earlier more serious +Florentines, of which Michelangelo is the inheritor, to which he gives +the final expression, and which centres in the sacristy of San Lorenzo, +as the tradition of the Creation centres in the Sistine Chapel. It has +been said that all the great Florentines were preoccupied with death. +Outre-tombe! Outre-tombe !--is the burden of their thoughts, from Dante +to Savonarola. Even the gay and licentious Boccaccio gives a keener edge +to his stories by putting them in the mouths of a party of people who +had taken refuge from the danger of death by plague, in a country-house. +It was to this inherited sentiment, this practical decision that to be +pre-occupied with the thought of death was in itself dignifying, and a +note of high quality, that the seriousness of the great Florentines of +the fifteenth century was partly due; and it was reinforced in them by +the actual sorrows of their times. How often, and in what various ways, +had they seen life stricken down, in their streets and houses! La bella +Simonetta dies in early youth, and is borne to the grave with uncovered +face. The young Cardinal Jacopo di Portogallo dies on a visit to +Florence--insignis forma fui et mirabili modestia--his epitaph dares to +say. Antonio Rossellino carves his tomb in the church of San Miniato, +with care for the shapely hands and feet, and sacred attire; Luca della +Robbia puts his skyeyest works there; and the tomb of the youthful and +princely prelate became the strangest and most beautiful thing in that +strange and beautiful place. After the execution of the Pazzi +conspirators, Botticelli is employed to paint their portraits. This +preoccupation with serious thoughts and sad images might easily have +resulted, as it did, for instance, in the gloomy villages of the Rhine, +or in the overcrowded parts of medieval Paris, as it still does in many +a village of the Alps, in something merely morbid or grotesque, in the +Danse Macabre of many French and German painters, or the grim inventions +of Duerer. From such a result the Florentine masters of the fifteenth +century were saved by their high Italian dignity and culture, and still +more by their tender pity for the thing itself. They must often have +leaned over the lifeless body, when all was at length quiet and smoothed +out. After death, it is said, the traces of slighter and more +superficial dispositions disappear; the lines become more simple and +dignified; only the abstract lines remain, in a great indifference. +They came thus to see death in its distinction; and following it perhaps +one stage further, dwelling for a moment on the point where all that +transitory dignity must break up, and discerning with no clearness a new +body, they paused just in time, and abstained, with a sentiment of +profound pity. + +Of all this sentiment Michelangelo is the achievement; and first of all, +of pity. Pieta--pity--the pity of the Virgin Mother over the dead body +of Christ, expanded into the pity of all mothers over all dead sons, the +entombment, with its cruel "hard stones"--that is the subject of his +predilection. He has left it in many forms, sketches, half-finished +designs, finished and unfinished groups of sculpture; but always as a +hopeless, rayless, almost heathen sorrow--no divine sorrow, but mere +pity and awe at the stiff limbs and colourless lips. There is a drawing +of his at Oxford, in which the dead body has sunk to the earth between +the mother's feet, with the arms extended over her knees. The tombs in +the sacristy of San Lorenzo are memorials, not of any of the nobler and +greater Medici, but of Giuliano, and Lorenzo the younger, noticeable +chiefly for their somewhat early death. It is mere human nature +therefore which has prompted the sentiment here. The titles assigned +traditionally to the four symbolical figures, Night and Day, The +Twilight and The Dawn, are far too definite for them; for these figures +come much nearer to the mind and spirit of their author, and are a more +direct expression of his thoughts, than any merely symbolical +conceptions could possibly have been. They concentrate and express, less +by way of definite conceptions than by the touches, the promptings of a +piece of music, all those vague fancies, misgivings, presentiments, +which shift and mix and define themselves and fade again, whenever the +thoughts try to fix themselves with sincerity on the conditions and +surroundings of the disembodied spirit. I suppose no one would come to +the sacristy of San Lorenzo for consolation; for seriousness, for +solemnity, for dignity of impression, perhaps, but not for consolation. +It is a place neither of terrible nor consoling thoughts, but of vague +and wistful speculation. Here, again, Michelangelo is the disciple not +so much of Dante as of the Platonists. Dante's belief in immortality is +formal, precise, and firm, as much so almost as that of a child, who +thinks the dead will hear if you cry loud enough. But in Michelangelo +you have maturity, the mind of the grown man, dealing cautiously and +dispassionately with serious things; and what hope he has is based on +the consciousness of ignorance--ignorance of man, ignorance of the +nature of the mind, its origin and capacities. Michelangelo is so +ignorant of the spiritual world, of the new body and its laws, that he +does not surely know whether the consecrated Host may not be the body of +Christ. And of all that range of sentiment he is the poet, a poet still +alive, and in possession of our inmost thoughts--dumb inquiry over the +relapse after death into the formlessness which preceded life, the +change, the revolt from that change, then the correcting, hallowing, +consoling rush of pity; at last, far off, thin and vague, yet not more +vague than the most definite thoughts men have had through three +centuries on a matter that has been so near their hearts, the new +body--a passing light, a mere intangible, external effect, over those +too rigid, or too formless faces; a dream that lingers a moment, +retreating in the dawn, incomplete, aimless, helpless; a thing with +faint hearing, faint memory, faint power of touch; a breath, a flame in +the doorway, a feather in the wind. + +The qualities of the great masters in art or literature, the combination +of those qualities, the laws by which they moderate, support, relieve +each other, are not peculiar to them; but most often typical standards, +or revealing instances, of the laws by which certain aesthetic effects +are produced. The old masters indeed are simpler; their characteristics +are written larger, and are easier to read, than their analogues in all +the mixed, confused productions of the modern mind. But when once we +have succeeded in defining for ourselves those characteristics, and the +law of their combination, we have acquired a standard or measure which +helps us to put in its right place many a vagrant genius, many an +unclassified talent, many precious though imperfect products of art. It +is so with the components of the true character of Michelangelo. That +strange interfusion of sweetness and strength is not to be found in +those who claimed to be his followers; but it is found in many of those +who worked before him, and in many others down to our own time, in +William Blake, for instance, and Victor Hugo, who, though not of his +school, and unaware, are his true sons, and help us to understand him, +as he in turn interprets and justifies them. Perhaps this is the chief +use in studying old masters. + +1871. + + + +LEONARDO DA VINCI + +HOMO MINISTER ET INTERPRES NATURAE + + +In Vasari's life of Leonardo da Vinci as we now read it there are some +variations from the first edition. There, the painter who has fixed the +outward type of Christ for succeeding centuries was a bold speculator, +holding lightly by other men's beliefs, setting philosophy above +Christianity. Words of his, trenchant enough to justify this impression, +are not recorded, and would have been out of keeping with a genius of +which one characteristic is the tendency to lose itself in a refined and +graceful mystery. The suspicion was but the time-honoured mode in which +the world stamps its appreciation of one who has thoughts for himself +alone, his high indifference, his intolerance of the common forms of +things; and in the second edition the image was changed into something +fainter and more conventional. But it is still by a certain mystery in +his work, and something enigmatical beyond the usual measure of great +men, that he fascinates, or perhaps half repels. His life is one of +sudden revolts, with intervals in which he works not at all, or apart +from the main scope of his work. By a strange fortune the works on which +his more popular fame rested disappeared early from the world, as the +Battle of the Standard; or are mixed obscurely with the work of meaner +hands, as the Last Supper. His type of beauty is so exotic that it +fascinates a larger number than it delights, and seems more than that of +any other artist to reflect ideas and views and some scheme of the world +within; so that he seemed to his contemporaries to be the possessor of +some unsanctified and sacred wisdom; as to Michelet and others to have +anticipated modern ideas. He trifles with his genius, and crowds all his +chief work into a few tormented years of later life; yet he is so +possessed by his genius that he passes unmoved through the most tragic +events, overwhelming his country and friends, like one who comes across +them by chance on some secret errand. + +His legend, as the French say, with the anecdotes which every one knows, +is one of the most brilliant in Vasari. Later writers merely copied it, +until, in 1804, Carlo Amoretti applied to it a criticism which left +hardly a date fixed, and not one of those anecdotes untouched. The +various questions thus raised have since that time become, one after +another, subjects of special study, and mere antiquarianism has in this +direction little more to do. For others remain the editing of the +thirteen books of his manuscripts, and the separation by technical +criticism of what in his reputed works is really his, from what is only +half his, or the work of his pupils. But a lover of strange souls may +still analyse for himself the impression made on him by those works, and +try to reach through it a definition of the chief elements of Leonardo's +genius. The legend, corrected and enlarged by its critics, may now and +then intervene to support the results of this analysis. + +His life has three divisions--thirty years at Florence, nearly twenty +years at Milan, then nineteen years of wandering, till he sinks to rest +under the protection of Francis the First at the Chateau de Clou. The +dishonour of illegitimacy hangs over his birth. Piero Antonio, his +father, was of a noble Florentine house, of Vinci in the Val d'Arno, and +Leonardo, brought up delicately among the true children of that house, +was the love-child of his youth, with the keen, puissant nature such +children often have. We see him in his youth fascinating all men by his +beauty, improvising music and songs, buying the caged birds and setting +them free, as he walked the streets of Florence, fond of odd bright +dresses and spirited horses. + +>From his earliest years he designed many objects, and constructed models +in relief, of which Vasari mentions some of women smiling. His father, +pondering over this promise in the child, took him to the workshop of +Andrea del Verrocchio, then the most famous artist in Florence. +Beautiful objects lay about there--reliquaries, pyxes, silver images for +the pope's chapel at Rome, strange fancy-work of the middle age, keeping +odd company with fragments of antiquity, then but lately discovered. +Another student Leonardo may have seen there--a boy into whose soul the +level light and aerial illusions of Italian sunsets had passed, in after +days famous as Perugino. Verrocchio was an artist of the earlier +Florentine type, carver, painter, and worker in metals, in one; +designer, not of pictures only, but of all things for sacred or +household use, drinking-vessels, ambries, instruments of music, making +them all fair to look upon, filling the common ways of life with the +reflexion of some far-off brightness; and years of patience had refined +his hand till his work was now sought after from distant places. + +It happened that Verrocchio was employed by the brethren of Vallombrosa +to paint the Baptism of Christ, and Leonardo was allowed to finish an +angel in the left hand corner. It was one of those moments in which the +progress of a great thing--here, that of the art of Italy--presses hard +and sharp on the happiness of an individual, through whose +discouragement and decrease, humanity, in more fortunate persons, comes +a step nearer to its final success. + +For beneath the cheerful exterior of the mere well-paid craftsman, +chasing brooches for the copes of Santa Maria Novella, or twisting metal +screens for the tombs of the Medici, lay the ambitious desire of +expanding the destiny of Italian art by a larger knowledge and insight +into things, a purpose in art not unlike Leonardo's still unconscious +purpose; and often, in the modelling of drapery, or of a lifted arm, or +of hair cast back from the face, there came to him something of the +freer manner and richer humanity of a later age. But in this Baptism the +pupil had surpassed the master; and Verrocchio turned away as one +stunned, and as if his sweet earlier work must thereafter be distasteful +to him, from the bright animated angel of Leonardo's hand. + +The angel may still be seen in Florence, a space of sunlight in the +cold, laboured old picture; but the legend is true only in sentiment, +for painting had always been the art by which Verrocchio set least +store. And as in a sense he anticipates Leonardo, so to the last +Leonardo recalls the studio of Verrocchio, in the love of beautiful +toys, such as the vessel of water for a mirror, and lovely needle-work +about the implicated hands in the Modesty and Vanity, and of reliefs +like those cameos which in the Virgin of the Balances hang all round the +girdle of Saint Michael, and of bright variegated stones, such as the +agates in the Saint Anne, and in a hieratic preciseness and grace, as of +a sanctuary swept and garnished. Amid all the cunning and intricacy of +his Lombard manner this never left him. Much of it there must have been +in that lost picture of Paradise, which he prepared as a cartoon for +tapestry, to be woven in the looms of Flanders. It was the perfection of +the older Florentine style of miniature-painting, with patient putting +of each leaf upon the trees and each flower in the grass, where the +first man and woman were standing. + +And because it was the perfection of that style, it awoke in Leonardo +some seed of discontent which lay in the secret places of his nature. +For the way to perfection is through a series of disgusts; and this +picture--all that he had done so far in his life at Florence--was after +all in the old slight manner. His art, if it was to be something in the +world, must be weighted with more of the meaning of nature and purpose +of humanity. Nature was "the true mistress of higher intelligences." So +he plunged into the study of nature. And in doing this he followed the +manner of the older students; he brooded over the hidden virtues of +plants and crystals, the lines traced by the stars as they moved in the +sky, over the correspondences which exist between the different orders +of living things, through which, to eyes opened, they interpret each +other; and for years he seemed to those about him as one listening to a +voice, silent for other men. + +He learned here the art of going deep, of tracking the sources of +expression to their subtlest retreats, the power of an intimate presence +in the things he handled. He did not at once or entirely desert his art; +only he was no longer the cheerful, objective painter, through whose +soul, as through clear glass, the bright figures of Florentine life, +only made a little mellower and more pensive by the transit, passed on +to the white wall. He wasted many days in curious tricks of design, +seeming to lose himself in the spinning of intricate devices of lines +and colours. He was smitten with a love of the impossible--the +perforation of mountains, changing the course of rivers, raising great +buildings, such as the church of San Giovanni, in the air; all those +feats for the performance of which natural magic professed to have the +key. Later writers, indeed, see in these efforts an anticipation of +modern mechanics; in him they were rather dreams, thrown off by the +overwrought and labouring brain. Two ideas were especially fixed in him, +as reflexes of things that had touched his brain in childhood beyond the +measure of other impressions--the smiling of women and the motion of +great waters. + +And in such studies some interfusion of the extremes of beauty and +terror shaped itself, as an image that might be seen and touched, in the +mind of this gracious youth, so fixed that for the rest of his life it +never left him; and as catching glimpses of it in the strange eyes or +hair of chance people, he would follow such about the streets of +Florence till the sun went down, of whom many sketches of his remain. +Some of these are full of a curious beauty, that remote beauty +apprehended only by those who have sought it carefully; who, starting +with acknowledged types of beauty, have refined as far upon these, as +these refine upon the world of common forms. But mingled inextricably +with this there is an element of mockery also; so that, whether in +sorrow or scorn, he caricatures Dante even. Legions of grotesques sweep +under his hand; for has not nature too her grotesques--the rent rock, +the distorting light of evening on lonely roads, the unveiled structure +of man in the embryo, or the skeleton? + +All these swarming fancies unite in the Medusa of the Uffizii. Vasari's +story of an earlier Medusa, painted on a wooden shield, is perhaps an +invention; and yet, properly told, has more of the air of truth about it +than any-thing else in the whole legend. For its real subject is not the +serious work of a man, but the experiment of a child. The lizards and +glow-worms and other strange small creatures which haunt an Italian +vineyard bring before one the whole picture of a child's life in a +Tuscan dwelling--half castle, half farm--and are as true to nature as +the pretended astonishment of the father for whom the boy has prepared a +surprise. It was not in play that he painted that other Medusa, the one +great picture which he left behind him in Florence. The subject has been +treated in various ways; Leonardo alone cuts to its centre; he alone +realises it as the head of a corpse, exercising its powers through all +the circumstances of death. What may be called the fascination of +corruption penetrates in every touch its exquisitely finished beauty. +About the dainty lines of the cheek the bat flits unheeded. The delicate +snakes seem literally strangling each other in terrified struggle to +escape from the Medusa brain. The hue which violent death always brings +with it is in the features: features singularly massive and grand, as we +catch them inverted, in a dexterous foreshortening, sloping upwards, +almost sliding down upon us, crown foremost, like a great calm stone +against which the wave of serpents breaks. But it is a subject that may +well be left to the beautiful verses of Shelley. + +The science of that age was all divination, clairvoyance, unsubjected to +our exact modern formulas, seeking in an instant of vision to +concentrate a thousand experiences. Later writers, thinking only of the +well-ordered treatise on painting which a Frenchman, Raffaelle du +Fresne, a hundred years afterwards, compiled from Leonardo's bewildered +manuscripts, written strangely, as his manner was, from right to left, +have imagined a rigid order in his inquiries. But this rigid order was +little in accordance with the restlessness of his character; and if we +think of him as the mere reasoner who subjects design to anatomy, and +composition to mathematical rules, we shall hardly have of him that +impression which those about him received from him. Poring over his +crucibles, making experiments with colour, trying, by a strange +variation of the alchemist's dream, to discover the secret, not of an +elixir to make man's natural life immortal, but rather of giving +immortality to the subtlest and most delicate effects of painting, he +seemed to them rather the sorcerer or the magician, possessed of curious +secrets and a hidden knowledge, living in a world of which he alone +possessed the key. What his philosophy seems to have been most like is +that of Paracelsus or Cardan; and much of the spirit of the older +alchemy still hangs about it, with its confidence in short cuts and odd +byways to knowledge. To him philosophy was to be something giving +strange swiftness and double sight, divining the sources of springs +beneath the earth or of expression beneath the human countenance, +clairvoyant of occult gifts in common or uncommon things, in the reed at +the brook-side, or the star which draws near to us but once in a +century. How, in this way, the clear purpose was overclouded, the fine +chaser's hand perplexed, we but dimly see; the mystery which at no point +quite lifts from Leonardo's life is deepest here. But it is certain that +at one period of his life he had almost ceased to be an artist. + +The year 1483--the year of the birth of Raffaelle and the thirty-first +of Leonardo's life--is fixed as the date of his visit to Milan by the +letter in which he recommends himself to Ludovico Sforza, and offers to +tell him, for a price, strange secrets in the art of war. It was that +Sforza who murdered his young nephew by slow poison, yet was so +susceptible of religious impressions that he blended mere earthly +passions with a sort of religious sentimentalism, and who took for his +device the mulberry-tree--symbol, in its long delay and sudden yielding +of flowers and fruit together, of a wisdom which economises all forces +for an opportunity of sudden and sure effect. The fame of Leonardo had +gone before him, and he was to model a colossal statue of Francesco, the +first Duke of Milan. As for Leonardo himself, he came not as an artist +at all, or careful of the fame of one; but as a player on the harp, a +strange harp of silver of his own construction, shaped in some curious +likeness to a horse's skull. The capricious spirit of Ludovico was +susceptible also of the charm of music, and Leonardo's nature had a kind +of spell in it. Fascination is always the word descriptive of him. No +portrait of his youth remains; but all tends to make us believe that up +to this time some charm of voice and aspect, strong enough to balance +the disadvantage of his birth, had played about him. His physical +strength was great; it was said that he could bend a horse-shoe like a +coil of lead. + +The Duomo, the work of artists from beyond the Alps, so fantastic to the +eye of a Florentine used to the mellow, unbroken surfaces of Giotto and +Arnolfo, was then in all its freshness; and below, in the streets of +Milan, moved a people as fantastic, changeful and dreamlike. To Leonardo +least of all men could there be anything poisonous in the exotic flowers +of sentiment which grew there. It was a life of brilliant sins and +exquisite amusements: Leonardo became a celebrated designer of pageants: +and it suited the quality of his genius, composed in almost equal parts +of curiosity and the desire of beauty, to take things as they came. + +Curiosity and the desire of beauty--these are the two elementary forces +in Leonardo's genius; curiosity often in conflict with the desire of +beauty, but generating, in union with it, a type of subtle and curious +grace. + +The movement of the fifteenth century was twofold; partly the +Renaissance, partly also the coming of what is called the "modern +spirit," with its realism, its appeal to experience: it comprehended a +return to antiquity, and a return to nature. Raffaelle represents the +return to antiquity, and Leonardo the return to nature. In this return +to nature, he was seeking to satisfy a boundless curiosity by her +perpetual surprises, a microscopic sense of finish by her finesse, or +delicacy of operation, that subtilitas naturae which Bacon notices. So +we find him often in intimate relations with men of science,--with Fra +Luca Poccioli the mathematician, and the anatomist Marc Antonio della +Torre. His observations and experiments fill thirteen volumes of +manuscript; and those who can judge describe him as anticipating long +before, by rapid intuition, the later ideas of science. He explained the +obscure light of the unilluminated part of the moon, knew that the sea +had once covered the mountains which contain shells, and the gathering +of the equatorial waters above the polar. + +He who thus penetrated into the most secret parts of nature preferred +always the more to the less remote, what, seeming exceptional, was an +instance of law more refined, the construction about things of a +peculiar atmosphere and mixed lights. He paints flowers with such +curious felicity that different writers have attributed to him a +fondness for particular flowers, as Clement the cyclamen, and Rio the +jasmin; while, at Venice, there is a stray leaf from his portfolio +dotted all over with studies of violets and the wild rose. In him first +appears the taste for what is bizarre or recherche in landscape; hollow +places full of the green shadow of bituminous rocks, ridged reefs of +trap-rock which cut the water into quaint sheets of light--their exact +antitype is in our own western seas; all the solemn effects of moving +water; you may follow it springing from its distant source among the +rocks on the heath of the Madonna of the Balances, passing, as a little +fall, into the treacherous calm of the Madonna of the Lake, next, as a +goodly river, below the cliffs of the Madonna of the Rocks, washing the +white walls of its distant villages, stealing out in a network of +divided streams in La Gioconda to the seashore of the Saint Anne--that +delicate place, where the wind passes like the hand of some fine etcher +over the surface, and the untorn shells are lying thick upon the sand, +and the tops of the rocks, to which the waves never rise, are green with +grass, grown fine as hair. It is the landscape, not of dreams or of +fancy, but of places far withdrawn, and hours selected from a thousand +with a miracle of finesse. Through Leonardo's strange veil of sight +things reach him so; in no ordinary night or day, but as in faint light +of eclipse, or in some brief interval of falling rain at daybreak, or +through deep water. + +And not into nature only; but he plunged also into human personality, +and became above all a painter of portraits; faces of a modelling more +skilful than has been seen before or since, embodied with a reality +which almost amounts to illusion, on dark air. To take a character as it +was, and delicately sound its stops, suited one so curious in +observation, curious in invention. So he painted the portraits of +Ludovico's mistresses, Lucretia Crivelli and Cecilia Galerani the +poetess, of Ludovico himself, and the Duchess Beatrice. The portrait of +Cecilia Galerani is lost; but that of Lucretia Crivelli has been +identified with La Belle Feroniere of the Louvre, and Ludovico's pale, +anxious face still remains in the Ambrosian library. Opposite is the +portrait of Beatrice d'Este, in whom Leonardo seems to have caught some +presentiment of early death, painting her precise and grave, full of the +refinement of the dead, in sad earth-coloured raiment, set with pale +stones. + +Sometimes this curiosity came in conflict with the desire of beauty; it +tended to make him go too far below that outside of things in which art +begins and ends. This struggle between the reason and its ideas, and the +senses, the desire of beauty, is the key to Leonardo's life at +Milan--his restlessness, his endless re-touchings, his odd experiments +with colour. How much must he leave unfinished, how much recommence! +His problem was the transmutation of ideas into images. What he had +attained so far had been the mastery of that earlier Florentine style, +with its naive and limited sensuousness. Now he was to entertain in this +narrow medium those divinations of a humanity too wide for it, that +larger vision of the opening world, which is only not too much for the +great, irregular art of Shakspere; and everywhere the effort is visible +in the work of his hands. This agitation, this perpetual delay, give him +an air of weariness and ennui. To others he seems to be aiming at an +impossible effect, to do something that art, that painting, can never +do. Often the expression of physical beauty at this or that point seems +strained and marred in the effort, as in those heavy German +foreheads--too German and heavy for perfect beauty. + +For there was a touch of Germany in that genius which, as Goethe said, +had "thought itself weary"--muede sich gedacht. What an anticipation of +modern Germany, for instance, in that debate on the question whether +sculpture or painting is the nobler art.* But there is this difference +between him and the German, that, with all that curious science, the +German would have thought nothing more was needed; and the name of +Goethe himself reminds one how great for the artist may be the danger of +overmuch science; how Goethe, who, in the Elective Affinities and the +first part of Faust, does transmute ideas into images, who wrought many +such transmutations, did not invariably find the spell-word, and in the +second part of Faust presents us with a mass of science which has almost +no artistic character at all. But Leonardo will never work till the +happy moment comes--that moment of bien-etre, which to imaginative men +is a moment of invention. On this moment he waits; other moments are but +a preparation, or after-taste of it. Few men distinguish between them as +jealously as he did. Hence so many flaws even in the choicest work. But +for Leonardo the distinction is absolute, and, in the moment of +bien-etre, the alchemy complete: the idea is stricken into colour and +imagery: a cloudy mysticism is refined to a subdued and graceful +mystery, and painting pleases the eye while it satisfies the soul. + +*How princely, how characteristic of Leonardo, the answer, Quanto piu, +un'arte porta seco fatica di corpo, tanto piu e vile! + +This curious beauty is seen above all in his drawings, and in these +chiefly in the abstract grace of the bounding lines. Let us take some of +these drawings, and pause over them awhile; and, first, one of those at +Florence--the heads of a woman and a little child, set side by side, but +each in its own separate frame. First of all, there is much pathos in +the reappearance in the fuller curves of the face of the child, of the +sharper, more chastened lines of the worn and older face, which leaves +no doubt that the heads are those of a little child and its mother. A +feeling for maternity is indeed always characteristic of Leonardo; and +this feeling is further indicated here by the half-humorous pathos of +the diminutive, rounded shoulders of the child. You may note a like +pathetic power in drawings of a young man seated in a stooping posture, +his face in his hands, as in sorrow; of a slave sitting in an uneasy +inclined posture, in some brief interval of rest; of a small Madonna and +Child, peeping sideways in half-reassured terror, as a mighty griffin +with batlike wings, one of Leonardo's finest inventions, descends +suddenly from the air to snatch up a lion wandering near them. But note +in these, as that which especially belongs to art, the contour of the +young man's hair, the poise of the slave's arm above his head, and the +curves of the head of the child, following the little skull within, thin +and fine as some seashell worn by the wind. + +Take again another head, still more full of sentiment, but of a +different kind, a little drawing in red chalk which every one remembers +who has examined at all carefully the drawings by old masters at the +Louvre. It is a face of doubtful sex, set in the shadow of its own hair, +the cheek-line in high light against it, with something voluptuous and +full in the eyelids and the lips. Another drawing might pass for the +same face in childhood, with parched and feverish lips, but with much +sweetness in the loose, short-waisted childish dress, with necklace and +bulla, and in the daintily bound hair. We might take the thread of +suggestion which these two drawings offer, when thus set side by side, +and, following it through the drawings at Florence, Venice, and Milan, +construct a sort of series, illustrating better than anything else +Leonardo's type of womanly beauty. Daughters of Herodias, with their +fantastic head-dresses knotted and folded so strangely to leave the +dainty oval of the face disengaged, they are not of the Christian +family, or of Raffaelle's. They are the clairvoyants, through whom, as +through delicate instruments, one becomes aware of the subtler forces of +nature, and the modes of their action, all that is magnetic in it, all +those finer conditions wherein material things rise to that subtlety of +operation which constitutes them spiritual, where only the finer nerve +and the keener touch can follow: it is as if in certain revealing +instances we actually saw them at their work on human flesh. Nervous, +electric, faint always with some inexplicable faintness, they seem to be +subject to exceptional conditions, to feel powers at work in the common +air unfelt by others, to become, as it were, receptacles of them, and +pass them on to us in a chain of secret influences. + +But among the more youthful heads there is one at Florence which Love +chooses for its own--the head of a young man, which may well be the +likeness of Andrea Salaino, beloved of Leonardo for his curled and +waving hair--belli capelli ricci e inanellati--and afterwards his +favourite pupil and servant. Of all the interests in living men and +women which may have filled his life at Milan, this attachment alone is +recorded; and in return Salaino identified himself so entirely with +Leonardo, that the picture of Saint Anne, in the Louvre, has been +attributed to him. It illustrates Leonardo's usual choice of pupils, men +of some natural charm of person or intercourse like Salaino, or men of +birth and princely habits of life like Francesco Melzi--men with just +enough genius to be capable of initiation into his secret, for the sake +of which they were ready to efface their own individuality. Among them, +retiring often to the Villa of the Melzi at Canonica al Vaprio, he +worked at his fugitive manuscripts and sketches, working for the present +hour, and for a few only, perhaps chiefly for himself. Other artists +have been as careless of present or future applause, in +self-forgetfulness, or because they set moral or political ends above +the ends of art; but in him this solitary culture of beauty seems to +have hung upon a kind of self-love, and a carelessness in the work of +art of all but art itself. Out of the secret places of a unique +temperament he brought strange blossoms and fruits hitherto unknown; and +for him, the novel impression conveyed, the exquisite effect woven, +counted as an end in itself--a perfect end. + +And these pupils of his acquired his manner so thoroughly, that though +the number of Leonardo's authentic works is very small indeed, there is +a multitude of other men's pictures through which we undoubtedly see +him, and come very near to his genius. Sometimes, as in the little +picture of the Madonna of the Balances, in which, from the bosom of His +mother, Christ weighs the pebbles of the brooks against the sins of men, +we have a hand, rough enough by contrast, working upon some fine hint or +sketch of his. Sometimes, as in the subjects of the Daughter of Herodias +and the Head of John the Baptist, the lost originals have been re-echoed +and varied upon again and again by Luini and others. At other times the +original remains, but has been a mere theme or motive, a type of which +the accessories might be modified or changed; and these variations have +but brought out the more the purpose, or expression of the original. It +is so with the so-called Saint John the Baptist of the Louvre--one of +the few naked figures Leonardo painted--whose delicate brown flesh and +woman's hair no one would go out into the wilderness to seek, and whose +treacherous smile would have us understand something far beyond the +outward gesture or circumstance. But the long, reedlike cross in the +hand, which suggests Saint John the Baptist, becomes faint in a copy at +the Ambrosian Library, and disappears altogether in another, in the +Palazzo Rosso at Genoa. Returning from the last to the original, we are +no longer surprised by Saint John's strange likeness to the Bacchus +which hangs near it, which set Theophile Gautier thinking of Heine's +notion of decayed gods, who, to maintain themselves, after the fall of +paganism, took employment in the new religion. We recognise one of those +symbolical inventions in which the ostensible subject is used, not as +matter for definite pictorial realisation, but as the starting-point of +a train of sentiment as subtle and vague as a piece of music. No one +ever ruled over his subject more entirely than Leonardo, or bent it more +dexterously to purely artistic ends. And so it comes to pass that though +he handles sacred subjects continually, he is the most profane of +painters; the given person or subject, Saint John in the Desert, or the +Virgin on the knees of Saint Anne, is often merely the pretext for a +kind of work which carries one quite out of the range of its +conventional associations. + +About the Last Supper, its decay and restorations, a whole literature +has risen up, Goethe's pensive sketch of its sad fortunes being far the +best. The death in childbirth of the Duchess Beatrice was followed in +Ludovico by one of those paroxysms of religious feeling which in him +were constitutional. The low, gloomy Dominican church of Saint Mary of +the Graces had been the favourite shrine of Beatrice. She had spent her +last days there, full of sinister presentiments; at last it had been +almost necessary to remove her from it by force; and now it was here +that mass was said a hundred times a day for her repose. On the damp +wall of the refectory, oozing with mineral salts, Leonardo painted the +Last Supper. A hundred anecdotes were told about it, his retouchings and +delays. They show him refusing to work except at the moment of +invention, scornful of whoever thought that art was a work of mere +industry and rule, often coming the whole length of Milan to give a +single touch. He painted it, not in fresco, where all must be impromptu, +but in oils, the new method which he had been one of the first to +welcome, because it allowed of so many afterthoughts, so refined a +working out of perfection. It turned out that on a plastered wall no +process could have been less durable. Within fifty years it had fallen +into decay. And now we have to turn back to Leonardo's own studies, +above all to one drawing of the central head at the Brera, which, in a +union of tenderness and severity in the face-lines, reminds one of the +monumental work of Mino da Fiesole, to trace it as it was. + +It was another effort to lift a given subject out of the range of its +conventional associations. Strange, after all the misrepresentations of +the middle age, was the effort to see it, not as the pale Host of the +altar, but as one taking leave of his friends. Five years afterwards the +young Raffaelle, at Florence, painted it with sweet and solemn effect in +the refectory of Saint Onofrio; but still with all the mystical +unreality of the school of Perugino. Vasari pretends that the central +head was never finished; but finished or unfinished, or owing part of +its effect to a mellowing decay, this central head does but consummate +the sentiment of the whole company--ghosts through which you see the +wall, faint as the shadows of the leaves upon the wall, on autumn +afternoons; this figure is but the faintest, most spectral of them all. +It is the image of what the history it symbolises has more and more +become for the world, paler and paler as it recedes into the distance. +Criticism came with its appeal from mystical unrealities to originals, +and restored no lifelike reality but these transparent shadows, spirits +which have not flesh and bones. + +The Last Supper was finished in 1497; in 1498 the French entered Milan, +and whether or not the Gascon bowmen used it as a mark for their arrows, +the model of Francesco Sforza certainly did not survive. What, in that +age, such work was capable of being--of what nobility, amid what racy +truthfulness to fact--we may judge from the bronze statue of Bartolomeo +Colleoni on horseback, modelled by Leonardo's master, Verrocchio (he +died of grief, it was said, because, the mould accidentally failing, he +was unable himself to complete it), still standing in the piazza of +Saint John and Saint Paul at Venice. Some traces of the thing may remain +in certain of Leonardo's drawings, and also, perhaps, by a singular +circumstance, in a far-off town of France. For Ludovico became a +prisoner, and ended his days at Loches in Touraine;--allowed at last, it +is said, to breathe fresher air for awhile in one of the rooms of a high +tower there, after many years of captivity in the dungeons below, where +all seems sick with barbarous feudal memories, and where his prison is +still shown, its walls covered with strange painted arabesques, ascribed +by tradition to his hand, amused a little, in this way, through the +tedious years:--vast helmets and faces and pieces of armour, among +which, in great letters, the motto Infelix Sum is woven in and out, and +in which, perhaps, it is not too fanciful to see the fruit of a wistful +after-dreaming over all those experiments with Leonardo on the armed +figure of the great duke, that had occupied the two so often during the +days of his good fortune at Milan. + +The remaining years of Leonardo's life are more or less years of +wandering. From his brilliant life at court he had saved nothing, and he +returned to Florence a poor man. Perhaps necessity kept his spirit +excited: the next four years are one prolonged rapture or ecstasy of +invention. He painted the pictures of the Louvre, his most authentic +works, which came there straight from the cabinet of Francis the First, +at Fontainebleau. One picture of his, the Saint Anne--not the Saint Anne +of the Louvre, but a mere cartoon, now in London--revived for a moment a +sort of appreciation more common in an earlier time, when good pictures +had still seemed miraculous; and for two days a crowd of people of all +qualities passed in naive excitement through the chamber where it hung, +and gave Leonardo a taste of Cimabue's triumph. But his work was less +with the saints than with the living women of Florence; for he lived +still in the polished society that he loved, and in the houses of +Florence, left perhaps a little subject to light thoughts by the death +of Savonarola--the latest gossip (1869) is of an undraped Monna Lisa, +found in some out-of-the-way corner of the late Orleans collection--he +saw Ginevra di Benci, and Lisa, the young third wife of Francesco del +Giocondo. As we have seen him using incidents of sacred story, not for +their own sake, or as mere subjects for pictorial realisation, but as a +symbolical language for fancies all his own, so now he found a vent for +his thoughts in taking one of these languid women, and raising her, as +Leda or Pomona, Modesty or Vanity, to the seventh heaven of symbolical +expression. + +La Gioconda is, in the truest sense, Leonardo's masterpiece, the +revealing instance of his mode of thought and work. In suggestiveness, +only the Melancholia of Duerer is comparable to it; and no crude +symbolism disturbs the effect of its subdued and graceful mystery. We +all know the face and hands of the figure, set in its marble chair, in +that cirque of fantastic rocks, as in some faint light under sea. +Perhaps of all ancient pictures time has chilled it least.* As often +happens with works in which invention seems to reach its limits, there +is an element in it given to, not invented by, the master. In that +inestimable folio of drawings, once in the possession of Vasari, were +certain designs by Verrocchio, faces of such impressive beauty that +Leonardo in his boyhood copied them many times. It is hard not to +connect with these designs of the elder, by-past master, as with its +germinal principle, the unfathomable smile, always with a touch of +something sinister in it, which plays over all Leonardo's work. +Besides, the picture is a portrait. From childhood we see this image +defining itself on the fabric of his dreams; and but for express +historical testimony, we might fancy that this was but his ideal lady, +embodied and beheld at last. What was the relationship of a living +Florentine to this creature of his thought? By means of what strange +affinities had the person and the dream grown up thus apart, and yet so +closely together? Present from the first incorporeally in Leonardo's +thought, dimly traced in the designs of Verrocchio, she is found present +at last in Il Giocondo's house. That there is much of mere portraiture +in the picture is attested by the legend that by artificial means, the +presence of mimes and flute-players, that subtle expression was +protracted on the face. Again, was it in four years and by renewed +labour never really completed, or in four months and as by stroke of +magic, that the image was projected? + +*Yet for Vasari there was some further magic of crimson in the lips and +cheeks, lost for us. + +The presence that thus rose so strangely beside the waters, is +expressive of what in the ways of a thousand years men had come to +desire. Hers is the head upon which all "the ends of the world are +come," and the eyelids are a little weary. It is a beauty wrought out +from within upon the flesh, the deposit, little cell by cell, of strange +thoughts and fantastic reveries and exquisite passions. Set it for a +moment beside one of those white Greek goddesses or beautiful women of +antiquity, and how would they be troubled by this beauty, into which the +soul with all its maladies has passed! All the thoughts and experience +of the world have etched and moulded there, in that which they have of +power to refine and make expressive the outward form, the animalism of +Greece, the lust of Rome, the reverie of the middle age with its +spiritual ambition and imaginative loves, the return of the Pagan world, +the sins of the Borgias. She is older than the rocks among which she +sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the +secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their +fallen day about her; and trafficked for strange webs with Eastern +merchants: and, as Leda, was the mother of Helen of Troy, and, as Saint +Anne, the mother of Mary ; and all this has been to her but as the sound +of lyres and flutes, and lives only in the delicacy with which it has +moulded the changing lineaments, and tinged the eyelids and the hands. +The fancy of a perpetual life, sweeping together ten thousand +experiences, is an old one; and modern thought has conceived the idea of +humanity as wrought upon by, and summing up in itself, all modes of +thought and life. Certainly Lady Lisa might stand as the embodiment of +the old fancy, the symbol of the modern idea. + +During these years at Florence Leonardo's history is the history of his +art; he himself is lost in the bright cloud of it. The outward history +begins again in 1502, with a wild journey through central Italy, which +he makes as the chief engineer of Caesar Borgia. The biographer, putting +together the stray jottings of his manuscripts, may follow him through +every day of it, up the strange tower of Siena, which looks towards +Rome, elastic like a bent bow, down to the seashore at Piombino, each +place appearing as fitfully as in a fever dream. + +One other great work was left for him to do, a work all trace of which +soon vanished, The Battle of the Standard, in which he had Michelangelo +for his rival. The citizens of Florence, desiring to decorate the walls +of the great council-chamber, had offered the work for competition, and +any subject might be chosen from the Florentine wars of the fifteenth +century. Michelangelo chose for his cartoon an incident of the war with +Pisa, in which the Florentine soldiers, bathing in the Arno, are +surprised by the sound of trumpets, and run to arms. His design has +reached us only in an old engraving, which perhaps helps us less than +what we remember of the background of his Holy Family in the Uffizii to +imagine in what superhuman form, such as might have beguiled the heart +of an earlier world, those figures may have risen from the water. +Leonardo chose an incident from the battle of Anghiari, in which two +parties of soldiers fight for a standard. Like Michelangelo's, his +cartoon is lost, and has come to us only in sketches, and in a fragment +of Rubens. Through the accounts given we may discern some lust of +terrible things in it, so that even the horses tore each other with +their teeth; and yet one fragment of it, in a drawing of his at +Florence, is far different--a waving field of lovely armour, the chased +edgings running like lines of sunlight from side to side. Michelangelo +was twenty-seven years old; Leonardo more than fifty; and Raffaelle, +then nineteen years old, visiting Florence for the first time, came and +watched them as they worked. + +We catch a glimpse of him again, at Rome in 1514, surrounded by his +mirrors and vials and furnaces, making strange toys that seemed alive of +wax and quicksilver. The hesitation which had haunted him all through +life, and made him like one under a spell, was upon him now with double +force. No one had ever carried political indifferentism farther; it had +always been his philosophy to "fly before the storm"; he is for the +Sforzas, or against them, as the tide of their fortune turns. Yet now in +the political society of Rome, he came to be suspected of concealed +French sympathies. It paralysed him to find himself among enemies; and +he turned wholly to France, which had long courted him. + +France was about to become an Italy more Italian than Italy itself. +Francis the First, like Lewis the Twelfth before him, was attracted by +the finesse of Leonardo's work; La Gioconda was already in his cabinet, +and he offered Leonardo the little Chateau de Clou, with its vineyards +and meadows, in the pleasant valley of the Masse, just outside the walls +of the town of Amboise, where, especially in the hunting season, the +court then frequently resided. A Monsieur Lyonard, peinteur du Roy pour +Amboyse--so the letter of Francis the First is headed. It opens a +prospect, one of the most interesting in the history of art, where, +under a strange mixture of lights, Italian art dies away as a French +exotic. + +Two questions remain, after much busy antiquarianism, concerning +Leonardo's death--the question of the precise form of his religion, and +the question whether Francis the First was present at the time. They are +of about equally little importance in the estimate of Leonardo's genius. +The directions in his will about the thirty masses and the great candles +for the church of Saint Florentin are things of course, their real +purpose being immediate and practical; and on no theory of religion +could these hurried offices be of much consequence. We forget them in +speculating how one who had been always so desirous of beauty, but +desired it always in such definite and precise forms, as hands or +flowers or hair, looked forward now into the vague land, and experienced +the last curiosity. + +1869. + + + +THE SCHOOL OF GIORGIONE + +It is the mistake of much popular criticism to regard poetry, music, and +Painting--all the various products of art--as but translations into +different languages of one and the same fixed quantity of imaginative +thought, supplemented by certain technical qualities of colour, in +painting--of sound, in music--of rhythmical words, in poetry. In this +way, the sensuous element in art, and with it almost everything in art +that is essentially artistic, is made a matter of indifference; and a +clear apprehension of the opposite principle--that the sensuous material +of each art brings with it a special phase or quality of beauty, +untranslatable into the forms of any other, an order of impressions +distinct in kind--is the beginning of all true aesthetic criticism. For, +as art addresses not pure sense, still less the pure intellect, but the +"imaginative reason" through the senses, there are differences of kind +in aesthetic beauty, corresponding to the differences in kind of the +gifts of sense themselves. Each art, therefore, having its own peculiar +and incommunicable sensuous charm, has its own special mode of reaching +the imagination, its own special responsibilities to its material. One +of the functions of aesthetic criticism is to define these limitations; +to estimate the degree in which a given work of art fulfils its +responsibilities to its special material; to note in a picture that true +pictorial charm, which is neither a mere poetical thought nor sentiment, +on the one hand, nor a mere result of communicable technical skill in +colour or design, on the other; to define in a poem that true poetical +quality, which is neither descriptive nor meditative merely, but comes +of an inventive handling of rhythmical language--the element of song in +the singing; to note in music the musical charm--that essential music, +which presents no words, no matter of sentiment or thought, separable +from the special form in which it is conveyed to us. + +To such a philosophy of the variations of the beautiful, Lessing's +analysis of the spheres of sculpture and poetry, in the Laocoon, was a +very important contribution. But a true appreciation of these things is +possible only in the light of a whole system of such art-casuistries. +And it is in the criticism of painting that this truth most needs +enforcing, for it is in popular judgments on pictures that that false +generalisation of all art into forms of poetry is most prevalent. To +suppose that all is mere technical acquirement in delineation or touch, +working through and addressing itself to the intelligence, on the one +side, or a merely poetical, or what may be called literary interest, +addressed also to the pure intelligence, on the other;--this is the way +of most spectators, and of many critics, who have never caught sight, +all the time, of that true pictorial quality. which lies between (unique +pledge of the possession of the pictorial gift) the inventive or +creative handling of pure line and colour, which, as almost always in +Dutch painting, as often also in the works of Titian or Veronese, is +quite independent of anything definitely poetical in the subject it +accompanies. It is the drawing--the design projected from that peculiar +pictorial temperament or constitution, in which, while it may possibly +be ignorant of true anatomical proportions, all things whatever, all +poetry, every idea however abstract or obscure, floats up as a visible +scene, or image: it is the colouring--that weaving as of just +perceptible gold threads of light through the dress, the flesh, the +atmosphere, in Titian's Lace-girl--the staining of the whole fabric of +the thing with a new, delightful physical quality. This drawing, +then--the arabesque traced in the air by Tintoret's flying figures, by +Titian's forest branches; this colouring--the magic conditions of light +and hue in the atmosphere of Titian's Lace-girl, or Rubens's Descent +from the Cross--these essential pictorial qualities must first of all +delight the sense, delight it as directly and sensuously as a fragment +of Venetian glass; and through this delight only be the medium of +whatever poetry or science may lie beyond them, in the intention of the +composer. In its primary aspect, a great picture has no more definite +message for us than an accidental play of sunlight and shadow for a +moment, on the wall or floor: is itself, in truth, a space of such +fallen light, caught as the colours are caught in an Eastern carpet, but +refined upon, and dealt with more subtly and exquisitely than by nature +itself. And this primary and essential condition fulfilled, we may trace +the coming of poetry into painting, by fine gradations upwards; from +Japanese fan-painting, for instance, where we get, first, only abstract +colour; then, just a little interfused sense of the poetry of flowers; +then, sometimes, perfect flower-painting; and so, onwards, until in +Titian we have, as his poetry in the Ariadne, so actually a touch of +true childlike humour in the diminutive, quaint figure with its silk +gown, which ascends the temple stairs, in his picture of the +Presentation of the Virgin, at Venice. + +But although each art has thus its own specific order of impressions, +and an untranslatable charm, while a just apprehension of the ultimate +differences of the arts is the beginning of aesthetic criticism; yet it +is noticeable that, in its special mode of handling its given material, +each art may be observed to pass into the condition of some other art, +by what German critics term an Anders-streben--a partial alienation from +its own limitations, by which the arts are able, not indeed to supply +the place of each other, but reciprocally to lend each other new forces. + +Thus some of the most delightful music seems to be always approaching to +figure, to pictorial definition. Architecture, again, though it has its +own laws--laws esoteric enough, as the true architect knows only too +well--yet sometimes aims at fulfilling the conditions of a picture, as +in the Arena chapel; or of sculpture, as in the flawless unity of +Giotto's tower at Florence; and often finds a true poetry, as in those +strangely twisted staircases of the chateaux of the country of the +Loire, as if it were intended that among their odd turnings the actors +in a wild life might pass each other unseen: there being a poetry also +of memory and of the mere effect of time, by which it often profits +greatly. Thus, again, sculpture aspires out of the hard limitation of +pure form towards colour, or its equivalent; poetry also, in many ways, +finding guidance from the other arts, the analogy between a Greek +tragedy and a work of Greek sculpture, between a sonnet and a relief, of +French poetry generally with the art of engraving, being more than mere +figures of speech; and all the arts in common aspiring towards the +principle of music; music being the typical, or ideally consummate art, +the object of the great Anders-streben of all art, of all that is +artistic, or partakes of artistic qualities. + +All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music. For while in +all other works of art it is possible to distinguish the matter from the +form, and the understanding can always make this distinction, yet it is +the constant effort of art to obliterate it. That the mere matter of a +poem, for instance--its subject, its given incidents or situation; that +the mere matter of a picture--the actual circumstances of an event, the +actual topography of a landscape--should be nothing without the form, +the spirit, of the handling; that this form, this mode of handling, +should become an end in itself, should penetrate every part of the +matter:--this is what all art constantly strives after, and achieves in +different degrees. + +This abstract language becomes clear enough, if we think of actual +examples. In an actual landscape we see a long white road, lost suddenly +on the hill-verge. That is the matter of one of the etchings of M. +Legros: only, in this etching, it is informed by an indwelling solemnity +of expression, seen upon it or half-seen, within the limits of an +exceptional moment, or caught from his own mood perhaps, but which he +maintains as the very essence of the thing, throughout his work. +Sometimes a momentary tint of stormy light may invest a homely or too +familiar scene with a character which might well have been drawn from +the deep places of the imagination. Then we might say that this +particular effect of light, this sudden inweaving of gold thread through +the texture of the haystack, and the poplars, and the grass, gives the +scene artistic qualities; that it is like a picture. And such tricks of +circumstance are commonest in landscape which has little salient +character of its own; because, in such scenery, all the material details +are so easily absorbed by that informing expression of passing light, +and elevated, throughout their whole extent, to a new and delightful +effect by it. And hence the superiority, for most conditions of the +picturesque, of a river-side in France to a Swiss valley, because, on +the French river-side, mere topography, the simple material, counts for +so little, and, all being so pure, untouched, and tranquil in itself, +mere light and shade have such easy work in modulating it to one +dominant tone. The Venetian landscape, on the other hand, has in its +material conditions much which is hard, or harshly definite; but the +masters of the Venetian school have shown themselves little burdened by +them. Of its Alpine background they retain certain abstracted elements +only, of cool colour and tranquillising line; and they use its actual +details, the brown windy turrets, the straw-coloured fields, the forest +arabesques, but as the notes of a music which duly accompanies the +presence of their men and women, presenting us with the spirit or +essence only of a certain sort of landscape--a country of the pure +reason or half-imaginative memory. + +Poetry, again, works with words addressed in the first instance to the +mere intelligence; and it deals, most often, with a definite subject or +situation. Sometimes it may find a noble and quite legitimate function +in the expression of moral or political aspiration, as often in the +poetry of Victor Hugo. In such instances it is easy enough for the +understanding to distinguish between the matter and the form, however +much the matter, the subject, the element which is addressed to the mere +intelligence, has been penetrated by the informing, artistic spirit. +But the ideal types of poetry are those in which this distinction is +reduced to its minimum; so that lyrical poetry, precisely because in it +we are least able to detach the matter from the form, without a +deduction of something from that matter itself, is, at least +artistically, the highest and most complete form of poetry. And the very +perfection of such poetry often seems to depend, in part, on a certain +suppression or vagueness of mere subject, so that the meaning reaches us +through ways not distinctly traceable by the understanding, as in some +of the most imaginative compositions of William Blake, and often in +Shakspere's songs, as pre-eminently in that song of Mariana's page in +Measure for Measure, in which the kindling force and poetry of the whole +play seems to pass for a moment into an actual strain of music. + +And this principle holds good of all things that partake in any degree +of artistic qualities, of the furniture of our houses, and of dress, for +instance, of life itself, of gesture and speech, and the details of +daily intercourse; these also, for the wise, being susceptible of a +suavity and charm, caught from the way in which they are done, which +gives them a worth in themselves; wherein, indeed, lies what is valuable +and justly attractive, in what is called the fashion of a time, which +elevates the trivialities of speech, and manner, and dress, into "ends +in themselves," and gives them a mysterious grace and attractiveness in +the doing of them. + +Art, then, is thus always striving to be independent of the mere +intelligence, to become a matter of pure perception, to get rid of its +responsibilities to its subject or material; the ideal examples of +poetry and painting being those in which the constituent elements of the +composition are so welded together, that the material or subject no +longer strikes the intellect only; nor the form, the eye or the ear +only; but form and matter, in their union or identity, present one +single effect to the "imaginative reason," that complex faculty for +which every thought and feeling is twin-born with its sensible analogue +or symbol. + +It is the art of music which most completely realises this artistic +ideal, this perfect identification of form and matter. In its ideal, +consummate moments, the end is not distinct from the means, the form +from the matter, the subject from the expression; they inhere in and +completely saturate each other; and to it, therefore, to the condition +of its perfect moments, all the arts may be supposed constantly to tend +and aspire. Music, then, and not poetry, as is so often supposed, is the +true type or measure of perfected art. Therefore, although each art has +its incommunicable element, its untranslatable order of impressions, its +unique mode of reaching the "imaginative reason," yet the arts may be +represented as continually struggling after the law or principle of +music, to a condition which music alone completely realises; and one of +the chief functions of aesthetic criticism, dealing with the products of +art, new or old, is to estimate the degree in which each of those +products approaches, in this sense, to musical law. + +By no school of painters have, the necessary limitations of the art of +painting been so unerringly though instinctively apprehended, and the +essence of what is pictorial in a picture so justly conceived, as by the +school of Venice; and the train of thought suggested in what has been +now said is, perhaps, a not unfitting introduction to a few pages about +Giorgione, who, though much has been taken by recent criticism from what +was reputed to be his work, yet, more entirely than any other painter, +sums up, in what we know of himself and his art, the spirit of the +Venetian school. + +The beginnings of Venetian painting link themselves to the last, stiff, +half-barbaric splendours of Byzantine decoration, and are but the +introduction into the crust of marble and gold on the walls of the Duomo +of Murano, or of Saint Mark's, of a little more of human expression. And +throughout the course of its later development, always subordinate to +architectural effect, the work of the Venetian school never escaped from +the influence of its beginnings. Unassisted, and therefore unperplexed, +by naturalism, religious mysticism, philosophical theories, it had no +Giotto, no Angelico, no Botticelli. Exempt from the stress of thought +and sentiment, which taxed so severely the resources of the generations +of Florentine artists, those earlier Venetian painters, down to +Carpaccio and the Bellini, seem never for a moment to have been tempted +even to lose sight of the scope of their art in its strictness, or to +forget that painting must be, before all things decorative, a thing for +the eye; a space of colour on the wall, only more dexterously blent than +the marking of its precious stone or the chance interchange of sun and +shade upon it--this, to begin and end with--whatever higher matter of +thought, or poetry, or religious reverie might play its part therein, +between. At last, with final mastery of all the technical secrets of his +art, and with somewhat more than "a spark of the divine fire" to his +share, comes Giorgione. He is the inventor of genre, of those easily +movable pictures which serve neither for uses of devotion, nor of +allegorical or historic teaching--little groups of real men and women, +amid congruous furniture or landscape--morsels of actual life, +conversation or music or play, refined upon or idealised, till they come +to seem like glimpses of life from afar. Those spaces of more cunningly +blent colour, obediently filling their places, hitherto, in a mere +architectural scheme, Giorgione detaches from the wall; he frames them +by the hands of some skilful carver, so that people may move them +readily and take with them where they go, like a poem in manuscript, or +a musical instrument, to be used, at will, as a means of self-education, +stimulus or solace, coming like an animated presence, into one's +cabinet, to enrich the air as with some choice aroma, and, like persons, +live with us, for a day or a lifetime. Of all art like this, art which +has played so large a part in men's culture since that time, Giorgione +is the initiator. Yet in him too that old Venetian clearness or justice, +in the apprehension of the essential limitations of the pictorial art, +is still undisturbed; and, while he interfuses his painted work with a +high-strung sort of poetry, caught directly from a singularly rich and +high-strung sort of life, yet in his selection of subject, or phase of +subject, in the subordination of mere subject to pictorial design, to +the main purpose of a picture, he is typical of that aspiration of all +the arts towards music, which I have endeavoured to explain,--towards +the perfect identification of matter and form. + +Born so near to Titian, though a little before him, that these two +companion pupils of the aged Giovanni Bellini may almost be called +contemporaries, Giorgione stands to Titian in something like the +relationship of Sordello to Dante, in Mr. Browning's poem. Titian, when +he leaves Bellini, becomes, in turn, the pupil of Giorgione; he lives in +constant labour more than sixty years after Giorgione is in his grave; +and with such fruit, that hardly one of the greater towns of Europe is +without some fragment of it. But the slightly older man, with his so +limited actual product (what remains to us of it seeming, when narrowly +examined, to reduce itself to almost one picture, like Sordello's one +fragment of lovely verse), yet expresses, in elementary motive and +principle, that spirit--itself the final acquisition of all the long +endeavours of Venetian art--which Titian spreads over his whole life's +activity. + +And, as we might expect, something fabulous and illusive has always +mingled itself in the brilliancy of Giorgione's fame. The exact +relationship to him of many works--drawings, portraits, painted +idylls--often fascinating enough, which in various collections went by +his name, was from the first uncertain. Still, six or eight famous +pictures at Dresden, Florence and the Louvre, were undoubtedly +attributed to him, and in these, if anywhere, something of the splendour +of the old Venetian humanity seemed to have been preserved. But of those +six or eight famous pictures it is now known that only one is certainly +from Giorgione's hand. The accomplished science of the subject has come +at last, and, as in other instances, has not made the past more real for +us, but assured us that we possess of it less than we seemed to possess. +Much of the work on which Giorgione's immediate fame depended, work done +for instantaneous effect, in all probability passed away almost within +his own age, like the frescoes on the facade of the fondaco dei Tedeschi +at Venice, some crimson traces of which, however, still give a strange +additional touch of splendour to the scene of the Rialto. And then there +is a barrier or borderland, a period about the middle of the sixteenth +century, in passing through which the tradition miscarries, and the true +outlines of Giorgione's work and person become obscured. It became +fashionable for wealthy lovers of art, with no critical standard of +authenticity, to collect so-called works of Giorgione, and a multitude +of imitations came into circulation. And now, in the "new Vasari,"* the +great traditional reputation, woven with so profuse demand on men's +admiration, has been scrutinised thread by thread; and what remains of +the most vivid and stimulating of Venetian masters, a live flame, as it +seemed, in those old shadowy times, has been reduced almost to a name by +his most recent critics. + +*Crowe and Cavalcaselle: History of Painting in North Italy. + +Yet enough remains to explain why the legend grew up, above the name, +why the name attached itself, in many instances, to the bravest work of +other men. The Concert in the Pitti Palace, in which a monk, with cowl +and tonsure, touches the keys of a harpsichord, while a clerk, placed +behind him, grasps the handle of the viol, and a third, with hat and +plume, seems to wait upon the true interval for beginning to sing, is +undoubtedly Giorgione's. The outline of the lifted finger, the trace of +the plume, the very threads of the fine linen, which fasten themselves +on the memory, in the moment before they are lost altogether in that +calm unearthly glow, the skill which has caught the waves of wandering +sound, and fixed them for ever on the lips and hands--these are indeed +the master's own; and the criticism which, while dismissing so much +hitherto believed to be Giorgione's, has established the claims of this +one picture, has left it among the most precious things in the world of +art. + +It is noticeable that the "distinction" of this Concert, its sustained +evenness of perfection, alike in design, in execution, and in choice of +personal type, becomes for the "new Vasari" the standard of Giorgione's +genuine work. Finding here enough to explain his influence, and the true +seal of mastery, its authors assign to Pellegrino da San Daniele the +Holy Family in the Louvre, for certain points in which it comes short of +that standard, but which will hardly diminish the spectator's enjoyment +of a singular charm of liquid air, with which the whole picture seems +instinct, filling the eyes and lips, the very garments, of its sacred +personages, with some wind-searched brightness and energy; of which fine +air the blue peak, clearly defined in the distance, is, as it were, the +visible pledge. Similarly, another favourite picture in the Louvre, the +subject of a Sonnet by a poet whose own painted work often comes to mind +as one ponders over these precious things--the Fete Champetre, is +assigned to an imitator of Sebastian del Piombo; and the Tempest, in the +Academy at Venice (a slighter loss, perhaps, though not without its +pleasant effect of clearing weather, towards the left, its one untouched +morsel), to Paris Bordone, or perhaps to "some advanced craftsman of the +sixteenth century." From the gallery at Dresden, the Knight embracing a +Lady, where the knight's broken gauntlets seem to mark some well-known +pause in a story we would willingly hear the rest of; is conceded to "a +Brescian hand," and Jacob meeting Rachel to a pupil of Palma; and, +whatever their charm, we are called on to give up the Ordeal and the +Finding of Moses with its jewel-like pools of water, perhaps to Bellini. + +Nor has the criticism, which thus so freely diminishes the number of his +authentic works, added anything important to the well-known outline of +the life and personality of the man: only, it has fixed one or two +dates, one or two circumstances, a little more exactly. Giorgione was +born before the year 1477, and spent his childhood at Castelfranco, +where the last crags of the Venetian Alps break down romantically, with +something of parklike grace, to the plain. A natural child of the family +of the Barbarelli by a peasant-girl of Vedelago, he finds his way early +into the circle of notable persons--people of courtesy; and becomes +initiated into those differences of personal type, manner, and even of +dress, which are best understood there--that "distinction" of the +Concert of the Pitti Palace. Not far from his home lives Catherine of +Cornara, formerly Queen of Cyprus; and, up in the towers which still +remain, Tuzio Costanzo, the famous condottiere--a picturesque remnant of +medieval manners, amid a civilisation rapidly changing. Giorgione paints +their portraits; and when Tuzio's son, Matteo, dies in early youth, +adorns in his memory a chapel in the church of Castelfranco, painting on +this occasion, perhaps, the altar-piece, foremost among his authentic +works, still to be seen there, with the figure of the warrior-saint, +Liberale, of which the original little study in oil, with the delicately +gleaming, silver-grey armour, is one of the greater treasures of the +National Gallery, and in which, as in some other knightly personages +attributed to him, people have supposed the likeness of his own +presumably gracious presence. Thither, at last, he is himself brought +home from Venice, early dead, but celebrated. It happened, about his +thirty-fourth year, that in one of those parties at which he entertained +his friends with music, he met a certain lady of whom he became greatly +enamoured, and "they rejoiced greatly," says Vasari, "the one and the +other, in their loves." And two quite different legends concerning it +agree in this, that it was through this lady he came by his death: +Ridolfi relating that, being robbed of her by one of his pupils, he died +of grief at the double treason;--Vasari, that she being secretly +stricken of the plague, and he making his visits to her as usual, he +took the sickness from her mortally, along with her kisses, and so +briefly departed. + +But, although the number of Giorgione's extant works has been thus +limited by recent criticism, all is not done when the real and the +traditional elements in what concerns him have been discriminated; for, +in what is connected with a great name, much that is not real is often +very stimulating; and, for the aesthetic philosopher, over and above the +real Giorgione and his authentic extant works, there remains the +Giorgionesque also--an influence, a spirit or type in art, active in men +so different as those to whom many of his supposed works are really +assignable--a veritable school, which grew together out of all those +fascinating works rightly or wrongly attributed to him; out of many +copies from, or variations on him, by unknown or uncertain workmen, +whose drawings and designs were, for various reasons, prized as his; out +of the immediate impression he made upon his contemporaries, and with +which he continued in men's minds; out of many traditions of subject and +treatment, which really descend from him to our own time, and by +retracing which we fill out the original image; Giorgione thus becoming +a sort of impersonation of Venice itself, its projected reflex or ideal, +all that was intense or desirable in it thus crystallising about the +memory of this wonderful young man. + +And now, finally, let me illustrate some of the characteristics of this +School of Giorgione, as we may call it, which, for most of us, +notwithstanding all that negative criticism of the "new Vasari," will +still identify itself with those famous pictures at Florence, Dresden +and Paris; and in which a certain artistic ideal is defined for us--the +conception of a peculiar aim and procedure in art, which we may +understand as the Giorgionesque, wherever we find it, whether in +Venetian work generally, or in work of our own time--and of which the +Concert, that undoubted work of Giorgione in the Pitti Palace, is the +typical instance, and a pledge authenticating the connexion of the +school with the master. + +I have spoken of a certain interpretation of the matter or subject of a +work of art with the form of it, a condition realised absolutely only in +music, as the condition to which every form of art is perpetually +aspiring. In the art of painting, the attainment of this ideal +condition, this perfect interpretation of the subject with colour and +design, depends, of course, in great measure, on dexterous choice of +that subject, or phase of subject; and such choice is one of the secrets +of Giorgione's school. It is the school of genre, and employs itself +mainly with "painted idylls," but, in the production of this pictorial +poetry, exercises a wonderful tact in the selecting of such matter as +lends itself most readily and entirely to pictorial form, to complete +expression by drawing and colour. For although its productions are +painted poems, they belong to a sort of poetry which tells itself +without an articulated story. The master is pre-eminent for the +resolution, the ease and quickness, with which he reproduces +instantaneous motion--the lacing-on of armour, with the head bent back +so stately--the fainting lady--the embrace, rapid as the kiss caught, +with death itself, from dying lips--the momentary conjunction of mirrors +and polished armour and still water, by which all the sides of a solid +image are presented at once, solving that casuistical question whether +painting can present an object as completely as sculpture. The sudden +act, the rapid transition of thought, the passing expression--this he +arrests with that vivacity which Vasari has attributed to him, il fuoco +Giorgionesco, as he terms it. Now it is part of the ideality of the +highest sort of dramatic poetry, that it presents us with a kind of +profoundly significant and animated instants, a mere gesture, a look, a +smile, perhaps--some brief and wholly concrete moment--into which, +however, all the motives, all the interests and effects of a long +history, have condensed themselves, and which seem to absorb past and +future in an intense consciousness of the present. Such ideal instants +the school of Giorgione selects, with its admirable tact, from that +feverish, tumultuously coloured life of the old citizens of +Venice--exquisite pauses in time, in which, arrested thus, we seem to be +spectators of all the fulness of existence, and which are like some +consummate extract or quintessence of life. + +It is to the law or condition of music, as I said, that all art like +this is really aspiring and, in the school of Giorgione, the perfect +moments of music itself, the making or hearing of music, song or its +accompaniment, are themselves prominent as subjects. On that background +of the silence of Venice, which the visitor there finds so impressive, +the world of Italian music was then forming. In choice of subject, as in +all besides, the Concert of the Pitti Palace is typical of all that +Giorgione, himself an admirable musician, touched with his influence; +and in sketch or finished picture, in various collections, we may follow +it through many intricate variations--men fainting at music, music heard +at the pool-side while people fish, or mingled with the sound of the +pitcher in the well, or heard across running water, or among the flocks; +the tuning of instruments--people with intent faces, as if listening, +like those described by Plato in an ingenious passage, to detect the +smallest interval of musical sound, the smallest undulation in the air, +or feeling for music in thought on a stringless instrument, ear and +finger refining themselves infinitely, in the appetite for sweet +sound--a momentary touch of an instrument in the twilight, as one passes +through some unfamiliar room, in a chance company. + +In such favourite incidents, then, of Giorgione's school, music or +music-like intervals in our existence, life itself is conceived as a +sort of listening--listening to music, to the reading of Bandello's +novels, to the sound of water, to time as it flies. Often such moments +are really our moments of play, and we are surprised at the unexpected +blessedness of what may seem our least important part of time; not +merely because play is in many instances that to which people really +apply their own best powers, but also because at such times, the stress +of our servile, everyday attentiveness being relaxed, the happier powers +in things without us are permitted free passage, and have their way with +us. And so, from music, the school of Giorgione passes often to the play +which is like music; to those masques in which men avowedly do but play +at real life, like children "dressing up," disguised in the strange old +Italian dresses, parti-coloured, or fantastic with embroidery and furs, +of which the master was so curious a designer, and which, above all the +spotless white linen at wrist and throat, he painted so dexterously. + +And when people are happy in this thirsty land water will not be far +off; and in the school of Giorgione, the presence of water--the well, or +marble-rimmed pool, the drawing or pouring of water, as the woman pours +it from a pitcher with her jewelled hand in the Fete Champetre, +listening, perhaps, to the cool sound as it falls, blent with the music +of the pipes--is as characteristic, and almost as suggestive, as that of +music itself. And the landscape feels, and is glad of it also--a +landscape full of clearness, of the effects of water, of fresh rain +newly passed through the air, and collected into the grassy channels; +the air, too, in the school of Giorgione, seeming as vivid as the people +who breathe it, and literally empyrean, all impurities being burnt out +of it, and no taint, no floating particle of anything but its own proper +elements allowed to subsist within it. + +Its scenery is such as in England we call "park scenery," with some +elusive refinement felt about the rustic buildings, the choice grass, +the grouped trees, the undulations deftly economised for graceful +effect. Only, in Italy all natural things are, as it were, woven through +and through with gold thread, even the cypress revealing it among the +folds of its blackness. And it is with gold dust, or gold thread, that +these Venetian painters seem to work, spinning its fine filaments, +through the solemn human flesh, away into the white plastered walls of +the thatched huts. The harsher details of the mountains recede to a +harmonious distance, the one peak of rich blue above the horizon +remaining but as the visible warrant of that due coolness which is all +we need ask here of the Alps, with their dark rains and streams. Yet +what real, airy space, as the eye passes from level to level, through +the long-drawn valley in which Jacob embraces Rachel among the flocks! +Nowhere is there a truer instance of that balance, that modulated unison +of landscape and persons--of the human image and its +accessories--already noticed as characteristic of the Venetian school, +so that, in it, neither personage nor scenery is ever a mere pretext for +the other. + +Something like this seems to me to be the vraie verite about Giorgione, +if I may adopt a serviceable expression, by which the French recognise +those more liberal and durable impressions which, in respect of any +really considerable person or subject, anything that has at all +intricately occupied men's attention, lie beyond, and must supplement, +the narrower range of the strictly ascertained facts about it. In this, +Giorgione is but an illustration of a valuable general caution we may +abide by in all criticism. As regards Giorgione himself, we have indeed +to take note of all those negations and exceptions, by which, at first +sight, a "new Vasari" seems merely to have confused our apprehension of +a delightful object, to have explained away out of our inheritance from +past time what seemed of high value there. Yet it is not with a full +understanding even of those exceptions that one can leave off just at +this point. Properly qualified, such exceptions are but a salt of +genuineness in our knowledge; and beyond all those strictly ascertained +facts, we must take note of that indirect influence by which one like +Giorgione, for instance, enlarges his permanent efficacy and really +makes himself felt in our culture. In a just impression of that, is the +essential truth, the vraie verite concerning him. + +1877. + + + +JOACHIM DU BELLAY + + +In the middle of the sixteenth century, when the spirit of the +Renaissance was everywhere, and people had begun to look back with +distaste on the works of the middle age, the old Gothic manner had still +one chance more, in borrowing something from the rival which was about +to supplant it. In this way there was produced, chiefly in France, a new +and peculiar phase of taste with qualities and a charm of its own, +blending the somewhat attenuated grace of Italian ornament with the +general outlines of Northern design. It produced the Chateau de Gaillon, +as you may still see it in the delicate engravings of Israel +Silvestre--a Gothic donjon veiled faintly by a surface of dainty Italian +traceries--Chenonceaux, Blois, Chambord, and the church of Brou. In +painting, there came from Italy workmen like Maitre Roux and the masters +of the school of Fontainebleau, to have their later Italian +voluptuousness attempered by the naive and silvery qualities of the +native style; and it was characteristic of these painters that they were +most successful in painting on glass, an art so essentially medieval. +Taking it up where the middle age had left it, they found their whole +work among the last subtleties of colour and line; and keeping within +the true limits of their material, they got quite a new order of effects +from it, and felt their way to refinements on colour never dreamed of by +those older workmen, the glass-painters of Chartres or Le Mans. What is +called the Renaissance in France is thus not so much the introduction of +a wholly new taste ready-made from Italy, but rather the finest and +subtlest phase of the middle age itself, its last fleeting splendour and +temperate Saint Martin's summer. In poetry, the Gothic spirit in France +had produced a thousand songs; and in the Renaissance, French poetry too +did but borrow something to blend with a native growth, and the poems of +Ronsard, with their ingenuity, their delicately figured surfaces, their +slightness, their fanciful combinations of rhyme, are but the +correlative of the traceries of the house of Jacques Coeur at Bourges, +or the Maison de Justice at Rouen. + +There was indeed something in the native French taste naturally akin to +that Italian finesse. The characteristic of French work had always been +a certain nicety, a remarkable daintiness of hand, une nettete +remarquable d'execution. In the paintings of Francois Clouet, for +example, or rather of the Clouets--for there was a whole family of +them--painters remarkable for their resistance to Italian influences, +there is a silveriness of colour and a clearness of expression which +distinguish them very definitely from their Flemish neighbours, Hemling +or the Van Eycks. And this nicety is not less characteristic of old +French poetry. A light, aerial delicacy, a simple elegance--une nettete +remarquable d'execution:--these are essential characteristics alike of +Villon's poetry, and of the Hours of Anne of Brittany. They are +characteristic too of a hundred French Gothic carvings and traceries. +Alike in the old Gothic cathedrals, and in their counterpart, the old +Gothic chansons de geste, the rough and ponderous mass becomes, as if by +passing for a moment into happier conditions, or through a more gracious +stratum of air, graceful and refined, like the carved ferneries on the +granite church at Folgoat, or the lines which describe the fair priestly +hands of Archbishop Turpin, in the song of Roland; although below both +alike there is a fund of mere Gothic strength, or heaviness.* + +*The purely artistic aspects of this subject have been interpreted, in a +work of great taste and learning, by Mrs. Mark Pattison:--The +Renaissance of Art in France. + +And Villon's songs and Clouet's paintings are like these. It is the +higher touch making itself felt here and there, betraying itself, like +nobler blood in a lower stock, by a fine line or gesture or expression, +the turn of a wrist, the tapering of a finger. In Ronsard's time that +rougher element seemed likely to predominate. No one can turn over the +pages of Rabelais without feeling how much need there was of softening, +of castigation. To effect this softening is the object of the revolution +in poetry which is connected with Ronsard's name. Casting about for the +means of thus refining upon and saving the character of French +literature, he accepted that influx of Renaissance taste, which, leaving +the buildings, the language, the art, the poetry of France, at bottom, +what they were, old French Gothic still, gilds their surfaces with a +strange, delightful, foreign aspect passing over all that Northern land, +in itself neither deeper nor more permanent than a chance effect of +light. He reinforces, he doubles the French daintiness by Italian +finesse. Thereupon, nearly all the force and all the seriousness of +French work disappear; only the elegance, the aerial touch, the perfect +manner remain. But this elegance, this manner, this daintiness of +execution are consummate, and have an unmistakable aesthetic value. + +So the old French chanson, which, like the old Northern Gothic ornament, +though it sometimes refined itself into a sort of weird elegance, was +often, in its essence, something rude and formless, became in the hands +of Ronsard a Pindaric ode. He gave it structure, a sustained system, +strophe and antistrophe, and taught it a changefulness and variety of +metre which keep the curiosity always excited, so that the very aspect +of it, as it lies written on the page, carries the eye lightly onwards, +and of which this is a good instance:-- + + Avril, la grace, et le ris + De Cypris, + Le flair et la douce haleine; + Avril, le parfum des dieux, + Qui, des cieux, + Sentent l'odeur de la plaine; + + C'est toy, courteis et gentil, + Qui, d'exil + Retire ces passageres, + Ces arondelles qui vont, + Et qui sont + Du printemps les messageres. + +That is not by Ronsard, but by Remy Belleau, for Ronsard soon came to +have a school. Six other poets threw in their lot with him in his +literary revolution--this Remy Belleau, Antoine de Baif, Pontus de +Tyard, Etienne Jodelle, Jean Daurat, and lastly Joachim du Bellay; and +with that strange love of emblems which is characteristic of the time, +which covered all the works of Francis the First with the salamander, +and all the works of Henry the Second with the double crescent, and all +the works of Anne of Brittany with the knotted cord, they called +themselves the Pleiad; seven in all, although, as happens with the +celestial Pleiad, if you scrutinise this constellation of poets more +carefully you may find there a great number of minor stars. + +The first note of this literary revolution was struck by Joachim du +Bellay in a little tract written at the early age of twenty-four, which +coming to us through three centuries seems of yesterday, so full is it +of those delicate critical distinctions which are sometimes supposed +peculiar to modern writers. The piece has for its title La Deffense et +Illustration de la langue Francoyse; and its problem is how to +illustrate or ennoble the French language, to give it lustre. We are +accustomed to speak of the varied critical and creative movement of the +fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as the Renaissance, and because we +have a single name for it we may sometimes fancy that there was more +unity in the thing itself than there really was. Even the Reformation, +that other great movement of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, had +far less unity, far less of combined action, than is at first sight +supposed; and the Renaissance was infinitely less united, less conscious +of combined action, than the Reformation. But if anywhere the +Renaissance became conscious, as a German philosopher might say, if ever +it was understood as a systematic movement by those who took part in it, +it is in this little book of Joachim du Bellay's, which it is impossible +to read without feeling the excitement, the animation, of change, of +discovery. "It is a remarkable fact," says M. Sainte-Beuve, "and an +inversion of what is true of other languages, that, in French, prose has +always had the precedence over poetry." Du Bellay's prose is perfectly +transparent, flexible, and chaste. In many ways it is a more +characteristic example of the culture of the Pleiad than any of its +verse; and those who love the whole movement of which the Pleiad is a +part, for a weird foreign grace in it, and may be looking about for a +true specimen of it, cannot have a better than Joachim du Bellay and +this little treatise of his. + +Du Bellay's object is to adjust the existing French culture to the +rediscovered classical culture; and in discussing this problem, and +developing the theories of the Pleiad, he has lighted upon many +principles of permanent truth and applicability. There were some who +despaired of the French language altogether, who thought it naturally +incapable of the fulness and elegance of Greek and Latin--cette elegance +et copie qui est en la langue Grecque et Romaine--that science could be +adequately discussed, and poetry nobly written, only in the dead +languages. "Those who speak thus," says Du Bellay, "make me think of +those relics which one may only see through a little pane of glass, and +must not touch with one's hands. That is what these people do with all +branches of culture, which they keep shut up in Greek and Latin books, +not permitting one to see them otherwise, or transport them out of dead +words into those which are alive, and wing their way daily through the +months of men." "Languages," he says again, "are not born like plants +and trees, some naturally feeble and sickly, others healthy and strong +and apter to bear the weight of men's conceptions, but all their virtue +is generated in the world of choice and men's freewill concerning them. +Therefore, I cannot blame too strongly the rashness of some of our +countrymen, who being anything rather than Greeks or Latins, depreciate +and reject with more than stoical disdain everything written in French; +nor can I express my surprise at the odd opinion of some learned men who +think that our vulgar tongue is wholly incapable of erudition and good +literature." + +It was an age of translations. Du Bellay himself translated two books of +the Aeneid, and other poetry, old and new, and there were some who +thought that the translation of the classical literature was the true +means of ennobling the French language:--strangers are ever favourites +with us--nous favorisons toujours les etrangers. Du Bellay moderates +their expectations. "I do not believe that one can learn the right use +of them"--he is speaking of figures and ornament in language--"from +translations, because it is impossible to reproduce them with the same +grace with which the original author used them. For each language has, I +know not what peculiarity of its own; and if you force yourself to +express the naturalness (le naif) of this, in another language, +observing the law of translation, which is, not to expatiate beyond the +limits of the author himself; your words will be constrained, cold and +ungraceful." Then he fixes the test of all good translation:--"To prove +this, read me Demosthenes and Homer in Latin, Cicero and Virgil in +French, and see whether they produce in you the same affections which +you experience in reading those authors in the original." + +In this effort to ennoble the French language, to give it grace, number, +perfection, and as painters do to their pictures, that last, so +desirable, touch--cette derniere main que nous desirons--what Du Bellay +is pleading for is his mother-tongue, the language, that is, in which +one will have the utmost degree of what is moving and passionate. He +recognised of what force the music and dignity of languages are, how +they enter into the inmost part of things; and in pleading for the +cultivation of the French language, he is pleading for no merely +scholastic interest, but for freedom, impulse, reality, not in +literature merely, but in daily communion of speech. After all, it was +impossible to have this impulse in Greek and Latin, dead languages shut +up in books as in reliquaries--peris et mises en reliquaires de livres. +By aid of this starveling stock--pauvre plante et vergette--of the +French language, he must speak delicately, movingly, if he is ever to +speak so at all: that, or none, must be for him the medium of what he +calls, in one of his great phrases, le discours fatal des choses +mondaines--that discourse about affairs which decides men's fates. And +it is his patriotism not to despair of it; he sees it already perfect in +all elegance and beauty of words--parfait en toute elegance et venuste +de paroles. + +Du Bellay was born in the disastrous year 1525, the year of the battle +of Pavia, and the captivity of Francis the First. . His parents died +early, and to him, as the younger son, his mother's little estate, ce +petit Lire, the beloved place of his birth, descended. He was brought up +by a brother only a little older than himself; and left to themselves, +the two boys passed their lives in day-dreams of military glory. Their +education was neglected; "The time of my youth," says Du Bellay, "was +lost, like the flower which no shower waters, and no hand cultivates." +He was just twenty years old when the elder brother died, leaving +Joachim to be the guardian of his child. It was with regret, with a +shrinking feeling of incapacity, that he took upon him the burden of +this responsibility. Hitherto he had looked forward to the profession of +a soldier, hereditary in his family. But at this time a sickness +attacked him which brought him cruel sufferings, and seemed likely to be +mortal. It was then for the first time that he read the Greek and Latin +poets. These studies came too late to make him what he so much desired +to be, a trifler in Greek and Latin verse, like so many others of his +time now forgotten; instead, they made him a lover of his own homely +native tongue, that poor starveling stock of the French language. It was +through this fortunate shortcoming in his education that he became +national and modern; and he learned afterwards to look back on that wild +garden of his youth with only a half regret. A certain Cardinal du +Bellay was the successful member of the family, a man often employed in +high official affairs. It was to him that the thoughts of Joachim turned +when it became necessary to choose a profession, and in 1552 he +accompanied the Cardinal to Rome. He remained there nearly five years, +burdened with the weight of affairs, and languishing with home-sickness. +Yet it was under these circumstances that his genius yielded its best +fruits. From Rome, which to most men of an imaginative temperament such +as his would have yielded so many pleasurable sensations, with all the +curiosities of the Renaissance still fresh there, his thoughts went back +painfully, longingly, to the country of the Loire, with its wide +expanses of waving corn, its homely pointed roofs of grey slate, and its +far-off scent of the sea. He reached home at last, but only to die +there, quite suddenly, one wintry day, at the early age of thirty-five. + +Much of Du Bellay's poetry illustrates rather the age and school to +which he belonged than his own temper and genius. As with the writings +of Ronsard and the other poets of the Pleiad, its interest depends not +so much on the impress of individual genius upon it, as on the +circumstance that it was once poetry a la mode, that it is part of the +manner of a time--a time which made much of manner, and carried it to a +high degree of perfection. It is one of the decorations of an age which +threw much of its energy into the work of decoration. We feel a pensive +pleasure in seeing these faded decorations, and observing how a group of +actual men and women pleased themselves long ago. Ronsard's poems are a +kind of epitome of his age. Of one side of that age, it is true, of the +strenuous, the progressive, the serious movement, which was then going +on, there is little; but of the catholic side, the losing side, the +forlorn hope, hardly a figure is absent. The Queen of Scots, at whose +desire Ronsard published his odes, reading him in her northern prison, +felt that he was bringing back to her the true flavour of her early days +in the court of Catherine at the Louvre, with its exotic Italian +gaieties. Those who disliked that poetry, disliked it because they found +that age itself distasteful. The poetry of Malherbe came, with its +sustained style and weighty sentiment, but with nothing that set people +singing; and the lovers of such poetry saw in the poetry of the Pleiad +only the latest trumpery of the middle age. But the time came also when +the school of Malherbe had had its day; and the Romanticists, who in +their eagerness for excitement, for strange music and imagery, went back +to the works of the middle age, accepted the Pleiad too with the rest; +and in that new middle age which their genius has evoked, the poetry of +the Pleiad has found its place. At first, with Malherbe, you may find +it, like the architecture, the whole mode of life, the very dresses of +that time, fantastic, faded, rococo. But if you look long enough to +understand it, to conceive its sentiment, you will find that those +wanton lines have a spirit guiding their caprices. For there is style +there; one temper has shaped the whole; and everything that has style, +that has been done as no other man or age could have done it, as it +could never, for all our trying, be done again, has its true value and +interest. Let us dwell upon it for a moment, and try to gather from it +that special flower, ce fleur particulier, which Ronsard himself tells +us every garden has. + +It is poetry not for the people, but for a confined circle, for +courtiers, great lords and erudite persons, people who desire to be +humoured, to gratify a certain refined voluptuousness they have in them. +Ronsard loves, or dreams that he loves, a rare and peculiar type of +beauty, la petite pucelle Angevine, with golden hair and dark eyes. But +he has the ambition not only of being a courtier and a lover, but a +great scholar also; he is anxious about orthography, about the letter e +Grecque, the true spelling of Latin names in French writing, and the +restoration of the letter i to its primitive liberty--del' i voyelle en +sa premiere liberte. His poetry is full of quaint, remote learning. He +is just a little pedantic, true always to his own express judgment, that +to be natural is not enough for one who in poetry desires to produce +work worthy of immortality. And therewithal a certain number of Greek +words, which charmed Ronsard and his circle by their gaiety and +daintiness, and a certain air of foreign elegance about them, crept into +the French language: and there were other strange words which the poets +of the Pleiad forged for themselves, and which had only an ephemeral +existence. + +With this was mixed the desire to taste a more exquisite and various +music than that of the older French verse, or of the classical poets. +The music of the measured, scanned verse of Latin and Greek poetry is +one thing; the music of the rhymed, unscanned verse of Villon and the +old French poets, la poesie chantee, is another. To unite together these +two kinds of music in a new school of French poetry, to make verse which +should scan and rhyme as well, to search out and harmonise the measure +of every syllable, and unite it to the swift, flitting, swallow-like +motion of rhyme, to penetrate their poetry with a double music--this was +the ambition of the Pleiad. They are insatiable of music, they cannot +have enough of it; they desire a music of greater compass perhaps than +words can possibly yield, to drain out the last drops of sweetness which +a certain note or accent contains. + +This eagerness for music is almost the only serious thing in the poetry +of the Pleiad; and it was Goudimel, the severe and protestant Goudimel, +who set Ronsard's songs to music. But except in this matter these poets +seem never quite in earnest. The old Greek and Roman mythology, which +for the great Italians had been a motive so weighty and severe, becomes +with them a mere toy. That "Lord of terrible aspect," Amor, has become +Love, the boy or the babe. They are full of fine railleries; they +delight in diminutives, ondelette, fontelette, doucelette, Cassandrette. +Their loves are only half real, a vain effort to prolong the imaginative +loves of the middle age beyond their natural lifetime. They write +love-poems for hire. Like that party of people who tell the tales in +Boccaccio's Decameron, they form a circle which in an age of great +troubles, losses, anxieties, amuses itself with art, poetry, intrigue. +But they amuse themselves with wonderful elegance; and sometimes their +gaiety becomes satiric, for, as they play, real passions insinuate +themselves, and at least the reality of death; their dejection at the +thought of leaving this fair abode of our common daylight--le beau +sejour du commun jour--is expressed by them with almost wearisome +reiteration. But with this sentiment too they are able to trifle: the +imagery of death serves for delicate ornament, and they weave into the +airy nothingness of their verses their trite reflexions on the vanity of +life; just as the grotesques of the charnel-house nest themselves, +together with birds and flowers and the fancies of the pagan mythology, +in the traceries of the architecture of that time, which wantons in its +delicate arabesques with the images of old age and death. + +Ronsard became deaf at sixteen; and it was this circumstance which +finally determined him to be a man of letters instead of a diplomatist, +significantly, one might fancy; of a certain premature agedness, and of +the tranquil, temperate sweetness appropriate to that, in the school of +poetry which he founded. Its charm is that of a thing not vigorous or +original, but full of the grace that comes of long study and reiterated +refinements, and many steps repeated, and many angles worn down, with an +exquisite faintness, une fadeur exquise, a certain tenuity and caducity, +as for those who can bear nothing vehement or strong; for princes weary +of love, like Francis the First, or of pleasure, like Henry the Third, +or of action, like Henry the Fourth. Its merits are those of the +old,--grace and finish, perfect in minute detail. For these people are a +little jaded, and have a constant desire for a subdued and delicate +excitement, to warm their creeping fancy a little. They love a constant +change of rhyme in poetry, and in their houses that strange, fantastic +interweaving of thin, reed-like lines, which are a kind of rhetoric in +architecture. + +But the poetry of the Pleiad is true not only to the physiognomy of its +age, but also to its country--ce pays du Vendomois--the names and scenery +of which so often recur in it; the great Loire, with its long spaces of +white sand; the little river Loir; the heathy, upland country, with its +scattered pools of water and waste road-sides,, and retired manors, with +their crazy old feudal defences half fallen into decay; La Beauce, the +granary of France, where the vast rolling fields of corn seem to +anticipate the great western sea itself. It is full of the traits of that +country. We see Du Bellay and Ronsard gardening, or hunting with their +dogs, or watch the pastimes of a rainy day; and with this is connected a +domesticity, a homeliness and simple goodness, by which this Northern +country gains upon the South. They have the love of the aged for warmth, +and understand the poetry of winter; for they are not far from the +Atlantic, and the west wind which comes up from it, turning the poplars +white, spares not this new Italy in France. So the fireside often +appears, with the pleasures of winter, about the vast emblazoned chimneys +of the time, and with a bonhomie as of little children, or old people. + +It is in Du Bellay's Olive, a collection of sonnets in praise of a +half-imaginary lady, Sonnetz a la louange d'Olive, that these +characteristics are most abundant. Here is a perfectly crystallised +specimen:-- + + D'amour, de grace, et de haulte valeur + Les feux divins estoient ceinctz et les cieulx + S'estoient vestuz d'un manteau precieux + A raiz ardens di diverse couleur: + Tout estoit p1ein de beaute, de bonheur, + La mer tranquille, et le vent gracieulx, + Quand celle la nasquit en ces bas lieux + Qui a pille du monde tout l'honneur. + Ell' prist son teint des beux lyz blanchissans, + Son chef de l'or, ses deux levres des rozes, + Et du soleil ses yeux resplandissans: + Le ciel usant de liberalite, + Mist en l'esprit ses semences encloses, + Son nom des Dieux prist l'immortalite. + + +That he is thus a characteristic specimen of the poetical taste of that +age, is indeed Du Bellay's chief interest. But if his work is to have the +highest sort of interest, if it is to do something more than satisfy +curiosity, if it is to have an aesthetic as distinct from an historical +value, it is not enough for a poet to have been the true child of his +age, to have conformed to its aesthetic conditions, and by so conforming +to have charmed and stimulated that age; it is necessary that there +should be perceptible in his work something individual, inventive, +unique, the impress there of the writer's own temper and personality. +This impress M. Sainte-Beuve thought he found in the Antiquites de Rome, +and the Regrets, which he ranks as what has been called poesie intime, +that intensely modern sort of poetry in which the writer has for his aim +the portraiture of his own most intimate moods, and to take the reader +into his confidence. That generation had other instances of this intimacy +of sentiment: Montaigne's Essays are full of it, the carvings of the +church of Brou are full of it. M. Sainte-Beuve has perhaps exaggerated +the influence of this quality in Du Bellay's Regrets; but the very name +of the book has a touch of Rousseau about it, and reminds one of a whole +generation of self-pitying poets in modern times. It was in the +atmosphere of Rome, to him so strange and mournful, that these pale +flowers grew up; for that journey to Italy, which he deplored as the +greatest misfortune of his life, put him in full possession of his +talent, and brought out all its originality. And in effect you do find +intimacy, intimite, here. The trouble of his life is analysed, and the +sentiment of it conveyed directly to our minds; not a great sorrow or +passion, but only the sense of loss in passing days, the ennui of a +dreamer who has to plunge into the world's affairs, the opposition +between actual life and the ideal, a longing for rest, nostalgia, +home-sickness--that pre-eminently childish, but so suggestive sorrow, as +significant of the final regret of all human creatures for the familiar +earth and limited sky. The feeling for landscape is often described as a +modern one; still more so is that for antiquity, the sentiment of ruins. +Du Bellay has this sentiment. The duration of the hard, sharp outlines of +things is a grief to him, and passing his wearisome days among the ruins +of ancient Rome, he is consoled by the thought that all must one day end, +by the sentiment of the grandeur of nothingness--la grandeur du rien. +With a strange touch of far-off mysticism, he thinks that the great +whole--le grand tout--into which all other things pass and lose +themselves, ought itself sometimes to perish and pass away. Nothing less +can relieve his weariness. From the stately aspects of Rome his thoughts +went back continually to France, to the smoking chimneys of his little +village, the longer twilight of the North, the soft climate of Anjou--la +douceur Angevine; yet not so much to the real France, we may be sure, +with its dark streets and its roofs of rough-hewn slate, as to that other +country, with slenderer towers, and more winding rivers, and trees like +flowers, and with softer sunshine on more gracefully-proportioned fields +and ways, which the fancy of the exile, and the pilgrim, and of the +schoolboy far from home, and of those kept at home unwillingly, +everywhere builds up before or behind them. + +He came home at last, through the Grisons, by slow journeys; and there, +in the cooler air of his own country, under its skies of milkier blue, +the sweetest flower of his genius sprang up. There have been poets whose +whole fame has rested on one poem, as Gray's on the Elegy in a Country +Churchyard, or Ronsard's, as many critics have thought, on the eighteen +lines of one famous ode. Du Bellay has almost been the poet of one poem; +and this one poem of his is an Italian thing transplanted into that green +country of Anjou; out of the Latin verses of Andrea Navagero, into +French: but it is a thing in which the matter is almost nothing, and the +form almost everything; and the form of the poem as it stands, written in +old French, is all Du Bellay's own. It is a song which the winnowers are +supposed to sing as they winnow the corn, and they invoke the winds to +lie lightly on the grain. + +D'UN VANNEUR DE BLE AUX VENTS* + + A vous trouppe legere + Qui d'aile passagere + Par le monde volez, + Et d'un sifflant murmure + L'ombrageuse verdure + Doulcement esbranlez. + + J'offre ces violettes, + Ces lis & ces fleurettes, + Et ces roses icy, + Ces vermeillettes roses + Sont freschement ecloses, + Et ces oelliets aussi. + + De vostre doulce haleine, + Eventez ceste plaine + Eventez ce sejour; + Ce pendant que j'ahanne + A mon ble que je vanne + A la chaleur du jour. + +*A graceful translation of this and some other poems of the Pleiad may be +found in Ballads and Lyrics of old France, by Mr. Andrew Lang. + +That has, in the highest degree, the qualities, the value, of the whole +Pleiad school of poetry, of the whole phase of taste from which that +school derives--a certain silvery grace of fancy, nearly all the +pleasures of which is in the surprise at the happy and dexterous way in +which a thing slight in itself is handled. The sweetness of it is by no +means to be got at by crushing, as you crush wild herbs to get at their +perfume. One seems to hear the measured falling of the fans, with a +child's pleasure on coming across the incident for the first time, in one +of those great barns of Du Bellay's own country, La Beauce, the granary +of France. A sudden light transfigures a trivial thing, a weather-vane, a +windmill, a winnowing flail, the dust in the barn door: a moment--and the +thing has vanished, because it was pure effect; but it leaves a relish +behind it, a longing that the accident may happen again. + +1872. + + + +WINCKELMANN + +ET EGO IN ARCADIA FUI + +Goethe's fragments of art-criticism contain a few pages of strange +pregnancy on the character of Winckelmann. He speaks of the teacher who +had made his career possible, but whom he had never seen, as of an +abstract type of culture, consummate, tranquil, withdrawn already into +the region of ideals, yet retaining colour from the incidents of a +passionate intellectual life. He classes him with certain works of art, +possessing an inexhaustible gift of suggestion, to which criticism may +return again and again with renewed freshness. Hegel, in his lectures on +the Philosophy of Art, estimating the work of his predecessors, has also +passed a remarkable judgment on Winckelmann's writings:--"Winckelmann, by +contemplation of the ideal works of the ancients, received a sort of +inspiration, through which he opened a new sense for the study of art. +He is to be regarded as one of those who, in the sphere of art, have +known how to initiate a new organ for the human spirit." That it has +given a new sense, that it has laid open a new organ, is the highest that +can be said of any critical effort. It is interesting then to ask what +kind of man it was who thus laid open a new organ. Under what conditions +was that effected? + +Johann Joachim Winckelmann was born at Stendal, in Brandenburg, in the +year 1717. The child of a poor tradesman, he passed through many +struggles in early youth, the memory of which ever remained in him as a +fitful cause of dejection. In 1763, in the full emancipation of his +spirit, looking over the beautiful Roman prospect, he writes--"One gets +spoiled here; but God owed me this; in my youth I suffered too much." +Destined to assert and interpret the charm of the Hellenic spirit, he +served first a painful apprenticeship in the tarnished intellectual world +of Germany in the earlier half of the eighteenth century. Passing out of +that into the happy light of the antique, he had a sense of exhilaration +almost physical. We find him as a child in the dusky precincts of a +German school, hungrily feeding on a few colourless books. The master of +this school grows blind; Winckelmann becomes his famulus. The old man +would have had him study theology. Winckelmann, free of the master's +library, chooses rather to become familiar with the Greek classics. +Herodotus and Homer win, with their "vowelled" Greek, his warmest +enthusiasm; whole nights of fever are devoted to them; disturbing dreams +of an Odyssey of his own come to him. "He felt in himself," says Madame +de Stael, "an ardent attraction towards the South." In German +imaginations even now traces are often to be found of that love of the +sun, that weariness of the North (cette fatigue du nord), which carried +the northern peoples away into those countries of the South. A fine sky +brings to birth sentiments not unlike the love of one's Fatherland. + +To most of us, after all our steps towards it, the antique world, in +spite of its intense outlines, its perfect self-expression, still remains +faint and remote. To him, closely limited except on the one side of the +ideal, building for his dark poverty "a house not made with hands," it +early came to seem more real than the present. In the fantastic plans of +foreign travel continually passing through his mind, to Egypt, for +instance, and to France, there seems always to be rather a wistful sense +of something lost to be regained, than the desire of discovering anything +new. Goethe has told us how, in his eagerness actually to handle the +antique, he became interested in the insignificant vestiges of it which +the neighbourhood of Strasburg contained. So we hear of Winckelmann's +boyish antiquarian wanderings among the ugly Brandenburg sandhills. Such +a conformity between himself and Winckelmann, Goethe would have gladly +noted. + +At twenty- one he enters the University at Halle, to study theology, as +his friends desire; instead, he becomes the enthusiastic translator of +Herodotus. The condition of Greek learning in German schools and +universities had fallen, and there were no professors at Halle who could +satisfy his sharp, intellectual craving. Of his professional education he +always speaks with scorn, claiming to have been his own teacher from +first to last. His appointed teachers did not perceive that a new source +of culture was within their hands. Homo vagus et inconstans!--one of them +pedantically reports of the future pilgrim to Rome, unaware on which side +his irony was whetted. When professional education confers nothing but +irritation on a Schiller, no one ought to be surprised; for Schiller, and +such as he, are primarily spiritual adventurers. But that Winckelmann, +the votary of the gravest of intellectual traditions, should get nothing +but an attempt at suppression from the professional guardians of +learning, is what may well surprise us. + +In 1743 he became master of a school at Seehausen. This was the most +wearisome period of his life. Notwithstanding a success in dealing with +children, which seems to testify to something simple and primeval in his +nature, he found the work of teaching very depressing. Engaged in this +work, he writes that he still has within him a longing desire to attain +to the knowledge of beauty--sehnlich wuenschte zur Kenntniss des Schoenen +zu gelangen. He had to shorten his nights, sleeping only four hours, to +gain time for reading. And here Winckelmann made a step forward in +culture. He multiplied his intellectual force by detaching from it all +flaccid interests. He renounced mathematics and law, in which his reading +had been considerable,--all but the literature of the arts. Nothing was +to enter into his life unpenetrated by its central enthusiasm. At this +time he undergoes the charm of Voltaire. Voltaire belongs to that +flimsier, more artificial, classical tradition, which Winckelmann was one +day to supplant, by the clear ring, the eternal outline of the genuine +antique. But it proves the authority of such a gift as Voltaire's that it +allures and wins even those born to supplant it. Voltaire's impression on +Winckelmann was never effaced; and it gave him a consideration for French +literature which contrasts with his contempt for the literary products of +Germany. German literature transformed, siderealised, as we see it in +Goethe, reckons Winckelmann among its initiators. But Germany at that +time presented nothing in which he could have anticipated Iphigenie, and +the formation of an effective classical tradition in German literature. + +Under this purely literary influence, Winckelmann protests against +Christian Wolff and the philosophers. Goethe, in speaking of this +protest, alludes to his own obligations to Emmanuel Kant. Kant's +influence over the culture of Goethe, which he tells us could not have +been resisted by him without loss, consisted in a severe limitation to +the concrete. But he adds, that in born antiquaries, like Winckelmann, +constant handling of the antique, with its eternal outline, maintains +that limitation as effectually as a critical philosophy. Plato, however, +saved so often for his redeeming literary manner, is excepted from +Winckelmann's proscription of the philosophers. The modern student most +often meets Plato on that side which seems to pass beyond Plato into a +world no longer pagan, based on the conception of a spiritual life. But +the element of affinity which he presents to Winckelmann is that which is +wholly Greek, and alien from the Christian world, represented by that +group of brilliant youths in the Lysis, still uninfected by any spiritual +sickness, finding the end of all endeavour in the aspects of the human +form, the continual stir and motion of a comely human life. + +This new-found interest in Plato's dialogues could not fail to increase +his desire to visit the countries of the classical tradition. "It is my +misfortune," he writes, "that I was not born to great place, wherein I +might have had cultivation, and the opportunity of following my instinct +and forming myself." A visit to Rome probably was already purposed, and +he silently preparing for it. Count Buenau, the author of an historical +work then of note, had collected at Noethenitz a valuable library, now +part of the library of Dresden. In 1784 Winckelmann wrote to Buenau in +halting French:--He is emboldened, he says, by Buenau's indulgence for +needy men of letters. He desires only to devote himself to study, having +never allowed himself to be dazzled by favourable prospects of the +Church. He hints at his doubtful position "in a metaphysical age, when +humane literature is trampled under foot. At present," he goes on, +"little value is set on Greek literature, to which I have devoted myself +so far as I could penetrate, when good books are so scarce and +expensive." Finally, he desires a place in some corner of Buenau's +library. "Perhaps, at some future time, I shall become more useful to the +public, if, drawn from obscurity in whatever way, I can find means to +maintain myself in the capital." + +Soon afterwards we find Winckelmann in the library at Noethenitz. Thence +he made many visits to the collection of antiquities at Dresden. He +became acquainted with many artists, above all with Oeser, Goethe's +future friend and master, who, uniting a high culture with the practical +knowledge of art, was fitted to minister to Winckelmann's culture. And +now there opened for him a new way of communion with the Greek life. +Hitherto he had handled the words only of Greek poetry, stirred indeed +and roused by them, yet divining beyond the words an unexpressed +pulsation of sensuous life. Suddenly he is in contact with that life, +still fervent in the relics of plastic art. Filled as our culture is with +the classical spirit, we can hardly imagine how deeply the human mind was +moved, when, at the Renaissance, in the midst of a frozen world, the +buried fire of ancient art rose up from under the soil. Winckelmann here +reproduces for us the earlier sentiment of the Renaissance. On a sudden +the imagination feels itself free. How facile and direct, it seems to +say, is this life of the senses and the understanding, when once we have +apprehended it! Here, surely, is the more liberal life we have been +seeking so long, so near to us all the while. How mistaken and roundabout +have been our efforts to reach it by mystic passion, and monastic +reverie; how they have deflowered the flesh; how little they have +emancipated us! Hermione melts from her stony posture, and the lost +proportions of life right themselves. Here, then, we see in vivid +realisation the native tendency of Winckelmann to escape from abstract +theory to intuition, to the exercise of sight and touch. Lessing, in the +Laocoon, has theorised finely on the relation of poetry to sculpture; and +philosophy can give us theoretical reasons why not poetry but sculpture +should be the most sincere and exact expression of the Greek ideal. By a +happy, unperplexed dexterity, Winckelmann solves the question in the +concrete. It is what Goethe calls his Gewahrwerden der griechischen +Kunst, his FINDING of Greek art. + +Through the tumultuous richness of Goethe's culture, the influence of +Winckelmann is always discernible, as the strong, regulative +under-current of a clear, antique motive. "One learns nothing from him," +he says to Eckermann, "but one becomes something." If we ask what the +secret of this influence was, Goethe himself will tell us--elasticity, +wholeness, intellectual integrity. And yet these expressions, because +they fit Goethe, with his universal culture, so well, seem hardly to +describe the narrow, exclusive interest of Winckelmann. Doubtless +Winckelmann's perfection is a narrow perfection: his feverish nursing of +the one motive of his life is a contrast to Goethe's various energy. But +what affected Goethe, what instructed him and ministered to his culture, +was the integrity, the truth to its type, of the given force. The +development of his force was the single interest of Winckelmann, +unembarrassed by anything else in him. Other interests, practical or +intellectual, those slighter talents and motives not supreme, which in +most men are the waste part of nature, and drain away their vitality, he +plucked out and cast from him. The protracted longing of his youth is not +a vague, romantic longing: he knows what he longs for, what he wills. +Within its severe limits his enthusiasm burns like lava. "You know," says +Lavater, speaking of Winckelmann's countenance, "that I consider ardour +and indifference by no means incompatible in the same character. If ever +there was a striking instance of that union, it is in the countenance +before us." "A lowly childhood," says Goethe, "insufficient instruction +in youth, broken, distracted studies in early manhood, the burden of +school-keeping! He was thirty years old before he enjoyed a single favour +of fortune: but as soon as he had attained to an adequate condition of +freedom, he appears before us consummate and entire, complete in the +ancient sense." + +But his hair is turning grey, and he has not yet reached the south. The +Saxon court had become Roman Catholic, and the way to favour at Dresden +was through Romish ecclesiastics. Probably the thought of a profession of +the Romish religion was not new to Winckelmann. At one time he had +thought of begging his way to Rome, from cloister to cloister, under the +pretence of a disposition to change his faith. In 1751, the papal nuncio, +Archinto, was one of the visitors at Noethenitz. He suggested Rome as the +fitting stage for Winckelmann's attainments, and held out the hope of a +place in the papal library. Cardinal Passionei, charmed with +Winckelmann's beautiful Greek writing, was ready to play the part of +Maecenas, on condition that the necessary change should be made. +Winckelmann accepted the bribe, and visited the nuncio at Dresden. +Unquiet still at the word "profession," not without a struggle, he joined +the Romish Church, July the 11th, 1754. + +Goethe boldly pleads that Winckelmann was a pagan, that the landmarks of +Christendom meant nothing to him. It is clear that he intended to deceive +no one by his disguise; fears of the inquisition are sometimes visible +during his life in Rome; he entered Rome notoriously with the works of +Voltaire in his possession; the thought of what Count Buenau might be +thinking of him seems to have been his greatest difficulty. On the other +hand, he may have had a sense of a certain antique, and as it were pagan +grandeur in the Roman Catholic religion. Turning from the crabbed +Protestantism, which had been the weariness of his youth, he might +reflect that while Rome had reconciled itself to the Renaissance, the +Protestant principle in art had cut off Germany from the supreme +tradition of beauty. And yet to that transparent nature, with its +simplicity as of the earlier world, the loss of absolute sincerity must +have been a real loss. Goethe understands that Winckelmann had made this +sacrifice. Yet at the bar of the highest criticism, perhaps, Winckelmann +may be absolved. The insincerity of his religious profession was only one +incident of a culture in which the moral instinct, like the religious or +political, was merged in the artistic. But then the artistic interest was +that by desperate faithfulness to which Winckelmann was saved from the +mediocrity, which, breaking through no bounds, moves ever in a bloodless +routine, and misses its one chance in the life of the spirit and the +intellect. There have been instances of culture developed by every high +motive in turn, and yet intense at every point; and the aim of our +culture should be to attain not only as intense but as complete a life as +possible. But often the higher life is only possible at all, on condition +of the selection of that in which one's motive is native and strong; and +this selection involves the renunciation of a crown reserved for others. +Which is better?--to lay open a new sense, to initiate a new organ for +the human spirit, or to cultivate many types of perfection up to a point +which leaves us still beyond the range of their transforming power? +Savonarola is one type of success; Winckelmann is another; criticism can +reject neither, because each is true to itself. Winckelmann himself +explains the motive of his life when he says, "It will be my highest +reward, if posterity acknowledges that I have written worthily." + +For a time he remained at Dresden. There his first book appeared, +Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Works of Art in Painting and +Sculpture. Full of obscurities as it was, obscurities which baffled but +did not offend Goethe when he first turned to art-criticism, its purpose +was direct--an appeal from the artificial classicism of the day to the +study of the antique. The book was well received, and a pension supplied +through the king's confessor. In September 1755 he started for Rome, in +the company of a young Jesuit. He was introduced to Raphael Mengs, a +painter then of note, and found a home near him, in the artists' quarter, +in a place where he could "overlook, far and wide, the eternal city." At +first he was perplexed with the sense of being a stranger on what was to +him, spiritually, native soil. "Unhappily," he cries in French, often +selected by him as the vehicle of strong feeling, "I am one of those whom +the Greeks call opsimatheis.--I have come into the world and into Italy +too late." More than thirty years afterwards, Goethe also, after many +aspirations and severe preparation of mind, visited Italy. In early +manhood, just as he too was FINDING Greek art, the rumour of that high +artist's life of Winckelmann in Italy had strongly moved him. At Rome, +spending a whole year drawing from the antique, in preparation for +Iphigenie, he finds the stimulus of Winckelmann's memory ever active. +Winckelmann's Roman life was simple, primeval, Greek. His delicate +constitution permitted him the use only of bread and wine. Condemned by +many as a renegade, he had no desire for places of honour, but only to +see his merits acknowledged, and existence assured to him. He was simple +without being niggardly; he desired to be neither poor nor rich. + +Winckelmann's first years in Rome present all the elements of an +intellectual situation of the highest interest. The beating of the +intellect against its bars, the sombre aspect, the alien traditions, the +still barbarous literature of Germany, are afar off; before him are +adequate conditions of culture, the sacred soil itself, the first tokens +of the advent of the new German literature, with its broad horizons, its +boundless intellectual promise. Dante, passing from the darkness of the +Inferno, is filled with a sharp and joyful sense of light, which makes +him deal with it, in the opening of the Purgatorio, in a wonderfully +touching and penetrative way. Hellenism, which is the principle +pre-eminently of intellectual light (our modern culture may have more +colour, the medieval spirit greater heat and profundity, but Hellenism is +pre-eminent for light), has always been most effectively conceived by +those who have crept into it out of an intellectual world in which the +sombre elements predominate. So it had been in the ages of the +Renaissance. This repression, removed at last, gave force and glow to +Winckelmann's native affinity to the Hellenic spirit. "There had been +known before him," says Madame de Stael, "learned men who might be +consulted like books; but no one had, if I may say so, made himself a +pagan for the purpose of penetrating antiquity." "One is always a poor +executant of conceptions not one's own."--On execute mal ce qu'on n'a pas +concu soi-meme*--words spoken on so high an occasion--are true in their +measure of every genuine enthusiasm. Enthusiasm--that, in the broad +Platonic sense of the Phaedrus, was the secret of his divinatory power +over the Hellenic world. This enthusiasm, dependent as it is to a great +degree on bodily temperament, has a power of re-enforcing the purer +emotions of the intellect with an almost physical excitement. That his +affinity with Hellenism was not merely intellectual, that the subtler +threads of temperament were inwoven in it, is proved by his romantic, +fervent friendships with young men. He has known, he says, many young men +more beautiful than Guido's archangel. These friendships, bringing him in +contact with the pride of human form, and staining his thoughts with its +bloom, perfected his reconciliation with the spirit of Greek sculpture. +A letter on taste, addressed from Rome to a young nobleman, Friedrich von +Berg, is the record of such a friendship. + +*Words of Charlotte Corday before the Convention. + +"I shall excuse my delay," he begins, "in fulfilling my promise of an +essay on the taste for beauty in works of art, in the words of Pindar. He +says to Agesidamus, a youth of Locri--ideai te kalon, horai te +kekramenon--whom he had kept waiting for an intended ode, that a debt +paid with usury is the end of reproach. This may win your good-nature on +behalf of my present essay, which has turned out far more detailed and +circumstantial than I had at first intended. + +"It is from yourself that the subject is taken. Our intercourse has been +short, too short both for you and me; but the first time I saw you, the +affinity of our spirits was revealed to me: your culture proved that my +hope was not groundless; and I found in a beautiful body a soul created +for nobleness, gifted with the sense of beauty. My parting from you was +therefore one of the most painful in my life; and that this feeling +continues our common friend is witness, for your separation from me +leaves me no hope of seeing you again. Let this essay be a memorial of +our friendship, which, on my side, is free from every selfish motive, and +ever remains subject and dedicate to yourself alone." + +The following passage is characteristic-- + +"As it is confessedly the beauty of man which is to be conceived under +one general idea, so I have noticed that those who are observant of +beauty only in women, and are moved little or not at all by the beauty of +men, seldom have an impartial, vital, inborn instinct for beauty in art. +To such persons the beauty of Greek art will ever seem wanting, because +its supreme beauty is rather male than female. But the beauty of art +demands a higher sensibility than the beauty of nature, because the +beauty of art, like tears shed at a play, gives no pain, is without life, +and must be awakened and repaired by culture. Now, as the spirit of +culture is much more ardent in youth than in manhood, the instinct of +which I am speaking must be exercised and directed to what is beautiful, +before that age is reached, at which one would be afraid to confess that +one had no taste for it." + +Certainly, of that beauty of living form which regulated Winckelmann's +friendships, it could not be said that it gave no pain. One notable +friendship, the fortune of which we may trace through his letters, begins +with an antique, chivalrous letter in French, and ends noisily in a burst +of angry fire. Far from reaching the quietism, the bland indifference of +art, such attachments are nevertheless more susceptible than any others +of equal strength of a purely intellectual culture. Of passion, of +physical excitement, they contain only just so much as stimulates the eye +to the finest delicacies of colour and form. These friendships, often the +caprices of a moment, make Winckelmann's letters, with their troubled +colouring, an instructive but bizarre addition to the History of Art, +that shrine of grave and mellow light for the mute Olympian family. The +impression which Winckelmann's literary life conveyed to those about him +was that of excitement, intuition, inspiration, rather than the +contemplative evolution of general principles. The quick, susceptible +enthusiast, betraying his temperament even in appearance, by his olive +complexion, his deep-seated, piercing eyes, his rapid movements, +apprehended the subtlest principles of the Hellenic manner, not through +the understanding, but by instinct or touch. A German biographer of +Winckelmann has compared him to Columbus. That is not the aptest of +comparisons; but it reminds one of a passage in which M. Edgar Quinet +describes the great discoverer's famous voyage. His science was often at +fault; but he had a way of estimating at once the slightest indication of +land, in a floating weed or passing bird; he seemed actually to come +nearer to nature than other men. And that world in which others had moved +with so much embarrassment, seems to call out in Winckelmann new senses +fitted to deal with it. He is in touch with it; it penetrates him, and +becomes part of his temperament. He remodels his writings with constant +renewal of insight; he catches the thread of a whole sequence of laws in +some hollowing of the hand, or dividing of the hair; he seems to realise +that fancy of the reminiscence of a forgotten knowledge hidden for a time +in the mind itself; as if the mind of one, lover and philosopher at once +in some phase of pre-existence-philosophesas pote met' erotos--fallen +into a new cycle, were beginning its intellectual culture over again, yet +with a certain power of anticipating its results. So comes the truth of +Goethe's judgments on his works; they are a life, a living thing, +designed for those who are alive--ein Lebendiges fuer die Lebendigen +geschrieben, ein Leben selbst. + +In 1785 Cardinal Albani, who possessed in his Roman villa a precious +collection of antiquities, became Winckelmann's patron. Pompeii had just +opened its treasures; Winckelmann gathered its first-fruits. But his plan +of a visit to Greece remained unfulfilled. From his first arrival in Rome +he had kept the History of Ancient Art ever in view. All his other +writings were a preparation for that. It appeared, finally, in 1764; but +even after its publication Winckelmann was still employed in perfecting +it. It is since his time that many of the most significant examples of +Greek art have been submitted to criticism. He had seen little or nothing +of what we ascribe to the age of Pheidias; and his conception of Greek +art tends, therefore, to put the mere elegance of the imperial society of +ancient Rome in place of the severe and chastened grace of the palaestra. +For the most part he had to penetrate to Greek art through copies, +imitations, and later Roman art itself; and it is not surprising that +this turbid medium has left in Winckelmann's actual results much that a +more privileged criticism can correct. + +He had been twelve years in Rome. Admiring Germany had many calls to him; +at last, in 1768, he set out to revisit the country of his birth; and as +he left Rome, a strange, inverted home-sickness, a strange reluctance to +leave it at all, came over him. He reached Vienna: there he was loaded +with honours and presents: other cities were awaiting him. Goethe, then +nineteen years old, studying art at Leipsic, was expecting his coming, +with that wistful eagerness which marked his youth, when the news of +Winckelmann's murder arrived. All that "weariness of the North" had +revived with double force. He left Vienna, intending to hasten back to +Rome. At Trieste a delay of a few days occurred. With characteristic +openness, Winckelmann had confided his plans to a fellow-traveller, a man +named Arcangeli, and had shown him the gold medals received at Vienna. +Arcangeli's avarice was aroused. One morning he entered Winckelmann's +room, under pretence of taking leave; Winckelmann was then writing +"memoranda for the future editor of the History of Art," still seeking +the perfection of his great work. Arcangeli begged to see the medals once +more. As Winckelmann stooped down to take them from the chest, a cord was +thrown round his neck. Some time afterwards, a child whose friendship +Winckelmann had made to beguile the delay, knocked at the door, and +receiving no answer, gave an alarm. Winckelmann was found dangerously +wounded, and died a few hours later, after receiving the sacraments of +the Romish Church. It seemed as if the gods, in reward for his devotion +to them, had given him a death which, for its swiftness and its +opportunity, he might well have desired. "He has," says Goethe, "the +advantage of figuring in the memory of posterity, as one eternally able +and strong; for the image in which one leaves the world is that in which +one moves among the shadows." Yet, perhaps, it is not fanciful to regret +that the meeting with Goethe did not take place. Goethe, then in all the +pregnancy of his wonderful youth, still unruffled by the press and storm +of his earlier manhood, was awaiting Winckelmann with a curiosity of the +worthiest kind. As it was, Winckelmann became to him something like what +Virgil was to Dante. And Winckelmann, with his fiery friendships, had +reached that age and that period of culture at which emotions hitherto +fitful, sometimes concentrate themselves in a vital, unchangeable +relationship. German literary history seems to have lost the chance of +one of those famous friendships, the very tradition of which becomes a +stimulus to culture, and exercises an imperishable influence. + +In one of the frescoes of the Vatican, Raffaelle has commemorated the +tradition of the Catholic religion. Against a strip of peaceful sky, +broken in upon by the beatific vision, are ranged the great personages +of. Christian history, with the Sacrament in the midst. Another fresco of +Raffaelle in the same apartment presents a very different company, Dante +alone appearing in both. Surrounded by the muses of Greek mythology, +under a thicket of myrtles, sits Apollo, with the sources of Castalia at +his feet. On either side are grouped those on whom the spirit of Apollo +descended, the classical and Renaissance poets, to whom the waters of +Castalia come down, a river making glad this other city of God. In this +fresco it is the classical tradition, the orthodoxy of taste, that +Raffaelle commemorates. Winckelmann's intellectual history authenticates +the claims of this tradition in human culture. In the countries where +that tradition arose, where it still lurked about its own artistic +relics, and changes of language had not broken its continuity, national +pride might sometimes light up anew an enthusiasm for it. Aliens might +imitate that enthusiasm, and classicism become from time to time an +intellectual fashion. But Winckelmann was not further removed by +language, than by local aspects and associations, from those vestiges of +the classical spirit; and he lived at a time when, in Germany, classical +studies were out of favour. Yet, remote in time and place, he feels after +the Hellenic world, divines the veins of ancient art, in which its life +still circulates, and, like Scyles, the half-barbarous yet Hellenising +king, in the beautiful story of Herodotus, is irresistibly attracted by +it. This testimony to the authority of the Hellenic tradition, its +fitness to satisfy some vital requirement of the intellect, which +Winckelmann contributes as a solitary man of genius, is offered also by +the general history of culture. The spiritual forces of the past, which +have prompted and informed the culture of a succeeding age, live, indeed, +within that culture, but with an absorbed, underground life. The Hellenic +element alone has not been so absorbed, or content with this underground +life; from time to time it has started to the surface; culture has been +drawn back to its sources to be clarified and corrected. Hellenism is not +merely an absorbed element in our intellectual life; it is a conscious +tradition in it. + +Again, individual genius works ever under conditions of time and place: +its products are coloured by the varying aspects of nature, and type of +human form, and outward manners of life. There is thus an element of +change in art; criticism must never for a moment forget that "the artist +is the child of his time." But besides these conditions of time and +place, and independent of them, there is also an element of permanence, a +standard of taste, which genius confesses. This standard is maintained in +a purely intellectual tradition; it acts upon the artist, not as one of +the influences of his own age, but by means of the artistic products of +the previous generation, which in youth have excited, and at the same +time directed into a particular channel, his sense of beauty. The supreme +artistic products of each generation thus form a series of elevated +points, taking each from each the reflexion of a strange light, the +source of which is not in the atmosphere around and above them, but in a +stage of society remote from ours. This standard takes its rise in +Greece, at a definite historical period. A tradition for all succeeding +generations, it originates in a spontaneous growth out of the influences +of Greek society. What were the conditions under which this ideal, this +standard of artistic orthodoxy, was generated? How was Greece enabled to +force its thought upon Europe? + +Greek art, when we first catch sight of it, is entangled with Greek +religion. We are accustomed to think of Greek religion as the religion of +art and beauty, the religion of which the Olympian Zeus and the Athena +Polias are the idols, the poems of Homer the sacred books. Thus Cardinal +Newman speaks of "the classical polytheism which was gay and graceful, as +was natural in a civilised age." Yet such a view is only a partial one; +in it the eye is fixed on the sharp, bright edge of high Hellenic culture +but loses sight of the sombre world across which it strikes. Greek +religion, where we can observe it most distinctly, is at once a +magnificent ritualistic system, and a cycle of poetical conceptions. +Religions, as they grow by natural laws out of man's life, are modified +by whatever modifies his life. They brighten under a bright sky, they +become liberal as the social range widens, they grow intense and shrill +in the clefts of human life, where the spirit is narrow and confined, and +the stars are visible at noonday; and a fine analysis of these +differences is one of the gravest functions of religious criticism. +Still, the broad foundation, in mere human nature, of all religions as +they exist for the greatest number, is a universal pagan sentiment, a +paganism which existed before the Greek religion, and has lingered far +onward into the Christian world, ineradicable, like some persistent +vegetable growth, because its seed is an element of the very soil out of +which it springs. This pagan sentiment measures the sadness with which +the human mind is filled, whenever its thoughts wander far from what is +here, and now. It is beset by notions of irresistible natural powers, for +the most part ranged against man, but the secret also of his fortune, +making the earth golden and the grape fiery for him. He makes gods in his +own image, gods smiling and flower-crowned, or bleeding by some sad +fatality, to console him by their wounds, never closed from generation to +generation. It is with a rush of home-sickness that the thought of death +presents itself. He would remain at home for ever on the earth if he +could: as it loses its colour and the senses fail, he clings ever closer +to it; but since the mouldering of bones and flesh must go on to the end, +he is careful for charms and talismans, that may chance to have some +friendly power in them, when the inevitable shipwreck comes. Such +sentiment is a part of the eternal basis of all religions, modified +indeed by changes of time and place, but indestructible, because its root +is so deep in the earth of man's nature. The breath of religious +initiators passes over them; a few "rise up with wings as eagles," but +the broad level of religious life is not permanently changed. Religious +progress, like all purely spiritual progress, is confined to a few. This +sentiment fixes itself in the earliest times to certain usages of +patriarchal life, the kindling of fire, the washing of the body, the +slaughter of the flock, the gathering of harvest, holidays and dances. +Here are the beginnings of a ritual, at first as occasional and unfixed +as the sentiment which it expresses, but destined to become the permanent +element of religious life. The usages of patriarchal life change; but +this germ of ritual remains, developing, but always in a religious +interest, losing its domestic character, and therefore becoming more and +more inexplicable with each generation. This pagan worship, in spite of +local variations, essentially one, is an element in all religions. It is +the anodyne which the religious principle, like one administering opiates +to the incurable, has added to the law which makes life sombre for the +vast majority of mankind. + +More definite religious conceptions come from other sources, and fix +themselves upon this ritual in various ways, changing it, and giving it +new meanings. In Greece they were derived from mythology, itself not due +to a religious source at all, but developing in the course of time into a +body of religious conceptions, entirely human in form and character. To +the unprogressive ritual element it brought these conceptions, +itself--he pterou dunamis, the power of the wing--an element of +refinement, of ascension, with the promise of an endless destiny. While +the ritual remains fixed, the aesthetic element, only accidentally +connected with it, expands with the freedom and mobility of the things of +the intellect. Always, the fixed element is the religious observance; the +fluid, unfixed element is the myth, the religious conception. This +religion is itself pagan, and has in any broad view of it the pagan +sadness. It does not at once, and for the majority, become the higher +Hellenic religion. The country people, of course, cherish the unlovely +idols of an earlier time, such as those which Pausanias found still +devoutly preserved in Arcadia. Athenaeus tells the story of one who, +coming to a temple of Latona, had expected to find some worthy +presentment of the mother of Apollo, and laughed on seeing only a +shapeless wooden figure. The wilder people have wilder gods, which, +however, in Athens, or Corinth, or Lacedaemon, changing ever with the +worshippers in whom they live and move and have their being, borrow +something of the lordliness and distinction of human nature there. Greek +religion too has its mendicants, its purifications, its antinomian +mysticism, its garments offered to the gods, its statues worn with +kissing, its exaggerated superstitions for the vulgar only, its worship +of sorrow, its addolorata, its mournful mysteries. Scarcely a wild or +melancholy note of the medieval church but was anticipated by Greek +polytheism! What should we have thought of the vertiginous prophetess at +the very centre of Greek religion? The supreme Hellenic culture is a +sharp edge of light across this gloom. The fiery, stupefying wine becomes +in a happier region clear and exhilarating. The Dorian worship of Apollo, +rational, chastened, debonair, with his unbroken daylight, always opposed +to the sad Chthonian divinities, is the aspiring element, by force and +spring of which Greek religion sublimes itself. Out of Greek religion, +under happy conditions, arises Greek art, to minister to human culture. +It was the privilege of Greek religion to be able to transform itself +into an artistic ideal. + +For the thoughts of the Greeks about themselves, and their relation to +the world generally, were ever in the happiest readiness to be +transformed into objects for the senses. In this lies the main +distinction between Greek art and the mystical art of the Christian +middle age, which is always struggling to express thoughts beyond itself. +Take, for instance, a characteristic work of the middle age, Angelico's +Coronation of the Virgin, in the cloister of Saint Mark's at Florence. In +some strange halo of a moon Christ and the Virgin Mary are sitting, clad +in mystical white raiment, half shroud, half priestly linen. Our Lord, +with rosy nimbus and the long pale hair--tanquam lana alba et tanquam +nix--of the figure in the Apocalypse, sets with slender finger-tips a +crown of pearl on the head of his mother, who, corpse-like in her +refinement, is bending forward to receive it, the light lying like snow +upon her forehead. Certainly, it cannot be said of Angelico's fresco that +it throws into a sensible form our highest thoughts about man and his +relation to the world; but it did not do this adequately even for +Angelico. For him, all that is outward or sensible in his work--the hair +like wool, the rosy nimbus, the crown of pearl--is only the symbol or +type of an inexpressible world, to which he wishes to direct the +thoughts; he would have shrunk from the notion that what the eye +apprehended was all. Such forms of art, then, are inadequate to the +matter they clothe; they remain ever below its level. Something of this +kind is true also of oriental art. As in the middle age from an +exaggerated inwardness, so in the East from a vagueness, a want of +definition, in thought, the matter presented to art is unmanageable: +forms of sense struggle vainly with it. The many-headed gods of the East, +the orientalised Diana of Ephesus, with its numerous breasts, like +Angelico's fresco, are at best overcharged symbols, a means of hinting at +an idea which art cannot adequately express, which still remains in the +world of shadows. + +But take a work of Greek art,--the Venus of Melos. That is in no sense a +symbol, a suggestion of anything beyond its own victorious fairness. The +mind begins and ends with the finite image, yet loses no part of the +spiritual motive. That motive is not lightly and loosely attached to the +sensuous form, as the meaning to the allegory, but saturates and is +identical with it. The Greek mind had advanced to a particular stage of +self-reflexion, but was careful not to pass beyond it. In oriental +thought there is a vague conception of life everywhere, but no true +appreciation of itself by the mind, no knowledge of the distinction of +man's nature: in its consciousness of itself, humanity is still confused +with the fantastic, indeterminate life of the animal and vegetable world. +In Greek thought the "lordship of the soul" is recognised; that lordship +gives authority and divinity to human eyes and hands and feet; inanimate +nature is thrown into the background. But there Greek thought finds its +happy limit; it has not yet become too inward; the mind has not begun to +boast of its independence of the flesh; the spirit has not yet absorbed +everything with its emotions, nor reflected its own colour everywhere. +It has indeed committed itself to a train of reflexion which must end in +a defiance of form, of all that is outward, in an exaggerated idealism. +But that end is still distant: it has not yet plunged into the depths of +religious mysticism. + +This ideal art, in which the thought does not outstrip or lie beyond its +sensible embodiment, could not have arisen out of a phase of life that +was uncomely or poor. That delicate pause in Greek reflexion was joined, +by some supreme good luck, to the perfect animal nature of the Greeks. +Here are the two conditions of an artistic ideal. The influences which +perfected the animal nature of the Greeks are part of the process by +which the ideal was evolved. Those "Mothers" who, in the second part of +Faust, mould and remould the typical forms which appear in human history, +preside, at the beginning of Greek culture, over such a concourse of +happy physical conditions as ever generates by natural laws some rare +type of intellectual or spiritual life. That delicate air, "nimbly and +sweetly recommending itself" to the senses, the finer aspects of nature, +the finer lime and clay of the human form, and modelling of the dainty +framework of the human countenance:--these are the good luck of the Greek +when he enters upon life. Beauty becomes a distinction, like genius, or +noble place. + +"By no people," says Winckelmann, "has beauty been so highly esteemed as +by the Greeks. The priests of a youthful Jupiter at Aegae, of the +Ismenian Apollo, and the priest who at Tanagra led the procession of +Mercury, bearing a lamb upon his shoulders, were always youths to whom +the prize of beauty had been awarded. The citizens of Egesta, in Sicily, +erected a monument to a certain Philip, who was not their fellow-citizen, +but of Croton, for his distinguished beauty; and the people made +offerings at it. In an ancient song, ascribed to Simonides or Epicharmus, +of four wishes, the first was health, the second beauty. And as beauty +was so longed for and prized by the Greeks, every beautiful person sought +to become known to the whole people by this distinction, and above all to +approve himself to the artists, because they awarded the prize; and this +was for the artists an opportunity of having supreme beauty ever before +their eyes. Beauty even gave a right to fame; and we find in Greek +histories the most beautiful people distinguished. Some were famous for +the beauty of one single part of their form; as Demetrius Phalereus, for +his beautiful eyebrows, was called Charito-blepharos. It seems even to +have been thought that the procreation of beautiful children might be +promoted by prizes: this is shown by the existence of contests for +beauty, which in ancient times were established by Cypselus, King of +Arcadia, by the river Alpheus; and, at the feast of Apollo of Philae, a +prize was offered to the youths for the deftest kiss. This was decided by +an umpire; as also at Megara, by the grave of Diodes. At Sparta, and at +Lesbos, in the temple of Juno, and among the Parrhasii, there were +contests for beauty among women. The general esteem for beauty went so +far, that the Spartan women set up in their bedchambers a Nireus, a +Narcissus, or a Hyacinth, that they might bear beautiful children." + +So, from a few stray antiquarianisms, a few faces cast up sharply from +the waves, Winckelmann, as his manner is, divines the temperament of the +antique world, and that in which it had delight. It has passed away with +that distant age, and we may venture to dwell upon it. What sharpness and +reality it has is the sharpness and reality of suddenly arrested life. +The Greek system of gymnastics originated as part of a religious ritual. +The worshipper was to recommend himself to the gods by becoming fleet and +fair, white and red, like them. The beauty of the palaestra, and the +beauty of the artist's studio, reacted on each other. The youth tried to +rival his gods; and his increased beauty passed back into them.--"I take +the gods to witness, I had rather have a fair body than a king's +crown"--Omnumi pantas theous me helesthai an ten basileos arkhen anti tou +kalos einai.--That is the form in which one age of the world chose the +higher life--a perfect world, if the gods could have seemed for ever only +fleet and fair, white and red. Let us not regret that this unperplexed +youth of humanity, seeing itself and satisfied, passed, at the due +moment, into a mournful maturity; for already the deep joy was in store +for the spirit, of finding the ideal of that youth still red with life in +the grave. + +It followed that the Greek ideal expressed itself pre-eminently in +sculpture. All art has a sensuous element, colour, form, sound--in poetry +a dexterous recalling of these, together with the profound, joyful +sensuousness of motion: each of these may be a medium for the ideal: it +is partly accident which in any individual case makes the born artist, +poet, or painter rather than sculptor. But as the mind itself has had an +historical development, one form of art, by the very limitations of its +material, may be more adequate than another for the expression of any one +phase of its experience. Different attitudes of the imagination have a +native affinity with different types of sensuous form, so that they +combine, with completeness and ease. The arts may thus be ranged in a +series, which corresponds to a series of developments in the human mind +itself. Architecture, which begins in a practical need, can only express +by vague hint or symbol the spirit or mind of the artist. He closes his +sadness over him, or wanders in the perplexed intricacies of things, or +projects his purpose from him clean-cut and sincere, or bares himself to +the sunlight. But these spiritualities, felt rather than seen, can but +lurk about architectural form as volatile effects, to be gathered from it +by reflexion; their expression is not really sensuous at all. As human +form is not the subject with which it deals, architecture is the mode in +which the artistic effort centres, when the thoughts of man concerning +himself are still indistinct, when he is still little preoccupied with +those harmonies, storms, victories, of the unseen and intellectual world, +which, wrought out into the bodily form, give it an interest and +significance communicable to it alone. The art of Egypt, with its supreme +architectural effects, is, according to Hegel's beautiful comparison, a +Memnon waiting for the day, the day of the Greek spirit, the humanistic +spirit, with its power of speech. Again, painting, music, and poetry, +with their endless power of complexity, are the special arts of the +romantic and modern ages. Into these, with the utmost attenuation of +detail, may be translated every delicacy of thought and feeling, +incidental to a consciousness brooding with delight over itself. Through +their gradations of shade, their exquisite intervals, they project in an +external form that which is most inward in humour, passion, sentiment. +Between architecture and the romantic arts of painting, music, and +poetry, comes sculpture, which, unlike architecture, deals immediately +with man, while it contrasts with the romantic arts, because it is not +self-analytical. It has to do more exclusively than any other art with +the human form, itself one entire medium of spiritual expression, +trembling, blushing, melting into dew, with inward excitement. That +spirituality which only lurks about architecture as a volatile effect, in +sculpture takes up the whole given material, and penetrates it with an +imaginative motive; and at first sight sculpture, with its solidity of +form, seems a thing more real and full than the faint, abstract world of +poetry or painting. Still the fact is the reverse. Discourse and action +show man as he is, more directly than the springing of the muscles and +the moulding of the flesh; and over these poetry has command. Painting, +by the flushing of colour in the face and dilatation of light in the +eye--music, by its subtle range of tones--can refine most delicately upon +a single moment of passion, unravelling its finest threads. + +But why should sculpture thus limit itself to pure form? Because, by this +limitation, it becomes a perfect medium of expression for one peculiar +motive of the imaginative intellect. It therefore renounces all these +attributes of its material which do not help forward that motive. It has +had, indeed, from the beginning an unfixed claim to colour; but this +element of colour in it has always been more or less conventional, with +no melting or modulation of tones, never admitting more than a very +limited realism. It was maintained chiefly as a religious tradition. In +proportion as the art of sculpture ceased to be merely decorative, and +subordinate to architecture, it threw itself upon pure form. It renounces +the power of expression by sinking or heightening tones. In it, no member +of the human form is more significant than the rest; the eye is wide, and +without pupil; the lips and brow are hardly less significant than hands, +and breasts, and feet. The limitation of its resources is part of its +pride it has no backgrounds, no sky or atmosphere, to suggest and +interpret a train of feeling; a little of suggested motion, and much of +pure light on its gleaming surfaces, with pure form--only these. And it +gains more than it loses by this limitation to its own distinguishing +motives; it unveils man in the repose of his unchanging characteristics. +Its white light, purged from the angry, bloodlike stains of action and +passion, reveals, not what is accidental in man, but the god in him, as +opposed to man's restless movement. The art of sculpture records the +first naive, unperplexed recognition of man by himself; and it is a proof +of the high artistic capacity of the Greeks, that they apprehended and +remained true to these exquisite limitations, yet, in spite of them, gave +to their creations a vital and mobile individuality. + +Heiterkeit--blitheness or repose, and Allgemeinheit--generality or +breadth, are, then, the supreme characteristics of the Hellenic ideal. +But that generality or breadth has nothing in common with the lax +observation, the unlearned thought, the flaccid execution, which have +sometimes claimed superiority in art, on the plea of being "broad" or +"general." Hellenic breadth and generality come of a culture minute, +severe, constantly renewed, rectifying and concentrating its impressions +into certain pregnant types. The base of all artistic genius is the power +of conceiving humanity in a new, striking, rejoicing way, of putting a +happy world of its own creation in place of the meaner world of common +days, of generating around itself an atmosphere with a novel power of +refraction, selecting, transforming, recombining the images it transmits, +according to the choice of the imaginative intellect. In exercising this +power, painting and poetry have a choice of subject almost unlimited. +The range of characters or persons open to them is as various as life +itself; no character, however trivial, misshapen, or unlovely, can resist +their magic. That is because those arts can accomplish their function in +the choice and development of some special situation, which lifts or +glorifies a character, in itself not poetical. To realise this situation, +to define in a chill and empty atmosphere, the focus where rays, in +themselves pale and impotent, unite and begin to burn, the artist has to +employ the most cunning detail, to complicate and refine upon thought and +passion a thousand-fold. The poems of Robert Browning supply brilliant +examples of this power. His poetry is pre-eminently the poetry of +situations. The characters themselves are always of secondary importance; +often they are characters in themselves of little interest; they seem to +come to him by strange accidents from the ends of the world. His gift is +shown by the way in which he accepts such a character, and throws it into +some situation, or apprehends it in some delicate pause of life, in which +for a moment it becomes ideal. Take an instance from Dramatis Personae. +In the poem entitled Le Byron de nos Jours, we have a single moment of +passion thrown into relief in this exquisite way. Those two jaded +Parisians are not intrinsically interesting; they only begin to interest +us when thrown into a choice situation. But to discriminate that moment, +to make it appreciable by us, that we may "find" it, what a cobweb of +allusions, what double and treble reflexions of the mind upon itself, +what an artificial light is constructed and broken over the chosen +situation; on how fine a needle's point that little world of passion is +balanced! Yet, in spite of this intricacy, the poem has the clear ring of +a central motive; we receive from it the impression of one imaginative +tone, of a single creative act. + +To produce such effects at all requires all the resources of painting, +with its power of indirect expression, of subordinate but significant +detail, its atmosphere, its foregrounds and backgrounds. To produce them +in a pre-eminent degree requires all the resources of poetry, language in +its most purged form, its remote associations and suggestions, its double +and treble lights. These appliances sculpture cannot command. In it, +therefore, not the special situation, but the type, the general character +of the subject to be delineated, is all-important. In poetry and +painting, the situation predominates over the character; in sculpture, +the character over the situation. Excluded by the limitations of its +material from the development of exquisite situations, it has to choose +from a select number of types intrinsically interesting--interesting, +that is, independently of any special situation into which they may be +thrown. Sculpture finds the secret of its power in presenting these +types, in their broad, central, incisive lines. This it effects not by +accumulation of detail, but by abstracting from it. All that is +accidental, all that distracts the simple effect upon us of the supreme +types of humanity, all traces in them of the commonness of the world, it +gradually purges away. + +Works of art produced under this law, and only these, are really +characterised by Hellenic generality or breadth. In every direction it is +a law of limitation; it keeps passion always below that degree of +intensity at which it must necessarily be transitory, never winding up +the features to one note of anger, or desire, or surprise. In some of the +feebler allegorical designs of the middle age, we find isolated qualities +portrayed as by so many masks; its religious art has familiarised us with +faces fixed immovably into blank types of placid reverie; and men and +women, in the hurry of life, often wear the sharp impress of one +absorbing motive, from which it is said death sets their features free. +All such instances may be ranged under the grotesque; and the Hellenic +ideal has nothing in common with the grotesque. It allows passion to play +lightly over the surface of the individual form, losing thereby nothing +of its central impassivity, its depth and repose. To all but the highest +culture, the reserved faces of the gods will ever have something of +insipidity. Again, in the best Greek sculpture, the archaic immobility +has been thawed, its forms are in motion; but it is a motion ever kept in +reserve, which is very seldom committed to any definite action. Endless +as are the attitudes of Greek sculpture, exquisite as is the invention of +the Greeks in this direction, the actions or situations it permits are +simple and few. There is no Greek Madonna; the goddesses are always +childless. The actions selected are those which would be without +significance, except in a divine person--binding on a sandal or preparing +for the bath. When a more complex and significant action is permitted, it +is most often represented as just finished, so that eager expectancy is +excluded, as in the image of Apollo just after the slaughter of the +Python, or of Venus with the apple of Paris already in her hand. The +Laocoon, with all that patient science through which it has triumphed +over an almost unmanageable subject, marks a period in which sculpture +has begun to aim at effects legitimate, because delightful, only in +painting. The hair, so rich a source of expression in painting, because, +relatively to the eye or to the lip, it is mere drapery, is withdrawn +from attention; its texture, as well as the colour, is lost, its +arrangement faintly and severely indicated, with no enmeshed or broken +light. The eyes are wide and directionless, not fixing anything with +their gaze, or riveting the brain to any special external object; the +brows without hair. It deals almost exclusively with youth, where the +moulding of the bodily organs is still as if suspended between growth and +completion, indicated but not emphasised; where the transition from curve +to curve is so delicate and elusive, that Winckelmann compares it to a +quiet sea, which, although we understand it to be in motion, we +nevertheless regard as an image of repose; where, therefore, the exact +degree of development is so hard to apprehend. If one had to choose a +single product of Hellenic art, to save in the wreck of all the rest, one +would choose from the "beautiful multitude" of the Panathenaic frieze, +that line of youths on horseback, with their level glances, their proud, +patient lips, their chastened reins, their whole bodies in exquisite +service. This colourless, unclassified purity of life, with its blending +and interpenetration of intellectual, spiritual, and physical elements, +still folded together, pregnant with the possibilities of a whole world +closed within it, is the highest expression of that indifference which +lies beyond all that is relative or partial. Everywhere there is the +effect of an awaking, of a child's sleep just disturbed. All these +effects are united in a single instance--the adorante of the museum of +Berlin, a youth who has gained the wrestler's prize, with hands lifted +and open, in praise for the victory. Fresh, unperplexed, it is the image +of man as he springs first from the sleep of nature; his white light +taking no colour from any one-sided experience, characterless, so far as +character involves subjection to the accidental influences of life. + +"This sense," says Hegel, "for the consummate modelling of divine and +human forms was pre-eminently at home in Greece. In its poets and +orators, its historians and philosophers, Greece cannot be conceived from +a central point, unless one brings, as a key to the understanding of it, +an insight into the ideal forms of sculpture, and regards the images of +statesmen and philosophers, as well as epic and dramatic heroes, from the +artistic point of view; for those who act, as well as those who create +and think, have, in those beautiful days of Greece, this plastic +character. They are great and free, and have grown up on the soil of +their own individuality, creating themselves out of themselves, and +moulding themselves to what they were, and willed to be. The age of +Pericles was rich in such characters; Pericles himself, Pheidias, Plato, +above all Sophocles, Thucydides also, Xenophon and Socrates, each in his +own order, the perfection of one remaining undiminished by that of the +others. They are ideal artists of themselves, cast each in one flawless +mould, works of art, which stand before us as an immortal presentment of +the gods. Of this modelling also are those bodily works of art, the +victors in the Olympic games; yes, and even Phryne, who, as the most +beautiful of women, ascended naked out of the water, in the presence of +assembled Greece." + +This key to the understanding of the Greek spirit, Winckelmann possessed +in his own nature, itself like a relic of classical antiquity, laid open +by accident to our alien modern atmosphere. To the criticism of that +consummate Greek modelling he brought not only his culture but his +temperament. We have seen how definite was the leading motive of his +culture; how, like some central root-fibre, it maintained the +well-rounded unity of his life through a thousand distractions. +Interests not his, nor meant for him, never disturbed him. In morals, as +in criticism, he followed the clue of an unerring instinct. Penetrating +into the antique world by his passion, his temperament, he enunciates no +formal principles, always hard and one-sided. Minute and anxious as his +culture was, he never became one-sidedly self-analytical. Occupied ever +with himself, perfecting himself and cultivating his genius, he was not +content, as so often happens with such natures, that the atmosphere +between him and other minds should be thick and clouded; he was ever +jealously refining his meaning into a form, express, clear, objective. +This temperament he nurtured and invigorated by friendships which kept +him ever in direct contact with the spirit of youth. The beauty of the +Greek statues was a sexless beauty; the statues of the gods had the least +traces of sex. Here there is a moral sexlessness, a kind of ineffectual +wholeness of nature, yet with a true beauty and significance of its own. + +One result of this temperament is a serenity--Heiterkeit--which +characterises Winckelmann's handling of the sensuous side of Greek art. +This serenity is, perhaps, in great measure, a negative quality; it is +the absence of any sense of want, or corruption, or shame. With the +sensuous element in Greek art he deals in the pagan manner; and what is +implied in that? It has been sometimes said that art is a means of escape +from "the tyranny of the senses." It may be so for the spectator; he may +find that the spectacle of supreme works of art takes from the life of +the senses something of its turbid fever. But this is possible for the +spectator only because the artist, in producing those works, has +gradually sunk his intellectual and spiritual ideas in sensuous form. He +may live, as Keats lived, a pure life; but his soul, like that of Plato's +false astronomer, becomes more and more immersed in sense, until nothing +which lacks an appeal to sense has interest for him. How could such an +one ever again endure the greyness of the ideal or spiritual world? The +spiritualist is satisfied in seeing the sensuous elements escape from his +conceptions; his interest grows, as the dyed garment bleaches in the +keener air. But the artist steeps his thought again and again into the +fire of colour. To the Greek this immersion in the sensuous was +indifferent. Greek sensuousness, therefore, does not fever the blood; it +is shameless and childlike. Christian asceticism, on the other hand, +discrediting the slightest touch of sense, has from time to time provoked +into strong emphasis the contrast or antagonism to itself, of the +artistic life, with its inevitable sensuousness.--I did but taste a +little honey with the end of the rod that was in mine hand, and lo, I +must die!--It has sometimes seemed hard to pursue that life without +something of conscious disavowal of a spiritual world; and this imparts +to genuine artistic interests a kind of intoxication. From this +intoxication Winckelmann is free; he fingers those pagan marbles with +unsinged hands, with no sense of shame or loss. That is to deal with the +sensuous side of art in the pagan manner. + +The longer we contemplate that Hellenic ideal, in which man is at unity +with himself, with his physical nature, with the outward world, the more +we may be inclined to regret that he should ever have passed beyond it, +to contend for a perfection that makes the blood turbid, and frets the +flesh, and discredits the actual world about us. But if he was to be +saved from the ennui which ever attaches itself to realisation, even the +realisation of perfection, it was necessary that a conflict should come, +and some sharper note grieve the perfect harmony, to the end that the +spirit chafed by it might beat out at last a larger and profounder music. +In Greek tragedy this conflict has begun; man finds himself face to face +with rival claims. Greek tragedy shows how such a conflict may be treated +with serenity, how the evolution of it may be a spectacle of the dignity, +not of the impotence, of the human spirit. But it is not only in tragedy +that the Greek spirit showed itself capable of thus winning joy out of +matter in itself full of discouragements. Theocritus, too, often strikes +a note of romantic sadness. But what a blithe and steady poise, above +these discouragements, in a clear and sunny stratum of the air! + +Into this stage of Greek achievement Winckelmann did not enter. Supreme +as he is where his true interest lay, his insight into the typical unity +and repose of the highest sort of sculpture seems to have involved +limitation in another direction. His conception of art excludes that +bolder type of it which deals confidently and serenely with life, +conflict, evil. Living in a world of exquisite but abstract and +colourless form, he could hardly have conceived of the subtle and +penetrative, but somewhat grotesque art of the modern world. What would +he have thought of Gilliatt, in Victor Hugo's Travailleurs de la Mer, or +of the bleeding mouth of Fantine in the first part of Les Miserables, +penetrated as it is with a sense of beauty, as lively and transparent as +that of a Greek? There is even a sort of preparation for the romantic +temper within the limits of the Greek ideal itself, which Winckelmann +failed to see. For Greek religion has not merely its mournful mysteries +of Adonis, of Hyacinthus, of Demeter, but it is conscious also of the +fall of earlier divine dynasties. Hyperion gives way to Apollo, Oceanus +to Poseidon. Around the feet of that tranquil Olympian family still crowd +the weary shadows of an earlier, more formless, divine world. Even their +still minds are troubled with thoughts of a limit to duration, of +inevitable decay, of dispossession. Again, the supreme and colourless +abstraction of those divine forms, which is the secret of their repose, +is also a premonition of the fleshless, consumptive refinements of the +pale medieval artists. That high indifference to the outward, that +impassivity, has already a touch of the corpse in it; we see already +Angelico and the Master of the Passion in the artistic future. The +crushing of the sensuous, the shutting of the door upon it, the ascetic +interest, is already traceable. Those abstracted gods, "ready to melt out +their essence fine into the winds," who can fold up their flesh as a +garment, and still remain themselves, seem already to feel that bleak +air, in which, like Helen of Troy, they wander as the spectres of the +middle age. + +Gradually, as the world came into the church, an artistic interest, +native in the human soul, reasserted its claims. But Christian art was +still dependent on pagan examples, building the shafts of pagan temples +into its churches, perpetuating the form of the basilica, in later times +working the disused amphitheatres as quarries. The sensuous expression of +conceptions which unreservedly discredit the world of sense, was the +delicate problem which Christian art had before it. If we think of +medieval painting, as it ranges from the early German schools, still with +something of the air of the charnel-house about them, to the clear +loveliness of Perugino, we shall see how that problem was solved. Even in +the worship of sorrow the native blitheness of art asserted itself; the +religious spirit, as Hegel says, "smiled through its tears." So perfectly +did the young Raffaelle infuse that Heiterkeit, that pagan blitheness, +into religious works, that his picture of Saint Agatha at Bologna became +to Goethe a step in the evolution of Iphigenie.* But in proportion as +this power of smiling was found again, there came also an aspiration +towards that lost antique art, some relics of which Christian art had +buried in itself, ready to work wonders when their day came. + +*Italiaenische Reise. Bologna, 19 Oct. 1776. + +The history of art has suffered as much as any history by trenchant and +absolute divisions. Pagan and Christian art are sometimes harshly +opposed, and the Renaissance is represented as a fashion which set in at +a definite period. That is the superficial view: the deeper view is that +which preserves the identity of European culture. The two are really +continuous; and there is a sense in which it may be said that the +Renaissance was an uninterrupted effort of the middle age, that it was +ever taking place. When the actual relics of the antique were restored to +the world, in the view of the Christian ascetic it was as if an ancient +plague-pit had been opened: all the world took the contagion of the life +of nature and of the senses. And now it was seen that the medieval spirit +too had done something for the destiny of the antique. By hastening the +decline of art, by withdrawing interest from it, and yet keeping unbroken +the thread of its traditions, it had suffered the human mind to repose +that it might awake when day came, with eyes refreshed, to those antique +forms. + +The aim of a right criticism is to place Winckelmann in an intellectual +perspective, of which Goethe is the foreground. For, after all, he is +infinitely less than Goethe; it is chiefly because at certain points he +comes in contact with Goethe, that criticism entertains consideration of +him. His relation to modern culture is a peculiar one. He is not of the +modern world; nor is he of the eighteenth century, although so much of +his outer life is characteristic of it. But that note of revolt against +the eighteenth century, which we detect in Goethe, was struck by +Winckelmann. Goethe illustrates that union of the Romantic spirit, in its +adventure, its variety, its profound subjectivity of soul, with +Hellenism, in its transparency, its rationality, its desire of +Beauty--that marriage of Faust and Helena--of which the art of the +nineteenth century is the child, the beautiful lad Euphorion, as Goethe +conceives him, on the crags, in the "splendour of battle and in harness +as for victory," his brows bound with light.* Goethe illustrates, too, +the preponderance in this marriage of the Hellenic element; and that +element, in its true essence, was made known to him by Winckelmann. + +*Faust, Th. ii. Act. 3. + +Breadth, centrality, with blitheness and repose, are the marks of +Hellenic culture. Is that culture a lost art? The local, accidental +colouring of its own age has passed from it; the greatness that is dead +looks greater when every link with what is slight and vulgar has been +severed; we can only see it at all in the reflected, refined light which +a high education creates for us. Can we bring down that ideal into the +gaudy, perplexed light of modern life? + +Certainly, for us of the modern world, with its conflicting claims, its +entangled interests, distracted by so many sorrows, so many +preoccupations, so bewildering an experience, the problem of unity with +ourselves, in blitheness and repose, is far harder than it was for the +Greek within the simple terms of antique life. Yet, not less than ever, +the intellect demands completeness, centrality. It is this which +Winckelmann imprints on the imagination of Goethe, at the beginning of +his culture, in its original and simplest form, as in a fragment of Greek +art itself, stranded on that littered, indeterminate shore of Germany in +the eighteenth century. In Winckelmann, this type comes to him, not as in +a book or a theory, but importunately, in a passionate life or +personality. For Goethe, possessing all modern interests, ready to be +lost in the perplexed currents of modern thought, he defines, in clearest +outline, the problem of culture--balance, unity with oneself, consummate +Greek modelling. + +It could no longer be solved, as in Phryne ascending naked out of the +water, by perfection of bodily form, or any joyful union with the world +without: the shadows had grown too long, the light too solemn, for that. +It could hardly be solved, as in Pericles or Pheidias, by the direct +exercise of any single talent: amid the manifold claims of modern +culture, that could only have ended in a thin, one-sided growth. Goethe's +Hellenism was of another order, the Allgemeinheit and Heiterkeit, the +completeness and serenity, of a watchful, exigent intellectualism. Im +Ganzen, Guten, Wahren, resolut zu leben--is Goethe's description of his +own higher life; and what is meant by life in the whole--im Ganzen? It +means the life of one for whom, over and over again, what was once +precious has become indifferent. Every one who aims at the life of +culture is met by many forms of it, arising out of the intense, +laborious, one-sided development of some special talent. They are the +brightest enthusiasms the world has to show. It is not their part to +weigh the claims which this or that alien form of culture makes upon +them. But the pure instinct of self-culture cares not so much to reap all +that these forms of culture can give, as to find in them its own +strength. The demand of the intellect is to feel itself alive. It must +see into the laws, the operation, the intellectual reward of every +divided form of culture; but only that it may measure the relation +between itself and them. It struggles with those forms till its secret is +won from each, and then lets each fall back into its place; in the +supreme, artistic view of life. With a kind of passionate coldness, such +natures rejoice to be away from and past their former selves. Above all, +they are jealous of that abandonment to one special gift which really +limits their capabilities. It would have been easy for Goethe, with the +gift of a sensuous nature, to let it overgrow him. It comes easily and +naturally, perhaps, to certain "other-worldly" natures to be even as the +Schoene Seele, that ideal of gentle pietism, in Wilhelm Meister: but to +the large vision of Goethe, that seemed to be a phase of life that a man +might feel all round, and leave behind him. Again, it is easy to indulge +the commonplace metaphysical instinct. But a taste for metaphysics may be +one of those things which we must renounce, if we mean to mould our lives +to artistic perfection. Philosophy serves culture, not by the fancied +gift of absolute or transcendental knowledge, but by suggesting questions +which help one to detect the passion, and strangeness, and dramatic +contrasts of life. + +But Goethe's culture did not remain "behind the veil"; it ever emerged in +the practical functions of art, in actual production. For him the problem +came to be:--Can the blitheness and universality of the antique ideal be +communicated to artistic productions, which shall contain the fulness of +the experience of the modern world? We have seen that the development of +the various forms of art has corresponded to the development of the +thoughts of man concerning himself, to the growing revelation of the mind +to itself. Sculpture corresponds to the unperplexed, emphatic outlines of +Hellenic humanism; painting to the mystic depth and intricacy of the +middle age; music and poetry have their fortune in the modern world. Let +us understand by poetry all literary production which attains the power +of giving pleasure by its form, as distinct from its matter. Only in this +varied literary form can art command that width, variety, delicacy of +resources, which will enable it to deal with the conditions of modern +life. What modern art has to do in the service of culture is so to +rearrange the details of modern life, so to reflect it, that it may +satisfy the spirit. And what does the spirit need in the face of modern +life? The sense of freedom. That naive, rough sense of freedom, which +supposes man's will to be limited, if at all, only by a will stronger +than his, he can never have again. The attempt to represent it in art +would have so little verisimilitude that it would be flat and +uninteresting. The chief factor in the thoughts of the modern mind +concerning itself is the intricacy, the universality of natural law, even +in the moral order. For us, necessity is not, as of old, a sort of +mythological personage without us, with whom we can do warfare: it is a +magic web woven through and through us, like that magnetic system of +which modern science speaks, penetrating us with a network, subtler than +our subtlest nerves, yet bearing in it the central forces of the world. +Can art represent men and women in these bewildering toils so as to give +the spirit at least an equivalent for the sense of freedom? Certainly, in +Goethe's romances, and even more in the romances of Victor Hugo, there +are high examples of modern art dealing thus with modern life, regarding +that life as the modern mind must regard it, yet reflecting upon +blitheness and repose. Natural laws we shall never modify, embarrass us +as they may; but there is still something in the nobler or less noble +attitude with which we watch their fatal combinations. In those romances +of Goethe and Victor Hugo, in some excellent work done after them, this +entanglement, this network of law, becomes the tragic situation, in which +certain groups of noble men and women work out for themselves a supreme +Denouement. Who, if he saw through all, would fret against the chain of +circumstance which endows one at the end with those great experiences? + +1867. + + + +CONCLUSION* + +*This brief "Conclusion" was omitted in the second edition of this book, +as I conceived it might possibly mislead some of those young men into +whose hands it might fall. On the whole, I have thought it best to +reprint it here, with some slight changes which bring it closer to my +original meaning. I have dealt more fully in Marius the Epicurean with +the thoughts suggested by it. + +Legei pou Herakleitos hoti panta khorei kai ouden menei. + +To regard all things and principles of things as inconstant modes or +fashions has more and more become the tendency of modern thought. Let us +begin with that which is without--our physical life. Fix upon it in one +of its more exquisite intervals, the moment, for instance, of delicious +recoil from the flood of water in summer heat. What is the whole physical +life in that moment but a combination of natural elements to which +science gives their names? But these elements, phosphorus and lime and +delicate fibres, are present not in the human body alone: we detect them +in places most remote from it. Our physical life is a perpetual motion of +them--the passage of the blood, the wasting and repairing of the lenses +of the eye, the modification of the tissues of the brain by every ray of +light and sound--processes which science reduces to simpler and more +elementary forces. Like the elements of which we are composed, the action +of these forces extends beyond us; it rusts iron and ripens corn. Far out +on every side of us those elements are broadcast, driven by many forces; +and birth and gesture and death and the springing of violets from the +grave are but a few out of ten thousand resultant combinations. That +clear, perpetual outline of face and limb is but an image of ours, under +which we group them--a design in a web, the actual threads of which pass +out beyond it. This at least of flamelike our life has, that it is but +the concurrence, renewed from moment to moment, of forces parting sooner +or later on their ways. + +Or if we begin with the inward world of thought and feeling, the +whirlpool is still more rapid, the flame more eager and devouring. There +it is no longer the gradual darkening of the eye and fading of colour +from the wall,--the movement of the shore-side, where the water flows +down indeed, though in apparent rest,--but the race of the mid-stream, a +drift of momentary acts of sight and passion and thought. At first sight +experience seems to bury us under a flood of external objects, pressing +upon us with a sharp and importunate reality, calling us out of ourselves +in a thousand forms of action. But when reflexion begins to act upon +those objects they are dissipated under its influence; the cohesive force +seems suspended like a trick of magic; each object is loosed into a group +of impressions--colour, odour, texture--in the mind of the observer. And +if we continue to dwell in thought on this world, not of objects in the +solidity with which language invests them, but of impressions unstable, +flickering, inconsistent, which burn and are extinguished with our +consciousness of them, it contracts still further; the whole scope of +observation is dwarfed to the narrow chamber of the individual mind. +Experience, already reduced to a swarm of impressions, is ringed round +for each one of us by that thick wall of personality through which no +real voice has ever pierced on its way to us, or from us to that which we +can only conjecture to be without. Every one of those impressions is the +impression of the individual in his isolation, each mind keeping as a +solitary prisoner its own dream of a world. Analysis goes a step farther +still, and assures us that those impressions of the individual mind to +which, for each one of us, experience dwindles down, are in perpetual +flight; that each of them is limited by time, and that as time is +infinitely divisible, each of them is infinitely divisible also; all that +is actual in it being a single moment, gone while we try to apprehend it, +of which it may ever be more truly said that it has ceased to be than +that it is. To such a tremulous wisp constantly re-forming itself on the +stream, to a single sharp impression, with a sense in it, a relic more or +less fleeting, of such moments gone by, what is real in our life fines +itself down. It is with this movement, with the passage and dissolution +of impressions, images, sensations, that analysis leaves off--that +continual vanishing away, that strange, perpetual weaving and unweaving +of ourselves. + +Philosophiren, says Novalis, ist dephlegmatisiren vivificiren. The +service of philosophy, of speculative culture, towards the human spirit +is to rouse, to startle it into sharp and eager observation. Every moment +some form grows perfect in hand or face; some tone on the hills or the +sea is choicer than the rest; some mood of passion or insight or +intellectual excitement is irresistibly real and attractive for us,--for +that moment only. Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is +the end. A counted number of pulses only is given to us of a variegated, +dramatic life. How may we see in them all that is to be seen in them by +the finest senses? How shall we pass most swiftly from point to point, +and be present always at the focus where the greatest number of vital +forces unite in their purest energy? + +To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, +is success in life. In a sense it might even be said that our failure is +to form habits: for, after all, habit is relative to a stereotyped world, +and meantime it is only the roughness of the eye that makes any two +persons, things, situations, seem alike. While all melts under our feet, +we may well catch at any exquisite passion, or any contribution to +knowledge that seems by a lifted horizon to set the spirit free for a +moment, or any stirring of the senses, strange dyes, strange colours, and +curious odours, or work of the artist's hands, or the face of one's +friend. Not to discriminate every moment some passionate attitude in +those about us, and in the brilliancy of their gifts some tragic dividing +of forces on their ways, is, on this short day of frost and sun, to sleep +before evening. With this sense of the splendour of our experience and of +its awful brevity, gathering all we are into one desperate effort to see +and touch, we shall hardly have time to make theories about the things we +see and touch. What we have to do is to be for ever curiously testing new +opinions and courting new impressions, never acquiescing in a facile +orthodoxy of Comte, or of Hegel, or of our own. Philosophical theories or +ideas, as points of view, instruments of criticism, may help us to gather +up what might otherwise pass unregarded by us. "Philosophy is the +microscope of thought." The theory or idea or system which requires of us +the sacrifice of any part of this experience, in consideration of some +interest into which we cannot enter, or some abstract theory we have not +identified with ourselves, or what is only conventional, has no real +claim upon us. + +One of the most beautiful passages in the writings of Rousseau is that in +the sixth book of the Confessions, where he describes the awakening in +him of the literary sense. An undefinable taint of death had always clung +about him, and now in early manhood he believed himself smitten by mortal +disease. He asked himself how he might make as much as possible of the +interval that remained; and he was not biassed by anything in his +previous life when he decided that it must be by intellectual excitement, +which he found just then in the clear, fresh writings of Voltaire. Well! +we are all condamnes, as Victor Hugo says: we are all under sentence of +death but with a sort of indefinite reprieve--les hommes sont tous +condamnes a mort avec des sursis indefinis: we have an interval, and then +our place knows us no more. Some spend this interval in listlessness, +some in high passions, the wisest, at least among "the children of this +world," in art and song. For our one chance lies in expanding that +interval, in getting as many pulsations as possible into the given time. +Great passions may give us this quickened sense of life, ecstasy and +sorrow of love, the various forms of enthusiastic activity, disinterested +or otherwise, which come naturally to many of us. Only be sure it is +passion--that it does yield you this fruit of a quickened, multiplied +consciousness. Of this wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire of beauty, +the love of art for art's sake, has most; for art comes to you professing +frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they +pass, and simply for those moments' sake. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg Etext of The Renaissance, by Walter Pater + diff --git a/old/rnsnc10.zip b/old/rnsnc10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..2618644 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/rnsnc10.zip |