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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ariadne Florentina, by John Ruskin
+
+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: Ariadne Florentina
+       Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving
+
+Author: John Ruskin
+
+Release Date: November 15, 2008 [EBook #27268]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ARIADNE FLORENTINA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Brownfox, Juliet Sutherland and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                      _Library Edition_
+
+                     THE COMPLETE WORKS
+
+                             OF
+
+                         JOHN RUSKIN
+
+
+                      THE EAGLE'S NEST
+                        LOVE'S MEINIE
+                     ARIADNE FLORENTINA
+                         VAL D'ARNO
+                         PROSERPINA
+
+
+                NATIONAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION
+                NEW YORK             CHICAGO
+
+
+
+
+                     ARIADNE FLORENTINA.
+
+
+                        SIX LECTURES
+
+                             ON
+
+                  WOOD AND METAL ENGRAVING
+
+                       WITH APPENDIX.
+
+
+           GIVEN BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD,
+
+                  IN MICHAELMAS TERM, 1872.
+
+
+
+
+                         CONTENTS.
+
+
+
+                         LECTURE I.
+                                                                       PAGE
+DEFINITION OF THE ART OF ENGRAVING                                       1
+
+
+                         LECTURE II.
+
+THE RELATION OF ENGRAVING TO OTHER ARTS IN FLORENCE                     22
+
+
+                         LECTURE III.
+
+THE TECHNICS OF WOOD ENGRAVING                                          42
+
+
+                         LECTURE IV.
+
+THE TECHNICS OF METAL ENGRAVING                                         61
+
+
+                         LECTURE V.
+
+DESIGN IN THE GERMAN SCHOOLS OF ENGRAVING (HOLBEIN AND DÜRER)           81
+
+
+                         LECTURE VI.
+
+DESIGN IN THE FLORENTINE SCHOOLS OF ENGRAVING (SANDRO BOTTICELLI)      108
+
+
+                         APPENDIX.
+
+ARTICLE
+ I. NOTES ON THE PRESENT STATE OF ENGRAVING IN ENGLAND                 143
+
+II. DETACHED NOTES                                                     157
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF PLATES
+
+
+                                                                Facing Page
+Diagram                                                                  27
+
+The Last Furrow (Fig. 2). Facsimile from Holbein's woodcut               47
+
+The Two Preachers (Fig. 3). Facsimile from Holbein's woodcut             48
+
+   I. Things Celestial and Terrestrial, as apparent to the English mind  56
+
+  II. Star of Florence                                                   62
+
+ III. "At evening from the top of Fésole"                                72
+
+  IV. "By the Springs of Parnassus"                                      77
+
+   V. "Heat considered as a Mode of Motion." Florentine Natural
+          Philosophy                                                     92
+
+  VI. Fairness of the Sea and Air. In Venice and Athens                  95
+
+      The Child's Bedtime (Fig. 5). Facsimile from Holbein's woodcut    103
+
+      "He that hath ears to hear let him hear" (Fig. 6). Facsimile from
+          Holbein's woodcut                                             105
+
+ VII. For a time, and times                                             130
+
+VIII. The Nymph beloved of Apollo (Michael Angelo)                      131
+
+  IX. In the Woods of Ida                                               132
+
+   X. Grass of the Desert                                               135
+
+  XI. "Obediente Domino voci hominis"                                   145
+
+ XII. The Coronation in the Garden                                      158
+
+
+
+
+                     ARIADNE FLORENTINA.
+
+
+
+
+                         LECTURE I.
+
+             DEFINITION OF THE ART OF ENGRAVING.
+
+
+1. The entrance on my duty for to-day begins the fourth year of my
+official work in Oxford; and I doubt not that some of my audience are
+asking themselves, very doubtfully--at all events, I ask myself, very
+anxiously--what has been done.
+
+For practical result, I have not much to show. I announced, a fortnight
+since, that I would meet, the day before yesterday, any gentleman who
+wished to attend this course for purposes of study. My class, so minded,
+numbers four, of whom three wish to be artists, and ought not therefore,
+by rights, to be at Oxford at all; and the fourth is the last remaining
+unit of the class I had last year.
+
+2. Yet I neither in this reproach myself, nor, if I could, would I
+reproach the students who are not here. I do not reproach myself; for it
+was impossible for me to attend properly to the schools and to write the
+grammar for them at the same time; and I do not blame the absent
+students for not attending a school from which I have generally been
+absent myself. In all this, there is much to be mended, but, in true
+light, nothing to be regretted.
+
+I say, I had to write my school grammar. These three volumes of lectures
+under my hand,[A] contain, carefully set down, the things I want you
+first to know. None of my writings are done fluently; the second volume
+of "Modern Painters" was all of it written twice--most of it, four
+times,--over; and these lectures have been written, I don't know how
+many times. You may think that this was done merely in an author's
+vanity, not in a tutor's care. To the vanity I plead guilty,--no man is
+more intensely vain than I am; but my vanity is set on having it _known_
+of me that I am a good master, not in having it _said_ of me that I am a
+smooth author. My vanity is never more wounded than in being called a
+fine writer, meaning--that nobody need mind what I say.
+
+3. Well, then, besides this vanity, I have some solicitude for your
+progress. You may give me credit for it or not, as you choose, but it is
+sincere. And that your advance may be safe, I have taken the best pains
+I could in laying down laws for it. In these three years I have got my
+grammar written, and, with the help of many friends, all working
+instruments in good order; and now we will try what we can do. Not that,
+even now, you are to depend on my presence with you in personal
+teaching. I shall henceforward think of the lectures less, of the
+schools more; but my best work for the schools will often be by drawing
+in Florence or in Lancashire--not here.
+
+4. I have already told you several times that the course through which I
+mean every student in these schools should pass, is one which shall
+enable them to understand the elementary principles of the finest art.
+It will necessarily be severe, and seem to lead to no immediate result.
+Some of you will, on the contrary, wish to be taught what is immediately
+easy, and gives prospect of a manifest success.
+
+But suppose they should come to the Professor of Logic and Rhetoric, and
+tell him they want to be taught to preach like Mr. Spurgeon, or the
+Bishop of ----.
+
+He would say to them,--I cannot, and if I could I would not, tell you
+how to preach like Mr. Spurgeon, or the Bishop of ----. Your own
+character will form your style; your own zeal will direct it; your own
+obstinacy or ignorance may limit or exaggerate it; but my business is to
+prevent, as far as I can, your having _any_ particular style; and to
+teach you the laws of all language, and the essential power of your own.
+
+In like manner, this course, which I propose to you in art, will be
+calculated only to give you judgment and method in future study, to
+establish to your conviction the laws of general art, and to enable you
+to draw, if not with genius, at least with sense and propriety.
+
+The course, so far as it consists in practice, will be defined in my
+Instructions for the schools. And the theory connected with that
+practice is set down in the three lectures at the end of the first
+course I delivered--those on Line, Light, and Color.
+
+You will have, therefore, to get this book,[B] and it is the only one
+which you will need to have of your own,--the others are placed, for
+reference, where they will be accessible to you.
+
+5. In the 139th paragraph it states the order of your practical study in
+these terms:--
+
+"I wish you to begin by getting command of line;--that is to say, by
+learning to draw a steady line, limiting with absolute correctness the
+form or space you intend it to limit; to proceed by getting command over
+flat tints, so that you may be able to fill the spaces you have inclosed
+evenly, either with shade or color, according to the school you adopt;
+and, finally, to obtain the power of adding such fineness of drawing,
+within the masses, as shall express their undulation, and their
+characters of form and texture."
+
+And now, since in your course of practice you are first required to
+attain the power of drawing lines accurately and delicately, so in the
+course of theory, or grammar, I wish you first to learn the principles
+of linear design, exemplified by the schools which (§ 137) you will find
+characterized as the Schools of Line.
+
+6. If I had command of as much time as I should like to spend with you
+on this subject, I would begin with the early forms of art which used
+the simplest linear elements of design. But, for general service and
+interest, it will be better that I should sketch what has been
+accomplished by the greatest masters in that manner; the rather that
+their work is more or less accessible to all, and has developed into the
+vast industries of modern engraving, one of the most powerful existing
+influences of education and sources of pleasure among civilized people.
+
+And this investigation, so far from interrupting, will facilitate our
+examination of the history of the nobler arts. You will see in the
+preface to my lectures on Greek sculpture that I intend them to be
+followed by a course on architecture, and that by one on Florentine
+sculpture. But the art of engraving is so manifestly, at Florence,
+though not less essentially elsewhere, a basis of style both in
+architecture and sculpture, that it is absolutely necessary I should
+explain to you in what the skill of the engraver consists, before I can
+define with accuracy that of more admired artists. For engraving, though
+not altogether in the method of which you see examples in the
+print-shops of the High Street, is, indeed, a prior art to that either
+of building or sculpture, and is an inseparable part of both, when they
+are rightly practiced.
+
+7. And while we thus examine the scope of this first of the arts, it
+will be necessary that we learn also the scope of mind of the early
+practicers of it, and accordingly acquaint ourselves with the main
+events in the biography of the schools of Florence. To understand the
+temper and meaning of one great master is to lay the best, if not the
+only, foundation for the understanding of all; and I shall therefore
+make it the leading aim of this course of lectures to remind you of what
+is known, and direct you to what is knowable, of the life and character
+of the greatest Florentine master of engraving, Sandro Botticelli; and,
+incidentally, to give you some idea of the power of the greatest master
+of the German, or any northern, school, Hans Holbein.
+
+8. You must feel, however, that I am using the word "engraving" in a
+somewhat different, and, you may imagine, a wider, sense, than that
+which you are accustomed to attach to it. So far from being a wider
+sense, it is in reality a more accurate and restricted one, while yet it
+embraces every conceivable right application of the art. And I wish, in
+this first lecture, to make entirely clear to you the proper meaning of
+the word, and proper range of the art of, engraving; in my next
+following lecture, to show you its place in Italian schools, and then,
+in due order, the place it ought to take in our own, and in all schools.
+
+9. First then, to-day, of the Differentia, or essential quality of
+Engraving, as distinguished from other arts.
+
+What answer would you make to me, if I asked casually what engraving
+was? Perhaps the readiest which would occur to you would be, "The
+translation of pictures into black and white by means admitting
+reduplication of impressions." But if that be done by lithography, we do
+not call it engraving,--whereas we speak contentedly and continually of
+seal engraving, in which there is no question of black and white. And,
+as scholars, you know that this customary mode of speaking is quite
+accurate; and that engraving means, primarily, making a permanent cut or
+furrow in something. The central syllable of the word has become a
+sorrowful one, meaning the most permanent of furrows.
+
+10. But are you prepared absolutely to accept this limitation with
+respect to engraving as a pictorial art? Will you call nothing an
+engraving, except a group of furrows or cavities cut in a hard
+substance? What shall we say of mezzotint engraving, for instance, in
+which, though indeed furrows and cavities are produced mechanically as a
+ground, the artist's work is in effacing them? And when we consider the
+power of engraving in representing pictures and multiplying them, are we
+to recognize and admire no effects of light and shade except those which
+are visibly produced by dots or furrows? I mean, will the virtue of an
+engraving be in exhibiting these imperfect means of its effect, or in
+concealing them?
+
+11. Here, for instance, is the head of a soldier by Dürer,--a mere
+gridiron of black lines. Would this be better or worse engraving if it
+were more like a photograph or lithograph, and no lines seen?--suppose,
+more like the head of Mr. Santley, now in all the music-shops, and
+really quite deceptive in light and shade, when seen from over the way?
+Do you think Dürer's work would be better if it were more like that? And
+would you have me, therefore, leaving the question of technical method
+of production altogether to the craftsman, consider pictorial engraving
+simply as the production of a light-and-shade drawing, by some method
+permitting its multiplication for the public?
+
+12. This, you observe, is a very practical question indeed. For
+instance, the illustrations of my own lectures on sculpture are
+equivalent to permanent photographs. There can be little doubt that
+means will be discovered of thus producing perfect facsimiles of
+artists' drawings; so that, if no more than facsimile be required, the
+old art of cutting furrows in metal may be considered as, at this day,
+virtually ended. And, indeed, it is said that line engravers cannot any
+more get apprentices, and that a pure steel or copper plate is not
+likely to be again produced, when once the old living masters of the
+bright field shall have been all laid in their earth-furrows.
+
+13. Suppose, then, that this come to pass; and more than this, suppose
+that wood engraving also be superseded, and that instead of imperfect
+transcripts of drawings, on wood-blocks or metal-plates, photography
+enabled us to give, quite cheaply, and without limit to number,
+facsimiles of the finished light-and-shade drawings of artists
+themselves. Another group of questions instantly offers itself, on these
+new conditions; namely, What are the best means for a light-and-shade
+drawing--the pen, or the pencil, the charcoal, or the flat wash? That is
+to say, the pen, producing shade by black lines, as old engraving did;
+the pencil, producing shade by gray lines, variable in force; the
+charcoal, producing a smoky shadow with no lines in it, or the washed
+tint, producing a transparent shadow with no lines in it. Which of
+these methods is the best?--or have they, each and all, virtues to be
+separately studied, and distinctively applied?
+
+14. See how curiously the questions multiply on us. 1st, Is engraving to
+be only considered as cut work? 2d, For present designs multipliable
+without cutting, by the sunshine, what methods or instruments of drawing
+will be best? And now, 3dly, before we can discuss these questions at
+all, is there not another lying at the root of both,--namely, what a
+light-and-shade drawing itself properly _is_, and how it differs, or
+should differ, from a painting, whether by mere deficiency, or by some
+entirely distinct merit?
+
+15. For instance, you know how confidently it is said, in common talk
+about Turner, that his works are intelligible and beautiful when
+engraved, though incomprehensible as paintings. Admitting this to be so,
+do you suppose it is because the translation into light and shade is
+deficient in some qualities which the painting had, or that it possesses
+some quality which the painting had not? Does it please more because it
+is deficient in the color which confused a feeble spectator, and
+offended a dogmatic one,--or because it possesses a decision in its
+steady linear labor which interprets, or corrects, the swift penciling
+of the artist?
+
+16. Do you notice the two words I have just used, _Decision_, and
+_Linear_?--Decision, again introducing the idea of cuts or divisions, as
+opposed to gradations; Linear, as opposed to massive or broad?
+
+Yet we use all these words at different times in praise, while they
+evidently mark inconsistent qualities. Softness and decision, breadth
+and delineation, cannot co-exist in equal degrees. There must surely
+therefore be a virtue in the engraving inconsistent with that of the
+painting, and vice versâ.
+
+Now, be clear about these three questions which we have to-day to
+answer.
+
+     A. Is all engraving to be cut work?
+
+     B. If it need not be cut work, but only the reproduction of a
+     drawing, what methods of executing a light-and-shade drawing
+     will be best?
+
+     C. Is the shaded drawing itself to be considered only as a
+     deficient or imperfect painting, or as a different thing from a
+     painting, having a virtue of its own, belonging to black and
+     white, as opposed to color?
+
+17. I will give you the answers at once, briefly, and amplify them
+afterwards.
+
+     A. All engraving must be cut work;--_that_ is its differentia.
+     Unless your effect be produced by cutting into some solid
+     substance, it is not engraving at all.
+
+     B. The proper methods for light-and-shade drawing vary
+     according to subject, and the degree of completeness
+     desired,--some of them having much in common with engraving,
+     and others with painting.
+
+     C. The qualities of a light-and-shade drawing ought to be
+     entirely different from those of a painting. It is not a
+     deficient or partial representation of a colored scene or
+     picture, but an entirely different reading of either. So that
+     much of what is intelligible in a painting ought to be
+     unintelligible in a light-and-shade study, and _vice versâ_.
+
+You have thus three arts,--engraving, light-and-shade drawing, and
+painting.
+
+Now I am not going to lecture, in this course, on painting, nor on
+light-and-shade drawing, but on engraving only. But I must tell you
+something about light-and-shade drawing first; or, at least, remind you
+of what I have before told.
+
+18. You see that the three elementary lectures in my first volume are on
+Line, Light, and Color,--that is to say, on the modes of art which
+produce linear designs,--which produce effects of light,--and which
+produce effects of color.
+
+I must, for the sake of new students, briefly repeat the explanation of
+these.
+
+Here is an Arabian vase, in which the pleasure given to the eye is only
+by lines;--no effect of light, or of color, is attempted. Here is a
+moonlight by Turner, in which there are no lines at all, and no colors
+at all. The pleasure given to the eye is only by modes of light and
+shade, or effects of light. Finally, here is an early Florentine
+painting, in which there are no lines of importance, and no effect of
+light whatever; but all the pleasure given to the eye is in gayety and
+variety of color.
+
+19. I say, the pleasure given to the _eye_. The lines on this vase write
+something; but the ornamentation produced by the beautiful writing is
+independent of its meaning. So the moonlight is pleasant, first, as
+light; and the figures, first, as color. It is not the shape of the
+waves, but the light on them; not the expression of the figures, but
+their color, by which the _ocular_ pleasure is to be given.
+
+These three examples are violently marked ones; but, in preparing to
+draw _any_ object, you will find that, practically, you have to ask
+yourself, Shall I aim at the color of it, the light of it, or the lines
+of it? You can't have all three; you can't even have any two out of the
+three in equal strength. The best art, indeed, comes so near nature as
+in a measure to unite all. But the best is not, and cannot be, as good
+as nature; and the mode of its deficiency is that it must lose some of
+the color, some of the light, or some of the delineation. And in
+consequence, there is one great school which says, We will have the
+color, and as much light and delineation as are consistent with it.
+Another which says, We will have shade, and as much color and
+delineation as are consistent with it. The third, We will have
+delineation, and as much color and shade as are consistent with it.
+
+20. And though much of the two subordinate qualities may in each school
+be consistent with the leading one, yet the schools are evermore
+separate: as, for instance, in other matters, one man says, I will have
+my fee, and as much honesty as is consistent with it; another, I will
+have my honesty, and as much fee as is consistent with it. Though the
+man who will have his fee be subordinately honest,--though the man who
+will have his honor, subordinately rich, are they not evermore of
+diverse schools?
+
+So you have, in art, the utterly separate provinces, though in contact
+at their borders, of
+
+                      The Delineators;
+                      The Chiaroscurists; and
+                      The Colorists.
+
+21. The Delineators are the men on whom I am going to give you this
+course of lectures. They are essentially engravers, an engraved line
+being the best means of delineation. The Chiaroscurists are essentially
+draughtsmen with chalk, charcoal, or single tints. Many of them paint,
+but always with some effort and pain. Lionardo is the type of them; but
+the entire Dutch school consists of them, laboriously painting, without
+essential genius for color.
+
+The Colorists are the true painters; and all the faultless (as far, that
+is to say, as men's work can be so,) and consummate masters of art
+belong to them.
+
+22. The distinction between the colorist and chiaroscurist school is
+trenchant and absolute: and may soon be shown you so that you will never
+forget it. Here is a Florentine picture by one of the pupils of Giotto,
+of very good representative quality, and which the University galleries
+are rich in possessing. At the distance at which I hold it, you see
+nothing but a checker-work of brilliant, and, as it happens, even
+glaring colors. If you come near, you will find this patchwork resolve
+itself into a Visitation, and Birth of St. John; but that St.
+Elizabeth's red dress, and the Virgin's blue and white one, and the
+brown posts of the door, and the blue spaces of the sky, are painted in
+their own entirely pure colors, each shaded with more powerful tints of
+itself,--pale blue with deep blue, scarlet with crimson, yellow with
+orange, and green with richer green.
+
+The whole is therefore as much a mosaic work of brilliant color as if it
+were made of bits of glass. There is no effect of light attempted, or so
+much as thought of: you don't know even where the sun is: nor have you
+the least notion what time of day it is. The painter thinks you cannot
+be so superfluous as to want to know what time of day it is.
+
+23. Here, on the other hand, is a Dutch picture of good average quality,
+also out of the University galleries. It represents a group of cattle,
+and a herdsman watching them. And you see in an instant that the time is
+evening. The sun is setting, and there is warm light on the landscape,
+the cattle, and the standing figure.
+
+Nor does the picture in any conspicuous way seem devoid of color. On the
+contrary, the herdsman has a scarlet jacket, which comes out rather
+brilliantly from the mass of shade round it; and a person devoid of
+color faculty, or ill taught, might imagine the picture to be really a
+fine work of color.
+
+But if you will come up close to it, you will find that the herdsman has
+brown sleeves, though he has a scarlet jacket; and that the shadows of
+both are painted with precisely the same brown, and in several places
+with continuous touches of the pencil. It is only in the light that the
+scarlet is laid on.
+
+This at once marks the picture as belonging to the lower or
+chiaroscurist school, even if you had not before recognized it as such
+by its pretty rendering of sunset effect.
+
+24. You might at first think it a painting which showed greater skill
+than that of the school of Giotto. But the skill is not the primary
+question. The power of imagination is the first thing to be asked about.
+This Italian work imagines, and requires you to imagine also, a St.
+Elizabeth and St. Mary, to the best of your power. But this Dutch one
+only wishes you to imagine an effect of sunlight on cow-skin, which is a
+far lower strain of the imaginative faculty.
+
+Also, as you may see the effect of sunlight on cow-skin, in reality, any
+summer afternoon, but cannot so frequently see a St. Elizabeth, it is a
+far less useful strain of the imaginative faculty.
+
+And, generally speaking, the Dutch chiaroscurists are indeed persons
+without imagination at all,--who, not being able to get any pleasure out
+of their thoughts, try to get it out of their sensations; note, however,
+also their technical connection with the Greek school of shade, (see my
+sixth inaugural lecture, § 158,) in which color was refused, not for the
+sake of deception, but of solemnity.
+
+25. With these final motives you are not now concerned; your present
+business is the quite easy one of knowing, and noticing, the universal
+distinction between the methods of treatment in which the aim is light,
+and in which it is color; and so to keep yourselves guarded from the
+danger of being misled by the, often very ingenious, talk of persons who
+have vivid color sensations without having learned to distinguish them
+from what else pleases them in pictures. There is an interesting volume
+by Professor Taine on the Dutch school, containing a valuable historical
+analysis of the influences which formed it; but full of the gravest
+errors, resulting from the confusion in his mind between color and tone,
+in consequence of which he imagines the Dutch painters to be colorists.
+
+26. It is so important for you to be grounded securely in these first
+elements of pictorial treatment, that I will be so far tedious as to
+show you one more instance of the relative intellectual value of the
+pure color and pure chiaroscuro school, not in Dutch and Florentine, but
+in English art. Here is a copy of one of the lost frescoes of our
+Painted Chamber of Westminster;--fourteenth-century work, entirely
+conceived in color, and calculated for decorative effect. There is no
+more light and shade in it than in a Queen of Hearts in a pack of
+cards;--all that the painter at first wants you to see is that the young
+lady has a white forehead, and a golden crown, and a fair neck, and a
+violet robe, and a crimson shield with golden leopards on it; and that
+behind her is clear blue sky. Then, farther, he wants you to read her
+name, "Debonnairete," which, when you have read, he farther expects you
+to consider what it is to be debonnaire, and to remember your Chaucer's
+description of the virtue:--
+
+    She was not brown, nor dun of hue,
+    But white as snowe, fallen new,
+    With eyen glad, and browes bent,
+    Her hair down to her heeles went,
+    And she was simple, as dove on tree,
+    Full debonnair of heart was she.
+
+27. You see Chaucer dwells on the color just as much as the painter
+does, but the painter has also given her the English shield to bear,
+meaning that good-humor, or debonnairete, cannot be maintained by
+self-indulgence;--only by fortitude. Farther note, with Chaucer, the
+"eyen glad," and brows "bent" (high-arched and calm), the strong life,
+(hair down to the heels,) and that her gladness is to be without
+subtlety,--that is to say, without the slightest pleasure in any form of
+advantage-taking, or any shrewd or mocking wit: "she was simple as dove
+on tree;" and you will find that the color-painting, both in the fresco
+and in the poem, is in the very highest degree didactic and
+intellectual; and distinguished, as being so, from all inferior forms of
+art. Farther, that it requires you yourself first to understand the
+nature of simplicity, and to like simplicity in young ladies better than
+subtlety; and to understand why the second of Love's five kind arrows
+(Beauté being the first)--
+
+    Simplece ot nom, la seconde
+    Qui maint homme parmi le monde
+    Et mainte dame fait amer.
+
+Nor must you leave the picture without observing that there is another
+reason for Debonnairete's bearing the Royal shield,--of all shields
+that, rather than another. "De-bonne-aire" meant originally "out of a
+good eagle's nest," the "aire" signifying the eagle's nest or eyrie
+especially, because it is flat, the Latin "area" being the root of all.
+
+And this coming out of a good nest is recognized as, of all things,
+needfulest to give the strength which enables people to be good-humored;
+and thus you have "debonnaire" forming the third word of the group, with
+"gentle" and "kind," all first signifying "of good race."
+
+You will gradually see, as we go on, more and more why I called my third
+volume of lectures Eagle's Nest; for I am not fantastic in these titles,
+as is often said; but try shortly to mark my chief purpose in the book
+by them.
+
+28. Now for comparison with this old art, here is a modern engraving,
+in which color is entirely ignored; and light and shade alone are used
+to produce what is supposed to be a piece of impressive religious
+instruction. But it is not a piece of religious instruction at
+all;--only a piece of religious sensation, prepared for the sentimental
+pleasure of young ladies; whom (since I am honored to-day by the
+presence of many) I will take the opportunity of warning against such
+forms of false theological satisfaction. This engraving represents a
+young lady in a very long and, though plain, very becoming white dress,
+tossed upon the waves of a terrifically stormy sea, by which neither her
+hair nor her becoming dress is in the least wetted; and saved from
+despair in that situation by closely embracing a very thick and solid
+stone Cross. By which far-sought and original metaphor young ladies are
+expected, after some effort, to understand the recourse they may have,
+for support, to the Cross of Christ, in the midst of the troubles of
+this world.
+
+29. As those troubles are for the present, in all probability, limited
+to the occasional loss of their thimbles when they have not taken care
+to put them into their work-boxes,--the concern they feel at the
+unsympathizing gayety of their companions,--or perhaps the
+disappointment at not hearing a favorite clergyman preach,--(for I will
+not suppose the young ladies interested in this picture to be affected
+by any chagrin at the loss of an invitation to a ball, or the like
+worldliness,)--it seems to me the stress of such calamities might be
+represented, in a picture, by less appalling imagery. And I can assure
+my fair little lady friends,--if I still have any,--that whatever a
+young girl's ordinary troubles or annoyances may be, her true virtue is
+in shaking them off, as a rose-leaf shakes off rain, and remaining
+debonnaire and bright in spirits, or even, as the rose would be, the
+brighter for the troubles; and not at all in allowing herself to be
+either drifted or depressed to the point of requiring religious
+consolation. But if any real and deep sorrow, such as no metaphor can
+represent, fall upon her, does she suppose that the theological advice
+of this piece of modern art can be trusted? If she will take the pains
+to think truly, she will remember that Christ Himself never says
+anything about holding by His Cross. He speaks a good deal of bearing
+it; but never for an instant of holding by it. It is His Hand, not His
+Cross, which is to save either you, or St. Peter, when the waves are
+rough. And the utterly reckless way in which modern religious teachers,
+whether in art or literature, abuse the metaphor somewhat briefly and
+violently leant on by St. Paul, simply prevents your understanding the
+meaning of any word which Christ Himself speaks on this matter! So you
+see this popular art of light and shade, catching you by your mere
+thirst of sensation, is not only undidactic, but the reverse of
+didactic--deceptive and illusory.
+
+30. This _popular_ art, you hear me say, scornfully; and I have told
+you, in some of my teaching in "Aratra Pentelici," that all great art
+must be popular. Yes, but great art is popular, as bread and water are
+to children fed by a father. And vile art is popular, as poisonous jelly
+is, to children cheated by a confectioner. And it is quite possible to
+make any kind of art popular on those last terms. The color school may
+become just as poisonous as the colorless, in the hands of fools, or of
+rogues. Here is a book I bought only the other day,--one of the things
+got up cheap to catch the eyes of mothers at bookstalls,--Puss in Boots,
+illustrated; a most definite work of the color school--red jackets and
+white paws and yellow coaches as distinct as Giotto or Raphael would
+have kept them. But the thing is done by fools for money, and becomes
+entirely monstrous and abominable. Here, again, is color art produced by
+fools for religion: here is Indian sacred painting,--a black god with a
+hundred arms, with a green god on one side of him and a red god on the
+other; still a most definite work of the color school. Giotto or Raphael
+could not have made the black more resolutely black, (though the whole
+color of the school of Athens is kept in distinct separation from one
+black square in it), nor the green more unquestionably green. Yet the
+whole is pestilent and loathsome.
+
+31. Now but one point more, and I have done with this subject for
+to-day.
+
+You must not think that this manifest brilliancy and Harlequin's-jacket
+character is essential in the color school. The essential matter is only
+that everything should be of _its own_ definite color: it may be
+altogether sober and dark, yet the distinctness of hue preserved with
+entire fidelity. Here, for instance, is a picture of Hogarth's,--one of
+quite the most precious things we have in our galleries. It represents a
+meeting of some learned society--gentlemen of the last century, very
+gravely dressed, but who, nevertheless, as gentlemen pleasantly did in
+that day,--you remember Goldsmith's weakness on the point--wear coats of
+tints of dark red, blue, or violet. There are some thirty gentlemen in
+the room, and perhaps seven or eight different tints of subdued
+claret-color in their coats; and yet every coat is kept so distinctly of
+its own proper claret-color, that each gentleman's servant would know
+his master's.
+
+Yet the whole canvas is so gray and quiet, that as I now hold it by this
+Dutch landscape, with the vermilion jacket, you would fancy Hogarth's
+had no color in it at all, and that the Dutchman was half-way to
+becoming a Titian; whereas Hogarth's is a consummate piece of the most
+perfect colorist school, which Titian could not beat, in its way; and
+the Dutchman could no more paint half an inch of it than he could summon
+a rainbow into the clouds.
+
+32. Here then, you see, are, altogether, five works, all of the
+absolutely pure color school:--
+
+  1. One, Indian,--Religious Art;
+  2. One, Florentine,--Religious Art;
+  3. One, English,--from Painted Chamber, Westminster,--Ethic Art;
+  4. One, English,--Hogarth,--Naturalistic Art;
+  5. One, English,--to-day sold in the High Street,--Caricaturist Art.
+
+And of these, the Florentine and old English are divine work,
+God-inspired; full, indeed, of faults and innocencies, but divine, as
+good children are.
+
+Then this by Hogarth is entirely wise and right; but worldly-wise, not
+divine.
+
+While the old Indian, and this, with which we feed our children at this
+hour, are entirely damnable art;--every bit of it done by the direct
+inspiration of the devil,--feeble, ridiculous,--yet mortally poisonous
+to every noble quality in body and soul.
+
+33. I have now, I hope, guarded you sufficiently from the danger either
+of confusing the inferior school of chiaroscuro with that of color, or
+of imagining that a work must necessarily be good, on the sole ground of
+its belonging to the higher group. I can now proceed securely to
+separate the third school, that of Delineation, from both; and to
+examine its special qualities.
+
+It begins (see "Inaugural Lectures," § 137) in the primitive work of
+races insensible alike to shade and to color, and nearly devoid of
+thought and of sentiment, but gradually developing into both.
+
+Now as the design is primitive, so are the means likely to be primitive.
+A line is the simplest work of art you can produce. What are the
+simplest means you can produce it with?
+
+A Cumberland lead-pencil is a work of art in itself, quite a
+nineteenth-century machine. Pen and ink are complex and scholarly; and
+even chalk or charcoal not always handy.
+
+But the primitive line, the first and last, generally the best of lines,
+is that which you have elementary faculty of at your fingers' ends, and
+which kittens can draw as well as you--the scratch.
+
+The first, I say, and the last of lines. Permanent exceedingly,--even in
+flesh, or on mahogany tables, often more permanent than we desire. But
+when studiously and honorably made, divinely permanent, or
+delightfully--as on the venerable desks of our public schools, most of
+them, now, specimens of wood engraving dear to the heart of England.
+
+34. Engraving, then, is, in brief terms, the Art of Scratch. It is
+essentially the cutting into a solid substance for the sake of making
+your ideas as permanent as possible, graven with an iron pen in the
+Rock forever. _Permanence_, you observe, is the object, not
+multiplicability;--that is quite an accidental, sometimes not even a
+desirable, attribute of engraving. Duration of your work--fame, and
+undeceived vision of all men, on the pane of glass of the window on a
+wet day, or on the pillars of the castle of Chillon, or on the walls
+of the pyramids;--a primitive art,--yet first and last with us.
+
+Since then engraving, we say, is essentially cutting into the surface of
+any solid; as the primitive design is in lines or dots, the primitive
+cutting of such design is a scratch or a hole; and scratchable solids
+being essentially three--stone, wood, metal,--we shall have three great
+schools of engraving to investigate in each material.
+
+35. On tablet of stone, on tablet of wood, on tablet of steel,--the
+first giving the law to everything; the second true Athenian, like
+Athena's first statue in olive-wood, making the law legible and homely;
+and the third true Vulcanian, having the splendor and power of
+accomplished labor.
+
+Now of stone engraving, which is joined inseparably with sculpture and
+architecture, I am not going to speak at length in this course of
+lectures. I shall speak only of wood and metal engraving. But there is
+one circumstance in stone engraving which it is necessary to observe in
+connection with the other two branches of the art.
+
+The great difficulty for a primitive engraver is to make his scratch
+deep enough to be visible. Visibility is quite as essential to your fame
+as permanence; and if you have only your furrow to depend on, the
+engraved tablet, at certain times of day, will be illegible, and passed
+without notice.
+
+But suppose you fill in your furrow with something black, then it will
+be legible enough at once; and if the black fall out or wash out, still
+your furrow is there, and may be filled again by anybody.
+
+Therefore, the noble stone engravers, using marble to receive their
+furrow, fill that furrow with marble ink.
+
+And you have an engraved plate to purpose;--with the whole sky for its
+margin! Look here--the front of the church of San Michele of
+Lucca,--white marble with green serpentine for ink; or here,--the steps
+of the Giant's Stair, with lead for ink; or here,--the floor of the
+Pisan Duomo, with porphyry for ink. Such cutting, filled in with color
+or with black, branches into all sorts of developments,--Florentine
+mosaic on the one hand, niello on the other, and infinite minor arts.
+
+36. Yet we must not make this filling with color part of our definition
+of engraving. To engrave is, in final strictness, "to decorate a surface
+with furrows." (Cameos, in accuratest terms, are minute sculptures, not
+engravings.) A plowed field is the purest type of such art; and is, on
+hilly land, an exquisite piece of decoration.
+
+Therefore it will follow that engraving distinguishes itself from
+ordinary drawing by greater need of muscular effort.
+
+The quality of a pen drawing is to be produced easily,--deliberately,
+always,[C] but with a point that _glides_ over the paper. Engraving, on
+the contrary, requires always force, and its virtue is that of a line
+produced by pressure, or by blows of a chisel.
+
+It involves, therefore, always, ideas of power and dexterity, but also
+of restraint; and the delight you take in it should involve the
+understanding of the difficulty the workman dealt with. You perhaps
+doubt the extent to which this feeling justly extends, (in the first
+volume of "Modern Painters," expressed under the head "Ideas of Power.")
+But why is a large stone in any building grander than a small one?
+Simply because it was more difficult to raise it. So, also, an engraved
+line is, and ought to be, recognized as more grand than a pen or pencil
+line, because it was more difficult to execute it.
+
+In this mosaic of Lucca front you forgive much, and admire much,
+because you see it is all cut in stone. So, in wood and steel, you ought
+to see that every line has been costly; but observe, costly of
+deliberative, no less than athletic or executive power. The main use of
+the restraint which makes the line difficult to draw, is to give time
+and motive for deliberation in drawing it, and to insure its being the
+best in your power.
+
+37. For, as with deliberation, so without repentance, your engraved line
+must be. It may, indeed, be burnished or beaten out again in metal, or
+patched and botched in stone; but always to disadvantage, and at pains
+which must not be incurred often. And there is a singular evidence in
+one of Dürer's finest plates that, in his time, or at least in his
+manner of work, it was not possible at all. Among the disputes as to the
+meaning of Dürer's Knight and Death, you will find it sometimes
+suggested, or insisted, that the horse's raised foot is going to fall
+into a snare. What has been fancied a noose is only the former outline
+of the horse's foot and limb, uneffaced.
+
+The engraved line is therefore to be conclusive; not experimental. "I
+have determined this," says the engraver. Much excellent pen drawing is
+excellent in being tentative,--in being experimental. Indeterminate, not
+through want of meaning, but through fullness of it--halting _wisely_
+between two opinions--feeling cautiously after clearer opinions. But
+your engraver has made up his opinion. This is so, and must forever be
+so, he tells you. A very proper thing for a thoughtful man to say; a
+very improper and impertinent thing for a foolish one to say. Foolish
+engraving is consummately foolish work. Look,--all the world,--look for
+evermore, says the foolish engraver; see what a fool I have been! How
+many lines I have laid for nothing! How many lines upon lines, with no
+precept, much less superprecept!
+
+38. Here, then, are two definite ethical characters in all engraved
+work. It is Athletic; and it is Resolute. Add one more; that it is
+Obedient;--in their infancy the nurse, but in their youth the slave, of
+the higher arts; servile, both in the mechanism and labor of it, and in
+its function of interpreting the schools of painting as superior to
+itself.
+
+And this relation to the higher arts we will study at the source of
+chief power in all the normal skill of Christendom, Florence; and
+chiefly, as I said, in the work of one Florentine master, Sandro
+Botticelli.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[A] "Inaugural Series," "Aratra Pentelici," and "Eagle's Nest."
+
+[B] My inaugural series of seven lectures (now published uniform in size
+with this edition. 1890).
+
+[C] Compare Inaugural Lectures, § 144.
+
+
+
+
+                         LECTURE II.
+
+    THE RELATION OF ENGRAVING TO OTHER ARTS IN FLORENCE.
+
+
+39. From what was laid before you in my last lecture, you must now be
+aware that I do not mean, by the word 'engraving,' merely the separate
+art of producing plates from which black pictures may be printed.
+
+I mean, by engraving, the art of producing decoration on a surface by
+the touches of a chisel or a burin; and I mean by its relation to other
+arts, the subordinate service of this linear work, in sculpture, in
+metal work, and in painting; or in the representation and repetition of
+painting.
+
+And first, therefore, I have to map out the broad relations of the arts
+of sculpture, metal work, and painting, in Florence, among themselves,
+during the period in which the art of engraving was distinctly connected
+with them.[D]
+
+40. You will find, or may remember, that in my lecture on Michael Angelo
+and Tintoret I indicated the singular importance, in the history of art,
+of a space of forty years, between 1480, and the year in which Raphael
+died, 1520. Within that space of time the change was completed, from the
+principles of ancient, to those of existing, art;--a manifold change,
+not definable in brief terms, but most clearly characterized, and easily
+remembered, as the change of conscientious and didactic art, into that
+which proposes to itself no duty beyond technical skill, and no object
+but the pleasure of the beholder. Of that momentous change itself I do
+not purpose to speak in the present course of lectures; but my endeavor
+will be to lay before you a rough chart of the course of the arts in
+Florence up to the time when it took place; a chart indicating for you,
+definitely, the growth of conscience, in work which is distinctively
+conscientious, and the perfecting of expression and means of popular
+address, in that which is distinctively didactic.
+
+41. Means of popular address, observe, which have become singularly
+important to us at this day. Nevertheless, remember that the power of
+printing, or reprinting, black _pictures_,--practically contemporary
+with that of reprinting black _letters_,--modified the art of the
+draughtsman only as it modified that of the scribe. Beautiful and unique
+writing, as beautiful and unique painting or engraving, remain exactly
+what they were; but other useful and reproductive methods of both have
+been superadded. Of these, it is acutely said by Dr. Alfred
+Woltmann,[E]--
+
+     "A far more important part is played in the art-life of Germany
+     by the technical arts for the _multiplying_ of works; for
+     Germany, while it was the land of book-printing, is also the
+     land of picture-printing. Indeed, wood-engraving, which
+     preceded the invention of book-printing, _prepared the way for
+     it, and only left one step more necessary for it_.
+     _Book-printing_ and _picture-printing_ have both the same inner
+     cause for their origin, namely, the impulse to make each mental
+     gain a common blessing. Not merely princes and rich nobles were
+     to have the privilege of adorning their private chapels and
+     apartments with beautiful religious pictures; the poorest man
+     was also to have his delight in that which the artist had
+     devised and produced. It was not sufficient for him when it
+     stood in the church as an altar-shrine, visible to him and to
+     the congregation from afar; he desired to have it as his own,
+     to carry it about with him, to bring it into his own home. The
+     grand importance of wood-engraving and copperplate is not
+     sufficiently estimated in historical investigations. They were
+     not alone of use in the advance of art; they form an epoch in
+     the entire life of mind and culture. The idea embodied and
+     multiplied in pictures became like that embodied in the printed
+     word, the herald of every intellectual movement, and conquered
+     the world."
+
+42. "Conquered the world"? The rest of the sentence is true, but this,
+hyperbolic, and greatly false. It should have been said that both
+painting and engraving have conquered much of the good in the world,
+and, hitherto, little or none of the evil.
+
+Nor do I hold it usually an advantage to art, in teaching, that it
+_should_ be common, or constantly seen. In becoming intelligibly and
+kindly beautiful, while it remains solitary and unrivaled, it has a
+greater power. Westminster Abbey is more didactic to the English nation,
+than a million of popular illustrated treatises on architecture.
+
+Nay, even that it cannot be understood but with some difficulty, and
+must be sought before it can be seen, is no harm. The noblest didactic
+art is, as it were, set on a hill, and its disciples come to it. The
+vilest destructive and corrosive art stands at the street corners,
+crying, "Turn in hither; come, eat of my bread, and drink of my wine,
+which I have mingled."
+
+And Dr. Woltmann has allowed himself too easily to fall into the common
+notion of Liberalism, that bad art, disseminated, is instructive, and
+good art isolated, not so. The question is, first, I assure you, whether
+what art you have got is good or bad. If essentially bad, the more you
+see of it, the worse for you. Entirely popular art is all that is noble,
+in the cathedral, the council chamber, and the market-place; not the
+paltry colored print pinned on the wall of a private room.
+
+43. I despise the poor!--do I, think you? Not so. They only despise the
+poor who think them better off with police news, and colored tracts of
+the story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife, than they were with Luini
+painting on their church walls, and Donatello carving the pillars of
+their market-places.
+
+Nevertheless, the effort to be universally, instead of locally,
+didactic, modified advantageously, as you know, and in a thousand ways
+varied, the earlier art of engraving: and the development of its popular
+power, whether for good or evil, came exactly--so fate appointed--at a
+time when the minds of the masses were agitated by the struggle which
+closed in the Reformation in some countries, and in the desperate
+refusal of Reformation in others.[F] The two greatest masters of
+engraving whose lives we are to study, were, both of them, passionate
+reformers: Holbein no less than Luther; Botticelli no less than
+Savonarola.
+
+44. Reformers, I mean, in the full and, accurately, the only, sense. Not
+preachers of new doctrines; but witnesses against the betrayal of the
+old ones, which were on the lips of all men, and in the lives of none.
+Nay, the painters are indeed more pure reformers than the priests. They
+rebuked the manifest vices of men, while they realized whatever was
+loveliest in their faith. Priestly reform soon enraged itself into mere
+contest for personal opinions; while, without rage, but in stern rebuke
+of all that was vile in conduct or thought,--in declaration of the
+always-received faiths of the Christian Church, and in warning of the
+power of faith, and death,[G] over the petty designs of men,--Botticelli
+and Holbein together fought foremost in the ranks of the Reformation.
+
+45. To-day I will endeavor to explain how they attained such rank. Then,
+in the next two lectures, the technics of both,--their way of speaking;
+and in the last two, what they had got to say.
+
+First, then, we ask how they attained this rank;--who taught _them_ what
+they were finally best to teach? How far must every people--how far did
+this Florentine people--teach its masters, before _they_ could teach
+_it_?
+
+Even in these days, when every man is, by hypothesis, as good as
+another, does not the question sound strange to you? You recognize in
+the past, as you think, clearly, that national advance takes place
+always under the guidance of masters, or groups of masters, possessed of
+what appears to be some new personal sensibility or gift of invention;
+and we are apt to be reverent to these alone, as if the nation itself
+had been unprogressive, and suddenly awakened, or converted, by the
+genius of one man.
+
+No idea can be more superficial. Every nation must teach its tutors, and
+prepare itself to receive them; but the fact on which our impression is
+founded--the rising, apparently by chance, of men whose singular gifts
+suddenly melt the multitude, already at the point of fusion; or suddenly
+form, and _in_form, the multitude which has gained coherence enough to
+be capable of formation,--enables us to measure and map the gain of
+national intellectual territory, by tracing first the lifting of the
+mountain chains of its genius.
+
+46. I have told you that we have nothing to do at present with the great
+transition from ancient to modern habits of thought which took place at
+the beginning of the sixteenth century. I only want to go as far as that
+point;--where we shall find the old superstitious art represented
+_finally_ by Perugino, and the modern scientific and anatomical art
+represented _primarily_ by Michael Angelo. And the epithet bestowed on
+Perugino by Michael Angelo, 'goffo nell' arte,' dunce, or blockhead, in
+art,--being, as far as my knowledge of history extends, the most cruel,
+the most false, and the most foolish insult ever offered by one great
+man to another,--does you at least good service, in showing how
+trenchant the separation is between the two orders of artists,[H]--how
+exclusively we may follow out the history of all the 'goffi nell' arte,'
+and write our Florentine Dunciad, and Laus Stultitiæ, in peace; and
+never trench upon the thoughts or ways of these proud ones, who showed
+their fathers' nakedness, and snatched their masters' fame.
+
+47. The Florentine dunces in art are a multitude; but I only want you to
+know something about twenty of them.
+
+Twenty!--you think that a grievous number? It may, perhaps, appease
+you a little to be told that when you really have learned a very little,
+accurately, about these twenty dunces, there are only five more men
+among the artists of Christendom whose works I shall ask you to examine
+while you are under my care. That makes twenty-five altogether,--an
+exorbitant demand on your attention, you still think? And yet, but a
+little while ago, you were all agog to get me to go and look at Mrs. A's
+sketches, and tell you what was to be thought about _them_; and I've had
+the greatest difficulty to keep Mrs. B's photographs from being shown
+side by side with the Raphael drawings in the University galleries. And
+you will waste any quantity of time in looking at Mrs. A's sketches or
+Mrs. B's photographs; and yet you look grave, because, out of nineteen
+centuries of European art-labor and thought, I ask you to learn
+something seriously about the works of five-and-twenty men!
+
+48. It is hard upon you, doubtless, considering the quantity of time you
+must nowadays spend in trying which can hit balls farthest. So I will
+put the task into the simplest form I can.
+
+                  1200                1300                1400
+                   |        1250       |        1350       |
+                   +         +         +         +         +
+    Niccola Pisano |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | | | | | |
+                 Arnolfo |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | | |
+                   Cimabue |-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | | | |
+             Giovanni Pisano |-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | |
+                   Andrea Pisano |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | |
+                          Giotto |-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | |
+                                 Orcagna |-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | |
+
+
+                  1400                1500                1600
+                   |        1450       |        1550       |
+                   +         +         +         +         +
+     Quercia |-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
+Brunelleschi |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
+      Ghiberti |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
+     Donatello |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | | | | | | |
+ Luca della Robbia |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | | | | | |
+       Filippo Lippi |-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | | | | | | |
+      Giovanni Bellini |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | |
+                Mantegna |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | | |
+              Verrocchio |-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | | | | |
+                  Perugino |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | |
+                  Botticelli |-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | |
+                           Luini |-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | |
+                           Dürer |-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | |
+                              Cima |-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | |
+                           Carpaccio |-|-|-|-| | | | | | | |
+                           Correggio |-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | |
+                               Holbein |-|-|-|-|-| | | | | |
+                                Tintoret |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|
+
+Here are the names of the twenty-five men,[I] and opposite each, a line
+indicating the length of his life, and the position of it in his
+century. The diagram still, however, needs a few words of explanation.
+Very chiefly, for those who know anything of my writings, there is
+needed explanation of its not including the names of Titian, Reynolds,
+Velasquez, Turner, and other such men, always reverently put before you
+at other times.
+
+They are absent, because I have no fear of your not looking at these.
+All your lives through, if you care about art, you will be looking at
+them. But while you are here at Oxford, I want to make you learn what
+you should know of these earlier, many of them weaker, men, who yet, for
+the very reason of their greater simplicity of power, are better guides
+for you, and of whom some will remain guides to all generations. And,
+as regards the subject of our present course, I have a still more
+weighty reason;--Vandyke, Gainsborough, Titian, Reynolds, Velasquez, and
+the rest, are essentially portrait painters. They give you the likeness
+of a man: they have nothing to say either about his future life, or his
+gods. 'That is the look of him,' they say: 'here, on earth, we know no
+more.'
+
+49. But these, whose names I have engraved, have something to
+say--generally much,--either about the future life of man, or about his
+gods. They are therefore, literally, seers or prophets. False prophets,
+it may be, or foolish ones; of that you must judge; but you must read
+before you can judge; and read (or hear) them consistently; for you
+don't know them till you have heard them out. But with Sir Joshua, or
+Titian, one portrait is as another: it is here a pretty lady, there a
+great lord; but speechless, all;--whereas, with these twenty-five men,
+each picture or statue is not merely another person of a pleasant
+society, but another chapter of a Sibylline book.
+
+50. For this reason, then, I do not want Sir Joshua or Velasquez in my
+defined group; and for my present purpose, I can spare from it even four
+others:--namely, three who have _too_ special gifts, and must each be
+separately studied--Correggio, Carpaccio, Tintoret;--and one who has no
+special gift, but a balanced group of many--Cima. This leaves twenty-one
+for classification, of whom I will ask you to lay hold thus. You must
+continually have felt the difficulty caused by the names of centuries
+not tallying with their years;--the year 1201 being the first of the
+thirteenth century, and so on. I am always plagued by it myself, much as
+I have to think and write with reference to chronology; and I mean for
+the future, in our art chronology, to use as far as possible a different
+form of notation.
+
+51. In my diagram the vertical lines are the divisions of tens of years;
+the thick black lines divide the centuries. The horizontal lines, then,
+at a glance, tell you the length and date of each artist's life. In one
+or two instances I cannot find the date of birth; in one or two more,
+of death; and the line indicates then only the ascertained[J] period
+during which the artist worked.
+
+And, thus represented, you see nearly all their lives run through the
+year of a new century; so that if the lines representing them were
+needles, and the black bars of the years 1300, 1400, 1500 were magnets,
+I could take up nearly all the needles by lifting the bars.
+
+52. I will actually do this, then, in three other simple diagrams. I
+place a rod for the year 1300 over the lines of life, and I take up all
+it touches. I have to drop Niccola Pisano, but I catch five. Now, with
+my rod of 1400, I have dropped Orcagna indeed, but I again catch five.
+Now, with my rod of 1500, I indeed drop Filippo Lippi and Verrocchio,
+but I catch seven. And here I have three pennons, with the staves of the
+years 1300, 1400, and 1500 running through them,--holding the names of
+nearly all the men I want you to study in easily remembered groups of
+five, five, and seven. And these three groups I shall hereafter call the
+1300 group, 1400 group, and 1500 group.
+
+
+                                        1300.
+                                         ^
+                                         |
+1240-1302 Cimabue            +-+-+-+-+-+-+
+                                         |
+1250-1321 Giovanni Pisano      +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
+                                         |
+1232-1310 ARNOLFO           -+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
+                                         |
+1270-1345 Andrea Pisano            +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
+                                         |
+1276-1336 Giotto                     +-+-+-+-+-+
+
+
+                             1400.
+                              ^
+                              |
+1374-1438 Quercia        -+-+-+-+-+-+-+
+                              |
+1381-1455 Ghiberti        +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
+                              |
+1377-1446 BRUNELLESCHI    +-+-+-+-+-+-+-
+                              |
+1386-1468 Donatello         +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
+                              |
+1400-1481 Luca                +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
+
+
+                                       1500.
+                                        ^
+                                        |
+1431-1506 Mantegna         -+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
+                                        |
+1457-1515 Botticelli            +-+-+-+-+-+-
+                                        |
+1426-1516 Bellini         +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
+                                        |
+1446-1524 PERUGINO            +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
+                                        |
+1470-1535 Luini                   +-+-+-+-+-+-+-
+                                        |
+1471-1527 Dürer                    -+-+-+-+-+-
+                                        |
+1498-1543 Holbein                       +-+-+-+-+
+
+53. But why should four unfortunate masters be dropped out?
+
+Well, I want to drop them out, at any rate; but not in disrespect. In
+hope, on the contrary, to make you remember them very separately
+indeed;--for this following reason.
+
+We are in the careless habit of speaking of men who form a great number
+of pupils, and have a host of inferior satellites round them, as masters
+of great schools.
+
+But before you call a man a master, you should ask, Are his pupils
+greater or less than himself? If they are greater than himself, he is a
+master indeed;--he has been a true teacher. But if all his pupils are
+less than himself, he may have been a great _man_, but in all
+probability has been a bad _master_, or no master.
+
+Now these men, whom I have signally left out of my groups, are true
+_Masters_.
+
+Niccola Pisano taught all Italy; but chiefly his own son, who succeeded,
+and in some things very much surpassed him.
+
+Orcagna taught all Italy, after him, down to Michael Angelo. And these
+two--Lippi, the religious schools, Verrocchio, the artist schools, of
+their century.
+
+Lippi taught Sandro Botticelli; and Verrocchio taught Lionardo da Vinci,
+Lorenzo di Credi, and Perugino. Have I not good reason to separate the
+masters of such pupils from the schools they created?
+
+54. But how is it that I can drop just the cards I want out of my pack?
+
+Well, certainly I force and fit matters a little: I leave some men out
+of my list whom I should like to have in it;--Benozzo Gozzoli, for
+instance, and Mino da Fiesole; but I can do without them, and so can you
+also, for the present. I catch Luca by a hair's-breadth only, with my
+1400 rod; but on the whole, with very little coaxing, I get the groups
+in this memorable and quite literally 'handy' form. For see, I write my
+lists of five, five, and seven, on bits of pasteboard; I hinge my rods
+to these; and you can brandish the school of 1400 in your left hand, and
+of 1500 in your right, like--railway signals;--and I wish all railway
+signals were as clear. Once learn, thoroughly, the groups in this
+artificially contracted form, and you can refine and complete afterwards
+at your leisure.
+
+55. And thus actually flourishing my two pennons, and getting my grip of
+the men, in either hand, I find a notable thing concerning my two flags.
+The men whose names I hold in my left hand are all sculptors; the men
+whose names I hold in my right are all painters.
+
+You will infallibly suspect me of having chosen them thus on purpose.
+No, honor bright!--I chose simply the greatest men,--those I wanted to
+talk to you about. I arranged them by their dates; I put them into three
+conclusive pennons; and behold what follows!
+
+56. Farther, note this: in the 1300 group, four out of the five men are
+architects as well as sculptors and painters. In the 1400 group, there
+is one architect; in the 1500, none. And the meaning of that is, that in
+1300 the arts were all united, and duly led by architecture; in 1400,
+sculpture began to assume too separate a power to herself; in 1500,
+painting arrogated all, and, at last, betrayed all. From which, with
+much other collateral evidence, you may justly conclude that the three
+arts ought to be practiced together, and that they naturally are so. I
+long since asserted that no man could be an architect who was not a
+sculptor. As I learned more and more of my business, I perceived also
+that no man could be a sculptor who was not an architect;--that is to
+say, who had not knowledge enough, and pleasure enough in structural
+law, to be able to build, on occasion, better than a mere builder. And
+so, finally, I now positively aver to you that nobody, in the graphic
+arts, can be quite rightly a master of anything, who is not master of
+everything!
+
+57. The junction of the three arts in men's minds, at the best times, is
+shortly signified in these words of Chaucer. Love's Garden,
+
+                        Everidele
+    Enclosed was, and walled well
+    With high walls, embatailled,
+    Portrayed without, and well entayled
+    With many rich portraitures.
+
+The French original is better still, and gives four arts in unison:--
+
+    Quant suis avant un pou alé
+    Et vy un vergier grant et le,
+    Bien cloz de bon mur batillié
+    Pourtrait dehors, et entaillié
+    Ou (for au) maintes riches escriptures.
+
+Read also carefully the description of the temples of Mars and Venus in
+the Knight's Tale. Contemporary French uses 'entaille' even of solid
+sculpture and of the living form; and Pygmalion, as a perfect master,
+professes wood carving, ivory carving, waxwork, and iron-work, no less
+than stone sculpture:--
+
+    Pimalion, uns entaillieres
+    Pourtraians en fuz[K] et en pierres,
+    En mettaux, en os, et en cire,
+    Et en toute autre matire.
+
+58. I made a little sketch, when last in Florence, of a subject which
+will fix the idea of this unity of the arts in your minds. At the base
+of the tower of Giotto are two rows of hexagonal panels, filled with
+bas-reliefs. Some of these are by unknown hands,--some by Andrea Pisano,
+some by Luca della Robbia, two by Giotto himself; of these I sketched
+the panel representing the art of Painting.
+
+You have in that bas-relief one of the foundation-stones of the most
+perfectly built tower in Europe; you have that stone carved by its
+architect's own hand; you find, further, that this architect and
+sculptor was the greatest painter of his time, and the friend of the
+greatest poet; and you have represented by him a painter in his
+shop,--bottega,--as symbolic of the entire art of painting.
+
+59. In which representation, please note how carefully Giotto shows you
+the tabernacles or niches, in which the paintings are to be placed. Not
+independent of their frames, these panels of his, you see!
+
+Have you ever considered, in the early history of painting, how
+important also is the history of the frame maker? It is a matter, I
+assure you, needing your very best consideration. For the frame was made
+before the picture. The painted window is much, but the aperture it
+fills was thought of before it. The fresco by Giotto is much, but the
+vault it adorns was planned first. Who thought of these;--who built?
+
+Questions taking us far back before the birth of the shepherd boy of
+Fésole--questions not to be answered by history of painting only, still
+less of painting in _Italy_ only.
+
+60. And in pointing out to you this fact, I may once for all prove to
+you the essential unity of the arts, and show you how impossible it is
+to understand one without reference to another. Which I wish you to
+observe all the more closely, that you may use, without danger of being
+misled, the data, of unequaled value, which have been collected by Crowe
+and Cavalcaselle, in the book which they have called a History of
+Painting in Italy, but which is in fact only a dictionary of details
+relating to that history. Such a title is an absurdity on the face of
+it. For, first, you can no more write the history of painting in Italy
+than you can write the history of the south wind in Italy. The sirocco
+does indeed produce certain effects at Genoa, and others at Rome; but
+what would be the value of a treatise upon the winds, which, for the
+honor of any country, assumed that every city of it had a native
+sirocco?
+
+But, further,--imagine what success would attend the meteorologist who
+should set himself to give an account of the south wind, but take no
+notice of the north!
+
+And, finally, suppose an attempt to give you an account of either wind,
+but none of the seas, or mountain passes, by which they were nourished,
+or directed.
+
+61. For instance, I am in this course of lectures to give you an account
+of a single and minor branch of graphic art,--engraving. But observe how
+many references to local circumstances it involves. There are three
+materials for it, we said;--stone, wood, and metal. Stone engraving is
+the art of countries possessing marble and gems; wood engraving, of
+countries overgrown with forest; metal engraving, of countries
+possessing treasures of silver and gold. And the style of a stone
+engraver is formed on pillars and pyramids; the style of a wood engraver
+under the eaves of larch cottages; the style of a metal engraver in the
+treasuries of kings. Do you suppose I could rightly explain to you the
+value of a single touch on brass by Finiguerra, or on box by Bewick,
+unless I had grasp of the great laws of climate and country; and could
+trace the inherited sirocco or tramontana of thought to which the souls
+and bodies of the men owed their existence?
+
+62. You see that in this flag of 1300 there is a dark strong line in the
+center, against which you read the name of Arnolfo.
+
+In writing our Florentine Dunciad, or History of Fools, can we possibly
+begin with a better day than All Fools' Day? On All Fools' Day--the
+first, if you like better so to call it, of the month of _opening_,--in
+the year 1300, is signed the document making Arnolfo a citizen of
+Florence, and in 1310 he dies, chief master of the works of the
+cathedral there. To this man, Crowe and Cavalcaselle give half a page,
+out of three volumes of five hundred pages each.
+
+But lower down in my flag, (not put there because of any inferiority,
+but by order of chronology,) you will see a name sufficiently familiar
+to you--that of Giotto; and to him, our historians of painting in Italy
+give some hundred pages, under the impression, stated by them at page
+243 of their volume, that "in his hands, art in the Peninsula became
+entitled for the first time to the name of Italian."
+
+63. Art became Italian! Yes, but _what_ art? Your authors give a
+perspective--or what they call such,--of the upper church of Assisi, as
+if that were merely an accidental occurrence of blind walls for Giotto
+to paint on!
+
+But how came the upper church of Assisi there? How came it to be
+vaulted--to be aisled? How came Giotto to be asked to paint upon it?
+
+The art that built it, good or bad, must have been an Italian one,
+before Giotto. He could not have painted on the air. Let us see how his
+panels were made for him.
+
+64. This Captain--the center of our first group--Arnolfo, has always
+hitherto been called 'Arnolfo di Lapo;'--Arnolfo the son of Lapo.
+
+Modern investigators come down on us delightedly, to tell us--Arnolfo
+was _not_ the son of Lapo.
+
+In these days you will have half a dozen doctors, writing each a long
+book, and the sense of all will be,--Arnolfo wasn't the son of Lapo.
+Much good may you get of that!
+
+Well, you will find the fact to be, there was a great Northman builder, a
+true son of Thor, who came down into Italy in 1200, served the order of
+St. Francis there, built Assisi, taught Arnolfo how to build, with Thor's
+hammer, and disappeared, leaving his name uncertain--Jacopo--Lapo--nobody
+knows what. Arnolfo always recognizes this man as his true father, who put
+the soul-life into him; he is known to his Florentines always as Lapo's
+Arnolfo.
+
+That, or some likeness of that, is the vital fact. You never can get at
+the literal limitation of living facts. They disguise themselves by the
+very strength of their life: get told again and again in different ways
+by all manner of people;--the literalness of them is turned topsy-turvy,
+inside-out, over and over again;--then the fools come and read them
+wrong side upwards, or else, say there never was a fact at all. Nothing
+delights a true blockhead so much as to prove a negative;--to show that
+everybody has been wrong. Fancy the delicious sensation, to an
+empty-headed creature, of fancying for a moment that he has emptied
+everybody else's head as well as his own! nay, that, for once, his own
+hollow bottle of a head has had the best of other bottles, and has been
+_first_ empty;--first to know--nothing.
+
+65. Hold, then, steadily the first tradition about this Arnolfo. That
+his real father was called "Cambio" matters to you not a straw. That he
+never called himself Cambio's Arnolfo--that nobody else ever called him
+so, down to Vasari's time, is an infinitely significant fact to you. In
+my twenty-second letter in Fors Clavigera you will find some account of
+the noble habit of the Italian artists to call themselves by their
+masters' names, considering their master as their true father. If not
+the name of the master, they take that of their native place, as having
+owed the character of their life to that. They rarely take their own
+family name: sometimes it is not even known,--when best known, it is
+unfamiliar to us. The great Pisan artists, for instance, never bear any
+other name than 'the Pisan;' among the other five-and-twenty names in my
+list, not above six, I think, the two German, with four Italian, are
+family names. Perugino, (Peter of Perugia,) Luini, (Bernard of Luino,)
+Quercia, (James of Quercia,) Correggio, (Anthony of Correggio,) are
+named from their native places. Nobody would have understood me if I had
+called Giotto, 'Ambrose Bondone;' or Tintoret, Robusti; or even Raphael,
+Sanzio. Botticelli is named from his master; Ghiberti from his
+father-in-law; and Ghirlandajo from his work. Orcagna, who _did_, for a
+wonder, name himself from his father, Andrea Cione, of Florence, has
+been always called 'Angel' by everybody else; while Arnolfo, who never
+named himself from his father, is now like to be fathered against his
+will.
+
+But, I again beg of you, keep to the old story. For it represents,
+however inaccurately in detail, clearly in sum, the fact, that some
+great master of German Gothic at this time came down into Italy, and
+changed the entire form of Italian architecture by his touch. So that
+while Niccola and Giovanni Pisano are still virtually Greek artists,
+experimentally introducing Gothic forms, Arnolfo and Giotto adopt the
+entire Gothic ideal of form, and thenceforward use the pointed arch and
+steep gable as the limits of sculpture.
+
+66. Hitherto I have been speaking of the relations of my twenty-five men
+to each other. But now, please note their relations altogether to the
+art before them. These twenty-five include, I say, all the great masters
+of _Christian_ art.
+
+Before them, the art was too savage to be Christian; afterwards, too
+carnal to be Christian.
+
+Too savage to be Christian? I will justify that assertion hereafter; but
+you will find that the European art of 1200 includes all the most
+developed and characteristic conditions of the style in the north which
+you have probably been accustomed to think of as NORMAN, and which you
+may always most conveniently call so; and the most developed conditions
+of the style in the south, which, formed out of effete Greek, Persian,
+and Roman tradition, you may, in like manner, most conveniently express
+by the familiar word BYZANTINE. Whatever you call them, they are in
+origin adverse in temper, and remain so up to the year 1200. Then an
+influence appears, seemingly that of one man, Nicholas the Pisan, (our
+first MASTER, observe,) and a new spirit adopts what is best in each,
+and gives to what it adopts a new energy of its own; namely, this
+conscientious and didactic power which is the speciality of its
+progressive existence. And just as the new-born and natural art of
+Athens collects and reanimates Pelasgian and Egyptian tradition,
+purifying their worship, and perfecting their work, into the living
+heathen faith of the world, so this new-born and natural art of Florence
+collects and animates the Norman and Byzantine tradition, and forms out
+of the perfected worship and work of both, the honest Christian faith,
+and vital craftsmanship, of the world.
+
+67. Get this first summary, therefore, well into your minds. The word
+'Norman' I use roughly for North-savage;--roughly, but advisedly. I mean
+Lombard, Scandinavian, Frankish; everything north-savage that you can
+think of, except Saxon. (I have a reason for that exception; never mind
+it just now.)[L]
+
+All north-savage I call NORMAN, all south-savage I call BYZANTINE; this
+latter including dead native Greek primarily--then dead foreign Greek,
+in Rome;--then Arabian--Persian--Phoenician--Indian--all you can think
+of, in art of hot countries, up to this year 1200, I rank under the one
+term Byzantine. Now all this cold art--Norman, and all this hot
+art--Byzantine, is virtually dead, till 1200. It has no conscience, no
+didactic power;[M] it is devoid of both, in the sense that dreams are.
+
+Then in the thirteenth century, men wake as if they heard an alarum
+through the whole vault of heaven, and true human life begins again, and
+the cradle of this life is the Val d'Arno. There the northern and
+southern nations meet; there they lay down their enmities; there they
+are first baptized unto John's baptism for the remission of sins; there
+is born, and thence exiled,--thought faithless, for breaking the font of
+baptism to save a child from drowning, in his 'bel San Giovanni,'--the
+greatest of Christian poets; he who had pity even for the lost.
+
+68. Now, therefore, my whole history of _Christian_ architecture and
+painting begins with this Baptistery of Florence, and with its
+associated Cathedral. Arnolfo brought the one into the form in which you
+now see it; he laid the foundation of the other, and that to purpose,
+and he is therefore the CAPTAIN of our first school.
+
+For this Florentine Baptistery[N] is the great one of the world. Here is
+the center of Christian knowledge and power.
+
+And it is one piece of large _engraving_. White substance, cut into, and
+filled with black, and dark-green.
+
+No more perfect work was afterwards done; and I wish you to grasp the
+idea of this building clearly and irrevocably,--first, in order (as I
+told you in a previous lecture) to quit yourselves thoroughly of the
+idea that ornament should be decorated construction; and, secondly, as
+the noblest type of the intaglio ornamentation, which developed itself
+into all minor application of black and white to engraving.
+
+69. That it should do so first at Florence, was the natural sequence,
+and the just reward, of the ancient skill of Etruria in chased
+metal-work. The effects produced in gold, either by embossing or
+engraving, were the direct means of giving interest to his surfaces at
+the command of the 'auri faber,' or orfevre: and every conceivable
+artifice of studding, chiseling, and interlacing was exhausted by the
+artists in gold, who were at the head of the metal-workers, and from
+whom the ranks of the sculptors were reinforced.
+
+The old French word 'orfroiz,' (aurifrigia,) expresses essentially what
+we call 'frosted' work in gold; that which resembles small dew or
+crystals of hoar-frost; the 'frigia' coming from the Latin frigus. To
+chase, or enchase, is not properly said of the gold; but of the jewel
+which it secures with hoops or ridges, (French, _en_chasser[O]). Then
+the armorer, or cup and casket maker, added to this kind of decoration
+that of flat inlaid enamel; and the silver-worker, finding that the
+raised filigree (still a staple at Genoa) only attracted tarnish, or got
+crushed, early sought to decorate a surface which would bear external
+friction, with labyrinths of safe incision.
+
+70. Of the _security_ of incision as a means of permanent decoration, as
+opposed to ordinary carving, here is a beautiful instance in the base of
+one of the external shafts of the Cathedral of Lucca; thirteenth-century
+work, which by this time, had it been carved in relief, would have been
+a shapeless remnant of indecipherable bosses. But it is still as safe as
+if it had been cut yesterday, because the smooth round mass of the
+pillar is entirely undisturbed; into that, furrows are cut with a chisel
+as much under command and as powerful as a burin. The effect of the
+design is trusted entirely to the depth of these incisions--here dying
+out and expiring in the light of the marble, there deepened, by drill
+holes, into as definitely a black line as if it were drawn with ink;
+and describing the outline of the leafage with a delicacy of touch and
+of perception which no man will ever surpass, and which very few have
+rivaled, in the proudest days of design.
+
+71. This security, in silver plates, was completed by filling the
+furrows with the black paste which at once exhibited and preserved them.
+The transition from that niello-work to modern engraving is one of no
+real moment: my object is to make you understand the qualities which
+constitute the _merit_ of the engraving, whether charged with niello or
+ink. And this I hope ultimately to accomplish by studying with you some
+of the works of the four men, Botticelli and Mantegna in the south,
+Dürer and Holbein in the north, whose names I have put in our last flag,
+above and beneath those of the three mighty painters, Perugino the
+captain, Bellini on one side--Luini on the other.
+
+The four following lectures[P] will contain data necessary for such
+study: you must wait longer before I can place before you those by which
+I can justify what must greatly surprise some of my audience--my having
+given Perugino the captain's place among the three painters.
+
+72. But I do so, at least primarily, because what is commonly thought
+affected in his design is indeed the true remains of the great
+architectural symmetry which was soon to be lost, and which makes him
+the true follower of Arnolfo and Brunelleschi; and because he is a sound
+craftsman and workman to the very heart's core. A noble, gracious, and
+quiet laborer from youth to death,--never weary, never impatient, never
+untender, never untrue. Not Tintoret in power, not Raphael in
+flexibility, not Holbein in veracity, not Luini in love,--their gathered
+gifts he has, in balanced and fruitful measure, fit to be the guide, and
+impulse, and father of all.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[D] Compare "Aratra Pentelici," § 154.
+
+[E] "Holbein and His Time," 4to, Bentley, 1872, (a very valuable book,)
+p. 17. Italics mine.
+
+[F] See Carlyle, "Frederick," Book III., chap. viii.
+
+[G] I believe I am taking too much trouble in writing these lectures.
+This sentence, § 44, has cost me, I suppose, first and last, about as
+many hours as there are lines in it;--and my choice of these two words,
+faith and death, as representatives of power, will perhaps, after all,
+only puzzle the reader.
+
+[H] He is said by Vasari to have called Francia the like. Francia is a
+child compared to Perugino; but a finished working-goldsmith and
+ornamental painter nevertheless; and one of the very last men to be
+called 'goffo,' except by unparalleled insolence.
+
+[I] The diagram used at the lecture is engraved on page 30; the reader
+had better draw it larger for himself, as it had to be made
+inconveniently small for this size of leaf.
+
+[J] 'Ascertained,' scarcely any date ever is, quite satisfactorily. The
+diagram only represents what is practically and broadly true. I may have
+to modify it greatly in detail.
+
+[K] For fust, log of wood, erroneously 'fer' in the later printed
+editions. Compare the account of the works of Art and Nature, towards
+the end of the Romance of the Rose.
+
+[L] Of course it would have been impossible to express in any accurate
+terms, short enough for the compass of a lecture, the conditions of
+opposition between the Heptarchy and the Northmen;--between the
+Byzantine and Roman;--and between the Byzantine and Arab, which form
+minor, but not less trenchant, divisions of Art-province, for subsequent
+delineation. If you can refer to my "Stones of Venice," see § 20 of its
+first chapter.
+
+[M] Again much too broad a statement: not to be qualified but by a
+length of explanation here impossible. My lectures on Architecture, now
+in preparation ("Val d'Arno"), will contain further detail.
+
+[N] At the side of my page, here, I find the following memorandum, which
+was expanded in the viva-voce lecture. The reader must make what he can
+of it, for I can't expand it here.
+
+_Sense_ of Italian Church plan.
+
+Baptistery, to make Christians in; house, or dome, for them to pray and
+be preached to in; bell-tower, to ring all over the town, when they were
+either to pray together, rejoice together, or to be warned of danger.
+
+Harvey's picture of the Covenanters, with a shepherd on the outlook, as
+a campanile.
+
+[O] And 'chassis,' a window frame, or tracery.
+
+[P] This present lecture does not, as at present published, justify its
+title; because I have not thought it necessary to write the viva-voce
+portions of it which amplified the 69th paragraph. I will give the
+substance of them in better form elsewhere; meantime the part of the
+lecture here given may be in its own way useful.
+
+
+
+
+                        LECTURE III.
+
+               THE TECHNICS OF WOOD ENGRAVING.
+
+
+73. I am to-day to begin to tell you what it is necessary you should
+observe respecting methods of manual execution in the two great arts of
+engraving. Only to _begin_ to tell you. There need be no end of telling
+you such things, if you care to hear them. The theory of art is soon
+mastered; but 'dal detto al fatto, v'e gran tratto;' and as I have
+several times told you in former lectures, every day shows me more and
+more the importance of the Hand.
+
+74. Of the hand as a Servant, observe,--not of the hand as a Master. For
+there are two great kinds of manual work: one in which the hand is
+continually receiving and obeying orders; the other in which it is
+acting independently, or even giving orders of its own. And the
+dependent and submissive hand is a noble hand; but the independent or
+imperative hand is a vile one.
+
+That is to say, as long as the pen, or chisel, or other graphic
+instrument, is moved under the direct influence of mental attention, and
+obeys orders of the brain, it is working nobly;--the moment it moves
+independently of them, and performs some habitual dexterity of its own,
+it is base.
+
+75. _Dexterity_--I say;--some 'right-handedness' of its own. We might
+wisely keep that word for what the hand does at the mind's bidding; and
+use an opposite word--sinisterity,--for what it does at its own. For
+indeed we want such a word in speaking of modern art; it is all full of
+sinisterity. Hands independent of brains;--the left hand, by division of
+labor, not knowing what the right does,--still less what it ought to do.
+
+76. Turning, then, to our special subject. All engraving, I said, is
+intaglio in the solid. But the solid, in wood engraving, is a coarse
+substance, easily cut; and in metal, a fine substance, not easily.
+Therefore, in general, you may be prepared to accept ruder and more
+elementary work in one than the other; and it will be the means of
+appeal to blunter minds.
+
+You probably already know the difference between the actual methods of
+producing a printed impression from wood and metal; but I may perhaps
+make the matter a little more clear. In metal engraving, you cut
+ditches, fill them with ink, and press your paper into them. In wood
+engraving, you leave ridges, rub the tops of them with ink, and stamp
+them on your paper.
+
+The instrument with which the substance, whether of the wood or steel,
+is cut away, is the same. It is a solid plowshare, which, instead of
+throwing the earth aside, throws it up and out, producing at first a
+simple ravine, or furrow, in the wood or metal, which you can widen by
+another cut, or extend by successive cuts. This (Fig. 1) is the general
+shape of the solid plowshare: but it is of course made sharper or
+blunter at pleasure. The furrow produced is at first the wedge-shaped or
+cuneiform ravine, already so much dwelt upon in my lectures on Greek
+sculpture.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 1]
+
+77. Since, then, in wood printing, you print from the surface left
+solid; and, in metal printing, from the hollows cut into it, it follows
+that if you put few touches on wood, you draw, as on a slate, with white
+lines, leaving a quantity of black; but if you put few touches on metal,
+you draw with black lines, leaving a quantity of white.
+
+Now the eye is not in the least offended by quantity of white, but is,
+or ought to be, greatly saddened and offended by quantity of black.
+Hence it follows that you must never put little work on wood. You must
+not sketch upon it. You may sketch on metal as much as you please.
+
+78. "Paradox," you will say, as usual. "Are not all our journals,--and
+the best of them, Punch, par excellence,--full of the most brilliantly
+swift and slight sketches, engraved on wood; while line-engravings take
+ten years to produce, and cost ten guineas each when they are done?"
+
+Yes, that is so; but observe, in the first place, what appears to you a
+sketch on wood is not so at all, but a most laborious and careful
+imitation of a sketch on paper; whereas when you see what appears to be
+a sketch on metal, it _is_ one. And in the second place, so far as the
+popular fashion is contrary to this natural method,--so far as we do in
+reality try to produce effects of sketching in wood, and of finish in
+metal,--our work is wrong.
+
+Those apparently careless and free sketches on the wood ought to have
+been stern and deliberate; those exquisitely toned and finished
+engravings on metal ought to have looked, instead, like free ink
+sketches on white paper. That is the theorem which I propose to you for
+consideration, and which, in the two branches of its assertion, I hope
+to prove to you; the first part of it, (that wood-cutting should be
+careful,) in this present lecture; the second, (that metal-cutting
+should be, at least in a far greater degree than it is now, slight, and
+free,) in the following one.
+
+79. Next, observe the distinction in respect of _thickness_, no less
+than number, of lines which may properly be used in the two methods.
+
+In metal engraving, it is easier to lay a fine line than a thick one;
+and however fine the line may be, it lasts;--but in wood engraving it
+requires extreme precision and skill to leave a thin dark line, and when
+left, it will be quickly beaten down by a careless printer. Therefore,
+the virtue of wood engraving is to exhibit the qualities and power of
+_thick_ lines; and of metal engraving, to exhibit the qualities and
+power of _thin_ ones.
+
+All thin dark lines, therefore, in wood, broadly speaking, are to be
+used only in case of necessity; and thick lines, on metal, only in case
+of necessity.
+
+80. Though, however, thin _dark_ lines cannot easily be produced in
+wood, thin _light_ ones may be struck in an instant. Nevertheless, even
+thin light ones must not be used, except with extreme caution. For
+observe, they are equally useless as outline, and for expression of
+mass. You know how far from exemplary or delightful your boy's first
+quite voluntary exercises in white line drawing on your slate were? You
+could, indeed, draw a goblin satisfactorily in such method;--a round O,
+with arms and legs to it, and a scratch under two dots in the middle,
+would answer the purpose; but if you wanted to draw a pretty face, you
+took pencil or pen, and paper--not your slate. Now, that instinctive
+feeling that a white outline is wrong, is deeply founded. For Nature
+herself draws with diffused light, and concentrated dark;--never, except
+in storm or twilight, with diffused dark, and concentrated light; and
+the thing we all like best to see drawn--the human face--cannot be drawn
+with white touches, but by extreme labor. For the pupil and iris of the
+eye, the eyebrow, the nostril, and the lip are all set in dark on pale
+ground. You can't draw a white eyebrow, a white pupil of the eye, a
+white nostril, and a white mouth, on a dark ground. Try it, and see what
+a specter you get. But the same number of dark touches, skillfully
+applied, will give the idea of a beautiful face. And what is true of the
+subtlest subject you have to represent, is equally true of inferior
+ones. Nothing lovely can be quickly represented by white touches. You
+must hew out, if your means are so restricted, the form by sheer labor;
+and that both cunning and dextrous. The Florentine masters, and Dürer,
+often practice the achievement, and there are many drawings by the
+Lippis, Mantegna, and other leading Italian draughtsmen, completed to
+great perfection with the white line; but only for the sake of severest
+study, nor is their work imitable by inferior men. And such studies,
+however accomplished, always mark a disposition to regard chiaroscuro
+too much, and local color too little.
+
+We conclude, then, that we must never trust, in wood, to our power of
+outline with white; and our general laws, thus far determined, will
+be--thick lines in wood; thin ones in metal; complete drawing on wood;
+sketches, if we choose, on metal.
+
+81. But why, in wood, lines at all? Why not cut out white _spaces_, and
+use the chisel as if its incisions were so much white paint? Many fine
+pieces of wood-cutting are indeed executed on this principle. Bewick
+does nearly all his foliage so; and continually paints the light plumes
+of his birds with single touches of his chisel, as if he were laying on
+white.
+
+But this is not the finest method of wood-cutting. It implies the idea
+of a system of light and shade in which the shadow is totally black.
+Now, no light and shade can be good, much less pleasant, in which all
+the shade is stark black. Therefore the finest wood-cutting ignores
+light and shade, and expresses only form, and _dark local color_. And it
+is convenient, for simplicity's sake, to anticipate what I should
+otherwise defer telling you until next lecture, that fine metal
+engraving, like fine wood-cutting, ignores light and shade; and that, in
+a word, all good engraving whatsoever does so.
+
+82. I hope that my saying so will make you eager to interrupt me. 'What!
+Rembrandt's etchings, and Lupton's mezzotints, and Le Keux's
+line-work,--do you mean to tell us that these ignore light and shade?'
+
+I never said that _mezzotint_ ignored light and shade, or ought to do
+so. Mezzotint is properly to be considered as chiaroscuro drawing on
+metal. But I do mean to tell you that both Rembrandt's etchings, and Le
+Keux's finished line-work, are misapplied labor, in so far as they
+regard chiaroscuro; and that consummate engraving never uses it as a
+primal element of pleasure.
+
+[Illustration: THE LAST FURROW.
+
+(Fig. 2) Facsimile from Holbein's woodcut.]
+
+83. We have now got our principles so far defined that I can proceed to
+illustration of them by example.
+
+Here are facsimiles, very marvelous ones,[Q] of two of the best wood
+engravings ever produced by art,--two subjects in Holbein's Dance of
+Death. You will probably like best that I should at once proceed to
+verify my last and most startling statement, that fine engraving
+disdained chiaroscuro.
+
+This vignette (Fig. 2) represents a sunset in the open mountainous
+fields of southern Germany. And Holbein is so entirely careless about
+the light and shade, which a Dutchman would first have thought of, as
+resulting from the sunset, that, as he works, he forgets altogether
+where his light comes from. Here, actually, the shadow of the figure is
+cast from the side, right across the picture, while the sun is in front.
+And there is not the slightest attempt to indicate gradation of light in
+the sky, darkness in the forest, or any other positive element of
+chiaroscuro.
+
+This is not because Holbein cannot give chiaroscuro if he chooses. He is
+twenty times a stronger master of it than Rembrandt; but he, therefore,
+knows exactly when and how to use it; and that wood engraving is not the
+proper means for it. The quantity of it which is needful for his story,
+and will not, by any sensational violence, either divert, or vulgarly
+enforce, the attention, he will give; and that with an unrivaled
+subtlety. Therefore I must ask you for a moment or two to quit the
+subject of technics, and look what these two woodcuts mean.
+
+84. The one I have first shown you is of a plowman plowing at evening.
+It is Holbein's object, here, to express the diffused and intense light
+of a golden summer sunset, so far as is consistent with grander
+purposes. A modern French or English chiaroscurist would have covered
+his sky with fleecy clouds, and relieved the plowman's hat and his
+horses against it in strong black, and put sparkling touches on the
+furrows and grass. Holbein scornfully casts all such tricks aside; and
+draws the whole scene in pure white, with simple outlines.
+
+[Illustration: THE TWO PREACHERS.
+
+(Fig. 3) Facsimile from Holbein's woodcut.]
+
+85. And yet, when I put it beside this second vignette, (Fig. 3,) which
+is of a preacher preaching in a feebly lighted church, you will feel
+that the diffused warmth of the one subject, and diffused twilight in
+the other, are complete; and they will finally be to you more impressive
+than if they had been wrought out with every superficial means of
+effect, on each block.
+
+For it is as a symbol, not as a scenic effect, that in each case the
+chiaroscuro is given. Holbein, I said, is at the head of the
+painter-reformers, and his Dance of Death is the most energetic and
+telling of all the forms given, in this epoch, to the _Rationalist_
+spirit of reform, preaching the new Gospel of Death,--"It is no matter
+whether you are priest or layman, what you believe, or what you do: here
+is the end." You shall see, in the course of our inquiry, that
+Botticelli, in like manner, represents the _Faithful_ and _Catholic_
+temper of reform.
+
+86. The teaching of Holbein is therefore always melancholy,--for the
+most part purely rational; and entirely furious in its indignation
+against all who, either by actual injustice in this life, or by what he
+holds to be false promise of another, destroy the good, or the energy,
+of the few days which man has to live. Against the rich, the luxurious,
+the Pharisee, the false lawyer, the priest, and the unjust judge,
+Holbein uses his fiercest mockery; but he is never himself unjust; never
+caricatures or equivocates; gives the facts as he knows them, with
+explanatory symbols, few and clear.
+
+87. Among the powers which he hates, the pathetic and ingenious
+preaching of untruth is one of the chief; and it is curious to find his
+biographer, knowing this, and reasoning, as German critics nearly always
+do, from acquired knowledge, not perception, imagine instantly that he
+sees hypocrisy in the face of Holbein's preacher. "How skillfully,"
+says Dr. Woltmann, "is the preacher propounding his doctrines; how
+thoroughly is his hypocrisy expressed in the features of his
+countenance, and in the gestures of his hands." But look at the cut
+yourself, candidly. I challenge you to find the slightest trace of
+hypocrisy in either feature or gesture. Holbein knew better. It is not
+the hypocrite who has power in the pulpit. It is the _sincere_ preacher
+of untruth who does mischief there. The hypocrite's place of power is in
+trade, or in general society; none but the sincere ever get fatal
+influence in the pulpit. This man is a refined gentleman--ascetic,
+earnest, thoughtful, and kind. He scarcely uses the vantage even of his
+pulpit,--comes aside out of it, as an eager man would, pleading; he is
+intent on being understood--_is_ understood; his congregation are
+delighted--you might hear a pin drop among them: one is asleep indeed,
+who cannot see him, (being under the pulpit,) and asleep just because
+the teacher is as gentle as he is earnest, and speaks quietly.
+
+88. How are we to know, then, that he speaks in vain? First, because
+among all his hearers you will not find one shrewd face. They are all
+either simple or stupid people: there is one nice woman in front of all,
+(else Holbein's representation had been caricature,) but she is not a
+shrewd one.
+
+Secondly, by the light and shade. The church is not in extreme
+darkness--far from that; a gray twilight is over everything, but the sun
+is totally shut out of it;--not a ray comes in even at the
+window--_that_ is darker than the walls, or vault.
+
+Lastly, and chiefly, by the mocking expression of Death. Mocking, but
+not angry. The man has been preaching what he thought true. Death laughs
+at him, but is not indignant with him.
+
+Death comes quietly: _I_ am going to be preacher now; here is your own
+hour-glass, ready for me. You have spoken many words in your day. But
+"of the things which you have spoken, _this_ is the sum,"--your
+death-warrant, signed and sealed. There's your text for to-day.
+
+89. Of this other picture, the meaning is more plain, and far more
+beautiful. The husbandman is old and gaunt, and has passed his days, not
+in speaking, but pressing the iron into the ground. And the payment for
+his life's work is, that he is clothed in rags, and his feet are bare on
+the clods; and he has no hat--but the brim of a hat only, and his long,
+unkempt gray hair comes through. But all the air is full of warmth and
+of peace; and, beyond his village church, there is, at last, light
+indeed. His horses lag in the furrow, and his own limbs totter and fail:
+but one comes to help him. 'It is a long field,' says Death; 'but we'll
+get to the end of it to-day,--you and I.'
+
+90. And now that we know the meaning, we are able to discuss the
+technical qualities farther.
+
+Both of these engravings, you will find, are executed with blunt lines;
+but more than that, they are executed with quiet lines, entirely steady.
+
+Now, here I have in my hand a lively woodcut of the present day--a good
+average type of the modern style of wood-cutting, which you will all
+recognize.[R]
+
+The shade in this is drawn on the wood, (not _cut_, but drawn, observe,)
+at the rate of at least ten lines in a second: Holbein's, at the rate of
+about one line in three seconds.[S]
+
+91. Now there are two different matters to be considered with respect to
+these two opposed methods of execution. The first, that the rapid work,
+though easy to the artist, is very difficult to the wood-cutter; so that
+it implies instantly a separation between the two crafts, and that your
+wood-cutter has ceased to be a draughtsman. I shall return to this
+point. I wish to insist on the other first; namely, the effect of the
+more deliberate method on the drawing itself.
+
+92. When the hand moves at the rate of ten lines in a second, it is
+indeed under the government of the muscles of the wrist and shoulder;
+but it cannot possibly be under the complete government of the brains. I
+am able to do this zigzag line evenly, because I have got the use of the
+hand from practice; and the faster it is done, the evener it will be.
+But I have no mental authority over every line I thus lay: chance
+regulates them. Whereas, when I draw at the rate of two or three seconds
+to each line, my hand disobeys the muscles a little--the mechanical
+accuracy is not so great; nay, there ceases to be any _appearance_ of
+dexterity at all. But there is, in reality, more manual skill required
+in the slow work than in the swift,--and all the while the hand is
+thoroughly under the orders of the brains. Holbein deliberately
+resolves, for every line, as it goes along, that it shall be so thick,
+so far from the next,--that it shall begin here, and stop there. And he
+is deliberately assigning the utmost quantity of meaning to it, that a
+line will carry.
+
+93. It is not fair, however, to compare common work of one age with the
+best of another. Here is a woodcut of Tenniel's, which I think contains
+as high qualities as it is possible to find in modern art.[T] I hold it
+as beyond others fine, because there is not the slightest caricature in
+it. No face, no attitude, is pushed beyond the degree of natural humor
+they would have possessed in life; and in precision of momentary
+expression, the drawing is equal to the art of any time, and shows power
+which would, if regulated, be quite adequate to producing an immortal
+work.
+
+94. Why, then, is it _not_ immortal? You yourselves, in compliance with
+whose demand it was done, forgot it the next week. It will become
+historically interesting; but no man of true knowledge and feeling will
+ever keep this in his cabinet of treasure, as he does these woodcuts of
+Holbein's.
+
+The reason is that this is base coin,--alloyed gold. There _is_ gold in
+it, but also a quantity of brass and lead--willfully added--to make it
+fit for the public. Holbein's is beaten gold, seven times tried in the
+fire. Of which commonplace but useful metaphor the meaning here is,
+first, that to catch the vulgar eye a quantity of,--so-called,--light
+and shade is added by Tenniel. It is effective to an ignorant eye, and
+is ingeniously disposed; but it is entirely conventional and false,
+unendurable by any person who knows what chiaroscuro is.
+
+Secondly, for one line that Holbein lays, Tenniel has a dozen. There
+are, for instance, a hundred and fifty-seven lines in Sir Peter Teazle's
+wig, without counting dots and slight cross-hatching;--but the entire
+face and flowing hair of Holbein's preacher are done with forty-five
+lines, all told.
+
+95. Now observe what a different state of mind the two artists must be
+in on such conditions;--one, never in a hurry, never doing anything that
+he knows is wrong; never doing a line badly that he can do better; and
+appealing only to the feelings of sensitive persons, and the judgment of
+attentive ones. That is Holbein's habit of soul. What is the habit of
+soul of every modern engraver? Always in a hurry; everywhere doing
+things which he knows to be wrong--(Tenniel knows his light and shade to
+be wrong as well as I do)--continually doing things badly which he was
+able to do better; and appealing exclusively to the feelings of the
+dull, and the judgment of the inattentive.
+
+Do you suppose that is not enough to make the difference between mortal
+and immortal art,--the original genius being supposed alike in both?[U]
+
+96. Thus far of the state of the artist himself. I pass, next to the
+relation between him and his subordinate, the wood-cutter.
+
+The modern artist requires him to cut a hundred and fifty-seven lines in
+the wig only,--the old artist requires him to cut forty-five for the
+face, and long hair, altogether. The actual proportion is roughly, and
+on the average, about one to twenty of cost in manual labor, ancient to
+modern,--the twentieth part of the mechanical labor, to produce an
+immortal instead of a perishable work,--the twentieth part of the labor;
+and--which is the greatest difference of all--that twentieth part, at
+once less mechanically difficult, and more mentally pleasant. Mr. Otley,
+in his general History of Engraving, says, "The greatest difficulty in
+wood engraving occurs in clearing out the minute quadrangular lights;"
+and in any modern woodcut you will see that where the lines of the
+drawing cross each other to produce shade, the white interstices are cut
+out so neatly that there is no appearance of any jag or break in the
+lines; they look exactly as if they had been drawn with a pen. It is
+chiefly difficult to cut the pieces clearly out when the lines cross at
+right angles; easier when they form oblique or diamond-shaped
+interstices; but in any case some half-dozen cuts, and in square
+crossings as many as twenty, are required to clear one interstice.
+Therefore if I carelessly draw six strokes with my pen across other six,
+I produce twenty-five interstices, each of which will need at least six,
+perhaps twenty, careful touches of the burin to clear out.--Say ten for
+an average; and I demand two hundred and fifty exquisitely precise
+touches from my engraver, to render ten careless ones of mine.
+
+97. Now I take up Punch, at his best. The whole of the left side of John
+Bull's waistcoat--the shadow on his knee-breeches and great-coat--the
+whole of the Lord Chancellor's gown, and of John Bull's and Sir Peter
+Teazle's complexions, are worked with finished precision of
+cross-hatching. These have indeed some purpose in their texture; but in
+the most wanton and gratuitous way, the wall below the window is
+cross-hatched too, and that not with a double, but a treble line (Fig.
+4).
+
+There are about thirty of these columns, with thirty-five interstices
+each: approximately, 1,050--certainly not fewer--interstices to be
+deliberately cut clear, to get that two inches square of shadow. Now
+calculate--or think enough to feel the impossibility of calculating--the
+number of woodcuts used daily for our popular prints, and how many men
+are night and day cutting 1,050 square holes to the square inch, as the
+occupation of their manly life. And Mrs. Beecher Stowe and the North
+Americans fancy they have abolished slavery!
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 4.]
+
+98. The workman cannot have even the consolation of pride; for his task,
+even in its finest accomplishment, is not really difficult,--only
+tedious. When you have once got into the practice, it is as easy as
+lying. To cut regular holes WITHOUT a purpose is easy enough; but to cut
+_ir_regular holes WITH a purpose, that is difficult, forever;--no tricks
+of tool or trade will give you power to do that.
+
+The supposed difficulty--the thing which, at all events, it takes time
+to learn, is to cut the interstices neat, and each like the other. But
+is there any reason, do you suppose, for their being neat, and each like
+the other? So far from it, they would be twenty times prettier if they
+were irregular, and each different from the other. And an old
+wood-cutter, instead of taking pride in cutting these interstices smooth
+and alike, resolutely cuts them rough and irregular; taking care, at the
+same time, never to have any more than are wanted, this being only one
+part of the general system of intelligent manipulation, which made so
+good an artist of the engraver that it is impossible to say of any
+standard old woodcut, whether the draughtsman engraved it himself or
+not. I should imagine, from the character and subtlety of the touch,
+that every line of the Dance of Death had been engraved by Holbein; we
+know it was not, and that there can be no certainty given by even the
+finest pieces of wood execution of anything more than perfect harmony
+between the designer and workman. And consider how much this harmony
+demands in the latter. Not that the modern engraver is unintelligent in
+applying his mechanical skill: very often he greatly improves the
+drawing; but we never could mistake his hand for Holbein's.
+
+99. The true merit, then, of wood execution, as regards this matter of
+cross-hatching, is first that there be no more crossing than necessary;
+secondly, that all the interstices be various, and rough. You may look
+through the entire series of the Dance of Death without finding any
+cross-hatching whatever, except in a few unimportant bits of background,
+so rude as to need scarcely more than one touch to each interstice.
+Albert Dürer crosses more definitely; but yet, in any fold of his
+drapery, every white spot differs in size from every other, and the
+arrangement of the whole is delightful, by the kind of variety which the
+spots on a leopard have.
+
+On the other hand, where either expression or form can be rendered by
+the shape of the lights and darks, the old engraver becomes as careful
+as in an ordinary ground he is careless.
+
+The endeavor, with your own hand, and common pen and ink, to copy a
+small piece of either of the two Holbein woodcuts (Figures 2 and 3) will
+prove this to you better than any words.
+
+100. I said that, had Tenniel been rightly trained, there might have
+been the making of a Holbein, or nearly a Holbein, in him. I do not
+know; but I can turn from his work to that of a man who was not trained
+at all, and who was, without training, Holbein's equal.
+
+Equal, in the sense that this brown stone, in my left hand, is the
+equal, though not the likeness, of that in my right. They are both of
+the same true and pure crystal; but the one is brown with iron, and
+never touched by forming hand; the other has never been in rough
+companionship, and has been exquisitely polished. So with these two men.
+The one was the companion of Erasmus and Sir Thomas More. His father was
+so good an artist that you cannot always tell their drawings asunder.
+But the other was a farmer's son; and learned his trade in the back
+shops of Newcastle.
+
+Yet the first book I asked you to get was his biography; and in this
+frame are set together a drawing by Hans Holbein, and one by Thomas
+Bewick. I know which is most scholarly; but I do _not_ know which is
+best.
+
+101. It is much to say for the self-taught Englishman;--yet do not
+congratulate yourselves on his simplicity. I told you, a little while
+since, that the English nobles had left the history of birds to be
+written, and their spots to be drawn, by a printer's lad;--but I did not
+tell you their farther loss in the fact that this printer's lad could
+have written their own histories, and drawn their own spots, if they had
+let him. But they had no history to be written; and were too closely
+maculate to be portrayed;--white ground in most places altogether
+obscured. Had there been Mores and Henrys to draw, Bewick could have
+drawn them; and would have found his function. As it was, the nobles of
+his day left him to draw the frogs, and pigs, and sparrows--of his day,
+which seemed to him, in his solitude, the best types of its Nobility. No
+sight or thought of beautiful things was ever granted him;--no heroic
+creature, goddess-born--how much less any native Deity--ever shone upon
+him. To his utterly English mind, the straw of the sty, and its
+tenantry, were abiding truth;--the cloud of Olympus, and its tenantry, a
+child's dream. He could draw a pig, but not an Aphrodite.
+
+102. The three pieces of woodcut from his Fables (the two lower ones
+enlarged) in the opposite plate, show his utmost strength and utmost
+rudeness. I must endeavor to make you thoroughly understand both:--the
+magnificent artistic power, the flawless virtue, veracity,
+tenderness,--the infinite humor of the man; and yet the difference
+between England and Florence, in the use they make of such gifts in
+their children.
+
+For the moment, however, I confine myself to the examination of
+technical points; and we must follow our former conclusions a little
+further.
+
+[Illustration: I.
+
+Things Celestial and Terrestrial, as apparent to the English Mind.]
+
+103. Because our lines in wood must be thick, it becomes an extreme
+virtue in wood engraving to economize lines,--not merely, as in all
+other art, to save time and power, but because, our lines being
+necessarily blunt, we must make up our minds to do with fewer, by many,
+than are in the object. But is this necessarily a disadvantage?
+
+_Absolutely_, an immense disadvantage,--a woodcut never can be so
+beautiful or good a thing as a painting, or line engraving. But in its
+own separate and useful way, an excellent thing, because, practiced
+rightly, it exercises in the artist, and summons in you, the habit of
+abstraction; that is to say, of deciding what are the essential points
+in the things you see, and seizing these; a habit entirely necessary to
+strong humanity; and so natural to all humanity, that it leads, in its
+indolent and undisciplined states, to all the vulgar amateur's liking of
+sketches better than pictures. The sketch seems to put the thing for him
+into a concentrated and exciting form.
+
+104. Observe, therefore, to guard you from this error, that a bad sketch
+is good for nothing; and that nobody can make a good sketch unless they
+generally are trying to finish with extreme care. But the abstraction of
+the essential particulars in his subject by a line-master, has a
+peculiar didactic value. For painting, when it is complete, leaves it
+much to your own judgment what to look at; and, if you are a fool, you
+look at the wrong thing;--but in a fine woodcut, the master says to you,
+"You _shall_ look at this, or at nothing."
+
+105. For example, here is a little tailpiece of Bewick's, to the fable
+of the Frogs and the Stork.[V] He is, as I told you, as stout a reformer
+as Holbein,[W] or Botticelli, or Luther, or Savonarola; and, as an
+impartial reformer, hits right and left, at lower or upper classes, if
+he sees them wrong. Most frequently, he strikes at vice, without
+reference to class; but in this vignette he strikes definitely at the
+degradation of the viler popular mind which is incapable of being
+governed, because it cannot understand the nobleness of kingship. He
+has written--better than written, engraved, sure to suffer no slip of
+type--his legend under the drawing; so that we know his meaning:
+
+"Set them up with a king, indeed!"
+
+106. There is an audience of seven frogs, listening to a speaker, or
+croaker, in the middle; and Bewick has set himself to show in all, but
+especially in the speaker, essential frogginess of mind--the marsh
+temper. He could not have done it half so well in painting as he has
+done by the abstraction of wood-outline. The characteristic of a manly
+mind, or body, is to be gentle in temper, and firm in constitution; the
+contrary essence of a froggy mind and body is to be angular in temper,
+and flabby in constitution. I have enlarged Bewick's orator-frog for
+you, Plate I. c., and I think you will feel that he is entirely
+expressed in those essential particulars.
+
+This being perfectly good wood-cutting, notice especially its
+deliberation. No scrawling or scratching, or cross-hatching, or '_free_'
+work of any sort. Most deliberate laying down of solid lines and dots,
+of which you cannot change one. The real difficulty of wood engraving is
+to cut every one of these black lines or spaces of the exactly right
+shape, and not at all to cross-hatch them cleanly.
+
+107. Next, examine the technical treatment of the pig, above. I have
+purposely chosen this as an example of a white object on dark ground,
+and the frog as a dark object on light ground, to explain to you what I
+mean by saying that fine engraving regards local color, but not light
+and shade. You see both frog and pig are absolutely without light and
+shade. The frog, indeed, casts a shadow; but his hind leg is as white as
+his throat. In the pig you don't even know which way the light falls.
+But you know at once that the pig is white, and the frog brown or green.
+
+108. There are, however, two pieces of chiaroscuro _implied_ in the
+treatment of the pig. It is assumed that his curly tail would be light
+against the background--dark against his own rump. This little piece of
+heraldic quartering is absolutely necessary to solidify him. He would
+have been a white ghost of a pig, flat on the background, but for that
+alternative tail, and the bits of dark behind the ears. Secondly: Where
+the shade is necessary to suggest the position of his ribs, it is given
+with graphic and chosen points of dark, as few as possible; not for the
+sake of the shade at all, but of the skin and bone.
+
+109. That, then, being the law of refused chiaroscuro, observe further
+the method of outline. We said that we were to have thick lines in wood,
+if possible. Look what thickness of black outline Bewick has left under
+our pig's chin, and above his nose.
+
+But that is not a line at all, you think?
+
+No;--a modern engraver would have made it one, and prided himself on
+getting it fine. Bewick leaves it actually thicker than the snout, but
+puts all his ingenuity of touch to vary the forms, and break the
+extremities of his white cuts, so that the eye may be refreshed and
+relieved by new forms at every turn. The group of white touches filling
+the space between snout and ears might be a wreath of fine-weather
+clouds, so studiously are they grouped and broken.
+
+And nowhere, you see, does a single black line cross another.
+
+Look back to Figure 4, page 54, and you will know, henceforward, the
+difference between good and bad wood-cutting.
+
+110. We have also, in the lower woodcut, a notable instance of Bewick's
+power of abstraction. You will observe that one of the chief characters
+of this frog, which makes him humorous,--next to his vain endeavor to
+get some firmness into his fore feet,--is his obstinately angular
+hump-back. And you must feel, when you see it so marked, how important a
+general character of a frog it is to have a hump-back,--not at the
+shoulders, but the loins.
+
+111. Here, then, is a case in which you will see the exact function that
+anatomy should take in art.
+
+All the most scientific anatomy in the world would never have taught
+Bewick, much less you, how to draw a frog.
+
+But when once you _have_ drawn him, or looked at him, so as to know his
+points, it then becomes entirely interesting to find out _why_ he has a
+hump-back. So I went myself yesterday to Professor Rolleston for a
+little anatomy, just as I should have gone to Professor Phillips for a
+little geology; and the Professor brought me a fine little active frog;
+and we put him on the table, and made him jump all over it, and then the
+Professor brought in a charming Squelette of a frog, and showed me that
+he needed a projecting bone from his rump, as a bird needs it from its
+breast,--the one to attach the strong muscles of the hind legs, as the
+other to attach those of the fore legs or wings. So that the entire
+leaping power of the frog is in his hump-back, as the flying power of
+the bird is in its breast-bone. And thus this Frog Parliament is most
+literally a Rump Parliament--everything depending on the hind legs, and
+nothing on the brains; which makes it wonderfully like some other
+Parliaments we know of nowadays, with Mr. Ayrton and Mr. Lowe for their
+æsthetic and acquisitive eyes, and a rump of Railway Directors.
+
+112. Now, to conclude, for want of time only--I have but touched on the
+beginning of my subject,--understand clearly and finally this simple
+principle of all art, that the best is that which realizes absolutely,
+if possible. Here is a viper by Carpaccio: you are afraid to go near it.
+Here is an arm-chair by Carpaccio: you who came in late, and are
+standing, to my regret, would like to sit down in it. This is consummate
+art; but you can only have that with consummate means, and exquisitely
+trained and hereditary mental power.
+
+With inferior means, and average mental power, you must be content to
+give a rude abstraction; but if rude abstraction _is_ to be made, think
+what a difference there must be between a wise man's and a fool's; and
+consider what heavy responsibility lies upon you in your youth, to
+determine, among realities, by what you will be delighted, and, among
+imaginations, by whose you will be led.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Q] By Mr. Burgess. The toil and skill necessary to produce a facsimile
+of this degree of precision will only be recognized by the reader who
+has had considerable experience of actual work.
+
+[R] The ordinary title-page of Punch.
+
+[S] In the lecture-room, the relative rates of execution were shown; I
+arrive at this estimate by timing the completion of two small pieces of
+shade in the two methods.
+
+[T] John Bull, as Sir Oliver Surface, with Sir Peter Teazle and Joseph
+Surface. It appeared in Punch, early in 1863.
+
+[U] In preparing these passages for the press, I feel perpetual need of
+qualifications and limitations, for it is impossible to surpass the
+humor, or precision of expressional touch, in the really golden parts of
+Tenniel's works; and they _may_ be immortal, as representing what is
+best in their day.
+
+[V] From Bewick's Æsop's Fables.
+
+[W] See _ante_, § 43.
+
+
+
+
+                         LECTURE IV.
+
+              THE TECHNICS OF METAL ENGRAVING.
+
+
+113. We are to-day to examine the proper methods for the technical
+management of the most perfect of the arms of precision possessed by the
+artist. For you will at once understand that a line cut by a
+finely-pointed instrument upon the smooth surface of metal is
+susceptible of the utmost fineness that can be given to the _definite_
+work of the human hand. In drawing with pen upon paper, the surface of
+the paper is slightly rough; necessarily, two points touch it instead of
+one, and the liquid flows from them more or less irregularly, whatever
+the draughtsman's skill. But you cut a metallic surface with one edge
+only; the furrow drawn by a skater on the surface of ice is like it on a
+large scale. Your surface is polished, and your line may be wholly
+faultless, if your hand is.
+
+114. And because, in such material, effects may be produced which no
+penmanship could rival, most people, I fancy, think that a steel plate
+half engraves itself; that the workman has no trouble with it, compared
+to that of a pen draughtsman.
+
+To test your feeling in this matter accurately, here is a manuscript
+book written with pen and ink, and illustrated with flourishes and
+vignettes.
+
+You will all, I think, be disposed, on examining it, to exclaim, How
+wonderful! and even to doubt the possibility of every page in the book
+being completed in the same manner. Again, here are three of my own
+drawings, executed with the pen, and Indian ink, when I was fifteen.
+They are copies from large lithographs by Prout; and I imagine that most
+of my pupils would think me very tyrannical if I requested them to do
+anything of the kind themselves. And yet, when you see in the shop
+windows a line engraving like this,[X] or this,[X] either of which
+contains, alone, as much work as fifty pages of the manuscript book, or
+fifty such drawings as mine, you look upon its effect as quite a matter
+of course,--you never say 'how wonderful' _that_ is, nor consider how
+you would like to have to live, by producing anything of the same kind
+yourselves.
+
+[Illustration: II.
+
+The Star of FLORENCE.]
+
+115. Yet you cannot suppose it is in reality easier to draw a line with
+a cutting point, not seeing the effect at all, or, if any effect, seeing
+a gleam of light instead of darkness, than to draw your black line at
+once on the white paper? You cannot really think[Y] that there is
+something complacent, sympathetic, and helpful in the nature of steel;
+so that while a pen-and-ink sketch may always be considered an
+achievement proving cleverness in the sketcher, a sketch on steel comes
+out by mere favor of the indulgent metal; or that the plate is woven
+like a piece of pattern silk, and the pattern is developed by pasteboard
+cards punched full of holes? Not so. Look close at this engraving, or
+take a smaller and simpler one, Turner's Mercury and Argus,--imagine it
+to be a drawing in pen and ink, and yourself required similarly to
+produce its parallel! True, the steel point has the one advantage of not
+blotting, but it has tenfold or twentyfold disadvantage, in that you
+cannot slur, nor efface, except in a very resolute and laborious way,
+nor play with it, nor even see what you are doing with it at the moment,
+far less the effect that is to be. You must _feel_ what you are doing
+with it, and know precisely what you have got to do; how deep, how
+broad, how far apart your lines must be, etc. and etc., (a couple of
+lines of etceteras would not be enough to imply all you must know). But
+suppose the plate _were_ only a pen drawing: take your pen--your
+finest--and just try to copy the leaves that entangle the head of Io,
+and her head itself; remembering always that the kind of work required
+here is mere child's play compared to that of fine figure engraving.
+Nevertheless, take a small magnifying glass to this--count the dots and
+lines that gradate the nostrils and the edges of the facial bone; notice
+how the light is left on the top of the head by the stopping, at its
+outline, of the coarse touches which form the shadows under the leaves;
+examine it well, and then--I humbly ask of you--try to do a piece of it
+yourself! You clever sketcher--you young lady or gentleman of
+genius--you eye-glassed dilettante--you current writer of criticism
+royally plural,--I beseech you,--do it yourself; do the merely etched
+outline yourself, if no more. Look you,--you hold your etching needle
+this way, as you would a pencil, nearly; and then,--you scratch with it!
+it is as easy as lying. Or if you think that too difficult, take an
+easier piece;--take either of the light sprays of foliage that rise
+against the fortress on the right, pass your lens over them--look how
+their fine outline is first drawn, leaf by leaf; then how the distant
+rock is put in between, with broken lines, mostly stopping before they
+touch the leaf-outline; and again, I pray you, do it yourself,--if not
+on that scale, on a larger. Go on into the hollows of the distant
+rock,--traverse its thickets,--number its towers;--count how many lines
+there are in a laurel bush--in an arch--in a casement; some hundred and
+fifty, or two hundred, deliberately drawn lines, you will find, in every
+square quarter of an inch;--say _three thousand to the inch_,--each,
+with skillful intent, put in its place! and then consider what the
+ordinary sketcher's work must appear, to the men who have been trained
+to this!
+
+116. "But might not more have been done by three thousand lines to a
+square inch?" you will perhaps ask. Well, possibly. It may be with lines
+as with soldiers: three hundred, knowing their work thoroughly, may be
+stronger than three thousand less sure of their aim. We shall have to
+press close home this question about numbers and purpose presently;--it
+is not the question now. Suppose certain results required,--atmospheric
+effects, surface textures, transparencies of shade, confusions of
+light,--then, more could _not_ be done with less. There are engravings
+of this modern school, of which, with respect to their particular aim,
+it may be said, most truly, they "cannot be better done."
+
+Here is one just finished,--or, at least, finished to the eyes of
+ordinary mortals, though its fastidious master means to retouch it;--a
+quite pure line engraving, by Mr. Charles Henry Jeens; (in calling it
+pure line, I mean that there are no mixtures of mezzotint or any
+mechanical tooling, but all is steady hand-work,) from a picture by Mr.
+Armytage, which, without possessing any of the highest claims to
+admiration, is yet free from the vulgar vices which disgrace most of our
+popular religious art; and is so sweet in the fancy of it as to deserve,
+better than many works of higher power, the pains of the engraver to
+make it a common possession. It is meant to help us to imagine the
+evening of the day when the father and mother of Christ had been seeking
+Him through Jerusalem: they have come to a well where women are drawing
+water; St. Joseph passes on,--but the tired Madonna, leaning on the
+well's margin, asks wistfully of the women if they have seen such and
+such a child astray. Now will you just look for a while into the lines
+by which the expression of the weary and anxious face is rendered; see
+how unerring they are,--how calm and clear; and think how many questions
+have to be determined in drawing the most minute portion of any
+one,--its curve,--its thickness,--its distance from the next,--its own
+preparation for ending, invisibly, where it ends. Think what the
+precision must be in these that trace the edge of the lip, and make it
+look quivering with disappointment, or in these which have made the
+eyelash heavy with restrained tears.
+
+117. Or if, as must be the case with many of my audience, it is
+impossible for you to conceive the difficulties here overcome, look
+merely at the draperies, and other varied substances represented in the
+plate; see how silk, and linen, and stone, and pottery, and flesh, are
+all separated in texture, and gradated in light, by the most subtle
+artifices and appliances of line,--of which artifices, and the nature of
+the mechanical labor throughout, I must endeavor to give you to-day a
+more distinct conception than you are in the habit of forming. But as I
+shall have to blame some of these methods in their general result, and I
+do not wish any word of general blame to be associated with this most
+excellent and careful plate by Mr. Jeens, I will pass, for special
+examination, to one already in your reference series, which for the rest
+exhibits more various treatment in its combined landscape, background,
+and figures; the Belle Jardinière of Raphael, drawn and engraved by the
+Baron Desnoyers.
+
+You see, in the first place, that the ground, stones, and other coarse
+surfaces are distinguished from the flesh and draperies by broken and
+wriggled lines. Those broken lines cannot be executed with the burin,
+they are etched in the early states of the plate, and are a modern
+artifice, never used by old engravers; partly because the older men were
+not masters of the art of etching, but chiefly because even those who
+were acquainted with it would not employ lines of this nature. They have
+been developed by the importance of landscape in modern engraving, and
+have produced some valuable results in small plates, especially of
+architecture. But they are entirely erroneous in principle, for the
+surface of stones and leaves is not broken or jagged in this manner, but
+consists of mossy, or blooming, or otherwise organic texture, which
+cannot be represented by these coarse lines; their general consequence
+has therefore been to withdraw the mind of the observer from all
+beautiful and tender characters in foreground, and eventually to destroy
+the very school of landscape engraving which gave birth to them.
+
+Considered, however, as a means of relieving more delicate textures,
+they are in some degree legitimate, being, in fact, a kind of chasing or
+jagging one part of the plate surface in order to throw out the delicate
+tints from the rough field. But the same effect was produced with less
+pains, and far more entertainment to the eye, by the older engravers,
+who employed purely ornamental variations of line; thus in Plate IV.,
+opposite § 137, the drapery is sufficiently distinguished from the grass
+by the treatment of the latter as an ornamental arabesque. The grain of
+wood is elaborately engraved by Marc Antonio, with the same purpose, in
+the plate given in your Standard Series.
+
+118. Next, however, you observe what difference of texture and force
+exists between the smooth, continuous lines themselves, which are all
+really _engraved_. You must take some pains to understand the nature of
+this operation.
+
+The line is first cut lightly through its whole course, by absolute
+decision and steadiness of hand, which you may endeavor to imitate if
+you like, in its simplest phase, by drawing a circle with your
+compass-pen; and then, grasping your penholder so that you can push the
+point like a plow, describing other circles inside or outside of it, in
+exact parallelism with the mathematical line, and at exactly equal
+distances. To approach, or depart, with your point at finely gradated
+intervals, may be your next exercise, if you find the first unexpectedly
+easy.
+
+119. When the line is thus described in its proper course, it is plowed
+deeper, where depth is needed, by a second cut of the burin, first on
+one side, then on the other, the cut being given with gradated force so
+as to take away most steel where the line is to be darkest. Every line
+of gradated depth in the plate has to be thus cut eight or ten times
+over at least, with retouchings to smooth and clear all in the close.
+Jason has to plow his field ten-furrow deep, with his fiery oxen well in
+hand, all the while.
+
+When the essential lines are thus produced in their several directions,
+those which have been drawn across each other, so as to give depth of
+shade, or richness of texture, have to be farther enriched by dots in
+the interstices; else there would be a painful appearance of network
+everywhere; and these dots require each four or five jags to produce
+them; and each of these jags must be done with what artists and
+engravers alike call 'feeling,'--the sensibility, that is, of a hand
+completely under mental government. So wrought, the dots look soft, and
+like touches of paint; but mechanically dug in, they are vulgar and
+hard.
+
+120. Now, observe, that, for every piece of shadow throughout the work,
+the engraver has to decide with what quantity and kind of line he will
+produce it. Exactly the same quantity of black, and therefore the same
+depth of tint in general effect, may be given with six thick lines; or
+with twelve, of half their thickness; or with eighteen, of a third of
+the thickness. The second six, second twelve, or second eighteen, may
+cross the first six, first twelve, or first eighteen, or go between
+them; and they may cross at any angle. And then the third six may be put
+between the first six, or between the second six, or across both, and at
+any angle. In the network thus produced, any kind of dots may be put in
+the severally shaped interstices. And for any of the series of
+superadded lines, dots, of equivalent value in shade, may be
+substituted. (Some engravings are wrought in dots altogether.) Choice
+infinite, with multiplication of infinity, is, at all events, to be
+made, for every minute space, from one side of the plate to the other.
+
+121. The excellence of a beautiful engraving is primarily in the use of
+these resources to exhibit the qualities of the original picture, with
+delight to the eye in the method of translation; and the language of
+engraving, when once you begin to understand it, is, in these respects,
+so fertile, so ingenious, so ineffably subtle and severe in its grammar,
+that you may quite easily make it the subject of your life's
+investigation, as you would the scholarship of a lovely literature.
+
+But in doing this, you would withdraw, and necessarily withdraw, your
+attention from the higher qualities of art, precisely as a grammarian,
+who is that, and nothing more, loses command of the matter and substance
+of thought. And the exquisitely mysterious mechanisms of the engraver's
+method have, in fact, thus entangled the intelligence of the careful
+draughtsmen of Europe; so that since the final perfection of this
+translator's power, all the men of finest patience and finest hand have
+stayed content with it;--the subtlest draughtsmanship has perished from
+the canvas,[Z] and sought more popular praise in this labyrinth of
+disciplined language, and more or less dulled or degraded thought. And,
+in sum, I know no cause more direct or fatal, in the destruction of the
+great schools of European art, than the perfectness of modern line
+engraving.
+
+122. This great and profoundly to be regretted influence I will prove
+and illustrate to you on another occasion. My object to-day is to
+explain the perfectness of the art itself; and above all to request you,
+if you will not look at pictures instead of photographs, at least not to
+allow the cheap merits of the chemical operation to withdraw your
+interest from the splendid human labor of the engraver. Here is a little
+vignette from Stothard, for instance, in Rogers' poems, to the lines,
+
+    "Soared in the swing, half pleased and half afraid,
+     'Neath sister elms, that waved their summer shade."
+
+You would think, would you not? (and rightly,) that of all difficult
+things to express with crossed black lines and dots, the face of a young
+girl must be the most difficult. Yet here you have the face of a bright
+girl, radiant in light, transparent, mysterious, almost breathing,--her
+dark hair involved in delicate wreath and shade, her eyes full of joy
+and sweet playfulness,--and all this done by the exquisite order and
+gradation of a very few lines, which, if you will examine them through a
+lens, you find dividing and checkering the lip, and cheek, and chin, so
+strongly that you would have fancied they could only produce the effect
+of a grim iron mask. But the intelligences of order and form guide them
+into beauty, and inflame them with delicatest life.
+
+123. And do you see the size of this head? About as large as the bud of
+a forget-me-not! Can you imagine the fineness of the little pressures of
+the hand on the steel, in that space, which at the edge of the almost
+invisible lip, fashioned its less or more of smile?
+
+My chemical friends, if you wish ever to know anything rightly
+concerning the arts, I very urgently advise you to throw all your vials
+and washes down the gutter-trap; and if you will ascribe, as you think
+it so clever to do, in your modern creeds, all virtue to the sun, use
+that virtue through your own heads and fingers, and apply your solar
+energies to draw a skillful line or two, for once or twice in your life.
+You may learn more by trying to engrave, like Goodall, the tip of an
+ear, or the curl of a lock of hair, than by photographing the entire
+population of the United States of America,--black, white, and
+neutral-tint.
+
+And one word, by the way, touching the complaints I hear at my having
+set you to so fine work that it hurts your eyes. You have noticed that
+all great sculptors--and most of the great painters of Florence--began
+by being goldsmiths. Why do you think the goldsmith's apprenticeship is
+so fruitful? Primarily, because it forces the boy to do small work, and
+mind what he is about. Do you suppose Michael Angelo learned his
+business by dashing or hitting at it? He laid the foundation of all his
+after power by doing precisely what I am requiring my own pupils to
+do,--copying German engravings in facsimile! And for your eyes--you all
+sit up at night till you haven't got any eyes worth speaking of. Go to
+bed at half-past nine, and get up at four, and you'll see something out
+of them, in time.
+
+124. Nevertheless, whatever admiration you may be brought to feel, and
+with justice, for this lovely workmanship,--the more distinctly you
+comprehend its merits, the more distinctly also will the question rise
+in your mind, How is it that a performance so marvelous has yet taken no
+rank in the records of art of any permanent or acknowledged kind? How
+is it that these vignettes from Stothard and Turner,[AA] like the
+woodcuts from Tenniel, scarcely make the name of the engraver known; and
+that they never are found side by side with this older and apparently
+ruder art, in the cabinets of men of real judgment? The reason is
+precisely the same as in the case of the Tenniel woodcut. This modern
+line engraving is alloyed gold. Rich in capacity, astonishing in
+attainment, it nevertheless admits willful fault, and misses what it
+ought first to have attained. It is therefore, to a certain measure,
+vile in its perfection; while the older work is noble even in its
+failure, and classic no less in what it deliberately refuses, than in
+what it rationally and rightly prefers and performs.
+
+125. Here, for instance, I have enlarged the head of one of Dürer's
+Madonnas for you out of one of his most careful plates.[AB] You think it
+very ugly. Well, so it is. Don't be afraid to think so, nor to say so.
+Frightfully ugly; vulgar also. It is the head, simply, of a fat Dutch
+girl, with all the pleasantness left out. There is not the least doubt
+about that. Don't let anybody force Albert Dürer down your throats; nor
+make you expect pretty things from him. Stothard's young girl in the
+swing, or Sir Joshua's Age of Innocence, is in quite angelic sphere of
+another world, compared to this black domain of poor, laborious Albert.
+We are not talking of female beauty, so please you, just now, gentlemen,
+but of engraving. And the merit, the classical, indefeasible, immortal
+merit of this head of a Dutch girl with all the beauty left out, is in
+the fact that every line of it, as engraving, is as good as can
+be;--good, not with the mechanical dexterity of a watch-maker, but with
+the intellectual effort and sensitiveness of an artist who knows
+precisely what can be done, and ought to be attempted, with his assigned
+materials. He works easily, fearlessly, flexibly; the dots are not all
+measured in distance; the lines not all mathematically parallel or
+divergent. He has even missed his mark at the mouth in one place, and
+leaves the mistake, frankly. But there are no petrified mistakes; nor is
+the eye so accustomed to the look of the mechanical furrow as to accept
+it for final excellence. The engraving is full of the painter's higher
+power and wider perception; it is classically perfect, because duly
+subordinate, and presenting for your applause only the virtues proper to
+its own sphere. Among these, I must now reiterate, the first of all is
+the _decorative_ arrangement of _lines_.
+
+126. You all know what a pretty thing a damask tablecloth is, and how a
+pattern is brought out by threads running one way in one space, and
+across in another. So, in lace, a certain delightfulness is given by the
+texture of meshed lines.
+
+Similarly, on any surface of metal, the object of the engraver is, or
+ought to be, to cover it with lovely _lines_, forming a lace-work, and
+including a variety of spaces, delicious to the eye.
+
+And this is his business, primarily; before any other matter can be
+thought of, his work must be ornamental. You know I told you a
+sculptor's business is first to cover a surface with pleasant _bosses_,
+whether they mean anything or not; so an engraver's is to cover it with
+pleasant _lines_, whether they mean anything or not. That they should
+mean something, and a good deal of something, is indeed desirable
+afterwards; but first we must be ornamental.
+
+127. Now if you will compare Plate II. at the beginning of this lecture,
+which is a characteristic example of good Florentine engraving, and
+represents the Planet and power of Aphrodite, with the Aphrodite of
+Bewick in the upper division of Plate I., you will at once understand
+the difference between a primarily ornamental, and a primarily
+realistic, style. The first requirement in the Florentine work, is that
+it shall be a lovely arrangement of lines; a pretty thing upon a page.
+Bewick _has_ a secondary notion of making his vignette a pretty thing
+upon a page. But he is overpowered by his vigorous veracity, and bent
+first on giving you his idea of Venus. Quite right, he would have been,
+mind you, if he had been carving a statue of her on Mount Eryx; but not
+when he was engraving a vignette to Æsop's fables. To engrave well is to
+ornament a surface well, not to create a realistic impression. I beg
+your pardon for my repetitions; but the point at issue is the root of
+the whole business, and I _must_ get it well asserted, and variously.
+
+Let me pass to a more important example.
+
+128. Three years ago, in the rough first arrangement of the copies in
+the Educational Series, I put an outline of the top of Apollo's scepter,
+which, in the catalogue, was said to be probably by Baccio Bandini of
+Florence, for your first real exercise; it remains so, the olive being
+put first only for its mythological rank.
+
+The series of engravings to which the plate from which that exercise is
+copied belongs, are part of a number, executed chiefly, I think, from
+early designs of Sandro Botticelli, and some in great part by his hand.
+He and his assistant, Baccio, worked together; and in such harmony, that
+Bandini probably often does what Sandro wants, better than Sandro could
+have done it himself; and, on the other hand, there is no design of
+Bandini's over which Sandro does not seem to have had influence.
+
+And wishing now to show you three examples of the finest work of the
+old, the renaissance, and the modern schools,--of the old, I will take
+Baccio Bandini's Astrologia, Plate III., opposite. Of the renaissance,
+Dürer's Adam and Eve. And of the modern, this head of the daughter of
+Herodias, engraved from Luini by Beaugrand, which is as
+affectionately and sincerely wrought, though in the modern manner, as
+any plate of the old schools.
+
+[Illustration: III.
+
+"At ev'ning from the top of Fésole."]
+
+129. Now observe the progress of the feeling for light and shade in the
+three examples.
+
+The first is nearly all white paper; you think of the outline as the
+constructive element throughout.
+
+The second is a vigorous piece of _white_ and _black_--not of _light_
+and _shade_,--for all the high lights are equally white, whether of
+flesh, or leaves, or goat's hair.
+
+The third is complete in chiaroscuro, as far as engraving can be.
+
+Now the dignity and virtue of the plates is in the exactly inverse ratio
+of their fullness in chiaroscuro.
+
+Bandini's is excellent work, and of the very highest school. Dürer's
+entirely accomplished work, but of an inferior school. And Beaugrand's,
+excellent work, but of a vulgar and non-classical school.
+
+And these relations of the schools are to be determined by the quality
+in the _lines_; we shall find that in proportion as the light and shade
+is neglected, the lines are studied; that those of Bandini are perfect;
+of Dürer perfect, only with a lower perfection; but of Beaugrand,
+entirely faultful.
+
+130. I have just explained to you that in modern engraving the lines are
+cut in clean furrow, widened, it may be, by successive cuts; but,
+whether it be fine or thick, retaining always, when printed, the aspect
+of a continuous line drawn with the pen, and entirely black throughout
+its whole course.
+
+Now we may increase the delicacy of this line to any extent by simply
+printing it in gray color instead of black. I obtained some very
+beautiful results of this kind in the later volumes of 'Modern
+Painters,' with Mr. Armytage's help, by using subdued purple tints; but,
+in any case, the line thus engraved must be monotonous in its character,
+and cannot be expressive of the finest qualities of form.
+
+Accordingly, the old Florentine workmen constructed the line _itself_,
+in important places, of successive minute touches, so that it became a
+chain of delicate links which could be opened or closed at
+pleasure.[AC] If you will examine through a lens the outline of the face
+of this Astrology, you will find it is traced with an exquisite series
+of minute touches, susceptible of accentuation or change absolutely at
+the engraver's pleasure; and, in result, corresponding to the finest
+conditions of a pencil line drawing by a consummate master. In the fine
+plates of this period, you have thus the united powers of the pen and
+pencil, and both absolutely secure and multipliable.
+
+131. I am a little proud of having independently discovered, and had the
+patience to carry out, this Florentine method of execution for myself,
+when I was a boy of thirteen. My good drawing-master had given me some
+copies calculated to teach me freedom of hand; the touches were rapid
+and vigorous,--many of them in mechanically regular zigzags, far beyond
+any capacity of mine to imitate in the bold way in which they were done.
+But I was resolved to have them, somehow; and actually facsimiled a
+considerable portion of the drawing in the Florentine manner, with the
+finest point I could cut to my pencil, taking a quarter of an hour to
+forge out the likeness of one return in the zigzag which my master
+carried down through twenty returns in two seconds; and so successfully,
+that he did not detect my artifice till I showed it him,--on which he
+forbade me ever to do the like again. And it was only thirty years
+afterwards that I found I had been quite right after all, and working
+like Baccio Bandini! But the patience which carried me through that
+early effort, served me well through all the thirty years, and enabled
+me to analyze, and in a measure imitate, the method of work employed by
+every master; so that, whether you believe me or not at first, you will
+find what I tell you of their superiority, or inferiority, to be true.
+
+132. When lines are studied with this degree of care, you may be sure
+the master will leave room enough for you to see them and enjoy them,
+and not use any at random. All the finest engravers, therefore, leave
+much white paper, and use their entire power on the outlines.
+
+133. Next to them come the men of the Renaissance schools, headed by
+Dürer, who, less careful of the beauty and refinement of the line,
+delight in its vigor, accuracy, and complexity. And the essential
+difference between these men and the moderns is that these central
+masters cut their line for the most part with a single furrow, giving it
+depth by force of hand or wrist, and retouching, _not in the furrow
+itself, but with others beside it_.[AD] Such work can only be done well
+on copper, and it can display all faculty of hand or wrist, precision of
+eye, and accuracy of knowledge, which a human creature can possess. But
+the dotted or hatched line is not used in this central style, and the
+higher conditions of beauty never thought of.
+
+In the Astrology of Bandini,--and remember that the Astrologia of the
+Florentine meant what we mean by Astronomy, and much more,--he wishes
+you first to look at the face: the lip half open, faltering in wonder;
+the amazed, intense, dreaming gaze; the pure dignity of forehead,
+undisturbed by terrestrial thought. None of these things could be so
+much as attempted in Dürer's method; he can engrave flowing hair, skin
+of animals, bark of trees, wreathings of metal-work, with the free hand;
+also, with labored chiaroscuro, or with sturdy line, he can reach
+expressions of sadness, or gloom, or pain, or soldierly strength,--but
+pure beauty,--never.
+
+134. Lastly, you have the Modern school, deepening its lines in
+successive cuts. The instant consequence of the introduction of this
+method is the restriction of curvature; you cannot follow a complex
+curve again with precision through its furrow. If you are a dextrous
+plowman, you can drive your plow any number of times along the simple
+curve. But you cannot repeat again exactly the motions which cut a
+variable one.[AE] You may retouch it, energize it, and deepen it in
+parts, but you cannot cut it all through again equally. And the
+retouching and energizing in parts is a living and intellectual process;
+but the cutting all through, equally, a mechanical one. The difference
+is exactly such as that between the dexterity of turning out two similar
+moldings from a lathe, and carving them with the free hand, like a Pisan
+sculptor. And although splendid intellect, and subtlest sensibility,
+have been spent on the production of some modern plates, the mechanical
+element introduced by their manner of execution always overpowers both;
+nor _can any plate of consummate value ever be produced in the modern
+method_.
+
+135. Nevertheless, in landscape, there are two examples in your
+Reference series, of insuperable skill and extreme beauty: Miller's
+plate, before instanced, of the Grand Canal, Venice; and E. Goodall's of
+the upper fall of the Tees. The men who engraved these plates might have
+been exquisite artists; but their patience and enthusiasm were held
+captive in the false system of lines, and we lost the painters; while
+the engravings, wonderful as they are, are neither of them worth a
+Turner etching, scratched in ten minutes with the point of an old fork;
+and the common types of such elaborate engraving are none of them worth
+a single frog, pig, or puppy, out of the corner of a Bewick vignette.
+
+136. And now, I think, you cannot fail to understand clearly what you
+are to look for in engraving, as a separate art from that of painting.
+Turn back to the 'Astrologia' as a perfect type of the purest school.
+She is gazing at stars, and crowned with them. But the stars are _black_
+instead of shining! You cannot have a more decisive and absolute proof
+that you must not look in engraving for chiaroscuro.
+
+Nevertheless, her body is half in shade, and her left foot; and she
+casts a shadow, and there is a bar of shade behind her.
+
+All these are merely so much acceptance of shade as may relieve the
+forms, and give value to the linear portions. The face, though turned
+from the light, is shadowless.
+
+Again. Every lock of the hair is designed and set in its place with the
+subtlest care, but there is no luster attempted,--no texture,--no
+mystery. The plumes of the wings are set studiously in their
+places,--they, also, lusterless. That even their filaments are not
+drawn, and that the broad curve embracing them ignores the anatomy of a
+bird's wing, are conditions of design, not execution. Of these in a
+future lecture.[AF]
+
+[Illustration: IV.
+
+"By the Springs of PARNASSUS."]
+
+137. The 'Poesia,' Plate IV., opposite, is a still more severe, though
+not so generic, an example; its decorative foreground reducing it almost
+to the rank of goldsmith's ornamentation. I need scarcely point out to
+you that the flowing water shows neither luster nor reflection; but
+notice that the observer's attention is supposed to be so close to every
+dark touch of the graver that he will see the minute dark spots which
+indicate the sprinkled shower falling from the vase into the pool.
+
+138. This habit of strict and calm attention, constant in the artist,
+and expected in the observer, makes all the difference between the art
+of Intellect, and of mere sensation. For every detail of this plate has
+a meaning, if you care to understand it. This is Poetry, sitting by the
+fountain of Castalia, which flows first out of a formal urn, to show
+that it is not artless; but the rocks of Parnassus are behind, and on
+the top of them--only one tree, like a mushroom with a thick stalk. You
+at first are inclined to say, How very absurd, to put only one tree on
+Parnassus! but this one tree is the Immortal Plane Tree, planted by
+Agamemnon, and at once connects our Poesia with the Iliad. Then, this
+is the hem of the robe of Poetry,--this is the divine vegetation which
+springs up under her feet,--this is the heaven and earth united by her
+power,--this is the fountain of Castalia flowing out afresh among the
+grass,--and these are the drops with which, out of a pitcher, Poetry is
+nourishing the fountain of Castalia.
+
+All which you may find out if you happen to know anything about
+Castalia, or about poetry; and pleasantly think more upon, for yourself.
+But the poor dunces, Sandro and Baccio, feeling themselves but 'goffi
+nell' arte,' have no hope of telling you all this, except suggestively.
+They can't engrave grass of Parnassus, nor sweet springs so as to look
+like water; but they can make a pretty damasked surface with ornamental
+leaves, and flowing lines, and so leave you something to think of--if
+you will.
+
+139. 'But a great many people won't, and a great many more can't; and
+surely the finished engravings are much more delightful, and the only
+means we have of giving any idea of finished pictures, out of our
+reach.'
+
+Yes, all that is true; and when we examine the effects of line engraving
+upon taste in recent art, we will discuss these matters; for the
+present, let us be content with knowing what the best work is, and why
+it is so. Although, however, I do not now press further my cavils at the
+triumph of modern line engraving, I must assign to you, in few words,
+the reason of its recent decline. Engravers complain that photography
+and cheap wood-cutting have ended their finer craft. No complaint can be
+less grounded. They themselves destroyed their own craft, by vulgarizing
+it. Content in their beautiful mechanism, they ceased to learn, and to
+feel, as artists; they put themselves under the order of publishers and
+print-sellers; they worked indiscriminately from whatever was put into
+their hands,--from Bartlett as willingly as from Turner, and from
+Mulready as carefully as from Raphael. They filled the windows of
+print-sellers, the pages of gift books, with elaborate rubbish, and
+piteous abortions of delicate industry. They worked cheap, and
+cheaper,--smoothly, and more smoothly,--they got armies of assistants,
+and surrounded themselves with schools of mechanical tricksters,
+learning their stale tricks with blundering avidity. They had
+fallen--before the days of photography--into providers of frontispieces
+for housekeepers' pocket-books. I do not know if photography itself,
+their redoubted enemy, has even now ousted them from that last refuge.
+
+140. Such the fault of the engraver,--very pardonable; scarcely
+avoidable,--however fatal. Fault mainly of humility. But what has _your_
+fault been, gentlemen? what the patrons' fault, who have permitted so
+wide waste of admirable labor, so pathetic a uselessness of obedient
+genius? It was yours to have directed, yours to have raised and rejoiced
+in, the skill, the modesty, the patience of this entirely gentle and
+industrious race;--copyists with their _heart_. The common
+painter-copyists who encumber our European galleries with their easels
+and pots, are, almost without exception, persons too stupid to be
+painters, and too lazy to be engravers. The real copyists--the men who
+can put their soul into another's work--are employed at home, in their
+narrow rooms, striving to make their good work profitable to all men.
+And in their submission to the public taste they are truly national
+servants as much as Prime Ministers are. They fulfill the demand of the
+nation; what, as a people, you wish to have for possession in art, these
+men are ready to give you.
+
+And what have you hitherto asked of them?--Ramsgate Sands, and Dolly
+Vardens, and the Paddington Station,--these, I think, are typical of
+your chief demands; the cartoons of Raphael--which you don't care to see
+themselves; and, by way of a flight into the empyrean, the Madonna di
+San Sisto. And literally, there are hundreds of cities and villages in
+Italy in which roof and wall are blazoned with the noblest divinity and
+philosophy ever imagined by men; and of all this treasure, I can, as far
+as I know, give you not _one_ example, in line engraving, by an English
+hand!
+
+Well, you are in the main matter right in this. You want essentially
+Ramsgate Sands and the Paddington Station, because there you can see
+yourselves.
+
+Make yourselves, then, worthy to be seen forever, and let English
+engraving become noble as the record of English loveliness and honor.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[X] Miller's large plate of the Grand Canal, Venice, after Turner; and
+Goodall's, of Tivoli, after Turner. The other examples referred to are
+left in the University Galleries.
+
+[Y] This paragraph was not read at the lecture, time not allowing:--it
+is part of what I wrote on engraving some years ago, in the papers for
+the Art Journal, called the Cestus of Aglaia. (Refer now to "On the Old
+Road.")
+
+[Z] An effort has lately been made in France, by Meissonier, Gérome, and
+their school, to recover it, with marvelous collateral skill of
+engravers. The etching of Gérome's Louis XIV. and Molière is one of the
+completest pieces of skillful mechanism ever put on metal.
+
+[AA] I must again qualify the too sweeping statement of the text. I
+think, as time passes, some of these nineteenth century line engravings
+will become monumental. The first vignette of the garden, with the cut
+hedges and fountain, for instance, in Rogers' poems, is so consummate in
+its use of every possible artifice of delicate line, (note the look of
+_tremulous_ atmosphere got by the undulatory etched lines on the
+pavement, and the broken masses, worked with dots, of the fountain
+foam,) that I think it cannot but, with some of its companions, survive
+the refuse of its school, and become classic. I find in like manner,
+even with all their faults and weaknesses, the vignettes to Heyne's
+Virgil to be real art-possessions.
+
+[AB] Plate XI., in the Appendix, taken from the engraving of the Virgin
+sitting in the fenced garden, with two angels crowning her.
+
+[AC] The method was first developed in engraving designs on
+silver--numbers of lines being executed with dots by the punch, for
+variety's sake. For niello, and printing, a transverse cut was
+substituted for the blow. The entire style is connected with the later
+Roman and Byzantine method of drawing lines with the drill hole, in
+marble. See above, Lecture II., Section 70.
+
+[AD] This most important and distinctive character was pointed out to me
+by Mr. Burgess.
+
+[AE] This point will be further examined and explained in the Appendix.
+
+[AF] See Appendix, Article I.
+
+
+
+
+                         LECTURE V.
+
+         DESIGN IN THE GERMAN SCHOOLS OF ENGRAVING.
+
+
+141. By reference to the close of the preface to 'Eagle's Nest,' you
+will see, gentlemen, that I meant these lectures, from the first, rather
+to lead you to the study of the characters of two great men, than to
+interest you in the processes of a secondary form of art. As I draw my
+materials into the limited form necessary for the hour, I find my
+divided purpose doubly failing; and would fain rather use my time to-day
+in supplying the defects of my last lecture, than in opening the greater
+subject, which I must treat with still more lamentable inadequacy.
+Nevertheless, you must not think it is for want of time that I omit
+reference to other celebrated engravers, and insist on the special power
+of these two only. Many not inconsiderable reputations are founded
+merely on the curiosity of collectors of prints, or on partial skill in
+the management of processes; others, though resting on more secure
+bases, are still of no importance to you in the general history of art;
+whereas you will find the work of Holbein and Botticelli determining for
+you, without need of any farther range, the principal questions of
+moment in the relation of the Northern and Southern schools of design.
+Nay, a wider method of inquiry would only render your comparison less
+accurate in result. It is only in Holbein's majestic range of capacity,
+and only in the particular phase of Teutonic life which his art adorned,
+that the problem can be dealt with on fair terms. We Northerns can
+advance no fairly comparable antagonist to the artists of the South,
+except at that one moment, and in that one man. Rubens cannot for an
+instant be matched with Tintoret, nor Memling with Lippi; while
+Reynolds only rivals Titian in what he learned from him. But in Holbein
+and Botticelli we have two men trained independently, equal in power of
+intellect, similar in material and mode of work, contemporary in age,
+correspondent in disposition. The relation between them is strictly
+typical of the constant aspects to each other of the Northern and
+Southern schools.
+
+142. Their point of closest contact is in the art of engraving, and this
+art is developed entirely as the servant of the great passions which
+perturbed or polluted Europe in the fifteenth century. The impulses
+which it obeys are all new; and it obeys them with its own nascent
+plasticity of temper. Painting and sculpture are only modified by them;
+but engraving is educated.
+
+These passions are in the main three; namely,
+
+1. The thirst for classical literature, and the forms of proud and false
+taste which arose out of it, in the position it had assumed as the enemy
+of Christianity.
+
+2. The pride of science, enforcing (in the particular domain of Art)
+accuracy of perspective, shade, and anatomy, never before dreamed of.
+
+3. The sense of error and iniquity in the theological teaching of the
+Christian Church, felt by the highest intellects of the time, and
+necessarily rendering the formerly submissive religious art impossible.
+
+To-day, then, our task is to examine the peculiar characters of the
+Design of the Northern Schools of Engraving, as affected by these great
+influences.
+
+143. I have not often, however, used the word 'design,' and must clearly
+define the sense in which I now use it. It is vaguely used in common
+art-parlance; often as if it meant merely the drawing of a picture, as
+distinct from its color; and in other still more inaccurate ways. The
+accurate and proper sense, underlying all these, I must endeavor to make
+clear to you.
+
+'Design' properly signifies that power in any art-work which has a
+purpose other than of imitation, and which is 'designed,' composed, or
+separated to that end. It implies the rejection of some things, and the
+insistence upon others, with a given object.[AG]
+
+Let us take progressive instances. Here is a group of prettily dressed
+peasant children, charmingly painted by a very able modern artist--not
+absolutely without design, for he really wishes to show you how pretty
+peasant children can be, (and, in so far, is wiser and kinder than
+Murillo, who likes to show how ugly they can be); also, his group is
+agreeably arranged, and its component children carefully chosen.
+Nevertheless, any summer's day, near any country village, you may come
+upon twenty groups in an hour as pretty as this; and may see--if you
+have eyes--children in them twenty times prettier than these. A
+photograph, if it could render them perfectly, and in color, would far
+excel the charm of this painting; for in it, good and clever as it is,
+there is nothing supernatural, and much that is subnatural.
+
+144. Beside this group of, in every sense of the word, 'artless' little
+country girls, I will now set one--in the best sense of the
+word--'artful' little country girl,--a sketch by Gainsborough.
+
+You never saw her like before. Never will again, now that Gainsborough
+is dead. No photography,--no science,--no industry, will touch or reach
+for an instant this _super_-naturalness. You will look vainly through
+the summer fields for such a child. "Nor up the lawn, nor by the wood,"
+is she. Whence do you think this marvelous charm has come? Alas! if we
+knew, would not we all be Gainsboroughs? This only you may practically
+ascertain, as surely as that a flower will die if you cut its root away,
+that you cannot alter a single touch in Gainsborough's work without
+injury to the whole. Half a dozen spots, more or less, in the printed
+gowns of these other children whom I first showed you, will not make the
+smallest difference to them; nor a lock or two more or less in their
+hair, nor a dimple or two more or less in their cheeks. But if you alter
+one wave of the hair of Gainsborough's girl, the child is gone. Yet the
+art is so subtle, that I do not expect you to believe this. It looks so
+instinctive, so easy, so 'chanceux,'--the French word is better than
+ours. Yes, and in their more accurate sense, also, 'Il a de la chance.'
+A stronger Designer than he was with him. He could not tell you himself
+how the thing was done.
+
+145. I proceed to take a more definite instance--this Greek head of the
+Lacinian Juno. The design or appointing of the forms now entirely
+prevails over the resemblance to Nature. No real hair could ever be
+drifted into these wild lines, which mean the wrath of the Adriatic
+winds round the Cape of Storms.
+
+And yet, whether this be uglier or prettier than Gainsborough's
+child--(and you know already what I think about it, that no Greek
+goddess was ever half so pretty as an English girl, of pure clay and
+temper,)--uglier or prettier, it is more dignified and impressive. It at
+least belongs to the domain of a lordlier, more majestic, more guiding
+and ordaining art.
+
+146. I will go back another five hundred years, and place an Egyptian
+beside the Greek divinity. The resemblance to Nature is now all but
+lost, the ruling law has become all. The lines are reduced to an easily
+counted number, and their arrangement is little more than a decorative
+sequence of pleasant curves cut in porphyry,--in the upper part of
+their contour following the outline of a woman's face in profile,
+over-crested by that of a hawk, on a kind of pedestal. But that the
+sign-engraver meant by his hawk, Immortality, and by her pedestal, the
+House or Tavern of Truth, is of little importance now to the passing
+traveler, not yet preparing to take the sarcophagus for his place of
+rest.
+
+147. How many questions are suggested to us by these transitions! Is
+beauty contrary to law, and grace attainable only through license? What
+we gain in language, shall we lose in thought? and in what we add of
+labor, more and more forget its ends?
+
+Not so.
+
+Look at this piece of Sandro's work, the Libyan Sibyl.[AH]
+
+It is as ordered and normal as the Egyptian's--as graceful and facile as
+Gainsborough's. It retains the majesty of old religion; it is invested
+with the joy of newly awakened childhood.
+
+Mind, I do not expect you--do not wish you--to enjoy Botticelli's dark
+engraving as much as Gainsborough's aerial sketch; for due comparison of
+the men, painting should be put beside painting. But there is enough
+even in this copy of the Florentine plate to show you the junction of
+the two powers in it--of prophecy, and delight.
+
+148. Will these two powers, do you suppose, be united in the same manner
+in the contemporary Northern art? That Northern school is my subject
+to-day; and yet I give you, as type of the intermediate condition
+between Egypt and England--not Holbein, but Botticelli. I am obliged to
+do this; because in the Southern art, the religious temper remains
+unconquered by the doctrines of the Reformation. Botticelli was--what
+Luther wished to be, but could not be--a reformer still believing in the
+Church: his mind is at peace; and his art, therefore, can pursue the
+delight of beauty, and yet remain prophetic. But it was far otherwise in
+Germany. There the Reformation of manners became the destruction of
+faith; and art therefore, not a prophecy, but a protest. It is the
+chief work of the greatest Protestant who ever lived,[AI] which I ask
+you to study with me to-day.
+
+149. I said that the power of engraving had developed itself during the
+introduction of three new--(practically and vitally new, that is to
+say)--elements, into the minds of men: elements which briefly may be
+expressed thus:
+
+    1. Classicism, and Literary Science.
+
+    2. Medicine, and Physical Science.[AJ]
+
+    3. Reformation, and Religious Science.
+
+And first of Classicism.
+
+You feel, do not you, in this typical work of Gainsborough's, that his
+subject as well as his picture is 'artless' in a lovely sense;--nay, not
+only artless, but ignorant, and unscientific, in a beautiful way? You
+would be afterwards remorseful, I think, and angry with yourself--seeing
+the effect produced on her face--if you were to ask this little lady to
+spell a very long word? Also, if you wished to know how many times the
+sevens go in forty-nine, you would perhaps wisely address yourself
+elsewhere. On the other hand, you do not doubt that _this_ lady[AK]
+knows very well how many times the sevens go in forty-nine, and is more
+Mistress of Arts than any of us are Masters of them.
+
+150. You have then, in the one case, a beautiful simplicity, and a
+blameless ignorance; in the other, a beautiful artfulness, and a wisdom
+which you do not dread,--or, at least, even though dreading, love. But
+you know also that we may remain in a hateful and culpable ignorance;
+and, as I fear too many of us in competitive effort feel, become
+possessed of a hateful knowledge.
+
+Ignorance, therefore, is not evil absolutely; but, innocent, may be
+lovable.
+
+Knowledge also is not good absolutely; but, guilty, may be hateful.
+
+So, therefore, when I now repeat my former statement, that the first
+main opposition between the Northern and Southern schools is in the
+simplicity of the one, and the scholarship of the other, that statement
+may imply sometimes the superiority of the North, and sometimes of the
+South. You may have a heavenly simplicity opposed to a hellish (that is
+to say, a lustful and arrogant) scholarship; or you may have a barbarous
+and presumptuous ignorance opposed to a divine and disciplined wisdom.
+Ignorance opposed to learning in both cases; but evil to good, as the
+case may be.
+
+151. For instance: the last time I was standing before Raphael's
+arabesques in the Loggias of the Vatican, I wrote down in my pocket-book
+the description, or, more modestly speaking, the inventory, of the small
+portion of that infinite wilderness of sensual fantasy which happened to
+be opposite me. It consisted of a woman's face, with serpents for hair,
+and a virgin's breasts, with stumps for arms, ending in blue
+butterflies' wings, the whole changing at the waist into a goat's body,
+which ended below in an obelisk upside-down, to the apex at the bottom
+of which were appended, by graceful chains, an altar, and two bunches of
+grapes.
+
+Now you know in a moment, by a glance at this 'design'--beautifully
+struck with free hand, and richly gradated in color,--that the master
+was familiar with a vast range of art and literature: that he knew all
+about Egyptian sphinxes, and Greek Gorgons; about Egyptian obelisks, and
+Hebrew altars; about Hermes, and Venus, and Bacchus, and satyrs, and
+goats, and grapes.
+
+You know also--or ought to know, in an instant,--that all this learning
+has done him no good; that he had better have known nothing than any of
+these things, since they were to be used by him only to such purpose;
+and that his delight in armless breasts, legless trunks, and obelisks
+upside-down, has been the last effort of his expiring sensation, in the
+grasp of corrupt and altogether victorious Death. And you have thus, in
+Gainsborough as compared with Raphael, a sweet, sacred, and living
+simplicity, set against an impure, profane, and paralyzed knowledge.
+
+152. But, next, let us consider the reverse conditions.
+
+Let us take instance of contrast between faultful and treacherous
+ignorance, and divinely pure and fruitful knowledge.
+
+In the place of honor at the end of one of the rooms of your Royal
+Academy--years ago--stood a picture by an English Academician, announced
+as a representation of Moses sustained by Aaron and Hur, during the
+discomfiture of Amalek. In the entire range of the Pentateuch, there is
+no other scene (in which the visible agents are mortal only) requiring
+so much knowledge and thought to reach even a distant approximation to
+the probabilities of the fact. One saw in a moment that the painter was
+both powerful and simple, after a sort; that he had really sought for a
+vital conception, and had originally and earnestly read his text, and
+formed his conception. And one saw also in a moment that he had chanced
+upon this subject, in reading or hearing his Bible, as he might have
+chanced on a dramatic scene accidentally in the street. That he knew
+nothing of the character of Moses,--nothing of his law,--nothing of the
+character of Aaron, nor of the nature of a priesthood,--nothing of the
+meaning of the event which he was endeavoring to represent, of the
+temper in which it would have been transacted by its agents, or of its
+relations to modern life.
+
+153. On the contrary, in the fresco of the earlier scenes in the life of
+Moses, by Sandro Botticelli, you know--not 'in a moment,' for the
+knowledge of knowledge cannot be so obtained; but in proportion to the
+discretion of your own reading, and to the care you give to the picture,
+you _may_ know,--that here is a sacredly guided and guarded learning;
+here a Master indeed, at whose feet you may sit safely, who can teach
+you, better than in words, the significance of both Moses' law and
+Aaron's ministry; and not only these, but, if he chose, could add to
+this an exposition as complete of the highest philosophies both of the
+Greek nation, and of his own; and could as easily have painted, had it
+been asked of him, Draco, or Numa, or Justinian, as the herdsman of
+Jethro.
+
+154. It is rarely that we can point to an opposition between faultful,
+because insolent, ignorance, and virtuous, because gracious, knowledge,
+so direct, and in so parallel elements, as in this instance. In general,
+the analysis is much more complex. It is intensely difficult to indicate
+the mischief of involuntary and modest ignorance, calamitous only in a
+measure; fruitful in its lower field, yet sorrowfully condemned to that
+lower field--not by sin, but fate.
+
+When first I introduced you to Bewick, we closed our too partial
+estimate of his entirely magnificent powers with one sorrowful
+concession--he could draw a pig, but not a Venus.
+
+Eminently he could so, because--which is still more sorrowfully to be
+conceded--he liked the pig best. I have put now in your educational
+series a whole galaxy of pigs by him; but, hunting all the fables
+through, I find only one Venus, and I think you will all admit that she
+is an unsatisfactory Venus.[AL] There is honest simplicity here; but you
+regret it; you miss something that you find in Holbein, much more in
+Botticelli. You see in a moment that this man knows nothing of Sphinxes,
+or Muses, or Graces, or Aphrodites; and, besides, that, knowing nothing,
+he would have no liking for them even if he saw them; but much prefers
+the style of a well-to-do English housekeeper with corkscrew curls, and
+a portly person.
+
+155. You miss something, I said, in Bewick which you find in Holbein.
+But do you suppose Holbein himself, or any other Northern painter, could
+wholly quit himself of the like accusations? I told you, in the second
+of these lectures, that the Northern temper, refined from savageness,
+and the Southern, redeemed from decay, met, in Florence. Holbein and
+Botticelli are the purest types of the two races. Holbein is a civilized
+boor; Botticelli a reanimate Greek. Holbein was polished by
+companionship with scholars and kings, but remains always a burgher of
+Augsburg in essential nature. Bewick and he are alike in temper; only
+the one is untaught, the other perfectly taught. But Botticelli _needs_
+no teaching. He is, by his birth, scholar and gentleman to the heart's
+core. Christianity itself can only inspire him, not refine him. He is as
+tried gold chased by the jeweler,--the roughest part of him is the
+outside.
+
+Now how differently must the newly recovered scholastic learning tell
+upon these two men. It is all out of Holbein's way; foreign to his
+nature, useless at the best, probably cumbrous. But Botticelli receives
+it as a child in later years recovers the forgotten dearness of a
+nursery tale; and is more himself, and again and again himself, as he
+breathes the air of Greece, and hears, in his own Italy, the lost voice
+of the Sibyl murmur again by the Avernus Lake.
+
+156. It is not, as we have seen, every one of the Southern race who can
+thus receive it. But it graces them all; is at once a part of their
+being; destroys them, if it is to destroy, the more utterly because it
+so enters into their natures. It destroys Raphael; but it graces him,
+and is a part of him. It all but destroys Mantegna; but it graces him.
+And it does not hurt Holbein, just because it does _not_ grace
+him--never is for an instant a part of him. It is with Raphael as with
+some charming young girl who has a new and beautifully made dress
+brought to her, which entirely becomes her,--so much, that in a little
+while, thinking of nothing else, she becomes _it_; and is only the
+decoration of her dress. But with Holbein it is as if you brought the
+same dress to a stout farmer's daughter who was going to dine at the
+Hall; and begged her to put it on that she might not discredit the
+company. She puts it on to please you; looks entirely ridiculous in it,
+but is not spoiled by it,--remains herself, in spite of it.
+
+157. You probably have never noticed the extreme awkwardness of Holbein
+in wearing this new dress; you would the less do so because his own
+people think him all the finer for it, as the farmer's wife would
+probably think her daughter. Dr. Woltmann, for instance, is enthusiastic
+in praise of the splendid architecture in the background of his
+Annunciation. A fine mess it must have made in the minds of simple
+German maidens, in their notion of the Virgin at home! I cannot show you
+this Annunciation; but I have under my hand one of Holbein's Bible cuts,
+of the deepest seriousness and import--his illustration of the
+Canticles, showing the Church as the bride of Christ.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+You could not find a subject requiring more tenderness, purity, or
+dignity of treatment. In this maid, symbolizing the Church, you ask for
+the most passionate humility, the most angelic beauty: "Behold, thou art
+fair, my dove." Now here is Holbein's ideal of that fairness; here is
+his "Church as the Bride."
+
+I am sorry to associate this figure in your minds, even for a moment,
+with the passages it is supposed to illustrate; but the lesson is too
+important to be omitted. Remember, Holbein represents the temper of
+Northern Reformation. He has all the nobleness of that temper, but also
+all its baseness. He represents, indeed, the revolt of German truth
+against Italian lies; but he represents also the revolt of German
+animalism against Hebrew imagination. This figure of Holbein's is
+half-way from Solomon's mystic bride, to Rembrandt's wife, sitting on
+his knee while he drinks.
+
+But the key of the question is not in this. Florentine animalism has at
+this time, also, enough to say for itself. But Florentine animalism, at
+this time, feels the joy of a gentleman, not of a churl. And a
+Florentine, whatever he does,--be it virtuous or sinful, chaste or
+lascivious, severe or extravagant,--does it with a grace.
+
+158. You think, perhaps, that Holbein's Solomon's bride is so ungraceful
+chiefly because she is overdressed, and has too many feathers and
+jewels. No; a Florentine would have put any quantity of feathers and
+jewels on her, and yet never lost her grace. You shall see him do it,
+and that to a fantastic degree, for I have an example under my hand.
+Look back, first, to Bewick's Venus (Lecture III.). You can't accuse her
+of being overdressed. She complies with every received modern principle
+of taste. Sir Joshua's precept that drapery should be "drapery, and
+nothing more," is observed more strictly even by Bewick than by Michael
+Angelo. If the absence of decoration could exalt the beauty of his
+Venus, here had been her perfection.
+
+Now look back to Plate II. (Lecture IV.), by Sandro; Venus in her
+planet, the ruling star of Florence. Anything more grotesque in
+conception, more unrestrained in fancy of ornament, you cannot find,
+even in the final days of the Renaissance. Yet Venus holds her divinity
+through all; she will become majestic to you as you gaze; and there is
+not a line of her chariot wheels, of her buskins, or of her throne,
+which you may not see was engraved by a gentleman.
+
+[Illustration: V.
+
+"Heat considered as a Mode of Motion."
+
+Florentine Natural Philosophy.]
+
+159. Again, Plate V., opposite, is a facsimile of another engraving of
+the same series--the Sun in Leo. It is even more extravagant in
+accessories than the Venus. You see the Sun's epaulets before you see
+the sun; the spiral scrolls of his chariot, and the black twisted rays
+of it, might, so far as types of form only are considered, be a design
+for some modern court-dress star, to be made in diamonds. And yet all
+this wild ornamentation is, if you will examine it, more purely Greek in
+spirit than the Apollo Belvedere.
+
+You know I have told you, again and again, that the soul of Greece is
+her veracity; that what to other nations were fables and symbolisms, to
+her became living facts--living gods. The fall of Greece was instant
+when her gods again became fables. The Apollo Belvedere is the work of a
+sculptor to whom Apollonism is merely an elegant idea on which to
+exhibit his own skill. He does not himself feel for an instant that the
+handsome man in the unintelligible attitude,[AM] with drapery hung over
+his left arm, as it would be hung to dry over a clothes-line, is the
+Power of the Sun. But the Florentine believes in Apollo with his whole
+mind, and is trying to explain his strength in every touch.
+
+For instance; I said just now, "You see the sun's epaulets before the
+sun." Well, _don't_ you, usually, as it rises? Do you not continually
+mistake a luminous cloud for it, or wonder where it is, behind one?
+Again, the face of the Apollo Belvedere is agitated by anxiety, passion,
+and pride. Is the sun's likely to be so, rising on the evil and the
+good? This Prince sits crowned and calm: look at the quiet fingers of
+the hand holding the scepter,--at the restraint of the reins merely by a
+depression of the wrist.
+
+160. You have to look carefully for those fingers holding the scepter,
+because the hand--which a great anatomist would have made so exclusively
+interesting--is here confused with the ornamentation of the arm of the
+chariot on which it rests. But look what the ornamentation is;--fruit
+and leaves, abundant, in the mouth of a cornucopia. A quite vulgar and
+meaningless ornament in ordinary renaissance work. Is it so here, think
+you? Are not the leaves and fruits of earth in the Sun's hand?[AN]
+
+You thought, perhaps, when I spoke just now of the action of the right
+hand, that less than a depression of the wrist would stop horses such as
+those. You fancy Botticelli drew them so, because he had never seen a
+horse; or because, able to draw fingers, he could not draw hoofs! How
+fine it would be to have, instead, a prancing four-in-hand, in the style
+of Piccadilly on the Derby-day, or at least horses like the real Greek
+horses of the Parthenon!
+
+Yes; and if they had had real ground to trot on, the Florentine would
+have shown you he knew how they should trot. But these have to make
+their way up the hill-side of other lands. Look to the example in your
+standard series, Hermes Eriophoros. You will find his motion among
+clouds represented precisely in this laboring, failing, half-kneeling
+attitude of limb. These forms, toiling up through the rippled sands of
+heaven, are--not horses;--they are clouds themselves, _like_ horses, but
+only a little like. Look how their hoofs lose themselves, buried in the
+ripples of cloud; it makes one think of the quicksands of Morecambe Bay.
+
+And their tails--what extraordinary tufts of tails, ending in points!
+Yes; but do you not see, nearly joining with them, what is not a horse
+tail at all; but a flame of fire, kindled at Apollo's knee? All the rest
+of the radiance about him shoots _from_ him. But this is rendered _up_
+to him. As the fruits of the earth are in one of his hands, its fire is
+in the other. And all the warmth, as well as all the light of it, are
+his.
+
+We had a little natural philosophy, gentlemen, as well as theology, in
+Florence, once upon a time.
+
+161. Natural philosophy, and also natural art, for in this the Greek
+reanimate was a nobler creature than the Greek who had died. His art had
+a wider force and warmer glow. I have told you that the first Greeks
+were distinguished from the barbarians by their simple humanity; the
+second Greeks--these Florentine Greeks reanimate--are human more
+strongly, more deeply, leaping from the Byzantine death at the call of
+Christ, "Loose him, and let him go." And there is upon them at once the
+joy of resurrection, and the solemnity of the grave.
+
+[Illustration: VI.
+
+Fairness of the Sea and Air.
+
+In VENICE and ATHENS.]
+
+162. Of this resurrection of the Greek, and the form of the tomb he had
+been buried in "those four days," I have to give you some account in the
+last lecture. I will only to-day show you an illustration of it which
+brings us back to our immediate question as to the reasons why Northern
+art could not accept classicism. When, in the closing lecture of "Aratra
+Pentelici,"[AO] I compared Florentine with Greek work, it was to point
+out to you the eager passions of the first as opposed to the formal
+legalism and proprieties of the other. Greek work, I told you, while
+truthful, was also restrained, and never but under majesty of law; while
+Gothic work was true, in the perfect law of Liberty or Franchise. And
+now I give you in facsimile (Plate VI.) the two Aphrodites thus
+compared--the Aphrodite Thalassia of the Tyrrhene seas, and the
+Aphrodite Urania of the Greek skies. You may not at first like the
+Tuscan best; and why she is the best, though both are noble, again I
+must defer explaining to next lecture. But now turn back to Bewick's
+Venus, and compare her with the Tuscan Venus of the Stars, (Plate II.);
+and then here, in Plate VI., with the Tuscan Venus of the Seas, and the
+Greek Venus of the Sky. Why is the English one vulgar? What is it, in
+the three others, which makes them, if not beautiful, at least
+refined?--every one of them 'designed' and drawn, indisputably, by a
+gentleman?
+
+I never have been so puzzled by any subject of analysis as, for these
+ten years, I have been by this. Every answer I give, however plausible
+it seems at first, fails in some way, or in some cases. But there is
+the point for you, more definitely put, I think, than in any of my
+former books;--at present, for want of time, I must leave it to your own
+thoughts.
+
+163. II. The second influence under which engraving developed itself, I
+said, was that of medicine and the physical sciences. Gentlemen, the
+most audacious, and the most valuable, statement which I have yet made
+to you on the subject of practical art, in these rooms, is that of the
+evil resulting from the study of anatomy. It is a statement so
+audacious, that not only for some time I dared not make it to you, but
+for ten years, at least, I dared not make it to myself. I saw, indeed,
+that whoever studied anatomy was in a measure injured by it; but I kept
+attributing the mischief to secondary causes. It _can't_ be this drink
+itself that poisons them, I said always. This drink is medicinal and
+strengthening: I see that it kills them, but it must be because they
+drink it cold when they have been hot, or they take something else with
+it that changes it into poison. The drink itself _must_ be good. Well,
+gentlemen, I found out the drink itself to be poison at last, by the
+breaking of my choicest Venice glass. I could not make out what it was
+that had killed Tintoret, and laid it long to the charge of chiaroscuro.
+It was only after my thorough study of his Paradise, in 1870, that I
+gave up this idea, finding the chiaroscuro, which I had thought
+exaggerated, was, in all original and undarkened passages, beautiful and
+most precious. And then at last I got hold of the true clue: "Il disegno
+di Michel Agnolo." And the moment I had dared to accuse that, it
+explained everything; and I saw that the betraying demons of Italian
+art, led on by Michael Angelo, had been, not pleasure, but knowledge;
+not indolence, but ambition; and not love, but horror.
+
+164. But when first I ventured to tell you this, I did not know, myself,
+the fact of all most conclusive for its confirmation. It will take me a
+little while to put it before you in its total force, and I must first
+ask your attention to a minor point. In one of the smaller rooms of the
+Munich Gallery is Holbein's painting of St. Margaret and St. Elizabeth
+of Hungary,--standard of his early religious work. Here is a photograph
+from the St. Elizabeth; and, in the same frame, a French lithograph of
+it. I consider it one of the most important pieces of comparison I have
+arranged for you, showing you at a glance the difference between true
+and false sentiment. Of that difference, generally, we cannot speak
+to-day, but one special result of it you are to observe;--the omission,
+in the French drawing, of Holbein's daring representation of disease,
+which is one of the vital honors of the picture. Quite one of the chief
+strengths of St. Elizabeth, in the Roman Catholic view, was in the
+courage of her dealing with disease, chiefly leprosy. Now observe, I say
+_Roman_ Catholic view, very earnestly just now; I am not at all sure
+that it is so in a Catholic view--that is to say, in an eternally
+Christian and Divine view. And this doubt, very nearly now a certainty,
+only came clearly into my mind the other day after many and many a
+year's meditation on it. I had read with great reverence all the
+beautiful stories about Christ's appearing as a leper, and the like; and
+had often pitied and rebuked myself alternately for my intense dislike
+and horror of disease. I am writing at this moment within fifty yards of
+the grave of St. Francis, and the story of the likeness of his feelings
+to mine had a little comforted me, and the tradition of his conquest of
+them again humiliated me; and I was thinking very gravely of this, and
+of the parallel instance of Bishop Hugo of Lincoln, always desiring to
+do service to the dead, as opposed to my own unmitigated and
+Louis-Quinze-like horror of funerals;--when by chance, in the cathedral
+of Palermo, a new light was thrown for me on the whole matter.
+
+165. I was drawing the tomb of Frederick II., which is shut off by a
+grating from the body of the church; and I had, in general, quite an
+unusual degree of quiet and comfort at my work. But sometimes it was
+paralyzed by the unconscious interference of one of the men employed in
+some minor domestic services about the church. When he had nothing to
+do, he used to come and seat himself near my grating, not to look at my
+work, (the poor wretch had no eyes, to speak of,) nor in any way
+meaning to be troublesome; but there was his habitual seat. His nose had
+been carried off by the most loathsome of diseases; there were two vivid
+circles of scarlet round his eyes; and as he sat, he announced his
+presence every quarter of a minute (if otherwise I could have forgotten
+it) by a peculiarly disgusting, loud, and long expectoration. On the
+second or third day, just I had forced myself into some forgetfulness of
+him, and was hard at my work, I was startled from it again by the
+bursting out of a loud and cheerful conversation close to me; and on
+looking round, saw a lively young fledgling of a priest, seventeen or
+eighteen years old, in the most eager and spirited chat with the man in
+the chair. He talked, laughed, and spat, himself, companionably, in the
+merriest way, for a quarter of an hour; evidently without feeling the
+slightest disgust, or being made serious for an instant, by the aspect
+of the destroyed creature before him.
+
+166. His own face was simply that of the ordinary vulgar type of
+thoughtless young Italians, rather beneath than above the usual
+standard; and I was certain, as I watched him, that he was not at all my
+superior, but very much my inferior, in the coolness with which he
+beheld what was to me so dreadful. I was positive that he could look
+this man in the face, precisely because he could _not_ look,
+discerningly, at any beautiful or noble thing; and that the reason I
+dared not, was because I had, spiritually, as much better eyes than the
+priest, as, bodily, than his companion.
+
+Having got so much of clear evidence given me on the matter, it was
+driven home for me a week later, as I landed on the quay of Naples.
+Almost the first thing that presented itself to me was the sign of a
+traveling theatrical company, displaying the principal scene of the
+drama to be enacted on their classical stage. Fresh from the theater of
+Taormina, I was curious to see the subject of the Neapolitan popular
+drama. It was the capture, by the police, of a man and his wife who
+lived by boiling children. One section of the police was coming in,
+armed to the teeth, through the passage; another section of the police,
+armed to the teeth, and with high feathers in its caps, was coming up
+through a trap-door. In fine dramatic unconsciousness to the last
+moment, like the clown in a pantomime, the child-boiler was represented
+as still industriously chopping up a child, pieces of which, ready for
+the pot, lay here and there on the table in the middle of the picture.
+The child-boiler's wife, however, just as she was taking the top off the
+pot to put the meat in, had caught a glimpse of the foremost policeman,
+and stopped, as much in rage as in consternation.
+
+167. Now it is precisely the same feeling, or want of feeling, in the
+lower Italian (nor always in the lower classes only) which makes him
+demand the kind of subject for his secular drama; and the Crucifixion
+and Pietà for his religious drama. The only part of Christianity he can
+enjoy is its horror; and even the saint and saintess are not always
+denying themselves severely, either by the contemplation of torture, or
+the companionship with disease.
+
+Nevertheless, we must be cautious, on the other hand, to allow full
+value to the endurance, by tender and delicate persons, of what is
+really loathsome or distressful to them in the service of others; and I
+think this picture of Holbein's indicative of the exact balance and
+rightness of his own mind in this matter, and therefore of his power to
+conceive a true saint also. He had to represent St. Catherine's chief
+effort;--he paints her ministering to the sick, and, among them, is a
+leper; and finding it thus his duty to paint leprosy, he courageously
+himself studies it from the life. Not to insist on its horror; but to
+assert it, to the needful point of fact, which he does with medical
+accuracy.
+
+Now here is just a case in which science, in a subordinate degree, is
+really required for a spiritual and moral purpose. And you find Holbein
+does not shrink from it even in this extreme case in which it is most
+painful.
+
+168. If, therefore, you _do_ find him in other cases not using it, you
+may be sure he knew it to be unnecessary.
+
+Now it may be disputable whether in order to draw a living Madonna, one
+needs to know how many ribs she has; but it would have seemed
+indisputable that in order to draw a skeleton, one must know how many
+ribs _it_ has.
+
+Holbein is par excellence the draughtsman of skeletons. His painted
+Dance of Death was, and his engraved Dance of Death is, principal of
+such things, without any comparison or denial. He draws skeleton after
+skeleton, in every possible gesture; but never so much as counts their
+ribs! He neither knows nor cares how many ribs a skeleton has. There are
+always enough to rattle.
+
+Monstrous, you think, in impudence,--Holbein for his carelessness, and I
+for defending him! Nay, I triumph in him; nothing has ever more pleased
+me than this grand negligence. Nobody wants to know how many ribs a
+skeleton has, any more than how many bars a gridiron has, so long as the
+one can breathe, and the other broil; and still less, when the breath
+and the fire are both out.
+
+169. But is it only of the bones, think you, that Holbein is
+careless?[AP] Nay, incredible though it may seem to you,--but, to me,
+explanatory at once of much of his excellence,--he did not know anatomy
+at all! I told you in my Preface,[AQ] already quoted, Holbein studies
+the face first, the body secondarily; but I had no idea, myself, how
+completely he had refused the venomous science of his day. I showed you
+a dead Christ of his, long ago. Can you match it with your academy
+drawings, think you? And yet he did not, and would not, know anatomy.
+_He_ would not; but Dürer would, and did:--went hotly into it--wrote
+books upon it, and upon 'proportions of the human body,' etc., etc., and
+all your modern recipes for painting flesh. How did his studies prosper
+his art?
+
+People are always talking of his Knight and Death, and his Melancholia,
+as if those were his principal works. They are his characteristic ones,
+and show what he might have been _without_ his anatomy; but they were
+mere by-play compared to his Greater Fortune, and Adam and Eve. Look at
+these. Here is his full energy displayed; here are both male and female
+forms drawn with perfect knowledge of their bones and muscles, and modes
+of action and digestion,--and I hope you are pleased.
+
+But it is not anatomy only that Master Albert studies. He has a taste
+for optics also; and knows all about refraction and reflection. What
+with his knowledge of the skull inside, and the vitreous lens outside,
+if any man in the world is to draw an eye, here's the man to do it,
+surely! With a hand which can give lessons to John Bellini, and a care
+which would fain do all so that it can't be done better, and
+acquaintance with every crack in the cranium, and every humor in the
+lens,--if we can't draw an eye, we should just like to know who can!
+thinks Albert.
+
+So having to engrave the portrait of Melanchthon, instead of looking at
+Melanchthon as ignorant Holbein would have been obliged to do,--wise
+Albert looks at the room window; and finds it has four cross-bars in it,
+and knows scientifically that the light on Melanchthon's eye must be a
+reflection of the window with its four bars--and engraves it so,
+accordingly; and who shall dare to say, now, it isn't like Melanchthon?
+
+Unfortunately, however, it isn't, nor like any other person in his
+senses; but like a madman looking at somebody who disputes his hobby.
+While in this drawing of Holbein's, where a dim gray shadow leaves a
+mere crumb of white paper,--accidentally it seems, for all the fine
+scientific reflection,--behold, it is an eye indeed, and of a noble
+creature.
+
+170. What is the reason? do you ask me; and is all the common teaching
+about generalization of details true, then?
+
+No; not a syllable of it is true. Holbein is right, not because he draws
+more generally, but more truly, than Dürer. Dürer draws what he knows is
+there; but Holbein, only what he sees. And, as I have told you often
+before, the really scientific artist is he who not only asserts bravely
+what he _does_ see, but confesses honestly what he does _not_. You must
+not draw all the hairs in an eyelash; not because it is sublime to
+generalize them, but because it is impossible to see them. How many
+hairs there are, a sign painter or anatomist may count; but how few of
+them you can see, it is only the utmost masters, Carpaccio, Tintoret,
+Reynolds, and Velasquez, who count, or know.
+
+171. Such was the effect, then, of his science upon Dürer's ideal of
+beauty, and skill in portraiture. What effect had it on the temper and
+quantity of his work, as compared with poor ignorant Holbein's! You have
+only three portraits, by Dürer, of the great men of his time, and those
+bad ones; while he toils his soul out to draw the hoofs of satyrs, the
+bristles of swine, and the distorted aspects of base women and vicious
+men.
+
+What, on the contrary, has ignorant Holbein done for you? Shakespeare
+and he divide between them, by word and look, the Story of England under
+Henry and Elizabeth.
+
+172. Of the effect of science on the art of Mantegna and Marc Antonio,
+(far more deadly than on Dürer's,) I must tell you in a future
+lecture;--the effect of it on their minds, I must partly refer to now,
+in passing to the third head of my general statement--the influence of
+new Theology. For Dürer and Mantegna, chiefly because of their science,
+forfeited their place, not only as painters of men, but as servants of
+God. Neither of them has left one completely noble or completely
+didactic picture; while Holbein and Botticelli, in consummate pieces of
+art, led the way before the eyes of all men, to the purification of
+their Church and land.
+
+173. III. But the need of reformation presented itself to these two men
+last named on entirely different terms.
+
+To Holbein, when the word of the Catholic Church proved false, and its
+deeds bloody; when he saw it selling permission of sin in his native
+Augsburg, and strewing the ashes of its enemies on the pure Alpine
+waters of Constance, what refuge was there for _him_ in more ancient
+religion? Shall he worship Thor again, and mourn over the death of
+Balder? He reads Nature in her desolate and narrow truth, and she
+teaches him the Triumph of Death.
+
+But, for Botticelli, the grand gods are old, are immortal. The priests
+may have taught falsely the story of the Virgin;--did they not also lie,
+in the name of Artemis, at Ephesus;--in the name of Aphrodite, at
+Cyprus?--but shall, therefore, Chastity or Love be dead, or the full
+moon paler over Arno? Saints of Heaven and Gods of Earth!--shall _these_
+perish because vain men speak evil of them! Let _us_ speak good forever,
+and grave, as on the rock, for ages to come, the glory of Beauty, and
+the triumph of Faith.
+
+174. Holbein had bitterer task.
+
+Of old, the one duty of the painter had been to exhibit the virtues of
+this life, and hopes of the life to come. Holbein had to show the vices
+of this life, and to obscure the hope of the future. "Yes, we walk
+through the valley of the shadow of death, and fear all evil, for Thou
+art not with us, and Thy rod and Thy staff comfort us not." He does not
+choose this task. It is thrust upon him,--just as fatally as the burial
+of the dead is in a plague-struck city. These are the things he sees,
+and must speak. He will not become a better artist thereby; no drawing
+of supreme beauty, or beautiful things, will be possible to him. Yet we
+cannot say he ought to have done anything else, nor can we praise him
+specially in doing this. It is his fate; the fate of all the bravest in
+that day.
+
+[Illustration: THE CHILD'S BEDTIME.
+
+(Fig. 5) Facsimile from Holbein's woodcut.]
+
+175. For instance, there is no scene about which a shallow and feeble
+painter would have been more sure to adopt the commonplaces of the creed
+of his time than the death of a child,--chiefly, and most of all, the
+death of a country child,--a little thing fresh from the cottage and the
+field. Surely for such an one, angels will wait by its sick bed, and
+rejoice as they bear its soul away; and over its shroud flowers will be
+strewn, and the birds will sing by its grave. So your common
+sentimentalist would think, and paint. Holbein sees the facts, as they
+verily are, up to the point when vision ceases. He speaks, then, no
+more.
+
+The country laborer's cottage--the rain coming through its roof, the
+clay crumbling from its partitions, the fire lighted with a few chips
+and sticks on a raised piece of the mud floor,--such dais as can be
+contrived, for use, not for honor. The damp wood sputters; the smoke,
+stopped by the roof, though the rain is not, coils round again, and
+down. But the mother can warm the child's supper of bread and milk
+so--holding the pan by the long handle; and on mud floor though it be,
+they are happy,--she, and her child, and its brother,--if only they
+could be left so. They shall not be left so: the young thing must leave
+them--will never need milk warmed for it any more. It would fain
+stay,--sees no angels--feels only an icy grip on its hand, and that it
+cannot stay. Those who loved it shriek and tear their hair in vain,
+amazed in grief. 'Oh, little one, must you lie out in the fields then,
+not even under this poor torn roof of thy mother's to-night?'
+
+[Illustration: "HE THAT HATH EARS TO HEAR, LET HIM HEAR."
+
+(Fig. 6) Facsimile from Holbein's woodcut.]
+
+176. Again: there was not in the old creed any subject more definitely
+and constantly insisted on than the death of a miser. He had been happy,
+the old preachers thought, till then: but his hour has come; and the
+black covetousness of hell is awake and watching; the sharp harpy claws
+will clutch his soul out of his mouth, and scatter his treasure for
+others. So the commonplace preacher and painter taught. Not so Holbein.
+The devil want to snatch his soul, indeed! Nay, he never _had_ a soul,
+but of the devil's giving. His misery to begin on his death-bed! Nay, he
+had never an unmiserable hour of life. The fiend is with him now,--a
+paltry, abortive fiend, with no breath even to blow hot with. He
+supplies the hell-blast _with a machine_. It is winter, and the rich man
+has his furred cloak and cap, thick and heavy; the beggar, bare-headed
+to beseech him, skin and rags hanging about him together, touches his
+shoulder, but all in vain; there is other business in hand. More haggard
+than the beggar himself, wasted and palsied, the rich man counts with
+his fingers the gain of the years to come.
+
+But of those years, infinite that are to be, Holbein says nothing. 'I
+know not; I see not. This only I see, on this very winter's day, the low
+pale stumbling-block at your feet, the altogether by you unseen and
+forgotten Death. You shall not pass _him_ by on the other side; here is
+a fasting figure in skin and bone, at last, that will stop you; and for
+all the hidden treasures of earth, here is your spade: dig now, and find
+them.'
+
+177. I have said that Holbein was condemned to teach these things. He
+was not happy in teaching them, nor thanked for teaching them. Nor was
+Botticelli for his lovelier teaching. But they both could do no
+otherwise. They lived in truth and steadfastness; and with both, in
+their marvelous design, veracity is the beginning of invention, and love
+its end.
+
+I have but time to show you, in conclusion, how this affectionate
+self-forgetfulness protects Holbein from the chief calamity of the
+German temper, vanity, which is at the root of all Dürer's weakness.
+Here is a photograph of Holbein's portrait of Erasmus, and a fine proof
+of Dürer's. In Holbein's, the face leads everything; and the most lovely
+qualities of the face lead in that. The cloak and cap are perfectly
+painted, just because you look at them neither more nor less than you
+would have looked at the cloak in reality. You don't say, 'How
+brilliantly they are touched,' as you would with Rembrandt; nor 'How
+gracefully they are neglected,' as you would with Gainsborough; nor 'How
+exquisitely they are shaded,' as you would with Lionardo; nor 'How
+grandly they are composed,' as you would with Titian. You say only,
+'Erasmus is surely there; and what a pleasant sight!' You don't think of
+Holbein at all. He has not even put in the minutest letter H, that I can
+see, to remind you of him. Drops his H's, I regret to say, often enough.
+'My hand should be enough for you; what matters my name?' But now, look
+at Dürer's. The very first thing you see, and at any distance, is this
+great square tablet with
+
+    "The image of Erasmus, drawn from the life by Albert Dürer,
+        1526,"
+
+and a great straddling A.D. besides. Then you see a cloak, and a table,
+and a pot, with flowers in it, and a heap of books with all their
+leaves and all their clasps, and all the little bits of leather gummed
+in to mark the places; and last of all you see Erasmus's face; and when
+you do see it, the most of it is wrinkles.
+
+All egotism and insanity, this, gentlemen. Hard words to use; but not
+too hard to define the faults which rendered so much of Dürer's great
+genius abortive, and to this day paralyze, among the details of a
+lifeless and ambitious precision, the student, no less than the artist,
+of German blood. For too many an Erasmus, too many a Dürer, among them,
+the world is all cloak and clasp, instead of face or book; and the first
+object of their lives is to engrave their initials.
+
+178. For us, in England, not even so much is at present to be hoped; and
+yet, singularly enough, it is more our modesty, unwisely submissive,
+than our vanity, which has destroyed our English school of engraving.
+
+At the bottom of the pretty line engravings which used to represent,
+characteristically, our English skill, one saw always _two_
+inscriptions. At the left-hand corner, "Drawn by--so-and-so;" at the
+right-hand corner, "Engraved by--so-and-so." Only under the worst and
+cheapest plates--for the Stationers' Almanack, or the like--one saw
+sometimes, "Drawn and engraved by--so-and-so," which meant nothing more
+than that the publisher would not go to the expense of an artist, and
+that the engraver haggled through as he could. (One fortunate exception,
+gentlemen, you have in the old drawings for your Oxford Almanack, though
+the publishers, I have no doubt, even in that case, employed the
+cheapest artist they could find.[AR]) But in general, no engraver
+thought himself able to draw; and no artist thought it his business to
+engrave.
+
+179. But the fact that this and the following lecture are on the subject
+of design in engraving, implies of course that in the work we have to
+examine, it was often the engraver himself who designed, and as often
+the artist who engraved.
+
+And you will observe that the only engravings which bear imperishable
+value are, indeed, in this kind. It is true that, in wood-cutting, both
+Dürer and Holbein, as in our own days Leech and Tenniel, have workmen
+under them who can do all they want. But in metal cutting it is not so.
+For, as I have told you, in metal cutting, ultimate perfection of Line
+has to be reached; and it can be reached by none but a master's hand;
+nor by his, unless in the very moment and act of designing. Never,
+unless under the vivid first force of imagination and intellect, can the
+Line have its full value. And for this high reason, gentlemen, that
+paradox which perhaps seemed to you so daring, is nevertheless deeply
+and finally true, that while a woodcut may be laboriously finished, a
+grand engraving on metal must be comparatively incomplete. For it must
+be done, throughout, with the full fire of temper in it, visibly
+governing its lines, as the wind does the fibers of cloud.
+
+180. The value hitherto attached to Rembrandt's etchings, and others
+imitating them, depends on a true instinct in the public mind for this
+virtue of line. But etching is an indolent and blundering method at the
+best; and I do not doubt that you will one day be grateful for the
+severe disciplines of drawing required in these schools, in that they
+will have enabled you to know what a line may be, driven by a master's
+chisel on silver or marble, following, and fostering as it follows, the
+instantaneous strength of his determined thought.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[AG] If you paint a bottle only to amuse the spectator by showing him
+how like a painting may be to a bottle, you cannot be considered, in
+art-philosophy, as a designer. But if you paint the cork flying out of
+the bottle, and the contents arriving in an arch at the mouth of a
+recipient glass, you are so far forth a designer or signer; probably
+meaning to express certain ultimate facts respecting, say, the
+hospitable disposition of the landlord of the house; but at all events
+representing the bottle and glass in a designed, and not merely natural,
+manner. Not merely natural--nay, in some sense non-natural, or
+supernatural. And all great artists show both this fantastic condition
+of mind in their work, and show that it has arisen out of a
+communicative or didactic purpose. They are the Signpainters of God.
+
+I have added this note to the lecture in copying my memoranda of it here
+at Assisi, June 9th, being about to begin work in the Tavern, or
+Tabernaculum, of the Lower Church, with its variously significant four
+great 'signs.'
+
+[AH] Plate X., Lecture VI.
+
+[AI] I do not mean the greatest teacher of reformed faith; but the
+greatest protestant against faith unreformed.
+
+[AJ] It has become the permitted fashion among modern mathematicians,
+chemists, and apothecaries, to call themselves 'scientific men,' as
+opposed to theologians, poets, and artists. They know their sphere to be
+a separate one; but their ridiculous notion of its being a peculiarly
+scientific one ought not to be allowed in our Universities. There is a
+science of Morals, a science of History, a science of Grammar, a science
+of Music, and a science of Painting; and all these are quite beyond
+comparison higher fields for human intellect, and require accuracies of
+intenser observation, than either chemistry, electricity, or geology.
+
+[AK] The Cumaean Sibyl, Plate VII., Lecture VI.
+
+[AL] Lecture III., § 101.
+
+[AM] I read somewhere, lately, a new and very ingenious theory about the
+attitude of the Apollo Belvedere, proving, to the author's satisfaction,
+that the received notion about watching the arrow was all a mistake. The
+paper proved, at all events, one thing--namely, the statement in the
+text. For an attitude which has been always hitherto taken to mean one
+thing, and is plausibly asserted now to mean another, must be in itself
+unintelligible.
+
+[AN] It may be asked, why not corn also? Because that belongs to Ceres,
+who is equally one of the great gods.
+
+[AO] "Aratra Pentelici," § 181.
+
+[AP] Or inventive! See Woltmann, p. 267. "The shinbone, or the lower
+part of the arm, exhibits only one bone, while the upper arm and thigh
+are often allowed the luxury of two!"
+
+[AQ] See ante, § 141. The "preface" is that to "The Eagle's Nest."
+
+[AR] The drawings were made by Turner, and are now among the chief
+treasures of the Oxford Galleries. I ought to add some notice of Hogarth
+to this lecture in the Appendix; but fear I shall have no time: besides,
+though I have profound respect for Hogarth, as, in literature, I have
+for Fielding, I can't criticise them, because I know nothing of their
+subjects.
+
+
+
+
+                         LECTURE VI.
+
+       DESIGN IN THE FLORENTINE SCHOOLS OF ENGRAVING.
+
+
+181. In the first of these lectures, I stated to you their subject, as
+the investigation of the engraved work of a group of men, to whom
+engraving, as a means of popular address, was above all precious,
+because their art was distinctively didactic.
+
+Some of my hearers must be aware that, of late years, the assertion that
+art should be didactic has been clamorously and violently derided by the
+countless crowd of artists who have nothing to represent, and of writers
+who have nothing to say; and that the contrary assertion--that art
+consists only in pretty colors and fine words,--is accepted, readily
+enough, by a public which rarely pauses to look at a picture with
+attention, or read a sentence with understanding.
+
+182. Gentlemen, believe me, there never was any great advancing art yet,
+nor can be, without didactic purpose. The leaders of the strong schools
+are, and must be always, either teachers of theology, or preachers of
+the moral law. I need not tell you that it was as teachers of theology
+on the walls of the Vatican that the masters with whose names you are
+most familiar obtained their perpetual fame. But however great their
+fame, you have not practically, I imagine, ever been materially assisted
+in your preparation for the schools either of philosophy or divinity by
+Raphael's 'School of Athens,' by Raphael's 'Theology,'--or by Michael
+Angelo's 'Judgment.' My task, to-day, is to set before you some part of
+the design of the first Master of the works in the Sistine Chapel; and I
+believe that, from his teaching, you will, even in the hour which I ask
+you now to give, learn what may be of true use to you in all your future
+labor, whether in Oxford or elsewhere.
+
+183. You have doubtless, in the course of these lectures, been
+occasionally surprised by my speaking of Holbein and Sandro Botticelli,
+as Reformers, in the same tone of respect, and with the same implied
+assertion of their intellectual power and agency, with which it is usual
+to speak of Luther and Savonarola. You have been accustomed, indeed, to
+hear painting and sculpture spoken of as supporting or enforcing Church
+doctrine; but never as reforming or chastising it. Whether Protestant or
+Roman Catholic, you have admitted what in the one case you held to be
+the abuse of painting in the furtherance of idolatry,--in the other, its
+amiable and exalting ministry to the feebleness of faith. But neither
+has recognized,--the Protestant his ally,--or the Catholic his enemy, in
+the far more earnest work of the great painters of the fifteenth
+century. The Protestant was, in most cases, too vulgar to understand the
+aid offered to him by painting; and in all cases too terrified to
+believe in it. He drove the gift-bringing Greek with imprecations from
+his sectarian fortress, or received him within it only on the condition
+that he should speak no word of religion there.
+
+184. On the other hand, the Catholic, in most cases too indolent to
+read, and, in all, too proud to dread, the rebuke of the reforming
+painters, confused them with the crowd of his old flatterers, and little
+noticed their altered language or their graver brow. In a little while,
+finding they had ceased to be amusing, he effaced their works, not as
+dangerous, but as dull; and recognized only thenceforward, as art, the
+innocuous bombast of Michael Angelo, and fluent efflorescence of
+Bernini. But when you become more intimately and impartially acquainted
+with the history of the Reformation, you will find that, as surely and
+earnestly as Memling and Giotto strove in the north and south to set
+forth and exalt the Catholic faith, so surely and earnestly did Holbein
+and Botticelli strive, in the north, to chastise, and, in the south, to
+revive it. In what manner, I will try to-day briefly to show you.
+
+185. I name these two men as the reforming leaders: there were many,
+rank and file, who worked in alliance with Holbein; with Botticelli, two
+great ones, Lippi and Perugino. But both of these had so much pleasure
+in their own pictorial faculty, that they strove to keep quiet, and out
+of harm's way,--involuntarily manifesting themselves sometimes, however;
+and not in the wisest manner. Lippi's running away with a novice was not
+likely to be understood as a step in Church reformation correspondent to
+Luther's marriage.[AS] Nor have Protestant divines, even to this day,
+recognized the real meaning of the reports of Perugino's 'infidelity.'
+Botticelli, the pupil of the one, and the companion of the other, held
+the truths they taught him through sorrow as well as joy; and he is the
+greatest of the reformers, because he preached without blame; though the
+least known, because he died without victory.
+
+I had hoped to be able to lay before you some better biography of him
+than the traditions of Vasari, of which I gave a short abstract some
+time back in Fors Clavigera (Letter XXII.); but as yet I have only added
+internal evidence to the popular story, the more important points of
+which I must review briefly. It will not waste your time if I
+read,--instead of merely giving you reference to,--the passages on which
+I must comment.
+
+186. "His father, Mariano Filipepi, a Florentine citizen, brought him up
+with care, and caused him to be instructed in all such things as are
+usually taught to children before they choose a calling. But although
+the boy readily acquired whatever he wished to learn, yet was he
+constantly discontented; neither would he take any pleasure in reading,
+writing, or accounts, insomuch that the father, disturbed by the
+eccentric habits of his son, turned him over in despair to a gossip of
+his, called Botticello, who was a goldsmith, and considered a very
+competent master of his art, to the intent that the boy might learn the
+same."
+
+"He took no pleasure in reading, writing, nor accounts"! You will find
+the same thing recorded of Cimabue; but it is more curious when stated
+of a man whom I cite to you as typically a gentleman and a scholar. But
+remember, in those days, though there were not so many entirely correct
+books issued by the Religious Tract Society for boys to read, there were
+a great many more pretty things in the world for boys to see. The Val
+d'Arno was Pater-noster Row to purpose; their Father's Row, with books
+of His writing on the mountain shelves. And the lad takes to looking at
+things, and thinking about them, instead of reading about them,--which I
+commend to you also, as much the more scholarly practice of the two. To
+the end, though he knows all about the celestial hierarchies, he is not
+strong in his letters, nor in his dialect. I asked Mr. Tyrwhitt to help
+me through with a bit of his Italian the other day. Mr. Tyrwhitt could
+only help me by suggesting that it was "Botticelli for so-and-so." And
+one of the minor reasons which induced me so boldly to attribute these
+sibyls to him, instead of Bandini, is that the lettering is so ill done.
+The engraver would assuredly have had his lettering all right,--or at
+least neat. Botticelli blunders through it, scratches impatiently out
+when he goes wrong: and as I told you there's no repentance in the
+engraver's trade, leaves all the blunders visible.
+
+187. I may add one fact bearing on this question lately communicated to
+me.[AT] In the autumn of 1872 I possessed myself of an Italian book of
+pen drawings, some, I have no doubt, by Mantegna in his youth, others by
+Sandro himself. In examining these, I was continually struck by the
+comparatively feeble and blundering way in which the titles were
+written, while all the rest of the handling was really superb; and still
+more surprised when, on the sleeves and hem of the robe of one of the
+principal figures of women, ("Helena rapita da Paris,") I found what
+seemed to be meant for inscriptions, intricately embroidered; which
+nevertheless, though beautifully drawn, I could not read. In copying
+Botticelli's Zipporah this spring, I found the border of her robe
+wrought with characters of the same kind, which a young painter, working
+with me, who already knows the minor secrets of Italian art better than
+I,[AU] assures me are letters,--and letters of a language hitherto
+undeciphered.
+
+188. "There was at that time a close connection and almost constant
+intercourse between the goldsmiths and the painters, wherefore Sandro,
+who possessed considerable ingenuity, and was strongly disposed to the
+arts of design, became enamored of painting, and resolved to devote
+himself entirely to that vocation. He acknowledged his purpose at once
+to his father; and the latter, who knew the force of his inclination,
+took him accordingly to the Carmelite monk, Fra Filippo, who was a most
+excellent painter of that time, with whom he placed him to study the
+art, as Sandro himself had desired. Devoting himself thereupon entirely
+to the vocation he had chosen, Sandro so closely followed the
+directions, and imitated the manner, of his master, that Fra Filippo
+conceived a great love for him, and instructed him so effectually, that
+Sandro rapidly attained to such a degree in art as none would have
+predicted for him."
+
+I have before pointed out to you the importance of training by the
+goldsmith. Sandro got more good of it, however, than any of the other
+painters so educated,--being enabled by it to use gold for light to
+color, in a glowing harmony never reached with equal perfection, and
+rarely attempted, in the later schools. To the last, his paintings are
+partly treated as work in niello; and he names himself, in perpetual
+gratitude, from this first artisan master. Nevertheless, the fortunate
+fellow finds, at the right moment, another, even more to his mind, and
+is obedient to him through his youth, as to the other through his
+childhood. And this master loves him; and instructs him 'so
+effectually,'--in grinding colors, do you suppose, only; or in laying of
+lines only; or in anything more than these?
+
+189. I will tell you what Lippi must have taught any boy whom he loved.
+First, humility, and to live in joy and peace, injuring no man--if such
+innocence might be. Nothing is so manifest in every face by him, as its
+gentleness and rest. Secondly, to finish his work perfectly, and in such
+temper that the angels might say of it--not he himself--'Iste perfecit
+opus.' Do you remember what I told you in the Eagle's Nest (§ 53), that
+true humility was in hoping that angels might sometimes admire _our_
+work; not in hoping that we should ever be able to admire _theirs_?
+Thirdly,--a little thing it seems, but was a great one,--love of
+flowers. No one draws such lilies or such daisies as Lippi. Botticelli
+beat him afterwards in roses, but never in lilies. Fourthly, due honor
+for classical tradition. Lippi is the only religious painter who dresses
+John Baptist in the camelskin, as the Greeks dressed Heracles in the
+lion's--over the head. Lastly, and chiefly of all,--Le Père Hyacinthe
+taught his pupil certain views about the doctrine of the Church, which
+the boy thought of more deeply than his tutor, and that by a great deal;
+and Master Sandro presently got himself into such question for painting
+heresy, that if he had been as hot-headed as he was true-hearted, he
+would soon have come to bad end by the tar-barrel. But he is so sweet
+and so modest, that nobody is frightened; so clever, that everybody is
+pleased: and at last, actually the Pope sends for him to paint his own
+private chapel,--where the first thing my young gentleman does, mind
+you, is to paint the devil in a monk's dress, tempting Christ! The
+sauciest thing, out and out, done in the history of the Reformation, it
+seems to me; yet so wisely done, and with such true respect otherwise
+shown for what was sacred in the Church, that the Pope didn't mind: and
+all went on as merrily as marriage bells.
+
+190. I have anticipated, however, in telling you this, the proper course
+of his biography, to which I now return.
+
+"While still a youth he painted the figure of Fortitude, among those
+pictures of the Virtues which Antonio and Pietro Pollaiuolo were
+executing in the Mercatanzia, or Tribunal of Commerce, in Florence. In
+Santo Spirito, a church of the same city, he painted a picture for the
+chapel of the Bardi family: this work he executed with great diligence,
+and finished it very successfully, depicting certain olive and palm
+trees therein with extraordinary care."
+
+It is by a beautiful chance that the first work of his, specified by his
+Italian biographer, should be the Fortitude.[AV] Note also what is said
+of his tree drawing.
+
+"Having, in consequence of this work, obtained much credit and
+reputation, Sandro was appointed by the Guild of Porta Santa Maria to
+paint a picture in San Marco, the subject of which is the Coronation of
+Our Lady, who is surrounded by a choir of angels--the whole extremely
+well designed, and finished by the artist with infinite care. He
+executed various works in the Medici Palace for the elder Lorenzo, more
+particularly a figure of Pallas on a shield wreathed with vine branches,
+whence flames are proceeding: this he painted of the size of life. A San
+Sebastiano was also among the most remarkable of the works executed for
+Lorenzo. In the church of Santa Maria Maggiore, in Florence, is a Pietà,
+with small figures, by this master: this is a very beautiful work. For
+different houses in various parts of the city Sandro painted many
+pictures of a round form, with numerous figures of women undraped. Of
+these there are still two examples at Castello, a villa of the Duke
+Cosimo,--one representing the birth of Venus, who is borne to earth by
+the Loves and Zephyrs; the second also presenting the figure of Venus
+crowned with flowers by the Graces: she is here intended to denote the
+Spring, and the allegory is expressed by the painter with extraordinary
+grace."
+
+Our young Reformer enters, it seems, on a very miscellaneous course of
+study; the Coronation of Our Lady; St. Sebastian; Pallas in
+vine-leaves; and Venus,--without fig-leaves. Not wholly Calvinistic, Fra
+Filippo's teaching seems to have been! All the better for the boy--being
+such a boy as he was: but I cannot in this lecture enter farther into my
+reasons for saying so.
+
+191. Vasari, however, has shot far ahead in telling us of this picture
+of the Spring, which is one of Botticelli's completest works. Long
+before he was able to paint Greek nymphs, he had done his best in
+idealism of greater spirits; and, while yet quite a youth, painted, at
+Castello, the Assumption of Our Lady, with "the patriarchs, the
+prophets, the apostles, the evangelists, the martyrs, the confessors,
+the doctors, the virgins, and the hierarchies!"
+
+Imagine this subject proposed to a young, (or even old) British Artist,
+for his next appeal to public sensation at the Academy! But do you
+suppose that the young British artist is wiser and more civilized than
+Lippi's scholar, because his only idea of a patriarch is of a man with a
+long beard; of a doctor, the M.D. with the brass plate over the way; and
+of a virgin, Miss ---- of the ---- theater?
+
+Not that even Sandro was able, according to Vasari's report, to conduct
+the entire design himself. The proposer of the subject assisted him; and
+they made some modifications in the theology, which brought them both
+into trouble--so early did Sandro's innovating work begin, into which
+subjects our gossiping friend waives unnecessary inquiry, as follows.
+
+"But although this picture is exceedingly beautiful, and ought to have
+put envy to shame, yet there were found certain malevolent and
+censorious persons who, not being able to affix any other blame to the
+work, declared that Matteo and Sandro had erred gravely in that matter,
+and had fallen into grievous heresy.
+
+"Now, whether this be true or not, let none expect the judgment of that
+question from me: it shall suffice me to note that the figures executed
+by Sandro in that work are entirely worthy of praise; and that the pains
+he took in depicting those circles of the heavens must have been very
+great, to say nothing of the angels mingled with the other figures, or
+of the various foreshortenings, all which are designed in a very good
+manner.
+
+"About this time Sandro received a commission to paint a small picture
+with figures three parts of a braccio high,--the subject an Adoration of
+the Magi.
+
+"It is indeed a most admirable work; the composition, the design, and
+the coloring are so beautiful that every artist who examines it is
+astonished; and, at the time, it obtained so great a name in Florence,
+and other places, for the master, that Pope Sixtus IV. having erected
+the chapel built by him in his palace at Rome, and desiring to have it
+adorned with paintings, commanded that Sandro Botticelli should be
+appointed Superintendent of the work."
+
+192. Vasari's words, "about this time," are evidently wrong. It must
+have been many and many a day after he painted Matteo's picture that he
+took such high standing in Florence as to receive the mastership of the
+works in the Pope's chapel at Rome. Of his position and doings there, I
+will tell you presently; meantime, let us complete the story of his
+life.
+
+"By these works Botticelli obtained great honor and reputation among the
+many competitors who were laboring with him, whether Florentines or
+natives of other cities, and received from the Pope a considerable sum
+of money; but this he consumed and squandered totally, during his
+residence in Rome, where he lived without due care, as was his habit."
+
+193. Well, but one would have liked to hear _how_ he squandered his
+money, and whether he was without care--of other things than money.
+
+It is just possible, Master Vasari, that Botticelli may have laid out
+his money at higher interest than you know of; meantime, he is advancing
+in life and thought, and becoming less and less comprehensible to his
+biographer. And at length, having got rid, somehow, of the money he
+received from the Pope; and finished the work he had to do, and
+uncovered it,--free in conscience, and empty in purse, he returned to
+Florence, where, "being a sophistical person, he made a comment on a
+part of Dante, and drew the Inferno, and put it in engraving, in which
+he consumed much time; and not working for this reason, brought infinite
+disorder into his affairs."
+
+194. Unpaid work, this engraving of Dante, you perceive,--consuming much
+time also, and not appearing to Vasari to be work at all. It is but a
+short sentence, gentlemen,--this, in the old edition of Vasari, and
+obscurely worded,--a very foolish person's contemptuous report of a
+thing to him totally incomprehensible. But the thing itself is
+out-and-out the most important fact in the history of the religious art
+of Italy. I can show you its significance in not many more words than
+have served to record it.
+
+Botticelli had been painting in Rome; and had expressly chosen to
+represent there,--being Master of Works, in the presence of the Defender
+of the Faith,--the foundation of the Mosaic law; to his mind the Eternal
+Law of God,--that law of which modern Evangelicals sing perpetually
+their own original psalm, "Oh, how hate I Thy law! it is my abomination
+all the day." Returning to Florence, he reads Dante's vision of the Hell
+created by its violation. He knows that the pictures he has painted in
+Rome cannot be understood by the people; they are exclusively for the
+best trained scholars in the Church. Dante, on the other hand, can only
+be read in manuscript; but the people could and would understand _his_
+lessons, if they were pictured in accessible and enduring form. He
+throws all his own lauded work aside,--all for which he is most honored,
+and in which his now matured and magnificent skill is as easy to him as
+singing to a perfect musician. And he sets himself to a servile and
+despised labor,--his friends mocking him, his resources failing him,
+infinite 'disorder' getting into his affairs--of this world.
+
+195. Never such another thing happened in Italy any more. Botticelli
+engraved her Pilgrim's Progress for her, putting himself in prison to
+do it. She would not read it when done. Raphael and Marc Antonio were
+the theologians for her money. Pretty Madonnas, and satyrs with
+abundance of tail,--let our pilgrim's progress be in _these_ directions,
+if you please.
+
+Botticelli's own pilgrimage, however, was now to be accomplished
+triumphantly, with such crowning blessings as Heaven might grant to him.
+In spite of his friends and his disordered affairs, he went his own
+obstinate way; and found another man's words worth engraving as well as
+Dante's; not without perpetuating, also, what he deemed worthy of his
+own.
+
+196. What would that be, think you? His chosen works before the Pope in
+Rome?--his admired Madonnas in Florence?--his choirs of angels and
+thickets of flowers? Some few of these yes, as you shall presently see;
+but "the best attempt of this kind from his hand is the Triumph of
+Faith, by Fra Girolamo Savonarola, of Ferrara, of whose sect our artist
+was so zealous a partisan that he totally abandoned painting, and not
+having any other means of living, he fell into very great difficulties.
+But his attachment to the party he had adopted increased; he became what
+was then called a Piagnone, or Mourner, and abandoned all labor;
+insomuch that, finding himself at length become old, being also very
+poor, he must have died of hunger had he not been supported by Lorenzo
+de' Medici, for whom he had worked at the small hospital of Volterra and
+other places, who assisted him while he lived, as did other friends and
+admirers of his talents."
+
+197. In such dignity and independence--having employed his talents not
+wholly at the orders of the dealer--died, a poor bedesman of Lorenzo de'
+Medici, the President of that high academy of art in Rome, whose
+Academicians were Perugino, Ghirlandajo, Angelico, and Signorelli; and
+whose students, Michael Angelo and Raphael.
+
+'A worthless, ill-conducted fellow on the whole,' thinks Vasari, 'with a
+crazy fancy for scratching on copper.'
+
+Well, here are some of the scratches for you to see; only, first, I must
+ask you seriously for a few moments to consider what the two powers
+were, which, with this iron pen of his, he has set himself to reprove.
+
+198. Two great forms of authority reigned over the entire civilized
+world, confessedly, and by name, in the Middle Ages. They reign over it
+still, and must forever, though at present very far from confessed; and,
+in most places, ragingly denied.
+
+The first power is that of the Teacher, or true Father; the Father 'in
+God.' It may be--happy the children to whom it is--the actual father
+also; and whose parents have been their tutors. But, for the most part,
+it will be some one else who teaches them, and molds their minds and
+brain. All such teaching, when true, being from above, and coming down
+from the Father of Lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow
+of turning, is properly that of the holy Catholic '[Greek: ekklêsia],'
+council, church, or papacy, of many fathers in God, not of one.
+Eternally powerful and divine; reverenced of all humble and lowly
+scholars, in Jewry, in Greece, in Rome, in Gaul, in England, and beyond
+sea, from Arctic zone to zone.
+
+The second authority is the power of National Law, enforcing justice in
+conduct by due reward and punishment. Power vested necessarily in
+magistrates capable of administering it with mercy and equity; whose
+authority, be it of many or few, is again divine, as proceeding from the
+King of kings, and was acknowledged, throughout civilized Christendom,
+as the power of the Holy Empire, or Holy Roman Empire, because first
+throned in Rome; but it is forever also acknowledged, namelessly, or by
+name, by all loyal, obedient, just, and humble hearts, which truly
+desire that, whether for them or against them, the eternal equities and
+dooms of Heaven should be pronounced and executed; and as the wisdom or
+word of their Father should be taught, so the will of their Father
+should be done, on earth, as it is in heaven.
+
+199. You all here know what contention, first, and then what corruption
+and dishonor, had paralyzed these two powers before the days of which we
+now speak. Reproof, and either reform or rebellion, became necessary
+everywhere. The northern Reformers, Holbein, and Luther, and Henry, and
+Cromwell, set themselves to their task rudely, and, it might seem,
+carried it through. The southern Reformers, Dante, and Savonarola, and
+Botticelli, set hand to their task reverently, and, it seemed, did not
+by any means carry it through. But the end is not yet.
+
+200. Now I shall endeavor to-day to set before you the art of
+Botticelli, especially as exhibiting the modesty of great imagination
+trained in reverence, which characterized the southern Reformers; and as
+opposed to the immodesty of narrow imagination, trained in self-trust,
+which characterized the northern Reformers.
+
+'The modesty of great _imagination_;' that is to say, of the power which
+conceives all things in true relation, and not only as they affect
+ourselves. I can show you this most definitely by taking one example of
+the modern, and unschooled temper, in Bewick;[AW] and setting it beside
+Botticelli's treatment of the same subject of thought,--namely, the
+meaning of war, and the reforms necessary in the carrying on of war.
+
+201. Both the men are entirely at one in their purpose. They yearn for
+peace and justice to rule over the earth, instead of the sword; but see
+how differently they will say what is in their hearts to the people they
+address. To Bewick, war was more an absurdity than it was a horror: he
+had not seen battle-fields, still less had he read of them, in ancient
+days. He cared nothing about heroes,--Greek, Roman, or Norman. What he
+knew, and saw clearly, was that Farmer Hodge's boy went out of the
+village one holiday afternoon, a fine young fellow, rather drunk, with
+a colored ribbon in his hat; and came back, ten years afterwards, with
+one leg, one eye, an old red coat, and a tobacco-pipe in the pocket of
+it. That is what he has got to say, mainly. So, for the pathetic side of
+the business, he draws you two old soldiers meeting as bricklayers'
+laborers; and for the absurd side of it, he draws a stone, sloping
+sideways with age, in a bare field, on which you can just read, out of a
+long inscription, the words "glorious victory;" but no one is there to
+read them,--only a jackass, who uses the stone to scratch himself
+against.
+
+202. Now compare with this Botticelli's reproof of war. _He_ had seen
+it, and often; and between noble persons;--knew the temper in which the
+noblest knights went out to it;--knew the strength, the patience, the
+glory, and the grief of it. He would fain see his Florence in peace; and
+yet he knows that the wisest of her citizens are her bravest soldiers.
+So he seeks for the ideal of a soldier, and for the greatest glory of
+war, that in the presence of these he may speak reverently, what he must
+speak. He does not go to Greece for his hero. He is not sure that even
+her patriotic wars were always right. But, by his religious faith, he
+cannot doubt the nobleness of the soldier who put the children of Israel
+in possession of their promised land, and to whom the sign of the
+consent of heaven was given by its pausing light in the valley of
+Ajalon. Must then setting sun and risen moon stay, he thinks, only to
+look upon slaughter? May no soldier of Christ bid them stay otherwise
+than so? He draws Joshua, but quitting his hold of the sword: its hilt
+rests on his bent knee; and he kneels before the sun, not commands it;
+and this is his prayer:--
+
+"Oh, King of kings, and Lord of lords, who alone rulest always in
+eternity, and who correctest all our wanderings,--Giver of melody to the
+choir of the angels, listen Thou a little to our bitter grief, and come
+and rule us, oh Thou highest King, with Thy love which is so sweet!"
+
+Is not that a little better, and a little wiser, than Bewick's jackass?
+Is it not also better, and wiser, than the sneer of modern science?
+'What great men are we!--we, forsooth, can make almanacs, and know that
+the earth turns round. Joshua indeed! Let us have no more talk of the
+old-clothes-man.'
+
+All Bewick's simplicity is in that; but none of Bewick's understanding.
+
+203. I pass to the attack made by Botticelli upon the guilt of wealth.
+So I had at first written; but I should rather have written, the appeal
+made by him against the cruelty of wealth, then first attaining the
+power it has maintained to this day.
+
+The practice of receiving interest had been confined, until this
+fifteenth century, with contempt and malediction, to the profession, so
+styled, of usurers, or to the Jews. The merchants of Augsburg introduced
+it as a convenient and pleasant practice among Christians also; and
+insisted that it was decorous and proper even among respectable
+merchants. In the view of the Christian Church of their day, they might
+more reasonably have set themselves to defend adultery.[AX] However,
+they appointed Dr. John Eck, of Ingoldstadt, to hold debates in all
+possible universities, at their expense, on the allowing of interest;
+and as these Augsburgers had in Venice their special mart, Fondaco,
+called of the Germans, their new notions came into direct collision with
+old Venetian ones, and were much hindered by them, and all the more,
+because, in opposition to Dr. John Eck, there was preaching on the other
+side of the Alps. The Franciscans, poor themselves, preached mercy to
+the poor: one of them, Brother Marco of San Gallo, planned the 'Mount of
+Pity' for their defense, and the merchants of Venice set up the first in
+the world, against the German Fondaco. The dispute burned far on towards
+our own times. You perhaps have heard before of one Antonio, a merchant
+of Venice, who persistently retained the then obsolete practice of
+lending money gratis, and of the peril it brought him into with the
+usurers. But you perhaps did not before know why it was the flesh, or
+heart of flesh, in him, that they so hated.
+
+204. Against this newly risen demon of authorized usury, Holbein and
+Botticelli went out to war together. Holbein, as we have partly seen in
+his designs for the Dance of Death, struck with all his soldier's
+strength.[AY] Botticelli uses neither satire nor reproach. He turns
+altogether away from the criminals; appeals only to heaven for defense
+against them. He engraves the design which, of all his work, must have
+cost him hardest toil in its execution,--the Virgin praying to her Son
+in heaven for pity upon the poor: "For these are also my children."[AZ]
+Underneath, are the seven works of Mercy; and in the midst of them, the
+building of the Mount of Pity: in the distance lies Italy, mapped in
+cape and bay, with the cities which had founded mounts of pity,--Venice
+in the distance, chief. Little seen, but engraved with the master's
+loveliest care, in the background there is a group of two small
+figures--the Franciscan brother kneeling, and an angel of Victory
+crowning him.
+
+205. I call it an angel of Victory, observe, with assurance; although
+there is no legend claiming victory, or distinguishing this angel from
+any other of those which adorn with crowns of flowers the nameless
+crowds of the blessed. For Botticelli has other ways of speaking than by
+written legends. I know by a glance at this angel that he has taken the
+action of it from a Greek coin; and I know also that he had not, in his
+own exuberant fancy, the least need to copy the action of any figure
+whatever. So I understand, as well as if he spoke to me, that he expects
+me, if I am an educated gentleman, to recognize this particular action
+as a Greek angel's; and to know that it is a temporal victory which it
+crowns.
+
+206. And now farther, observe, that this classical learning of
+Botticelli's, received by him, as I told you, as a native element of his
+being, gives not only greater dignity and gentleness, but far wider
+range, to his thoughts of Reformation. As he asks for pity from the
+cruel Jew to the _poor_ Gentile, so he asks for pity from the proud
+Christian to the _untaught_ Gentile. Nay, for more than pity, for
+fellowship, and acknowledgment of equality before God. The learned men
+of his age in general brought back the Greek mythology as
+anti-Christian. But Botticelli and Perugino, as pre-Christian; nor only
+as pre-Christian, but as the foundation of Christianity. But chiefly
+Botticelli, with perfect grasp of the Mosaic and classic theology,
+thought over and seized the harmonies of both; and he it was who gave
+the conception of that great choir of the prophets and sibyls, of which
+Michael Angelo, more or less ignorantly borrowing it in the Sistine
+Chapel, in great part lost the meaning, while he magnified the aspect.
+
+207. For, indeed, all Christian and heathen mythology had alike become
+to Michael Angelo only a vehicle for the display of his own powers of
+drawing limbs and trunks: and having resolved, and made the world of his
+day believe, that all the glory of design lay in variety of difficult
+attitude, he flings the naked bodies about his ceiling with an
+upholsterer's ingenuity of appliance to the corners they could fit, but
+with total absence of any legible meaning. Nor do I suppose that one
+person in a million, even of those who have some acquaintance with the
+earlier masters, takes patience in the Sistine Chapel to conceive the
+original design. But Botticelli's mastership of the works evidently was
+given to him as a theologian, even more than as a painter; and the
+moment when he came to Rome to receive it, you may hold for the crisis
+of the Reformation in Italy. The main effort to save her priesthood was
+about to be made by her wisest Reformer,--face to face with the head of
+her Church,--not in contest with him, but in the humblest subjection to
+him; and in adornment of his own chapel for his own delight, and more
+than delight, if it might be.
+
+208. Sandro brings to work, not under him, but with him, the three other
+strongest and worthiest men he knows, Perugino, Ghirlandajo, and Luca
+Signorelli. There is evidently entire fellowship in thought between
+Botticelli and Perugino. They two together plan the whole; and
+Botticelli, though the master, yields to Perugino the principal place,
+the end of the chapter, on which is to be the Assumption of the Virgin.
+It was Perugino's favorite subject, done with his central strength;
+assuredly the crowning work of his life, and of lovely Christian art in
+Europe.
+
+Michael Angelo painted it out, and drew devils and dead bodies all over
+the wall instead. But there remains to us, happily, the series of
+subjects designed by Botticelli to lead up to this lost one.
+
+209. He came, I said, not to attack, but to restore the Papal authority.
+To show the power of inherited honor, and universal claim of divine law,
+in the Jewish and Christian Church,--the law delivered first by Moses;
+then, in final grace and truth, by Christ.
+
+He designed twelve great pictures, each containing some twenty figures
+the size of life, and groups of smaller ones scarcely to be counted.
+Twelve pictures,--six to illustrate the giving of the law by Moses; and
+six, the ratification and completion of it by Christ. Event by event,
+the jurisprudence of each dispensation is traced from dawn to close in
+this correspondence.
+
+       1. Covenant of Circumcision.
+       2. Entrance on his Ministry by Moses.
+       3. Moses by the Red Sea.
+       4. Delivery of Law on Sinai.
+       5. Destruction of Korah.
+       6. Death of Moses.
+       7. Covenant of Baptism.
+       8. Entrance on His Ministry by Christ.
+       9. Peter and Andrew by the Sea of Galilee.
+      10. Sermon on Mount.
+      11. Giving Keys to St. Peter.
+      12. Last Supper.
+
+Of these pictures, Sandro painted three himself, Perugino three, and the
+Assumption; Ghirlandajo one, Signorelli one, and Rosselli four.[BA] I
+believe that Sandro intended to take the roof also, and had sketched out
+the main succession of its design; and that the prophets and sibyls
+which he meant to paint, he drew first small, and engraved his drawings
+afterwards, that some part of the work might be, at all events, thus
+communicable to the world outside of the Vatican.
+
+210. It is not often that I tell you my beliefs; but I am forced here,
+for there are no dates to found more on. Is it not wonderful that among
+all the infinite mass of fools' thoughts about the "majestic works of
+Michael Angelo" in the Sistine Chapel, no slightly more rational person
+has ever asked what the chapel was first meant to be like, and how it
+was to be roofed?
+
+Nor can I assume myself, still less you, that all these prophets and
+sibyls are Botticelli's. Of many there are two engravings, with
+variations: some are inferior in parts, many altogether. He signed none;
+never put grand tablets with 'S. B.' into his skies; had other letters
+than those to engrave, and no time to spare. I have chosen out of the
+series three of the sibyls, which have, I think, clear internal evidence
+of being his; and these you shall compare with Michael Angelo's. But
+first I must put you in mind what the sibyls were.
+
+211. As the prophets represent the voice of God in man, the sibyls
+represent the voice of God in nature. They are properly all forms of one
+sibyl, [Greek: Dios Boulê], the counsel of God; and the chief one, at
+least in the Roman mind, was the Sibyl of Cumae. From the traditions of
+her, the Romans, and we through them, received whatever lessons the
+myth, or fact, of sibyl power has given to mortals.
+
+How much have you received, or may you yet receive, think you, of that
+teaching? I call it the myth, or fact; but remember that, _as_ a myth,
+it _is_ a fact. This story has concentrated whatever good there is in
+the imagination or visionary powers in women, inspired by nature only.
+The traditions of witch and gypsy are partly its offshoots. You despise
+both, perhaps. But can you, though in utmost pride of your supreme
+modern wisdom, suppose that the character--say, even of so poor and
+far-fallen a sibyl as Meg Merrilies--is only the coinage of Scott's
+brain; or that, even being no more, it is valueless? Admit the figure of
+the Cumaean Sibyl, in like manner, to be the coinage only of Virgil's
+brain. As such, it, and the words it speaks, are yet facts in which we
+may find use, if we are reverent to them.
+
+To me, personally, (I must take your indulgence for a moment to speak
+wholly of myself,) they have been of the truest service--quite material
+and indisputable.
+
+I am writing on St. John's Day, in the monastery of Assisi; and I had no
+idea whatever, when I sat down to my work this morning, of saying any
+word of what I am now going to tell you. I meant only to expand and
+explain a little what I said in my lecture about the Florentine
+engraving. But it seems to me now that I had better tell you what the
+Cumaean Sibyl has actually done for me.
+
+212. In 1871, partly in consequence of chagrin at the Revolution in
+Paris, and partly in great personal sorrow, I was struck by acute
+inflammatory illness at Matlock, and reduced to a state of extreme
+weakness; lying at one time unconscious for some hours, those about me
+having no hope of my life. I have no doubt that the immediate cause of
+the illness was simply, eating when I was not hungry; so that modern
+science would acknowledge nothing in the whole business but an extreme
+and very dangerous form of indigestion; and entirely deny any
+interference of the Cumaean Sibyl in the matter.
+
+I once heard a sermon by Dr. Guthrie, in Edinburgh, upon the wickedness
+of fasting. It was very eloquent and ingenious, and finely explained the
+superiority of the Scotch Free Church to the benighted Catholic Church,
+in that the Free Church saw no merit in fasting. And there was no
+mention, from beginning to end of the sermon, of even the existence of
+such texts as Daniel i. 12, or Matthew vi. 16.
+
+Without the smallest merit, I admit, in fasting, I was nevertheless
+reduced at Matlock to a state very near starvation; and could not rise
+from my pillow, without being lifted, for some days. And in the first
+clearly pronounced stage of recovery, when the perfect powers of spirit
+had returned, while the body was still as weak as it well could be, I
+had three dreams, which made a great impression on me; for in ordinary
+health my dreams are supremely ridiculous, if not unpleasant; and in
+ordinary conditions of illness, very ugly, and always without the
+slightest meaning. But these dreams were all distinct and impressive,
+and had much meaning, if I chose to take it.
+
+213. The first[BB] was of a Venetian fisherman, who wanted me to follow
+him down into some water which I thought was too deep; but he called me
+on, saying he had something to show me; so I followed him; and
+presently, through an opening, as if in the arsenal wall, he showed me
+the bronze horses of St. Mark's, and said, 'See, the horses are putting
+on their harness.'
+
+The second was of a preparation at Rome, in St. Peter's, (or a vast hall
+as large as St. Peter's,) for the exhibition of a religious drama. Part
+of the play was to be a scene in which demons were to appear in the sky;
+and the stage servants were arranging gray fictitious clouds, and
+painted fiends, for it, under the direction of the priests. There was a
+woman dressed in black, standing at the corner of the stage watching
+them, having a likeness in her face to one of my own dead friends; and I
+knew somehow that she was not that friend, but a spirit; and she made me
+understand, without speaking, that I was to watch, for the play would
+turn out other than the priests expected. And I waited; and when the
+scene came on, the clouds became real clouds, and the fiends real
+fiends, agitating them in slow quivering, wild and terrible, over the
+heads of the people and priests. I recollected distinctly, however, when
+I woke, only the figure of the black woman mocking the people, and of
+one priest in an agony of terror, with the sweat pouring from his brow,
+but violently scolding one of the stage servants for having failed in
+some ceremony, the omission of which, he thought, had given the devils
+their power.
+
+The third dream was the most interesting and personal. Some one came to
+me to ask me to help in the deliverance of a company of Italian
+prisoners who were to be ransomed for money. I said I had no money. They
+answered, Yes, I had some that belonged to me as a brother of St.
+Francis, if I would give it up. I said I did not know even that I _was_
+a brother of St. Francis; but I thought to myself, that perhaps the
+Franciscans of Fésole, whom I had helped to make hay in their field in
+1845, had adopted me for one; only I didn't see how the consequence of
+that would be my having any money. However, I said they were welcome to
+whatever I had; and then I heard the voice of an Italian woman singing;
+and I have never heard such divine singing before nor since;--the sounds
+absolutely strong and real, and the melody altogether lovely. If I could
+have written it! But I could not even remember it when I woke,--only how
+beautiful it was.
+
+214. Now these three dreams have, every one of them, been of much use to
+me since; or so far as they have failed to be useful, it has been my own
+fault, and not theirs; but the chief use of them at the time was to give
+me courage and confidence in myself, both in bodily distress, of which I
+had still not a little to bear; and worse, much mental anxiety about
+matters supremely interesting to me, which were turning out ill. And
+through all such trouble--which came upon me as I was recovering, as if
+it meant to throw me back into the grave,--I held out and recovered,
+repeating always to myself, or rather having always murmured in my ears,
+at every new trial, one Latin line,
+
+    Tu ne cede malis, sed contra fortior ito.
+
+Now I had got this line out of the tablet in the engraving of Raphael's
+vision, and had forgotten where it came from. And I thought I knew my
+sixth book of Virgil so well, that I never looked at it again while I
+was giving these lectures at Oxford, and it was only here at Assisi,
+the other day, wanting to look more accurately at the first scene by the
+lake Avernus, that I found I had been saved by the words of the Cumaean
+Sibyl.
+
+215. "Quam tua te Fortuna sinet," the completion of the sentence, has
+yet more and continual teaching in it for me now; as it has for all men.
+Her opening words, which have become hackneyed, and lost all present
+power through vulgar use of them, contain yet one of the most immortal
+truths ever yet spoken for mankind; and they will never lose their power
+of help for noble persons. But observe, both in that lesson, "Facilis
+descensus Averni," etc.; and in the still more precious, because
+universal, one on which the strength of Rome was founded,--the burning
+of the books,--the Sibyl speaks only as the voice of Nature, and of her
+laws;--not as a divine helper, prevailing over death; but as a mortal
+teacher warning us against it, and strengthening us for our mortal time;
+but not for eternity. Of which lesson her own history is a part, and her
+habitation by the Avernus lake. She desires immortality, fondly and
+vainly, as we do ourselves. She receives, from the love of her _refused_
+lover, Apollo, not immortality, but length of life;--her years to be as
+the grains of dust in her hand. And even this she finds was a false
+desire; and her wise and holy desire at last is--to die. She wastes
+away; becomes a shade only, and a voice. The Nations ask her, What
+wouldst thou? She answers, Peace; only let my last words be true.
+"L'ultimo mie parlar sie verace."
+
+[Illustration: VII.
+
+For a time, and times.]
+
+216. Therefore, if anything is to be conceived, rightly, and chiefly, in
+the form of the Cumaean Sibyl, it must be of fading virginal beauty, of
+enduring patience, of far-looking into futurity. "For after my death
+there shall yet return," she says, "another virgin."
+
+    Jam redit et virgo;--redeunt Saturnia regna,
+    Ultima Cumaei venit jam carminis aetas.
+
+Here then is Botticelli's Cumaean Sibyl. She is armed, for she is the
+prophetess of Roman fortitude;--but her faded breast scarcely
+raises the corselet; her hair floats, not falls, in waves like the
+currents of a river,--the sign of enduring life; the light is full on
+her forehead: she looks into the distance as in a dream. It is
+impossible for art to gather together more beautifully or intensely
+every image which can express her true power, or lead us to understand
+her lesson.
+
+[Illustration: VIII.
+
+The Nymph beloved of Apollo.
+
+(MICHAEL ANGELO.)]
+
+217. Now you do not, I am well assured, know one of Michael Angelo's
+sibyls from another: unless perhaps the Delphian, whom of course he
+makes as beautiful as he can. But of this especially Italian prophetess,
+one would have thought he might, at least in some way, have shown that
+he knew the history, even if he did not understand it. She might have
+had more than one book, at all events, to burn. She might have had a
+stray leaf or two fallen at her feet. He could not indeed have painted
+her only as a voice; but his anatomical knowledge need not have hindered
+him from painting her virginal youth, or her wasting and watching age,
+or her inspired hope of a holier future.
+
+218. Opposite,--fortunately, photograph from the figure itself, so that
+you can suspect me of no exaggeration,--is Michael Angelo's Cumaean
+Sibyl, wasting away. It is by a grotesque and most strange chance that
+he should have made the figure of this Sibyl, of all others in the
+chapel, the most fleshly and gross, even proceeding to the monstrous
+license of showing the nipples of the breast as if the dress were molded
+over them like plaster. Thus he paints the poor nymph beloved of
+Apollo,--the clearest and queenliest in prophecy and command of all the
+sibyls,--as an ugly crone, with the arms of Goliath, poring down upon a
+single book.
+
+219. There is one point of fine detail, however, in Botticelli's Cumaean
+Sibyl, and in the next I am going to show you, to explain which I must
+go back for a little while to the question of the direct relation of the
+Italian painters to the Greek. I don't like repeating in one lecture
+what I have said in another; but to save you the trouble of reference,
+must remind you of what I stated in my fourth lecture on Greek birds,
+when we were examining the adoption of the plume crests in armor, that
+the crest signifies command; but the diadem, _obedience_; and that every
+crown is primarily a diadem. It is the thing that binds, before it is
+the thing that honors.
+
+Now all the great schools dwell on this symbolism. The long flowing hair
+is the symbol of life, and the [Greek: diadêma] of the law restraining
+it. Royalty, or kingliness, over life, restraining and glorifying. In
+the extremity of restraint--in death, whether noble, as of death to
+Earth, or ignoble, as of death to Heaven, the [Greek: diadêma] is
+fastened with the mort-cloth: "Bound hand and foot with grave-clothes,
+and the face bound about with the napkin."
+
+220. Now look back to the first Greek head I ever showed you, used as
+the type of archaic sculpture in Aratra Pentelici, and then look at the
+crown in Botticelli's Astrologia. It is absolutely the Greek form,--even
+to the peculiar oval of the forehead; while the diadem--the governing
+law--is set with appointed stars--to rule the destiny and thought. Then
+return to the Cumaean Sibyl. She, as we have seen, is the symbol of
+enduring life--almost immortal. The diadem is withdrawn from the
+forehead--reduced to a narrow fillet--here, and the hair thrown free.
+
+[Illustration: IX.
+
+In the woods of Ida.]
+
+221. From the Cumaean Sibyl's diadem, traced only by points, turn to
+that of the Hellespontic, (Plate 9, opposite). I do not know why
+Botticelli chose her for the spirit of prophecy in old age; but he has
+made this the most interesting plate of the series in the definiteness
+of its connection with the work from Dante, which becomes his own
+prophecy in old age. The fantastic yet solemn treatment of the gnarled
+wood occurs, as far as I know, in no other engravings but this, and the
+illustrations to Dante; and I am content to leave it, with little
+comment, for the reader's quiet study, as showing the exuberance of
+imagination which other men at this time in Italy allowed to waste
+itself in idle arabesque, restrained by Botticelli to his most earnest
+purposes; and giving the withered tree-trunks, hewn for the rude throne
+of the aged prophetess, the same harmony with her fading spirit which
+the rose has with youth, or the laurel with victory. Also in its
+weird characters, you have the best example I can show you of the orders
+of decorative design which are especially expressible by engraving, and
+which belong to a group of art instincts scarcely now to be understood,
+much less recovered, (the influence of modern naturalistic imitation
+being too strong to be conquered)--the instincts, namely, for the
+arrangement of pure line, in labyrinthine intricacy, through which the
+grace of order may give continual clue. The entire body of ornamental
+design, connected with writing, in the Middle Ages seems as if it were a
+sensible symbol, to the eye and brain, of the methods of error and
+recovery, the minglings of crooked with straight, and perverse with
+progressive, which constitute the great problem of human morals and
+fate; and when I chose the title for the collected series of these
+lectures, I hoped to have justified it by careful analysis of the
+methods of labyrinthine ornament, which, made sacred by Theseian
+traditions,[BC] and beginning, in imitation of physical truth, with the
+spiral waves of the waters of Babylon as the Assyrian carved them,
+entangled in their returns the eyes of men, on Greek vase and Christian
+manuscript--till they closed in the arabesques which sprang round the
+last luxury of Venice and Rome.
+
+But the labyrinth of life itself, and its more and more interwoven
+occupation, become too manifold, and too difficult for me; and of the
+time wasted in the blind lanes of it, perhaps that spent in analysis or
+recommendation of the art to which men's present conduct makes them
+insensible, has been chiefly cast away. On the walls of the little room
+where I finally revise this lecture,[BD] hangs an old silken sampler of
+great-grandame's work: representing the domestic life of Abraham:
+chiefly the stories of Isaac and Ishmael. Sarah at her tent-door,
+watching, with folded arms, the dismissal of Hagar: above, in a
+wilderness full of fruit trees, birds, and butterflies, little Ishmael
+lying at the root of a tree, and the spent bottle under another; Hagar
+in prayer, and the angel appearing to her out of a wreathed line of
+gloomily undulating clouds, which, with a dark-rayed sun in the midst,
+surmount the entire composition in two arches, out of which descend
+shafts of (I suppose) beneficent rain; leaving, however, room, in the
+corner opposite to Ishmael's angel, for Isaac's, who stays Abraham in
+the sacrifice; the ram in the thicket, the squirrel in the plum tree
+above him, and the grapes, pears, apples, roses, and daisies of the
+foreground, being all wrought with involution of such ingenious
+needlework as may well rank, in the patience, the natural skill, and the
+innocent pleasure of it, with the truest works of Florentine engraving.
+Nay; the actual tradition of many of the forms of ancient art is in many
+places evident,--as, for instance, in the spiral summits of the flames
+of the wood on the altar, which are like a group of first-springing
+fern. On the wall opposite is a smaller composition, representing
+Justice with her balance and sword, standing between the sun and moon,
+with a background of pinks, borage, and corn-cockle: a third is only a
+cluster of tulips and iris, with two Byzantine peacocks; but the spirits
+of Penelope and Ariadne reign vivid in all the work--and the richness of
+pleasurable fancy is as great still, in these silken labors, as in the
+marble arches and golden roof of the cathedral of Monreale.
+
+But what is the use of explaining or analyzing it? Such work as this
+means the patience and simplicity of all feminine life; and can be
+produced, among _us_ at least, no more. Gothic tracery itself, another
+of the instinctive labyrinthine intricacies of old, though analyzed to
+its last section, has become now the symbol only of a foolish
+ecclesiastical sect, retained for their shibboleth, joyless and
+powerless for all good. The very labyrinth of the grass and flowers of
+our fields, though dissected to its last leaf, is yet bitten bare, or
+trampled to slime, by the Minotaur of our lust; and for the traceried
+spire of the poplar by the brook, we possess but the four-square furnace
+tower, to mingle its smoke with heaven's thunder-clouds.[BE]
+
+We will look yet at one sampler more of the engraved work, done in the
+happy time when flowers were pure, youth simple, and imagination
+gay,--Botticelli's Libyan Sibyl.
+
+Glance back first to the Hellespontic, noting the close fillet, and the
+cloth bound below the face, and then you will be prepared to understand
+the last I shall show you, and the loveliest of the southern
+Pythonesses.
+
+[Illustration: X.
+
+Grass of the Desert.]
+
+222. A less deep thinker than Botticelli would have made her parched
+with thirst, and burnt with heat. But the voice of God, through nature,
+to the Arab or the Moor, is not in the thirst, but in the fountain--not
+in the desert, but in the grass of it. And this Libyan Sibyl is the
+spirit of wild grass and flowers, springing in desolate places.
+
+You see, her diadem is a wreath of them; but the blossoms of it are not
+fastening enough for her hair, though it is not long yet--(she is only
+in reality a Florentine girl of fourteen or fifteen)--so the little
+darling knots it under her ears, and then makes herself a necklace of
+it. But though flowing hair and flowers are wild and pretty, Botticelli
+had not, in these only, got the power of Spring marked to his mind. Any
+girl might wear flowers; but few, for ornament, would be likely to wear
+grass. So the Sibyl shall have grass in her diadem; not merely
+interwoven and bending, but springing and strong. You thought it ugly
+and grotesque at first, did not you? It was made so, because precisely
+what Botticelli wanted you to look at.
+
+But that's not all. This conical cap of hers, with one bead at the
+top,--considering how fond the Florentines are of graceful head-dresses,
+this seems a strange one for a young girl. But, exactly as I know the
+angel of Victory to be Greek, at his Mount of Pity, so I know this
+head-dress to be taken from a Greek coin, and to be meant for a Greek
+symbol. It is the Petasus of Hermes--the mist of morning over the dew.
+Lastly, what will the Libyan Sibyl say to you? The letters are large on
+her tablet. Her message is the oracle from the temple of the Dew: "The
+dew of thy birth is as the womb of the morning."--"Ecce venientem diem,
+et latentia aperientem, tenebit gremio gentium regina."
+
+223. Why the daybreak came not then, nor yet has come, but only a deeper
+darkness; and why there is now neither queen nor king of nations, but
+every man doing that which is right in his own eyes, I would fain go on,
+partly to tell you, and partly to meditate with you: but it is not our
+work for to-day. The issue of the Reformation which these great
+painters, the scholars of Dante, began, we may follow, farther, in the
+study to which I propose to lead you, of the lives of Cimabue and
+Giotto, and the relation of their work at Assisi to the chapel and
+chambers of the Vatican.
+
+224. To-day let me finish what I have to tell you of the style of
+southern engraving. What sudden bathos in the sentence, you think! So
+contemptible the question of style, then, in painting, though not in
+literature? You study the 'style' of Homer; the style, perhaps, of
+Isaiah; the style of Horace, and of Massillon. Is it so vain to study
+the style of Botticelli?
+
+In all cases, it is equally vain, if you think of their style first. But
+know their purpose, and then, their way of speaking is worth thinking
+of. These apparently unfinished and certainly unfilled outlines of the
+Florentine,--clumsy work, as Vasari thought them,--as Mr. Otley and most
+of our English amateurs still think them,--are these good or bad
+engraving?
+
+You may ask now, comprehending their motive, with some hope of answering
+or being answered rightly. And the answer is, They are the finest
+gravers' work ever done yet by human hand. You may teach, by process of
+discipline and of years, any youth of good artistic capacity to engrave
+a plate in the modern manner; but only the noblest passion, and the
+tenderest patience, will ever engrave one line like these of Sandro
+Botticelli.
+
+225. Passion, and patience! Nay, even these you may have to-day in
+England, and yet both be in vain. Only a few years ago, in one of our
+northern iron-foundries, a workman of intense power and natural
+art-faculty set himself to learn engraving;--made his own tools; gave
+all the spare hours of his laborious life to learn their use; learnt it;
+and engraved a plate which, in manipulation, no professional engraver
+would be ashamed of. He engraved his blast furnace, and the casting of a
+beam of a steam engine. This, to him, was the power of God,--it was his
+life. No greater earnestness was ever given by man to promulgate a
+Gospel. Nevertheless, the engraving is absolutely worthless. The blast
+furnace _is not_ the power of God; and the life of the strong spirit was
+as much consumed in the flames of it, as ever driven slave's by the
+burden and heat of the day.
+
+How cruel to say so, if he yet lives, you think! No, my friends; the
+cruelty will be in you, and the guilt, if, having been brought here to
+learn that God is your Light, you yet leave the blast furnace to be the
+only light of England.
+
+226. It has been, as I said in the note above (§ 200), with extreme pain
+that I have hitherto limited my notice of our own great engraver and
+moralist, to the points in which the disadvantages of English
+art-teaching made him inferior to his trained Florentine rival. But,
+that these disadvantages were powerless to arrest or ignobly depress
+him;--that however failing in grace and scholarship, he should never
+fail in truth or vitality; and that the precision of his unerring
+hand[BF]--his inevitable eye--and his rightly judging heart--should
+place him in the first rank of the great artists not of England only,
+but of all the world and of all time:--that _this_ was possible to him,
+was simply because he lived a _country_ life. Bewick himself,
+Botticelli himself, Apelles himself, and twenty times Apelles, condemned
+to slavery in the hell-fire of the iron furnace, could have
+done--NOTHING. Absolute paralysis of all high human faculty _must_
+result from labor near fire. The poor engraver of the piston-rod had
+faculties--not like Bewick's, for if he had had those, he never would
+have endured the degradation; but assuredly, (I know this by his work,)
+faculties high enough to have made him one of the most accomplished
+figure painters of his age. And they are scorched out of him, as the sap
+from the grass in the oven: while on his Northumberland hill-sides,
+Bewick grew into as stately life as their strongest pine.
+
+227. And therefore, in words of his, telling consummate and unchanging
+truth concerning the life, honor, and happiness of England, and bearing
+directly on the points of difference between class and class which I
+have not dwelt on without need, I will bring these lectures to a close.
+
+"I have always, through life, been of opinion that there is no business
+of any kind that can be compared to that of a man who farms his own
+land. It appears to me that every earthly pleasure, with health, is
+within his reach. But numbers of these men (the old statesmen) were
+grossly ignorant, and in exact proportion to that ignorance they were
+sure to be offensively proud. This led them to attempt appearing above
+their station, which hastened them on to their ruin; but, indeed, this
+disposition and this kind of conduct invariably leads to such results.
+There were many of these lairds on Tyneside; as well as many who held
+their lands on the tenure of 'suit and service,' and were nearly on the
+same level as the lairds. Some of the latter lost their lands (not
+fairly, I think) in a way they could not help; many of the former, by
+their misdirected pride and folly, were driven into towns, to slide away
+into nothingness, and to sink into oblivion, while their 'ha' houses'
+(halls), that ought to have remained in their families from generation
+to generation, have moldered away. I have always felt extremely grieved
+to see the ancient mansions of many of the country gentlemen, from
+somewhat similar causes, meet with a similar fate. The gentry should,
+in an especial manner, prove by their conduct that they are guarded
+against showing any symptom of foolish pride; at the same time that they
+soar above every meanness, and that their conduct is guided by truth,
+integrity, and patriotism. If they wish the people to partake with them
+in these good qualities, they must set them the example, without which
+no real respect can ever be paid to them. Gentlemen ought never to
+forget the respectable station they hold in society, and that they are
+the natural guardians of public morals and may with propriety be
+considered as the head and the heart of the country, while 'a bold
+peasantry' are, in truth, the arms, the sinews, and the strength of the
+same; but when these last are degraded, they soon become dispirited and
+mean, and often dishonest and useless."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"This singular and worthy man[BG] was perhaps the most invaluable
+acquaintance and friend I ever met with. His moral lectures and advice
+to me formed a most important succedaneum to those imparted by my
+parents. His wise remarks, his detestation of vice, his industry, and
+his temperance, crowned with a most lively and cheerful disposition,
+altogether made him appear to me as one of the best of characters. In
+his workshop I often spent my winter evenings. This was also the case
+with a number of young men who might be considered as his pupils; many
+of whom, I have no doubt, he directed into the paths of truth and
+integrity, and who revered his memory through life. He rose early to
+work, lay down when he felt weary, and rose again when refreshed. His
+diet was of the simplest kind; and he ate when hungry, and drank when
+dry, without paying regard to meal-times. By steadily pursuing this mode
+of life he was enabled to accumulate sums of money--from ten to thirty
+pounds. This enabled him to get books, of an entertaining and moral
+tendency, printed and circulated at a cheap rate. His great object was,
+by every possible means, to promote honorable feelings in the minds of
+youth, and to prepare them for becoming good members of society. I have
+often discovered that he did not overlook ingenious mechanics, whose
+misfortunes--perhaps mismanagement--had led them to a lodging in
+Newgate. To these he directed his compassionate eye, and for the
+deserving (in his estimation), he paid their debt, and set them at
+liberty. He felt hurt at seeing the hands of an ingenious man tied up in
+prison, where they were of no use either to himself or to the community.
+This worthy man had been educated for a priest; but he would say to me,
+'Of a "trouth," Thomas, I did not like their ways.' So he gave up the
+thoughts of being a priest, and bent his way from Aberdeen to Edinburgh,
+where he engaged himself to Allan Ramsay, the poet, then a bookseller at
+the latter place, in whose service he was both shopman and bookbinder.
+From Edinburgh he came to Newcastle. Gilbert had had a liberal education
+bestowed upon him. He had read a great deal, and had reflected upon what
+he had read. This, with his retentive memory, enabled him to be a
+pleasant and communicative companion. I lived in habits of intimacy with
+him to the end of his life; and, when he died, I, with others of his
+friends, attended his remains to the grave at the Ballast Hills."
+
+And what graving on the sacred cliffs of Egypt ever honored them, as
+that grass-dimmed furrow does the mounds of our Northern land?
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[AS] The world was not then ready for Le Père Hyacinthe;--but the real
+gist of the matter is that Lippi did, openly and bravely, what the
+highest prelates in the Church did basely and in secret; also he loved,
+where they only lusted; and he has been proclaimed therefore by
+them--and too foolishly believed by us--to have been a shameful person.
+Of his true life, and the colors given to it, we will try to learn
+something tenable, before we end our work in Florence.
+
+[AT] I insert supplementary notes, when of importance, in the text of
+the lecture, for the convenience of the general reader.
+
+[AU] Mr. Charles F. Murray.
+
+[AV] Some notice of this picture is given at the beginning of my third
+Morning in Florence, 'Before the Soldan.'
+
+[AW] I am bitterly sorry for the pain which my partial references to the
+man whom of all English artists whose histories I have read, I most
+esteem, have given to one remaining member of his family. I hope my
+meaning may be better understood after she has seen the close of this
+lecture.
+
+[AX] Read Ezekiel xviii.
+
+[AY] See also the account by Dr. Woltmann of the picture of the Triumph
+of Riches. 'Holbein and his Time,' p. 352.
+
+[AZ] These words are engraved in the plate, as spoken by the Virgin.
+
+[BA] Cosimo Rosselli, especially chosen by the Pope for his gay
+coloring.
+
+[BB] I am not certain of their order at this distance of time.
+
+[BC] Callimachus, 'Delos,' 304, etc.
+
+[BD] In the Old King's Arms Hotel, Lancaster.
+
+[BE] A manufacturer wrote to me the other day, "We don't _want_ to make
+smoke!" Who said they did?--a hired murderer does not want to commit
+murder, but does it for sufficient motive. (Even our shipowners don't
+want to drown their sailors; they will only do it for sufficient
+motive.) If the dirty creatures _did_ want to make smoke, there would be
+more excuse for them: and that they are not clever enough to consume it,
+is no praise to them. A man who can't help his hiccough leaves the room:
+why do they not leave the England they pollute?
+
+[BF] I know no drawing so subtle as Bewick's, since the fifteenth
+century, except Holbein's and Turner's. I have been greatly surprised
+lately by the exquisite water-color work in some of Stothard's smaller
+vignettes; but he cannot set the line like Turner or Bewick.
+
+[BG] Gilbert Gray, bookbinder. I have to correct the inaccurate--and
+very harmfully inaccurate, expression which I used of Bewick, in Love's
+Meinie (§ 3), 'a printer's lad at Newcastle.' His first master was a
+goldsmith and engraver, else he could never have been an artist. I am
+very heartily glad to make this correction, which establishes another
+link of relation between Bewick and Botticelli; but my error was partly
+caused by the impression which the above description of his "most
+invaluable friend" made on me, when I first read it.
+
+Much else that I meant to correct, or promised to explain, in this
+lecture, must be deferred to the Appendix; the superiority of the Tuscan
+to the Greek Aphrodite I may perhaps, even at last, leave the reader to
+admit or deny as he pleases, having more important matters of debate on
+hand. But as I mean only to play with Proserpina during the spring, I
+will here briefly anticipate a statement I mean in the Appendix to
+enforce, namely, of the extreme value of colored copies by hand, of
+paintings whose excellence greatly consists in color, as auxiliary to
+engravings of them. The prices now given without hesitation for nearly
+worthless original drawings by fifth-rate artists, would obtain for the
+misguided buyers, in something like a proportion of ten to one, most
+precious copies of drawings which can only be represented at all in
+engraving by entire alteration of their treatment, and abandonment of
+their finest purposes. I feel this so strongly that I have given my best
+attention, during upwards of ten years, to train a copyist to perfect
+fidelity in rendering the work of Turner; and having now succeeded in
+enabling him to produce facsimiles so close as to look like replicas,
+facsimiles which I must sign with my own name and his, in the very work
+of them, to prevent their being sold for real Turner vignettes, I can
+obtain no custom for him, and am obliged to leave him to make his bread
+by any power of captivation his original sketches may possess in the
+eyes of a public which maintains a nation of copyists in Rome, but is
+content with black and white renderings of great English art; though
+there is scarcely one cultivated English gentleman or lady who has not
+been twenty times in the Vatican, for once that they have been in the
+National Gallery.
+
+
+
+
+                           NOTES.
+
+
+228. I. The following letter, from one of my most faithful readers,
+corrects an important piece of misinterpretation in the text. The waving
+of the reins must be only in sign of the fluctuation of heat round the
+Sun's own chariot:--
+
+                                      "Spring Field, Ambleside,
+                                               "February 11, 1875.
+
+"Dear Mr. Ruskin,--Your fifth lecture on Engraving I have to hand.
+
+"Sandro intended those wavy lines meeting under the Sun's right[BH]
+hand, (Plate V.) primarily, no doubt, to represent the four ends of the
+four reins dangling from the Sun's hand. The flames and rays are seen to
+continue to radiate from the platform of the chariot between and beyond
+these ends of the reins, and over the knee. He may have wanted to
+acknowledge that the warmth of the earth was Apollo's, by making these
+ends of the reins spread out separately and wave, and thereby inclose a
+form like a flame. But I cannot think it.
+
+                        "Believe me,
+                            "Ever yours truly,
+                                "CHAS. WM. SMITH."
+
+II. I meant to keep labyrinthine matters for my Appendix; but the
+following most useful by-words from Mr. Tyrwhitt had better be read at
+once:--
+
+"In the matter of Cretan Labyrinth, as connected by Virgil with the
+Ludus Trojæ, or equestrian game of winding and turning, continued in
+England from twelfth century; and having for last relic the maze[BI]
+called 'Troy Town,' at Troy Farm, near Somerton, Oxfordshire, which
+itself resembles the circular labyrinth on a coin of Cnossus in Fors
+Clavigera. (Letter 23, p. 12.)
+
+"The connecting quotation from Virg., Æn., V. 588, is as follows:
+
+    'Ut quondam Creta fertur Labyrinthus in alta
+    Parietibus textum cæcis iter, ancipitemque
+    Mille viis habuisse dolum, qua signa sequendi
+    Falleret indeprensus et inremeabilis error.
+    Haud alio Teucrün nati vestigia cursu
+    Impediunt, texuntque fagas et proelia ludo,
+    Delphinum similes.'"
+
+Labyrinth of Ariadne, as cut on the Downs by shepherds from time
+immemorial,--
+
+Shakespeare, 'Midsummer Night's Dream,' Act ii., sc. 2:
+
+"_Oberon._ The nine-men's morris[BJ] is filled up with mud;
+           And the quaint mazes in the wanton green
+           By lack of tread are undistinguishable."
+
+The following passage, 'Merchant of Venice,' Act iii., sc. 2, confuses
+(to all appearance) the Athenian tribute to Crete, with the story of
+Hesione: and may point to general confusion in the Elizabethan mind
+about the myths:
+
+"_Portia._ ... with much more love
+           Than young Alcides, when he did reduce
+           The virgin-tribute paid by howling Troy
+           To the sea monster."[BK]
+
+Theseus is the Attic Hercules, however; and Troy may have been a sort of
+house of call for mythical monsters, in the view of midland shepherds.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[BH] "Would not the design have looked better, to us, on the plate than
+on the print? On the plate, the reins would be in the left hand; and the
+whole movement be from the left to the right? The two different forms
+that the radiance takes would symbolize respectively heat and light,
+would they not?"
+
+[BI] Strutt, pp. 97-8, ed. 1801.
+
+[BJ] Explained as "a game still played by the shepherds, cowkeepers,"
+etc., in the midland counties.
+
+[BK] See Iliad, 20, 145.
+
+
+[Illustration: XI.
+
+"Obediente Domino voci hominis."]
+
+
+
+
+                          APPENDIX.
+
+
+                         ARTICLE I.
+
+     NOTES ON THE PRESENT STATE OF ENGRAVING IN ENGLAND.
+
+229. I have long deferred the completion of this book, because I had
+hoped to find time to show, in some fullness, the grounds for my
+conviction that engraving, and the study of it, since the development of
+the modern finished school, have been ruinous to European knowledge of
+art. But I am more and more busied in what I believe to be better work,
+and can only with extreme brevity state here the conclusions of many
+years' thought.
+
+These, in several important particulars, have been curiously enforced on
+me by the carelessness shown by the picture dealers about the copies
+from Turner which it has cost Mr. Ward and me[BL] fifteen years of study
+together to enable ourselves to make. "They are only copies," say
+they,--"nobody will look at them."
+
+230. It never seems to occur even to the most intelligent persons that
+an engraving also is 'only a copy,' and a copy done with refusal of
+color, and with disadvantage of means in rendering shade. But just
+because this utterly inferior copy can be reduplicated, and introduces a
+different kind of skill, in another material, people are content to lose
+all the composition, and all the charm, of the original,--so far as
+these depend on the chief gift of a _painter_,--color; while they are
+gradually misled into attributing to the painter himself qualities
+impertinently added by the engraver to make his plate popular: and,
+which is far worse, they are as gradually and subtly prevented from
+looking, in the original, for the qualities which engraving could never
+render. Further, it continually happens that the very best
+color-compositions engrave worst; for they often extend colors over
+great spaces at equal pitch, and the green is as dark as the red, and
+the blue as the brown; so that the engraver can only distinguish them by
+lines in different directions, and his plate becomes a vague and dead
+mass of neutral tint; but a bad and forced piece of color, or a piece of
+work of the Bolognese school, which is everywhere black in the shadows,
+and colorless in the lights, will engrave with great ease, and appear
+spirited and forcible. Hence engravers, as a rule, are interested in
+reproducing the work of the worst schools of painting.
+
+Also, the idea that the merit of an engraving consisted in light and
+shade, has prevented the modern masters from even attempting to render
+works dependent mainly on outline and expression; like the early
+frescoes, which should indeed have been the objects of their most
+attentive and continual skill: for outline and expression are entirely
+within the scope of engraving; and the scripture histories of an aisle
+of a cloister might have been engraved, to perfection, with little more
+pains than are given by ordinary workmen to round a limb by Correggio,
+or imitate the texture of a dress by Sir Joshua,--and both, at last,
+inadequately.
+
+231. I will not lose more time in asserting or lamenting the mischief
+arising out of the existing system: but will rapidly state what the
+public should now ask for.
+
+1. Exquisitely careful engraved outlines of all remaining frescoes of
+the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries in Italy, with so
+much pale tinting as may be explanatory of their main masses; and with
+the local darks and local lights brilliantly relieved. The Arundel
+Society have published some meritorious plates of this kind from
+Angelico,--not, however, paying respect enough to the local colors, but
+conventionalizing the whole too much into outline.
+
+2. Finished small plates for book illustration. The cheap wood-cutting
+and etching of popular illustrated books have been endlessly mischievous
+to public taste: they first obtained their power in a general reaction
+of the public mind from the insipidity of the lower school of line
+engraving, brought on it by servile persistence in hack work for
+ignorant publishers. The last dregs of it may still be seen in the
+sentimental landscapes engraved for cheap ladies' pocket-books. But the
+woodcut can never, educationally, take the place of serene and
+accomplished line engraving; and the training of young artists in whom
+the gift of delineation prevails over their sense of color, to the
+production of scholarly, but small plates, with their utmost honor of
+skill, would give a hitherto unconceived dignity to the character and
+range of our popular literature.
+
+3. Vigorous mezzotints from pictures of the great masters, which
+originally present noble contrasts of light and shade. Many Venetian
+works are magnificent in this character.
+
+4. Original design by painters themselves, decisively engraved in few
+lines--(_not_ etched); and with such insistence by dotted work on the
+main contours as we have seen in the examples given from Italian
+engraving.
+
+5. On the other hand, the men whose quiet patience and exquisite manual
+dexterity are at present employed in producing large and costly plates,
+such as that of the Belle Jardinière de Florence, by M. Boucher
+Desnoyers, should be entirely released from their servile toil, and
+employed exclusively in producing colored copies, or light drawings,
+from the original work. The same number of hours of labor, applied with
+the like conscientious skill, would multiply precious likenesses of the
+real picture, full of subtle veracities which no steel line could
+approach, and conveying, to thousands, true knowledge and unaffected
+enjoyment of painting; while the finished plate lies uncared for in the
+portfolio of the virtuoso, serving only, so far as it is seen in the
+printseller's window by the people, to make them think that sacred
+painting must always be dull, and unnatural.
+
+232. I have named the above engraving, because, for persons wishing to
+study the present qualities and methods of line-work, it is a pleasant
+and sufficient possession, uniting every variety of texture with great
+serenity of unforced effect, and exhibiting every possible artifice and
+achievement in the distribution of even and rugged, or of close and open
+line; artifices for which,--while I must yet once more and emphatically
+repeat that they are illegitimate, and could not be practiced in a
+revived school of classic art,--I would fain secure the reader's
+reverent admiration, under the conditions exacted by the school to which
+they belong. Let him endeavor, with the finest point of pen or pencil he
+can obtain, to imitate the profile of this Madonna in its relief against
+the gray background of the water surface; let him examine, through a
+good lens, the way in which the lines of the background are ended in a
+lance-point as they approach it; the exact equality of depth of shade
+being restored by inserted dots, which prepare for the transition to the
+manner of shade adopted in the flesh: then let him endeavor to trace
+with his own hand some of the curved lines at the edge of the eyelid, or
+in the rounding of the lip; or if these be too impossible, even a few of
+the quiet undulations which gradate the folds of the hood behind the
+hair; and he will, I trust, begin to comprehend the range of delightful
+work which would be within the reach of such an artist, employed with
+more tractable material on more extended subject.
+
+233. If, indeed, the present system were capable of influencing the mass
+of the people, and enforcing among them the subtle attention necessary
+to appreciate it, something might be pleaded in defense of its severity.
+But all these plates are entirely above the means of the lower middle
+classes, and perhaps not one reader in a hundred can possess himself,
+for the study I ask of him, even of the plate to which I have just
+referred. What, in the stead of such, he can and does possess, let him
+consider,--and, if possible, just after examining the noble qualities of
+this conscientious engraving.
+
+234. Take up, for an average specimen of modern illustrated works, the
+volume of Dickens's 'Master Humphrey's Clock,' containing 'Barnaby
+Rudge.'
+
+You have in that book an entirely profitless and monstrous story, in
+which the principal characters are a coxcomb, an idiot, a madman, a
+savage blackguard, a foolish tavern-keeper, a mean old maid, and a
+conceited apprentice,--mixed up with a certain quantity of ordinary
+operatic pastoral stuff, about a pretty Dolly in ribbons, a lover with a
+wooden leg, and an heroic locksmith. For these latter, the only elements
+of good, or life, in the filthy mass of the story,[BM] observe that the
+author must filch the wreck of those old times of which we fiercely and
+frantically destroy every living vestige, whenever it is possible. You
+cannot have your Dolly Varden brought up behind the counter of a railway
+station; nor your jolly locksmith trained at a Birmingham brass-foundry.
+And of these materials, observe that you can only have the ugly ones
+illustrated. The cheap popular art cannot draw for you beauty, sense, or
+honesty; and for Dolly Varden, or the locksmith, you will look through
+the vignettes in vain. But every species of distorted folly and
+vice,--the idiot, the blackguard, the coxcomb, the paltry fool, the
+degraded woman,--are pictured for your honorable pleasure in every page,
+with clumsy caricature, struggling to render its dullness tolerable by
+insisting on defect,--if perchance a penny or two more may be coined out
+of the Cockney reader's itch for loathsomeness.
+
+235. Or take up, for instance of higher effort, the 'Cornhill Magazine'
+for this month, July, 1876. It has a vignette of Venice for an
+illuminated letter. That is what your decorative art has become, by help
+of Kensington! The letter to be produced is a T. There is a gondola in
+the front of the design, with the canopy slipped back to the stern like
+a saddle over a horse's tail. There is another in the middle distance,
+all gone to seed at the prow, with its gondolier emaciated into an oar,
+at the stern; then there is a Church of the Salute, and a Ducal
+Palace,--in which I beg you to observe all the felicity and dexterity of
+modern cheap engraving; finally, over the Ducal Palace there is
+something, I know not in the least what meant for, like an umbrella
+dropping out of a balloon, which is the ornamental letter T. Opposite
+this ornamental design, there is an engraving of two young ladies and a
+parasol, between two trunks of trees. The white face and black feet of
+the principal young lady, being the points of the design, are done with
+as much care,--not with as much dexterity,--as an ordinary sketch of Du
+Maurier's in Punch. The young lady's dress, the next attraction, is done
+in cheap white and black cutting, with considerably less skill than that
+of any ordinary tailor's or milliner's shop-book pattern drawing. For
+the other young lady, and the landscape, take your magnifying glass, and
+look at the hacked wood that forms the entire shaded surface--one mass
+of idiotic scrabble, without the remotest attempt to express a single
+leaf, flower, or clod of earth. It is such landscape as the public sees
+out of its railroad window at sixty miles of it in the hour--and good
+enough for such a public.
+
+236. Then turn to the last--the poetical plate, p. 122: "Lifts her--lays
+her down with care." Look at the gentleman with a spade, promoting the
+advance, over a hillock of hay, of the reposing figure in the
+black-sided tub. Take your magnifying glass to _that_, and look what a
+dainty female arm and hand your modern scientific and anatomical schools
+of art have provided you with! Look at the tender horizontal flux of the
+sea round the promontory point above. Look at the tender engraving of
+the linear light on the divine horizon, above the ravenous sea-gull.
+Here is Development and Progress for you, from the days of Perugino's
+horizon, and Dante's daybreaks! Truly, here it seems
+
+    "Si che le bianche e le vermiglie guance
+    Per troppa etate divenivan rance."
+
+237. I have chosen no gross or mean instances of modern work. It is one
+of the saddest points connected with the matter that the designer of
+this last plate is a person of consummate art faculty, but bound to the
+wheel of the modern Juggernaut, and broken on it. These woodcuts, for
+'Barnaby Rudge' and the 'Cornhill Magazine,' are favorably
+representative of the entire illustrative art industry of the modern
+press,--industry enslaved to the ghastly service of catching the last
+gleams in the glued eyes of the daily more bestial English
+mob,--railroad born and bred, which drags itself about the black world
+it has withered under its breath, in one eternal grind and
+shriek,--gobbling,--staring,--chattering,--giggling,--trampling out
+every vestige of national honor and domestic peace, wherever it sets the
+staggering hoof of it; incapable of reading, of hearing, of thinking, of
+looking,--capable only of greed for money, lust for food, pride of
+dress, and the prurient itch of momentary curiosity for the politics
+last announced by the newsmonger, and the religion last rolled by the
+chemist into electuary for the dead.
+
+238. In the miserably competitive labor of finding new stimulus for the
+appetite--daily more gross--of this tyrannous mob, we may count as lost,
+beyond any hope, the artists who are dull, docile, or distressed enough
+to submit to its demands; and we may count the dull and the distressed
+by myriads;--and among the docile, many of the best intellects we
+possess. The few who have sense and strength to assert their own place
+and supremacy, are driven into discouraged disease by their isolation,
+like Turner and Blake; the one abandoning the design of his 'Liber
+Studiorum' after imperfectly and sadly, against total public neglect,
+carrying it forward to what it is,--monumental, nevertheless, in
+landscape engraving; the other producing, with one only majestic series
+of designs from the book of Job, nothing for his life's work but
+coarsely iridescent sketches of enigmatic dream.
+
+239. And, for total result of our English engraving industry during the
+last hundred and fifty years, I find that practically at this moment I
+cannot get a _single_ piece of true, sweet, and comprehensible art, to
+place for instruction in any children's school! I can get, for ten
+pounds apiece, well-engraved portraits of Sir Joshua's beauties showing
+graceful limbs through flowery draperies; I can get--dirt-cheap--any
+quantity of Dutch flats, ditches, and hedges, enlivened by cows chewing
+the cud, and dogs behaving indecently; I can get heaps upon heaps of
+temples, and forums, and altars, arranged as for academical competition,
+round seaports, with curled-up ships that only touch the water with the
+middle of their bottoms. I can get, at the price of lumber, any quantity
+of British squires flourishing whips and falling over hurdles; and, in
+suburban shops, a dolorous variety of widowed mothers nursing babies in
+a high light with the Bible on a table, and baby's shoes on a chair.
+Also, of cheap prints, painted red and blue, of Christ blessing little
+children, of Joseph and his brethren, the infant Samuel, or Daniel in
+the lions' den, the supply is ample enough to make every child in these
+islands think of the Bible as a somewhat dull story-book, allowed on
+Sunday;--but of trained, wise, and worthy art, applied to gentle
+purposes of instruction, no single example can be found in the shops of
+the British printseller or bookseller. And after every dilettante tongue
+in European society has filled drawing-room and academy alike with idle
+clatter concerning the divinity of Raphael and Michael Angelo, for these
+last hundred years, I cannot at this instant, for the first school which
+I have some power of organizing under St. George's laws, get a good
+print of Raphael's Madonna of the tribune, or an ordinarily intelligible
+view of the side and dome of St. Peter's!
+
+240. And there are simply no words for the mixed absurdity and
+wickedness of the present popular demand for art, as shown by its supply
+in our thoroughfares. Abroad, in the shops of the Rue de Rivoli,
+brightest and most central of Parisian streets, the putrescent remnant
+of what was once Catholicism promotes its poor gilded pedlars' ware of
+nativity and crucifixion into such honorable corners as it can find
+among the more costly and studious illuminations of the brothel: and
+although, in Pall Mall, and the Strand, the large-margined
+Landseer,--Stanfield,--or Turner-proofs, in a few stately windows, still
+represent, uncared-for by the people, or inaccessible to them, the power
+of an English school now wholly perished,--these are too surely
+superseded, in the windows that stop the crowd, by the thrilling
+attraction with which Doré, Gérome, and Tadema have invested the
+gambling table, the dueling ground, and the arena; or by the more
+material and almost tangible truth with which the apothecary-artist
+stereographs the stripped actress, and the railway mound.
+
+241. Under these conditions, as I have now repeatedly asserted, no
+professorship, nor school, of art can be of the least use to the general
+public. No race can understand a visionary landscape, which blasts its
+real mountains into ruin, and blackens its river-beds with foam of
+poison. Nor is it of the least use to exhibit ideal Diana at Kensington,
+while substantial Phryne may be worshiped in the Strand. The only
+recovery of our art-power possible,--nay, when once we know the full
+meaning of it, the only one desirable,--must result from the
+purification of the nation's heart, and chastisement of its life:
+utterly hopeless now, for our adult population, or in our large cities,
+and their neighborhood. But, so far as any of the sacred influence of
+former design can be brought to bear on the minds of the young, and so
+far as, in rural districts, the first elements of scholarly education
+can be made pure, the foundation of a new dynasty of thought may be
+slowly laid. I was strangely impressed by the effect produced in a
+provincial seaport school for children, chiefly of fishermen's families,
+by the gift of a little colored drawing of a single figure from the
+Paradise of Angelico in the Accademia of Florence. The drawing was
+wretched enough, seen beside the original; I had only bought it from the
+poor Italian copyist for charity: but, to the children, it was like an
+actual glimpse of heaven; they rejoiced in it with pure joy, and their
+mistress thanked me for it more than if I had sent her a whole library
+of good books. Of such copies, the grace-giving industry of young
+girls, now worse than lost in the spurious charities of the bazaar, or
+selfish ornamentations of the drawing-room, might, in a year's time,
+provide enough for every dame-school in England; and a year's honest
+work of the engravers employed on our base novels, might represent to
+our advanced students every frescoed legend of philosophy and morality
+extant in Christendom.
+
+242. For my own part, I have no purpose, in what remains to me of
+opportunity, either at Oxford or elsewhere, to address any farther
+course of instruction towards the development of existing schools. After
+seeing the stream of the Teviot as black as ink, and a putrid carcass of
+a sheep lying in the dry channel of the Jed, under Jedburgh Abbey, (the
+entire strength of the summer stream being taken away to supply a single
+mill,) I know, finally, what value the British mind sets on the
+'beauties of nature,' and shall attempt no farther the excitement of its
+enthusiasm in that direction. I shall indeed endeavor to carry out, with
+Mr. Ward's help, my twenty years' held purpose of making the real
+character of Turner's work known, to the persons who, formerly
+interested by the engravings from him, imagined half the merit was of
+the engraver's giving. But I know perfectly that to the general people,
+trained in the midst of the ugliest objects that vice can design, in
+houses, mills, and machinery, _all_ beautiful form and color is as
+invisible as the seventh heaven. It is not a question of appreciation at
+all; the thing is physically invisible to them, as human speech is
+inaudible during a steam whistle.
+
+243. And I shall also use all the strength I have to convince those,
+among our artists of the second order, who are wise and modest enough
+not to think themselves the matches of Turner or Michael Angelo, that in
+the present state of art they only waste their powers in endeavoring to
+produce original pictures of human form or passion. Modern aristocratic
+life is too vulgar, and modern peasant life too unhappy, to furnish
+subjects of noble study; while, even were it otherwise, the
+multiplication of designs by painters of second-rate power is no more
+desirable than the writing of music by inferior composers. They may,
+with far greater personal happiness, and incalculably greater advantage
+to others, devote themselves to the affectionate and sensitive copying
+of the works of men of just renown. The dignity of this self-sacrifice
+would soon be acknowledged with sincere respect; for copies produced by
+men working with such motive would differ no less from the common
+trade-article of the galleries than the rendering of music by an
+enthusiastic and highly trained executant differs from the grinding of a
+street organ. And the change in the tone of public feeling, produced by
+familiarity with such work, would soon be no less great than in their
+musical enjoyment, if having been accustomed only to hear black
+Christys, blind fiddlers, and hoarse beggars scrape or howl about their
+streets, they were permitted daily audience of faithful and gentle
+orchestral rendering of the work of the highest classical masters.
+
+244. I have not, until very lately, rightly appreciated the results of
+the labor of the Arundel Society in this direction. Although, from the
+beginning, I have been honored in being a member of its council, my
+action has been hitherto rather of check than help, because I thought
+more of the differences between our copies and the great originals, than
+of their unquestionable superiority to anything the public could
+otherwise obtain.
+
+I was practically convinced of their extreme value only this last
+winter, by staying at the house of a friend in which the Arundel
+engravings were the principal decoration; and where I learned more of
+Masaccio from the Arundel copy of the contest with Simon Magus, than in
+the Brancacci chapel itself; for the daily companionship with the
+engraving taught me subtleties in its composition which had escaped me
+in the multitudinous interest of visits to the actual fresco.
+
+But the work of the Society has been sorely hindered hitherto, because
+it has had at command only the skill of copyists trained in foreign
+schools of color, and accustomed to meet no more accurate requisitions
+than those of the fashionable traveler. I have always hoped for, and
+trust at last to obtain, co-operation with our too mildly laborious
+copyists, of English artists possessing more brilliant color faculty;
+and the permission of our subscribers to secure for them the great ruins
+of the noble past, undesecrated by the trim, but treacherous, plastering
+of modern emendation.
+
+245. Finally, I hope to direct some of the antiquarian energy often to
+be found remaining, even when love of the picturesque has passed away,
+to encourage the accurate delineation and engraving of historical
+monuments, as a direct function of our schools of art. All that I have
+generally to suggest on this matter has been already stated with
+sufficient clearness in the first of my inaugural lectures at Oxford:
+and my forthcoming 'Elements of Drawing'[BN] will contain all the
+directions I can give in writing as to methods of work for such purpose.
+The publication of these has been hindered, for at least a year, by the
+abuses introduced by the modern cheap modes of printing engravings. I
+find the men won't use any ink but what pleases them; nor print but with
+what pressure pleases them; and if I can get the foreman to attend to
+the business, and choose the ink right, the men change it the moment he
+leaves the room, and threaten to throw up the job when they are
+detected. All this, I have long known well, is a matter of course, in
+the outcome of modern principles of trade; but it has rendered it
+hitherto impossible for me to produce illustrations, which have been
+ready, as far as my work or that of my own assistants is concerned, for
+a year and a half. Any one interested in hearing of our progress--or
+arrest, may write to my Turner copyist, Mr. Ward:[BO] and, in the
+meantime, they can help my designs for art education best by making
+these Turner copies more generally known; and by determining, when they
+travel, to spend what sums they have at their disposal, not in fady
+photography, but in the encouragement of any good _water-color_ and
+_pencil_ draughtsmen whom they find employed in the _galleries_ of
+Europe.
+
+
+                               ARTICLE II.
+
+                             DETACHED NOTES.
+
+                                   I.
+
+      _On the series of Sibyl engravings attributed to Botticelli._
+
+246. Since I wrote the earlier lectures in this volume, I have been made
+more doubtful on several points which were embarrassing enough before,
+by seeing some better (so-called) impressions of my favorite plates
+containing light and shade which did not improve them.
+
+I do not choose to waste time or space in discussion, till I know more
+of the matter; and that more I must leave to my good friend Mr. Reid of
+the British Museum to find out for me; for I have no time to take up the
+subject myself, but I give, for frontispiece to this Appendix, the
+engraving of Joshua referred to in the text, which however beautiful in
+thought, is an example of the inferior execution and more elaborate
+shade which puzzle me. But whatever is said in the previous pages of the
+plates chosen for example, by whomsoever done, is absolutely
+trustworthy. Thoroughly fine they are, in their existing state, and
+exemplary to all persons and times. And of the rest, in fitting place I
+hope to give complete--or at least satisfactory account.
+
+
+                                   II.
+
+  _On the three excellent engravers representative of the first, middle,
+                           and late schools._
+
+[Illustration: XII.
+
+The Coronation in the Garden.]
+
+247. I have given opposite a photograph, slightly reduced from the Dürer
+Madonna, alluded to often in the text, as an example of his best
+conception of womanhood. It is very curious that Dürer, the least
+able of all great artists to represent womanhood, should of late have
+been a very principal object of feminine admiration. The last thing a
+woman should do is to write about art. They never see anything in
+pictures but what they are told, (or resolve to see out of
+contradiction,)--or the particular things that fall in with their own
+feelings. I saw a curious piece of enthusiastic writing by an Edinburgh
+lady, the other day, on the photographs I had taken from the tower of
+Giotto. She did not care a straw what Giotto had meant by them, declared
+she felt it her duty only to announce what they were to _her_; and wrote
+two pages on the bas-relief of Heracles and Antæus--assuming it to be
+the death of Abel.
+
+248. It is not, however, by women only that Dürer has been over-praised.
+He stands so alone in his own field, that the people who care much for
+him generally lose the power of enjoying anything else rightly; and are
+continually attributing to the force of his imagination quaintnesses
+which are merely part of the general mannerism of his day.
+
+The following notes upon him, in relation to two other excellent
+engravers, were written shortly for extempore expansion in lecturing. I
+give them, with the others in this terminal article, mainly for use to
+myself in future reference; but also as more or less suggestive to the
+reader, if he has taken up the subject seriously, and worth, therefore,
+a few pages of this closing sheet.
+
+249. The men I have named as representative of all the good ones
+composing their school, are alike resolved their engraving shall be
+lovely.
+
+But Botticelli, the ancient, wants, with as little engraving, as much
+Sibyl as possible.
+
+Dürer, the central, wants, with as much engraving as possible, anything
+of Sibyl that may chance to be picked up with it.
+
+Beaugrand, the modern, wants, as much Sibyl as possible, and as much
+engraving too.
+
+250. I repeat--for I want to get this clear to you--Botticelli wants,
+with as little engraving, as much Sibyl as possible. For his head is
+full of Sibyls, and his heart. He can't draw them fast enough: one
+comes, and another and another; and all, gracious and wonderful and
+good, to be engraved forever, if only he had a thousand hands and lives.
+He scratches down one, with no haste, with no fault, divinely careful,
+scrupulous, patient, but with as few lines as possible. 'Another
+Sibyl--let me draw another, for heaven's sake, before she has burnt all
+her books, and vanished.'
+
+Dürer is exactly Botticelli's opposite. He is a workman, to the heart,
+and will do his work magnificently. 'No matter what I do it on, so that
+my craft be honorably shown. Anything will do; a Sibyl, a skull, a
+Madonna and Christ, a hat and feather, an Adam, an Eve, a cock, a
+sparrow, a lion with two tails, a pig with five legs,--anything will do
+for me. But see if I don't show you what engraving is, be my subject
+what it may!'
+
+251. Thirdly: Beaugrand, I said, wants as much Sibyl as possible, and as
+much engraving. He is essentially a copyist, and has no ideas of his
+own, but deep reverence and love for the work of others. He will give
+his life to represent another man's thought. He will do his best with
+every spot and line,--exhibit to you, if you will only look, the most
+exquisite completion of obedient skill; but will be content, if you will
+not look, to pass his neglected years in fruitful peace, and count every
+day well spent that has given softness to a shadow, or light to a smile.
+
+
+                                  III.
+
+    _On Dürer's landscape, with reference to the sentence on p. 101_:
+                        "I hope you are pleased."
+
+252. I spoke just now only of the ill-shaped body of this figure of
+Fortune, or Pleasure. Beneath her feet is an elaborate landscape. It is
+all drawn out of Dürer's head;--he would look at bones or tendons
+carefully, or at the leaf details of foreground;--but at the breadth
+and loveliness of real landscape, never.
+
+He has tried to give you a bird's-eye view of Germany; rocks, and woods,
+and clouds, and brooks, and the pebbles in their beds, and mills, and
+cottages, and fences, and what not; but it is all a feverish dream,
+ghastly and strange, a monotone of diseased imagination.
+
+And here is a little bit of the world he would not look at--of the great
+river of his land, with a single cluster of its reeds, and two boats,
+and an island with a village, and the way for the eternal waters opened
+between the rounded hills.[BP]
+
+It is just what you may see any day, anywhere,--innocent, seemingly
+artless; but the artlessness of Turner is like the face of
+Gainsborough's village girl, and a joy forever.
+
+
+                                   IV.
+
+                       _On the study of anatomy._
+
+253. The virtual beginner of artistic anatomy in Italy was a man called
+'The Poulterer'--from his grandfather's trade; 'Pollajuolo,' a man of
+immense power, but on whom the curse of the Italian mind in this age[BQ]
+was set at its deepest.
+
+Any form of passionate excess has terrific effects on body and soul, in
+nations as in men; and when this excess is in rage, and rage against
+your brother, and rage accomplished in habitual deeds of blood,--do you
+think Nature will forget to set the seal of her indignation upon the
+forehead? I told you that the great division of spirit between the
+northern and southern races had been reconciled in the Val d'Arno. The
+Font of Florence, and the Font of Pisa, were as the very springs of the
+life of the Christianity which had gone forth to teach all nations,
+baptizing them in the name of the Prince of Peace. Yet these two brother
+cities were to each other--I do not say as Abel and Cain, but as
+Eteocles and Polynices, and the words of Æschylus are now fulfilled in
+them to the uttermost. The Arno baptizes their dead bodies:--their
+native valley between its mountains is to them as the furrow of a
+grave;--"and so much of their land they have, as is sepulcher." Nay, not
+of Florence and Pisa only was this true: Venice and Genoa died in
+death-grapple; and eight cities of Lombardy divided between them the joy
+of leveling Milan to her lowest stone. Nay, not merely in city against
+city, but in street against street, and house against house, the fury of
+the Theban dragon flamed ceaselessly, and with the same excuse upon
+men's lips. The sign of the shield of Polynices, Justice bringing back
+the exile, was to them all, in turn, the portent of death: and their
+history, in the sum of it and substance, is as of the servants of Joab
+and Abner by the pool of Gibeon. "They caught every one his fellow by
+the head, and thrust his sword in his fellow's side; so they fell down
+together: wherefore that place was called 'the field of the strong
+men.'"
+
+254. Now it is not possible for Christian men to live thus, except under
+a fever of insanity. I have before, in my lectures on Prudence and
+Insolence in art, deliberately asserted to you the logical accuracy of
+the term 'demoniacal possession'[BR]--the being in the power or
+possession of a betraying spirit; and the definite sign of such insanity
+is delight in witnessing pain, usually accompanied by an instinct that
+gloats over or plays with physical uncleanness or disease, and always by
+a morbid egotism. It is not to be recognized for demoniacal power so
+much by its _viciousness_, as its _paltriness_,--the taking pleasure in
+minute, contemptible, and loathsome things.[BS] Now, in the middle of
+the gallery of the Brera at Milan, there is an elaborate study of a
+dead Christ, entirely characteristic of early fifteenth century Italian
+madman's work. It is called--and was presented to the people as--a
+Christ; but it _is_ only an anatomical study of a vulgar and ghastly
+dead body, with the soles of the feet set straight at the spectator, and
+the rest foreshortened. It is either Castagno's or Mantegna's,--in my
+mind, set down to Castagno; but I have not looked at the picture for
+years, and am not sure at this moment. It does not matter a straw which:
+it is exactly characteristic of the madness in which all of
+them--Pollajuolo, Castagno, Mantegna, Lionardo da Vinci, and Michael
+Angelo, polluted their work with the science of the sepulcher,[BT] and
+degraded it with presumptuous and paltry technical skill. Foreshorten
+your Christ, and paint Him, if you can, half putrefied,--that is the
+scientific art of the Renaissance.
+
+255. It is impossible, however, in so vast a subject to distinguish
+always the beginner of things from the establisher. To the poulterer's
+son, Pollajuolo, remains the eternal shame of first making insane
+contest the only subject of art; but the two _establishers_ of anatomy
+were Lionardo and Michael Angelo. You hear of Lionardo chiefly because
+of his Last Supper, but Italy did not hear of him for that. This was not
+what brought _her_ to worship Lionardo--but the Battle of the Standard.
+
+
+                                   V.
+
+                   _Fragments on Holbein and others._
+
+256. Of Holbein's St. Elizabeth, remember, she is not a perfect Saint
+Elizabeth, by any means. She is an honest and sweet German lady,--the
+best he could see; he could do no better;--and so I come back to my old
+story,--no man can do better than he sees: if he can reach the nature
+round him, it is well; he may fall short of it; he cannot rise above it;
+"the best, in this kind, are but shadows."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Yet that intense veracity of Holbein is indeed the strength and glory of
+all the northern schools. They exist only in being true. Their work
+among men is the definition of what is, and the abiding by it. They
+cannot dream of what is not. They make fools of themselves if they try.
+Think how feeble even Shakspere is when he tries his hand at a
+Goddess;--women, beautiful and womanly, as many as you choose; but who
+cares what his Minerva or Juno says, in the masque of the Tempest? And
+for the painters--when Sir Joshua tries for a Madonna, or Vandyke for a
+Diana--they can't even _paint_! they become total simpletons. Look at
+Rubens' mythologies in the Louvre, or at modern French heroics, or
+German pietisms! Why, all--Cornelius, Hesse, Overbeck, and David--put
+together, are not worth one De Hooghe of an old woman with a broom
+sweeping a back-kitchen. The one thing we northerns can do is to find
+out what is fact, and insist on it: mean fact it may be, or noble--but
+fact always, or we die.
+
+257. Yet the intensest form of northern realization can be matched in
+the south, when the southerns choose. There are two pieces of animal
+drawing in the Sistine Chapel unrivaled for literal veracity. The sheep
+at the well in front of Zipporah; and afterwards, when she is going
+away, leading her children, her eldest boy, like every one else, has
+taken his chief treasure with him, and this treasure is his pet dog. It
+is a little sharp-nosed white fox-terrier, full of fire and life; but
+not strong enough for a long walk. So little Gershom, whose name was
+"the stranger" because his father had been a stranger in a strange
+land,--little Gershom carries his white terrier under his arm, lying on
+the top of a large bundle to make it comfortable. The doggie puts its
+sharp nose and bright eyes out, above his hand, with a little roguish
+gleam sideways in them, which means,--if I can read rightly a dog's
+expression,--that he has been barking at Moses all the morning and has
+nearly put him out of temper:--and without any doubt, I can assert to
+you that there is not any other such piece of animal painting in the
+world,--so brief, intense, vivid, and absolutely balanced in truth: as
+tenderly drawn as if it had been a saint, yet as humorously as
+Landseer's Lord Chancellor poodle.
+
+258. Oppose to--
+
+  Holbein's Veracity--Botticelli's Fantasy.
+     "      Shade         "        Color.
+     "      Despair       "        Faith.
+     "      Grossness     "        Purity.
+
+True Fantasy. Botticelli's Tree in Hellespontic Sibyl. Not a real tree
+at all--yet founded on intensest perception of beautiful reality. So the
+swan of Clio, as opposed to Dürer's cock, or to Turner's swan.
+
+The Italian power of abstraction into one mythologic
+personage--Holbein's death is only literal. He has to split his death
+into thirty different deaths; and each is but a skeleton. But Orcagna's
+death is one--the power of death itself. There may thus be as much
+_breadth in thought_, as in execution.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+259. What then, we have to ask, is a man _conscious of_ in what he sees?
+
+For instance, in all Cruikshank's etchings--however slight the
+outline--there is an intense consciousness of light and shade, and of
+local color, _as a part_ of light and shade; but none of color itself.
+He was wholly incapable of coloring; and perhaps this very deficiency
+enabled him to give graphic harmony to engraving.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Bewick--snow-pieces, etc. _Gray_ predominant; _perfect sense of color_,
+coming out in patterns of birds;--yet so uncultivated, that he engraves
+the brown birds better than pheasant or peacock!
+
+For quite perfect consciousness of color makes engraving impossible, and
+you have instead--Correggio.
+
+
+                                   VI.
+
+                    _Final notes on light and shade._
+
+260. You will find in the 138th and 147th paragraphs of my Inaugural
+lectures, statements which, if you were reading the book by yourselves,
+would strike you probably as each of them difficult, and in some degree
+inconsistent,--namely, that the school of color has exquisite character
+and sentiment; but is childish, cheerful, and fantastic; while the
+school of shade is deficient in character and sentiment; but supreme in
+intellect and veracity. "The way by light and shade," I say, "is taken
+by men of the highest powers of thought and most earnest desire for
+truth."
+
+The school of shade, I say, is deficient in character and sentiment.
+Compare any of Dürer's Madonnas with any of Angelico's.
+
+Yet you may discern in the Apocalypse engravings that Dürer's mind was
+seeking for truths, and dealing with questions, which no more could have
+occurred to Angelico's mind than to that of a two-years-old baby.
+
+261. The two schools unite in various degrees; but are always
+distinguishably generic, the two headmost masters representing each
+being Tintoret and Perugino. The one, deficient in sentiment, and
+continually offending us by the want of it, but full of intellectual
+power and suggestion.
+
+The other, repeating ideas with so little reflection that he gets blamed
+for doing the same thing over again, (Vasari); but exquisite in
+sentiment and the conditions of taste which it forms, so as to become
+the master of it to Raphael and to all succeeding him; and remaining
+such a type of sentiment, too delicate to be felt by the latter
+practical mind of Dutch-bred England, that Goldsmith makes the
+admiration of him the test of absurd connoisseurship. But yet, with
+under-current of intellect, which gets him accused of free-thinking, and
+therefore with under-current of entirely exquisite chiaroscuro.
+
+Light and shade, then, imply the understanding of things--Color, the
+imagination and the sentiment of them.
+
+262. In Turner's distinctive work, color is scarcely acknowledged unless
+under influence of sunshine. The sunshine is his treasure; his lividest
+gloom contains it; his grayest twilight regrets it, and remembers. Blue
+is always a blue shadow; brown or gold, always light;--nothing is
+cheerful but sunshine; wherever the sun is not, there is melancholy or
+evil. Apollo is God; and all forms of death and sorrow exist in
+opposition to him.
+
+But in Perugino's distinctive work,--and therefore I have given him the
+captain's place over all,--there is simply _no_ darkness, _no_ wrong.
+Every color is lovely, and every space is light. The world, the
+universe, is divine: all sadness is a part of harmony; and all gloom, a
+part of peace.
+
+                          THE END.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[BL] See note to the close of this article, p. 156.
+
+[BM] The raven, however, like all Dickens's animals, is perfect: and I
+am the more angry with the rest because I have every now and then to
+open the book to look for him.
+
+[BN] "Laws of Fésole."
+
+[BO] 2, Church Terrace, Richmond, Surrey. NOTE.--I have hitherto
+permitted Mr. Ward to copy any Turner drawing he was asked to do; but,
+finding there is a run upon the vignettes of Loch Lomond and Derwent, I
+have forbidden him to do more of them for the present, lest his work
+should get the least mechanical. The admirable drawings of Venice, by my
+good assistant, Mr. Bunney, resident there, will become of more value to
+their purchasers every year, as the buildings from which they are made
+are destroyed. I was but just in time, working with him at Verona, to
+catch record of Fra Giocondo's work in the smaller square; the most
+beautiful Renaissance design in North Italy.
+
+[BP] The engraving of Turner's "Scene on the Rhine" (near Bingen?) with
+boats on the right, and reedy foreground on the left; the opening
+between its mountain banks in central distance. It is exquisitely
+engraved, the plate being of the size of the drawing, about ten inches
+by six, and finished with extreme care and feeling.
+
+[BQ] See the horrible picture of St. Sebastian by him in our own
+National Gallery.
+
+[BR] See "The Eagle's Nest," § 79.
+
+[BS] As in the muscles of the legs and effort in stretching bows, of the
+executioners, in the picture just referred to.
+
+[BT] Observe, I entirely distinguish the study of _anatomy_--i.e., of
+intense bone and muscle--from study of the nude, as the Greeks practiced
+it. This for an entirely great painter is absolutely necessary; but yet
+I believe, in the case of Botticelli, it was nobly restricted. The
+following note by Mr. Tyrwhitt contains, I think, the probable truth:--
+
+"The facts relating to Sandro Botticelli's models, or rather to his
+favorite model (as it appears to me), are but few; and it is greatly to
+be regretted that his pictures are seldom dated;--if it were certain in
+what order they appeared, what follows here might approach moral
+certainty.
+
+"There is no doubt that he had great personal regard for Fra Filippo, up
+to that painter's death in 1469, Sandro being then twenty-two years old.
+He may probably have got only good from him; anyhow he would get a
+strong turn for Realism,--i.e. the treatment of sacred and all other
+subjects in a realistic manner. He is described in Crowe and
+Cavalcaselle from Filippino Lippi's Martyrdom of St. Peter, as a sullen
+and sensual man, with beetle brows, large fleshy mouth, etc., etc.
+Probably he was a strong man, and intense in physical and intellectual
+habit.
+
+"This man, then, begins to paint in his strength, with
+conviction--rather happy and innocent than not--that it is right to
+paint any beautiful thing, and best to paint the most beautiful,--say in
+1470, at twenty-three years of age. The allegorical Spring and the
+Graces, and the Aphrodite now in the Ufficii, were painted for Cosmo,
+and seem to be taken by Vasari and others as early, or early-central,
+works in his life: also the portrait of Simonetta Vespucei[1]. He is
+known to have painted much in early life for the Vespucei and the
+Medici;--and this daughter of the former house seems to have been
+inamorata or mistress of Giuliano de' Medici, murdered by the Pazzi in
+1478. Now it seems agreed by Crowe and Cavalcaselle, Pater, etc., (and I
+am quite sure of it myself as to the pictures mentioned)--first, that
+the same slender and long-throated model appears in Spring, the
+Aphrodite, Calumny, and other works.[2] Secondly, that she was
+Simonetta, the original of the Pitti portrait.
+
+"Now I think she must have been induced to let Sandro draw from her
+whole person undraped, more or less; and that he must have done so as
+such a man probably would, in strict honor as to deed, word, and
+_definite_ thought, but under occasional accesses of passion of which he
+said nothing, and which in all probability and by grace of God refined
+down to nil, or nearly so, as he got accustomed to look in honor at so
+beautiful a thing. (He may have left off the undraped after her death.)
+First, her figure is absolutely fine Gothic; I don't think any antique
+is so slender. Secondly, she has the sad, passionate, and exquisite
+Lombard mouth. Thirdly, her limbs shrink together, and she seems not
+quite to have 'liked it' or been an accustomed model. Fourthly, there is
+tradition, giving her name to all those forms.
+
+"Her lover Giuliano was murdered in 1478, and Savonarola hanged and
+burnt in 1498. Now, can her distress, and Savonarola's preaching,
+between them, have taken, in few years, all the carnality out of Sandro,
+supposing him to have come already, by seventy-eight, to that state in
+which the sight of her delighted him, without provoking ulterior
+feelings? All decent men accustomed to draw from the nude tell us they
+get to that.
+
+"Sandro's Dante is dated as published in 1482. He may have been
+saddening by that time, and weary of beauty, pure or mixed;--though he
+went on painting Madonnas, I fancy. (Can Simonetta be traced in any of
+them? I think not. The Sistine paintings extend from 1481 to 1484,
+however. I cannot help thinking Zipporah is impressed with her.) After
+Savonarola's death, Sandro must have lost heart, and gone into Dante
+altogether. Most ways in literature and art lead to Dante; and this
+question about the nude and the purity of Botticelli is no exception to
+the rule.
+
+"Now in the Purgatorio, Lust is the last sin of which we are to be made
+pure, and it has to be burnt out of us; being itself as searching as
+fire, as smoldering, devouring, and all that. Corruptio: optimi pessima;
+and it is the most searching and lasting of evils, because it really is
+a corruption attendant on true Love, which is eternal--whatever the word
+means. That this is so, seems to me to demonstrate the truth of the Fall
+of Man from the condition of moral very-goodness in God's sight. And I
+think that Dante connected the purifying pains of his intermediate state
+with actual sufferings in this life, working out repentance,--in himself
+and others. And the 'torment' of this passion, to the repentant or
+resisting, or purity-seeking soul is decidedly like the pain of physical
+burning.
+
+"Further, its casuistry is impracticable; because the more you stir the
+said 'fire' the stronger hold it takes. Therefore, men and women are
+_rightly_ secret about it, and detailed confessions unadvisable. Much
+talk about 'hypocrisy' in this matter is quite wrong and unjust. Then,
+its connection with female beauty, as a cause of love between man and
+woman, seems to me to be the inextricable nodus of the Fall, the here
+inseparable mixture of good and evil, till soul and body are parted. For
+the sense of seen Beauty is the awakening of Love, at whatever distance
+from any kind of return or sympathy--as with a rose, or what not. Sandro
+may be the man who has gone nearest to the right separation of Delight
+from Desire: supposing that he began with religion and a straight
+conscience; saw lovingly the error of Fra Filippo's way; saw with
+intense distant love the error of Simonetta's; and reflected on Florence
+and _its_ way, and drew nearer and nearer to Savonarola, being yet too
+big a man for asceticism; and finally wearied of all things and sunk
+into poverty and peace."
+
+[1] Pitti, Stanza di Prometeo, 348.
+
+[2] I think Zipporah may be a remembrance of her.
+
++----------------------------------------------------------------------+
+|                         TRANSCRIBERS' NOTES                          |
+|                                                                      |
+|                                                                      |
+| General: Corrections to punctuation have not been individually       |
+|     documented                                                       |
+|                                                                      |
+| List of Plates: Fac-simile standardised to Facsimile (3 occurrences) |
+|                                                                      |
+| List of Plates, Illustration III: Fesole standardised to Fésole      |
+|                                                                      |
+| List of Plates: Obedienta corrected to Obediente                     |
+|                                                                      |
+| Pages 10, 31, 105: Leonardo standardised to Lionardo                 |
+|                                                                      |
+| Pages 26, 78: nell' arte as in original                              |
+|                                                                      |
+| Page 27: Diagram has been split into two parts as it was too wide to |
+|     display                                                          |
+|                                                                      |
+| Page 27: Durer standardised to Dürer (in diagram)                    |
+|                                                                      |
+| Page 46: line work standardised to line-work (first occurrence)      |
+|                                                                      |
+| Page 47, 51, 54, 70, 151: wood-cuts standardised to woodcuts         |
+|                                                                      |
+| Page 50, 51, 53, 56, 57, 59, 70, 107, 147: wood-cut standardised to  |
+|     woodcut                                                          |
+|                                                                      |
+| Page 76: dexterous standardised to dextrous                          |
+|                                                                      |
+| Page 103: "Holbein had bitterer task." as in the original            |
+|                                                                      |
+| Page 112: beame corrected to became                                  |
++----------------------------------------------------------------------+
+
+
+
+
+
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ariadne Florentina, by John Ruskin
+
+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: Ariadne Florentina
+       Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving
+
+Author: John Ruskin
+
+Release Date: November 15, 2008 [EBook #27268]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ARIADNE FLORENTINA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Brownfox, Juliet Sutherland and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<p class="center"><i>Library Edition</i></p>
+
+<p class="center larger">THE COMPLETE WORKS</p>
+
+<p class="center">OF</p>
+
+<h1>JOHN RUSKIN</h1>
+
+
+<p class="center gap6">THE EAGLE'S NEST</p>
+<p class="center">LOVE'S MEINIE</p>
+<p class="center">ARIADNE FLORENTINA</p>
+<p class="center">VAL D'ARNO</p>
+<p class="center">PROSERPINA</p>
+
+
+<p class="center gap6">NATIONAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION</p>
+<p style="margin-left:30%;" class="lfloat">NEW YORK</p>
+<p style="margin-right:30%;" class="rfloat">CHICAGO</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1 class="gap3" style="clear:both;">ARIADNE FLORENTINA.</h1>
+
+
+<p class="center">SIX LECTURES</p>
+
+<p class="center smaller">ON</p>
+
+<h2>WOOD AND METAL ENGRAVING</h2>
+
+<p class="center">WITH APPENDIX.</p>
+
+<p class="center smaller">GIVEN BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD,</p>
+
+<p class="center smaller">IN MICHAELMAS TERM, 1872.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<h2 class="gap3">CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+<p class="gap1 center larger">LECTURE I.</p>
+
+<p class="ralign smaller" style="margin-bottom:0em; margin-right:10%;">PAGE</p>
+
+<table summary="TOC Lecture I" style="width:80%;">
+<tr>
+<td class="tocdetail">DEFINITION OF THE ART OF ENGRAVING</td>
+<td class="tocpage"><a href="#LECTURE_I">1</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p class="gap1 center larger">LECTURE II.</p>
+
+<table summary="TOC Lecture II" style="width:80%;">
+<tr>
+<td class="tocdetail">THE RELATION OF ENGRAVING TO OTHER ARTS IN FLORENCE</td>
+<td class="tocpage"><a href="#LECTURE_II">22</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p class="gap1 center larger">LECTURE III.</p>
+
+<table summary="TOC Lecture III" style="width:80%;">
+<tr>
+<td class="tocdetail">THE TECHNICS OF WOOD ENGRAVING</td>
+<td class="tocpage"><a href="#LECTURE_III">42</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p class="gap1 center larger">LECTURE IV.</p>
+
+<table summary="TOC Lecture IV" style="width:80%;">
+<tr>
+<td class="tocdetail">THE TECHNICS OF METAL ENGRAVING</td>
+<td class="tocpage"><a href="#LECTURE_IV">61</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p class="gap1 center larger">LECTURE V.</p>
+
+<table summary="TOC Lecture V" style="width:80%;">
+<tr>
+<td class="tocdetail">DESIGN IN THE GERMAN SCHOOLS OF ENGRAVING (HOLBEIN AND D&Uuml;RER)</td>
+<td class="tocpage"><a href="#LECTURE_V">81</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p class="gap1 center larger">LECTURE VI.</p>
+
+<table summary="TOC Lecture VI" style="width:80%;">
+<tr>
+<td class="tocdetail">DESIGN IN THE FLORENTINE SCHOOLS OF ENGRAVING (SANDRO BOTTICELLI)</td>
+<td class="tocpage"><a href="#LECTURE_VI">108</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<h3 class="gap1">APPENDIX.</h3>
+
+<table summary="TOC Appendix" style="width:80%;">
+<tr>
+<td class="smaller" colspan="3">ARTICLE</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tocappnum">I.</td>
+<td class="tocappmain">NOTES ON THE PRESENT STATE OF ENGRAVING IN ENGLAND</td>
+<td class="tocpage"><a href="#NOTES_I">143</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tocappnum">II.</td>
+<td class="tocappmain">DETACHED NOTES</td>
+<td class="tocpage"><a href="#NOTES_II">157</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<h2 class="gap3">LIST OF PLATES</h2>
+
+<p class="ralign smaller" style="margin-bottom:0em; margin-right:10%;">Facing Page</p>
+<table summary="List of Plates" style="width:80%;">
+<tr>
+<td class="tocdetail" colspan="2">Diagram</td>
+<td class="tocpage"><a href="#DIAGRAM">27</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tocdetail" colspan="2">The Last Furrow (Fig. 2). Facsimile from Holbein's woodcut</td>
+<td class="tocpage"><a href="#Fig_2">47</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tocdetail" colspan="2">The Two Preachers (Fig. 3). Facsimile from Holbein's woodcut</td>
+<td class="tocpage"><a href="#Fig_3">48</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tocappnum">I.</td>
+<td class="tocappmain">Things Celestial and Terrestrial, as apparent to the English mind</td>
+<td class="tocpage"><a href="#Plate_I">56</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tocappnum">II.</td>
+<td class="tocappmain">Star of Florence</td>
+<td class="tocpage"><a href="#Plate_II">62</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tocappnum">III.</td>
+<td class="tocappmain">"At evening from the top of F&eacute;sole"</td>
+<td class="tocpage"><a href="#Plate_III">72</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tocappnum">IV.</td>
+<td class="tocappmain">"By the Springs of Parnassus"</td>
+<td class="tocpage"><a href="#Plate_IV">77</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tocappnum">V.</td>
+<td class="tocappmain">"Heat considered as a Mode of Motion." Florentine Natural Philosophy</td>
+<td class="tocpage"><a href="#Plate_V">92</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tocappnum">VI.</td>
+<td class="tocappmain">Fairness of the Sea and Air. In Venice and Athens</td>
+<td class="tocpage"><a href="#Plate_VI">95</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tocappnum">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tocappmain">The Child's Bedtime (Fig. 5). Facsimile from Holbein's woodcut</td>
+<td class="tocpage"><a href="#Fig_5">103</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tocappnum">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tocappmain">"He that hath ears to hear let him hear" (Fig. 6). Facsimile from Holbein's woodcut</td>
+<td class="tocpage"><a href="#Fig_6">105</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tocappnum">VII.</td>
+<td class="tocappmain">For a time, and times</td>
+<td class="tocpage"><a href="#Plate_VII">130</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tocappnum">VIII.</td>
+<td class="tocappmain">The Nymph beloved of Apollo (Michael Angelo)</td>
+<td class="tocpage"><a href="#Plate_VIII">131</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tocappnum">IX.</td>
+<td class="tocappmain">In the Woods of Ida</td>
+<td class="tocpage"><a href="#Plate_IX">132</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tocappnum">X.</td>
+<td class="tocappmain">Grass of the Desert</td>
+<td class="tocpage"><a href="#Plate_X">135</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tocappnum">XI.</td>
+<td class="tocappmain">"Obediente Domino voci hominis"</td>
+<td class="tocpage"><a href="#Plate_XI">145</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tocappnum">XII.</td>
+<td class="tocappmain">The Coronation in the Garden</td>
+<td class="tocpage"><a href="#Plate_XII">158</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2 class="gap6">ARIADNE FLORENTINA.</h2>
+
+
+<h2 class="gap3"><a name="LECTURE_I" id="LECTURE_I"></a>LECTURE I.</h2>
+
+<h3>DEFINITION OF THE ART OF ENGRAVING.</h3>
+
+
+<p>1. The entrance on my duty for to-day begins the fourth
+year of my official work in Oxford; and I doubt not that
+some of my audience are asking themselves, very doubtfully&mdash;at
+all events, I ask myself, very anxiously&mdash;what has been
+done.</p>
+
+<p>For practical result, I have not much to show. I announced,
+a fortnight since, that I would meet, the day before
+yesterday, any gentleman who wished to attend this course
+for purposes of study. My class, so minded, numbers four,
+of whom three wish to be artists, and ought not therefore, by
+rights, to be at Oxford at all; and the fourth is the last
+remaining unit of the class I had last year.</p>
+
+<p>2. Yet I neither in this reproach myself, nor, if I could,
+would I reproach the students who are not here. I do not
+reproach myself; for it was impossible for me to attend
+properly to the schools and to write the grammar for them
+at the same time; and I do not blame the absent students
+for not attending a school from which I have generally been
+absent myself. In all this, there is much to be mended, but,
+in true light, nothing to be regretted.</p>
+
+<p>I say, I had to write my school grammar. These three
+volumes of lectures under my hand,<a name="FNanchor_A_1" id="FNanchor_A_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_1" class="fnanchor">[A]</a> contain, carefully set
+down, the things I want you first to know. None of my
+writings are done fluently; the second volume of "Modern<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span>
+Painters" was all of it written twice&mdash;most of it, four times,&mdash;over;
+and these lectures have been written, I don't know
+how many times. You may think that this was done merely
+in an author's vanity, not in a tutor's care. To the vanity
+I plead guilty,&mdash;no man is more intensely vain than I am;
+but my vanity is set on having it <i>known</i> of me that I am
+a good master, not in having it <i>said</i> of me that I am a smooth
+author. My vanity is never more wounded than in being
+called a fine writer, meaning&mdash;that nobody need mind what
+I say.</p>
+
+<p>3. Well, then, besides this vanity, I have some solicitude
+for your progress. You may give me credit for it or not, as
+you choose, but it is sincere. And that your advance may
+be safe, I have taken the best pains I could in laying down
+laws for it. In these three years I have got my grammar
+written, and, with the help of many friends, all working
+instruments in good order; and now we will try what we can
+do. Not that, even now, you are to depend on my presence
+with you in personal teaching. I shall henceforward think
+of the lectures less, of the schools more; but my best work for
+the schools will often be by drawing in Florence or in Lancashire&mdash;not
+here.</p>
+
+<p>4. I have already told you several times that the course
+through which I mean every student in these schools should
+pass, is one which shall enable them to understand the
+elementary principles of the finest art. It will necessarily
+be severe, and seem to lead to no immediate result. Some of
+you will, on the contrary, wish to be taught what is immediately
+easy, and gives prospect of a manifest success.</p>
+
+<p>But suppose they should come to the Professor of Logic
+and Rhetoric, and tell him they want to be taught to preach
+like Mr. Spurgeon, or the Bishop of &mdash;&mdash;.</p>
+
+<p>He would say to them,&mdash;I cannot, and if I could I would
+not, tell you how to preach like Mr. Spurgeon, or the Bishop
+of &mdash;&mdash;. Your own character will form your style; your
+own zeal will direct it; your own obstinacy or ignorance may
+limit or exaggerate it; but my business is to prevent, as far<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span>
+as I can, your having <i>any</i> particular style; and to teach you
+the laws of all language, and the essential power of your own.</p>
+
+<p>In like manner, this course, which I propose to you in art,
+will be calculated only to give you judgment and method in
+future study, to establish to your conviction the laws of
+general art, and to enable you to draw, if not with genius, at
+least with sense and propriety.</p>
+
+<p>The course, so far as it consists in practice, will be defined
+in my Instructions for the schools. And the theory connected
+with that practice is set down in the three lectures at the end
+of the first course I delivered&mdash;those on Line, Light, and
+Color.</p>
+
+<p>You will have, therefore, to get this book,<a name="FNanchor_B_2" id="FNanchor_B_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_B_2" class="fnanchor">[B]</a> and it is the
+only one which you will need to have of your own,&mdash;the
+others are placed, for reference, where they will be accessible
+to you.</p>
+
+<p>5. In the 139th paragraph it states the order of your practical
+study in these terms:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I wish you to begin by getting command of line;&mdash;that
+is to say, by learning to draw a steady line, limiting with
+absolute correctness the form or space you intend it to limit;
+to proceed by getting command over flat tints, so that you may
+be able to fill the spaces you have inclosed evenly, either with
+shade or color, according to the school you adopt; and, finally,
+to obtain the power of adding such fineness of drawing, within
+the masses, as shall express their undulation, and their characters
+of form and texture."</p>
+
+<p>And now, since in your course of practice you are first
+required to attain the power of drawing lines accurately and
+delicately, so in the course of theory, or grammar, I wish you
+first to learn the principles of linear design, exemplified by
+the schools which (&sect; 137) you will find characterized as the
+Schools of Line.</p>
+
+<p>6. If I had command of as much time as I should like to
+spend with you on this subject, I would begin with the early<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>
+forms of art which used the simplest linear elements of design.
+But, for general service and interest, it will be better that I
+should sketch what has been accomplished by the greatest
+masters in that manner; the rather that their work is more
+or less accessible to all, and has developed into the vast industries
+of modern engraving, one of the most powerful existing
+influences of education and sources of pleasure among civilized
+people.</p>
+
+<p>And this investigation, so far from interrupting, will
+facilitate our examination of the history of the nobler arts.
+You will see in the preface to my lectures on Greek sculpture
+that I intend them to be followed by a course on architecture,
+and that by one on Florentine sculpture. But the art of
+engraving is so manifestly, at Florence, though not less
+essentially elsewhere, a basis of style both in architecture and
+sculpture, that it is absolutely necessary I should explain to
+you in what the skill of the engraver consists, before I can
+define with accuracy that of more admired artists. For
+engraving, though not altogether in the method of which you
+see examples in the print-shops of the High Street, is, indeed,
+a prior art to that either of building or sculpture, and is an
+inseparable part of both, when they are rightly practiced.</p>
+
+<p>7. And while we thus examine the scope of this first of
+the arts, it will be necessary that we learn also the scope of
+mind of the early practicers of it, and accordingly acquaint
+ourselves with the main events in the biography of the schools
+of Florence. To understand the temper and meaning of one
+great master is to lay the best, if not the only, foundation for
+the understanding of all; and I shall therefore make it the
+leading aim of this course of lectures to remind you of what
+is known, and direct you to what is knowable, of the life and
+character of the greatest Florentine master of engraving,
+Sandro Botticelli; and, incidentally, to give you some idea
+of the power of the greatest master of the German, or any
+northern, school, Hans Holbein.</p>
+
+<p>8. You must feel, however, that I am using the word
+"engraving" in a somewhat different, and, you may imagine,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span>
+a wider, sense, than that which you are accustomed to attach
+to it. So far from being a wider sense, it is in reality a more
+accurate and restricted one, while yet it embraces every conceivable
+right application of the art. And I wish, in this
+first lecture, to make entirely clear to you the proper meaning
+of the word, and proper range of the art of, engraving; in
+my next following lecture, to show you its place in Italian
+schools, and then, in due order, the place it ought to take in
+our own, and in all schools.</p>
+
+<p>9. First then, to-day, of the Differentia, or essential quality
+of Engraving, as distinguished from other arts.</p>
+
+<p>What answer would you make to me, if I asked casually
+what engraving was? Perhaps the readiest which would
+occur to you would be, "The translation of pictures into black
+and white by means admitting reduplication of impressions."
+But if that be done by lithography, we do not call it engraving,&mdash;whereas
+we speak contentedly and continually of seal
+engraving, in which there is no question of black and white.
+And, as scholars, you know that this customary mode of
+speaking is quite accurate; and that engraving means, primarily,
+making a permanent cut or furrow in something.
+The central syllable of the word has become a sorrowful one,
+meaning the most permanent of furrows.</p>
+
+<p>10. But are you prepared absolutely to accept this limitation
+with respect to engraving as a pictorial art? Will you
+call nothing an engraving, except a group of furrows or cavities
+cut in a hard substance? What shall we say of mezzotint
+engraving, for instance, in which, though indeed furrows and
+cavities are produced mechanically as a ground, the artist's
+work is in effacing them? And when we consider the power
+of engraving in representing pictures and multiplying them,
+are we to recognize and admire no effects of light and shade
+except those which are visibly produced by dots or furrows?
+I mean, will the virtue of an engraving be in exhibiting these
+imperfect means of its effect, or in concealing them?</p>
+
+<p>11. Here, for instance, is the head of a soldier by D&uuml;rer,&mdash;a
+mere gridiron of black lines. Would this be better or worse<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span>
+engraving if it were more like a photograph or lithograph,
+and no lines seen?&mdash;suppose, more like the head of Mr. Santley,
+now in all the music-shops, and really quite deceptive in
+light and shade, when seen from over the way? Do you think
+D&uuml;rer's work would be better if it were more like that? And
+would you have me, therefore, leaving the question of technical
+method of production altogether to the craftsman, consider
+pictorial engraving simply as the production of a light-and-shade
+drawing, by some method permitting its multiplication
+for the public?</p>
+
+<p>12. This, you observe, is a very practical question indeed.
+For instance, the illustrations of my own lectures on sculpture
+are equivalent to permanent photographs. There can
+be little doubt that means will be discovered of thus producing
+perfect facsimiles of artists' drawings; so that, if no more
+than facsimile be required, the old art of cutting furrows in
+metal may be considered as, at this day, virtually ended.
+And, indeed, it is said that line engravers cannot any more
+get apprentices, and that a pure steel or copper plate is not
+likely to be again produced, when once the old living masters
+of the bright field shall have been all laid in their earth-furrows.</p>
+
+<p>13. Suppose, then, that this come to pass; and more than
+this, suppose that wood engraving also be superseded, and
+that instead of imperfect transcripts of drawings, on wood-blocks
+or metal-plates, photography enabled us to give, quite
+cheaply, and without limit to number, facsimiles of the finished
+light-and-shade drawings of artists themselves. Another
+group of questions instantly offers itself, on these new conditions;
+namely, What are the best means for a light-and-shade
+drawing&mdash;the pen, or the pencil, the charcoal, or the
+flat wash? That is to say, the pen, producing shade by black
+lines, as old engraving did; the pencil, producing shade by
+gray lines, variable in force; the charcoal, producing a
+smoky shadow with no lines in it, or the washed tint, producing
+a transparent shadow with no lines in it. Which of these<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span>
+methods is the best?&mdash;or have they, each and all, virtues to
+be separately studied, and distinctively applied?</p>
+
+<p>14. See how curiously the questions multiply on us. 1st,
+Is engraving to be only considered as cut work? 2d, For
+present designs multipliable without cutting, by the sunshine,
+what methods or instruments of drawing will be best? And
+now, 3dly, before we can discuss these questions at all, is
+there not another lying at the root of both,&mdash;namely, what
+a light-and-shade drawing itself properly <i>is</i>, and how it
+differs, or should differ, from a painting, whether by mere
+deficiency, or by some entirely distinct merit?</p>
+
+<p>15. For instance, you know how confidently it is said, in
+common talk about Turner, that his works are intelligible
+and beautiful when engraved, though incomprehensible as
+paintings. Admitting this to be so, do you suppose it is
+because the translation into light and shade is deficient in
+some qualities which the painting had, or that it possesses
+some quality which the painting had not? Does it please
+more because it is deficient in the color which confused a
+feeble spectator, and offended a dogmatic one,&mdash;or because it
+possesses a decision in its steady linear labor which interprets,
+or corrects, the swift penciling of the artist?</p>
+
+<p>16. Do you notice the two words I have just used, <i>Decision</i>,
+and <i>Linear</i>?&mdash;Decision, again introducing the idea of cuts
+or divisions, as opposed to gradations; Linear, as opposed to
+massive or broad?</p>
+
+<p>Yet we use all these words at different times in praise,
+while they evidently mark inconsistent qualities. Softness
+and decision, breadth and delineation, cannot co-exist in
+equal degrees. There must surely therefore be a virtue in
+the engraving inconsistent with that of the painting, and
+vice vers&acirc;.</p>
+
+<p>Now, be clear about these three questions which we have
+to-day to answer.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>A. Is all engraving to be cut work?</p>
+
+<p>B. If it need not be cut work, but only the reproduction
+of a drawing, what methods of executing a light-and-shade
+drawing will be best?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>C. Is the shaded drawing itself to be considered only as
+a deficient or imperfect painting, or as a different
+thing from a painting, having a virtue of its own,
+belonging to black and white, as opposed to color?</p></div>
+
+<p>17. I will give you the answers at once, briefly, and amplify
+them afterwards.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>A. All engraving must be cut work;&mdash;<i>that</i> is its differentia.
+Unless your effect be produced by cutting into some
+solid substance, it is not engraving at all.</p>
+
+<p>B. The proper methods for light-and-shade drawing vary
+according to subject, and the degree of completeness
+desired,&mdash;some of them having much in common with
+engraving, and others with painting.</p>
+
+<p>C. The qualities of a light-and-shade drawing ought to
+be entirely different from those of a painting. It is
+not a deficient or partial representation of a colored
+scene or picture, but an entirely different reading of
+either. So that much of what is intelligible in a
+painting ought to be unintelligible in a light-and-shade
+study, and <i>vice vers&acirc;</i>.</p></div>
+
+<p>You have thus three arts,&mdash;engraving, light-and-shade
+drawing, and painting.</p>
+
+<p>Now I am not going to lecture, in this course, on painting,
+nor on light-and-shade drawing, but on engraving only. But
+I must tell you something about light-and-shade drawing
+first; or, at least, remind you of what I have before told.</p>
+
+<p>18. You see that the three elementary lectures in my first
+volume are on Line, Light, and Color,&mdash;that is to say, on
+the modes of art which produce linear designs,&mdash;which produce
+effects of light,&mdash;and which produce effects of color.</p>
+
+<p>I must, for the sake of new students, briefly repeat the
+explanation of these.</p>
+
+<p>Here is an Arabian vase, in which the pleasure given to
+the eye is only by lines;&mdash;no effect of light, or of color, is
+attempted. Here is a moonlight by Turner, in which there
+are no lines at all, and no colors at all. The pleasure given
+to the eye is only by modes of light and shade, or effects of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>
+light. Finally, here is an early Florentine painting, in
+which there are no lines of importance, and no effect of light
+whatever; but all the pleasure given to the eye is in gayety
+and variety of color.</p>
+
+<p>19. I say, the pleasure given to the <i>eye</i>. The lines on
+this vase write something; but the ornamentation produced
+by the beautiful writing is independent of its meaning. So
+the moonlight is pleasant, first, as light; and the figures,
+first, as color. It is not the shape of the waves, but the light
+on them; not the expression of the figures, but their color, by
+which the <i>ocular</i> pleasure is to be given.</p>
+
+<p>These three examples are violently marked ones; but, in
+preparing to draw <i>any</i> object, you will find that, practically,
+you have to ask yourself, Shall I aim at the color of it, the
+light of it, or the lines of it? You can't have all three; you
+can't even have any two out of the three in equal strength.
+The best art, indeed, comes so near nature as in a measure to
+unite all. But the best is not, and cannot be, as good as
+nature; and the mode of its deficiency is that it must lose
+some of the color, some of the light, or some of the delineation.
+And in consequence, there is one great school which
+says, We will have the color, and as much light and delineation
+as are consistent with it. Another which says, We will
+have shade, and as much color and delineation as are consistent
+with it. The third, We will have delineation, and
+as much color and shade as are consistent with it.</p>
+
+<p>20. And though much of the two subordinate qualities may
+in each school be consistent with the leading one, yet the
+schools are evermore separate: as, for instance, in other matters,
+one man says, I will have my fee, and as much honesty
+as is consistent with it; another, I will have my honesty,
+and as much fee as is consistent with it. Though the man
+who will have his fee be subordinately honest,&mdash;though the
+man who will have his honor, subordinately rich, are they
+not evermore of diverse schools?</p>
+
+<p>So you have, in art, the utterly separate provinces, though
+in contact at their borders, of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span></p>
+
+<p style="margin-left:30%; margin-bottom:0em;">The Delineators;</p>
+<p style="margin-left:30%; margin-bottom:0em; margin-top:0em;">The Chiaroscurists; and</p>
+<p style="margin-left:30%; margin-top:0em;">The Colorists.</p>
+
+<p>21. The Delineators are the men on whom I am going
+to give you this course of lectures. They are essentially
+engravers, an engraved line being the best means of delineation.
+The Chiaroscurists are essentially draughtsmen with
+chalk, charcoal, or single tints. Many of them paint, but
+always with some effort and pain. Lionardo is the type of
+them; but the entire Dutch school consists of them, laboriously
+painting, without essential genius for color.</p>
+
+<p>The Colorists are the true painters; and all the faultless
+(as far, that is to say, as men's work can be so,) and consummate
+masters of art belong to them.</p>
+
+<p>22. The distinction between the colorist and chiaroscurist
+school is trenchant and absolute: and may soon be shown you
+so that you will never forget it. Here is a Florentine picture
+by one of the pupils of Giotto, of very good representative
+quality, and which the University galleries are rich in possessing.
+At the distance at which I hold it, you see nothing but
+a checker-work of brilliant, and, as it happens, even glaring
+colors. If you come near, you will find this patchwork
+resolve itself into a Visitation, and Birth of St. John; but
+that St. Elizabeth's red dress, and the Virgin's blue and
+white one, and the brown posts of the door, and the blue
+spaces of the sky, are painted in their own entirely pure
+colors, each shaded with more powerful tints of itself,&mdash;pale
+blue with deep blue, scarlet with crimson, yellow with orange,
+and green with richer green.</p>
+
+<p>The whole is therefore as much a mosaic work of brilliant
+color as if it were made of bits of glass. There is no effect
+of light attempted, or so much as thought of: you don't know
+even where the sun is: nor have you the least notion what
+time of day it is. The painter thinks you cannot be so superfluous
+as to want to know what time of day it is.</p>
+
+<p>23. Here, on the other hand, is a Dutch picture of good
+average quality, also out of the University galleries. It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>
+represents a group of cattle, and a herdsman watching them.
+And you see in an instant that the time is evening. The sun
+is setting, and there is warm light on the landscape, the
+cattle, and the standing figure.</p>
+
+<p>Nor does the picture in any conspicuous way seem devoid
+of color. On the contrary, the herdsman has a scarlet jacket,
+which comes out rather brilliantly from the mass of shade
+round it; and a person devoid of color faculty, or ill taught,
+might imagine the picture to be really a fine work of color.</p>
+
+<p>But if you will come up close to it, you will find that the
+herdsman has brown sleeves, though he has a scarlet jacket;
+and that the shadows of both are painted with precisely the
+same brown, and in several places with continuous touches
+of the pencil. It is only in the light that the scarlet is
+laid on.</p>
+
+<p>This at once marks the picture as belonging to the lower
+or chiaroscurist school, even if you had not before recognized
+it as such by its pretty rendering of sunset effect.</p>
+
+<p>24. You might at first think it a painting which showed
+greater skill than that of the school of Giotto. But the skill
+is not the primary question. The power of imagination is
+the first thing to be asked about. This Italian work imagines,
+and requires you to imagine also, a St. Elizabeth and St.
+Mary, to the best of your power. But this Dutch one only
+wishes you to imagine an effect of sunlight on cow-skin,
+which is a far lower strain of the imaginative faculty.</p>
+
+<p>Also, as you may see the effect of sunlight on cow-skin,
+in reality, any summer afternoon, but cannot so frequently
+see a St. Elizabeth, it is a far less useful strain of the imaginative
+faculty.</p>
+
+<p>And, generally speaking, the Dutch chiaroscurists are
+indeed persons without imagination at all,&mdash;who, not being
+able to get any pleasure out of their thoughts, try to get it
+out of their sensations; note, however, also their technical
+connection with the Greek school of shade, (see my sixth
+inaugural lecture, &sect; 158,) in which color was refused, not
+for the sake of deception, but of solemnity.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>25. With these final motives you are not now concerned;
+your present business is the quite easy one of knowing, and
+noticing, the universal distinction between the methods of
+treatment in which the aim is light, and in which it is color;
+and so to keep yourselves guarded from the danger of being
+misled by the, often very ingenious, talk of persons who have
+vivid color sensations without having learned to distinguish
+them from what else pleases them in pictures. There is
+an interesting volume by Professor Taine on the Dutch
+school, containing a valuable historical analysis of the influences
+which formed it; but full of the gravest errors, resulting
+from the confusion in his mind between color and tone,
+in consequence of which he imagines the Dutch painters to
+be colorists.</p>
+
+<p>26. It is so important for you to be grounded securely in
+these first elements of pictorial treatment, that I will be so
+far tedious as to show you one more instance of the relative
+intellectual value of the pure color and pure chiaroscuro
+school, not in Dutch and Florentine, but in English art.
+Here is a copy of one of the lost frescoes of our Painted
+Chamber of Westminster;&mdash;fourteenth-century work, entirely
+conceived in color, and calculated for decorative effect.
+There is no more light and shade in it than in a Queen of
+Hearts in a pack of cards;&mdash;all that the painter at first wants
+you to see is that the young lady has a white forehead, and
+a golden crown, and a fair neck, and a violet robe, and a
+crimson shield with golden leopards on it; and that behind
+her is clear blue sky. Then, farther, he wants you to read
+her name, "Debonnairete," which, when you have read,
+he farther expects you to consider what it is to be debonnaire,
+and to remember your Chaucer's description of the virtue:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">She was not brown, nor dun of hue,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But white as snowe, fallen new,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With eyen glad, and browes bent,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her hair down to her heeles went,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And she was simple, as dove on tree,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Full debonnair of heart was she.<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>27. You see Chaucer dwells on the color just as much as
+the painter does, but the painter has also given her the
+English shield to bear, meaning that good-humor, or debonnairete,
+cannot be maintained by self-indulgence;&mdash;only by
+fortitude. Farther note, with Chaucer, the "eyen glad," and
+brows "bent" (high-arched and calm), the strong life, (hair
+down to the heels,) and that her gladness is to be without
+subtlety,&mdash;that is to say, without the slightest pleasure in any
+form of advantage-taking, or any shrewd or mocking wit:
+"she was simple as dove on tree;" and you will find that
+the color-painting, both in the fresco and in the poem, is in
+the very highest degree didactic and intellectual; and distinguished,
+as being so, from all inferior forms of art.
+Farther, that it requires you yourself first to understand the
+nature of simplicity, and to like simplicity in young ladies
+better than subtlety; and to understand why the second of
+Love's five kind arrows (Beaut&eacute; being the first)&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Simplece ot nom, la seconde<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Qui maint homme parmi le monde<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Et mainte dame fait amer.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Nor must you leave the picture without observing that there
+is another reason for Debonnairete's bearing the Royal shield,&mdash;of
+all shields that, rather than another. "De-bonne-aire"
+meant originally "out of a good eagle's nest," the "aire"
+signifying the eagle's nest or eyrie especially, because it is
+flat, the Latin "area" being the root of all.</p>
+
+<p>And this coming out of a good nest is recognized as, of all
+things, needfulest to give the strength which enables people
+to be good-humored; and thus you have "debonnaire" forming
+the third word of the group, with "gentle" and "kind,"
+all first signifying "of good race."</p>
+
+<p>You will gradually see, as we go on, more and more why
+I called my third volume of lectures Eagle's Nest; for I am
+not fantastic in these titles, as is often said; but try shortly
+to mark my chief purpose in the book by them.</p>
+
+<p>28. Now for comparison with this old art, here is a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span>
+modern engraving, in which color is entirely ignored; and
+light and shade alone are used to produce what is supposed
+to be a piece of impressive religious instruction. But it is
+not a piece of religious instruction at all;&mdash;only a piece of
+religious sensation, prepared for the sentimental pleasure of
+young ladies; whom (since I am honored to-day by the
+presence of many) I will take the opportunity of warning
+against such forms of false theological satisfaction. This
+engraving represents a young lady in a very long and, though
+plain, very becoming white dress, tossed upon the waves of
+a terrifically stormy sea, by which neither her hair nor her
+becoming dress is in the least wetted; and saved from despair
+in that situation by closely embracing a very thick and solid
+stone Cross. By which far-sought and original metaphor
+young ladies are expected, after some effort, to understand the
+recourse they may have, for support, to the Cross of Christ,
+in the midst of the troubles of this world.</p>
+
+<p>29. As those troubles are for the present, in all probability,
+limited to the occasional loss of their thimbles when they
+have not taken care to put them into their work-boxes,&mdash;the
+concern they feel at the unsympathizing gayety of their companions,&mdash;or
+perhaps the disappointment at not hearing a
+favorite clergyman preach,&mdash;(for I will not suppose the
+young ladies interested in this picture to be affected by any
+chagrin at the loss of an invitation to a ball, or the like worldliness,)&mdash;it
+seems to me the stress of such calamities might
+be represented, in a picture, by less appalling imagery. And
+I can assure my fair little lady friends,&mdash;if I still have any,&mdash;that
+whatever a young girl's ordinary troubles or annoyances
+may be, her true virtue is in shaking them off, as a rose-leaf
+shakes off rain, and remaining debonnaire and bright in
+spirits, or even, as the rose would be, the brighter for the
+troubles; and not at all in allowing herself to be either drifted
+or depressed to the point of requiring religious consolation.
+But if any real and deep sorrow, such as no metaphor can
+represent, fall upon her, does she suppose that the theological
+advice of this piece of modern art can be trusted? If she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>
+will take the pains to think truly, she will remember that
+Christ Himself never says anything about holding by His
+Cross. He speaks a good deal of bearing it; but never for
+an instant of holding by it. It is His Hand, not His Cross,
+which is to save either you, or St. Peter, when the waves are
+rough. And the utterly reckless way in which modern religious
+teachers, whether in art or literature, abuse the metaphor
+somewhat briefly and violently leant on by St. Paul, simply
+prevents your understanding the meaning of any word which
+Christ Himself speaks on this matter! So you see this popular
+art of light and shade, catching you by your mere thirst
+of sensation, is not only undidactic, but the reverse of didactic&mdash;deceptive
+and illusory.</p>
+
+<p>30. This <i>popular</i> art, you hear me say, scornfully; and I
+have told you, in some of my teaching in "Aratra Pentelici,"
+that all great art must be popular. Yes, but great art is
+popular, as bread and water are to children fed by a father.
+And vile art is popular, as poisonous jelly is, to children
+cheated by a confectioner. And it is quite possible to make
+any kind of art popular on those last terms. The color school
+may become just as poisonous as the colorless, in the hands
+of fools, or of rogues. Here is a book I bought only the other
+day,&mdash;one of the things got up cheap to catch the eyes of
+mothers at bookstalls,&mdash;Puss in Boots, illustrated; a most
+definite work of the color school&mdash;red jackets and white paws
+and yellow coaches as distinct as Giotto or Raphael would
+have kept them. But the thing is done by fools for money,
+and becomes entirely monstrous and abominable. Here,
+again, is color art produced by fools for religion: here is
+Indian sacred painting,&mdash;a black god with a hundred arms,
+with a green god on one side of him and a red god on the
+other; still a most definite work of the color school. Giotto
+or Raphael could not have made the black more resolutely
+black, (though the whole color of the school of Athens is
+kept in distinct separation from one black square in it), nor
+the green more unquestionably green. Yet the whole is
+pestilent and loathsome.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>31. Now but one point more, and I have done with this
+subject for to-day.</p>
+
+<p>You must not think that this manifest brilliancy and
+Harlequin's-jacket character is essential in the color school.
+The essential matter is only that everything should be of
+<i>its own</i> definite color: it may be altogether sober and dark,
+yet the distinctness of hue preserved with entire fidelity.
+Here, for instance, is a picture of Hogarth's,&mdash;one of quite
+the most precious things we have in our galleries. It represents
+a meeting of some learned society&mdash;gentlemen of the
+last century, very gravely dressed, but who, nevertheless, as
+gentlemen pleasantly did in that day,&mdash;you remember Goldsmith's
+weakness on the point&mdash;wear coats of tints of dark
+red, blue, or violet. There are some thirty gentlemen in the
+room, and perhaps seven or eight different tints of subdued
+claret-color in their coats; and yet every coat is kept so
+distinctly of its own proper claret-color, that each gentleman's
+servant would know his master's.</p>
+
+<p>Yet the whole canvas is so gray and quiet, that as I now
+hold it by this Dutch landscape, with the vermilion jacket,
+you would fancy Hogarth's had no color in it at all, and that
+the Dutchman was half-way to becoming a Titian; whereas
+Hogarth's is a consummate piece of the most perfect colorist
+school, which Titian could not beat, in its way; and the
+Dutchman could no more paint half an inch of it than he
+could summon a rainbow into the clouds.</p>
+
+<p>32. Here then, you see, are, altogether, five works, all of
+the absolutely pure color school:&mdash;</p>
+
+<ol>
+<li>One, Indian,&mdash;Religious Art;</li>
+<li>One, Florentine,&mdash;Religious Art;</li>
+<li>One, English,&mdash;from Painted Chamber, Westminster,&mdash;Ethic Art;</li>
+<li>One, English,&mdash;Hogarth,&mdash;Naturalistic Art;</li>
+<li>One, English,&mdash;to-day sold in the High Street,&mdash;Caricaturist Art.</li>
+</ol>
+
+<p>And of these, the Florentine and old English are divine<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>
+work, God-inspired; full, indeed, of faults and innocencies,
+but divine, as good children are.</p>
+
+<p>Then this by Hogarth is entirely wise and right; but
+worldly-wise, not divine.</p>
+
+<p>While the old Indian, and this, with which we feed our
+children at this hour, are entirely damnable art;&mdash;every bit
+of it done by the direct inspiration of the devil,&mdash;feeble,
+ridiculous,&mdash;yet mortally poisonous to every noble quality
+in body and soul.</p>
+
+<p>33. I have now, I hope, guarded you sufficiently from the
+danger either of confusing the inferior school of chiaroscuro
+with that of color, or of imagining that a work must necessarily
+be good, on the sole ground of its belonging to the
+higher group. I can now proceed securely to separate the
+third school, that of Delineation, from both; and to examine
+its special qualities.</p>
+
+<p>It begins (see "Inaugural Lectures," &sect; 137) in the primitive
+work of races insensible alike to shade and to color, and
+nearly devoid of thought and of sentiment, but gradually
+developing into both.</p>
+
+<p>Now as the design is primitive, so are the means likely to
+be primitive. A line is the simplest work of art you can
+produce. What are the simplest means you can produce it
+with?</p>
+
+<p>A Cumberland lead-pencil is a work of art in itself, quite
+a nineteenth-century machine. Pen and ink are complex and
+scholarly; and even chalk or charcoal not always handy.</p>
+
+<p>But the primitive line, the first and last, generally the best
+of lines, is that which you have elementary faculty of at your
+fingers' ends, and which kittens can draw as well as you&mdash;the
+scratch.</p>
+
+<p>The first, I say, and the last of lines. Permanent exceedingly,&mdash;even
+in flesh, or on mahogany tables, often more
+permanent than we desire. But when studiously and honorably
+made, divinely permanent, or delightfully&mdash;as on the
+venerable desks of our public schools, most of them, now,
+specimens of wood engraving dear to the heart of England.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>34. Engraving, then, is, in brief terms, the Art of Scratch.
+It is essentially the cutting into a solid substance for the sake
+of making your ideas as permanent as possible, graven with
+an iron pen in the Rock forever. <i>Permanence</i>, you observe,
+is the object, not multiplicability;&mdash;that is quite an accidental,
+sometimes not even a desirable, attribute of engraving.
+Duration of your work&mdash;fame, and undeceived vision
+of all men, on the pane of glass of the window on a wet
+day, or on the pillars of the castle of Chillon, or on the
+walls of the pyramids;&mdash;a primitive art,&mdash;yet first and last
+with us.</p>
+
+<p>Since then engraving, we say, is essentially cutting into
+the surface of any solid; as the primitive design is in lines
+or dots, the primitive cutting of such design is a scratch or a
+hole; and scratchable solids being essentially three&mdash;stone,
+wood, metal,&mdash;we shall have three great schools of engraving
+to investigate in each material.</p>
+
+<p>35. On tablet of stone, on tablet of wood, on tablet of steel,&mdash;the
+first giving the law to everything; the second true
+Athenian, like Athena's first statue in olive-wood, making
+the law legible and homely; and the third true Vulcanian,
+having the splendor and power of accomplished labor.</p>
+
+<p>Now of stone engraving, which is joined inseparably with
+sculpture and architecture, I am not going to speak at length
+in this course of lectures. I shall speak only of wood and
+metal engraving. But there is one circumstance in stone
+engraving which it is necessary to observe in connection with
+the other two branches of the art.</p>
+
+<p>The great difficulty for a primitive engraver is to make his
+scratch deep enough to be visible. Visibility is quite as
+essential to your fame as permanence; and if you have only
+your furrow to depend on, the engraved tablet, at certain
+times of day, will be illegible, and passed without notice.</p>
+
+<p>But suppose you fill in your furrow with something black,
+then it will be legible enough at once; and if the black fall
+out or wash out, still your furrow is there, and may be filled
+again by anybody.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Therefore, the noble stone engravers, using marble to
+receive their furrow, fill that furrow with marble ink.</p>
+
+<p>And you have an engraved plate to purpose;&mdash;with the
+whole sky for its margin! Look here&mdash;the front of the church
+of San Michele of Lucca,&mdash;white marble with green serpentine
+for ink; or here,&mdash;the steps of the Giant's Stair, with
+lead for ink; or here,&mdash;the floor of the Pisan Duomo, with
+porphyry for ink. Such cutting, filled in with color or with
+black, branches into all sorts of developments,&mdash;Florentine
+mosaic on the one hand, niello on the other, and infinite minor
+arts.</p>
+
+<p>36. Yet we must not make this filling with color part of
+our definition of engraving. To engrave is, in final strictness,
+"to decorate a surface with furrows." (Cameos, in
+accuratest terms, are minute sculptures, not engravings.)
+A plowed field is the purest type of such art; and is, on
+hilly land, an exquisite piece of decoration.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore it will follow that engraving distinguishes itself
+from ordinary drawing by greater need of muscular effort.</p>
+
+<p>The quality of a pen drawing is to be produced easily,&mdash;deliberately,
+always,<a name="FNanchor_C_3" id="FNanchor_C_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_C_3" class="fnanchor">[C]</a> but with a point that <i>glides</i> over the
+paper. Engraving, on the contrary, requires always force,
+and its virtue is that of a line produced by pressure, or by
+blows of a chisel.</p>
+
+<p>It involves, therefore, always, ideas of power and dexterity,
+but also of restraint; and the delight you take in it should
+involve the understanding of the difficulty the workman dealt
+with. You perhaps doubt the extent to which this feeling
+justly extends, (in the first volume of "Modern Painters,"
+expressed under the head "Ideas of Power.") But why is
+a large stone in any building grander than a small one?
+Simply because it was more difficult to raise it. So, also, an
+engraved line is, and ought to be, recognized as more grand
+than a pen or pencil line, because it was more difficult to
+execute it.</p>
+
+<p>In this mosaic of Lucca front you forgive much, and admire<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>
+much, because you see it is all cut in stone. So, in wood and
+steel, you ought to see that every line has been costly; but
+observe, costly of deliberative, no less than athletic or executive
+power. The main use of the restraint which makes
+the line difficult to draw, is to give time and motive for
+deliberation in drawing it, and to insure its being the best in
+your power.</p>
+
+<p>37. For, as with deliberation, so without repentance, your
+engraved line must be. It may, indeed, be burnished or
+beaten out again in metal, or patched and botched in stone;
+but always to disadvantage, and at pains which must not be
+incurred often. And there is a singular evidence in one of
+D&uuml;rer's finest plates that, in his time, or at least in his
+manner of work, it was not possible at all. Among the disputes
+as to the meaning of D&uuml;rer's Knight and Death, you
+will find it sometimes suggested, or insisted, that the horse's
+raised foot is going to fall into a snare. What has been
+fancied a noose is only the former outline of the horse's foot
+and limb, uneffaced.</p>
+
+<p>The engraved line is therefore to be conclusive; not experimental.
+"I have determined this," says the engraver. Much
+excellent pen drawing is excellent in being tentative,&mdash;in being
+experimental. Indeterminate, not through want of meaning,
+but through fullness of it&mdash;halting <i>wisely</i> between two
+opinions&mdash;feeling cautiously after clearer opinions. But
+your engraver has made up his opinion. This is so, and
+must forever be so, he tells you. A very proper thing for a
+thoughtful man to say; a very improper and impertinent
+thing for a foolish one to say. Foolish engraving is consummately
+foolish work. Look,&mdash;all the world,&mdash;look for
+evermore, says the foolish engraver; see what a fool I have
+been! How many lines I have laid for nothing! How many
+lines upon lines, with no precept, much less superprecept!</p>
+
+<p>38. Here, then, are two definite ethical characters in all
+engraved work. It is Athletic; and it is Resolute. Add one
+more; that it is Obedient;&mdash;in their infancy the nurse, but
+in their youth the slave, of the higher arts; servile, both in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>
+the mechanism and labor of it, and in its function of interpreting
+the schools of painting as superior to itself.</p>
+
+<p>And this relation to the higher arts we will study at the
+source of chief power in all the normal skill of Christendom,
+Florence; and chiefly, as I said, in the work of one Florentine
+master, Sandro Botticelli.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_A_1" id="Footnote_A_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_1"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> "Inaugural Series," "Aratra Pentelici," and "Eagle's Nest."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_B_2" id="Footnote_B_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_B_2"><span class="label">[B]</span></a> My inaugural series of seven lectures (now published uniform in
+size with this edition. 1890).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_C_3" id="Footnote_C_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_C_3"><span class="label">[C]</span></a> Compare Inaugural Lectures, &sect; 144.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2 class="gap3"><a name="LECTURE_II" id="LECTURE_II"></a>LECTURE II.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE RELATION OF ENGRAVING TO OTHER ARTS IN FLORENCE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>39. From what was laid before you in my last lecture, you
+must now be aware that I do not mean, by the word 'engraving,'
+merely the separate art of producing plates from which
+black pictures may be printed.</p>
+
+<p>I mean, by engraving, the art of producing decoration on
+a surface by the touches of a chisel or a burin; and I mean
+by its relation to other arts, the subordinate service of this
+linear work, in sculpture, in metal work, and in painting; or
+in the representation and repetition of painting.</p>
+
+<p>And first, therefore, I have to map out the broad relations
+of the arts of sculpture, metal work, and painting, in Florence,
+among themselves, during the period in which the art of
+engraving was distinctly connected with them.<a name="FNanchor_D_4" id="FNanchor_D_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_D_4" class="fnanchor">[D]</a></p>
+
+<p>40. You will find, or may remember, that in my lecture
+on Michael Angelo and Tintoret I indicated the singular
+importance, in the history of art, of a space of forty years,
+between 1480, and the year in which Raphael died, 1520.
+Within that space of time the change was completed, from
+the principles of ancient, to those of existing, art;&mdash;a manifold
+change, not definable in brief terms, but most clearly
+characterized, and easily remembered, as the change of conscientious
+and didactic art, into that which proposes to itself
+no duty beyond technical skill, and no object but the pleasure
+of the beholder. Of that momentous change itself I do not
+purpose to speak in the present course of lectures; but my
+endeavor will be to lay before you a rough chart of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span>
+course of the arts in Florence up to the time when it took
+place; a chart indicating for you, definitely, the growth of
+conscience, in work which is distinctively conscientious, and
+the perfecting of expression and means of popular address,
+in that which is distinctively didactic.</p>
+
+<p>41. Means of popular address, observe, which have become
+singularly important to us at this day. Nevertheless, remember
+that the power of printing, or reprinting, black <i>pictures</i>,&mdash;practically
+contemporary with that of reprinting black
+<i>letters</i>,&mdash;modified the art of the draughtsman only as it modified
+that of the scribe. Beautiful and unique writing, as
+beautiful and unique painting or engraving, remain exactly
+what they were; but other useful and reproductive methods
+of both have been superadded. Of these, it is acutely said
+by Dr. Alfred Woltmann,<a name="FNanchor_E_5" id="FNanchor_E_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_E_5" class="fnanchor">[E]</a>&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"A far more important part is played in the art-life of Germany by
+the technical arts for the <i>multiplying</i> of works; for Germany, while it
+was the land of book-printing, is also the land of picture-printing.
+Indeed, wood-engraving, which preceded the invention of book-printing,
+<i>prepared the way for it, and only left one step more necessary for
+it</i>. <i>Book-printing</i> and <i>picture-printing</i> have both the same inner cause
+for their origin, namely, the impulse to make each mental gain a common
+blessing. Not merely princes and rich nobles were to have the
+privilege of adorning their private chapels and apartments with
+beautiful religious pictures; the poorest man was also to have his
+delight in that which the artist had devised and produced. It was not
+sufficient for him when it stood in the church as an altar-shrine, visible
+to him and to the congregation from afar; he desired to have it as his
+own, to carry it about with him, to bring it into his own home. The
+grand importance of wood-engraving and copperplate is not sufficiently
+estimated in historical investigations. They were not alone of use in
+the advance of art; they form an epoch in the entire life of mind and
+culture. The idea embodied and multiplied in pictures became like
+that embodied in the printed word, the herald of every intellectual
+movement, and conquered the world."</p></div>
+
+<p>42. "Conquered the world"? The rest of the sentence
+is true, but this, hyperbolic, and greatly false. It should<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>
+have been said that both painting and engraving have conquered
+much of the good in the world, and, hitherto, little
+or none of the evil.</p>
+
+<p>Nor do I hold it usually an advantage to art, in teaching,
+that it <i>should</i> be common, or constantly seen. In becoming
+intelligibly and kindly beautiful, while it remains solitary
+and unrivaled, it has a greater power. Westminster Abbey
+is more didactic to the English nation, than a million of
+popular illustrated treatises on architecture.</p>
+
+<p>Nay, even that it cannot be understood but with some
+difficulty, and must be sought before it can be seen, is no
+harm. The noblest didactic art is, as it were, set on a hill,
+and its disciples come to it. The vilest destructive and
+corrosive art stands at the street corners, crying, "Turn in
+hither; come, eat of my bread, and drink of my wine, which
+I have mingled."</p>
+
+<p>And Dr. Woltmann has allowed himself too easily to fall
+into the common notion of Liberalism, that bad art, disseminated,
+is instructive, and good art isolated, not so. The
+question is, first, I assure you, whether what art you have got
+is good or bad. If essentially bad, the more you see of it, the
+worse for you. Entirely popular art is all that is noble, in
+the cathedral, the council chamber, and the market-place; not
+the paltry colored print pinned on the wall of a private room.</p>
+
+<p><a id="Sect_43" name="Sect_43"></a>43. I despise the poor!&mdash;do I, think you? Not so. They
+only despise the poor who think them better off with police
+news, and colored tracts of the story of Joseph and Potiphar's
+wife, than they were with Luini painting on their church
+walls, and Donatello carving the pillars of their market-places.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, the effort to be universally, instead of locally,
+didactic, modified advantageously, as you know, and in a
+thousand ways varied, the earlier art of engraving: and the
+development of its popular power, whether for good or evil,
+came exactly&mdash;so fate appointed&mdash;at a time when the minds
+of the masses were agitated by the struggle which closed in
+the Reformation in some countries, and in the desperate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span>
+refusal of Reformation in others.<a name="FNanchor_F_6" id="FNanchor_F_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_F_6" class="fnanchor">[F]</a> The two greatest masters
+of engraving whose lives we are to study, were, both of them,
+passionate reformers: Holbein no less than Luther; Botticelli
+no less than Savonarola.</p>
+
+<p>44. Reformers, I mean, in the full and, accurately, the
+only, sense. Not preachers of new doctrines; but witnesses
+against the betrayal of the old ones, which were on the lips
+of all men, and in the lives of none. Nay, the painters are
+indeed more pure reformers than the priests. They rebuked
+the manifest vices of men, while they realized whatever was
+loveliest in their faith. Priestly reform soon enraged itself
+into mere contest for personal opinions; while, without rage,
+but in stern rebuke of all that was vile in conduct or thought,&mdash;in
+declaration of the always-received faiths of the Christian
+Church, and in warning of the power of faith, and death,<a name="FNanchor_G_7" id="FNanchor_G_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_G_7" class="fnanchor">[G]</a>
+over the petty designs of men,&mdash;Botticelli and Holbein together
+fought foremost in the ranks of the Reformation.</p>
+
+<p>45. To-day I will endeavor to explain how they attained
+such rank. Then, in the next two lectures, the technics of
+both,&mdash;their way of speaking; and in the last two, what they
+had got to say.</p>
+
+<p>First, then, we ask how they attained this rank;&mdash;who
+taught <i>them</i> what they were finally best to teach? How far
+must every people&mdash;how far did this Florentine people&mdash;teach
+its masters, before <i>they</i> could teach <i>it</i>?</p>
+
+<p>Even in these days, when every man is, by hypothesis, as
+good as another, does not the question sound strange to you?
+You recognize in the past, as you think, clearly, that national
+advance takes place always under the guidance of masters, or
+groups of masters, possessed of what appears to be some new
+personal sensibility or gift of invention; and we are apt to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>
+be reverent to these alone, as if the nation itself had been
+unprogressive, and suddenly awakened, or converted, by the
+genius of one man.</p>
+
+<p>No idea can be more superficial. Every nation must teach
+its tutors, and prepare itself to receive them; but the fact on
+which our impression is founded&mdash;the rising, apparently
+by chance, of men whose singular gifts suddenly melt the
+multitude, already at the point of fusion; or suddenly form,
+and <i>in</i>form, the multitude which has gained coherence enough
+to be capable of formation,&mdash;enables us to measure and map
+the gain of national intellectual territory, by tracing first
+the lifting of the mountain chains of its genius.</p>
+
+<p>46. I have told you that we have nothing to do at present
+with the great transition from ancient to modern habits of
+thought which took place at the beginning of the sixteenth
+century. I only want to go as far as that point;&mdash;where we
+shall find the old superstitious art represented <i>finally</i> by
+Perugino, and the modern scientific and anatomical art represented
+<i>primarily</i> by Michael Angelo. And the epithet
+bestowed on Perugino by Michael Angelo, 'goffo nell' arte,'
+dunce, or blockhead, in art,&mdash;being, as far as my knowledge
+of history extends, the most cruel, the most false, and the
+most foolish insult ever offered by one great man to another,&mdash;does
+you at least good service, in showing how trenchant
+the separation is between the two orders of artists,<a name="FNanchor_H_8" id="FNanchor_H_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_H_8" class="fnanchor">[H]</a>&mdash;how
+exclusively we may follow out the history of all the 'goffi
+nell' arte,' and write our Florentine Dunciad, and Laus
+Stultiti&aelig;, in peace; and never trench upon the thoughts or
+ways of these proud ones, who showed their fathers' nakedness,
+and snatched their masters' fame.</p>
+
+<p>47. The Florentine dunces in art are a multitude; but I
+only want you to know something about twenty of them.</p>
+
+<p>Twenty!&mdash;you think that a grievous number? It may,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>
+perhaps, appease you a little to be told that when you really
+have learned a very little, accurately, about these twenty
+dunces, there are only five more men among the artists of
+Christendom whose works I shall ask you to examine while
+you are under my care. That makes twenty-five altogether,&mdash;an
+exorbitant demand on your attention, you still think?
+And yet, but a little while ago, you were all agog to get me
+to go and look at Mrs. A's sketches, and tell you what was to
+be thought about <i>them</i>; and I've had the greatest difficulty to
+keep Mrs. B's photographs from being shown side by side
+with the Raphael drawings in the University galleries. And
+you will waste any quantity of time in looking at Mrs. A's
+sketches or Mrs. B's photographs; and yet you look grave,
+because, out of nineteen centuries of European art-labor and
+thought, I ask you to learn something seriously about the
+works of five-and-twenty men!</p>
+
+<p>48. It is hard upon you, doubtless, considering the quantity
+of time you must nowadays spend in trying which can hit balls
+farthest. So I will put the task into the simplest form I can.</p>
+
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 656px;">
+<a id="DIAGRAM" name="DIAGRAM"></a><img src="images/image036.png" width="656" height="449" alt="Diagram showing lifespans of artists between  1200 and 1600 A.D." title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>Here are the names of the twenty-five men,<a name="FNanchor_I_9" id="FNanchor_I_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_I_9" class="fnanchor">[I]</a> and opposite
+each, a line indicating the length of his life, and the position
+of it in his century. The diagram still, however, needs a
+few words of explanation. Very chiefly, for those who know
+anything of my writings, there is needed explanation of its
+not including the names of Titian, Reynolds, Velasquez,
+Turner, and other such men, always reverently put before
+you at other times.</p>
+
+<p>They are absent, because I have no fear of your not looking
+at these. All your lives through, if you care about art, you
+will be looking at them. But while you are here at Oxford,
+I want to make you learn what you should know of these
+earlier, many of them weaker, men, who yet, for the very
+reason of their greater simplicity of power, are better guides
+for you, and of whom some will remain guides to all genera<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span>tions.
+And, as regards the subject of our present course, I
+have a still more weighty reason;&mdash;Vandyke, Gainsborough,
+Titian, Reynolds, Velasquez, and the rest, are essentially
+portrait painters. They give you the likeness of a man: they
+have nothing to say either about his future life, or his gods.
+'That is the look of him,' they say: 'here, on earth, we know
+no more.'</p>
+
+<p>49. But these, whose names I have engraved, have something
+to say&mdash;generally much,&mdash;either about the future life
+of man, or about his gods. They are therefore, literally, seers
+or prophets. False prophets, it may be, or foolish ones; of
+that you must judge; but you must read before you can
+judge; and read (or hear) them consistently; for you don't
+know them till you have heard them out. But with Sir
+Joshua, or Titian, one portrait is as another: it is here a
+pretty lady, there a great lord; but speechless, all;&mdash;whereas,
+with these twenty-five men, each picture or statue is not
+merely another person of a pleasant society, but another
+chapter of a Sibylline book.</p>
+
+<p>50. For this reason, then, I do not want Sir Joshua or
+Velasquez in my defined group; and for my present purpose,
+I can spare from it even four others:&mdash;namely, three who
+have <i>too</i> special gifts, and must each be separately studied&mdash;Correggio,
+Carpaccio, Tintoret;&mdash;and one who has no special
+gift, but a balanced group of many&mdash;Cima. This leaves
+twenty-one for classification, of whom I will ask you to lay
+hold thus. You must continually have felt the difficulty
+caused by the names of centuries not tallying with their years;&mdash;the
+year 1201 being the first of the thirteenth century, and
+so on. I am always plagued by it myself, much as I have to
+think and write with reference to chronology; and I mean for
+the future, in our art chronology, to use as far as possible a
+different form of notation.</p>
+
+<p>51. In my diagram the vertical lines are the divisions of
+tens of years; the thick black lines divide the centuries. The
+horizontal lines, then, at a glance, tell you the length and
+date of each artist's life. In one or two instances I cannot<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span>
+find the date of birth; in one or two more, of death; and
+the line indicates then only the ascertained<a name="FNanchor_J_10" id="FNanchor_J_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_J_10" class="fnanchor">[J]</a> period during
+which the artist worked.</p>
+
+<p>And, thus represented, you see nearly all their lives run
+through the year of a new century; so that if the lines representing
+them were needles, and the black bars of the years
+1300, 1400, 1500 were magnets, I could take up nearly all
+the needles by lifting the bars.</p>
+
+<p>52. I will actually do this, then, in three other simple
+diagrams. I place a rod for the year 1300 over the lines of
+life, and I take up all it touches. I have to drop Niccola
+Pisano, but I catch five. Now, with my rod of 1400, I have
+dropped Orcagna indeed, but I again catch five. Now, with
+my rod of 1500, I indeed drop Filippo Lippi and Verrocchio,
+but I catch seven. And here I have three pennons, with the
+staves of the years 1300, 1400, and 1500 running through
+them,&mdash;holding the names of nearly all the men I want you
+to study in easily remembered groups of five, five, and seven.
+And these three groups I shall hereafter call the 1300 group,
+1400 group, and 1500 group.</p>
+
+<table summary="Artists 1300" style="border-collapse:collapse;">
+<tr>
+<td style="height:80px;">&nbsp;</td>
+<td rowspan="7">
+<div class="figright" style="width: 290px;">
+<img src="images/image040a.png" width="290" height="223" alt="Diagram showing lifespans of artists as lines around 1300" title="" />
+</div>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td style="height:30px;">1240-1302 Cimabue</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td style="height:30px;">1250-1321 Giovanni Pisano</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td style="height:30px;">1232-1310 <span class="smcap">Arnolfo</span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td style="height:30px;">1270-1345 Andrea Pisano</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td style="height:30px;">1276-1336 Giotto</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<table summary="Artists 1400">
+<tr style="height:80px;">
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td rowspan="7">
+<div class="figright" style="width: 261px;">
+<img src="images/image040b.png" width="261" height="221" alt="Diagram showing lifespans of artists as lines around 1400" title="" />
+</div></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td style="height:30px;">1374-1438 Quercia</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td style="height:30px;">1381-1455 Ghiberti</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td style="height:30px;">1377-1446 <span class="smcap">Brunelleschi</span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td style="height:30px;">1386-1468 Donatello</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td style="height:30px;">1400-1481 Luca</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<table summary="Artists 1500">
+<tr style="height:60px;">
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td rowspan="9">
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 288px;">
+<img src="images/image040c.png" width="288" height="276" alt="Diagram showing lifespans of artists as lines around 1500" title="" />
+</div>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td style="height:28px;">1431-1506 Mantegna</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td style="height:28px;">1457-1515 Botticelli</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td style="height:28px;">1426-1516 Bellini</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td style="height:28px;">1446-1524 <span class="smcap">Perugino</span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td style="height:28px;">1470-1535 Luini</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td style="height:28px;">1471-1527 D&uuml;rer</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td style="height:28px;">1498-1543 Holbein</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<p>53. But why should four unfortunate masters be dropped
+out?</p>
+
+<p>Well, I want to drop them out, at any rate; but not in
+disrespect. In hope, on the contrary, to make you remember
+them very separately indeed;&mdash;for this following reason.</p>
+
+<p>We are in the careless habit of speaking of men who form
+a great number of pupils, and have a host of inferior satellites
+round them, as masters of great schools.</p>
+
+<p>But before you call a man a master, you should ask,
+Are his pupils greater or less than himself? If they are
+greater than himself, he is a master indeed;&mdash;he has been a
+true teacher. But if all his pupils are less than himself, he
+may have been a great <i>man</i>, but in all probability has been
+a bad <i>master</i>, or no master.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Now these men, whom I have signally left out of my
+groups, are true <i>Masters</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Niccola Pisano taught all Italy; but chiefly his own son,
+who succeeded, and in some things very much surpassed him.</p>
+
+<p>Orcagna taught all Italy, after him, down to Michael
+Angelo. And these two&mdash;Lippi, the religious schools, Verrocchio,
+the artist schools, of their century.</p>
+
+<p>Lippi taught Sandro Botticelli; and Verrocchio taught
+Lionardo da Vinci, Lorenzo di Credi, and Perugino. Have
+I not good reason to separate the masters of such pupils from
+the schools they created?</p>
+
+<p>54. But how is it that I can drop just the cards I want
+out of my pack?</p>
+
+<p>Well, certainly I force and fit matters a little: I leave
+some men out of my list whom I should like to have in it;&mdash;Benozzo
+Gozzoli, for instance, and Mino da Fiesole; but I
+can do without them, and so can you also, for the present.
+I catch Luca by a hair's-breadth only, with my 1400 rod;
+but on the whole, with very little coaxing, I get the groups in
+this memorable and quite literally 'handy' form. For see,
+I write my lists of five, five, and seven, on bits of pasteboard;
+I hinge my rods to these; and you can brandish the school of
+1400 in your left hand, and of 1500 in your right, like&mdash;railway
+signals;&mdash;and I wish all railway signals were as clear.
+Once learn, thoroughly, the groups in this artificially contracted
+form, and you can refine and complete afterwards at
+your leisure.</p>
+
+<p>55. And thus actually flourishing my two pennons, and
+getting my grip of the men, in either hand, I find a notable
+thing concerning my two flags. The men whose names I hold
+in my left hand are all sculptors; the men whose names I
+hold in my right are all painters.</p>
+
+<p>You will infallibly suspect me of having chosen them
+thus on purpose. No, honor bright!&mdash;I chose simply the
+greatest men,&mdash;those I wanted to talk to you about. I
+arranged them by their dates; I put them into three conclusive
+pennons; and behold what follows!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>56. Farther, note this: in the 1300 group, four out of the
+five men are architects as well as sculptors and painters. In
+the 1400 group, there is one architect; in the 1500, none.
+And the meaning of that is, that in 1300 the arts were all
+united, and duly led by architecture; in 1400, sculpture
+began to assume too separate a power to herself; in 1500,
+painting arrogated all, and, at last, betrayed all. From which,
+with much other collateral evidence, you may justly conclude
+that the three arts ought to be practiced together, and that
+they naturally are so. I long since asserted that no man
+could be an architect who was not a sculptor. As I learned
+more and more of my business, I perceived also that no man
+could be a sculptor who was not an architect;&mdash;that is to say,
+who had not knowledge enough, and pleasure enough in
+structural law, to be able to build, on occasion, better than a
+mere builder. And so, finally, I now positively aver to you
+that nobody, in the graphic arts, can be quite rightly a
+master of anything, who is not master of everything!</p>
+
+<p>57. The junction of the three arts in men's minds, at the
+best times, is shortly signified in these words of Chaucer.
+Love's Garden,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">Everidele<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Enclosed was, and walled well<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With high walls, embatailled,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Portrayed without, and well entayled<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With many rich portraitures.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The French original is better still, and gives four arts in
+unison:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Quant suis avant un pou al&eacute;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Et vy un vergier grant et le,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bien cloz de bon mur batilli&eacute;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pourtrait dehors, et entailli&eacute;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ou (for au) maintes riches escriptures.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Read also carefully the description of the temples of
+Mars and Venus in the Knight's Tale. Contemporary French
+uses 'entaille' even of solid sculpture and of the living
+form; and Pygmalion, as a perfect master, professes wood<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>
+carving, ivory carving, waxwork, and iron-work, no less than
+stone sculpture:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Pimalion, uns entaillieres<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pourtraians en fuz<a name="FNanchor_K_11" id="FNanchor_K_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_K_11" class="fnanchor">[K]</a> et en pierres,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">En mettaux, en os, et en cire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Et en toute autre matire.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>58. I made a little sketch, when last in Florence, of a
+subject which will fix the idea of this unity of the arts in
+your minds. At the base of the tower of Giotto are two rows
+of hexagonal panels, filled with bas-reliefs. Some of these
+are by unknown hands,&mdash;some by Andrea Pisano, some by
+Luca della Robbia, two by Giotto himself; of these I sketched
+the panel representing the art of Painting.</p>
+
+<p>You have in that bas-relief one of the foundation-stones
+of the most perfectly built tower in Europe; you have that
+stone carved by its architect's own hand; you find, further,
+that this architect and sculptor was the greatest painter of
+his time, and the friend of the greatest poet; and you have
+represented by him a painter in his shop,&mdash;bottega,&mdash;as
+symbolic of the entire art of painting.</p>
+
+<p>59. In which representation, please note how carefully
+Giotto shows you the tabernacles or niches, in which the
+paintings are to be placed. Not independent of their
+frames, these panels of his, you see!</p>
+
+<p>Have you ever considered, in the early history of painting,
+how important also is the history of the frame maker? It
+is a matter, I assure you, needing your very best consideration.
+For the frame was made before the picture. The
+painted window is much, but the aperture it fills was thought
+of before it. The fresco by Giotto is much, but the vault it
+adorns was planned first. Who thought of these;&mdash;who
+built?</p>
+
+<p>Questions taking us far back before the birth of the shep<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>herd
+boy of F&eacute;sole&mdash;questions not to be answered by history
+of painting only, still less of painting in <i>Italy</i> only.</p>
+
+<p>60. And in pointing out to you this fact, I may once for
+all prove to you the essential unity of the arts, and show you
+how impossible it is to understand one without reference to
+another. Which I wish you to observe all the more closely,
+that you may use, without danger of being misled, the data,
+of unequaled value, which have been collected by Crowe and
+Cavalcaselle, in the book which they have called a History of
+Painting in Italy, but which is in fact only a dictionary of
+details relating to that history. Such a title is an absurdity
+on the face of it. For, first, you can no more write the
+history of painting in Italy than you can write the history
+of the south wind in Italy. The sirocco does indeed produce
+certain effects at Genoa, and others at Rome; but what would
+be the value of a treatise upon the winds, which, for the honor
+of any country, assumed that every city of it had a native
+sirocco?</p>
+
+<p>But, further,&mdash;imagine what success would attend the
+meteorologist who should set himself to give an account of
+the south wind, but take no notice of the north!</p>
+
+<p>And, finally, suppose an attempt to give you an account of
+either wind, but none of the seas, or mountain passes, by
+which they were nourished, or directed.</p>
+
+<p>61. For instance, I am in this course of lectures to give
+you an account of a single and minor branch of graphic art,&mdash;engraving.
+But observe how many references to local circumstances
+it involves. There are three materials for it, we
+said;&mdash;stone, wood, and metal. Stone engraving is the art
+of countries possessing marble and gems; wood engraving,
+of countries overgrown with forest; metal engraving, of
+countries possessing treasures of silver and gold. And the
+style of a stone engraver is formed on pillars and pyramids;
+the style of a wood engraver under the eaves of larch cottages;
+the style of a metal engraver in the treasuries of kings. Do
+you suppose I could rightly explain to you the value of a
+single touch on brass by Finiguerra, or on box by Bewick,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span>
+unless I had grasp of the great laws of climate and country;
+and could trace the inherited sirocco or tramontana of thought
+to which the souls and bodies of the men owed their existence?</p>
+
+<p>62. You see that in this flag of 1300 there is a dark strong
+line in the center, against which you read the name of
+Arnolfo.</p>
+
+<p>In writing our Florentine Dunciad, or History of Fools,
+can we possibly begin with a better day than All Fools' Day?
+On All Fools' Day&mdash;the first, if you like better so to call it,
+of the month of <i>opening</i>,&mdash;in the year 1300, is signed the
+document making Arnolfo a citizen of Florence, and in 1310
+he dies, chief master of the works of the cathedral there. To
+this man, Crowe and Cavalcaselle give half a page, out of
+three volumes of five hundred pages each.</p>
+
+<p>But lower down in my flag, (not put there because of any
+inferiority, but by order of chronology,) you will see a name
+sufficiently familiar to you&mdash;that of Giotto; and to him, our
+historians of painting in Italy give some hundred pages,
+under the impression, stated by them at page 243 of their
+volume, that "in his hands, art in the Peninsula became
+entitled for the first time to the name of Italian."</p>
+
+<p>63. Art became Italian! Yes, but <i>what</i> art? Your
+authors give a perspective&mdash;or what they call such,&mdash;of the
+upper church of Assisi, as if that were merely an accidental
+occurrence of blind walls for Giotto to paint on!</p>
+
+<p>But how came the upper church of Assisi there? How
+came it to be vaulted&mdash;to be aisled? How came Giotto to be
+asked to paint upon it?</p>
+
+<p>The art that built it, good or bad, must have been an Italian
+one, before Giotto. He could not have painted on the air.
+Let us see how his panels were made for him.</p>
+
+<p>64. This Captain&mdash;the center of our first group&mdash;Arnolfo,
+has always hitherto been called 'Arnolfo di Lapo;'&mdash;Arnolfo
+the son of Lapo.</p>
+
+<p>Modern investigators come down on us delightedly, to tell
+us&mdash;Arnolfo was <i>not</i> the son of Lapo.</p>
+
+<p>In these days you will have half a dozen doctors, writing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>
+each a long book, and the sense of all will be,&mdash;Arnolfo wasn't
+the son of Lapo. Much good may you get of that!</p>
+
+<p>Well, you will find the fact to be, there was a great Northman
+builder, a true son of Thor, who came down into Italy
+in 1200, served the order of St. Francis there, built Assisi,
+taught Arnolfo how to build, with Thor's hammer, and disappeared,
+leaving his name uncertain&mdash;Jacopo&mdash;Lapo&mdash;nobody
+knows what. Arnolfo always recognizes this man as his true
+father, who put the soul-life into him; he is known to his
+Florentines always as Lapo's Arnolfo.</p>
+
+<p>That, or some likeness of that, is the vital fact. You never
+can get at the literal limitation of living facts. They disguise
+themselves by the very strength of their life: get told again
+and again in different ways by all manner of people;&mdash;the
+literalness of them is turned topsy-turvy, inside-out, over and
+over again;&mdash;then the fools come and read them wrong side
+upwards, or else, say there never was a fact at all. Nothing
+delights a true blockhead so much as to prove a negative;&mdash;to
+show that everybody has been wrong. Fancy the delicious
+sensation, to an empty-headed creature, of fancying for a
+moment that he has emptied everybody else's head as well as
+his own! nay, that, for once, his own hollow bottle of a head
+has had the best of other bottles, and has been <i>first</i> empty;&mdash;first
+to know&mdash;nothing.</p>
+
+<p>65. Hold, then, steadily the first tradition about this
+Arnolfo. That his real father was called "Cambio" matters
+to you not a straw. That he never called himself Cambio's
+Arnolfo&mdash;that nobody else ever called him so, down to
+Vasari's time, is an infinitely significant fact to you. In my
+twenty-second letter in Fors Clavigera you will find some
+account of the noble habit of the Italian artists to call themselves
+by their masters' names, considering their master as
+their true father. If not the name of the master, they take
+that of their native place, as having owed the character of
+their life to that. They rarely take their own family name:
+sometimes it is not even known,&mdash;when best known, it is
+unfamiliar to us. The great Pisan artists, for instance,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span>
+never bear any other name than 'the Pisan;' among the other
+five-and-twenty names in my list, not above six, I think, the
+two German, with four Italian, are family names. Perugino,
+(Peter of Perugia,) Luini, (Bernard of Luino,) Quercia,
+(James of Quercia,) Correggio, (Anthony of Correggio,) are
+named from their native places. Nobody would have understood
+me if I had called Giotto, 'Ambrose Bondone;' or
+Tintoret, Robusti; or even Raphael, Sanzio. Botticelli is
+named from his master; Ghiberti from his father-in-law; and
+Ghirlandajo from his work. Orcagna, who <i>did</i>, for a wonder,
+name himself from his father, Andrea Cione, of Florence,
+has been always called 'Angel' by everybody else; while
+Arnolfo, who never named himself from his father, is now
+like to be fathered against his will.</p>
+
+<p>But, I again beg of you, keep to the old story. For it
+represents, however inaccurately in detail, clearly in sum, the
+fact, that some great master of German Gothic at this time
+came down into Italy, and changed the entire form of Italian
+architecture by his touch. So that while Niccola and Giovanni
+Pisano are still virtually Greek artists, experimentally
+introducing Gothic forms, Arnolfo and Giotto adopt the entire
+Gothic ideal of form, and thenceforward use the pointed arch
+and steep gable as the limits of sculpture.</p>
+
+<p>66. Hitherto I have been speaking of the relations of my
+twenty-five men to each other. But now, please note their
+relations altogether to the art before them. These twenty-five
+include, I say, all the great masters of <i>Christian</i>
+art.</p>
+
+<p>Before them, the art was too savage to be Christian; afterwards,
+too carnal to be Christian.</p>
+
+<p>Too savage to be Christian? I will justify that assertion
+hereafter; but you will find that the European art of 1200
+includes all the most developed and characteristic conditions
+of the style in the north which you have probably been
+accustomed to think of as <span class="smcap">Norman</span>, and which you may
+always most conveniently call so; and the most developed
+conditions of the style in the south, which, formed out of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span>
+effete Greek, Persian, and Roman tradition, you may, in
+like manner, most conveniently express by the familiar word
+<span class="smcap">Byzantine</span>. Whatever you call them, they are in origin
+adverse in temper, and remain so up to the year 1200. Then
+an influence appears, seemingly that of one man, Nicholas
+the Pisan, (our first <span class="smcap">Master</span>, observe,) and a new spirit
+adopts what is best in each, and gives to what it adopts a new
+energy of its own; namely, this conscientious and didactic
+power which is the speciality of its progressive existence.
+And just as the new-born and natural art of Athens collects
+and reanimates Pelasgian and Egyptian tradition, purifying
+their worship, and perfecting their work, into the living
+heathen faith of the world, so this new-born and natural
+art of Florence collects and animates the Norman and
+Byzantine tradition, and forms out of the perfected worship
+and work of both, the honest Christian faith, and vital craftsmanship,
+of the world.</p>
+
+<p>67. Get this first summary, therefore, well into your minds.
+The word 'Norman' I use roughly for North-savage;&mdash;roughly,
+but advisedly. I mean Lombard, Scandinavian,
+Frankish; everything north-savage that you can think of,
+except Saxon. (I have a reason for that exception; never
+mind it just now.)<a name="FNanchor_L_12" id="FNanchor_L_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_L_12" class="fnanchor">[L]</a></p>
+
+<p>All north-savage I call <span class="smcap">Norman</span>, all south-savage I call
+<span class="smcap">Byzantine</span>; this latter including dead native Greek primarily&mdash;then
+dead foreign Greek, in Rome;&mdash;then Arabian&mdash;Persian&mdash;Ph&oelig;nician&mdash;Indian&mdash;all
+you can think of, in art
+of hot countries, up to this year 1200, I rank under the one
+term Byzantine. Now all this cold art&mdash;Norman, and all this
+hot art&mdash;Byzantine, is virtually dead, till 1200. It has no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span>
+conscience, no didactic power;<a name="FNanchor_M_13" id="FNanchor_M_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_M_13" class="fnanchor">[M]</a> it is devoid of both, in the
+sense that dreams are.</p>
+
+<p>Then in the thirteenth century, men wake as if they heard
+an alarum through the whole vault of heaven, and true human
+life begins again, and the cradle of this life is the Val d'Arno.
+There the northern and southern nations meet; there they
+lay down their enmities; there they are first baptized unto
+John's baptism for the remission of sins; there is born, and
+thence exiled,&mdash;thought faithless, for breaking the font of
+baptism to save a child from drowning, in his 'bel San Giovanni,'&mdash;the
+greatest of Christian poets; he who had pity
+even for the lost.</p>
+
+<p>68. Now, therefore, my whole history of <i>Christian</i> architecture
+and painting begins with this Baptistery of Florence,
+and with its associated Cathedral. Arnolfo brought the one
+into the form in which you now see it; he laid the foundation
+of the other, and that to purpose, and he is therefore the
+<span class="smcap">Captain</span> of our first school.</p>
+
+<p>For this Florentine Baptistery<a name="FNanchor_N_14" id="FNanchor_N_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_N_14" class="fnanchor">[N]</a> is the great one of the
+world. Here is the center of Christian knowledge and power.</p>
+
+<p>And it is one piece of large <i>engraving</i>. White substance,
+cut into, and filled with black, and dark-green.</p>
+
+<p>No more perfect work was afterwards done; and I wish you
+to grasp the idea of this building clearly and irrevocably,&mdash;first,
+in order (as I told you in a previous lecture) to quit
+yourselves thoroughly of the idea that ornament should be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span>
+decorated construction; and, secondly, as the noblest type of
+the intaglio ornamentation, which developed itself into all
+minor application of black and white to engraving.</p>
+
+<p>69. That it should do so first at Florence, was the natural
+sequence, and the just reward, of the ancient skill of Etruria
+in chased metal-work. The effects produced in gold, either
+by embossing or engraving, were the direct means of giving
+interest to his surfaces at the command of the 'auri faber,'
+or orfevre: and every conceivable artifice of studding, chiseling,
+and interlacing was exhausted by the artists in gold, who
+were at the head of the metal-workers, and from whom the
+ranks of the sculptors were reinforced.</p>
+
+<p>The old French word 'orfroiz,' (aurifrigia,) expresses
+essentially what we call 'frosted' work in gold; that which
+resembles small dew or crystals of hoar-frost; the 'frigia'
+coming from the Latin frigus. To chase, or enchase, is not
+properly said of the gold; but of the jewel which it secures
+with hoops or ridges, (French, <i>en</i>chasser<a name="FNanchor_O_15" id="FNanchor_O_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_O_15" class="fnanchor">[O]</a>). Then the
+armorer, or cup and casket maker, added to this kind of
+decoration that of flat inlaid enamel; and the silver-worker,
+finding that the raised filigree (still a staple at Genoa) only
+attracted tarnish, or got crushed, early sought to decorate a
+surface which would bear external friction, with labyrinths
+of safe incision.</p>
+
+
+
+<p><a id="Sect_70" name="Sect_70"></a>70. Of the <i>security</i> of incision as a means of permanent
+decoration, as opposed to ordinary carving, here is a beautiful
+instance in the base of one of the external shafts of the
+Cathedral of Lucca; thirteenth-century work, which by this
+time, had it been carved in relief, would have been a shapeless
+remnant of indecipherable bosses. But it is still as safe
+as if it had been cut yesterday, because the smooth round
+mass of the pillar is entirely undisturbed; into that, furrows
+are cut with a chisel as much under command and as powerful
+as a burin. The effect of the design is trusted entirely to the
+depth of these incisions&mdash;here dying out and expiring in the
+light of the marble, there deepened, by drill holes, into as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>
+definitely a black line as if it were drawn with ink; and
+describing the outline of the leafage with a delicacy of touch
+and of perception which no man will ever surpass, and which
+very few have rivaled, in the proudest days of design.</p>
+
+<p>71. This security, in silver plates, was completed by filling
+the furrows with the black paste which at once exhibited and
+preserved them. The transition from that niello-work to
+modern engraving is one of no real moment: my object is to
+make you understand the qualities which constitute the <i>merit</i>
+of the engraving, whether charged with niello or ink. And
+this I hope ultimately to accomplish by studying with you
+some of the works of the four men, Botticelli and Mantegna
+in the south, D&uuml;rer and Holbein in the north, whose names
+I have put in our last flag, above and beneath those of the
+three mighty painters, Perugino the captain, Bellini on one
+side&mdash;Luini on the other.</p>
+
+<p>The four following lectures<a name="FNanchor_P_16" id="FNanchor_P_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_P_16" class="fnanchor">[P]</a> will contain data necessary
+for such study: you must wait longer before I can place before
+you those by which I can justify what must greatly surprise
+some of my audience&mdash;my having given Perugino the captain's
+place among the three painters.</p>
+
+<p>72. But I do so, at least primarily, because what is commonly
+thought affected in his design is indeed the true
+remains of the great architectural symmetry which was soon
+to be lost, and which makes him the true follower of Arnolfo
+and Brunelleschi; and because he is a sound craftsman and
+workman to the very heart's core. A noble, gracious, and
+quiet laborer from youth to death,&mdash;never weary, never
+impatient, never untender, never untrue. Not Tintoret in
+power, not Raphael in flexibility, not Holbein in veracity,
+not Luini in love,&mdash;their gathered gifts he has, in balanced
+and fruitful measure, fit to be the guide, and impulse, and
+father of all.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_D_4" id="Footnote_D_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_D_4"><span class="label">[D]</span></a> Compare "Aratra Pentelici," &sect; 154.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_E_5" id="Footnote_E_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_E_5"><span class="label">[E]</span></a> "Holbein and His Time," 4to, Bentley, 1872, (a very valuable
+book,) p. 17. Italics mine.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_F_6" id="Footnote_F_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_F_6"><span class="label">[F]</span></a> See Carlyle, "Frederick," Book III., chap. viii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_G_7" id="Footnote_G_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_G_7"><span class="label">[G]</span></a> I believe I am taking too much trouble in writing these lectures.
+This sentence, &sect; 44, has cost me, I suppose, first and last, about as many
+hours as there are lines in it;&mdash;and my choice of these two words,
+faith and death, as representatives of power, will perhaps, after all,
+only puzzle the reader.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_H_8" id="Footnote_H_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_H_8"><span class="label">[H]</span></a> He is said by Vasari to have called Francia the like. Francia is
+a child compared to Perugino; but a finished working-goldsmith and
+ornamental painter nevertheless; and one of the very last men to be
+called 'goffo,' except by unparalleled insolence.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_I_9" id="Footnote_I_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_I_9"><span class="label">[I]</span></a> The diagram used at the lecture is engraved on page 30; the reader
+had better draw it larger for himself, as it had to be made inconveniently
+small for this size of leaf.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_J_10" id="Footnote_J_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_J_10"><span class="label">[J]</span></a> 'Ascertained,' scarcely any date ever is, quite satisfactorily. The
+diagram only represents what is practically and broadly true. I may
+have to modify it greatly in detail.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_K_11" id="Footnote_K_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_K_11"><span class="label">[K]</span></a> For fust, log of wood, erroneously 'fer' in the later printed editions.
+Compare the account of the works of Art and Nature, towards the end
+of the Romance of the Rose.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_L_12" id="Footnote_L_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_L_12"><span class="label">[L]</span></a> Of course it would have been impossible to express in any accurate
+terms, short enough for the compass of a lecture, the conditions of
+opposition between the Heptarchy and the Northmen;&mdash;between the
+Byzantine and Roman;&mdash;and between the Byzantine and Arab, which
+form minor, but not less trenchant, divisions of Art-province, for subsequent
+delineation. If you can refer to my "Stones of Venice," see
+&sect; 20 of its first chapter.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_M_13" id="Footnote_M_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_M_13"><span class="label">[M]</span></a> Again much too broad a statement: not to be qualified but by a
+length of explanation here impossible. My lectures on Architecture,
+now in preparation ("Val d'Arno"), will contain further detail.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_N_14" id="Footnote_N_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_N_14"><span class="label">[N]</span></a> At the side of my page, here, I find the following memorandum,
+which was expanded in the viva-voce lecture. The reader must make
+what he can of it, for I can't expand it here.
+</p><p>
+<i>Sense</i> of Italian Church plan.
+</p><p>
+Baptistery, to make Christians in; house, or dome, for them to pray
+and be preached to in; bell-tower, to ring all over the town, when
+they were either to pray together, rejoice together, or to be warned of
+danger.
+</p><p>
+Harvey's picture of the Covenanters, with a shepherd on the outlook,
+as a campanile.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_O_15" id="Footnote_O_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_O_15"><span class="label">[O]</span></a> And 'chassis,' a window frame, or tracery.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_P_16" id="Footnote_P_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_P_16"><span class="label">[P]</span></a> This present lecture does not, as at present published, justify its
+title; because I have not thought it necessary to write the viva-voce
+portions of it which amplified the 69th paragraph. I will give the substance
+of them in better form elsewhere; meantime the part of the
+lecture here given may be in its own way useful.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="gap3"><a name="LECTURE_III" id="LECTURE_III"></a>LECTURE III.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE TECHNICS OF WOOD ENGRAVING.</h3>
+
+
+<p>73. I am to-day to begin to tell you what it is necessary
+you should observe respecting methods of manual execution
+in the two great arts of engraving. Only to <i>begin</i> to tell you.
+There need be no end of telling you such things, if you care
+to hear them. The theory of art is soon mastered; but 'dal
+detto al fatto, v'e gran tratto;' and as I have several times
+told you in former lectures, every day shows me more and
+more the importance of the Hand.</p>
+
+<p>74. Of the hand as a Servant, observe,&mdash;not of the hand
+as a Master. For there are two great kinds of manual work:
+one in which the hand is continually receiving and obeying
+orders; the other in which it is acting independently, or even
+giving orders of its own. And the dependent and submissive
+hand is a noble hand; but the independent or imperative
+hand is a vile one.</p>
+
+<p>That is to say, as long as the pen, or chisel, or other graphic
+instrument, is moved under the direct influence of mental
+attention, and obeys orders of the brain, it is working nobly;&mdash;the
+moment it moves independently of them, and performs
+some habitual dexterity of its own, it is base.</p>
+
+<p>75. <i>Dexterity</i>&mdash;I say;&mdash;some 'right-handedness' of its
+own. We might wisely keep that word for what the hand
+does at the mind's bidding; and use an opposite word&mdash;sinisterity,&mdash;for
+what it does at its own. For indeed we want
+such a word in speaking of modern art; it is all full of sinisterity.
+Hands independent of brains;&mdash;the left hand, by
+division of labor, not knowing what the right does,&mdash;still
+less what it ought to do.</p>
+
+<p>76. Turning, then, to our special subject. All engraving,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>
+I said, is intaglio in the solid. But the solid, in wood engraving,
+is a coarse substance, easily cut; and in metal, a fine
+substance, not easily. Therefore, in general, you may be
+prepared to accept ruder and more elementary work in one
+than the other; and it will be the means of appeal to blunter
+minds.</p>
+
+<p>You probably already know the difference between the
+actual methods of producing a printed impression from wood
+and metal; but I may perhaps make the matter a little more
+clear. In metal engraving, you cut ditches, fill them with
+ink, and press your paper into them. In wood engraving,
+you leave ridges, rub the tops of them with ink, and stamp
+them on your paper.</p>
+
+<p>The instrument with which the substance, whether of the
+wood or steel, is cut away, is the same. It is a solid plowshare,
+which, instead of throwing the earth aside, throws it
+up and out, producing at first a simple ravine, or furrow,
+in the wood or metal, which you can widen by another cut,
+or extend by successive cuts. This (Fig. 1) is the general
+shape of the solid plowshare:
+but it is of course made sharper or blunter at pleasure. The
+furrow produced is at first the wedge-shaped or cuneiform
+ravine, already so much dwelt upon in my lectures on Greek
+sculpture.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 229px;">
+<img src="images/image053.png" width="229" height="57" alt="Fig. 1" title="" />
+<span class="caption smcap">Fig. 1</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>77. Since, then, in wood printing, you print from the
+surface left solid; and, in metal printing, from the hollows
+cut into it, it follows that if you put few touches on wood,
+you draw, as on a slate, with white lines, leaving a quantity
+of black; but if you put few touches on metal, you draw
+with black lines, leaving a quantity of white.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Now the eye is not in the least offended by quantity of
+white, but is, or ought to be, greatly saddened and offended by
+quantity of black. Hence it follows that you must never
+put little work on wood. You must not sketch upon it. You
+may sketch on metal as much as you please.</p>
+
+<p>78. "Paradox," you will say, as usual. "Are not all
+our journals,&mdash;and the best of them, Punch, par excellence,&mdash;full
+of the most brilliantly swift and slight sketches,
+engraved on wood; while line-engravings take ten years to
+produce, and cost ten guineas each when they are done?"</p>
+
+<p>Yes, that is so; but observe, in the first place, what appears
+to you a sketch on wood is not so at all, but a most laborious
+and careful imitation of a sketch on paper; whereas when
+you see what appears to be a sketch on metal, it <i>is</i> one. And
+in the second place, so far as the popular fashion is contrary
+to this natural method,&mdash;so far as we do in reality try to
+produce effects of sketching in wood, and of finish in metal,&mdash;our
+work is wrong.</p>
+
+<p>Those apparently careless and free sketches on the wood
+ought to have been stern and deliberate; those exquisitely
+toned and finished engravings on metal ought to have looked,
+instead, like free ink sketches on white paper. That is the
+theorem which I propose to you for consideration, and
+which, in the two branches of its assertion, I hope to prove
+to you; the first part of it, (that wood-cutting should be
+careful,) in this present lecture; the second, (that metal-cutting
+should be, at least in a far greater degree than it is
+now, slight, and free,) in the following one.</p>
+
+<p>79. Next, observe the distinction in respect of <i>thickness</i>,
+no less than number, of lines which may properly be used in
+the two methods.</p>
+
+<p>In metal engraving, it is easier to lay a fine line than a
+thick one; and however fine the line may be, it lasts;&mdash;but
+in wood engraving it requires extreme precision and skill to
+leave a thin dark line, and when left, it will be quickly beaten
+down by a careless printer. Therefore, the virtue of wood
+engraving is to exhibit the qualities and power of <i>thick</i> lines;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span>
+and of metal engraving, to exhibit the qualities and power of
+<i>thin</i> ones.</p>
+
+<p>All thin dark lines, therefore, in wood, broadly speaking,
+are to be used only in case of necessity; and thick lines, on
+metal, only in case of necessity.</p>
+
+<p>80. Though, however, thin <i>dark</i> lines cannot easily be
+produced in wood, thin <i>light</i> ones may be struck in an instant.
+Nevertheless, even thin light ones must not be used, except
+with extreme caution. For observe, they are equally useless
+as outline, and for expression of mass. You know how far
+from exemplary or delightful your boy's first quite voluntary
+exercises in white line drawing on your slate were?
+You could, indeed, draw a goblin satisfactorily in such
+method;&mdash;a round O, with arms and legs to it, and a scratch
+under two dots in the middle, would answer the purpose;
+but if you wanted to draw a pretty face, you took pencil or
+pen, and paper&mdash;not your slate. Now, that instinctive feeling
+that a white outline is wrong, is deeply founded. For
+Nature herself draws with diffused light, and concentrated
+dark;&mdash;never, except in storm or twilight, with diffused
+dark, and concentrated light; and the thing we all like best
+to see drawn&mdash;the human face&mdash;cannot be drawn with white
+touches, but by extreme labor. For the pupil and iris of the
+eye, the eyebrow, the nostril, and the lip are all set in dark
+on pale ground. You can't draw a white eyebrow, a white
+pupil of the eye, a white nostril, and a white mouth, on a dark
+ground. Try it, and see what a specter you get. But the
+same number of dark touches, skillfully applied, will give the
+idea of a beautiful face. And what is true of the subtlest
+subject you have to represent, is equally true of inferior ones.
+Nothing lovely can be quickly represented by white touches.
+You must hew out, if your means are so restricted, the form
+by sheer labor; and that both cunning and dextrous. The
+Florentine masters, and D&uuml;rer, often practice the achievement,
+and there are many drawings by the Lippis, Mantegna,
+and other leading Italian draughtsmen, completed to great
+perfection with the white line; but only for the sake of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span>
+severest study, nor is their work imitable by inferior men.
+And such studies, however accomplished, always mark a
+disposition to regard chiaroscuro too much, and local color
+too little.</p>
+
+<p>We conclude, then, that we must never trust, in wood, to
+our power of outline with white; and our general laws, thus
+far determined, will be&mdash;thick lines in wood; thin ones in
+metal; complete drawing on wood; sketches, if we choose, on
+metal.</p>
+
+<p>81. But why, in wood, lines at all? Why not cut out
+white <i>spaces</i>, and use the chisel as if its incisions were so
+much white paint? Many fine pieces of wood-cutting are
+indeed executed on this principle. Bewick does nearly all
+his foliage so; and continually paints the light plumes of
+his birds with single touches of his chisel, as if he were laying
+on white.</p>
+
+<p>But this is not the finest method of wood-cutting. It
+implies the idea of a system of light and shade in which the
+shadow is totally black. Now, no light and shade can be good,
+much less pleasant, in which all the shade is stark black.
+Therefore the finest wood-cutting ignores light and shade,
+and expresses only form, and <i>dark local color</i>. And it is convenient,
+for simplicity's sake, to anticipate what I should
+otherwise defer telling you until next lecture, that fine
+metal engraving, like fine wood-cutting, ignores light and
+shade; and that, in a word, all good engraving whatsoever
+does so.</p>
+
+<p>82. I hope that my saying so will make you eager to interrupt
+me. 'What! Rembrandt's etchings, and Lupton's
+mezzotints, and Le Keux's line-work,&mdash;do you mean to tell
+us that these ignore light and shade?'</p>
+
+<p>I never said that <i>mezzotint</i> ignored light and shade, or
+ought to do so. Mezzotint is properly to be considered as
+chiaroscuro drawing on metal. But I do mean to tell you
+that both Rembrandt's etchings, and Le Keux's finished line-work,
+are misapplied labor, in so far as they regard chiar<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>oscuro;
+and that consummate engraving never uses it as a
+primal element of pleasure.</p>
+
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 493px;">
+<a id="Fig_2" name="Fig_2"></a>
+<img src="images/image058.png" width="493" height="636" alt="THE LAST FURROW. (Fig. 2) Facsimile from Holbein's woodcut." title="" />
+<p class="caption center">THE LAST FURROW.</p>
+<p class="caption center">(Fig. 2) Facsimile from Holbein's woodcut.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>83. We have now got our principles so far defined that I
+can proceed to illustration of them by example.</p>
+
+<p>Here are facsimiles, very marvelous ones,<a name="FNanchor_Q_17" id="FNanchor_Q_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_Q_17" class="fnanchor">[Q]</a> of two of the
+best wood engravings ever produced by art,&mdash;two subjects
+in Holbein's Dance of Death. You will probably like best
+that I should at once proceed to verify my last and most
+startling statement, that fine engraving disdained chiaroscuro.</p>
+
+<p>This vignette (Fig. 2) represents a sunset in the open
+mountainous fields of southern Germany. And Holbein is
+so entirely careless about the light and shade, which a
+Dutchman would first have thought of, as resulting from the
+sunset, that, as he works, he forgets altogether where his
+light comes from. Here, actually, the shadow of the figure
+is cast from the side, right across the picture, while the sun
+is in front. And there is not the slightest attempt to indicate
+gradation of light in the sky, darkness in the forest, or any
+other positive element of chiaroscuro.</p>
+
+<p>This is not because Holbein cannot give chiaroscuro if he
+chooses. He is twenty times a stronger master of it than
+Rembrandt; but he, therefore, knows exactly when and how
+to use it; and that wood engraving is not the proper means
+for it. The quantity of it which is needful for his story, and
+will not, by any sensational violence, either divert, or vulgarly
+enforce, the attention, he will give; and that with an unrivaled
+subtlety. Therefore I must ask you for a moment or
+two to quit the subject of technics, and look what these two
+woodcuts mean.</p>
+
+<p>84. The one I have first shown you is of a plowman
+plowing at evening. It is Holbein's object, here, to express
+the diffused and intense light of a golden summer sunset, so
+far as is consistent with grander purposes. A modern French
+or English chiaroscurist would have covered his sky with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span>
+fleecy clouds, and relieved the plowman's hat and his horses
+against it in strong black, and put sparkling touches on the
+furrows and grass. Holbein scornfully casts all such tricks
+aside; and draws the whole scene in pure white, with simple
+outlines.</p>
+
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 486px;">
+<a id="Fig_3" name="Fig_3"></a>
+<img src="images/image061.png" width="486" height="616" alt="THE TWO PREACHERS. (Fig. 3) Facsimile from Holbein's woodcut." title="" />
+<p class="caption center">THE TWO PREACHERS.</p>
+<p class="caption center">(Fig. 3) Facsimile from Holbein's woodcut.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>85. And yet, when I put it beside this second vignette,
+(Fig. 3,) which is of a preacher preaching in a feebly lighted
+church, you will feel that the diffused warmth of the one
+subject, and diffused twilight in the other, are complete;
+and they will finally be to you more impressive than if they
+had been wrought out with every superficial means of effect,
+on each block.</p>
+
+<p>For it is as a symbol, not as a scenic effect, that in each
+case the chiaroscuro is given. Holbein, I said, is at the head
+of the painter-reformers, and his Dance of Death is the most
+energetic and telling of all the forms given, in this epoch,
+to the <i>Rationalist</i> spirit of reform, preaching the new Gospel
+of Death,&mdash;"It is no matter whether you are priest or layman,
+what you believe, or what you do: here is the end."
+You shall see, in the course of our inquiry, that Botticelli,
+in like manner, represents the <i>Faithful</i> and <i>Catholic</i> temper
+of reform.</p>
+
+<p>86. The teaching of Holbein is therefore always melancholy,&mdash;for
+the most part purely rational; and entirely furious
+in its indignation against all who, either by actual
+injustice in this life, or by what he holds to be false promise
+of another, destroy the good, or the energy, of the few days
+which man has to live. Against the rich, the luxurious, the
+Pharisee, the false lawyer, the priest, and the unjust judge,
+Holbein uses his fiercest mockery; but he is never himself
+unjust; never caricatures or equivocates; gives the facts as
+he knows them, with explanatory symbols, few and clear.</p>
+
+<p>87. Among the powers which he hates, the pathetic and
+ingenious preaching of untruth is one of the chief; and it is
+curious to find his biographer, knowing this, and reasoning,
+as German critics nearly always do, from acquired knowledge,
+not perception, imagine instantly that he sees hypocrisy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>
+in the face of Holbein's preacher. "How skillfully," says
+Dr. Woltmann, "is the preacher propounding his doctrines;
+how thoroughly is his hypocrisy expressed in the features of
+his countenance, and in the gestures of his hands." But look
+at the cut yourself, candidly. I challenge you to find the
+slightest trace of hypocrisy in either feature or gesture.
+Holbein knew better. It is not the hypocrite who has
+power in the pulpit. It is the <i>sincere</i> preacher of untruth
+who does mischief there. The hypocrite's place of power
+is in trade, or in general society; none but the sincere ever
+get fatal influence in the pulpit. This man is a refined gentleman&mdash;ascetic,
+earnest, thoughtful, and kind. He scarcely
+uses the vantage even of his pulpit,&mdash;comes aside out of it,
+as an eager man would, pleading; he is intent on being understood&mdash;<i>is</i>
+understood; his congregation are delighted&mdash;you
+might hear a pin drop among them: one is asleep indeed,
+who cannot see him, (being under the pulpit,) and asleep
+just because the teacher is as gentle as he is earnest, and
+speaks quietly.</p>
+
+<p>88. How are we to know, then, that he speaks in vain?
+First, because among all his hearers you will not find one
+shrewd face. They are all either simple or stupid people:
+there is one nice woman in front of all, (else Holbein's
+representation had been caricature,) but she is not a shrewd
+one.</p>
+
+<p>Secondly, by the light and shade. The church is not in
+extreme darkness&mdash;far from that; a gray twilight is over
+everything, but the sun is totally shut out of it;&mdash;not a ray
+comes in even at the window&mdash;<i>that</i> is darker than the walls,
+or vault.</p>
+
+<p>Lastly, and chiefly, by the mocking expression of Death.
+Mocking, but not angry. The man has been preaching what
+he thought true. Death laughs at him, but is not indignant
+with him.</p>
+
+<p>Death comes quietly: <i>I</i> am going to be preacher now; here
+is your own hour-glass, ready for me. You have spoken
+many words in your day. But "of the things which you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>
+have spoken, <i>this</i> is the sum,"&mdash;your death-warrant, signed
+and sealed. There's your text for to-day.</p>
+
+<p>89. Of this other picture, the meaning is more plain, and
+far more beautiful. The husbandman is old and gaunt, and
+has passed his days, not in speaking, but pressing the iron
+into the ground. And the payment for his life's work is, that
+he is clothed in rags, and his feet are bare on the clods; and
+he has no hat&mdash;but the brim of a hat only, and his long,
+unkempt gray hair comes through. But all the air is full of
+warmth and of peace; and, beyond his village church, there
+is, at last, light indeed. His horses lag in the furrow, and his
+own limbs totter and fail: but one comes to help him. 'It is
+a long field,' says Death; 'but we'll get to the end of it
+to-day,&mdash;you and I.'</p>
+
+<p>90. And now that we know the meaning, we are able to
+discuss the technical qualities farther.</p>
+
+<p>Both of these engravings, you will find, are executed with
+blunt lines; but more than that, they are executed with quiet
+lines, entirely steady.</p>
+
+<p>Now, here I have in my hand a lively woodcut of the
+present day&mdash;a good average type of the modern style of
+wood-cutting, which you will all recognize.<a name="FNanchor_R_18" id="FNanchor_R_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_R_18" class="fnanchor">[R]</a></p>
+
+<p>The shade in this is drawn on the wood, (not <i>cut</i>, but
+drawn, observe,) at the rate of at least ten lines in a second:
+Holbein's, at the rate of about one line in three seconds.<a name="FNanchor_S_19" id="FNanchor_S_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_S_19" class="fnanchor">[S]</a></p>
+
+<p>91. Now there are two different matters to be considered
+with respect to these two opposed methods of execution. The
+first, that the rapid work, though easy to the artist, is very
+difficult to the wood-cutter; so that it implies instantly a separation
+between the two crafts, and that your wood-cutter has
+ceased to be a draughtsman. I shall return to this point. I
+wish to insist on the other first; namely, the effect of the
+more deliberate method on the drawing itself.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>92. When the hand moves at the rate of ten lines in a
+second, it is indeed under the government of the muscles of
+the wrist and shoulder; but it cannot possibly be under the
+complete government of the brains. I am able to do this
+zigzag line evenly, because I have got the use of the hand
+from practice; and the faster it is done, the evener it will be.
+But I have no mental authority over every line I thus lay:
+chance regulates them. Whereas, when I draw at the rate of
+two or three seconds to each line, my hand disobeys the muscles
+a little&mdash;the mechanical accuracy is not so great; nay,
+there ceases to be any <i>appearance</i> of dexterity at all. But
+there is, in reality, more manual skill required in the slow
+work than in the swift,&mdash;and all the while the hand is
+thoroughly under the orders of the brains. Holbein deliberately
+resolves, for every line, as it goes along, that it shall
+be so thick, so far from the next,&mdash;that it shall begin here,
+and stop there. And he is deliberately assigning the utmost
+quantity of meaning to it, that a line will carry.</p>
+
+<p>93. It is not fair, however, to compare common work of
+one age with the best of another. Here is a woodcut of
+Tenniel's, which I think contains as high qualities as it is
+possible to find in modern art.<a name="FNanchor_T_20" id="FNanchor_T_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_T_20" class="fnanchor">[T]</a> I hold it as beyond others
+fine, because there is not the slightest caricature in it. No
+face, no attitude, is pushed beyond the degree of natural
+humor they would have possessed in life; and in precision of
+momentary expression, the drawing is equal to the art of
+any time, and shows power which would, if regulated, be
+quite adequate to producing an immortal work.</p>
+
+<p>94. Why, then, is it <i>not</i> immortal? You yourselves, in
+compliance with whose demand it was done, forgot it the next
+week. It will become historically interesting; but no man
+of true knowledge and feeling will ever keep this in his
+cabinet of treasure, as he does these woodcuts of Holbein's.</p>
+
+<p>The reason is that this is base coin,&mdash;alloyed gold. There<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>
+<i>is</i> gold in it, but also a quantity of brass and lead&mdash;willfully
+added&mdash;to make it fit for the public. Holbein's is beaten
+gold, seven times tried in the fire. Of which commonplace
+but useful metaphor the meaning here is, first, that to catch
+the vulgar eye a quantity of,&mdash;so-called,&mdash;light and shade is
+added by Tenniel. It is effective to an ignorant eye, and is
+ingeniously disposed; but it is entirely conventional and
+false, unendurable by any person who knows what chiaroscuro
+is.</p>
+
+<p>Secondly, for one line that Holbein lays, Tenniel has a
+dozen. There are, for instance, a hundred and fifty-seven
+lines in Sir Peter Teazle's wig, without counting dots and
+slight cross-hatching;&mdash;but the entire face and flowing hair
+of Holbein's preacher are done with forty-five lines, all told.</p>
+
+<p>95. Now observe what a different state of mind the two
+artists must be in on such conditions;&mdash;one, never in a hurry,
+never doing anything that he knows is wrong; never doing
+a line badly that he can do better; and appealing only to the
+feelings of sensitive persons, and the judgment of attentive
+ones. That is Holbein's habit of soul. What is the habit
+of soul of every modern engraver? Always in a hurry; everywhere
+doing things which he knows to be wrong&mdash;(Tenniel
+knows his light and shade to be wrong as well as I do)&mdash;continually
+doing things badly which he was able to do better;
+and appealing exclusively to the feelings of the dull, and the
+judgment of the inattentive.</p>
+
+<p>Do you suppose that is not enough to make the difference
+between mortal and immortal art,&mdash;the original genius being
+supposed alike in both?<a name="FNanchor_U_21" id="FNanchor_U_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_U_21" class="fnanchor">[U]</a></p>
+
+<p>96. Thus far of the state of the artist himself. I pass, next
+to the relation between him and his subordinate, the wood-cutter.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The modern artist requires him to cut a hundred and fifty-seven
+lines in the wig only,&mdash;the old artist requires him to
+cut forty-five for the face, and long hair, altogether. The
+actual proportion is roughly, and on the average, about one
+to twenty of cost in manual labor, ancient to modern,&mdash;the
+twentieth part of the mechanical labor, to produce an immortal
+instead of a perishable work,&mdash;the twentieth part of the
+labor; and&mdash;which is the greatest difference of all&mdash;that
+twentieth part, at once less mechanically difficult, and more
+mentally pleasant. Mr. Otley, in his general History of
+Engraving, says, "The greatest difficulty in wood engraving
+occurs in clearing out the minute quadrangular lights;" and
+in any modern woodcut you will see that where the lines
+of the drawing cross each other to produce shade, the white
+interstices are cut out so neatly that there is no appearance
+of any jag or break in the lines; they look exactly as if they
+had been drawn with a pen. It is chiefly difficult to cut the
+pieces clearly out when the lines cross at right angles; easier
+when they form oblique or diamond-shaped interstices; but
+in any case some half-dozen cuts, and in square crossings as
+many as twenty, are required to clear one interstice. Therefore
+if I carelessly draw six strokes with my pen across other
+six, I produce twenty-five interstices, each of which will need
+at least six, perhaps twenty, careful touches of the burin to
+clear out.&mdash;Say ten for an average; and I demand two hundred
+and fifty exquisitely precise touches from my engraver,
+to render ten careless ones of mine.</p>
+
+<p>97. Now I take up Punch, at his best. The whole of the
+left side of John Bull's waistcoat&mdash;the shadow on his knee-breeches
+and great-coat&mdash;the whole of the Lord Chancellor's
+gown, and of John Bull's and Sir Peter Teazle's complexions,
+are worked with finished precision of cross-hatching.
+These have indeed some purpose in their texture; but in the
+most wanton and gratuitous way, the wall below the window
+is cross-hatched too, and that not with a double, but a treble
+line (Fig. 4).<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There are about thirty of these columns, with thirty-five
+interstices each: approximately, 1,050&mdash;certainly not fewer&mdash;interstices
+to be deliberately cut clear,
+to get that two inches square of shadow.
+Now calculate&mdash;or think enough to
+feel the impossibility of calculating&mdash;the
+number of woodcuts used daily for
+our popular prints, and how many men
+are night and day cutting 1,050 square
+holes to the square inch, as the occupation
+of their manly life. And Mrs. Beecher Stowe and the
+North Americans fancy they have abolished slavery!</p>
+
+
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 152px;">
+<a id="Fig_4" name="Fig_4"></a>
+<img src="images/image068.png" width="152" height="138" alt="Fig. 4. A lattice of intersecting lines" title="" />
+<span class="caption"><span class="smcap">Fig. 4.</span></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>98. The workman cannot have even the consolation of
+pride; for his task, even in its finest accomplishment, is not
+really difficult,&mdash;only tedious. When you have once got into
+the practice, it is as easy as lying. To cut regular holes
+<span class="smcap">without</span> a purpose is easy enough; but to cut <i>ir</i>regular holes
+<span class="smcap">with</span> a purpose, that is difficult, forever;&mdash;no tricks of tool
+or trade will give you power to do that.</p>
+
+<p>The supposed difficulty&mdash;the thing which, at all events,
+it takes time to learn, is to cut the interstices neat, and each
+like the other. But is there any reason, do you suppose, for
+their being neat, and each like the other? So far from it,
+they would be twenty times prettier if they were irregular,
+and each different from the other. And an old wood-cutter,
+instead of taking pride in cutting these interstices smooth
+and alike, resolutely cuts them rough and irregular; taking
+care, at the same time, never to have any more than are
+wanted, this being only one part of the general system of
+intelligent manipulation, which made so good an artist of the
+engraver that it is impossible to say of any standard old woodcut,
+whether the draughtsman engraved it himself or not.
+I should imagine, from the character and subtlety of the
+touch, that every line of the Dance of Death had been
+engraved by Holbein; we know it was not, and that there can
+be no certainty given by even the finest pieces of wood execution
+of anything more than perfect harmony between the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>
+designer and workman. And consider how much this harmony
+demands in the latter. Not that the modern engraver
+is unintelligent in applying his mechanical skill: very often
+he greatly improves the drawing; but we never could mistake
+his hand for Holbein's.</p>
+
+<p>99. The true merit, then, of wood execution, as regards
+this matter of cross-hatching, is first that there be no more
+crossing than necessary; secondly, that all the interstices be
+various, and rough. You may look through the entire series
+of the Dance of Death without finding any cross-hatching
+whatever, except in a few unimportant bits of background,
+so rude as to need scarcely more than one touch to each
+interstice. Albert D&uuml;rer crosses more definitely; but yet, in
+any fold of his drapery, every white spot differs in size from
+every other, and the arrangement of the whole is delightful,
+by the kind of variety which the spots on a leopard have.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, where either expression or form can
+be rendered by the shape of the lights and darks, the old
+engraver becomes as careful as in an ordinary ground he is
+careless.</p>
+
+<p>The endeavor, with your own hand, and common pen and
+ink, to copy a small piece of either of the two Holbein woodcuts
+(Figures <a href="#Fig_2">2</a> and  <a href="#Fig_3">3</a>) will prove this to you better than any
+words.</p>
+
+<p>100. I said that, had Tenniel been rightly trained, there
+might have been the making of a Holbein, or nearly a Holbein,
+in him. I do not know; but I can turn from his work to
+that of a man who was not trained at all, and who was,
+without training, Holbein's equal.</p>
+
+<p>Equal, in the sense that this brown stone, in my left hand,
+is the equal, though not the likeness, of that in my right.
+They are both of the same true and pure crystal; but the one
+is brown with iron, and never touched by forming hand;
+the other has never been in rough companionship, and has
+been exquisitely polished. So with these two men. The one
+was the companion of Erasmus and Sir Thomas More. His
+father was so good an artist that you cannot always tell their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>
+drawings asunder. But the other was a farmer's son; and
+learned his trade in the back shops of Newcastle.</p>
+
+<p>Yet the first book I asked you to get was his biography;
+and in this frame are set together a drawing by Hans Holbein,
+and one by Thomas Bewick. I know which is most scholarly;
+but I do <i>not</i> know which is best.</p>
+
+<p><a id="Sect_101" name="Sect_101"></a>101. It is much to say for the self-taught Englishman;&mdash;yet
+do not congratulate yourselves on his simplicity. I
+told you, a little while since, that the English nobles had left
+the history of birds to be written, and their spots to be drawn,
+by a printer's lad;&mdash;but I did not tell you their farther loss
+in the fact that this printer's lad could have written their own
+histories, and drawn their own spots, if they had let him.
+But they had no history to be written; and were too closely
+maculate to be portrayed;&mdash;white ground in most places
+altogether obscured. Had there been Mores and Henrys
+to draw, Bewick could have drawn them; and would have
+found his function. As it was, the nobles of his day left
+him to draw the frogs, and pigs, and sparrows&mdash;of his day,
+which seemed to him, in his solitude, the best types of its
+Nobility. No sight or thought of beautiful things was ever
+granted him;&mdash;no heroic creature, goddess-born&mdash;how much
+less any native Deity&mdash;ever shone upon him. To his utterly
+English mind, the straw of the sty, and its tenantry, were
+abiding truth;&mdash;the cloud of Olympus, and its tenantry, a
+child's dream. He could draw a pig, but not an Aphrodite.</p>
+
+<p>102. The three pieces of woodcut from his Fables (the
+two lower ones enlarged) in the opposite plate, show his
+utmost strength and utmost rudeness. I must endeavor to
+make you thoroughly understand both:&mdash;the magnificent
+artistic power, the flawless virtue, veracity, tenderness,&mdash;the
+infinite humor of the man; and yet the difference between
+England and Florence, in the use they make of such gifts
+in their children.</p>
+
+<p>For the moment, however, I confine myself to the examination
+of technical points; and we must follow our former
+conclusions a little further.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 290px;">
+<a id="Plate_I" name="Plate_I"></a>
+<img src="images/image071.png" width="290" height="685" alt="I. Things Celestial and Terrestrial, as apparent
+to the English Mind." title="" />
+<p class="caption center">I.</p>
+<p class="caption center">Things Celestial and Terrestrial, as apparent
+to the English Mind.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>103. Because our lines in wood must be thick, it becomes
+an extreme virtue in wood engraving to economize lines,&mdash;not
+merely, as in all other art, to save time and power, but
+because, our lines being necessarily blunt, we must make up
+our minds to do with fewer, by many, than are in the object.
+But is this necessarily a disadvantage?</p>
+
+<p><i>Absolutely</i>, an immense disadvantage,&mdash;a woodcut never
+can be so beautiful or good a thing as a painting, or line
+engraving. But in its own separate and useful way, an
+excellent thing, because, practiced rightly, it exercises in the
+artist, and summons in you, the habit of abstraction; that
+is to say, of deciding what are the essential points in the
+things you see, and seizing these; a habit entirely necessary
+to strong humanity; and so natural to all humanity, that it
+leads, in its indolent and undisciplined states, to all the vulgar
+amateur's liking of sketches better than pictures. The sketch
+seems to put the thing for him into a concentrated and exciting
+form.</p>
+
+<p>104. Observe, therefore, to guard you from this error,
+that a bad sketch is good for nothing; and that nobody can
+make a good sketch unless they generally are trying to finish
+with extreme care. But the abstraction of the essential
+particulars in his subject by a line-master, has a peculiar
+didactic value. For painting, when it is complete, leaves it
+much to your own judgment what to look at; and, if you are
+a fool, you look at the wrong thing;&mdash;but in a fine woodcut,
+the master says to you, "You <i>shall</i> look at this, or at nothing."</p>
+
+<p>105. For example, here is a little tailpiece of Bewick's,
+to the fable of the Frogs and the Stork.<a name="FNanchor_V_22" id="FNanchor_V_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_V_22" class="fnanchor">[V]</a> He is, as I told
+you, as stout a reformer as Holbein,<a name="FNanchor_W_23" id="FNanchor_W_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_W_23" class="fnanchor">[W]</a> or Botticelli, or Luther,
+or Savonarola; and, as an impartial reformer, hits right and
+left, at lower or upper classes, if he sees them wrong. Most
+frequently, he strikes at vice, without reference to class; but
+in this vignette he strikes definitely at the degradation of
+the viler popular mind which is incapable of being governed,
+because it cannot understand the nobleness of kingship. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span>
+has written&mdash;better than written, engraved, sure to suffer no
+slip of type&mdash;his legend under the drawing; so that we know
+his meaning:</p>
+
+<p>"Set them up with a king, indeed!"</p>
+
+<p>106. There is an audience of seven frogs, listening to a
+speaker, or croaker, in the middle; and Bewick has set himself
+to show in all, but especially in the speaker, essential
+frogginess of mind&mdash;the marsh temper. He could not have
+done it half so well in painting as he has done by the abstraction
+of wood-outline. The characteristic of a manly mind,
+or body, is to be gentle in temper, and firm in constitution;
+the contrary essence of a froggy mind and body is to be
+angular in temper, and flabby in constitution. I have
+enlarged Bewick's orator-frog for you, Plate I. c., and I
+think you will feel that he is entirely expressed in those
+essential particulars.</p>
+
+<p>This being perfectly good wood-cutting, notice especially
+its deliberation. No scrawling or scratching, or cross-hatching,
+or '<i>free</i>' work of any sort. Most deliberate laying
+down of solid lines and dots, of which you cannot change one.
+The real difficulty of wood engraving is to cut every one of
+these black lines or spaces of the exactly right shape, and not
+at all to cross-hatch them cleanly.</p>
+
+<p>107. Next, examine the technical treatment of the pig,
+above. I have purposely chosen this as an example of a white
+object on dark ground, and the frog as a dark object on light
+ground, to explain to you what I mean by saying that fine
+engraving regards local color, but not light and shade. You
+see both frog and pig are absolutely without light and shade.
+The frog, indeed, casts a shadow; but his hind leg is as white
+as his throat. In the pig you don't even know which way the
+light falls. But you know at once that the pig is white, and
+the frog brown or green.</p>
+
+<p>108. There are, however, two pieces of chiaroscuro <i>implied</i>
+in the treatment of the pig. It is assumed that his curly tail
+would be light against the background&mdash;dark against his own
+rump. This little piece of heraldic quartering is absolutely<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>
+necessary to solidify him. He would have been a white
+ghost of a pig, flat on the background, but for that alternative
+tail, and the bits of dark behind the ears. Secondly:
+Where the shade is necessary to suggest the position of his
+ribs, it is given with graphic and chosen points of dark, as
+few as possible; not for the sake of the shade at all, but of
+the skin and bone.</p>
+
+<p>109. That, then, being the law of refused chiaroscuro,
+observe further the method of outline. We said that we
+were to have thick lines in wood, if possible. Look what
+thickness of black outline Bewick has left under our pig's
+chin, and above his nose.</p>
+
+<p>But that is not a line at all, you think?</p>
+
+<p>No;&mdash;a modern engraver would have made it one, and
+prided himself on getting it fine. Bewick leaves it actually
+thicker than the snout, but puts all his ingenuity of touch to
+vary the forms, and break the extremities of his white cuts,
+so that the eye may be refreshed and relieved by new forms
+at every turn. The group of white touches filling the space
+between snout and ears might be a wreath of fine-weather
+clouds, so studiously are they grouped and broken.</p>
+
+<p>And nowhere, you see, does a single black line cross another.</p>
+
+<p>Look back to <a href="#Fig_4">Figure 4, page 54</a>, and you will know, henceforward,
+the difference between good and bad wood-cutting.</p>
+
+<p>110. We have also, in the lower woodcut, a notable instance
+of Bewick's power of abstraction. You will observe that one
+of the chief characters of this frog, which makes him humorous,&mdash;next
+to his vain endeavor to get some firmness into his
+fore feet,&mdash;is his obstinately angular hump-back. And you
+must feel, when you see it so marked, how important a
+general character of a frog it is to have a hump-back,&mdash;not
+at the shoulders, but the loins.</p>
+
+<p>111. Here, then, is a case in which you will see the exact
+function that anatomy should take in art.</p>
+
+<p>All the most scientific anatomy in the world would never
+have taught Bewick, much less you, how to draw a frog.</p>
+
+<p>But when once you <i>have</i> drawn him, or looked at him, so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span>
+as to know his points, it then becomes entirely interesting
+to find out <i>why</i> he has a hump-back. So I went myself
+yesterday to Professor Rolleston for a little anatomy, just
+as I should have gone to Professor Phillips for a little
+geology; and the Professor brought me a fine little active
+frog; and we put him on the table, and made him jump all
+over it, and then the Professor brought in a charming Squelette
+of a frog, and showed me that he needed a projecting
+bone from his rump, as a bird needs it from its breast,&mdash;the
+one to attach the strong muscles of the hind legs, as the other
+to attach those of the fore legs or wings. So that the entire
+leaping power of the frog is in his hump-back, as the flying
+power of the bird is in its breast-bone. And thus this Frog
+Parliament is most literally a Rump Parliament&mdash;everything
+depending on the hind legs, and nothing on the
+brains; which makes it wonderfully like some other Parliaments
+we know of nowadays, with Mr. Ayrton and Mr. Lowe
+for their &aelig;sthetic and acquisitive eyes, and a rump of Railway
+Directors.</p>
+
+<p>112. Now, to conclude, for want of time only&mdash;I have but
+touched on the beginning of my subject,&mdash;understand clearly
+and finally this simple principle of all art, that the best is that
+which realizes absolutely, if possible. Here is a viper by Carpaccio:
+you are afraid to go near it. Here is an arm-chair by
+Carpaccio: you who came in late, and are standing, to my regret,
+would like to sit down in it. This is consummate art;
+but you can only have that with consummate means, and
+exquisitely trained and hereditary mental power.</p>
+
+<p>With inferior means, and average mental power, you must
+be content to give a rude abstraction; but if rude abstraction
+<i>is</i> to be made, think what a difference there must be between
+a wise man's and a fool's; and consider what heavy responsibility
+lies upon you in your youth, to determine, among realities,
+by what you will be delighted, and, among imaginations,
+by whose you will be led.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_Q_17" id="Footnote_Q_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_Q_17"><span class="label">[Q]</span></a> By Mr. Burgess. The toil and skill necessary to produce a facsimile
+of this degree of precision will only be recognized by the reader
+who has had considerable experience of actual work.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_R_18" id="Footnote_R_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_R_18"><span class="label">[R]</span></a> The ordinary title-page of Punch.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_S_19" id="Footnote_S_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_S_19"><span class="label">[S]</span></a> In the lecture-room, the relative rates of execution were shown;
+I arrive at this estimate by timing the completion of two small pieces
+of shade in the two methods.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_T_20" id="Footnote_T_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_T_20"><span class="label">[T]</span></a> John Bull, as Sir Oliver Surface, with Sir Peter Teazle and Joseph
+Surface. It appeared in Punch, early in 1863.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_U_21" id="Footnote_U_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_U_21"><span class="label">[U]</span></a> In preparing these passages for the press, I feel perpetual need of
+qualifications and limitations, for it is impossible to surpass the humor,
+or precision of expressional touch, in the really golden parts of Tenniel's
+works; and they <i>may</i> be immortal, as representing what is best
+in their day.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_V_22" id="Footnote_V_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_V_22"><span class="label">[V]</span></a> From Bewick's &AElig;sop's Fables.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_W_23" id="Footnote_W_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_W_23"><span class="label">[W]</span></a> See <i>ante</i>, <a href="#Sect_43">&sect; 43</a>.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="gap3"><a name="LECTURE_IV" id="LECTURE_IV"></a>LECTURE IV.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE TECHNICS OF METAL ENGRAVING.</h3>
+
+
+<p>113. We are to-day to examine the proper methods for the
+technical management of the most perfect of the arms of precision
+possessed by the artist. For you will at once understand
+that a line cut by a finely-pointed instrument upon the
+smooth surface of metal is susceptible of the utmost fineness
+that can be given to the <i>definite</i> work of the human hand. In
+drawing with pen upon paper, the surface of the paper is
+slightly rough; necessarily, two points touch it instead of one,
+and the liquid flows from them more or less irregularly, whatever
+the draughtsman's skill. But you cut a metallic surface
+with one edge only; the furrow drawn by a skater on the surface
+of ice is like it on a large scale. Your surface is polished,
+and your line may be wholly faultless, if your hand is.</p>
+
+<p>114. And because, in such material, effects may be produced
+which no penmanship could rival, most people, I fancy,
+think that a steel plate half engraves itself; that the workman
+has no trouble with it, compared to that of a pen draughtsman.</p>
+
+<p>To test your feeling in this matter accurately, here is a
+manuscript book written with pen and ink, and illustrated
+with flourishes and vignettes.</p>
+
+<p>You will all, I think, be disposed, on examining it, to exclaim,
+How wonderful! and even to doubt the possibility of
+every page in the book being completed in the same manner.
+Again, here are three of my own drawings, executed with the
+pen, and Indian ink, when I was fifteen. They are copies
+from large lithographs by Prout; and I imagine that most of
+my pupils would think me very tyrannical if I requested<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span>
+them to do anything of the kind themselves. And yet, when
+you see in the shop windows a line engraving like this,<a href="#Footnote_X_24" class="fnanchor">[X]</a> or
+this,<a name="FNanchor_X_24" id="FNanchor_X_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_X_24" class="fnanchor">[X]</a> either of which contains, alone, as much work as fifty
+pages of the manuscript book, or fifty such drawings as mine,
+you look upon its effect as quite a matter of course,&mdash;you
+never say 'how wonderful' <i>that</i> is, nor consider how you
+would like to have to live, by producing anything of the same
+kind yourselves.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 550px;">
+<a id="Plate_II" name="Plate_II"></a>
+<img src="images/image079.png" width="550" height="392" alt="II. The Star of FLORENCE." title="" />
+<p class="caption center">II.</p>
+<p class="caption center">The Star of FLORENCE.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>115. Yet you cannot suppose it is in reality easier to draw
+a line with a cutting point, not seeing the effect at all, or, if
+any effect, seeing a gleam of light instead of darkness, than
+to draw your black line at once on the white paper? You
+cannot really think<a name="FNanchor_Y_25" id="FNanchor_Y_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_Y_25" class="fnanchor">[Y]</a> that there is something complacent, sympathetic,
+and helpful in the nature of steel; so that while a
+pen-and-ink sketch may always be considered an achievement
+proving cleverness in the sketcher, a sketch on steel comes out
+by mere favor of the indulgent metal; or that the plate is
+woven like a piece of pattern silk, and the pattern is developed
+by pasteboard cards punched full of holes? Not so. Look
+close at this engraving, or take a smaller and simpler one,
+Turner's Mercury and Argus,&mdash;imagine it to be a drawing in
+pen and ink, and yourself required similarly to produce its
+parallel! True, the steel point has the one advantage of not
+blotting, but it has tenfold or twentyfold disadvantage, in that
+you cannot slur, nor efface, except in a very resolute and laborious
+way, nor play with it, nor even see what you are doing
+with it at the moment, far less the effect that is to be. You
+must <i>feel</i> what you are doing with it, and know precisely what
+you have got to do; how deep, how broad, how far apart your
+lines must be, etc. and etc., (a couple of lines of etceteras
+would not be enough to imply all you must know). But sup<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>pose
+the plate <i>were</i> only a pen drawing: take your pen&mdash;your
+finest&mdash;and just try to copy the leaves that entangle the head
+of Io, and her head itself; remembering always that the kind
+of work required here is mere child's play compared to that
+of fine figure engraving. Nevertheless, take a small magnifying
+glass to this&mdash;count the dots and lines that gradate the
+nostrils and the edges of the facial bone; notice how the light
+is left on the top of the head by the stopping, at its outline,
+of the coarse touches which form the shadows under the
+leaves; examine it well, and then&mdash;I humbly ask of you&mdash;try
+to do a piece of it yourself! You clever sketcher&mdash;you
+young lady or gentleman of genius&mdash;you eye-glassed dilettante&mdash;you
+current writer of criticism royally plural,&mdash;I beseech
+you,&mdash;do it yourself; do the merely etched outline yourself,
+if no more. Look you,&mdash;you hold your etching needle
+this way, as you would a pencil, nearly; and then,&mdash;you
+scratch with it! it is as easy as lying. Or if you think that
+too difficult, take an easier piece;&mdash;take either of the light
+sprays of foliage that rise against the fortress on the right,
+pass your lens over them&mdash;look how their fine outline is first
+drawn, leaf by leaf; then how the distant rock is put in between,
+with broken lines, mostly stopping before they touch
+the leaf-outline; and again, I pray you, do it yourself,&mdash;if
+not on that scale, on a larger. Go on into the hollows of the
+distant rock,&mdash;traverse its thickets,&mdash;number its towers;&mdash;count
+how many lines there are in a laurel bush&mdash;in an arch&mdash;in
+a casement; some hundred and fifty, or two hundred, deliberately
+drawn lines, you will find, in every square quarter
+of an inch;&mdash;say <i>three thousand to the inch</i>,&mdash;each, with
+skillful intent, put in its place! and then consider what the
+ordinary sketcher's work must appear, to the men who have
+been trained to this!</p>
+
+<p>116. "But might not more have been done by three thousand
+lines to a square inch?" you will perhaps ask. Well,
+possibly. It may be with lines as with soldiers: three hundred,
+knowing their work thoroughly, may be stronger than
+three thousand less sure of their aim. We shall have to press<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>
+close home this question about numbers and purpose presently;&mdash;it
+is not the question now. Suppose certain results
+required,&mdash;atmospheric effects, surface textures, transparencies
+of shade, confusions of light,&mdash;then, more could <i>not</i> be
+done with less. There are engravings of this modern school,
+of which, with respect to their particular aim, it may be said,
+most truly, they "cannot be better done."</p>
+
+<p>Here is one just finished,&mdash;or, at least, finished to the eyes
+of ordinary mortals, though its fastidious master means to
+retouch it;&mdash;a quite pure line engraving, by Mr. Charles
+Henry Jeens; (in calling it pure line, I mean that there
+are no mixtures of mezzotint or any mechanical tooling,
+but all is steady hand-work,) from a picture by Mr. Armytage,
+which, without possessing any of the highest claims to
+admiration, is yet free from the vulgar vices which disgrace
+most of our popular religious art; and is so sweet in the fancy
+of it as to deserve, better than many works of higher power,
+the pains of the engraver to make it a common possession. It
+is meant to help us to imagine the evening of the day when
+the father and mother of Christ had been seeking Him
+through Jerusalem: they have come to a well where women
+are drawing water; St. Joseph passes on,&mdash;but the tired Madonna,
+leaning on the well's margin, asks wistfully of the
+women if they have seen such and such a child astray. Now
+will you just look for a while into the lines by which the expression
+of the weary and anxious face is rendered; see how
+unerring they are,&mdash;how calm and clear; and think how many
+questions have to be determined in drawing the most minute
+portion of any one,&mdash;its curve,&mdash;its thickness,&mdash;its distance
+from the next,&mdash;its own preparation for ending, invisibly,
+where it ends. Think what the precision must be in these
+that trace the edge of the lip, and make it look quivering with
+disappointment, or in these which have made the eyelash
+heavy with restrained tears.</p>
+
+<p>117. Or if, as must be the case with many of my audience,
+it is impossible for you to conceive the difficulties here overcome,
+look merely at the draperies, and other varied sub<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>stances
+represented in the plate; see how silk, and linen, and
+stone, and pottery, and flesh, are all separated in texture, and
+gradated in light, by the most subtle artifices and appliances
+of line,&mdash;of which artifices, and the nature of the mechanical
+labor throughout, I must endeavor to give you to-day a more
+distinct conception than you are in the habit of forming.
+But as I shall have to blame some of these methods in their
+general result, and I do not wish any word of general blame
+to be associated with this most excellent and careful plate by
+Mr. Jeens, I will pass, for special examination, to one already
+in your reference series, which for the rest exhibits
+more various treatment in its combined landscape, background,
+and figures; the Belle Jardini&egrave;re of Raphael, drawn
+and engraved by the Baron Desnoyers.</p>
+
+<p>You see, in the first place, that the ground, stones, and
+other coarse surfaces are distinguished from the flesh and
+draperies by broken and wriggled lines. Those broken lines
+cannot be executed with the burin, they are etched in the
+early states of the plate, and are a modern artifice, never used
+by old engravers; partly because the older men were not masters
+of the art of etching, but chiefly because even those who
+were acquainted with it would not employ lines of this nature.
+They have been developed by the importance of landscape
+in modern engraving, and have produced some valuable
+results in small plates, especially of architecture. But they
+are entirely erroneous in principle, for the surface of stones
+and leaves is not broken or jagged in this manner, but consists
+of mossy, or blooming, or otherwise organic texture, which
+cannot be represented by these coarse lines; their general consequence
+has therefore been to withdraw the mind of the observer
+from all beautiful and tender characters in foreground,
+and eventually to destroy the very school of landscape engraving
+which gave birth to them.</p>
+
+<p>Considered, however, as a means of relieving more delicate
+textures, they are in some degree legitimate, being, in
+fact, a kind of chasing or jagging one part of the plate surface
+in order to throw out the delicate tints from the rough field.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>
+But the same effect was produced with less pains, and far
+more entertainment to the eye, by the older engravers, who
+employed purely ornamental variations of line; thus in <a href="#Plate_IV">Plate
+IV.</a>, opposite &sect; 137, the drapery is sufficiently distinguished
+from the grass by the treatment of the latter as an ornamental
+arabesque. The grain of wood is elaborately engraved by
+Marc Antonio, with the same purpose, in the plate given in
+your Standard Series.</p>
+
+<p>118. Next, however, you observe what difference of texture
+and force exists between the smooth, continuous lines themselves,
+which are all really <i>engraved</i>. You must take some
+pains to understand the nature of this operation.</p>
+
+<p>The line is first cut lightly through its whole course, by
+absolute decision and steadiness of hand, which you may
+endeavor to imitate if you like, in its simplest phase, by
+drawing a circle with your compass-pen; and then, grasping
+your penholder so that you can push the point like a plow,
+describing other circles inside or outside of it, in exact
+parallelism with the mathematical line, and at exactly equal
+distances. To approach, or depart, with your point at finely
+gradated intervals, may be your next exercise, if you find
+the first unexpectedly easy.</p>
+
+<p>119. When the line is thus described in its proper course,
+it is plowed deeper, where depth is needed, by a second
+cut of the burin, first on one side, then on the other, the cut
+being given with gradated force so as to take away most steel
+where the line is to be darkest. Every line of gradated depth
+in the plate has to be thus cut eight or ten times over at
+least, with retouchings to smooth and clear all in the close.
+Jason has to plow his field ten-furrow deep, with his fiery
+oxen well in hand, all the while.</p>
+
+<p>When the essential lines are thus produced in their several
+directions, those which have been drawn across each other,
+so as to give depth of shade, or richness of texture, have
+to be farther enriched by dots in the interstices; else there
+would be a painful appearance of network everywhere; and
+these dots require each four or five jags to produce them; and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>
+each of these jags must be done with what artists and engravers
+alike call 'feeling,'&mdash;the sensibility, that is, of a hand
+completely under mental government. So wrought, the dots
+look soft, and like touches of paint; but mechanically dug
+in, they are vulgar and hard.</p>
+
+<p>120. Now, observe, that, for every piece of shadow throughout
+the work, the engraver has to decide with what quantity
+and kind of line he will produce it. Exactly the same
+quantity of black, and therefore the same depth of tint in
+general effect, may be given with six thick lines; or with
+twelve, of half their thickness; or with eighteen, of a third
+of the thickness. The second six, second twelve, or second
+eighteen, may cross the first six, first twelve, or first eighteen,
+or go between them; and they may cross at any angle. And
+then the third six may be put between the first six, or
+between the second six, or across both, and at any angle. In
+the network thus produced, any kind of dots may be put in
+the severally shaped interstices. And for any of the series
+of superadded lines, dots, of equivalent value in shade, may
+be substituted. (Some engravings are wrought in dots
+altogether.) Choice infinite, with multiplication of infinity,
+is, at all events, to be made, for every minute space, from one
+side of the plate to the other.</p>
+
+<p>121. The excellence of a beautiful engraving is primarily
+in the use of these resources to exhibit the qualities of the
+original picture, with delight to the eye in the method of translation;
+and the language of engraving, when once you begin
+to understand it, is, in these respects, so fertile, so ingenious,
+so ineffably subtle and severe in its grammar, that you may
+quite easily make it the subject of your life's investigation,
+as you would the scholarship of a lovely literature.</p>
+
+<p>But in doing this, you would withdraw, and necessarily
+withdraw, your attention from the higher qualities of art, precisely
+as a grammarian, who is that, and nothing more, loses
+command of the matter and substance of thought. And the
+exquisitely mysterious mechanisms of the engraver's method
+have, in fact, thus entangled the intelligence of the careful<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>
+draughtsmen of Europe; so that since the final perfection of
+this translator's power, all the men of finest patience and
+finest hand have stayed content with it;&mdash;the subtlest
+draughtsmanship has perished from the canvas,<a name="FNanchor_Z_26" id="FNanchor_Z_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_Z_26" class="fnanchor">[Z]</a> and sought
+more popular praise in this labyrinth of disciplined language,
+and more or less dulled or degraded thought. And,
+in sum, I know no cause more direct or fatal, in the destruction
+of the great schools of European art, than the perfectness
+of modern line engraving.</p>
+
+<p>122. This great and profoundly to be regretted influence I
+will prove and illustrate to you on another occasion. My
+object to-day is to explain the perfectness of the art itself;
+and above all to request you, if you will not look at pictures
+instead of photographs, at least not to allow the cheap merits
+of the chemical operation to withdraw your interest from the
+splendid human labor of the engraver. Here is a little
+vignette from Stothard, for instance, in Rogers' poems, to
+the lines,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Soared in the swing, half pleased and half afraid,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Neath sister elms, that waved their summer shade."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>You would think, would you not? (and rightly,) that of all
+difficult things to express with crossed black lines and dots,
+the face of a young girl must be the most difficult. Yet here
+you have the face of a bright girl, radiant in light, transparent,
+mysterious, almost breathing,&mdash;her dark hair involved
+in delicate wreath and shade, her eyes full of joy and sweet
+playfulness,&mdash;and all this done by the exquisite order and
+gradation of a very few lines, which, if you will examine
+them through a lens, you find dividing and checkering the
+lip, and cheek, and chin, so strongly that you would have
+fancied they could only produce the effect of a grim iron
+mask. But the intelligences of order and form guide them
+into beauty, and inflame them with delicatest life.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>123. And do you see the size of this head? About as
+large as the bud of a forget-me-not! Can you imagine the
+fineness of the little pressures of the hand on the steel, in that
+space, which at the edge of the almost invisible lip, fashioned
+its less or more of smile?</p>
+
+<p>My chemical friends, if you wish ever to know anything
+rightly concerning the arts, I very urgently advise you to
+throw all your vials and washes down the gutter-trap; and
+if you will ascribe, as you think it so clever to do, in your
+modern creeds, all virtue to the sun, use that virtue through
+your own heads and fingers, and apply your solar energies
+to draw a skillful line or two, for once or twice in your life.
+You may learn more by trying to engrave, like Goodall, the
+tip of an ear, or the curl of a lock of hair, than by photographing
+the entire population of the United States of America,&mdash;black,
+white, and neutral-tint.</p>
+
+<p>And one word, by the way, touching the complaints I
+hear at my having set you to so fine work that it hurts your
+eyes. You have noticed that all great sculptors&mdash;and most of
+the great painters of Florence&mdash;began by being goldsmiths.
+Why do you think the goldsmith's apprenticeship is so fruitful?
+Primarily, because it forces the boy to do small work,
+and mind what he is about. Do you suppose Michael Angelo
+learned his business by dashing or hitting at it? He laid
+the foundation of all his after power by doing precisely what
+I am requiring my own pupils to do,&mdash;copying German
+engravings in facsimile! And for your eyes&mdash;you all sit up
+at night till you haven't got any eyes worth speaking of. Go
+to bed at half-past nine, and get up at four, and you'll see
+something out of them, in time.</p>
+
+<p>124. Nevertheless, whatever admiration you may be
+brought to feel, and with justice, for this lovely workmanship,&mdash;the
+more distinctly you comprehend its merits, the more
+distinctly also will the question rise in your mind, How is
+it that a performance so marvelous has yet taken no rank
+in the records of art of any permanent or acknowledged kind?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span>
+How is it that these vignettes from Stothard and Turner,<a name="FNanchor_AA_27" id="FNanchor_AA_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_AA_27" class="fnanchor">[AA]</a>
+like the woodcuts from Tenniel, scarcely make the name of
+the engraver known; and that they never are found side by
+side with this older and apparently ruder art, in the cabinets
+of men of real judgment? The reason is precisely the same
+as in the case of the Tenniel woodcut. This modern line
+engraving is alloyed gold. Rich in capacity, astonishing in
+attainment, it nevertheless admits willful fault, and misses
+what it ought first to have attained. It is therefore, to
+a certain measure, vile in its perfection; while the older work
+is noble even in its failure, and classic no less in what it
+deliberately refuses, than in what it rationally and rightly
+prefers and performs.</p>
+
+<p>125. Here, for instance, I have enlarged the head of one
+of D&uuml;rer's Madonnas for you out of one of his most careful
+plates.<a name="FNanchor_AB_28" id="FNanchor_AB_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_AB_28" class="fnanchor">[AB]</a> You think it very ugly. Well, so it is. Don't be
+afraid to think so, nor to say so. Frightfully ugly; vulgar
+also. It is the head, simply, of a fat Dutch girl, with all the
+pleasantness left out. There is not the least doubt about
+that. Don't let anybody force Albert D&uuml;rer down your
+throats; nor make you expect pretty things from him.
+Stothard's young girl in the swing, or Sir Joshua's Age of
+Innocence, is in quite angelic sphere of another world, compared
+to this black domain of poor, laborious Albert. We
+are not talking of female beauty, so please you, just now,
+gentlemen, but of engraving. And the merit, the classical,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>
+indefeasible, immortal merit of this head of a Dutch girl
+with all the beauty left out, is in the fact that every line of
+it, as engraving, is as good as can be;&mdash;good, not with the
+mechanical dexterity of a watch-maker, but with the intellectual
+effort and sensitiveness of an artist who knows precisely
+what can be done, and ought to be attempted, with his
+assigned materials. He works easily, fearlessly, flexibly; the
+dots are not all measured in distance; the lines not all mathematically
+parallel or divergent. He has even missed his mark
+at the mouth in one place, and leaves the mistake, frankly.
+But there are no petrified mistakes; nor is the eye so accustomed
+to the look of the mechanical furrow as to accept it
+for final excellence. The engraving is full of the painter's
+higher power and wider perception; it is classically perfect,
+because duly subordinate, and presenting for your applause
+only the virtues proper to its own sphere. Among these, I
+must now reiterate, the first of all is the <i>decorative</i> arrangement
+of <i>lines</i>.</p>
+
+<p>126. You all know what a pretty thing a damask tablecloth
+is, and how a pattern is brought out by threads running
+one way in one space, and across in another. So, in lace, a
+certain delightfulness is given by the texture of meshed lines.</p>
+
+<p>Similarly, on any surface of metal, the object of the
+engraver is, or ought to be, to cover it with lovely <i>lines</i>, forming
+a lace-work, and including a variety of spaces, delicious
+to the eye.</p>
+
+<p>And this is his business, primarily; before any other
+matter can be thought of, his work must be ornamental. You
+know I told you a sculptor's business is first to cover a surface
+with pleasant <i>bosses</i>, whether they mean anything or not; so
+an engraver's is to cover it with pleasant <i>lines</i>, whether they
+mean anything or not. That they should mean something,
+and a good deal of something, is indeed desirable afterwards;
+but first we must be ornamental.</p>
+
+<p>127. Now if you will compare <a href="#Plate_II">Plate II.</a> at the beginning
+of this lecture, which is a characteristic example of good
+Florentine engraving, and represents the Planet and power<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>
+of Aphrodite, with the Aphrodite of Bewick in the upper
+division of <a href="#Plate_I">Plate I.</a>, you will at once understand the difference
+between a primarily ornamental, and a primarily
+realistic, style. The first requirement in the Florentine
+work, is that it shall be a lovely arrangement of lines; a pretty
+thing upon a page. Bewick <i>has</i> a secondary notion of making
+his vignette a pretty thing upon a page. But he is overpowered
+by his vigorous veracity, and bent first on giving
+you his idea of Venus. Quite right, he would have been,
+mind you, if he had been carving a statue of her on Mount
+Eryx; but not when he was engraving a vignette to &AElig;sop's
+fables. To engrave well is to ornament a surface well, not
+to create a realistic impression. I beg your pardon for my
+repetitions; but the point at issue is the root of the whole
+business, and I <i>must</i> get it well asserted, and variously.</p>
+
+<p>Let me pass to a more important example.</p>
+
+<p>128. Three years ago, in the rough first arrangement of
+the copies in the Educational Series, I put an outline of the
+top of Apollo's scepter, which, in the catalogue, was said to
+be probably by Baccio Bandini of Florence, for your first
+real exercise; it remains so, the olive being put first only for
+its mythological rank.</p>
+
+<p>The series of engravings to which the plate from which
+that exercise is copied belongs, are part of a number, executed
+chiefly, I think, from early designs of Sandro Botticelli, and
+some in great part by his hand. He and his assistant, Baccio,
+worked together; and in such harmony, that Bandini probably
+often does what Sandro wants, better than Sandro could
+have done it himself; and, on the other hand, there is no
+design of Bandini's over which Sandro does not seem to have
+had influence.</p>
+
+<p>And wishing now to show you three examples of the finest
+work of the old, the renaissance, and the modern schools,&mdash;of
+the old, I will take Baccio Bandini's Astrologia, Plate
+III., opposite. Of the renaissance, D&uuml;rer's Adam and Eve.
+And of the modern, this head of the daughter of Herodias,
+engraved from Luini by Beaugrand, which is as affection<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>ately
+and sincerely wrought, though in the modern manner,
+as any plate of the old schools.</p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 377px;">
+<a id="Plate_III" name="Plate_III"></a>
+<img src="images/image091.png" width="377" height="671" alt="III. At ev'ning from the top of F&eacute;sole." title="" />
+<p class="caption center">III.</p>
+<p class="caption center">"At ev'ning from the top of F&eacute;sole."</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>129. Now observe the progress of the feeling for light
+and shade in the three examples.</p>
+
+<p>The first is nearly all white paper; you think of the outline
+as the constructive element throughout.</p>
+
+<p>The second is a vigorous piece of <i>white</i> and <i>black</i>&mdash;not of
+<i>light</i> and <i>shade</i>,&mdash;for all the high lights are equally white,
+whether of flesh, or leaves, or goat's hair.</p>
+
+<p>The third is complete in chiaroscuro, as far as engraving
+can be.</p>
+
+<p>Now the dignity and virtue of the plates is in the exactly
+inverse ratio of their fullness in chiaroscuro.</p>
+
+<p>Bandini's is excellent work, and of the very highest school.
+D&uuml;rer's entirely accomplished work, but of an inferior school.
+And Beaugrand's, excellent work, but of a vulgar and non-classical
+school.</p>
+
+<p>And these relations of the schools are to be determined by
+the quality in the <i>lines</i>; we shall find that in proportion as
+the light and shade is neglected, the lines are studied; that
+those of Bandini are perfect; of D&uuml;rer perfect, only with a
+lower perfection; but of Beaugrand, entirely faultful.</p>
+
+<p>130. I have just explained to you that in modern engraving
+the lines are cut in clean furrow, widened, it may be, by
+successive cuts; but, whether it be fine or thick, retaining
+always, when printed, the aspect of a continuous line drawn
+with the pen, and entirely black throughout its whole course.</p>
+
+<p>Now we may increase the delicacy of this line to any
+extent by simply printing it in gray color instead of black.
+I obtained some very beautiful results of this kind in the
+later volumes of 'Modern Painters,' with Mr. Armytage's
+help, by using subdued purple tints; but, in any case, the
+line thus engraved must be monotonous in its character, and
+cannot be expressive of the finest qualities of form.</p>
+
+<p>Accordingly, the old Florentine workmen constructed the
+line <i>itself</i>, in important places, of successive minute touches,
+so that it became a chain of delicate links which could be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>
+opened or closed at pleasure.<a name="FNanchor_AC_29" id="FNanchor_AC_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_AC_29" class="fnanchor">[AC]</a> If you will examine through a
+lens the outline of the face of this Astrology, you will find
+it is traced with an exquisite series of minute touches,
+susceptible of accentuation or change absolutely at the
+engraver's pleasure; and, in result, corresponding to the
+finest conditions of a pencil line drawing by a consummate
+master. In the fine plates of this period, you have thus the
+united powers of the pen and pencil, and both absolutely
+secure and multipliable.</p>
+
+<p>131. I am a little proud of having independently discovered,
+and had the patience to carry out, this Florentine
+method of execution for myself, when I was a boy of thirteen.
+My good drawing-master had given me some copies
+calculated to teach me freedom of hand; the touches were
+rapid and vigorous,&mdash;many of them in mechanically regular
+zigzags, far beyond any capacity of mine to imitate in the
+bold way in which they were done. But I was resolved to
+have them, somehow; and actually facsimiled a considerable
+portion of the drawing in the Florentine manner, with the
+finest point I could cut to my pencil, taking a quarter of an
+hour to forge out the likeness of one return in the zigzag
+which my master carried down through twenty returns in
+two seconds; and so successfully, that he did not detect my
+artifice till I showed it him,&mdash;on which he forbade me ever
+to do the like again. And it was only thirty years afterwards
+that I found I had been quite right after all, and
+working like Baccio Bandini! But the patience which
+carried me through that early effort, served me well through
+all the thirty years, and enabled me to analyze, and in a
+measure imitate, the method of work employed by every
+master; so that, whether you believe me or not at first, you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span>
+will find what I tell you of their superiority, or inferiority,
+to be true.</p>
+
+<p>132. When lines are studied with this degree of care, you
+may be sure the master will leave room enough for you to
+see them and enjoy them, and not use any at random. All
+the finest engravers, therefore, leave much white paper, and
+use their entire power on the outlines.</p>
+
+<p>133. Next to them come the men of the Renaissance
+schools, headed by D&uuml;rer, who, less careful of the beauty and
+refinement of the line, delight in its vigor, accuracy, and
+complexity. And the essential difference between these men
+and the moderns is that these central masters cut their line
+for the most part with a single furrow, giving it depth by
+force of hand or wrist, and retouching, <i>not in the furrow
+itself, but with others beside it</i>.<a name="FNanchor_AD_30" id="FNanchor_AD_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_AD_30" class="fnanchor">[AD]</a> Such work can only be
+done well on copper, and it can display all faculty of hand
+or wrist, precision of eye, and accuracy of knowledge, which
+a human creature can possess. But the dotted or hatched line
+is not used in this central style, and the higher conditions of
+beauty never thought of.</p>
+
+<p>In the Astrology of Bandini,&mdash;and remember that the
+Astrologia of the Florentine meant what we mean by Astronomy,
+and much more,&mdash;he wishes you first to look at the
+face: the lip half open, faltering in wonder; the amazed,
+intense, dreaming gaze; the pure dignity of forehead, undisturbed
+by terrestrial thought. None of these things could
+be so much as attempted in D&uuml;rer's method; he can engrave
+flowing hair, skin of animals, bark of trees, wreathings of
+metal-work, with the free hand; also, with labored chiaroscuro,
+or with sturdy line, he can reach expressions of sadness,
+or gloom, or pain, or soldierly strength,&mdash;but pure
+beauty,&mdash;never.</p>
+
+<p>134. Lastly, you have the Modern school, deepening its
+lines in successive cuts. The instant consequence of the
+introduction of this method is the restriction of curvature;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>
+you cannot follow a complex curve again with precision
+through its furrow. If you are a dextrous plowman, you
+can drive your plow any number of times along the simple
+curve. But you cannot repeat again exactly the motions
+which cut a variable one.<a name="FNanchor_AE_31" id="FNanchor_AE_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_AE_31" class="fnanchor">[AE]</a> You may retouch it, energize
+it, and deepen it in parts, but you cannot cut it all through
+again equally. And the retouching and energizing in parts
+is a living and intellectual process; but the cutting all through,
+equally, a mechanical one. The difference is exactly such
+as that between the dexterity of turning out two similar
+moldings from a lathe, and carving them with the free
+hand, like a Pisan sculptor. And although splendid intellect,
+and subtlest sensibility, have been spent on the production
+of some modern plates, the mechanical element introduced
+by their manner of execution always overpowers both;
+nor <i>can any plate of consummate value ever be produced in
+the modern method</i>.</p>
+
+<p>135. Nevertheless, in landscape, there are two examples
+in your Reference series, of insuperable skill and extreme
+beauty: Miller's plate, before instanced, of the Grand Canal,
+Venice; and E. Goodall's of the upper fall of the Tees. The
+men who engraved these plates might have been exquisite
+artists; but their patience and enthusiasm were held captive
+in the false system of lines, and we lost the painters; while
+the engravings, wonderful as they are, are neither of them
+worth a Turner etching, scratched in ten minutes with the
+point of an old fork; and the common types of such elaborate
+engraving are none of them worth a single frog, pig, or
+puppy, out of the corner of a Bewick vignette.</p>
+
+<p>136. And now, I think, you cannot fail to understand
+clearly what you are to look for in engraving, as a separate
+art from that of painting. Turn back to the 'Astrologia' as
+a perfect type of the purest school. She is gazing at stars,
+and crowned with them. But the stars are <i>black</i> instead of
+shining! You cannot have a more decisive and absolute proof
+that you must not look in engraving for chiaroscuro.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, her body is half in shade, and her left foot;
+and she casts a shadow, and there is a bar of shade behind
+her.</p>
+
+<p>All these are merely so much acceptance of shade as may
+relieve the forms, and give value to the linear portions. The
+face, though turned from the light, is shadowless.</p>
+
+<p>Again. Every lock of the hair is designed and set in its
+place with the subtlest care, but there is no luster attempted,&mdash;no
+texture,&mdash;no mystery. The plumes of the wings are set
+studiously in their places,&mdash;they, also, lusterless. That
+even their filaments are not drawn, and that the broad curve
+embracing them ignores the anatomy of a bird's wing, are
+conditions of design, not execution. Of these in a future
+lecture.<a name="FNanchor_AF_32" id="FNanchor_AF_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_AF_32" class="fnanchor">[AF]</a></p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 373px;">
+<a id="Plate_IV" name="Plate_IV"></a>
+<img src="images/image098.png" width="373" height="670" alt="IV. By the Springs of Parnassus." title="" />
+<p class="caption center">IV.</p>
+<p class="caption center">"By the Springs of <span class="smcap">Parnassus</span>."</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>137. The 'Poesia,' Plate IV., opposite, is a still more
+severe, though not so generic, an example; its decorative
+foreground reducing it almost to the rank of goldsmith's
+ornamentation. I need scarcely point out to you that the
+flowing water shows neither luster nor reflection; but notice
+that the observer's attention is supposed to be so close to
+every dark touch of the graver that he will see the minute
+dark spots which indicate the sprinkled shower falling from
+the vase into the pool.</p>
+
+<p>138. This habit of strict and calm attention, constant in
+the artist, and expected in the observer, makes all the difference
+between the art of Intellect, and of mere sensation. For
+every detail of this plate has a meaning, if you care to
+understand it. This is Poetry, sitting by the fountain of
+Castalia, which flows first out of a formal urn, to show that
+it is not artless; but the rocks of Parnassus are behind, and
+on the top of them&mdash;only one tree, like a mushroom with a
+thick stalk. You at first are inclined to say, How very
+absurd, to put only one tree on Parnassus! but this one
+tree is the Immortal Plane Tree, planted by Agamemnon,
+and at once connects our Poesia with the Iliad. Then, this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>
+is the hem of the robe of Poetry,&mdash;this is the divine vegetation
+which springs up under her feet,&mdash;this is the heaven and
+earth united by her power,&mdash;this is the fountain of Castalia
+flowing out afresh among the grass,&mdash;and these are the drops
+with which, out of a pitcher, Poetry is nourishing the fountain
+of Castalia.</p>
+
+<p>All which you may find out if you happen to know anything
+about Castalia, or about poetry; and pleasantly think
+more upon, for yourself. But the poor dunces, Sandro and
+Baccio, feeling themselves but 'goffi nell' arte,' have no
+hope of telling you all this, except suggestively. They can't
+engrave grass of Parnassus, nor sweet springs so as to look
+like water; but they can make a pretty damasked surface
+with ornamental leaves, and flowing lines, and so leave you
+something to think of&mdash;if you will.</p>
+
+<p>139. 'But a great many people won't, and a great many
+more can't; and surely the finished engravings are much
+more delightful, and the only means we have of giving any
+idea of finished pictures, out of our reach.'</p>
+
+<p>Yes, all that is true; and when we examine the effects of
+line engraving upon taste in recent art, we will discuss these
+matters; for the present, let us be content with knowing what
+the best work is, and why it is so. Although, however, I do
+not now press further my cavils at the triumph of modern line
+engraving, I must assign to you, in few words, the reason of
+its recent decline. Engravers complain that photography
+and cheap wood-cutting have ended their finer craft. No
+complaint can be less grounded. They themselves destroyed
+their own craft, by vulgarizing it. Content in their beautiful
+mechanism, they ceased to learn, and to feel, as artists;
+they put themselves under the order of publishers and print-sellers;
+they worked indiscriminately from whatever was put
+into their hands,&mdash;from Bartlett as willingly as from Turner,
+and from Mulready as carefully as from Raphael. They
+filled the windows of print-sellers, the pages of gift books,
+with elaborate rubbish, and piteous abortions of delicate
+industry. They worked cheap, and cheaper,&mdash;smoothly, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>
+more smoothly,&mdash;they got armies of assistants, and surrounded
+themselves with schools of mechanical tricksters,
+learning their stale tricks with blundering avidity. They
+had fallen&mdash;before the days of photography&mdash;into providers
+of frontispieces for housekeepers' pocket-books. I do not
+know if photography itself, their redoubted enemy, has even
+now ousted them from that last refuge.</p>
+
+<p>140. Such the fault of the engraver,&mdash;very pardonable;
+scarcely avoidable,&mdash;however fatal. Fault mainly of humility.
+But what has <i>your</i> fault been, gentlemen? what the
+patrons' fault, who have permitted so wide waste of admirable
+labor, so pathetic a uselessness of obedient genius? It was
+yours to have directed, yours to have raised and rejoiced in,
+the skill, the modesty, the patience of this entirely gentle and
+industrious race;&mdash;copyists with their <i>heart</i>. The common
+painter-copyists who encumber our European galleries with
+their easels and pots, are, almost without exception, persons
+too stupid to be painters, and too lazy to be engravers. The
+real copyists&mdash;the men who can put their soul into another's
+work&mdash;are employed at home, in their narrow rooms, striving
+to make their good work profitable to all men. And in their
+submission to the public taste they are truly national servants
+as much as Prime Ministers are. They fulfill the demand of
+the nation; what, as a people, you wish to have for possession
+in art, these men are ready to give you.</p>
+
+<p>And what have you hitherto asked of them?&mdash;Ramsgate
+Sands, and Dolly Vardens, and the Paddington Station,&mdash;these,
+I think, are typical of your chief demands; the cartoons
+of Raphael&mdash;which you don't care to see themselves;
+and, by way of a flight into the empyrean, the Madonna di
+San Sisto. And literally, there are hundreds of cities and
+villages in Italy in which roof and wall are blazoned with
+the noblest divinity and philosophy ever imagined by
+men; and of all this treasure, I can, as far as I know, give
+you not <i>one</i> example, in line engraving, by an English
+hand!</p>
+
+<p>Well, you are in the main matter right in this. You want<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span>
+essentially Ramsgate Sands and the Paddington Station, because
+there you can see yourselves.</p>
+
+<p>Make yourselves, then, worthy to be seen forever, and let
+English engraving become noble as the record of English
+loveliness and honor.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_X_24" id="Footnote_X_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_X_24"><span class="label">[X]</span></a> Miller's large plate of the Grand Canal, Venice, after Turner; and
+Goodall's, of Tivoli, after Turner. The other examples referred to are
+left in the University Galleries.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_Y_25" id="Footnote_Y_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_Y_25"><span class="label">[Y]</span></a> This paragraph was not read at the lecture, time not allowing:&mdash;it
+is part of what I wrote on engraving some years ago, in the papers
+for the Art Journal, called the Cestus of Aglaia. (Refer now to "On
+the Old Road.")</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_Z_26" id="Footnote_Z_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_Z_26"><span class="label">[Z]</span></a> An effort has lately been made in France, by Meissonier, G&eacute;rome,
+and their school, to recover it, with marvelous collateral skill of engravers.
+The etching of G&eacute;rome's Louis XIV. and Moli&egrave;re is one of
+the completest pieces of skillful mechanism ever put on metal.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_AA_27" id="Footnote_AA_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_AA_27"><span class="label">[AA]</span></a> I must again qualify the too sweeping statement of the text. I
+think, as time passes, some of these nineteenth century line engravings
+will become monumental. The first vignette of the garden, with
+the cut hedges and fountain, for instance, in Rogers' poems, is so consummate
+in its use of every possible artifice of delicate line, (note the
+look of <i>tremulous</i> atmosphere got by the undulatory etched lines on
+the pavement, and the broken masses, worked with dots, of the fountain
+foam,) that I think it cannot but, with some of its companions,
+survive the refuse of its school, and become classic. I find in like
+manner, even with all their faults and weaknesses, the vignettes to
+Heyne's Virgil to be real art-possessions.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_AB_28" id="Footnote_AB_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_AB_28"><span class="label">[AB]</span></a> <a href="#Plate_XI">Plate XI.</a>, in the Appendix, taken from the engraving of the Virgin
+sitting in the fenced garden, with two angels crowning her.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_AC_29" id="Footnote_AC_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_AC_29"><span class="label">[AC]</span></a> The method was first developed in engraving designs on silver&mdash;numbers
+of lines being executed with dots by the punch, for variety's
+sake. For niello, and printing, a transverse cut was substituted for
+the blow. The entire style is connected with the later Roman and
+Byzantine method of drawing lines with the drill hole, in marble. See
+above, Lecture II., <a href="#Sect_70">Section 70.</a></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_AD_30" id="Footnote_AD_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_AD_30"><span class="label">[AD]</span></a> This most important and distinctive character was pointed out to
+me by Mr. Burgess.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_AE_31" id="Footnote_AE_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_AE_31"><span class="label">[AE]</span></a> This point will be further examined and explained in the <a href="#APPENDIX">Appendix.</a></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_AF_32" id="Footnote_AF_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_AF_32"><span class="label">[AF]</span></a> See <a href="#APPENDIX">Appendix, Article I.</a></p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="gap3"><a name="LECTURE_V" id="LECTURE_V"></a>LECTURE V.</h2>
+
+<h3>DESIGN IN THE GERMAN SCHOOLS OF ENGRAVING.</h3>
+
+<p><a id="Sect_141" name="Sect_141"></a>141. By reference to the close of the preface to 'Eagle's
+Nest,' you will see, gentlemen, that I meant these lectures,
+from the first, rather to lead you to the study of the characters
+of two great men, than to interest you in the processes of a
+secondary form of art. As I draw my materials into the
+limited form necessary for the hour, I find my divided purpose
+doubly failing; and would fain rather use my time to-day
+in supplying the defects of my last lecture, than in opening
+the greater subject, which I must treat with still more
+lamentable inadequacy. Nevertheless, you must not think it
+is for want of time that I omit reference to other celebrated
+engravers, and insist on the special power of these two only.
+Many not inconsiderable reputations are founded merely on
+the curiosity of collectors of prints, or on partial skill in the
+management of processes; others, though resting on more secure
+bases, are still of no importance to you in the general
+history of art; whereas you will find the work of Holbein and
+Botticelli determining for you, without need of any farther
+range, the principal questions of moment in the relation of
+the Northern and Southern schools of design. Nay, a wider
+method of inquiry would only render your comparison less accurate
+in result. It is only in Holbein's majestic range of
+capacity, and only in the particular phase of Teutonic life
+which his art adorned, that the problem can be dealt with on
+fair terms. We Northerns can advance no fairly comparable
+antagonist to the artists of the South, except at that one moment,
+and in that one man. Rubens cannot for an instant
+be matched with Tintoret, nor Memling with Lippi; while<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>
+Reynolds only rivals Titian in what he learned from him.
+But in Holbein and Botticelli we have two men trained independently,
+equal in power of intellect, similar in material
+and mode of work, contemporary in age, correspondent in
+disposition. The relation between them is strictly typical of
+the constant aspects to each other of the Northern and Southern
+schools.</p>
+
+<p>142. Their point of closest contact is in the art of engraving,
+and this art is developed entirely as the servant of the
+great passions which perturbed or polluted Europe in the fifteenth
+century. The impulses which it obeys are all new;
+and it obeys them with its own nascent plasticity of temper.
+Painting and sculpture are only modified by them; but
+engraving is educated.</p>
+
+<p>These passions are in the main three; namely,</p>
+
+<p class="hangindent">1. The thirst for classical literature, and the forms of
+proud and false taste which arose out of it, in the position
+it had assumed as the enemy of Christianity.</p>
+
+<p class="hangindent">2. The pride of science, enforcing (in the particular domain
+of Art) accuracy of perspective, shade, and anatomy,
+never before dreamed of.</p>
+
+<p class="hangindent">3. The sense of error and iniquity in the theological teaching
+of the Christian Church, felt by the highest intellects
+of the time, and necessarily rendering the formerly
+submissive religious art impossible.</p>
+
+<p>To-day, then, our task is to examine the peculiar characters
+of the Design of the Northern Schools of Engraving, as
+affected by these great influences.</p>
+
+<p>143. I have not often, however, used the word 'design,'
+and must clearly define the sense in which I now use it. It
+is vaguely used in common art-parlance; often as if it meant
+merely the drawing of a picture, as distinct from its color;
+and in other still more inaccurate ways. The accurate and
+proper sense, underlying all these, I must endeavor to make
+clear to you.</p>
+
+<p>'Design' properly signifies that power in any art-work
+which has a purpose other than of imitation, and which is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>
+'designed,' composed, or separated to that end. It implies
+the rejection of some things, and the insistence upon others,
+with a given object.<a name="FNanchor_AG_33" id="FNanchor_AG_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_AG_33" class="fnanchor">[AG]</a></p>
+
+<p>Let us take progressive instances. Here is a group of
+prettily dressed peasant children, charmingly painted by a
+very able modern artist&mdash;not absolutely without design, for
+he really wishes to show you how pretty peasant children can
+be, (and, in so far, is wiser and kinder than Murillo, who
+likes to show how ugly they can be); also, his group is agreeably
+arranged, and its component children carefully chosen.
+Nevertheless, any summer's day, near any country village,
+you may come upon twenty groups in an hour as pretty as
+this; and may see&mdash;if you have eyes&mdash;children in them
+twenty times prettier than these. A photograph, if it could
+render them perfectly, and in color, would far excel the charm
+of this painting; for in it, good and clever as it is, there is
+nothing supernatural, and much that is subnatural.</p>
+
+<p>144. Beside this group of, in every sense of the word, 'artless'
+little country girls, I will now set one&mdash;in the best
+sense of the word&mdash;'artful' little country girl,&mdash;a sketch by
+Gainsborough.</p>
+
+<p>You never saw her like before. Never will again, now
+that Gainsborough is dead. No photography,&mdash;no science,&mdash;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span>no
+industry, will touch or reach for an instant this <i>super</i>-naturalness.
+You will look vainly through the summer fields
+for such a child. "Nor up the lawn, nor by the wood," is
+she. Whence do you think this marvelous charm has come?
+Alas! if we knew, would not we all be Gainsboroughs? This
+only you may practically ascertain, as surely as that a flower
+will die if you cut its root away, that you cannot alter a single
+touch in Gainsborough's work without injury to the whole.
+Half a dozen spots, more or less, in the printed gowns of
+these other children whom I first showed you, will not make
+the smallest difference to them; nor a lock or two more or less
+in their hair, nor a dimple or two more or less in their cheeks.
+But if you alter one wave of the hair of Gainsborough's girl,
+the child is gone. Yet the art is so subtle, that I do not
+expect you to believe this. It looks so instinctive, so easy, so
+'chanceux,'&mdash;the French word is better than ours. Yes, and
+in their more accurate sense, also, 'Il a de la chance.' A
+stronger Designer than he was with him. He could not tell
+you himself how the thing was done.</p>
+
+<p>145. I proceed to take a more definite instance&mdash;this Greek
+head of the Lacinian Juno. The design or appointing of the
+forms now entirely prevails over the resemblance to Nature.
+No real hair could ever be drifted into these wild lines, which
+mean the wrath of the Adriatic winds round the Cape of
+Storms.</p>
+
+<p>And yet, whether this be uglier or prettier than Gainsborough's
+child&mdash;(and you know already what I think about it,
+that no Greek goddess was ever half so pretty as an English
+girl, of pure clay and temper,)&mdash;uglier or prettier, it is more
+dignified and impressive. It at least belongs to the domain
+of a lordlier, more majestic, more guiding and ordaining art.</p>
+
+<p>146. I will go back another five hundred years, and place
+an Egyptian beside the Greek divinity. The resemblance to
+Nature is now all but lost, the ruling law has become all.
+The lines are reduced to an easily counted number, and their
+arrangement is little more than a decorative sequence of
+pleasant curves cut in porphyry,&mdash;in the upper part of their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>
+contour following the outline of a woman's face in profile,
+over-crested by that of a hawk, on a kind of pedestal. But
+that the sign-engraver meant by his hawk, Immortality, and
+by her pedestal, the House or Tavern of Truth, is of little
+importance now to the passing traveler, not yet preparing to
+take the sarcophagus for his place of rest.</p>
+
+<p>147. How many questions are suggested to us by these
+transitions! Is beauty contrary to law, and grace attainable
+only through license? What we gain in language, shall we
+lose in thought? and in what we add of labor, more and more
+forget its ends?</p>
+
+<p>Not so.</p>
+
+<p>Look at this piece of Sandro's work, the Libyan Sibyl.<a name="FNanchor_AH_34" id="FNanchor_AH_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_AH_34" class="fnanchor">[AH]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is as ordered and normal as the Egyptian's&mdash;as graceful
+and facile as Gainsborough's. It retains the majesty of old
+religion; it is invested with the joy of newly awakened childhood.</p>
+
+<p>Mind, I do not expect you&mdash;do not wish you&mdash;to enjoy
+Botticelli's dark engraving as much as Gainsborough's aerial
+sketch; for due comparison of the men, painting should be
+put beside painting. But there is enough even in this copy
+of the Florentine plate to show you the junction of the two
+powers in it&mdash;of prophecy, and delight.</p>
+
+<p>148. Will these two powers, do you suppose, be united in
+the same manner in the contemporary Northern art? That
+Northern school is my subject to-day; and yet I give you, as
+type of the intermediate condition between Egypt and England&mdash;not
+Holbein, but Botticelli. I am obliged to do this;
+because in the Southern art, the religious temper remains
+unconquered by the doctrines of the Reformation. Botticelli
+was&mdash;what Luther wished to be, but could not be&mdash;a reformer
+still believing in the Church: his mind is at peace; and his
+art, therefore, can pursue the delight of beauty, and yet
+remain prophetic. But it was far otherwise in Germany.
+There the Reformation of manners became the destruction of
+faith; and art therefore, not a prophecy, but a protest. It is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>
+the chief work of the greatest Protestant who ever lived,<a name="FNanchor_AI_35" id="FNanchor_AI_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_AI_35" class="fnanchor">[AI]</a>
+which I ask you to study with me to-day.</p>
+
+<p>149. I said that the power of engraving had developed
+itself during the introduction of three new&mdash;(practically and
+vitally new, that is to say)&mdash;elements, into the minds of men:
+elements which briefly may be expressed thus:</p>
+
+<ol>
+<li>Classicism, and Literary Science.</li>
+<li>Medicine, and Physical Science.<a name="FNanchor_AJ_36" id="FNanchor_AJ_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_AJ_36" class="fnanchor">[AJ]</a></li>
+<li>Reformation, and Religious Science.</li>
+</ol>
+
+<p>And first of Classicism.</p>
+
+<p>You feel, do not you, in this typical work of Gainsborough's,
+that his subject as well as his picture is 'artless' in
+a lovely sense;&mdash;nay, not only artless, but ignorant, and unscientific,
+in a beautiful way? You would be afterwards remorseful,
+I think, and angry with yourself&mdash;seeing the effect
+produced on her face&mdash;if you were to ask this little lady to
+spell a very long word? Also, if you wished to know how
+many times the sevens go in forty-nine, you would perhaps
+wisely address yourself elsewhere. On the other hand, you
+do not doubt that <i>this</i> lady<a name="FNanchor_AK_37" id="FNanchor_AK_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_AK_37" class="fnanchor">[AK]</a> knows very well how many times
+the sevens go in forty-nine, and is more Mistress of Arts than
+any of us are Masters of them.</p>
+
+<p>150. You have then, in the one case, a beautiful simplicity,
+and a blameless ignorance; in the other, a beautiful artfulness,
+and a wisdom which you do not dread,&mdash;or, at least,
+even though dreading, love. But you know also that we may<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span>
+remain in a hateful and culpable ignorance; and, as I fear too
+many of us in competitive effort feel, become possessed of a
+hateful knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>Ignorance, therefore, is not evil absolutely; but, innocent,
+may be lovable.</p>
+
+<p>Knowledge also is not good absolutely; but, guilty, may be
+hateful.</p>
+
+<p>So, therefore, when I now repeat my former statement,
+that the first main opposition between the Northern and
+Southern schools is in the simplicity of the one, and the
+scholarship of the other, that statement may imply sometimes
+the superiority of the North, and sometimes of the South.
+You may have a heavenly simplicity opposed to a hellish
+(that is to say, a lustful and arrogant) scholarship; or you
+may have a barbarous and presumptuous ignorance opposed
+to a divine and disciplined wisdom. Ignorance opposed to
+learning in both cases; but evil to good, as the case may be.</p>
+
+<p>151. For instance: the last time I was standing before
+Raphael's arabesques in the Loggias of the Vatican, I wrote
+down in my pocket-book the description, or, more modestly
+speaking, the inventory, of the small portion of that infinite
+wilderness of sensual fantasy which happened to be opposite
+me. It consisted of a woman's face, with serpents for hair,
+and a virgin's breasts, with stumps for arms, ending in blue
+butterflies' wings, the whole changing at the waist into a goat's
+body, which ended below in an obelisk upside-down, to the
+apex at the bottom of which were appended, by graceful
+chains, an altar, and two bunches of grapes.</p>
+
+<p>Now you know in a moment, by a glance at this 'design'&mdash;beautifully
+struck with free hand, and richly gradated in
+color,&mdash;that the master was familiar with a vast range of art
+and literature: that he knew all about Egyptian sphinxes, and
+Greek Gorgons; about Egyptian obelisks, and Hebrew altars;
+about Hermes, and Venus, and Bacchus, and satyrs, and
+goats, and grapes.</p>
+
+<p>You know also&mdash;or ought to know, in an instant,&mdash;that all
+this learning has done him no good; that he had better have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span>
+known nothing than any of these things, since they were to
+be used by him only to such purpose; and that his delight in
+armless breasts, legless trunks, and obelisks upside-down, has
+been the last effort of his expiring sensation, in the grasp of
+corrupt and altogether victorious Death. And you have thus,
+in Gainsborough as compared with Raphael, a sweet, sacred,
+and living simplicity, set against an impure, profane, and
+paralyzed knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>152. But, next, let us consider the reverse conditions.</p>
+
+<p>Let us take instance of contrast between faultful and
+treacherous ignorance, and divinely pure and fruitful knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>In the place of honor at the end of one of the rooms of your
+Royal Academy&mdash;years ago&mdash;stood a picture by an English
+Academician, announced as a representation of Moses sustained
+by Aaron and Hur, during the discomfiture of Amalek.
+In the entire range of the Pentateuch, there is no other scene
+(in which the visible agents are mortal only) requiring so
+much knowledge and thought to reach even a distant approximation
+to the probabilities of the fact. One saw in a moment
+that the painter was both powerful and simple, after a
+sort; that he had really sought for a vital conception, and had
+originally and earnestly read his text, and formed his conception.
+And one saw also in a moment that he had chanced
+upon this subject, in reading or hearing his Bible, as he might
+have chanced on a dramatic scene accidentally in the street.
+That he knew nothing of the character of Moses,&mdash;nothing of
+his law,&mdash;nothing of the character of Aaron, nor of the nature
+of a priesthood,&mdash;nothing of the meaning of the event which
+he was endeavoring to represent, of the temper in which it
+would have been transacted by its agents, or of its relations to
+modern life.</p>
+
+<p>153. On the contrary, in the fresco of the earlier scenes in
+the life of Moses, by Sandro Botticelli, you know&mdash;not 'in a
+moment,' for the knowledge of knowledge cannot be so obtained;
+but in proportion to the discretion of your own reading,
+and to the care you give to the picture, you <i>may</i> know,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span>&mdash;that
+here is a sacredly guided and guarded learning; here a
+Master indeed, at whose feet you may sit safely, who can teach
+you, better than in words, the significance of both Moses' law
+and Aaron's ministry; and not only these, but, if he chose,
+could add to this an exposition as complete of the highest
+philosophies both of the Greek nation, and of his own; and
+could as easily have painted, had it been asked of him, Draco,
+or Numa, or Justinian, as the herdsman of Jethro.</p>
+
+<p>154. It is rarely that we can point to an opposition between
+faultful, because insolent, ignorance, and virtuous, because
+gracious, knowledge, so direct, and in so parallel elements, as
+in this instance. In general, the analysis is much more complex.
+It is intensely difficult to indicate the mischief of
+involuntary and modest ignorance, calamitous only in a measure;
+fruitful in its lower field, yet sorrowfully condemned
+to that lower field&mdash;not by sin, but fate.</p>
+
+<p>When first I introduced you to Bewick, we closed our too
+partial estimate of his entirely magnificent powers with one
+sorrowful concession&mdash;he could draw a pig, but not a Venus.</p>
+
+<p>Eminently he could so, because&mdash;which is still more sorrowfully
+to be conceded&mdash;he liked the pig best. I have put
+now in your educational series a whole galaxy of pigs by him;
+but, hunting all the fables through, I find only one Venus,
+and I think you will all admit that she is an unsatisfactory
+Venus.<a name="FNanchor_AL_38" id="FNanchor_AL_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_AL_38" class="fnanchor">[AL]</a> There is honest simplicity here; but you regret it;
+you miss something that you find in Holbein, much more in
+Botticelli. You see in a moment that this man knows nothing
+of Sphinxes, or Muses, or Graces, or Aphrodites; and, besides,
+that, knowing nothing, he would have no liking for
+them even if he saw them; but much prefers the style of a
+well-to-do English housekeeper with corkscrew curls, and a
+portly person.</p>
+
+<p>155. You miss something, I said, in Bewick which you
+find in Holbein. But do you suppose Holbein himself, or
+any other Northern painter, could wholly quit himself of the
+like accusations? I told you, in the second of these lectures,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>
+that the Northern temper, refined from savageness, and
+the Southern, redeemed from decay, met, in Florence. Holbein
+and Botticelli are the purest types of the two races.
+Holbein is a civilized boor; Botticelli a reanimate Greek.
+Holbein was polished by companionship with scholars and
+kings, but remains always a burgher of Augsburg in essential
+nature. Bewick and he are alike in temper; only the one is
+untaught, the other perfectly taught. But Botticelli <i>needs</i> no
+teaching. He is, by his birth, scholar and gentleman to the
+heart's core. Christianity itself can only inspire him, not
+refine him. He is as tried gold chased by the jeweler,&mdash;the
+roughest part of him is the outside.</p>
+
+<p>Now how differently must the newly recovered scholastic
+learning tell upon these two men. It is all out of Holbein's
+way; foreign to his nature, useless at the best, probably cumbrous.
+But Botticelli receives it as a child in later years
+recovers the forgotten dearness of a nursery tale; and is more
+himself, and again and again himself, as he breathes the air
+of Greece, and hears, in his own Italy, the lost voice of the
+Sibyl murmur again by the Avernus Lake.</p>
+
+<p>156. It is not, as we have seen, every one of the Southern
+race who can thus receive it. But it graces them all; is at
+once a part of their being; destroys them, if it is to destroy,
+the more utterly because it so enters into their natures. It
+destroys Raphael; but it graces him, and is a part of him. It
+all but destroys Mantegna; but it graces him. And it does
+not hurt Holbein, just because it does <i>not</i> grace him&mdash;never
+is for an instant a part of him. It is with Raphael as with
+some charming young girl who has a new and beautifully
+made dress brought to her, which entirely becomes her,&mdash;so
+much, that in a little while, thinking of nothing else, she becomes
+<i>it</i>; and is only the decoration of her dress. But with
+Holbein it is as if you brought the same dress to a stout farmer's
+daughter who was going to dine at the Hall; and begged
+her to put it on that she might not discredit the company.
+She puts it on to please you; looks entirely ridiculous in it,
+but is not spoiled by it,&mdash;remains herself, in spite of it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>157. You probably have never noticed the extreme awkwardness
+of Holbein in wearing this new dress; you would
+the less do so because his own people think him all the finer
+for it, as the farmer's wife would probably think her daughter.
+Dr. Woltmann, for instance, is enthusiastic in praise of
+the splendid architecture in the background of his Annunciation.
+A fine mess it must have made in the minds of simple
+German maidens, in their notion of the Virgin at home! I
+cannot show you this Annunciation; but I have under my
+hand one of Holbein's Bible cuts, of the deepest seriousness
+and import&mdash;his illustration of the Canticles, showing the
+Church as the bride of Christ.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 191px;">
+<img src="images/image113.png" width="191" height="327" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>You could not find a subject requiring more tenderness,
+purity, or dignity of treatment. In this maid, symbolizing
+the Church, you ask for the most passionate humility, the
+most angelic beauty: "Behold, thou art fair, my dove."
+Now here is Holbein's ideal of that fairness; here is his
+"Church as the Bride."</p>
+
+<p>I am sorry to associate this figure in your minds, even for
+a moment, with the passages it is supposed to illustrate; but
+the lesson is too important to be omitted. Remember, Hol<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span>bein
+represents the temper of Northern Reformation. He
+has all the nobleness of that temper, but also all its baseness.
+He represents, indeed, the revolt of German truth against
+Italian lies; but he represents also the revolt of German
+animalism against Hebrew imagination. This figure of
+Holbein's is half-way from Solomon's mystic bride, to
+Rembrandt's wife, sitting on his knee while he drinks.</p>
+
+<p>But the key of the question is not in this. Florentine animalism
+has at this time, also, enough to say for itself. But
+Florentine animalism, at this time, feels the joy of a gentleman,
+not of a churl. And a Florentine, whatever he does,&mdash;be
+it virtuous or sinful, chaste or lascivious, severe or extravagant,&mdash;does
+it with a grace.</p>
+
+<p>158. You think, perhaps, that Holbein's Solomon's bride
+is so ungraceful chiefly because she is overdressed, and has
+too many feathers and jewels. No; a Florentine would have
+put any quantity of feathers and jewels on her, and yet never
+lost her grace. You shall see him do it, and that to a fantastic
+degree, for I have an example under my hand. Look
+back, first, to <a href="#Plate_I">Bewick's Venus</a> (Lecture III.). You can't
+accuse her of being overdressed. She complies with every
+received modern principle of taste. Sir Joshua's precept that
+drapery should be "drapery, and nothing more," is observed
+more strictly even by Bewick than by Michael Angelo. If
+the absence of decoration could exalt the beauty of his Venus,
+here had been her perfection.</p>
+
+<p>Now look back to <a href="#Plate_II">Plate II.</a> (Lecture IV.), by Sandro;
+Venus in her planet, the ruling star of Florence. Anything
+more grotesque in conception, more unrestrained in fancy of
+ornament, you cannot find, even in the final days of the Renaissance.
+Yet Venus holds her divinity through all; she
+will become majestic to you as you gaze; and there is not a
+line of her chariot wheels, of her buskins, or of her throne,
+which you may not see was engraved by a gentleman.</p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 729px;">
+<a id="Plate_V" name="Plate_V"></a>
+<img src="images/image115.png" width="729" height="451" alt="V. Heat considered as a Mode of Motion. Florentine Natural Philosophy." title="" />
+<p class="caption center">V.</p>
+<p class="caption center">"Heat considered as a Mode of Motion."</p>
+<p class="caption center">Florentine Natural Philosophy.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>159. Again, Plate V., opposite, is a facsimile of another
+engraving of the same series&mdash;the Sun in Leo. It is even
+more extravagant in accessories than the Venus. You see<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>
+the Sun's epaulets before you see the sun; the spiral scrolls
+of his chariot, and the black twisted rays of it, might, so far
+as types of form only are considered, be a design for some
+modern court-dress star, to be made in diamonds. And yet
+all this wild ornamentation is, if you will examine it, more
+purely Greek in spirit than the Apollo Belvedere.</p>
+
+<p>You know I have told you, again and again, that the soul
+of Greece is her veracity; that what to other nations were
+fables and symbolisms, to her became living facts&mdash;living
+gods. The fall of Greece was instant when her gods again
+became fables. The Apollo Belvedere is the work of a sculptor
+to whom Apollonism is merely an elegant idea on which
+to exhibit his own skill. He does not himself feel for an instant
+that the handsome man in the unintelligible attitude,<a name="FNanchor_AM_39" id="FNanchor_AM_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_AM_39" class="fnanchor">[AM]</a>
+with drapery hung over his left arm, as it would be hung to
+dry over a clothes-line, is the Power of the Sun. But the
+Florentine believes in Apollo with his whole mind, and is trying
+to explain his strength in every touch.</p>
+
+<p>For instance; I said just now, "You see the sun's epaulets
+before the sun." Well, <i>don't</i> you, usually, as it rises?
+Do you not continually mistake a luminous cloud for it, or
+wonder where it is, behind one? Again, the face of the
+Apollo Belvedere is agitated by anxiety, passion, and pride.
+Is the sun's likely to be so, rising on the evil and the good?
+This Prince sits crowned and calm: look at the quiet fingers
+of the hand holding the scepter,&mdash;at the restraint of the reins
+merely by a depression of the wrist.</p>
+
+<p>160. You have to look carefully for those fingers holding
+the scepter, because the hand&mdash;which a great anatomist would
+have made so exclusively interesting&mdash;is here confused with
+the ornamentation of the arm of the chariot on which it rests.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span>
+But look what the ornamentation is;&mdash;fruit and leaves, abundant,
+in the mouth of a cornucopia. A quite vulgar and
+meaningless ornament in ordinary renaissance work. Is it
+so here, think you? Are not the leaves and fruits of earth
+in the Sun's hand?<a name="FNanchor_AN_40" id="FNanchor_AN_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_AN_40" class="fnanchor">[AN]</a></p>
+
+<p>You thought, perhaps, when I spoke just now of the action
+of the right hand, that less than a depression of the wrist
+would stop horses such as those. You fancy Botticelli drew
+them so, because he had never seen a horse; or because, able
+to draw fingers, he could not draw hoofs! How fine it would
+be to have, instead, a prancing four-in-hand, in the style of
+Piccadilly on the Derby-day, or at least horses like the real
+Greek horses of the Parthenon!</p>
+
+<p>Yes; and if they had had real ground to trot on, the Florentine
+would have shown you he knew how they should trot.
+But these have to make their way up the hill-side of other
+lands. Look to the example in your standard series, Hermes
+Eriophoros. You will find his motion among clouds represented
+precisely in this laboring, failing, half-kneeling attitude
+of limb. These forms, toiling up through the rippled
+sands of heaven, are&mdash;not horses;&mdash;they are clouds themselves,
+<i>like</i> horses, but only a little like. Look how their
+hoofs lose themselves, buried in the ripples of cloud; it makes
+one think of the quicksands of Morecambe Bay.</p>
+
+<p>And their tails&mdash;what extraordinary tufts of tails, ending
+in points! Yes; but do you not see, nearly joining with
+them, what is not a horse tail at all; but a flame of fire, kindled
+at Apollo's knee? All the rest of the radiance about him
+shoots <i>from</i> him. But this is rendered <i>up</i> to him. As the
+fruits of the earth are in one of his hands, its fire is in the
+other. And all the warmth, as well as all the light of it, are
+his.</p>
+
+<p>We had a little natural philosophy, gentlemen, as well as
+theology, in Florence, once upon a time.</p>
+
+<p>161. Natural philosophy, and also natural art, for in this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span>
+the Greek reanimate was a nobler creature than the Greek
+who had died. His art had a wider force and warmer glow.
+I have told you that the first Greeks were distinguished from
+the barbarians by their simple humanity; the second Greeks&mdash;these
+Florentine Greeks reanimate&mdash;are human more
+strongly, more deeply, leaping from the Byzantine death at
+the call of Christ, "Loose him, and let him go." And there
+is upon them at once the joy of resurrection, and the solemnity
+of the grave.</p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 440px;">
+<a id="Plate_VI" name="Plate_VI"></a>
+<img src="images/image120.png" width="440" height="718" alt="VI. Fairness of the Sea and Air. In VENICE and ATHENS." title="" />
+<p class="caption center">VI.</p>
+<p class="caption center">Fairness of the Sea and Air.</p>
+<p class="caption center">In VENICE and ATHENS.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>162. Of this resurrection of the Greek, and the form of the
+tomb he had been buried in "those four days," I have to give
+you some account in the last lecture. I will only to-day show
+you an illustration of it which brings us back to our immediate
+question as to the reasons why Northern art could not
+accept classicism. When, in the closing lecture of "Aratra
+Pentelici,"<a name="FNanchor_AO_41" id="FNanchor_AO_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_AO_41" class="fnanchor">[AO]</a> I compared Florentine with Greek work, it was
+to point out to you the eager passions of the first as opposed
+to the formal legalism and proprieties of the other. Greek
+work, I told you, while truthful, was also restrained, and
+never but under majesty of law; while Gothic work was true,
+in the perfect law of Liberty or Franchise. And now I give
+you in facsimile (Plate VI.) the two Aphrodites thus compared&mdash;the
+Aphrodite Thalassia of the Tyrrhene seas, and
+the Aphrodite Urania of the Greek skies. You may not at
+first like the Tuscan best; and why she is the best, though
+both are noble, again I must defer explaining to next lecture.
+But now turn back to <a href="#Plate_I">Bewick's Venus</a>, and compare her with
+the Tuscan Venus of the Stars, (<a href="#Plate_II">Plate II.</a>); and then here,
+in Plate VI., with the Tuscan Venus of the Seas, and the
+Greek Venus of the Sky. Why is the English one vulgar?
+What is it, in the three others, which makes them, if not beautiful,
+at least refined?&mdash;every one of them 'designed' and
+drawn, indisputably, by a gentleman?</p>
+
+<p>I never have been so puzzled by any subject of analysis as,
+for these ten years, I have been by this. Every answer I
+give, however plausible it seems at first, fails in some way, or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span>
+in some cases. But there is the point for you, more definitely
+put, I think, than in any of my former books;&mdash;at present,
+for want of time, I must leave it to your own thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>163. II. The second influence under which engraving
+developed itself, I said, was that of medicine and the physical
+sciences. Gentlemen, the most audacious, and the most valuable,
+statement which I have yet made to you on the subject
+of practical art, in these rooms, is that of the evil resulting
+from the study of anatomy. It is a statement so audacious,
+that not only for some time I dared not make it to you, but
+for ten years, at least, I dared not make it to myself. I saw,
+indeed, that whoever studied anatomy was in a measure injured
+by it; but I kept attributing the mischief to secondary
+causes. It <i>can't</i> be this drink itself that poisons them, I said
+always. This drink is medicinal and strengthening: I see
+that it kills them, but it must be because they drink it cold
+when they have been hot, or they take something else with it
+that changes it into poison. The drink itself <i>must</i> be good.
+Well, gentlemen, I found out the drink itself to be poison at
+last, by the breaking of my choicest Venice glass. I could
+not make out what it was that had killed Tintoret, and laid
+it long to the charge of chiaroscuro. It was only after my
+thorough study of his Paradise, in 1870, that I gave up this
+idea, finding the chiaroscuro, which I had thought exaggerated,
+was, in all original and undarkened passages, beautiful
+and most precious. And then at last I got hold of the true
+clue: "Il disegno di Michel Agnolo." And the moment I
+had dared to accuse that, it explained everything; and I saw
+that the betraying demons of Italian art, led on by Michael
+Angelo, had been, not pleasure, but knowledge; not indolence,
+but ambition; and not love, but horror.</p>
+
+<p>164. But when first I ventured to tell you this, I did not
+know, myself, the fact of all most conclusive for its confirmation.
+It will take me a little while to put it before you in its
+total force, and I must first ask your attention to a minor
+point. In one of the smaller rooms of the Munich Gallery
+is Holbein's painting of St. Margaret and St. Elizabeth of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>
+Hungary,&mdash;standard of his early religious work. Here is a
+photograph from the St. Elizabeth; and, in the same frame,
+a French lithograph of it. I consider it one of the most important
+pieces of comparison I have arranged for you, showing
+you at a glance the difference between true and false sentiment.
+Of that difference, generally, we cannot speak to-day,
+but one special result of it you are to observe;&mdash;the omission,
+in the French drawing, of Holbein's daring representation
+of disease, which is one of the vital honors of the picture.
+Quite one of the chief strengths of St. Elizabeth, in the
+Roman Catholic view, was in the courage of her dealing with
+disease, chiefly leprosy. Now observe, I say <i>Roman</i> Catholic
+view, very earnestly just now; I am not at all sure that it is
+so in a Catholic view&mdash;that is to say, in an eternally Christian
+and Divine view. And this doubt, very nearly now a certainty,
+only came clearly into my mind the other day after
+many and many a year's meditation on it. I had read with
+great reverence all the beautiful stories about Christ's appearing
+as a leper, and the like; and had often pitied and rebuked
+myself alternately for my intense dislike and horror of disease.
+I am writing at this moment within fifty yards of the
+grave of St. Francis, and the story of the likeness of his feelings
+to mine had a little comforted me, and the tradition of
+his conquest of them again humiliated me; and I was thinking
+very gravely of this, and of the parallel instance of Bishop
+Hugo of Lincoln, always desiring to do service to the dead, as
+opposed to my own unmitigated and Louis-Quinze-like horror
+of funerals;&mdash;when by chance, in the cathedral of Palermo,
+a new light was thrown for me on the whole matter.</p>
+
+<p>165. I was drawing the tomb of Frederick II., which is
+shut off by a grating from the body of the church; and I had,
+in general, quite an unusual degree of quiet and comfort at
+my work. But sometimes it was paralyzed by the unconscious
+interference of one of the men employed in some minor
+domestic services about the church. When he had nothing to
+do, he used to come and seat himself near my grating, not to
+look at my work, (the poor wretch had no eyes, to speak of,)<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>
+nor in any way meaning to be troublesome; but there was
+his habitual seat. His nose had been carried off by the most
+loathsome of diseases; there were two vivid circles of scarlet
+round his eyes; and as he sat, he announced his presence
+every quarter of a minute (if otherwise I could have forgotten
+it) by a peculiarly disgusting, loud, and long expectoration.
+On the second or third day, just I had forced myself
+into some forgetfulness of him, and was hard at my work, I
+was startled from it again by the bursting out of a loud and
+cheerful conversation close to me; and on looking round, saw
+a lively young fledgling of a priest, seventeen or eighteen
+years old, in the most eager and spirited chat with the man
+in the chair. He talked, laughed, and spat, himself, companionably,
+in the merriest way, for a quarter of an hour;
+evidently without feeling the slightest disgust, or being made
+serious for an instant, by the aspect of the destroyed creature
+before him.</p>
+
+<p>166. His own face was simply that of the ordinary vulgar
+type of thoughtless young Italians, rather beneath than above
+the usual standard; and I was certain, as I watched him, that
+he was not at all my superior, but very much my inferior, in
+the coolness with which he beheld what was to me so dreadful.
+I was positive that he could look this man in the face, precisely
+because he could <i>not</i> look, discerningly, at any beautiful
+or noble thing; and that the reason I dared not, was because
+I had, spiritually, as much better eyes than the priest,
+as, bodily, than his companion.</p>
+
+<p>Having got so much of clear evidence given me on the matter,
+it was driven home for me a week later, as I landed on
+the quay of Naples. Almost the first thing that presented
+itself to me was the sign of a traveling theatrical company,
+displaying the principal scene of the drama to be enacted on
+their classical stage. Fresh from the theater of Taormina, I
+was curious to see the subject of the Neapolitan popular
+drama. It was the capture, by the police, of a man and his
+wife who lived by boiling children. One section of the police
+was coming in, armed to the teeth, through the passage;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span>
+another section of the police, armed to the teeth, and with
+high feathers in its caps, was coming up through a trap-door.
+In fine dramatic unconsciousness to the last moment, like the
+clown in a pantomime, the child-boiler was represented as still
+industriously chopping up a child, pieces of which, ready for
+the pot, lay here and there on the table in the middle of the
+picture. The child-boiler's wife, however, just as she was
+taking the top off the pot to put the meat in, had caught a
+glimpse of the foremost policeman, and stopped, as much in
+rage as in consternation.</p>
+
+<p>167. Now it is precisely the same feeling, or want of feeling,
+in the lower Italian (nor always in the lower classes only)
+which makes him demand the kind of subject for his secular
+drama; and the Crucifixion and Piet&agrave; for his religious drama.
+The only part of Christianity he can enjoy is its horror; and
+even the saint and saintess are not always denying themselves
+severely, either by the contemplation of torture, or the companionship
+with disease.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, we must be cautious, on the other hand, to
+allow full value to the endurance, by tender and delicate persons,
+of what is really loathsome or distressful to them in the
+service of others; and I think this picture of Holbein's indicative
+of the exact balance and rightness of his own mind in
+this matter, and therefore of his power to conceive a true saint
+also. He had to represent St. Catherine's chief effort;&mdash;he
+paints her ministering to the sick, and, among them, is a
+leper; and finding it thus his duty to paint leprosy, he courageously
+himself studies it from the life. Not to insist on its
+horror; but to assert it, to the needful point of fact, which he
+does with medical accuracy.</p>
+
+<p>Now here is just a case in which science, in a subordinate
+degree, is really required for a spiritual and moral purpose.
+And you find Holbein does not shrink from it even in this
+extreme case in which it is most painful.</p>
+
+<p>168. If, therefore, you <i>do</i> find him in other cases not using
+it, you may be sure he knew it to be unnecessary.</p>
+
+<p>Now it may be disputable whether in order to draw a living<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span>
+Madonna, one needs to know how many ribs she has; but it
+would have seemed indisputable that in order to draw a skeleton,
+one must know how many ribs <i>it</i> has.</p>
+
+<p>Holbein is par excellence the draughtsman of skeletons.
+His painted Dance of Death was, and his engraved Dance of
+Death is, principal of such things, without any comparison or
+denial. He draws skeleton after skeleton, in every possible
+gesture; but never so much as counts their ribs! He neither
+knows nor cares how many ribs a skeleton has. There are
+always enough to rattle.</p>
+
+<p>Monstrous, you think, in impudence,&mdash;Holbein for his
+carelessness, and I for defending him! Nay, I triumph in
+him; nothing has ever more pleased me than this grand negligence.
+Nobody wants to know how many ribs a skeleton has,
+any more than how many bars a gridiron has, so long as the
+one can breathe, and the other broil; and still less, when the
+breath and the fire are both out.</p>
+
+<p>169. But is it only of the bones, think you, that Holbein
+is careless?<a name="FNanchor_AP_42" id="FNanchor_AP_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_AP_42" class="fnanchor">[AP]</a> Nay, incredible though it may seem to you,&mdash;but,
+to me, explanatory at once of much of his excellence,&mdash;he
+did not know anatomy at all! I told you in my Preface,<a name="FNanchor_AQ_43" id="FNanchor_AQ_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_AQ_43" class="fnanchor">[AQ]</a>
+already quoted, Holbein studies the face first, the body secondarily;
+but I had no idea, myself, how completely he had
+refused the venomous science of his day. I showed you a
+dead Christ of his, long ago. Can you match it with your
+academy drawings, think you? And yet he did not, and
+would not, know anatomy. <i>He</i> would not; but D&uuml;rer would,
+and did:&mdash;went hotly into it&mdash;wrote books upon it, and upon
+'proportions of the human body,' etc., etc., and all your
+modern recipes for painting flesh. How did his studies prosper
+his art?</p>
+
+<p>People are always talking of his Knight and Death, and
+his Melancholia, as if those were his principal works. They<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span>
+are his characteristic ones, and show what he might have been
+<i>without</i> his anatomy; but they were mere by-play compared
+to his Greater Fortune, and Adam and Eve. Look at these.
+Here is his full energy displayed; here are both male and
+female forms drawn with perfect knowledge of their bones
+and muscles, and modes of action and digestion,&mdash;and I hope
+you are pleased.</p>
+
+<p>But it is not anatomy only that Master Albert studies.
+He has a taste for optics also; and knows all about refraction
+and reflection. What with his knowledge of the skull inside,
+and the vitreous lens outside, if any man in the world is to
+draw an eye, here's the man to do it, surely! With a hand
+which can give lessons to John Bellini, and a care which
+would fain do all so that it can't be done better, and acquaintance
+with every crack in the cranium, and every humor in
+the lens,&mdash;if we can't draw an eye, we should just like to
+know who can! thinks Albert.</p>
+
+<p>So having to engrave the portrait of Melanchthon, instead
+of looking at Melanchthon as ignorant Holbein would have
+been obliged to do,&mdash;wise Albert looks at the room window;
+and finds it has four cross-bars in it, and knows scientifically
+that the light on Melanchthon's eye must be a reflection of the
+window with its four bars&mdash;and engraves it so, accordingly;
+and who shall dare to say, now, it isn't like Melanchthon?</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately, however, it isn't, nor like any other person
+in his senses; but like a madman looking at somebody who disputes
+his hobby. While in this drawing of Holbein's, where
+a dim gray shadow leaves a mere crumb of white paper,&mdash;accidentally
+it seems, for all the fine scientific reflection,&mdash;behold,
+it is an eye indeed, and of a noble creature.</p>
+
+<p>170. What is the reason? do you ask me; and is all the
+common teaching about generalization of details true, then?</p>
+
+<p>No; not a syllable of it is true. Holbein is right, not because
+he draws more generally, but more truly, than D&uuml;rer.
+D&uuml;rer draws what he knows is there; but Holbein, only what
+he sees. And, as I have told you often before, the really
+scientific artist is he who not only asserts bravely what he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span>
+<i>does</i> see, but confesses honestly what he does <i>not</i>. You must
+not draw all the hairs in an eyelash; not because it is sublime
+to generalize them, but because it is impossible to see them.
+How many hairs there are, a sign painter or anatomist may
+count; but how few of them you can see, it is only the utmost
+masters, Carpaccio, Tintoret, Reynolds, and Velasquez, who
+count, or know.</p>
+
+<p>171. Such was the effect, then, of his science upon D&uuml;rer's
+ideal of beauty, and skill in portraiture. What effect had it
+on the temper and quantity of his work, as compared with
+poor ignorant Holbein's! You have only three portraits, by
+D&uuml;rer, of the great men of his time, and those bad ones;
+while he toils his soul out to draw the hoofs of satyrs, the
+bristles of swine, and the distorted aspects of base women and
+vicious men.</p>
+
+<p>What, on the contrary, has ignorant Holbein done for you?
+Shakespeare and he divide between them, by word and look,
+the Story of England under Henry and Elizabeth.</p>
+
+<p>172. Of the effect of science on the art of Mantegna and
+Marc Antonio, (far more deadly than on D&uuml;rer's,) I must
+tell you in a future lecture;&mdash;the effect of it on their minds,
+I must partly refer to now, in passing to the third head of my
+general statement&mdash;the influence of new Theology. For
+D&uuml;rer and Mantegna, chiefly because of their science, forfeited
+their place, not only as painters of men, but as servants
+of God. Neither of them has left one completely noble or
+completely didactic picture; while Holbein and Botticelli, in
+consummate pieces of art, led the way before the eyes of all
+men, to the purification of their Church and land.</p>
+
+<p>173. III. But the need of reformation presented itself to
+these two men last named on entirely different terms.</p>
+
+<p>To Holbein, when the word of the Catholic Church proved
+false, and its deeds bloody; when he saw it selling permission
+of sin in his native Augsburg, and strewing the ashes of its
+enemies on the pure Alpine waters of Constance, what refuge
+was there for <i>him</i> in more ancient religion? Shall he worship
+Thor again, and mourn over the death of Balder? He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span>
+reads Nature in her desolate and narrow truth, and she
+teaches him the Triumph of Death.</p>
+
+<p>But, for Botticelli, the grand gods are old, are immortal.
+The priests may have taught falsely the story of the Virgin;&mdash;did
+they not also lie, in the name of Artemis, at Ephesus;&mdash;in
+the name of Aphrodite, at Cyprus?&mdash;but shall, therefore,
+Chastity or Love be dead, or the full moon paler over
+Arno? Saints of Heaven and Gods of Earth!&mdash;shall <i>these</i>
+perish because vain men speak evil of them! Let <i>us</i> speak
+good forever, and grave, as on the rock, for ages to come, the
+glory of Beauty, and the triumph of Faith.</p>
+
+<p>174. Holbein had bitterer task.</p>
+
+<p>Of old, the one duty of the painter had been to exhibit the
+virtues of this life, and hopes of the life to come. Holbein
+had to show the vices of this life, and to obscure the hope of
+the future. "Yes, we walk through the valley of the shadow
+of death, and fear all evil, for Thou art not with us, and Thy
+rod and Thy staff comfort us not." He does not choose this
+task. It is thrust upon him,&mdash;just as fatally as the burial
+of the dead is in a plague-struck city. These are the things
+he sees, and must speak. He will not become a better artist
+thereby; no drawing of supreme beauty, or beautiful things,
+will be possible to him. Yet we cannot say he ought to have
+done anything else, nor can we praise him specially in doing
+this. It is his fate; the fate of all the bravest in that day.</p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 473px;">
+<a id="Fig_5" name="Fig_5"></a>
+<img src="images/image130.png" width="473" height="631" alt="THE CHILD'S BEDTIME. (Fig. 5) Facsimile from Holbein's woodcut." title="" />
+<p class="caption center">THE CHILD'S BEDTIME.</p>
+<p class="caption center">(Fig. 5) Facsimile from Holbein's woodcut.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>175. For instance, there is no scene about which a shallow
+and feeble painter would have been more sure to adopt the
+commonplaces of the creed of his time than the death of a
+child,&mdash;chiefly, and most of all, the death of a country child,&mdash;a
+little thing fresh from the cottage and the field. Surely
+for such an one, angels will wait by its sick bed, and rejoice
+as they bear its soul away; and over its shroud flowers will
+be strewn, and the birds will sing by its grave. So your
+common sentimentalist would think, and paint. Holbein
+sees the facts, as they verily are, up to the point when vision
+ceases. He speaks, then, no more.</p>
+
+<p>The country laborer's cottage&mdash;the rain coming through its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>
+roof, the clay crumbling from its partitions, the fire lighted
+with a few chips and sticks on a raised piece of the mud floor,&mdash;such
+dais as can be contrived, for use, not for honor. The
+damp wood sputters; the smoke, stopped by the roof, though
+the rain is not, coils round again, and down. But the
+mother can warm the child's supper of bread and milk so&mdash;holding
+the pan by the long handle; and on mud floor though
+it be, they are happy,&mdash;she, and her child, and its brother,&mdash;if
+only they could be left so. They shall not be left so: the
+young thing must leave them&mdash;will never need milk warmed
+for it any more. It would fain stay,&mdash;sees no angels&mdash;feels
+only an icy grip on its hand, and that it cannot stay. Those
+who loved it shriek and tear their hair in vain, amazed in
+grief. 'Oh, little one, must you lie out in the fields then, not
+even under this poor torn roof of thy mother's to-night?'</p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 483px;">
+<a id="Fig_6" name="Fig_6"></a>
+<img src="images/image134.png" width="483" height="636" alt="H" title="" />
+<p class="caption center">"HE THAT HATH EARS TO HEAR, LET HIM HEAR."</p>
+<p class="caption center">(Fig. 6) Facsimile from Holbein's woodcut.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>176. Again: there was not in the old creed any subject
+more definitely and constantly insisted on than the death of
+a miser. He had been happy, the old preachers thought,
+till then: but his hour has come; and the black covetousness
+of hell is awake and watching; the sharp harpy claws will
+clutch his soul out of his mouth, and scatter his treasure for
+others. So the commonplace preacher and painter taught.
+Not so Holbein. The devil want to snatch his soul, indeed!
+Nay, he never <i>had</i> a soul, but of the devil's giving. His
+misery to begin on his death-bed! Nay, he had never an
+unmiserable hour of life. The fiend is with him now,&mdash;a
+paltry, abortive fiend, with no breath even to blow hot with.
+He supplies the hell-blast <i>with a machine</i>. It is winter,
+and the rich man has his furred cloak and cap, thick and
+heavy; the beggar, bare-headed to beseech him, skin and rags
+hanging about him together, touches his shoulder, but all
+in vain; there is other business in hand. More haggard than
+the beggar himself, wasted and palsied, the rich man counts
+with his fingers the gain of the years to come.</p>
+
+<p>But of those years, infinite that are to be, Holbein says
+nothing. 'I know not; I see not. This only I see, on this
+very winter's day, the low pale stumbling-block at your feet,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span>
+the altogether by you unseen and forgotten Death. You
+shall not pass <i>him</i> by on the other side; here is a fasting figure
+in skin and bone, at last, that will stop you; and for all the
+hidden treasures of earth, here is your spade: dig now, and
+find them.'</p>
+
+<p>177. I have said that Holbein was condemned to teach
+these things. He was not happy in teaching them, nor
+thanked for teaching them. Nor was Botticelli for his lovelier
+teaching. But they both could do no otherwise. They
+lived in truth and steadfastness; and with both, in their
+marvelous design, veracity is the beginning of invention, and
+love its end.</p>
+
+<p>I have but time to show you, in conclusion, how this affectionate
+self-forgetfulness protects Holbein from the chief
+calamity of the German temper, vanity, which is at the root of
+all D&uuml;rer's weakness. Here is a photograph of Holbein's
+portrait of Erasmus, and a fine proof of D&uuml;rer's. In
+Holbein's, the face leads everything; and the most lovely
+qualities of the face lead in that. The cloak and cap are
+perfectly painted, just because you look at them neither more
+nor less than you would have looked at the cloak in reality.
+You don't say, 'How brilliantly they are touched,' as you
+would with Rembrandt; nor 'How gracefully they are
+neglected,' as you would with Gainsborough; nor 'How
+exquisitely they are shaded,' as you would with Lionardo;
+nor 'How grandly they are composed,' as you would with
+Titian. You say only, 'Erasmus is surely there; and what
+a pleasant sight!' You don't think of Holbein at all. He
+has not even put in the minutest letter H, that I can see, to
+remind you of him. Drops his H's, I regret to say, often
+enough. 'My hand should be enough for you; what matters
+my name?' But now, look at D&uuml;rer's. The very first thing
+you see, and at any distance, is this great square tablet with</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"The image of Erasmus, drawn from the life by Albert
+D&uuml;rer, 1526,"</p></div>
+
+<p>and a great straddling <span class="smcap">a.d.</span> besides. Then you see a cloak,
+and a table, and a pot, with flowers in it, and a heap of books<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span>
+with all their leaves and all their clasps, and all the little
+bits of leather gummed in to mark the places; and last of all
+you see Erasmus's face; and when you do see it, the most of
+it is wrinkles.</p>
+
+<p>All egotism and insanity, this, gentlemen. Hard words to
+use; but not too hard to define the faults which rendered so
+much of D&uuml;rer's great genius abortive, and to this day paralyze,
+among the details of a lifeless and ambitious precision,
+the student, no less than the artist, of German blood. For
+too many an Erasmus, too many a D&uuml;rer, among them, the
+world is all cloak and clasp, instead of face or book; and the
+first object of their lives is to engrave their initials.</p>
+
+<p>178. For us, in England, not even so much is at present to
+be hoped; and yet, singularly enough, it is more our modesty,
+unwisely submissive, than our vanity, which has destroyed
+our English school of engraving.</p>
+
+<p>At the bottom of the pretty line engravings which used to
+represent, characteristically, our English skill, one saw
+always <i>two</i> inscriptions. At the left-hand corner, "Drawn
+by&mdash;so-and-so;" at the right-hand corner, "Engraved by&mdash;so-and-so."
+Only under the worst and cheapest plates&mdash;for
+the Stationers' Almanack, or the like&mdash;one saw sometimes,
+"Drawn and engraved by&mdash;so-and-so," which meant nothing
+more than that the publisher would not go to the expense of
+an artist, and that the engraver haggled through as he could.
+(One fortunate exception, gentlemen, you have in the old
+drawings for your Oxford Almanack, though the publishers,
+I have no doubt, even in that case, employed the cheapest
+artist they could find.<a name="FNanchor_AR_44" id="FNanchor_AR_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_AR_44" class="fnanchor">[AR]</a>) But in general, no engraver thought
+himself able to draw; and no artist thought it his business
+to engrave.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>179. But the fact that this and the following lecture are
+on the subject of design in engraving, implies of course that
+in the work we have to examine, it was often the engraver
+himself who designed, and as often the artist who engraved.</p>
+
+<p>And you will observe that the only engravings which bear
+imperishable value are, indeed, in this kind. It is true that,
+in wood-cutting, both D&uuml;rer and Holbein, as in our own days
+Leech and Tenniel, have workmen under them who can do
+all they want. But in metal cutting it is not so. For, as I
+have told you, in metal cutting, ultimate perfection of Line
+has to be reached; and it can be reached by none but a
+master's hand; nor by his, unless in the very moment and act
+of designing. Never, unless under the vivid first force of
+imagination and intellect, can the Line have its full value.
+And for this high reason, gentlemen, that paradox which
+perhaps seemed to you so daring, is nevertheless deeply and
+finally true, that while a woodcut may be laboriously
+finished, a grand engraving on metal must be comparatively
+incomplete. For it must be done, throughout, with the full
+fire of temper in it, visibly governing its lines, as the wind
+does the fibers of cloud.</p>
+
+<p>180. The value hitherto attached to Rembrandt's etchings,
+and others imitating them, depends on a true instinct in the
+public mind for this virtue of line. But etching is an indolent
+and blundering method at the best; and I do not doubt that
+you will one day be grateful for the severe disciplines of
+drawing required in these schools, in that they will have
+enabled you to know what a line may be, driven by a master's
+chisel on silver or marble, following, and fostering as it
+follows, the instantaneous strength of his determined thought.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_AG_33" id="Footnote_AG_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_AG_33"><span class="label">[AG]</span></a> If you paint a bottle only to amuse the spectator by showing him
+how like a painting may be to a bottle, you cannot be considered, in art-philosophy,
+as a designer. But if you paint the cork flying out of the
+bottle, and the contents arriving in an arch at the mouth of a recipient
+glass, you are so far forth a designer or signer; probably meaning to
+express certain ultimate facts respecting, say, the hospitable disposition
+of the landlord of the house; but at all events representing the bottle
+and glass in a designed, and not merely natural, manner. Not merely
+natural&mdash;nay, in some sense non-natural, or supernatural. And all
+great artists show both this fantastic condition of mind in their work,
+and show that it has arisen out of a communicative or didactic purpose.
+They are the Signpainters of God.
+</p><p>
+I have added this note to the lecture in copying my memoranda of
+it here at Assisi, June 9th, being about to begin work in the Tavern,
+or Tabernaculum, of the Lower Church, with its variously significant
+four great 'signs.'</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_AH_34" id="Footnote_AH_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_AH_34"><span class="label">[AH]</span></a> <a href="#Plate_X">Plate X., Lecture VI.</a></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_AI_35" id="Footnote_AI_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_AI_35"><span class="label">[AI]</span></a> I do not mean the greatest teacher of reformed faith; but the
+greatest protestant against faith unreformed.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_AJ_36" id="Footnote_AJ_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_AJ_36"><span class="label">[AJ]</span></a> It has become the permitted fashion among modern mathematicians,
+chemists, and apothecaries, to call themselves 'scientific men,' as opposed
+to theologians, poets, and artists. They know their sphere to be
+a separate one; but their ridiculous notion of its being a peculiarly
+scientific one ought not to be allowed in our Universities. There is a
+science of Morals, a science of History, a science of Grammar, a science
+of Music, and a science of Painting; and all these are quite beyond
+comparison higher fields for human intellect, and require accuracies
+of intenser observation, than either chemistry, electricity, or geology.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_AK_37" id="Footnote_AK_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_AK_37"><span class="label">[AK]</span></a> The Cumaean Sibyl, <a href="#Plate_VII">Plate VII., Lecture VI.</a></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_AL_38" id="Footnote_AL_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_AL_38"><span class="label">[AL]</span></a> <a href="#Sect_101">Lecture III., &sect; 101.</a></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_AM_39" id="Footnote_AM_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_AM_39"><span class="label">[AM]</span></a> I read somewhere, lately, a new and very ingenious theory about
+the attitude of the Apollo Belvedere, proving, to the author's satisfaction,
+that the received notion about watching the arrow was all a
+mistake. The paper proved, at all events, one thing&mdash;namely, the
+statement in the text. For an attitude which has been always hitherto
+taken to mean one thing, and is plausibly asserted now to mean another,
+must be in itself unintelligible.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_AN_40" id="Footnote_AN_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_AN_40"><span class="label">[AN]</span></a> It may be asked, why not corn also? Because that belongs to Ceres,
+who is equally one of the great gods.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_AO_41" id="Footnote_AO_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_AO_41"><span class="label">[AO]</span></a> "Aratra Pentelici," &sect; 181.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_AP_42" id="Footnote_AP_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_AP_42"><span class="label">[AP]</span></a> Or inventive! See Woltmann, p. 267. "The shinbone, or the
+lower part of the arm, exhibits only one bone, while the upper arm
+and thigh are often allowed the luxury of two!"</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_AQ_43" id="Footnote_AQ_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_AQ_43"><span class="label">[AQ]</span></a> See ante, <a href="#Sect_141">&sect; 141</a>. The "preface" is that to "The Eagle's Nest."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_AR_44" id="Footnote_AR_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_AR_44"><span class="label">[AR]</span></a> The drawings were made by Turner, and are now among the chief
+treasures of the Oxford Galleries. I ought to add some notice of
+Hogarth to this lecture in the Appendix; but fear I shall have no time:
+besides, though I have profound respect for Hogarth, as, in literature,
+I have for Fielding, I can't criticise them, because I know nothing of
+their subjects.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="gap3"><a name="LECTURE_VI" id="LECTURE_VI"></a>LECTURE VI.</h2>
+
+<h3>DESIGN IN THE FLORENTINE SCHOOLS OF ENGRAVING.</h3>
+
+
+<p>181. In the first of these lectures, I stated to you their
+subject, as the investigation of the engraved work of a group
+of men, to whom engraving, as a means of popular address,
+was above all precious, because their art was distinctively
+didactic.</p>
+
+<p>Some of my hearers must be aware that, of late years, the
+assertion that art should be didactic has been clamorously and
+violently derided by the countless crowd of artists who have
+nothing to represent, and of writers who have nothing to say;
+and that the contrary assertion&mdash;that art consists only in
+pretty colors and fine words,&mdash;is accepted, readily enough,
+by a public which rarely pauses to look at a picture with
+attention, or read a sentence with understanding.</p>
+
+<p>182. Gentlemen, believe me, there never was any great
+advancing art yet, nor can be, without didactic purpose.
+The leaders of the strong schools are, and must be always,
+either teachers of theology, or preachers of the moral law.
+I need not tell you that it was as teachers of theology on the
+walls of the Vatican that the masters with whose names you
+are most familiar obtained their perpetual fame. But however
+great their fame, you have not practically, I imagine,
+ever been materially assisted in your preparation for the
+schools either of philosophy or divinity by Raphael's
+'School of Athens,' by Raphael's 'Theology,'&mdash;or by Michael
+Angelo's 'Judgment.' My task, to-day, is to set before you
+some part of the design of the first Master of the works in
+the Sistine Chapel; and I believe that, from his teaching, you
+will, even in the hour which I ask you now to give, learn
+what may be of true use to you in all your future labor,
+whether in Oxford or elsewhere.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>183. You have doubtless, in the course of these lectures,
+been occasionally surprised by my speaking of Holbein and
+Sandro Botticelli, as Reformers, in the same tone of respect,
+and with the same implied assertion of their intellectual
+power and agency, with which it is usual to speak of Luther
+and Savonarola. You have been accustomed, indeed, to hear
+painting and sculpture spoken of as supporting or enforcing
+Church doctrine; but never as reforming or chastising it.
+Whether Protestant or Roman Catholic, you have admitted
+what in the one case you held to be the abuse of painting in
+the furtherance of idolatry,&mdash;in the other, its amiable and
+exalting ministry to the feebleness of faith. But neither has
+recognized,&mdash;the Protestant his ally,&mdash;or the Catholic his
+enemy, in the far more earnest work of the great painters of
+the fifteenth century. The Protestant was, in most cases, too
+vulgar to understand the aid offered to him by painting; and
+in all cases too terrified to believe in it. He drove the gift-bringing
+Greek with imprecations from his sectarian fortress,
+or received him within it only on the condition that he should
+speak no word of religion there.</p>
+
+<p>184. On the other hand, the Catholic, in most cases too
+indolent to read, and, in all, too proud to dread, the rebuke of
+the reforming painters, confused them with the crowd of his
+old flatterers, and little noticed their altered language or
+their graver brow. In a little while, finding they had ceased
+to be amusing, he effaced their works, not as dangerous, but
+as dull; and recognized only thenceforward, as art, the innocuous
+bombast of Michael Angelo, and fluent efflorescence of
+Bernini. But when you become more intimately and
+impartially acquainted with the history of the Reformation,
+you will find that, as surely and earnestly as Memling and
+Giotto strove in the north and south to set forth and exalt
+the Catholic faith, so surely and earnestly did Holbein and
+Botticelli strive, in the north, to chastise, and, in the south,
+to revive it. In what manner, I will try to-day briefly to
+show you.</p>
+
+<p>185. I name these two men as the reforming leaders: there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span>
+were many, rank and file, who worked in alliance with
+Holbein; with Botticelli, two great ones, Lippi and Perugino.
+But both of these had so much pleasure in their own pictorial
+faculty, that they strove to keep quiet, and out of harm's
+way,&mdash;involuntarily manifesting themselves sometimes, however;
+and not in the wisest manner. Lippi's running away
+with a novice was not likely to be understood as a step in
+Church reformation correspondent to Luther's marriage.<a name="FNanchor_AS_45" id="FNanchor_AS_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_AS_45" class="fnanchor">[AS]</a>
+Nor have Protestant divines, even to this day, recognized the
+real meaning of the reports of Perugino's 'infidelity.' Botticelli,
+the pupil of the one, and the companion of the other,
+held the truths they taught him through sorrow as well as
+joy; and he is the greatest of the reformers, because he
+preached without blame; though the least known, because
+he died without victory.</p>
+
+<p>I had hoped to be able to lay before you some better
+biography of him than the traditions of Vasari, of which I
+gave a short abstract some time back in Fors Clavigera
+(Letter XXII.); but as yet I have only added internal
+evidence to the popular story, the more important points of
+which I must review briefly. It will not waste your time if
+I read,&mdash;instead of merely giving you reference to,&mdash;the
+passages on which I must comment.</p>
+
+<p>186. "His father, Mariano Filipepi, a Florentine citizen,
+brought him up with care, and caused him to be instructed in
+all such things as are usually taught to children before they
+choose a calling. But although the boy readily acquired
+whatever he wished to learn, yet was he constantly discontented;
+neither would he take any pleasure in reading,
+writing, or accounts, insomuch that the father, disturbed by
+the eccentric habits of his son, turned him over in despair<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span>
+to a gossip of his, called Botticello, who was a goldsmith, and
+considered a very competent master of his art, to the intent
+that the boy might learn the same."</p>
+
+<p>"He took no pleasure in reading, writing, nor accounts"!
+You will find the same thing recorded of Cimabue; but it
+is more curious when stated of a man whom I cite to you as
+typically a gentleman and a scholar. But remember, in those
+days, though there were not so many entirely correct books
+issued by the Religious Tract Society for boys to read, there
+were a great many more pretty things in the world for boys
+to see. The Val d'Arno was Pater-noster Row to purpose;
+their Father's Row, with books of His writing on the mountain
+shelves. And the lad takes to looking at things, and
+thinking about them, instead of reading about them,&mdash;which
+I commend to you also, as much the more scholarly practice of
+the two. To the end, though he knows all about the celestial
+hierarchies, he is not strong in his letters, nor in his dialect.
+I asked Mr. Tyrwhitt to help me through with a bit of his
+Italian the other day. Mr. Tyrwhitt could only help me by
+suggesting that it was "Botticelli for so-and-so." And one
+of the minor reasons which induced me so boldly to attribute
+these sibyls to him, instead of Bandini, is that the lettering
+is so ill done. The engraver would assuredly have had his
+lettering all right,&mdash;or at least neat. Botticelli blunders
+through it, scratches impatiently out when he goes wrong:
+and as I told you there's no repentance in the engraver's
+trade, leaves all the blunders visible.</p>
+
+<p>187. I may add one fact bearing on this question lately
+communicated to me.<a name="FNanchor_AT_46" id="FNanchor_AT_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_AT_46" class="fnanchor">[AT]</a> In the autumn of 1872 I possessed
+myself of an Italian book of pen drawings, some, I have no
+doubt, by Mantegna in his youth, others by Sandro himself.
+In examining these, I was continually struck by the comparatively
+feeble and blundering way in which the titles were
+written, while all the rest of the handling was really superb;
+and still more surprised when, on the sleeves and hem of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>
+robe of one of the principal figures of women, ("Helena
+rapita da Paris,") I found what seemed to be meant for
+inscriptions, intricately embroidered; which nevertheless,
+though beautifully drawn, I could not read. In copying
+Botticelli's Zipporah this spring, I found the border of her
+robe wrought with characters of the same kind, which a
+young painter, working with me, who already knows the
+minor secrets of Italian art better than I,<a name="FNanchor_AU_47" id="FNanchor_AU_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_AU_47" class="fnanchor">[AU]</a> assures me are
+letters,&mdash;and letters of a language hitherto undeciphered.</p>
+
+<p>188. "There was at that time a close connection and
+almost constant intercourse between the goldsmiths and the
+painters, wherefore Sandro, who possessed considerable
+ingenuity, and was strongly disposed to the arts of design,
+became enamored of painting, and resolved to devote himself
+entirely to that vocation. He acknowledged his purpose at
+once to his father; and the latter, who knew the force of his
+inclination, took him accordingly to the Carmelite monk,
+Fra Filippo, who was a most excellent painter of that time,
+with whom he placed him to study the art, as Sandro himself
+had desired. Devoting himself thereupon entirely to the
+vocation he had chosen, Sandro so closely followed the directions,
+and imitated the manner, of his master, that Fra
+Filippo conceived a great love for him, and instructed him
+so effectually, that Sandro rapidly attained to such a degree
+in art as none would have predicted for him."</p>
+
+<p>I have before pointed out to you the importance of training
+by the goldsmith. Sandro got more good of it, however,
+than any of the other painters so educated,&mdash;being enabled
+by it to use gold for light to color, in a glowing harmony
+never reached with equal perfection, and rarely attempted,
+in the later schools. To the last, his paintings are partly
+treated as work in niello; and he names himself, in perpetual
+gratitude, from this first artisan master. Nevertheless, the
+fortunate fellow finds, at the right moment, another, even
+more to his mind, and is obedient to him through his youth,
+as to the other through his childhood. And this master loves<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>
+him; and instructs him 'so effectually,'&mdash;in grinding colors,
+do you suppose, only; or in laying of lines only; or in anything
+more than these?</p>
+
+<p>189. I will tell you what Lippi must have taught any boy
+whom he loved. First, humility, and to live in joy and
+peace, injuring no man&mdash;if such innocence might be. Nothing
+is so manifest in every face by him, as its gentleness and
+rest. Secondly, to finish his work perfectly, and in such
+temper that the angels might say of it&mdash;not he himself&mdash;'Iste
+perfecit opus.' Do you remember what I told you in the
+Eagle's Nest (&sect; 53), that true humility was in hoping that
+angels might sometimes admire <i>our</i> work; not in hoping that
+we should ever be able to admire <i>theirs</i>? Thirdly,&mdash;a little
+thing it seems, but was a great one,&mdash;love of flowers. No one
+draws such lilies or such daisies as Lippi. Botticelli beat
+him afterwards in roses, but never in lilies. Fourthly, due
+honor for classical tradition. Lippi is the only religious
+painter who dresses John Baptist in the camelskin, as the
+Greeks dressed Heracles in the lion's&mdash;over the head. Lastly,
+and chiefly of all,&mdash;Le P&egrave;re Hyacinthe taught his pupil
+certain views about the doctrine of the Church, which the boy
+thought of more deeply than his tutor, and that by a great
+deal; and Master Sandro presently got himself into such
+question for painting heresy, that if he had been as hot-headed
+as he was true-hearted, he would soon have come to
+bad end by the tar-barrel. But he is so sweet and so modest,
+that nobody is frightened; so clever, that everybody is
+pleased: and at last, actually the Pope sends for him to
+paint his own private chapel,&mdash;where the first thing my
+young gentleman does, mind you, is to paint the devil in a
+monk's dress, tempting Christ! The sauciest thing, out and
+out, done in the history of the Reformation, it seems to me;
+yet so wisely done, and with such true respect otherwise
+shown for what was sacred in the Church, that the Pope
+didn't mind: and all went on as merrily as marriage bells.</p>
+
+<p>190. I have anticipated, however, in telling you this, the
+proper course of his biography, to which I now return.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"While still a youth he painted the figure of Fortitude,
+among those pictures of the Virtues which Antonio and
+Pietro Pollaiuolo were executing in the Mercatanzia, or
+Tribunal of Commerce, in Florence. In Santo Spirito, a
+church of the same city, he painted a picture for the chapel
+of the Bardi family: this work he executed with great diligence,
+and finished it very successfully, depicting certain
+olive and palm trees therein with extraordinary care."</p>
+
+<p>It is by a beautiful chance that the first work of his,
+specified by his Italian biographer, should be the Fortitude.<a name="FNanchor_AV_48" id="FNanchor_AV_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_AV_48" class="fnanchor">[AV]</a>
+Note also what is said of his tree drawing.</p>
+
+<p>"Having, in consequence of this work, obtained much
+credit and reputation, Sandro was appointed by the Guild of
+Porta Santa Maria to paint a picture in San Marco, the
+subject of which is the Coronation of Our Lady, who is
+surrounded by a choir of angels&mdash;the whole extremely well
+designed, and finished by the artist with infinite care. He
+executed various works in the Medici Palace for the elder
+Lorenzo, more particularly a figure of Pallas on a shield
+wreathed with vine branches, whence flames are proceeding:
+this he painted of the size of life. A San Sebastiano was
+also among the most remarkable of the works executed for
+Lorenzo. In the church of Santa Maria Maggiore, in Florence,
+is a Piet&agrave;, with small figures, by this master: this is
+a very beautiful work. For different houses in various parts
+of the city Sandro painted many pictures of a round form,
+with numerous figures of women undraped. Of these there
+are still two examples at Castello, a villa of the Duke Cosimo,&mdash;one
+representing the birth of Venus, who is borne to earth
+by the Loves and Zephyrs; the second also presenting the
+figure of Venus crowned with flowers by the Graces: she is
+here intended to denote the Spring, and the allegory is
+expressed by the painter with extraordinary grace."</p>
+
+<p>Our young Reformer enters, it seems, on a very miscellaneous
+course of study; the Coronation of Our Lady; St.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span>
+Sebastian; Pallas in vine-leaves; and Venus,&mdash;without fig-leaves.
+Not wholly Calvinistic, Fra Filippo's teaching seems
+to have been! All the better for the boy&mdash;being such a boy
+as he was: but I cannot in this lecture enter farther into my
+reasons for saying so.</p>
+
+<p>191. Vasari, however, has shot far ahead in telling us of
+this picture of the Spring, which is one of Botticelli's completest
+works. Long before he was able to paint Greek
+nymphs, he had done his best in idealism of greater spirits;
+and, while yet quite a youth, painted, at Castello, the Assumption
+of Our Lady, with "the patriarchs, the prophets, the
+apostles, the evangelists, the martyrs, the confessors, the
+doctors, the virgins, and the hierarchies!"</p>
+
+<p>Imagine this subject proposed to a young, (or even old)
+British Artist, for his next appeal to public sensation at the
+Academy! But do you suppose that the young British artist
+is wiser and more civilized than Lippi's scholar, because his
+only idea of a patriarch is of a man with a long beard; of
+a doctor, the M.D. with the brass plate over the way; and of
+a virgin, Miss &mdash;&mdash; of the &mdash;&mdash; theater?</p>
+
+<p>Not that even Sandro was able, according to Vasari's
+report, to conduct the entire design himself. The proposer of
+the subject assisted him; and they made some modifications
+in the theology, which brought them both into trouble&mdash;so
+early did Sandro's innovating work begin, into which subjects
+our gossiping friend waives unnecessary inquiry, as
+follows.</p>
+
+<p>"But although this picture is exceedingly beautiful, and
+ought to have put envy to shame, yet there were found certain
+malevolent and censorious persons who, not being able to
+affix any other blame to the work, declared that Matteo and
+Sandro had erred gravely in that matter, and had fallen into
+grievous heresy.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, whether this be true or not, let none expect the
+judgment of that question from me: it shall suffice me to
+note that the figures executed by Sandro in that work are
+entirely worthy of praise; and that the pains he took in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>
+depicting those circles of the heavens must have been very
+great, to say nothing of the angels mingled with the other
+figures, or of the various foreshortenings, all which are
+designed in a very good manner.</p>
+
+<p>"About this time Sandro received a commission to paint
+a small picture with figures three parts of a braccio high,&mdash;the
+subject an Adoration of the Magi.</p>
+
+<p>"It is indeed a most admirable work; the composition, the
+design, and the coloring are so beautiful that every artist who
+examines it is astonished; and, at the time, it obtained so
+great a name in Florence, and other places, for the master,
+that Pope Sixtus IV. having erected the chapel built by him
+in his palace at Rome, and desiring to have it adorned with
+paintings, commanded that Sandro Botticelli should be
+appointed Superintendent of the work."</p>
+
+<p>192. Vasari's words, "about this time," are evidently
+wrong. It must have been many and many a day after he
+painted Matteo's picture that he took such high standing in
+Florence as to receive the mastership of the works in the
+Pope's chapel at Rome. Of his position and doings there, I
+will tell you presently; meantime, let us complete the story
+of his life.</p>
+
+<p>"By these works Botticelli obtained great honor and reputation
+among the many competitors who were laboring with
+him, whether Florentines or natives of other cities, and received
+from the Pope a considerable sum of money; but this
+he consumed and squandered totally, during his residence in
+Rome, where he lived without due care, as was his habit."</p>
+
+<p>193. Well, but one would have liked to hear <i>how</i> he squandered
+his money, and whether he was without care&mdash;of other
+things than money.</p>
+
+<p>It is just possible, Master Vasari, that Botticelli may have
+laid out his money at higher interest than you know of;
+meantime, he is advancing in life and thought, and becoming
+less and less comprehensible to his biographer. And at
+length, having got rid, somehow, of the money he received
+from the Pope; and finished the work he had to do, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span>
+uncovered it,&mdash;free in conscience, and empty in purse, he
+returned to Florence, where, "being a sophistical person, he
+made a comment on a part of Dante, and drew the Inferno,
+and put it in engraving, in which he consumed much time;
+and not working for this reason, brought infinite disorder into
+his affairs."</p>
+
+<p>194. Unpaid work, this engraving of Dante, you perceive,&mdash;consuming
+much time also, and not appearing to Vasari
+to be work at all. It is but a short sentence, gentlemen,&mdash;this,
+in the old edition of Vasari, and obscurely worded,&mdash;a
+very foolish person's contemptuous report of a thing to him
+totally incomprehensible. But the thing itself is out-and-out
+the most important fact in the history of the religious art
+of Italy. I can show you its significance in not many more
+words than have served to record it.</p>
+
+<p>Botticelli had been painting in Rome; and had expressly
+chosen to represent there,&mdash;being Master of Works, in the
+presence of the Defender of the Faith,&mdash;the foundation of
+the Mosaic law; to his mind the Eternal Law of God,&mdash;that
+law of which modern Evangelicals sing perpetually their
+own original psalm, "Oh, how hate I Thy law! it is my
+abomination all the day." Returning to Florence, he reads
+Dante's vision of the Hell created by its violation. He
+knows that the pictures he has painted in Rome cannot be
+understood by the people; they are exclusively for the best
+trained scholars in the Church. Dante, on the other hand,
+can only be read in manuscript; but the people could and
+would understand <i>his</i> lessons, if they were pictured in accessible
+and enduring form. He throws all his own lauded work
+aside,&mdash;all for which he is most honored, and in which his
+now matured and magnificent skill is as easy to him as singing
+to a perfect musician. And he sets himself to a servile
+and despised labor,&mdash;his friends mocking him, his resources
+failing him, infinite 'disorder' getting into his affairs&mdash;of
+this world.</p>
+
+<p>195. Never such another thing happened in Italy any
+more. Botticelli engraved her Pilgrim's Progress for her,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span>
+putting himself in prison to do it. She would not read it
+when done. Raphael and Marc Antonio were the theologians
+for her money. Pretty Madonnas, and satyrs with
+abundance of tail,&mdash;let our pilgrim's progress be in <i>these</i>
+directions, if you please.</p>
+
+<p>Botticelli's own pilgrimage, however, was now to be accomplished
+triumphantly, with such crowning blessings as Heaven
+might grant to him. In spite of his friends and his disordered
+affairs, he went his own obstinate way; and found
+another man's words worth engraving as well as Dante's;
+not without perpetuating, also, what he deemed worthy of
+his own.</p>
+
+<p>196. What would that be, think you? His chosen works
+before the Pope in Rome?&mdash;his admired Madonnas in
+Florence?&mdash;his choirs of angels and thickets of flowers?
+Some few of these yes, as you shall presently see; but "the
+best attempt of this kind from his hand is the Triumph of
+Faith, by Fra Girolamo Savonarola, of Ferrara, of whose
+sect our artist was so zealous a partisan that he totally
+abandoned painting, and not having any other means of
+living, he fell into very great difficulties. But his attachment
+to the party he had adopted increased; he became what was
+then called a Piagnone, or Mourner, and abandoned all labor;
+insomuch that, finding himself at length become old, being
+also very poor, he must have died of hunger had he not been
+supported by Lorenzo de' Medici, for whom he had worked
+at the small hospital of Volterra and other places, who
+assisted him while he lived, as did other friends and admirers
+of his talents."</p>
+
+<p>197. In such dignity and independence&mdash;having employed
+his talents not wholly at the orders of the dealer&mdash;died, a
+poor bedesman of Lorenzo de' Medici, the President of that
+high academy of art in Rome, whose Academicians were
+Perugino, Ghirlandajo, Angelico, and Signorelli; and whose
+students, Michael Angelo and Raphael.</p>
+
+<p>'A worthless, ill-conducted fellow on the whole,' thinks
+Vasari, 'with a crazy fancy for scratching on copper.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Well, here are some of the scratches for you to see; only,
+first, I must ask you seriously for a few moments to consider
+what the two powers were, which, with this iron pen of his,
+he has set himself to reprove.</p>
+
+<p>198. Two great forms of authority reigned over the entire
+civilized world, confessedly, and by name, in the Middle
+Ages. They reign over it still, and must forever, though
+at present very far from confessed; and, in most places,
+ragingly denied.</p>
+
+<p>The first power is that of the Teacher, or true Father;
+the Father 'in God.' It may be&mdash;happy the children to
+whom it is&mdash;the actual father also; and whose parents have
+been their tutors. But, for the most part, it will be some one
+else who teaches them, and molds their minds and brain.
+All such teaching, when true, being from above, and coming
+down from the Father of Lights, with whom is no variableness,
+neither shadow of turning, is properly that of the holy
+Catholic '&#949;&#954;&#954;&#955;&#951;&#963;&#953;&#945;,' council, church, or papacy, of many fathers
+in God, not of one. Eternally powerful and divine; reverenced
+of all humble and lowly scholars, in Jewry, in Greece,
+in Rome, in Gaul, in England, and beyond sea, from Arctic
+zone to zone.</p>
+
+<p>The second authority is the power of National Law, enforcing
+justice in conduct by due reward and punishment. Power
+vested necessarily in magistrates capable of administering it
+with mercy and equity; whose authority, be it of many or
+few, is again divine, as proceeding from the King of kings,
+and was acknowledged, throughout civilized Christendom,
+as the power of the Holy Empire, or Holy Roman Empire,
+because first throned in Rome; but it is forever also acknowledged,
+namelessly, or by name, by all loyal, obedient, just,
+and humble hearts, which truly desire that, whether for them
+or against them, the eternal equities and dooms of Heaven
+should be pronounced and executed; and as the wisdom or
+word of their Father should be taught, so the will of their
+Father should be done, on earth, as it is in heaven.</p>
+
+<p>199. You all here know what contention, first, and then<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>
+what corruption and dishonor, had paralyzed these two powers
+before the days of which we now speak. Reproof, and either
+reform or rebellion, became necessary everywhere. The
+northern Reformers, Holbein, and Luther, and Henry, and
+Cromwell, set themselves to their task rudely, and, it might
+seem, carried it through. The southern Reformers, Dante,
+and Savonarola, and Botticelli, set hand to their task
+reverently, and, it seemed, did not by any means carry it
+through. But the end is not yet.</p>
+
+<p><a id="Sect_200" name="Sect_200"></a>200. Now I shall endeavor to-day to set before you the
+art of Botticelli, especially as exhibiting the modesty of
+great imagination trained in reverence, which characterized
+the southern Reformers; and as opposed to the immodesty
+of narrow imagination, trained in self-trust, which characterized
+the northern Reformers.</p>
+
+<p>'The modesty of great <i>imagination</i>;' that is to say, of the
+power which conceives all things in true relation, and not
+only as they affect ourselves. I can show you this most
+definitely by taking one example of the modern, and
+unschooled temper, in Bewick;<a name="FNanchor_AW_49" id="FNanchor_AW_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_AW_49" class="fnanchor">[AW]</a> and setting it beside Botticelli's
+treatment of the same subject of thought,&mdash;namely,
+the meaning of war, and the reforms necessary in the carrying
+on of war.</p>
+
+<p>201. Both the men are entirely at one in their purpose.
+They yearn for peace and justice to rule over the earth, instead
+of the sword; but see how differently they will say what
+is in their hearts to the people they address. To Bewick,
+war was more an absurdity than it was a horror: he had not
+seen battle-fields, still less had he read of them, in ancient
+days. He cared nothing about heroes,&mdash;Greek, Roman, or
+Norman. What he knew, and saw clearly, was that Farmer
+Hodge's boy went out of the village one holiday afternoon, a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span>
+fine young fellow, rather drunk, with a colored ribbon in
+his hat; and came back, ten years afterwards, with one leg,
+one eye, an old red coat, and a tobacco-pipe in the pocket of
+it. That is what he has got to say, mainly. So, for the
+pathetic side of the business, he draws you two old soldiers
+meeting as bricklayers' laborers; and for the absurd side of
+it, he draws a stone, sloping sideways with age, in a bare
+field, on which you can just read, out of a long inscription,
+the words "glorious victory;" but no one is there to read
+them,&mdash;only a jackass, who uses the stone to scratch himself
+against.</p>
+
+<p>202. Now compare with this Botticelli's reproof of war.
+<i>He</i> had seen it, and often; and between noble persons;&mdash;knew
+the temper in which the noblest knights went out to it;&mdash;knew
+the strength, the patience, the glory, and the grief of
+it. He would fain see his Florence in peace; and yet he
+knows that the wisest of her citizens are her bravest soldiers.
+So he seeks for the ideal of a soldier, and for the greatest
+glory of war, that in the presence of these he may speak
+reverently, what he must speak. He does not go to Greece for
+his hero. He is not sure that even her patriotic wars were
+always right. But, by his religious faith, he cannot doubt
+the nobleness of the soldier who put the children of Israel in
+possession of their promised land, and to whom the sign of
+the consent of heaven was given by its pausing light in the
+valley of Ajalon. Must then setting sun and risen moon
+stay, he thinks, only to look upon slaughter? May no soldier
+of Christ bid them stay otherwise than so? He draws
+Joshua, but quitting his hold of the sword: its hilt rests on
+his bent knee; and he kneels before the sun, not commands
+it; and this is his prayer:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, King of kings, and Lord of lords, who alone rulest
+always in eternity, and who correctest all our wanderings,&mdash;Giver
+of melody to the choir of the angels, listen Thou a
+little to our bitter grief, and come and rule us, oh Thou
+highest King, with Thy love which is so sweet!"</p>
+
+<p>Is not that a little better, and a little wiser, than Bewick's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>
+jackass? Is it not also better, and wiser, than the sneer of
+modern science? 'What great men are we!&mdash;we, forsooth,
+can make almanacs, and know that the earth turns round.
+Joshua indeed! Let us have no more talk of the old-clothes-man.'</p>
+
+<p>All Bewick's simplicity is in that; but none of Bewick's
+understanding.</p>
+
+<p>203. I pass to the attack made by Botticelli upon the
+guilt of wealth. So I had at first written; but I should
+rather have written, the appeal made by him against the
+cruelty of wealth, then first attaining the power it has
+maintained to this day.</p>
+
+<p>The practice of receiving interest had been confined, until
+this fifteenth century, with contempt and malediction, to the
+profession, so styled, of usurers, or to the Jews. The merchants
+of Augsburg introduced it as a convenient and
+pleasant practice among Christians also; and insisted that
+it was decorous and proper even among respectable merchants.
+In the view of the Christian Church of their day, they might
+more reasonably have set themselves to defend adultery.<a name="FNanchor_AX_50" id="FNanchor_AX_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_AX_50" class="fnanchor">[AX]</a>
+However, they appointed Dr. John Eck, of Ingoldstadt, to
+hold debates in all possible universities, at their expense, on
+the allowing of interest; and as these Augsburgers had in
+Venice their special mart, Fondaco, called of the Germans,
+their new notions came into direct collision with old Venetian
+ones, and were much hindered by them, and all the more,
+because, in opposition to Dr. John Eck, there was preaching
+on the other side of the Alps. The Franciscans, poor themselves,
+preached mercy to the poor: one of them, Brother
+Marco of San Gallo, planned the 'Mount of Pity' for their
+defense, and the merchants of Venice set up the first in the
+world, against the German Fondaco. The dispute burned
+far on towards our own times. You perhaps have heard
+before of one Antonio, a merchant of Venice, who persistently
+retained the then obsolete practice of lending money
+gratis, and of the peril it brought him into with the usurers.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span>
+But you perhaps did not before know why it was the flesh, or
+heart of flesh, in him, that they so hated.</p>
+
+<p>204. Against this newly risen demon of authorized usury,
+Holbein and Botticelli went out to war together. Holbein,
+as we have partly seen in his designs for the Dance of Death,
+struck with all his soldier's strength.<a name="FNanchor_AY_51" id="FNanchor_AY_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_AY_51" class="fnanchor">[AY]</a> Botticelli uses neither
+satire nor reproach. He turns altogether away from the
+criminals; appeals only to heaven for defense against them.
+He engraves the design which, of all his work, must have
+cost him hardest toil in its execution,&mdash;the Virgin praying
+to her Son in heaven for pity upon the poor: "For these
+are also my children."<a name="FNanchor_AZ_52" id="FNanchor_AZ_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_AZ_52" class="fnanchor">[AZ]</a> Underneath, are the seven works
+of Mercy; and in the midst of them, the building of the
+Mount of Pity: in the distance lies Italy, mapped in cape
+and bay, with the cities which had founded mounts of pity,&mdash;Venice
+in the distance, chief. Little seen, but engraved
+with the master's loveliest care, in the background there is
+a group of two small figures&mdash;the Franciscan brother kneeling,
+and an angel of Victory crowning him.</p>
+
+<p>205. I call it an angel of Victory, observe, with assurance;
+although there is no legend claiming victory, or distinguishing
+this angel from any other of those which adorn with
+crowns of flowers the nameless crowds of the blessed. For
+Botticelli has other ways of speaking than by written legends.
+I know by a glance at this angel that he has taken the action
+of it from a Greek coin; and I know also that he had not,
+in his own exuberant fancy, the least need to copy the action
+of any figure whatever. So I understand, as well as if he
+spoke to me, that he expects me, if I am an educated gentleman,
+to recognize this particular action as a Greek angel's;
+and to know that it is a temporal victory which it crowns.</p>
+
+<p>206. And now farther, observe, that this classical learning
+of Botticelli's, received by him, as I told you, as a native
+element of his being, gives not only greater dignity and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span>
+gentleness, but far wider range, to his thoughts of Reformation.
+As he asks for pity from the cruel Jew to the <i>poor</i>
+Gentile, so he asks for pity from the proud Christian to the
+<i>untaught</i> Gentile. Nay, for more than pity, for fellowship,
+and acknowledgment of equality before God. The learned
+men of his age in general brought back the Greek mythology
+as anti-Christian. But Botticelli and Perugino, as pre-Christian;
+nor only as pre-Christian, but as the foundation of
+Christianity. But chiefly Botticelli, with perfect grasp of
+the Mosaic and classic theology, thought over and seized the
+harmonies of both; and he it was who gave the conception of
+that great choir of the prophets and sibyls, of which Michael
+Angelo, more or less ignorantly borrowing it in the Sistine
+Chapel, in great part lost the meaning, while he magnified
+the aspect.</p>
+
+<p>207. For, indeed, all Christian and heathen mythology had
+alike become to Michael Angelo only a vehicle for the display
+of his own powers of drawing limbs and trunks: and
+having resolved, and made the world of his day believe,
+that all the glory of design lay in variety of difficult attitude,
+he flings the naked bodies about his ceiling with an upholsterer's
+ingenuity of appliance to the corners they could fit,
+but with total absence of any legible meaning. Nor do I
+suppose that one person in a million, even of those who have
+some acquaintance with the earlier masters, takes patience
+in the Sistine Chapel to conceive the original design. But
+Botticelli's mastership of the works evidently was given to
+him as a theologian, even more than as a painter; and the
+moment when he came to Rome to receive it, you may hold
+for the crisis of the Reformation in Italy. The main effort to
+save her priesthood was about to be made by her wisest
+Reformer,&mdash;face to face with the head of her Church,&mdash;not
+in contest with him, but in the humblest subjection to him;
+and in adornment of his own chapel for his own delight, and
+more than delight, if it might be.</p>
+
+<p>208. Sandro brings to work, not under him, but with
+him, the three other strongest and worthiest men he knows,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>
+Perugino, Ghirlandajo, and Luca Signorelli. There is evidently
+entire fellowship in thought between Botticelli and
+Perugino. They two together plan the whole; and Botticelli,
+though the master, yields to Perugino the principal place,
+the end of the chapter, on which is to be the Assumption of the
+Virgin. It was Perugino's favorite subject, done with his
+central strength; assuredly the crowning work of his life,
+and of lovely Christian art in Europe.</p>
+
+<p>Michael Angelo painted it out, and drew devils and dead
+bodies all over the wall instead. But there remains to us,
+happily, the series of subjects designed by Botticelli to lead
+up to this lost one.</p>
+
+<p>209. He came, I said, not to attack, but to restore the Papal
+authority. To show the power of inherited honor, and universal
+claim of divine law, in the Jewish and Christian
+Church,&mdash;the law delivered first by Moses; then, in final
+grace and truth, by Christ.</p>
+
+<p>He designed twelve great pictures, each containing some
+twenty figures the size of life, and groups of smaller ones
+scarcely to be counted. Twelve pictures,&mdash;six to illustrate
+the giving of the law by Moses; and six, the ratification and
+completion of it by Christ. Event by event, the jurisprudence
+of each dispensation is traced from dawn to close in
+this correspondence.</p>
+
+<ol>
+<li>Covenant of Circumcision.</li>
+<li>Entrance on his Ministry by Moses.</li>
+<li>Moses by the Red Sea.</li>
+<li>Delivery of Law on Sinai.</li>
+<li>Destruction of Korah.</li>
+<li>Death of Moses.</li>
+<li>Covenant of Baptism.</li>
+<li>Entrance on His Ministry by Christ.</li>
+<li>Peter and Andrew by the Sea of Galilee.</li>
+<li>Sermon on Mount.</li>
+<li>Giving Keys to St. Peter.</li>
+<li>Last Supper.</li>
+</ol>
+
+<p>Of these pictures, Sandro painted three himself, Perugino
+three, and the Assumption; Ghirlandajo one, Signorelli one,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>
+and Rosselli four.<a name="FNanchor_BA_53" id="FNanchor_BA_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_BA_53" class="fnanchor">[BA]</a> I believe that Sandro intended to take
+the roof also, and had sketched out the main succession of its
+design; and that the prophets and sibyls which he meant to
+paint, he drew first small, and engraved his drawings afterwards,
+that some part of the work might be, at all events, thus
+communicable to the world outside of the Vatican.</p>
+
+<p>210. It is not often that I tell you my beliefs; but I am
+forced here, for there are no dates to found more on. Is
+it not wonderful that among all the infinite mass of fools'
+thoughts about the "majestic works of Michael Angelo" in
+the Sistine Chapel, no slightly more rational person has ever
+asked what the chapel was first meant to be like, and how
+it was to be roofed?</p>
+
+<p>Nor can I assume myself, still less you, that all these
+prophets and sibyls are Botticelli's. Of many there are two
+engravings, with variations: some are inferior in parts, many
+altogether. He signed none; never put grand tablets with
+'S. B.' into his skies; had other letters than those to engrave,
+and no time to spare. I have chosen out of the series three
+of the sibyls, which have, I think, clear internal evidence of
+being his; and these you shall compare with Michael Angelo's.
+But first I must put you in mind what the sibyls were.</p>
+
+<p>211. As the prophets represent the voice of God in man,
+the sibyls represent the voice of God in nature. They are
+properly all forms of one sibyl, &#916;&#953;&#959;&#962; &#914;&#959;&#965;&#955;&#951;, the counsel of God;
+and the chief one, at least in the Roman mind, was the Sibyl
+of Cumae. From the traditions of her, the Romans, and we
+through them, received whatever lessons the myth, or fact, of
+sibyl power has given to mortals.</p>
+
+<p>How much have you received, or may you yet receive, think
+you, of that teaching? I call it the myth, or fact; but remember
+that, <i>as</i> a myth, it <i>is</i> a fact. This story has concentrated
+whatever good there is in the imagination or visionary
+powers in women, inspired by nature only. The traditions
+of witch and gypsy are partly its offshoots. You despise both,
+perhaps. But can you, though in utmost pride of your su<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span>preme
+modern wisdom, suppose that the character&mdash;say, even
+of so poor and far-fallen a sibyl as Meg Merrilies&mdash;is only
+the coinage of Scott's brain; or that, even being no more, it
+is valueless? Admit the figure of the Cumaean Sibyl, in
+like manner, to be the coinage only of Virgil's brain. As
+such, it, and the words it speaks, are yet facts in which we
+may find use, if we are reverent to them.</p>
+
+<p>To me, personally, (I must take your indulgence for a moment
+to speak wholly of myself,) they have been of the truest
+service&mdash;quite material and indisputable.</p>
+
+<p>I am writing on St. John's Day, in the monastery of Assisi;
+and I had no idea whatever, when I sat down to my work
+this morning, of saying any word of what I am now going to
+tell you. I meant only to expand and explain a little what I
+said in my lecture about the Florentine engraving. But it
+seems to me now that I had better tell you what the Cumaean
+Sibyl has actually done for me.</p>
+
+<p>212. In 1871, partly in consequence of chagrin at the Revolution
+in Paris, and partly in great personal sorrow, I was
+struck by acute inflammatory illness at Matlock, and reduced
+to a state of extreme weakness; lying at one time unconscious
+for some hours, those about me having no hope of my life.
+I have no doubt that the immediate cause of the illness was
+simply, eating when I was not hungry; so that modern science
+would acknowledge nothing in the whole business but an extreme
+and very dangerous form of indigestion; and entirely
+deny any interference of the Cumaean Sibyl in the matter.</p>
+
+<p>I once heard a sermon by Dr. Guthrie, in Edinburgh, upon
+the wickedness of fasting. It was very eloquent and ingenious,
+and finely explained the superiority of the Scotch Free
+Church to the benighted Catholic Church, in that the Free
+Church saw no merit in fasting. And there was no mention,
+from beginning to end of the sermon, of even the existence of
+such texts as Daniel i. 12, or Matthew vi. 16.</p>
+
+<p>Without the smallest merit, I admit, in fasting, I was
+nevertheless reduced at Matlock to a state very near starvation;
+and could not rise from my pillow, without being lifted,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span>
+for some days. And in the first clearly pronounced stage of
+recovery, when the perfect powers of spirit had returned,
+while the body was still as weak as it well could be, I had
+three dreams, which made a great impression on me; for in
+ordinary health my dreams are supremely ridiculous, if not
+unpleasant; and in ordinary conditions of illness, very ugly,
+and always without the slightest meaning. But these dreams
+were all distinct and impressive, and had much meaning, if
+I chose to take it.</p>
+
+<p>213. The first<a name="FNanchor_BB_54" id="FNanchor_BB_54"></a><a href="#Footnote_BB_54" class="fnanchor">[BB]</a> was of a Venetian fisherman, who wanted
+me to follow him down into some water which I thought was
+too deep; but he called me on, saying he had something to
+show me; so I followed him; and presently, through an opening,
+as if in the arsenal wall, he showed me the bronze horses
+of St. Mark's, and said, 'See, the horses are putting on their
+harness.'</p>
+
+<p>The second was of a preparation at Rome, in St. Peter's,
+(or a vast hall as large as St. Peter's,) for the exhibition of
+a religious drama. Part of the play was to be a scene in
+which demons were to appear in the sky; and the stage
+servants were arranging gray fictitious clouds, and painted
+fiends, for it, under the direction of the priests. There was
+a woman dressed in black, standing at the corner of the stage
+watching them, having a likeness in her face to one of my own
+dead friends; and I knew somehow that she was not that
+friend, but a spirit; and she made me understand, without
+speaking, that I was to watch, for the play would turn out
+other than the priests expected. And I waited; and when
+the scene came on, the clouds became real clouds, and the
+fiends real fiends, agitating them in slow quivering, wild and
+terrible, over the heads of the people and priests. I recollected
+distinctly, however, when I woke, only the figure of the
+black woman mocking the people, and of one priest in an
+agony of terror, with the sweat pouring from his brow, but
+violently scolding one of the stage servants for having failed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span>
+in some ceremony, the omission of which, he thought, had
+given the devils their power.</p>
+
+<p>The third dream was the most interesting and personal.
+Some one came to me to ask me to help in the deliverance of
+a company of Italian prisoners who were to be ransomed for
+money. I said I had no money. They answered, Yes, I
+had some that belonged to me as a brother of St. Francis, if
+I would give it up. I said I did not know even that I <i>was</i>
+a brother of St. Francis; but I thought to myself, that perhaps
+the Franciscans of F&eacute;sole, whom I had helped to make
+hay in their field in 1845, had adopted me for one; only I
+didn't see how the consequence of that would be my having
+any money. However, I said they were welcome to whatever
+I had; and then I heard the voice of an Italian woman singing;
+and I have never heard such divine singing before nor
+since;&mdash;the sounds absolutely strong and real, and the melody
+altogether lovely. If I could have written it! But I could
+not even remember it when I woke,&mdash;only how beautiful it
+was.</p>
+
+<p>214. Now these three dreams have, every one of them, been
+of much use to me since; or so far as they have failed to be
+useful, it has been my own fault, and not theirs; but the chief
+use of them at the time was to give me courage and confidence
+in myself, both in bodily distress, of which I had still not a
+little to bear; and worse, much mental anxiety about matters
+supremely interesting to me, which were turning out ill.
+And through all such trouble&mdash;which came upon me as I was
+recovering, as if it meant to throw me back into the grave,&mdash;I
+held out and recovered, repeating always to myself, or rather
+having always murmured in my ears, at every new trial, one
+Latin line,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Tu ne cede malis, sed contra fortior ito.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Now I had got this line out of the tablet in the engraving of
+Raphael's vision, and had forgotten where it came from.
+And I thought I knew my sixth book of Virgil so well, that
+I never looked at it again while I was giving these lectures<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>
+at Oxford, and it was only here at Assisi, the other day, wanting
+to look more accurately at the first scene by the lake Avernus,
+that I found I had been saved by the words of the
+Cumaean Sibyl.</p>
+
+<p>215. "Quam tua te Fortuna sinet," the completion of the
+sentence, has yet more and continual teaching in it for me
+now; as it has for all men. Her opening words, which have
+become hackneyed, and lost all present power through vulgar
+use of them, contain yet one of the most immortal truths ever
+yet spoken for mankind; and they will never lose their power
+of help for noble persons. But observe, both in that lesson,
+"Facilis descensus Averni," etc.; and in the still more precious,
+because universal, one on which the strength of Rome
+was founded,&mdash;the burning of the books,&mdash;the Sibyl speaks
+only as the voice of Nature, and of her laws;&mdash;not as a divine
+helper, prevailing over death; but as a mortal teacher warning
+us against it, and strengthening us for our mortal time;
+but not for eternity. Of which lesson her own history is a
+part, and her habitation by the Avernus lake. She desires
+immortality, fondly and vainly, as we do ourselves. She receives,
+from the love of her <i>refused</i> lover, Apollo, not immortality,
+but length of life;&mdash;her years to be as the grains of
+dust in her hand. And even this she finds was a false desire;
+and her wise and holy desire at last is&mdash;to die. She wastes
+away; becomes a shade only, and a voice. The Nations ask
+her, What wouldst thou? She answers, Peace; only let my
+last words be true. "L'ultimo mie parlar sie verace."</p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 430px;">
+<a id="Plate_VII" name="Plate_VII"></a>
+<img src="images/image161.png" width="430" height="694" alt="VII. For a time, and times." title="" />
+<p class="caption center">VII.</p>
+<p class="caption center">For a time, and times.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>216. Therefore, if anything is to be conceived, rightly,
+and chiefly, in the form of the Cumaean Sibyl, it must be of
+fading virginal beauty, of enduring patience, of far-looking
+into futurity. "For after my death there shall yet return,"
+she says, "another virgin."</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Jam redit et virgo;&mdash;redeunt Saturnia regna,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ultima Cumaei venit jam carminis aetas.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Here then is Botticelli's Cumaean Sibyl. She is armed, for
+she is the prophetess of Roman fortitude;&mdash;but her faded<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span>
+breast scarcely raises the corselet; her hair floats, not falls, in
+waves like the currents of a river,&mdash;the sign of enduring life;
+the light is full on her forehead: she looks into the distance
+as in a dream. It is impossible for art to gather together
+more beautifully or intensely every image which can express
+her true power, or lead us to understand her lesson.</p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 420px;">
+<a id="Plate_VIII" name="Plate_VIII"></a>
+<img src="images/image164.png" width="420" height="559" alt="VIII. The Nymph beloved of Apollo." title="" />
+<p class="caption center">VIII.</p>
+<p class="caption center">The Nymph beloved of Apollo.</p>
+<p class="caption center">(MICHAEL ANGELO.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>217. Now you do not, I am well assured, know one of
+Michael Angelo's sibyls from another: unless perhaps the
+Delphian, whom of course he makes as beautiful as he can.
+But of this especially Italian prophetess, one would have
+thought he might, at least in some way, have shown that he
+knew the history, even if he did not understand it. She
+might have had more than one book, at all events, to burn.
+She might have had a stray leaf or two fallen at her feet.
+He could not indeed have painted her only as a voice; but his
+anatomical knowledge need not have hindered him from
+painting her virginal youth, or her wasting and watching
+age, or her inspired hope of a holier future.</p>
+
+<p>218. Opposite,&mdash;fortunately, photograph from the figure
+itself, so that you can suspect me of no exaggeration,&mdash;is
+Michael Angelo's Cumaean Sibyl, wasting away. It is by a
+grotesque and most strange chance that he should have made
+the figure of this Sibyl, of all others in the chapel, the most
+fleshly and gross, even proceeding to the monstrous license of
+showing the nipples of the breast as if the dress were molded
+over them like plaster. Thus he paints the poor nymph beloved
+of Apollo,&mdash;the clearest and queenliest in prophecy and
+command of all the sibyls,&mdash;as an ugly crone, with the arms
+of Goliath, poring down upon a single book.</p>
+
+<p>219. There is one point of fine detail, however, in Botticelli's
+Cumaean Sibyl, and in the next I am going to show
+you, to explain which I must go back for a little while to the
+question of the direct relation of the Italian painters to the
+Greek. I don't like repeating in one lecture what I have said
+in another; but to save you the trouble of reference, must remind
+you of what I stated in my fourth lecture on Greek
+birds, when we were examining the adoption of the plume<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>
+crests in armor, that the crest signifies command; but the diadem,
+<i>obedience</i>; and that every crown is primarily a diadem.
+It is the thing that binds, before it is the thing that honors.</p>
+
+<p>Now all the great schools dwell on this symbolism. The
+long flowing hair is the symbol of life, and the &#948;&#953;&#940;&#948;&#951;&#956;&#945; of the
+law restraining it. Royalty, or kingliness, over life, restraining
+and glorifying. In the extremity of restraint&mdash;in
+death, whether noble, as of death to Earth, or ignoble, as of
+death to Heaven, the &#948;&#953;&#940;&#948;&#951;&#956;&#945; is fastened with the mort-cloth:
+"Bound hand and foot with grave-clothes, and the face bound
+about with the napkin."</p>
+
+<p>220. Now look back to the first Greek head I ever showed
+you, used as the type of archaic sculpture in Aratra Pentelici,
+and then look at the crown in Botticelli's Astrologia. It is
+absolutely the Greek form,&mdash;even to the peculiar oval of the
+forehead; while the diadem&mdash;the governing law&mdash;is set with
+appointed stars&mdash;to rule the destiny and thought. Then return
+to the Cumaean Sibyl. She, as we have seen, is the symbol
+of enduring life&mdash;almost immortal. The diadem is withdrawn
+from the forehead&mdash;reduced to a narrow fillet&mdash;here,
+and the hair thrown free.</p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 398px;">
+<a id="Plate_IX" name="Plate_IX"></a>
+<img src="images/image167.png" width="398" height="654" alt="IX. In the woods of Ida." title="" />
+<p class="caption center">IX.</p>
+<p class="caption center">In the woods of Ida.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>221. From the Cumaean Sibyl's diadem, traced only by
+points, turn to that of the Hellespontic, (Plate 9, opposite).
+I do not know why Botticelli chose her for the spirit of prophecy
+in old age; but he has made this the most interesting
+plate of the series in the definiteness of its connection with
+the work from Dante, which becomes his own prophecy in old
+age. The fantastic yet solemn treatment of the gnarled wood
+occurs, as far as I know, in no other engravings but this, and
+the illustrations to Dante; and I am content to leave it, with
+little comment, for the reader's quiet study, as showing the
+exuberance of imagination which other men at this time in
+Italy allowed to waste itself in idle arabesque, restrained by
+Botticelli to his most earnest purposes; and giving the withered
+tree-trunks, hewn for the rude throne of the aged prophetess,
+the same harmony with her fading spirit which the
+rose has with youth, or the laurel with victory. Also in its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span>
+weird characters, you have the best example I can show you
+of the orders of decorative design which are especially expressible
+by engraving, and which belong to a group of art instincts
+scarcely now to be understood, much less recovered,
+(the influence of modern naturalistic imitation being too
+strong to be conquered)&mdash;the instincts, namely, for the arrangement
+of pure line, in labyrinthine intricacy, through
+which the grace of order may give continual clue. The entire
+body of ornamental design, connected with writing, in the
+Middle Ages seems as if it were a sensible symbol, to the eye
+and brain, of the methods of error and recovery, the minglings
+of crooked with straight, and perverse with progressive, which
+constitute the great problem of human morals and fate; and
+when I chose the title for the collected series of these lectures,
+I hoped to have justified it by careful analysis of the methods
+of labyrinthine ornament, which, made sacred by Theseian
+traditions,<a name="FNanchor_BC_55" id="FNanchor_BC_55"></a><a href="#Footnote_BC_55" class="fnanchor">[BC]</a> and beginning, in imitation of physical truth,
+with the spiral waves of the waters of Babylon as the Assyrian
+carved them, entangled in their returns the eyes of men,
+on Greek vase and Christian manuscript&mdash;till they closed in
+the arabesques which sprang round the last luxury of Venice
+and Rome.</p>
+
+<p>But the labyrinth of life itself, and its more and more interwoven
+occupation, become too manifold, and too difficult
+for me; and of the time wasted in the blind lanes of it, perhaps
+that spent in analysis or recommendation of the art to
+which men's present conduct makes them insensible, has been
+chiefly cast away. On the walls of the little room where I
+finally revise this lecture,<a name="FNanchor_BD_56" id="FNanchor_BD_56"></a><a href="#Footnote_BD_56" class="fnanchor">[BD]</a> hangs an old silken sampler of
+great-grandame's work: representing the domestic life of
+Abraham: chiefly the stories of Isaac and Ishmael. Sarah
+at her tent-door, watching, with folded arms, the dismissal of
+Hagar: above, in a wilderness full of fruit trees, birds, and
+butterflies, little Ishmael lying at the root of a tree, and the
+spent bottle under another; Hagar in prayer, and the angel<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span>
+appearing to her out of a wreathed line of gloomily undulating
+clouds, which, with a dark-rayed sun in the midst, surmount
+the entire composition in two arches, out of which descend
+shafts of (I suppose) beneficent rain; leaving, however,
+room, in the corner opposite to Ishmael's angel, for Isaac's,
+who stays Abraham in the sacrifice; the ram in the thicket,
+the squirrel in the plum tree above him, and the grapes, pears,
+apples, roses, and daisies of the foreground, being all wrought
+with involution of such ingenious needlework as may well
+rank, in the patience, the natural skill, and the innocent
+pleasure of it, with the truest works of Florentine engraving.
+Nay; the actual tradition of many of the forms of ancient art
+is in many places evident,&mdash;as, for instance, in the spiral
+summits of the flames of the wood on the altar, which are like
+a group of first-springing fern. On the wall opposite is a
+smaller composition, representing Justice with her balance
+and sword, standing between the sun and moon, with a background
+of pinks, borage, and corn-cockle: a third is only a
+cluster of tulips and iris, with two Byzantine peacocks; but
+the spirits of Penelope and Ariadne reign vivid in all the
+work&mdash;and the richness of pleasurable fancy is as great still,
+in these silken labors, as in the marble arches and golden roof
+of the cathedral of Monreale.</p>
+
+<p>But what is the use of explaining or analyzing it? Such
+work as this means the patience and simplicity of all feminine
+life; and can be produced, among <i>us</i> at least, no more. Gothic
+tracery itself, another of the instinctive labyrinthine intricacies
+of old, though analyzed to its last section, has become now
+the symbol only of a foolish ecclesiastical sect, retained for
+their shibboleth, joyless and powerless for all good. The
+very labyrinth of the grass and flowers of our fields, though
+dissected to its last leaf, is yet bitten bare, or trampled to
+slime, by the Minotaur of our lust; and for the traceried spire
+of the poplar by the brook, we possess but the four-square furnace
+tower, to mingle its smoke with heaven's thunder-clouds.<a name="FNanchor_BE_57" id="FNanchor_BE_57"></a><a href="#Footnote_BE_57" class="fnanchor">[BE]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We will look yet at one sampler more of the engraved work,
+done in the happy time when flowers were pure, youth simple,
+and imagination gay,&mdash;Botticelli's Libyan Sibyl.</p>
+
+<p>Glance back first to the Hellespontic, noting the close fillet,
+and the cloth bound below the face, and then you will be prepared
+to understand the last I shall show you, and the loveliest
+of the southern Pythonesses.</p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 405px;">
+<a id="Plate_X" name="Plate_X"></a>
+<img src="images/image172.png" width="405" height="668" alt="X. Grass of the Desert." title="" />
+<p class="caption center">X.</p>
+<p class="caption center">Grass of the Desert.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>222. A less deep thinker than Botticelli would have made
+her parched with thirst, and burnt with heat. But the voice
+of God, through nature, to the Arab or the Moor, is not in the
+thirst, but in the fountain&mdash;not in the desert, but in the grass
+of it. And this Libyan Sibyl is the spirit of wild grass and
+flowers, springing in desolate places.</p>
+
+<p>You see, her diadem is a wreath of them; but the blossoms
+of it are not fastening enough for her hair, though it is not
+long yet&mdash;(she is only in reality a Florentine girl of fourteen
+or fifteen)&mdash;so the little darling knots it under her ears, and
+then makes herself a necklace of it. But though flowing hair
+and flowers are wild and pretty, Botticelli had not, in these
+only, got the power of Spring marked to his mind. Any girl
+might wear flowers; but few, for ornament, would be likely
+to wear grass. So the Sibyl shall have grass in her diadem;
+not merely interwoven and bending, but springing and strong.
+You thought it ugly and grotesque at first, did not you? It
+was made so, because precisely what Botticelli wanted you to
+look at.</p>
+
+<p>But that's not all. This conical cap of hers, with one bead
+at the top,&mdash;considering how fond the Florentines are of
+graceful head-dresses, this seems a strange one for a young
+girl. But, exactly as I know the angel of Victory to be
+Greek, at his Mount of Pity, so I know this head-dress to be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>
+taken from a Greek coin, and to be meant for a Greek symbol.
+It is the Petasus of Hermes&mdash;the mist of morning over
+the dew. Lastly, what will the Libyan Sibyl say to you?
+The letters are large on her tablet. Her message is the oracle
+from the temple of the Dew: "The dew of thy birth is as the
+womb of the morning."&mdash;"Ecce venientem diem, et latentia
+aperientem, tenebit gremio gentium regina."</p>
+
+<p>223. Why the daybreak came not then, nor yet has come,
+but only a deeper darkness; and why there is now neither
+queen nor king of nations, but every man doing that which
+is right in his own eyes, I would fain go on, partly to tell
+you, and partly to meditate with you: but it is not our work
+for to-day. The issue of the Reformation which these great
+painters, the scholars of Dante, began, we may follow, farther,
+in the study to which I propose to lead you, of the lives of
+Cimabue and Giotto, and the relation of their work at Assisi
+to the chapel and chambers of the Vatican.</p>
+
+<p>224. To-day let me finish what I have to tell you of the
+style of southern engraving. What sudden bathos in the sentence,
+you think! So contemptible the question of style,
+then, in painting, though not in literature? You study the
+'style' of Homer; the style, perhaps, of Isaiah; the style of
+Horace, and of Massillon. Is it so vain to study the style of
+Botticelli?</p>
+
+<p>In all cases, it is equally vain, if you think of their style
+first. But know their purpose, and then, their way of speaking
+is worth thinking of. These apparently unfinished and
+certainly unfilled outlines of the Florentine,&mdash;clumsy work,
+as Vasari thought them,&mdash;as Mr. Otley and most of our
+English amateurs still think them,&mdash;are these good or bad
+engraving?</p>
+
+<p>You may ask now, comprehending their motive, with some
+hope of answering or being answered rightly. And the answer
+is, They are the finest gravers' work ever done yet by
+human hand. You may teach, by process of discipline and
+of years, any youth of good artistic capacity to engrave a
+plate in the modern manner; but only the noblest passion,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>
+and the tenderest patience, will ever engrave one line like
+these of Sandro Botticelli.</p>
+
+<p>225. Passion, and patience! Nay, even these you may
+have to-day in England, and yet both be in vain. Only a
+few years ago, in one of our northern iron-foundries, a workman
+of intense power and natural art-faculty set himself to
+learn engraving;&mdash;made his own tools; gave all the spare
+hours of his laborious life to learn their use; learnt it; and
+engraved a plate which, in manipulation, no professional engraver
+would be ashamed of. He engraved his blast furnace,
+and the casting of a beam of a steam engine. This, to him,
+was the power of God,&mdash;it was his life. No greater earnestness
+was ever given by man to promulgate a Gospel. Nevertheless,
+the engraving is absolutely worthless. The blast furnace
+<i>is not</i> the power of God; and the life of the strong spirit
+was as much consumed in the flames of it, as ever driven
+slave's by the burden and heat of the day.</p>
+
+<p>How cruel to say so, if he yet lives, you think! No, my
+friends; the cruelty will be in you, and the guilt, if, having
+been brought here to learn that God is your Light, you yet
+leave the blast furnace to be the only light of England.</p>
+
+<p>226. It has been, as I said in the note above (<a href="#Sect_200">&sect; 200</a>), with
+extreme pain that I have hitherto limited my notice of our
+own great engraver and moralist, to the points in which the
+disadvantages of English art-teaching made him inferior to
+his trained Florentine rival. But, that these disadvantages
+were powerless to arrest or ignobly depress him;&mdash;that however
+failing in grace and scholarship, he should never fail in
+truth or vitality; and that the precision of his unerring hand<a name="FNanchor_BF_58" id="FNanchor_BF_58"></a><a href="#Footnote_BF_58" class="fnanchor">[BF]</a>&mdash;his
+inevitable eye&mdash;and his rightly judging heart&mdash;should
+place him in the first rank of the great artists not of England
+only, but of all the world and of all time:&mdash;that <i>this</i> was
+possible to him, was simply because he lived a <i>country</i> life.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>
+Bewick himself, Botticelli himself, Apelles himself, and
+twenty times Apelles, condemned to slavery in the hell-fire of
+the iron furnace, could have done&mdash;<span class="smcap">Nothing</span>. Absolute
+paralysis of all high human faculty <i>must</i> result from labor
+near fire. The poor engraver of the piston-rod had faculties&mdash;not
+like Bewick's, for if he had had those, he never would
+have endured the degradation; but assuredly, (I know this
+by his work,) faculties high enough to have made him one of
+the most accomplished figure painters of his age. And they
+are scorched out of him, as the sap from the grass in the oven:
+while on his Northumberland hill-sides, Bewick grew into as
+stately life as their strongest pine.</p>
+
+<p>227. And therefore, in words of his, telling consummate
+and unchanging truth concerning the life, honor, and happiness
+of England, and bearing directly on the points of difference
+between class and class which I have not dwelt on
+without need, I will bring these lectures to a close.</p>
+
+<p>"I have always, through life, been of opinion that there is
+no business of any kind that can be compared to that of a man
+who farms his own land. It appears to me that every earthly
+pleasure, with health, is within his reach. But numbers of
+these men (the old statesmen) were grossly ignorant, and in
+exact proportion to that ignorance they were sure to be offensively
+proud. This led them to attempt appearing above
+their station, which hastened them on to their ruin; but, indeed,
+this disposition and this kind of conduct invariably
+leads to such results. There were many of these lairds on
+Tyneside; as well as many who held their lands on the tenure
+of 'suit and service,' and were nearly on the same level as
+the lairds. Some of the latter lost their lands (not fairly, I
+think) in a way they could not help; many of the former, by
+their misdirected pride and folly, were driven into towns, to
+slide away into nothingness, and to sink into oblivion, while
+their 'ha' houses' (halls), that ought to have remained in
+their families from generation to generation, have moldered
+away. I have always felt extremely grieved to see the ancient
+mansions of many of the country gentlemen, from some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>what
+similar causes, meet with a similar fate. The gentry
+should, in an especial manner, prove by their conduct that
+they are guarded against showing any symptom of foolish
+pride; at the same time that they soar above every meanness,
+and that their conduct is guided by truth, integrity, and
+patriotism. If they wish the people to partake with them
+in these good qualities, they must set them the example, without
+which no real respect can ever be paid to them. Gentlemen
+ought never to forget the respectable station they hold
+in society, and that they are the natural guardians of public
+morals and may with propriety be considered as the head and
+the heart of the country, while 'a bold peasantry' are, in
+truth, the arms, the sinews, and the strength of the same; but
+when these last are degraded, they soon become dispirited and
+mean, and often dishonest and useless."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>"This singular and worthy man<a name="FNanchor_BG_59" id="FNanchor_BG_59"></a><a href="#Footnote_BG_59" class="fnanchor">[BG]</a> was perhaps the most<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span>
+invaluable acquaintance and friend I ever met with. His
+moral lectures and advice to me formed a most important
+succedaneum to those imparted by my parents. His wise remarks,
+his detestation of vice, his industry, and his temperance,
+crowned with a most lively and cheerful disposition, altogether
+made him appear to me as one of the best of characters.
+In his workshop I often spent my winter evenings.
+This was also the case with a number of young men who
+might be considered as his pupils; many of whom, I have no
+doubt, he directed into the paths of truth and integrity, and
+who revered his memory through life. He rose early to work,
+lay down when he felt weary, and rose again when refreshed.
+His diet was of the simplest kind; and he ate when hungry,
+and drank when dry, without paying regard to meal-times.
+By steadily pursuing this mode of life he was enabled to accumulate
+sums of money&mdash;from ten to thirty pounds. This
+enabled him to get books, of an entertaining and moral tendency,
+printed and circulated at a cheap rate. His great object
+was, by every possible means, to promote honorable feelings
+in the minds of youth, and to prepare them for becoming
+good members of society. I have often discovered that he
+did not overlook ingenious mechanics, whose misfortunes&mdash;perhaps
+mismanagement&mdash;had led them to a lodging in Newgate.
+To these he directed his compassionate eye, and for
+the deserving (in his estimation), he paid their debt, and set
+them at liberty. He felt hurt at seeing the hands of an ingenious
+man tied up in prison, where they were of no use either
+to himself or to the community. This worthy man had been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>
+educated for a priest; but he would say to me, 'Of a "trouth,"
+Thomas, I did not like their ways.' So he gave up the
+thoughts of being a priest, and bent his way from Aberdeen
+to Edinburgh, where he engaged himself to Allan Ramsay,
+the poet, then a bookseller at the latter place, in whose service
+he was both shopman and bookbinder. From Edinburgh
+he came to Newcastle. Gilbert had had a liberal education
+bestowed upon him. He had read a great deal, and had reflected
+upon what he had read. This, with his retentive
+memory, enabled him to be a pleasant and communicative
+companion. I lived in habits of intimacy with him to the
+end of his life; and, when he died, I, with others of his
+friends, attended his remains to the grave at the Ballast
+Hills."</p>
+
+<p>And what graving on the sacred cliffs of Egypt ever honored
+them, as that grass-dimmed furrow does the mounds of
+our Northern land?</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_AS_45" id="Footnote_AS_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_AS_45"><span class="label">[AS]</span></a> The world was not then ready for Le P&egrave;re Hyacinthe;&mdash;but the
+real gist of the matter is that Lippi did, openly and bravely, what the
+highest prelates in the Church did basely and in secret; also he loved,
+where they only lusted; and he has been proclaimed therefore by them&mdash;and
+too foolishly believed by us&mdash;to have been a shameful person.
+Of his true life, and the colors given to it, we will try to learn something
+tenable, before we end our work in Florence.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_AT_46" id="Footnote_AT_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_AT_46"><span class="label">[AT]</span></a> I insert supplementary notes, when of importance, in the text of
+the lecture, for the convenience of the general reader.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_AU_47" id="Footnote_AU_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_AU_47"><span class="label">[AU]</span></a> Mr. Charles F. Murray.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_AV_48" id="Footnote_AV_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_AV_48"><span class="label">[AV]</span></a> Some notice of this picture is given at the beginning of my third
+Morning in Florence, 'Before the Soldan.'</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_AW_49" id="Footnote_AW_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_AW_49"><span class="label">[AW]</span></a> I am bitterly sorry for the pain which my partial references to the
+man whom of all English artists whose histories I have read, I most
+esteem, have given to one remaining member of his family. I hope
+my meaning may be better understood after she has seen the close of
+this lecture.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_AX_50" id="Footnote_AX_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_AX_50"><span class="label">[AX]</span></a> Read Ezekiel xviii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_AY_51" id="Footnote_AY_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_AY_51"><span class="label">[AY]</span></a> See also the account by Dr. Woltmann of the picture of the Triumph
+of Riches. 'Holbein and his Time,' p. 352.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_AZ_52" id="Footnote_AZ_52"></a><a href="#FNanchor_AZ_52"><span class="label">[AZ]</span></a> These words are engraved in the plate, as spoken by the Virgin.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_BA_53" id="Footnote_BA_53"></a><a href="#FNanchor_BA_53"><span class="label">[BA]</span></a> Cosimo Rosselli, especially chosen by the Pope for his gay coloring.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_BB_54" id="Footnote_BB_54"></a><a href="#FNanchor_BB_54"><span class="label">[BB]</span></a> I am not certain of their order at this distance of time.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_BC_55" id="Footnote_BC_55"></a><a href="#FNanchor_BC_55"><span class="label">[BC]</span></a> Callimachus, 'Delos,' 304, etc.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_BD_56" id="Footnote_BD_56"></a><a href="#FNanchor_BD_56"><span class="label">[BD]</span></a> In the Old King's Arms Hotel, Lancaster.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_BE_57" id="Footnote_BE_57"></a><a href="#FNanchor_BE_57"><span class="label">[BE]</span></a> A manufacturer wrote to me the other day, "We don't <i>want</i>
+to make smoke!" Who said they did?&mdash;a hired murderer does not want
+to commit murder, but does it for sufficient motive. (Even our shipowners
+don't want to drown their sailors; they will only do it for sufficient
+motive.) If the dirty creatures <i>did</i> want to make smoke, there
+would be more excuse for them: and that they are not clever enough
+to consume it, is no praise to them. A man who can't help his hiccough
+leaves the room: why do they not leave the England they pollute?</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_BF_58" id="Footnote_BF_58"></a><a href="#FNanchor_BF_58"><span class="label">[BF]</span></a> I know no drawing so subtle as Bewick's, since the fifteenth century,
+except Holbein's and Turner's. I have been greatly surprised
+lately by the exquisite water-color work in some of Stothard's smaller
+vignettes; but he cannot set the line like Turner or Bewick.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_BG_59" id="Footnote_BG_59"></a><a href="#FNanchor_BG_59"><span class="label">[BG]</span></a> Gilbert Gray, bookbinder. I have to correct the inaccurate&mdash;and
+very harmfully inaccurate, expression which I used of Bewick, in Love's
+Meinie (&sect; 3), 'a printer's lad at Newcastle.' His first master was a goldsmith
+and engraver, else he could never have been an artist. I am
+very heartily glad to make this correction, which establishes another
+link of relation between Bewick and Botticelli; but my error was
+partly caused by the impression which the above description of his
+"most invaluable friend" made on me, when I first read it.
+</p><p>
+Much else that I meant to correct, or promised to explain, in this
+lecture, must be deferred to the Appendix; the superiority of the Tuscan
+to the Greek Aphrodite I may perhaps, even at last, leave the
+reader to admit or deny as he pleases, having more important matters
+of debate on hand. But as I mean only to play with Proserpina during
+the spring, I will here briefly anticipate a statement I mean in the
+Appendix to enforce, namely, of the extreme value of colored copies
+by hand, of paintings whose excellence greatly consists in color, as
+auxiliary to engravings of them. The prices now given without hesitation
+for nearly worthless original drawings by fifth-rate artists, would
+obtain for the misguided buyers, in something like a proportion of ten
+to one, most precious copies of drawings which can only be represented
+at all in engraving by entire alteration of their treatment, and abandonment
+of their finest purposes. I feel this so strongly that I have given
+my best attention, during upwards of ten years, to train a copyist to
+perfect fidelity in rendering the work of Turner; and having now succeeded
+in enabling him to produce facsimiles so close as to look like
+replicas, facsimiles which I must sign with my own name and his, in the
+very work of them, to prevent their being sold for real Turner vignettes,
+I can obtain no custom for him, and am obliged to leave him to make his
+bread by any power of captivation his original sketches may possess in
+the eyes of a public which maintains a nation of copyists in Rome, but
+is content with black and white renderings of great English art; though
+there is scarcely one cultivated English gentleman or lady who has not
+been twenty times in the Vatican, for once that they have been in the
+National Gallery.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span></p>
+<h2 class="gap3"><a name="NOTES" id="NOTES"></a>NOTES.</h2>
+
+
+<p>228. I. The following letter, from one of my most faithful
+readers, corrects an important piece of misinterpretation
+in the text. The waving of the reins must be only in sign of
+the fluctuation of heat round the Sun's own chariot:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p style="text-align:right;margin-bottom:0em;">"Spring Field, Ambleside,&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>
+<p style="text-align:right;margin-top:0em;">"February 11, 1875.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear Mr. Ruskin,&mdash;Your fifth lecture on Engraving I
+have to hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Sandro intended those wavy lines meeting under the
+Sun's right<a name="FNanchor_BH_60" id="FNanchor_BH_60"></a><a href="#Footnote_BH_60" class="fnanchor">[BH]</a> hand, (Plate V.) primarily, no doubt, to represent
+the four ends of the four reins dangling from the
+Sun's hand. The flames and rays are seen to continue to
+radiate from the platform of the chariot between and beyond
+these ends of the reins, and over the knee. He may have
+wanted to acknowledge that the warmth of the earth was
+Apollo's, by making these ends of the reins spread out separately
+and wave, and thereby inclose a form like a flame.
+But I cannot think it.</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left: 40%;margin-bottom:0em;">"Believe me,</p>
+<p style="margin-left: 40%;margin-bottom:0em;margin-top:0em;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Ever yours truly,</p>
+<p style="margin-left: 40%;margin-top:0em;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"<span class="smcap">Chas. Wm. Smith.</span>"</p>
+
+<p>II. I meant to keep labyrinthine matters for my Appendix;
+but the following most useful by-words from Mr. Tyrwhitt
+had better be read at once:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"In the matter of Cretan Labyrinth, as connected by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span>
+Virgil with the Ludus Troj&aelig;, or equestrian game of winding
+and turning, continued in England from twelfth century;
+and having for last relic the maze<a name="FNanchor_BI_61" id="FNanchor_BI_61"></a><a href="#Footnote_BI_61" class="fnanchor">[BI]</a> called 'Troy Town,' at
+Troy Farm, near Somerton, Oxfordshire, which itself resembles
+the circular labyrinth on a coin of Cnossus in Fors
+Clavigera. (Letter 23, p. 12.)</p>
+
+<p>"The connecting quotation from Virg., &AElig;n., V. 588, is as
+follows:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Ut quondam Creta fertur Labyrinthus in alta<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Parietibus textum c&aelig;cis iter, ancipitemque<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mille viis habuisse dolum, qua signa sequendi<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Falleret indeprensus et inremeabilis error.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Haud alio Teucr&uuml;n nati vestigia cursu<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Impediunt, texuntque fagas et pr&oelig;lia ludo,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Delphinum similes.'"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Labyrinth of Ariadne, as cut on the Downs by shepherds
+from time immemorial,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Shakespeare, 'Midsummer Night's Dream,' Act ii., sc. 2:</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Oberon.</i> The nine-men's morris<a name="FNanchor_BJ_62" id="FNanchor_BJ_62"></a><a href="#Footnote_BJ_62" class="fnanchor">[BJ]</a> is filled up with mud;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5.5em;">And the quaint mazes in the wanton green</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5.5em;">By lack of tread are undistinguishable."</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>The following passage, 'Merchant of Venice,' Act iii., sc.
+2, confuses (to all appearance) the Athenian tribute to Crete,
+with the story of Hesione: and may point to general confusion
+in the Elizabethan mind about the myths:</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Portia.</i> ... with much more love<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5.5em;">Than young Alcides, when he did reduce</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5.5em;">The virgin-tribute paid by howling Troy</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5.5em;">To the sea monster."<a name="FNanchor_BK_63" id="FNanchor_BK_63"></a><a href="#Footnote_BK_63" class="fnanchor">[BK]</a></span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Theseus is the Attic Hercules, however; and Troy may
+have been a sort of house of call for mythical monsters, in
+the view of midland shepherds.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_BH_60" id="Footnote_BH_60"></a><a href="#FNanchor_BH_60"><span class="label">[BH]</span></a> "Would not the design have looked better, to us, on the plate than
+on the print? On the plate, the reins would be in the left hand; and
+the whole movement be from the left to the right? The two different
+forms that the radiance takes would symbolize respectively heat and
+light, would they not?"</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_BI_61" id="Footnote_BI_61"></a><a href="#FNanchor_BI_61"><span class="label">[BI]</span></a> Strutt, pp. 97-8, ed. 1801.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_BJ_62" id="Footnote_BJ_62"></a><a href="#FNanchor_BJ_62"><span class="label">[BJ]</span></a> Explained as "a game still played by the shepherds, cowkeepers,"
+etc., in the midland counties.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_BK_63" id="Footnote_BK_63"></a><a href="#FNanchor_BK_63"><span class="label">[BK]</span></a> See Iliad, 20, 145.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 402px;">
+<a id="Plate_XI" name="Plate_XI"></a>
+<img src="images/image184.png" width="402" height="657" alt="XI. Obediente Domino voci hominis." title="" />
+<p class="caption center">XI.</p>
+<p class="caption center">"Obediente Domino voci hominis."</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2 class="gap3"><a name="APPENDIX" id="APPENDIX"></a>APPENDIX.</h2>
+
+<h3><a id="NOTES_I" name="NOTES_I"></a>ARTICLE I.</h3>
+
+<h4>NOTES ON THE PRESENT STATE OF ENGRAVING IN ENGLAND.</h4>
+
+<p>229. I have long deferred the completion of this book, because
+I had hoped to find time to show, in some fullness, the
+grounds for my conviction that engraving, and the study of
+it, since the development of the modern finished school, have
+been ruinous to European knowledge of art. But I am more
+and more busied in what I believe to be better work, and can
+only with extreme brevity state here the conclusions of many
+years' thought.</p>
+
+<p>These, in several important particulars, have been curiously
+enforced on me by the carelessness shown by the picture
+dealers about the copies from Turner which it has cost
+Mr. Ward and me<a name="FNanchor_BL_64" id="FNanchor_BL_64"></a><a href="#Footnote_BL_64" class="fnanchor">[BL]</a> fifteen years of study together to enable
+ourselves to make. "They are only copies," say they,&mdash;"nobody
+will look at them."</p>
+
+<p>230. It never seems to occur even to the most intelligent
+persons that an engraving also is 'only a copy,' and a copy
+done with refusal of color, and with disadvantage of means in
+rendering shade. But just because this utterly inferior copy
+can be reduplicated, and introduces a different kind of skill,
+in another material, people are content to lose all the composition,
+and all the charm, of the original,&mdash;so far as these
+depend on the chief gift of a <i>painter</i>,&mdash;color; while they are
+gradually misled into attributing to the painter himself qualities
+impertinently added by the engraver to make his plate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span>
+popular: and, which is far worse, they are as gradually and
+subtly prevented from looking, in the original, for the qualities
+which engraving could never render. Further, it continually
+happens that the very best color-compositions engrave
+worst; for they often extend colors over great spaces at equal
+pitch, and the green is as dark as the red, and the blue as the
+brown; so that the engraver can only distinguish them by
+lines in different directions, and his plate becomes a vague
+and dead mass of neutral tint; but a bad and forced piece of
+color, or a piece of work of the Bolognese school, which is
+everywhere black in the shadows, and colorless in the lights,
+will engrave with great ease, and appear spirited and forcible.
+Hence engravers, as a rule, are interested in reproducing
+the work of the worst schools of painting.</p>
+
+<p>Also, the idea that the merit of an engraving consisted in
+light and shade, has prevented the modern masters from even
+attempting to render works dependent mainly on outline and
+expression; like the early frescoes, which should indeed have
+been the objects of their most attentive and continual skill:
+for outline and expression are entirely within the scope of engraving;
+and the scripture histories of an aisle of a cloister
+might have been engraved, to perfection, with little more
+pains than are given by ordinary workmen to round a limb
+by Correggio, or imitate the texture of a dress by Sir Joshua,&mdash;and
+both, at last, inadequately.</p>
+
+<p>231. I will not lose more time in asserting or lamenting
+the mischief arising out of the existing system: but will
+rapidly state what the public should now ask for.</p>
+
+<p>1. Exquisitely careful engraved outlines of all remaining
+frescoes of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries
+in Italy, with so much pale tinting as may be explanatory of
+their main masses; and with the local darks and local lights
+brilliantly relieved. The Arundel Society have published
+some meritorious plates of this kind from Angelico,&mdash;not,
+however, paying respect enough to the local colors, but conventionalizing
+the whole too much into outline.</p>
+
+<p>2. Finished small plates for book illustration. The cheap<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span>
+wood-cutting and etching of popular illustrated books have
+been endlessly mischievous to public taste: they first obtained
+their power in a general reaction of the public mind from the
+insipidity of the lower school of line engraving, brought on it
+by servile persistence in hack work for ignorant publishers.
+The last dregs of it may still be seen in the sentimental landscapes
+engraved for cheap ladies' pocket-books. But the
+woodcut can never, educationally, take the place of serene
+and accomplished line engraving; and the training of young
+artists in whom the gift of delineation prevails over their
+sense of color, to the production of scholarly, but small plates,
+with their utmost honor of skill, would give a hitherto unconceived
+dignity to the character and range of our popular
+literature.</p>
+
+<p>3. Vigorous mezzotints from pictures of the great masters,
+which originally present noble contrasts of light and
+shade. Many Venetian works are magnificent in this character.</p>
+
+<p>4. Original design by painters themselves, decisively engraved
+in few lines&mdash;(<i>not</i> etched); and with such insistence
+by dotted work on the main contours as we have seen in the
+examples given from Italian engraving.</p>
+
+<p>5. On the other hand, the men whose quiet patience and
+exquisite manual dexterity are at present employed in producing
+large and costly plates, such as that of the Belle Jardini&egrave;re
+de Florence, by M. Boucher Desnoyers, should be entirely
+released from their servile toil, and employed exclusively
+in producing colored copies, or light drawings, from
+the original work. The same number of hours of labor, applied
+with the like conscientious skill, would multiply precious
+likenesses of the real picture, full of subtle veracities
+which no steel line could approach, and conveying, to thousands,
+true knowledge and unaffected enjoyment of painting;
+while the finished plate lies uncared for in the portfolio of the
+virtuoso, serving only, so far as it is seen in the printseller's
+window by the people, to make them think that sacred painting
+must always be dull, and unnatural.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>232. I have named the above engraving, because, for persons
+wishing to study the present qualities and methods of
+line-work, it is a pleasant and sufficient possession, uniting
+every variety of texture with great serenity of unforced effect,
+and exhibiting every possible artifice and achievement in the
+distribution of even and rugged, or of close and open line;
+artifices for which,&mdash;while I must yet once more and emphatically
+repeat that they are illegitimate, and could not be
+practiced in a revived school of classic art,&mdash;I would fain secure
+the reader's reverent admiration, under the conditions exacted
+by the school to which they belong. Let him endeavor,
+with the finest point of pen or pencil he can obtain, to imitate
+the profile of this Madonna in its relief against the gray background
+of the water surface; let him examine, through a good
+lens, the way in which the lines of the background are ended
+in a lance-point as they approach it; the exact equality of
+depth of shade being restored by inserted dots, which prepare
+for the transition to the manner of shade adopted in the flesh:
+then let him endeavor to trace with his own hand some of the
+curved lines at the edge of the eyelid, or in the rounding of
+the lip; or if these be too impossible, even a few of the quiet
+undulations which gradate the folds of the hood behind the
+hair; and he will, I trust, begin to comprehend the range of
+delightful work which would be within the reach of such an
+artist, employed with more tractable material on more
+extended subject.</p>
+
+<p>233. If, indeed, the present system were capable of influencing
+the mass of the people, and enforcing among them the
+subtle attention necessary to appreciate it, something might
+be pleaded in defense of its severity. But all these plates
+are entirely above the means of the lower middle classes, and
+perhaps not one reader in a hundred can possess himself, for
+the study I ask of him, even of the plate to which I have just
+referred. What, in the stead of such, he can and does possess,
+let him consider,&mdash;and, if possible, just after examining the
+noble qualities of this conscientious engraving.</p>
+
+<p>234. Take up, for an average specimen of modern illus<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>trated
+works, the volume of Dickens's 'Master Humphrey's
+Clock,' containing 'Barnaby Rudge.'</p>
+
+<p>You have in that book an entirely profitless and monstrous
+story, in which the principal characters are a coxcomb, an
+idiot, a madman, a savage blackguard, a foolish tavern-keeper,
+a mean old maid, and a conceited apprentice,&mdash;mixed
+up with a certain quantity of ordinary operatic pastoral stuff,
+about a pretty Dolly in ribbons, a lover with a wooden leg,
+and an heroic locksmith. For these latter, the only elements
+of good, or life, in the filthy mass of the story,<a name="FNanchor_BM_65" id="FNanchor_BM_65"></a><a href="#Footnote_BM_65" class="fnanchor">[BM]</a> observe that
+the author must filch the wreck of those old times of which
+we fiercely and frantically destroy every living vestige, whenever
+it is possible. You cannot have your Dolly Varden
+brought up behind the counter of a railway station; nor your
+jolly locksmith trained at a Birmingham brass-foundry.
+And of these materials, observe that you can only have the
+ugly ones illustrated. The cheap popular art cannot draw
+for you beauty, sense, or honesty; and for Dolly Varden, or
+the locksmith, you will look through the vignettes in vain.
+But every species of distorted folly and vice,&mdash;the idiot, the
+blackguard, the coxcomb, the paltry fool, the degraded woman,&mdash;are
+pictured for your honorable pleasure in every page,
+with clumsy caricature, struggling to render its dullness tolerable
+by insisting on defect,&mdash;if perchance a penny or two
+more may be coined out of the Cockney reader's itch for
+loathsomeness.</p>
+
+<p>235. Or take up, for instance of higher effort, the 'Cornhill
+Magazine' for this month, July, 1876. It has a vignette
+of Venice for an illuminated letter. That is what your decorative
+art has become, by help of Kensington! The letter
+to be produced is a T. There is a gondola in the front of the
+design, with the canopy slipped back to the stern like a saddle
+over a horse's tail. There is another in the middle distance,
+all gone to seed at the prow, with its gondolier emaciated into<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>
+an oar, at the stern; then there is a Church of the Salute, and
+a Ducal Palace,&mdash;in which I beg you to observe all the felicity
+and dexterity of modern cheap engraving; finally, over
+the Ducal Palace there is something, I know not in the least
+what meant for, like an umbrella dropping out of a balloon,
+which is the ornamental letter T. Opposite this ornamental
+design, there is an engraving of two young ladies and a parasol,
+between two trunks of trees. The white face and black
+feet of the principal young lady, being the points of the design,
+are done with as much care,&mdash;not with as much dexterity,&mdash;as
+an ordinary sketch of Du Maurier's in Punch. The
+young lady's dress, the next attraction, is done in cheap white
+and black cutting, with considerably less skill than that of
+any ordinary tailor's or milliner's shop-book pattern drawing.
+For the other young lady, and the landscape, take your magnifying
+glass, and look at the hacked wood that forms the entire
+shaded surface&mdash;one mass of idiotic scrabble, without the
+remotest attempt to express a single leaf, flower, or clod of
+earth. It is such landscape as the public sees out of its railroad
+window at sixty miles of it in the hour&mdash;and good
+enough for such a public.</p>
+
+<p>236. Then turn to the last&mdash;the poetical plate, p. 122:
+"Lifts her&mdash;lays her down with care." Look at the gentleman
+with a spade, promoting the advance, over a hillock of
+hay, of the reposing figure in the black-sided tub. Take your
+magnifying glass to <i>that</i>, and look what a dainty female arm
+and hand your modern scientific and anatomical schools of
+art have provided you with! Look at the tender horizontal
+flux of the sea round the promontory point above. Look at
+the tender engraving of the linear light on the divine horizon,
+above the ravenous sea-gull. Here is Development and Progress
+for you, from the days of Perugino's horizon, and
+Dante's daybreaks! Truly, here it seems</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Si che le bianche e le vermiglie guance<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Per troppa etate divenivan rance."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>237. I have chosen no gross or mean instances of modern<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span>
+work. It is one of the saddest points connected with the
+matter that the designer of this last plate is a person of consummate
+art faculty, but bound to the wheel of the modern
+Juggernaut, and broken on it. These woodcuts, for 'Barnaby
+Rudge' and the 'Cornhill Magazine,' are favorably representative
+of the entire illustrative art industry of the modern
+press,&mdash;industry enslaved to the ghastly service of catching
+the last gleams in the glued eyes of the daily more bestial
+English mob,&mdash;railroad born and bred, which drags itself
+about the black world it has withered under its breath, in one
+eternal grind and shriek,&mdash;gobbling,&mdash;staring,&mdash;chattering,&mdash;giggling,&mdash;trampling
+out every vestige of national honor
+and domestic peace, wherever it sets the staggering hoof of it;
+incapable of reading, of hearing, of thinking, of looking,&mdash;capable
+only of greed for money, lust for food, pride of dress,
+and the prurient itch of momentary curiosity for the politics
+last announced by the newsmonger, and the religion last
+rolled by the chemist into electuary for the dead.</p>
+
+<p>238. In the miserably competitive labor of finding new
+stimulus for the appetite&mdash;daily more gross&mdash;of this tyrannous
+mob, we may count as lost, beyond any hope, the artists
+who are dull, docile, or distressed enough to submit to its
+demands; and we may count the dull and the distressed by
+myriads;&mdash;and among the docile, many of the best intellects
+we possess. The few who have sense and strength to assert
+their own place and supremacy, are driven into discouraged
+disease by their isolation, like Turner and Blake; the one
+abandoning the design of his 'Liber Studiorum' after imperfectly
+and sadly, against total public neglect, carrying it
+forward to what it is,&mdash;monumental, nevertheless, in landscape
+engraving; the other producing, with one only majestic
+series of designs from the book of Job, nothing for his life's
+work but coarsely iridescent sketches of enigmatic dream.</p>
+
+<p>239. And, for total result of our English engraving industry
+during the last hundred and fifty years, I find that
+practically at this moment I cannot get a <i>single</i> piece of true,
+sweet, and comprehensible art, to place for instruction in any<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span>
+children's school! I can get, for ten pounds apiece, well-engraved
+portraits of Sir Joshua's beauties showing graceful
+limbs through flowery draperies; I can get&mdash;dirt-cheap&mdash;any
+quantity of Dutch flats, ditches, and hedges, enlivened
+by cows chewing the cud, and dogs behaving indecently; I
+can get heaps upon heaps of temples, and forums, and altars,
+arranged as for academical competition, round seaports, with
+curled-up ships that only touch the water with the middle of
+their bottoms. I can get, at the price of lumber, any quantity
+of British squires flourishing whips and falling over hurdles;
+and, in suburban shops, a dolorous variety of widowed mothers
+nursing babies in a high light with the Bible on a table, and
+baby's shoes on a chair. Also, of cheap prints, painted red
+and blue, of Christ blessing little children, of Joseph and
+his brethren, the infant Samuel, or Daniel in the lions' den,
+the supply is ample enough to make every child in these
+islands think of the Bible as a somewhat dull story-book,
+allowed on Sunday;&mdash;but of trained, wise, and worthy art,
+applied to gentle purposes of instruction, no single example
+can be found in the shops of the British printseller or bookseller.
+And after every dilettante tongue in European
+society has filled drawing-room and academy alike with idle
+clatter concerning the divinity of Raphael and Michael
+Angelo, for these last hundred years, I cannot at this instant,
+for the first school which I have some power of organizing
+under St. George's laws, get a good print of Raphael's
+Madonna of the tribune, or an ordinarily intelligible view of
+the side and dome of St. Peter's!</p>
+
+<p>240. And there are simply no words for the mixed absurdity
+and wickedness of the present popular demand for art,
+as shown by its supply in our thoroughfares. Abroad, in
+the shops of the Rue de Rivoli, brightest and most central
+of Parisian streets, the putrescent remnant of what was once
+Catholicism promotes its poor gilded pedlars' ware of nativity
+and crucifixion into such honorable corners as it can find
+among the more costly and studious illuminations of the
+brothel: and although, in Pall Mall, and the Strand, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span>
+large-margined Landseer,&mdash;Stanfield,&mdash;or Turner-proofs, in
+a few stately windows, still represent, uncared-for by the
+people, or inaccessible to them, the power of an English
+school now wholly perished,&mdash;these are too surely superseded,
+in the windows that stop the crowd, by the thrilling attraction
+with which Dor&eacute;, G&eacute;rome, and Tadema have invested the
+gambling table, the dueling ground, and the arena; or by the
+more material and almost tangible truth with which the apothecary-artist
+stereographs the stripped actress, and the railway
+mound.</p>
+
+<p>241. Under these conditions, as I have now repeatedly
+asserted, no professorship, nor school, of art can be of the
+least use to the general public. No race can understand a
+visionary landscape, which blasts its real mountains into
+ruin, and blackens its river-beds with foam of poison. Nor
+is it of the least use to exhibit ideal Diana at Kensington,
+while substantial Phryne may be worshiped in the Strand.
+The only recovery of our art-power possible,&mdash;nay, when
+once we know the full meaning of it, the only one desirable,&mdash;must
+result from the purification of the nation's heart,
+and chastisement of its life: utterly hopeless now, for our
+adult population, or in our large cities, and their neighborhood.
+But, so far as any of the sacred influence of former
+design can be brought to bear on the minds of the young,
+and so far as, in rural districts, the first elements of scholarly
+education can be made pure, the foundation of a new dynasty
+of thought may be slowly laid. I was strangely impressed
+by the effect produced in a provincial seaport school for
+children, chiefly of fishermen's families, by the gift of a
+little colored drawing of a single figure from the Paradise
+of Angelico in the Accademia of Florence. The drawing
+was wretched enough, seen beside the original; I had only
+bought it from the poor Italian copyist for charity: but, to
+the children, it was like an actual glimpse of heaven; they
+rejoiced in it with pure joy, and their mistress thanked me
+for it more than if I had sent her a whole library of good
+books. Of such copies, the grace-giving industry of young<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>
+girls, now worse than lost in the spurious charities of the
+bazaar, or selfish ornamentations of the drawing-room, might,
+in a year's time, provide enough for every dame-school in
+England; and a year's honest work of the engravers employed
+on our base novels, might represent to our advanced
+students every frescoed legend of philosophy and morality
+extant in Christendom.</p>
+
+<p>242. For my own part, I have no purpose, in what remains
+to me of opportunity, either at Oxford or elsewhere, to
+address any farther course of instruction towards the development
+of existing schools. After seeing the stream of the
+Teviot as black as ink, and a putrid carcass of a sheep lying
+in the dry channel of the Jed, under Jedburgh Abbey, (the
+entire strength of the summer stream being taken away to
+supply a single mill,) I know, finally, what value the British
+mind sets on the 'beauties of nature,' and shall attempt no
+farther the excitement of its enthusiasm in that direction.
+I shall indeed endeavor to carry out, with Mr. Ward's help,
+my twenty years' held purpose of making the real character
+of Turner's work known, to the persons who, formerly interested
+by the engravings from him, imagined half the merit
+was of the engraver's giving. But I know perfectly that
+to the general people, trained in the midst of the ugliest
+objects that vice can design, in houses, mills, and machinery,
+<i>all</i> beautiful form and color is as invisible as the seventh
+heaven. It is not a question of appreciation at all; the thing
+is physically invisible to them, as human speech is inaudible
+during a steam whistle.</p>
+
+<p>243. And I shall also use all the strength I have to convince
+those, among our artists of the second order, who are
+wise and modest enough not to think themselves the matches
+of Turner or Michael Angelo, that in the present state of
+art they only waste their powers in endeavoring to produce
+original pictures of human form or passion. Modern aristocratic
+life is too vulgar, and modern peasant life too
+unhappy, to furnish subjects of noble study; while, even
+were it otherwise, the multiplication of designs by painters<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>
+of second-rate power is no more desirable than the writing
+of music by inferior composers. They may, with far greater
+personal happiness, and incalculably greater advantage to
+others, devote themselves to the affectionate and sensitive
+copying of the works of men of just renown. The dignity
+of this self-sacrifice would soon be acknowledged with sincere
+respect; for copies produced by men working with such motive
+would differ no less from the common trade-article of the
+galleries than the rendering of music by an enthusiastic and
+highly trained executant differs from the grinding of a street
+organ. And the change in the tone of public feeling, produced
+by familiarity with such work, would soon be no less
+great than in their musical enjoyment, if having been accustomed
+only to hear black Christys, blind fiddlers, and hoarse
+beggars scrape or howl about their streets, they were permitted
+daily audience of faithful and gentle orchestral rendering of
+the work of the highest classical masters.</p>
+
+<p>244. I have not, until very lately, rightly appreciated the
+results of the labor of the Arundel Society in this direction.
+Although, from the beginning, I have been honored in being
+a member of its council, my action has been hitherto rather
+of check than help, because I thought more of the differences
+between our copies and the great originals, than of their
+unquestionable superiority to anything the public could
+otherwise obtain.</p>
+
+<p>I was practically convinced of their extreme value only
+this last winter, by staying at the house of a friend in which
+the Arundel engravings were the principal decoration; and
+where I learned more of Masaccio from the Arundel copy
+of the contest with Simon Magus, than in the Brancacci
+chapel itself; for the daily companionship with the engraving
+taught me subtleties in its composition which had escaped
+me in the multitudinous interest of visits to the actual fresco.</p>
+
+<p>But the work of the Society has been sorely hindered
+hitherto, because it has had at command only the skill of
+copyists trained in foreign schools of color, and accustomed
+to meet no more accurate requisitions than those of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span>
+fashionable traveler. I have always hoped for, and trust at
+last to obtain, co-operation with our too mildly laborious
+copyists, of English artists possessing more brilliant color
+faculty; and the permission of our subscribers to secure for
+them the great ruins of the noble past, undesecrated by the
+trim, but treacherous, plastering of modern emendation.</p>
+
+<p>245. Finally, I hope to direct some of the antiquarian
+energy often to be found remaining, even when love of the
+picturesque has passed away, to encourage the accurate delineation
+and engraving of historical monuments, as a direct
+function of our schools of art. All that I have generally to
+suggest on this matter has been already stated with sufficient
+clearness in the first of my inaugural lectures at Oxford:
+and my forthcoming 'Elements of Drawing'<a name="FNanchor_BN_66" id="FNanchor_BN_66"></a><a href="#Footnote_BN_66" class="fnanchor">[BN]</a> will contain
+all the directions I can give in writing as to methods of work
+for such purpose. The publication of these has been hindered,
+for at least a year, by the abuses introduced by the modern
+cheap modes of printing engravings. I find the men won't
+use any ink but what pleases them; nor print but with what
+pressure pleases them; and if I can get the foreman to attend
+to the business, and choose the ink right, the men change it
+the moment he leaves the room, and threaten to throw up the
+job when they are detected. All this, I have long known
+well, is a matter of course, in the outcome of modern principles
+of trade; but it has rendered it hitherto impossible
+for me to produce illustrations, which have been ready, as far
+as my work or that of my own assistants is concerned, for a
+year and a half. Any one interested in hearing of our
+progress&mdash;or arrest, may write to my Turner copyist, Mr.
+Ward:<a name="FNanchor_BO_67" id="FNanchor_BO_67"></a><a href="#Footnote_BO_67" class="fnanchor">[BO]</a> and, in the meantime, they can help my designs<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span>
+for art education best by making these Turner copies more
+generally known; and by determining, when they travel, to
+spend what sums they have at their disposal, not in fady
+photography, but in the encouragement of any good <i>water-color</i>
+and <i>pencil</i> draughtsmen whom they find employed in
+the <i>galleries</i> of Europe.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h3 class="gap3"><a id="NOTES_II" name="NOTES_II"></a>ARTICLE II.</h3>
+
+<h4>DETACHED NOTES.</h4>
+
+<h4>I.</h4>
+
+<p class="center"><i>On the series of Sibyl engravings attributed to Botticelli.</i></p>
+
+<p>246. Since I wrote the earlier lectures in this volume,
+I have been made more doubtful on several points which were
+embarrassing enough before, by seeing some better (so-called)
+impressions of my favorite plates containing light and shade
+which did not improve them.</p>
+
+<p>I do not choose to waste time or space in discussion, till
+I know more of the matter; and that more I must leave to
+my good friend Mr. Reid of the British Museum to find out
+for me; for I have no time to take up the subject myself, but
+I give, for frontispiece to this Appendix, the engraving of
+Joshua referred to in the text, which however beautiful in
+thought, is an example of the inferior execution and more
+elaborate shade which puzzle me. But whatever is said in
+the previous pages of the plates chosen for example, by whomsoever
+done, is absolutely trustworthy. Thoroughly fine they
+are, in their existing state, and exemplary to all persons and
+times. And of the rest, in fitting place I hope to give complete&mdash;or
+at least satisfactory account.</p>
+
+<h4 class="gap3">II.</h4>
+
+<p class="center"><i>On the three excellent engravers representative of the first, middle,
+and late schools.</i></p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 441px;">
+<a id="Plate_XII" name="Plate_XII"></a>
+<img src="images/image199.png" width="441" height="644" alt="XII. The Coronation in the Garden." title="" />
+<p class="caption center">XII.</p>
+<p class="caption center">The Coronation in the Garden.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>247. I have given opposite a photograph, slightly reduced
+from the D&uuml;rer Madonna, alluded to often in the text, as
+an example of his best conception of womanhood. It is very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span>
+curious that D&uuml;rer, the least able of all great artists to represent
+womanhood, should of late have been a very principal
+object of feminine admiration. The last thing a woman
+should do is to write about art. They never see anything in
+pictures but what they are told, (or resolve to see out of
+contradiction,)&mdash;or the particular things that fall in with
+their own feelings. I saw a curious piece of enthusiastic
+writing by an Edinburgh lady, the other day, on the photographs
+I had taken from the tower of Giotto. She did not
+care a straw what Giotto had meant by them, declared she
+felt it her duty only to announce what they were to <i>her</i>; and
+wrote two pages on the bas-relief of Heracles and Ant&aelig;us&mdash;assuming
+it to be the death of Abel.</p>
+
+<p>248. It is not, however, by women only that D&uuml;rer has
+been over-praised. He stands so alone in his own field, that
+the people who care much for him generally lose the power
+of enjoying anything else rightly; and are continually attributing
+to the force of his imagination quaintnesses which are
+merely part of the general mannerism of his day.</p>
+
+<p>The following notes upon him, in relation to two other
+excellent engravers, were written shortly for extempore expansion
+in lecturing. I give them, with the others in this
+terminal article, mainly for use to myself in future reference;
+but also as more or less suggestive to the reader, if he has
+taken up the subject seriously, and worth, therefore, a few
+pages of this closing sheet.</p>
+
+<p>249. The men I have named as representative of all the
+good ones composing their school, are alike resolved their
+engraving shall be lovely.</p>
+
+<p>But Botticelli, the ancient, wants, with as little engraving,
+as much Sibyl as possible.</p>
+
+<p>D&uuml;rer, the central, wants, with as much engraving as
+possible, anything of Sibyl that may chance to be picked up
+with it.</p>
+
+<p>Beaugrand, the modern, wants, as much Sibyl as possible,
+and as much engraving too.</p>
+
+<p>250. I repeat&mdash;for I want to get this clear to you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span>&mdash;Botticelli
+wants, with as little engraving, as much Sibyl as
+possible. For his head is full of Sibyls, and his heart. He
+can't draw them fast enough: one comes, and another and
+another; and all, gracious and wonderful and good, to be
+engraved forever, if only he had a thousand hands and lives.
+He scratches down one, with no haste, with no fault, divinely
+careful, scrupulous, patient, but with as few lines as possible.
+'Another Sibyl&mdash;let me draw another, for heaven's sake,
+before she has burnt all her books, and vanished.'</p>
+
+<p>D&uuml;rer is exactly Botticelli's opposite. He is a workman,
+to the heart, and will do his work magnificently. 'No
+matter what I do it on, so that my craft be honorably shown.
+Anything will do; a Sibyl, a skull, a Madonna and Christ,
+a hat and feather, an Adam, an Eve, a cock, a sparrow, a
+lion with two tails, a pig with five legs,&mdash;anything will do
+for me. But see if I don't show you what engraving is, be
+my subject what it may!'</p>
+
+<p>251. Thirdly: Beaugrand, I said, wants as much Sibyl as
+possible, and as much engraving. He is essentially a copyist,
+and has no ideas of his own, but deep reverence and love for
+the work of others. He will give his life to represent another
+man's thought. He will do his best with every spot and line,&mdash;exhibit
+to you, if you will only look, the most exquisite
+completion of obedient skill; but will be content, if you will
+not look, to pass his neglected years in fruitful peace, and
+count every day well spent that has given softness to a shadow,
+or light to a smile.</p>
+
+<h4 class="gap3">III.</h4>
+
+<p class="center"><i>On D&uuml;rer's landscape, with reference to the sentence on <a href="#Page_101">p. 101</a></i>: "I hope
+you are pleased."</p>
+
+<p>252. I spoke just now only of the ill-shaped body of this
+figure of Fortune, or Pleasure. Beneath her feet is an elaborate
+landscape. It is all drawn out of D&uuml;rer's head;&mdash;he
+would look at bones or tendons carefully, or at the leaf details<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>
+of foreground;&mdash;but at the breadth and loveliness of real
+landscape, never.</p>
+
+<p>He has tried to give you a bird's-eye view of Germany;
+rocks, and woods, and clouds, and brooks, and the pebbles in
+their beds, and mills, and cottages, and fences, and what not;
+but it is all a feverish dream, ghastly and strange, a monotone
+of diseased imagination.</p>
+
+<p>And here is a little bit of the world he would not look at&mdash;of
+the great river of his land, with a single cluster of its
+reeds, and two boats, and an island with a village, and the
+way for the eternal waters opened between the rounded hills.<a name="FNanchor_BP_68" id="FNanchor_BP_68"></a><a href="#Footnote_BP_68" class="fnanchor">[BP]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is just what you may see any day, anywhere,&mdash;innocent,
+seemingly artless; but the artlessness of Turner is like
+the face of Gainsborough's village girl, and a joy forever.</p>
+
+<h4 class="gap3">IV.</h4>
+
+<p class="center"><i>On the study of anatomy.</i></p>
+
+<p>253. The virtual beginner of artistic anatomy in Italy was
+a man called 'The Poulterer'&mdash;from his grandfather's trade;
+'Pollajuolo,' a man of immense power, but on whom the
+curse of the Italian mind in this age<a name="FNanchor_BQ_69" id="FNanchor_BQ_69"></a><a href="#Footnote_BQ_69" class="fnanchor">[BQ]</a> was set at its deepest.</p>
+
+<p>Any form of passionate excess has terrific effects on body
+and soul, in nations as in men; and when this excess is in
+rage, and rage against your brother, and rage accomplished
+in habitual deeds of blood,&mdash;do you think Nature will forget
+to set the seal of her indignation upon the forehead? I told
+you that the great division of spirit between the northern
+and southern races had been reconciled in the Val d'Arno.
+The Font of Florence, and the Font of Pisa, were as the very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>
+springs of the life of the Christianity which had gone forth
+to teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Prince
+of Peace. Yet these two brother cities were to each other&mdash;I
+do not say as Abel and Cain, but as Eteocles and Polynices,
+and the words of &AElig;schylus are now fulfilled in them to the
+uttermost. The Arno baptizes their dead bodies:&mdash;their
+native valley between its mountains is to them as the furrow
+of a grave;&mdash;"and so much of their land they have, as is
+sepulcher." Nay, not of Florence and Pisa only was this
+true: Venice and Genoa died in death-grapple; and eight
+cities of Lombardy divided between them the joy of leveling
+Milan to her lowest stone. Nay, not merely in city against
+city, but in street against street, and house against house, the
+fury of the Theban dragon flamed ceaselessly, and with the
+same excuse upon men's lips. The sign of the shield of Polynices,
+Justice bringing back the exile, was to them all, in
+turn, the portent of death: and their history, in the sum of
+it and substance, is as of the servants of Joab and Abner by
+the pool of Gibeon. "They caught every one his fellow
+by the head, and thrust his sword in his fellow's side; so they
+fell down together: wherefore that place was called 'the
+field of the strong men.'"</p>
+
+<p>254. Now it is not possible for Christian men to live thus,
+except under a fever of insanity. I have before, in my lectures
+on Prudence and Insolence in art, deliberately asserted
+to you the logical accuracy of the term 'demoniacal possession'<a name="FNanchor_BR_70" id="FNanchor_BR_70"></a><a href="#Footnote_BR_70" class="fnanchor">[BR]</a>&mdash;the
+being in the power or possession of a betraying
+spirit; and the definite sign of such insanity is delight
+in witnessing pain, usually accompanied by an instinct
+that gloats over or plays with physical uncleanness or disease,
+and always by a morbid egotism. It is not to be recognized
+for demoniacal power so much by its <i>viciousness</i>, as
+its <i>paltriness</i>,&mdash;the taking pleasure in minute, contemptible,
+and loathsome things.<a name="FNanchor_BS_71" id="FNanchor_BS_71"></a><a href="#Footnote_BS_71" class="fnanchor">[BS]</a> Now, in the middle of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>
+gallery of the Brera at Milan, there is an elaborate study
+of a dead Christ, entirely characteristic of early fifteenth
+century Italian madman's work. It is called&mdash;and was presented
+to the people as&mdash;a Christ; but it <i>is</i> only an anatomical
+study of a vulgar and ghastly dead body, with the soles of
+the feet set straight at the spectator, and the rest foreshortened.
+It is either Castagno's or Mantegna's,&mdash;in my mind,
+set down to Castagno; but I have not looked at the picture
+for years, and am not sure at this moment. It does not
+matter a straw which: it is exactly characteristic of the madness
+in which all of them&mdash;Pollajuolo, Castagno, Mantegna,
+Lionardo da Vinci, and Michael Angelo, polluted their work
+with the science of the sepulcher,<a name="FNanchor_BT_72" id="FNanchor_BT_72"></a><a href="#Footnote_BT_72" class="fnanchor">[BT]</a> and degraded it with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span>
+presumptuous and paltry technical skill. Foreshorten your
+Christ, and paint Him, if you can, half putrefied,&mdash;that is
+the scientific art of the Renaissance.</p>
+
+<p>255. It is impossible, however, in so vast a subject to distinguish
+always the beginner of things from the establisher.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span>
+To the poulterer's son, Pollajuolo, remains the eternal shame
+of first making insane contest the only subject of art; but
+the two <i>establishers</i> of anatomy were Lionardo and Michael
+Angelo. You hear of Lionardo chiefly because of his Last
+Supper, but Italy did not hear of him for that. This was not
+what brought <i>her</i> to worship Lionardo&mdash;but the Battle of
+the Standard.</p>
+
+<h4 class="gap3">V.</h4>
+
+<p class="center"><i>Fragments on Holbein and others.</i></p>
+
+<p>256. Of Holbein's St. Elizabeth, remember, she is not a
+perfect Saint Elizabeth, by any means. She is an honest
+and sweet German lady,&mdash;the best he could see; he could do
+no better;&mdash;and so I come back to my old story,&mdash;no man can<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span>
+do better than he sees: if he can reach the nature round him,
+it is well; he may fall short of it; he cannot rise above it;
+"the best, in this kind, are but shadows."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Yet that intense veracity of Holbein is indeed the strength
+and glory of all the northern schools. They exist only in
+being true. Their work among men is the definition of what
+is, and the abiding by it. They cannot dream of what is
+not. They make fools of themselves if they try. Think how
+feeble even Shakspere is when he tries his hand at a Goddess;&mdash;women,
+beautiful and womanly, as many as you choose;
+but who cares what his Minerva or Juno says, in the masque
+of the Tempest? And for the painters&mdash;when Sir Joshua
+tries for a Madonna, or Vandyke for a Diana&mdash;they can't
+even <i>paint</i>! they become total simpletons. Look at Rubens'
+mythologies in the Louvre, or at modern French heroics, or
+German pietisms! Why, all&mdash;Cornelius, Hesse, Overbeck,
+and David&mdash;put together, are not worth one De Hooghe of
+an old woman with a broom sweeping a back-kitchen. The
+one thing we northerns can do is to find out what is fact,
+and insist on it: mean fact it may be, or noble&mdash;but fact
+always, or we die.</p>
+
+<p>257. Yet the intensest form of northern realization can be
+matched in the south, when the southerns choose. There are
+two pieces of animal drawing in the Sistine Chapel unrivaled
+for literal veracity. The sheep at the well in front of
+Zipporah; and afterwards, when she is going away, leading
+her children, her eldest boy, like every one else, has taken his
+chief treasure with him, and this treasure is his pet dog. It
+is a little sharp-nosed white fox-terrier, full of fire and life;
+but not strong enough for a long walk. So little Gershom,
+whose name was "the stranger" because his father had been
+a stranger in a strange land,&mdash;little Gershom carries his
+white terrier under his arm, lying on the top of a large
+bundle to make it comfortable. The doggie puts its sharp
+nose and bright eyes out, above his hand, with a little roguish<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>
+gleam sideways in them, which means,&mdash;if I can read rightly
+a dog's expression,&mdash;that he has been barking at Moses all
+the morning and has nearly put him out of temper:&mdash;and
+without any doubt, I can assert to you that there is not any
+other such piece of animal painting in the world,&mdash;so brief,
+intense, vivid, and absolutely balanced in truth: as tenderly
+drawn as if it had been a saint, yet as humorously as Landseer's
+Lord Chancellor poodle.</p>
+
+<p>258. Oppose to&mdash;</p>
+
+<table summary="Comparison of Botticelli and Holbein" style="margin-left:0%;">
+<tr>
+<td>Holbein's Veracity&mdash;</td>
+<td>Botticelli's Fantasy.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td style="padding-left:2em;">"&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Shade</td>
+<td style="padding-left:2em;">"&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Color.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td style="padding-left:2em;">"&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Despair</td>
+<td style="padding-left:2em;">"&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Faith.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td style="padding-left:2em;">"&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Grossness</td>
+<td style="padding-left:2em;">"&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Purity.</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<p>True Fantasy. Botticelli's Tree in Hellespontic Sibyl.
+Not a real tree at all&mdash;yet founded on intensest perception
+of beautiful reality. So the swan of Clio, as opposed to
+D&uuml;rer's cock, or to Turner's swan.</p>
+
+<p>The Italian power of abstraction into one mythologic
+personage&mdash;Holbein's death is only literal. He has to split
+his death into thirty different deaths; and each is but a
+skeleton. But Orcagna's death is one&mdash;the power of death
+itself. There may thus be as much <i>breadth in thought</i>, as in
+execution.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>259. What then, we have to ask, is a man <i>conscious of</i> in
+what he sees?</p>
+
+<p>For instance, in all Cruikshank's etchings&mdash;however slight
+the outline&mdash;there is an intense consciousness of light and
+shade, and of local color, <i>as a part</i> of light and shade; but
+none of color itself. He was wholly incapable of coloring;
+and perhaps this very deficiency enabled him to give graphic
+harmony to engraving.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Bewick&mdash;snow-pieces, etc. <i>Gray</i> predominant; <i>perfect
+sense of color</i>, coming out in patterns of birds;&mdash;yet so uncul<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span>tivated,
+that he engraves the brown birds better than pheasant
+or peacock!</p>
+
+<p>For quite perfect consciousness of color makes engraving
+impossible, and you have instead&mdash;Correggio.</p>
+
+<h4 class="gap3">VI.</h4>
+
+<p class="center"><i>Final notes on light and shade.</i></p>
+
+<p>260. You will find in the 138th and 147th paragraphs of
+my Inaugural lectures, statements which, if you were reading
+the book by yourselves, would strike you probably as each of
+them difficult, and in some degree inconsistent,&mdash;namely,
+that the school of color has exquisite character and sentiment;
+but is childish, cheerful, and fantastic; while the school of
+shade is deficient in character and sentiment; but supreme in
+intellect and veracity. "The way by light and shade," I
+say, "is taken by men of the highest powers of thought and
+most earnest desire for truth."</p>
+
+<p>The school of shade, I say, is deficient in character and
+sentiment. Compare any of D&uuml;rer's Madonnas with any of
+Angelico's.</p>
+
+<p>Yet you may discern in the Apocalypse engravings that
+D&uuml;rer's mind was seeking for truths, and dealing with questions,
+which no more could have occurred to Angelico's mind
+than to that of a two-years-old baby.</p>
+
+<p>261. The two schools unite in various degrees; but are
+always distinguishably generic, the two headmost masters
+representing each being Tintoret and Perugino. The one,
+deficient in sentiment, and continually offending us by the
+want of it, but full of intellectual power and suggestion.</p>
+
+<p>The other, repeating ideas with so little reflection that he
+gets blamed for doing the same thing over again, (Vasari);
+but exquisite in sentiment and the conditions of taste which
+it forms, so as to become the master of it to Raphael and to
+all succeeding him; and remaining such a type of sentiment,
+too delicate to be felt by the latter practical mind of Dutch-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span>bred
+England, that Goldsmith makes the admiration of him
+the test of absurd connoisseurship. But yet, with under-current
+of intellect, which gets him accused of free-thinking,
+and therefore with under-current of entirely exquisite
+chiaroscuro.</p>
+
+<p>Light and shade, then, imply the understanding of things&mdash;Color,
+the imagination and the sentiment of them.</p>
+
+<p>262. In Turner's distinctive work, color is scarcely acknowledged
+unless under influence of sunshine. The sunshine
+is his treasure; his lividest gloom contains it; his
+grayest twilight regrets it, and remembers. Blue is always
+a blue shadow; brown or gold, always light;&mdash;nothing is
+cheerful but sunshine; wherever the sun is not, there is
+melancholy or evil. Apollo is God; and all forms of death
+and sorrow exist in opposition to him.</p>
+
+<p>But in Perugino's distinctive work,&mdash;and therefore I
+have given him the captain's place over all,&mdash;there is simply
+<i>no</i> darkness, <i>no</i> wrong. Every color is lovely, and every
+space is light. The world, the universe, is divine: all sadness
+is a part of harmony; and all gloom, a part of peace.</p>
+
+<p class="center gap3">THE END.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_BL_64" id="Footnote_BL_64"></a><a href="#FNanchor_BL_64"><span class="label">[BL]</span></a> See note to the close of this article, <a href="#Page_156">p. 156.</a></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_BM_65" id="Footnote_BM_65"></a><a href="#FNanchor_BM_65"><span class="label">[BM]</span></a> The raven, however, like all Dickens's animals, is perfect: and I
+am the more angry with the rest because I have every now and then to
+open the book to look for him.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_BN_66" id="Footnote_BN_66"></a><a href="#FNanchor_BN_66"><span class="label">[BN]</span></a> "Laws of F&eacute;sole."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_BO_67" id="Footnote_BO_67"></a><a href="#FNanchor_BO_67"><span class="label">[BO]</span></a> 2, Church Terrace, Richmond, Surrey. <span class="smcap">Note</span>.&mdash;I have hitherto
+permitted Mr. Ward to copy any Turner drawing he was asked to do;
+but, finding there is a run upon the vignettes of Loch Lomond and
+Derwent, I have forbidden him to do more of them for the present, lest
+his work should get the least mechanical. The admirable drawings
+of Venice, by my good assistant, Mr. Bunney, resident there, will
+become of more value to their purchasers every year, as the buildings
+from which they are made are destroyed. I was but just in time, working
+with him at Verona, to catch record of Fra Giocondo's work in the
+smaller square; the most beautiful Renaissance design in North Italy.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_BP_68" id="Footnote_BP_68"></a><a href="#FNanchor_BP_68"><span class="label">[BP]</span></a> The engraving of Turner's "Scene on the Rhine" (near Bingen?)
+with boats on the right, and reedy foreground on the left; the opening
+between its mountain banks in central distance. It is exquisitely
+engraved, the plate being of the size of the drawing, about ten inches
+by six, and finished with extreme care and feeling.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_BQ_69" id="Footnote_BQ_69"></a><a href="#FNanchor_BQ_69"><span class="label">[BQ]</span></a> See the horrible picture of St. Sebastian by him in our own National
+Gallery.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_BR_70" id="Footnote_BR_70"></a><a href="#FNanchor_BR_70"><span class="label">[BR]</span></a> See "The Eagle's Nest," &sect; 79.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_BS_71" id="Footnote_BS_71"></a><a href="#FNanchor_BS_71"><span class="label">[BS]</span></a> As in the muscles of the legs and effort in stretching bows, of
+the executioners, in the picture just referred to.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_BT_72" id="Footnote_BT_72"></a><a href="#FNanchor_BT_72"><span class="label">[BT]</span></a> Observe, I entirely distinguish the study of <i>anatomy</i>&mdash;i.e., of intense
+bone and muscle&mdash;from study of the nude, as the Greeks practiced
+it. This for an entirely great painter is absolutely necessary; but yet
+I believe, in the case of Botticelli, it was nobly restricted. The following
+note by Mr. Tyrwhitt contains, I think, the probable truth:&mdash;
+</p><p>
+"The facts relating to Sandro Botticelli's models, or rather to his
+favorite model (as it appears to me), are but few; and it is greatly to
+be regretted that his pictures are seldom dated;&mdash;if it were certain in
+what order they appeared, what follows here might approach moral
+certainty.
+</p><p>
+"There is no doubt that he had great personal regard for Fra Filippo,
+up to that painter's death in 1469, Sandro being then twenty-two years
+old. He may probably have got only good from him; anyhow he
+would get a strong turn for Realism,&mdash;i.e. the treatment of sacred and
+all other subjects in a realistic manner. He is described in Crowe and
+Cavalcaselle from Filippino Lippi's Martyrdom of St. Peter, as a sullen
+and sensual man, with beetle brows, large fleshy mouth, etc., etc.
+Probably he was a strong man, and intense in physical and intellectual
+habit.
+</p><p>
+"This man, then, begins to paint in his strength, with conviction&mdash;rather
+happy and innocent than not&mdash;that it is right to paint any beautiful
+thing, and best to paint the most beautiful,&mdash;say in 1470, at twenty-three
+years of age. The allegorical Spring and the Graces, and the
+Aphrodite now in the Ufficii, were painted for Cosmo, and seem to be
+taken by Vasari and others as early, or early-central, works in his life:
+also the portrait of Simonetta Vespucei<a name="FNanchor_1_73" id="FNanchor_1_73"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_73" class="fnanchor">[1]</a>. He is known to have painted
+much in early life for the Vespucei and the Medici;&mdash;and this daughter
+of the former house seems to have been inamorata or mistress of Giuliano
+de' Medici, murdered by the Pazzi in 1478. Now it seems agreed
+by Crowe and Cavalcaselle, Pater, etc., (and I am quite sure of it myself
+as to the pictures mentioned)&mdash;first, that the same slender and
+long-throated model appears in Spring, the Aphrodite, Calumny, and
+other works.<a name="FNanchor_2_74" id="FNanchor_2_74"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_74" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> Secondly, that she was Simonetta, the original of the
+Pitti portrait.
+</p><p>
+"Now I think she must have been induced to let Sandro draw from
+her whole person undraped, more or less; and that he must have done
+so as such a man probably would, in strict honor as to deed, word, and
+<i>definite</i> thought, but under occasional accesses of passion of which he
+said nothing, and which in all probability and by grace of God refined
+down to nil, or nearly so, as he got accustomed to look in honor at so
+beautiful a thing. (He may have left off the undraped after her death.)
+First, her figure is absolutely fine Gothic; I don't think any antique is so
+slender. Secondly, she has the sad, passionate, and exquisite Lombard
+mouth. Thirdly, her limbs shrink together, and she seems not quite
+to have 'liked it' or been an accustomed model. Fourthly, there is
+tradition, giving her name to all those forms.
+</p><p>
+"Her lover Giuliano was murdered in 1478, and Savonarola hanged
+and burnt in 1498. Now, can her distress, and Savonarola's preaching,
+between them, have taken, in few years, all the carnality out of Sandro,
+supposing him to have come already, by seventy-eight, to that
+state in which the sight of her delighted him, without provoking
+ulterior feelings? All decent men accustomed to draw from the nude
+tell us they get to that.
+</p><p>
+"Sandro's Dante is dated as published in 1482. He may have been
+saddening by that time, and weary of beauty, pure or mixed;&mdash;though
+he went on painting Madonnas, I fancy. (Can Simonetta be traced in
+any of them? I think not. The Sistine paintings extend from 1481
+to 1484, however. I cannot help thinking Zipporah is impressed with
+her.) After Savonarola's death, Sandro must have lost heart, and gone
+into Dante altogether. Most ways in literature and art lead to Dante;
+and this question about the nude and the purity of Botticelli is no
+exception to the rule.
+</p><p>
+"Now in the Purgatorio, Lust is the last sin of which we are to be
+made pure, and it has to be burnt out of us; being itself as searching
+as fire, as smoldering, devouring, and all that. Corruptio: optimi
+pessima; and it is the most searching and lasting of evils, because it
+really is a corruption attendant on true Love, which is eternal&mdash;whatever
+the word means. That this is so, seems to me to demonstrate
+the truth of the Fall of Man from the condition of moral very-goodness
+in God's sight. And I think that Dante connected the purifying
+pains of his intermediate state with actual sufferings in this life, working
+out repentance,&mdash;in himself and others. And the 'torment' of
+this passion, to the repentant or resisting, or purity-seeking soul is
+decidedly like the pain of physical burning.
+</p><p>
+"Further, its casuistry is impracticable; because the more you stir
+the said 'fire' the stronger hold it takes. Therefore, men and women
+are <i>rightly</i> secret about it, and detailed confessions unadvisable. Much
+talk about 'hypocrisy' in this matter is quite wrong and unjust. Then,
+its connection with female beauty, as a cause of love between man and
+woman, seems to me to be the inextricable nodus of the Fall, the here
+inseparable mixture of good and evil, till soul and body are parted.
+For the sense of seen Beauty is the awakening of Love, at whatever
+distance from any kind of return or sympathy&mdash;as with a rose, or what
+not. Sandro may be the man who has gone nearest to the right separation
+of Delight from Desire: supposing that he began with religion
+and a straight conscience; saw lovingly the error of Fra Filippo's way;
+saw with intense distant love the error of Simonetta's; and reflected
+on Florence and <i>its</i> way, and drew nearer and nearer to Savonarola,
+being yet too big a man for asceticism; and finally wearied of all things
+and sunk into poverty and peace."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_73" id="Footnote_1_73"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_73"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Pitti, Stanza di Prometeo, 348.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_74" id="Footnote_2_74"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_74"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> I think Zipporah may be a remembrance of her.</p></div>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="bbox gap3">
+<h3>Transcribers' Notes</h3>
+<p class="gap1" style="padding-left:1em;padding-right:1em;">General: Corrections to punctuation have not been individually noted</p>
+<p style="padding-left:1em;padding-right:1em;">List of Plates: Fac-simile standardised to Facsimile (3 occurrences)</p>
+<p style="padding-left:1em;padding-right:1em;">List of Plates, Illustration III: Fesole standardised to Fésole</p>
+<p style="padding-left:1em;padding-right:1em;">List of Plates: Obedienta corrected to Obediente</p>
+<p style="padding-left:1em;padding-right:1em;">Pages 10, 31, 105: Leonardo standardised to Lionardo</p>
+<p style="padding-left:1em;padding-right:1em;">Pages 26, 78: nell' arte as in original</p>
+<p style="padding-left:1em;padding-right:1em;">Page 27: Durer as in original diagram</p>
+<p style="padding-left:1em;padding-right:1em;">Page 46: line work standardised to line-work (first occurrence)</p>
+<p style="padding-left:1em;padding-right:1em;">Page 47, 51, 54, 70, 151: wood-cuts standardised to woodcuts</p>
+<p style="padding-left:1em;padding-right:1em;">Page 50, 51, 53, 56, 57, 59, 70, 107, 147: wood-cut standardised to woodcut</p>
+<p style="padding-left:1em;padding-right:1em;">Page 76: dexterous standardised to dextrous</p>
+<p style="padding-left:1em;padding-right:1em;">Page 103: "Holbein had bitterer task." as in the original</p>
+<p style="padding-left:1em;padding-right:1em;">Page 112: beame corrected to became</p>
+
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Ariadne Florentina, by John Ruskin
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ariadne Florentina, by John Ruskin
+
+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: Ariadne Florentina
+       Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving
+
+Author: John Ruskin
+
+Release Date: November 15, 2008 [EBook #27268]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ARIADNE FLORENTINA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Brownfox, Juliet Sutherland and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                      _Library Edition_
+
+                     THE COMPLETE WORKS
+
+                             OF
+
+                         JOHN RUSKIN
+
+
+                      THE EAGLE'S NEST
+                        LOVE'S MEINIE
+                     ARIADNE FLORENTINA
+                         VAL D'ARNO
+                         PROSERPINA
+
+
+                NATIONAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION
+                NEW YORK             CHICAGO
+
+
+
+
+                     ARIADNE FLORENTINA.
+
+
+                        SIX LECTURES
+
+                             ON
+
+                  WOOD AND METAL ENGRAVING
+
+                       WITH APPENDIX.
+
+
+           GIVEN BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD,
+
+                  IN MICHAELMAS TERM, 1872.
+
+
+
+
+                         CONTENTS.
+
+
+
+                         LECTURE I.
+                                                                       PAGE
+DEFINITION OF THE ART OF ENGRAVING                                       1
+
+
+                         LECTURE II.
+
+THE RELATION OF ENGRAVING TO OTHER ARTS IN FLORENCE                     22
+
+
+                         LECTURE III.
+
+THE TECHNICS OF WOOD ENGRAVING                                          42
+
+
+                         LECTURE IV.
+
+THE TECHNICS OF METAL ENGRAVING                                         61
+
+
+                         LECTURE V.
+
+DESIGN IN THE GERMAN SCHOOLS OF ENGRAVING (HOLBEIN AND DUeRER)           81
+
+
+                         LECTURE VI.
+
+DESIGN IN THE FLORENTINE SCHOOLS OF ENGRAVING (SANDRO BOTTICELLI)      108
+
+
+                         APPENDIX.
+
+ARTICLE
+ I. NOTES ON THE PRESENT STATE OF ENGRAVING IN ENGLAND                 143
+
+II. DETACHED NOTES                                                     157
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF PLATES
+
+
+                                                                Facing Page
+Diagram                                                                  27
+
+The Last Furrow (Fig. 2). Facsimile from Holbein's woodcut               47
+
+The Two Preachers (Fig. 3). Facsimile from Holbein's woodcut             48
+
+   I. Things Celestial and Terrestrial, as apparent to the English mind  56
+
+  II. Star of Florence                                                   62
+
+ III. "At evening from the top of Fesole"                                72
+
+  IV. "By the Springs of Parnassus"                                      77
+
+   V. "Heat considered as a Mode of Motion." Florentine Natural
+          Philosophy                                                     92
+
+  VI. Fairness of the Sea and Air. In Venice and Athens                  95
+
+      The Child's Bedtime (Fig. 5). Facsimile from Holbein's woodcut    103
+
+      "He that hath ears to hear let him hear" (Fig. 6). Facsimile from
+          Holbein's woodcut                                             105
+
+ VII. For a time, and times                                             130
+
+VIII. The Nymph beloved of Apollo (Michael Angelo)                      131
+
+  IX. In the Woods of Ida                                               132
+
+   X. Grass of the Desert                                               135
+
+  XI. "Obediente Domino voci hominis"                                   145
+
+ XII. The Coronation in the Garden                                      158
+
+
+
+
+                     ARIADNE FLORENTINA.
+
+
+
+
+                         LECTURE I.
+
+             DEFINITION OF THE ART OF ENGRAVING.
+
+
+1. The entrance on my duty for to-day begins the fourth year of my
+official work in Oxford; and I doubt not that some of my audience are
+asking themselves, very doubtfully--at all events, I ask myself, very
+anxiously--what has been done.
+
+For practical result, I have not much to show. I announced, a fortnight
+since, that I would meet, the day before yesterday, any gentleman who
+wished to attend this course for purposes of study. My class, so minded,
+numbers four, of whom three wish to be artists, and ought not therefore,
+by rights, to be at Oxford at all; and the fourth is the last remaining
+unit of the class I had last year.
+
+2. Yet I neither in this reproach myself, nor, if I could, would I
+reproach the students who are not here. I do not reproach myself; for it
+was impossible for me to attend properly to the schools and to write the
+grammar for them at the same time; and I do not blame the absent
+students for not attending a school from which I have generally been
+absent myself. In all this, there is much to be mended, but, in true
+light, nothing to be regretted.
+
+I say, I had to write my school grammar. These three volumes of lectures
+under my hand,[A] contain, carefully set down, the things I want you
+first to know. None of my writings are done fluently; the second volume
+of "Modern Painters" was all of it written twice--most of it, four
+times,--over; and these lectures have been written, I don't know how
+many times. You may think that this was done merely in an author's
+vanity, not in a tutor's care. To the vanity I plead guilty,--no man is
+more intensely vain than I am; but my vanity is set on having it _known_
+of me that I am a good master, not in having it _said_ of me that I am a
+smooth author. My vanity is never more wounded than in being called a
+fine writer, meaning--that nobody need mind what I say.
+
+3. Well, then, besides this vanity, I have some solicitude for your
+progress. You may give me credit for it or not, as you choose, but it is
+sincere. And that your advance may be safe, I have taken the best pains
+I could in laying down laws for it. In these three years I have got my
+grammar written, and, with the help of many friends, all working
+instruments in good order; and now we will try what we can do. Not that,
+even now, you are to depend on my presence with you in personal
+teaching. I shall henceforward think of the lectures less, of the
+schools more; but my best work for the schools will often be by drawing
+in Florence or in Lancashire--not here.
+
+4. I have already told you several times that the course through which I
+mean every student in these schools should pass, is one which shall
+enable them to understand the elementary principles of the finest art.
+It will necessarily be severe, and seem to lead to no immediate result.
+Some of you will, on the contrary, wish to be taught what is immediately
+easy, and gives prospect of a manifest success.
+
+But suppose they should come to the Professor of Logic and Rhetoric, and
+tell him they want to be taught to preach like Mr. Spurgeon, or the
+Bishop of ----.
+
+He would say to them,--I cannot, and if I could I would not, tell you
+how to preach like Mr. Spurgeon, or the Bishop of ----. Your own
+character will form your style; your own zeal will direct it; your own
+obstinacy or ignorance may limit or exaggerate it; but my business is to
+prevent, as far as I can, your having _any_ particular style; and to
+teach you the laws of all language, and the essential power of your own.
+
+In like manner, this course, which I propose to you in art, will be
+calculated only to give you judgment and method in future study, to
+establish to your conviction the laws of general art, and to enable you
+to draw, if not with genius, at least with sense and propriety.
+
+The course, so far as it consists in practice, will be defined in my
+Instructions for the schools. And the theory connected with that
+practice is set down in the three lectures at the end of the first
+course I delivered--those on Line, Light, and Color.
+
+You will have, therefore, to get this book,[B] and it is the only one
+which you will need to have of your own,--the others are placed, for
+reference, where they will be accessible to you.
+
+5. In the 139th paragraph it states the order of your practical study in
+these terms:--
+
+"I wish you to begin by getting command of line;--that is to say, by
+learning to draw a steady line, limiting with absolute correctness the
+form or space you intend it to limit; to proceed by getting command over
+flat tints, so that you may be able to fill the spaces you have inclosed
+evenly, either with shade or color, according to the school you adopt;
+and, finally, to obtain the power of adding such fineness of drawing,
+within the masses, as shall express their undulation, and their
+characters of form and texture."
+
+And now, since in your course of practice you are first required to
+attain the power of drawing lines accurately and delicately, so in the
+course of theory, or grammar, I wish you first to learn the principles
+of linear design, exemplified by the schools which (Sec. 137) you will find
+characterized as the Schools of Line.
+
+6. If I had command of as much time as I should like to spend with you
+on this subject, I would begin with the early forms of art which used
+the simplest linear elements of design. But, for general service and
+interest, it will be better that I should sketch what has been
+accomplished by the greatest masters in that manner; the rather that
+their work is more or less accessible to all, and has developed into the
+vast industries of modern engraving, one of the most powerful existing
+influences of education and sources of pleasure among civilized people.
+
+And this investigation, so far from interrupting, will facilitate our
+examination of the history of the nobler arts. You will see in the
+preface to my lectures on Greek sculpture that I intend them to be
+followed by a course on architecture, and that by one on Florentine
+sculpture. But the art of engraving is so manifestly, at Florence,
+though not less essentially elsewhere, a basis of style both in
+architecture and sculpture, that it is absolutely necessary I should
+explain to you in what the skill of the engraver consists, before I can
+define with accuracy that of more admired artists. For engraving, though
+not altogether in the method of which you see examples in the
+print-shops of the High Street, is, indeed, a prior art to that either
+of building or sculpture, and is an inseparable part of both, when they
+are rightly practiced.
+
+7. And while we thus examine the scope of this first of the arts, it
+will be necessary that we learn also the scope of mind of the early
+practicers of it, and accordingly acquaint ourselves with the main
+events in the biography of the schools of Florence. To understand the
+temper and meaning of one great master is to lay the best, if not the
+only, foundation for the understanding of all; and I shall therefore
+make it the leading aim of this course of lectures to remind you of what
+is known, and direct you to what is knowable, of the life and character
+of the greatest Florentine master of engraving, Sandro Botticelli; and,
+incidentally, to give you some idea of the power of the greatest master
+of the German, or any northern, school, Hans Holbein.
+
+8. You must feel, however, that I am using the word "engraving" in a
+somewhat different, and, you may imagine, a wider, sense, than that
+which you are accustomed to attach to it. So far from being a wider
+sense, it is in reality a more accurate and restricted one, while yet it
+embraces every conceivable right application of the art. And I wish, in
+this first lecture, to make entirely clear to you the proper meaning of
+the word, and proper range of the art of, engraving; in my next
+following lecture, to show you its place in Italian schools, and then,
+in due order, the place it ought to take in our own, and in all schools.
+
+9. First then, to-day, of the Differentia, or essential quality of
+Engraving, as distinguished from other arts.
+
+What answer would you make to me, if I asked casually what engraving
+was? Perhaps the readiest which would occur to you would be, "The
+translation of pictures into black and white by means admitting
+reduplication of impressions." But if that be done by lithography, we do
+not call it engraving,--whereas we speak contentedly and continually of
+seal engraving, in which there is no question of black and white. And,
+as scholars, you know that this customary mode of speaking is quite
+accurate; and that engraving means, primarily, making a permanent cut or
+furrow in something. The central syllable of the word has become a
+sorrowful one, meaning the most permanent of furrows.
+
+10. But are you prepared absolutely to accept this limitation with
+respect to engraving as a pictorial art? Will you call nothing an
+engraving, except a group of furrows or cavities cut in a hard
+substance? What shall we say of mezzotint engraving, for instance, in
+which, though indeed furrows and cavities are produced mechanically as a
+ground, the artist's work is in effacing them? And when we consider the
+power of engraving in representing pictures and multiplying them, are we
+to recognize and admire no effects of light and shade except those which
+are visibly produced by dots or furrows? I mean, will the virtue of an
+engraving be in exhibiting these imperfect means of its effect, or in
+concealing them?
+
+11. Here, for instance, is the head of a soldier by Duerer,--a mere
+gridiron of black lines. Would this be better or worse engraving if it
+were more like a photograph or lithograph, and no lines seen?--suppose,
+more like the head of Mr. Santley, now in all the music-shops, and
+really quite deceptive in light and shade, when seen from over the way?
+Do you think Duerer's work would be better if it were more like that? And
+would you have me, therefore, leaving the question of technical method
+of production altogether to the craftsman, consider pictorial engraving
+simply as the production of a light-and-shade drawing, by some method
+permitting its multiplication for the public?
+
+12. This, you observe, is a very practical question indeed. For
+instance, the illustrations of my own lectures on sculpture are
+equivalent to permanent photographs. There can be little doubt that
+means will be discovered of thus producing perfect facsimiles of
+artists' drawings; so that, if no more than facsimile be required, the
+old art of cutting furrows in metal may be considered as, at this day,
+virtually ended. And, indeed, it is said that line engravers cannot any
+more get apprentices, and that a pure steel or copper plate is not
+likely to be again produced, when once the old living masters of the
+bright field shall have been all laid in their earth-furrows.
+
+13. Suppose, then, that this come to pass; and more than this, suppose
+that wood engraving also be superseded, and that instead of imperfect
+transcripts of drawings, on wood-blocks or metal-plates, photography
+enabled us to give, quite cheaply, and without limit to number,
+facsimiles of the finished light-and-shade drawings of artists
+themselves. Another group of questions instantly offers itself, on these
+new conditions; namely, What are the best means for a light-and-shade
+drawing--the pen, or the pencil, the charcoal, or the flat wash? That is
+to say, the pen, producing shade by black lines, as old engraving did;
+the pencil, producing shade by gray lines, variable in force; the
+charcoal, producing a smoky shadow with no lines in it, or the washed
+tint, producing a transparent shadow with no lines in it. Which of
+these methods is the best?--or have they, each and all, virtues to be
+separately studied, and distinctively applied?
+
+14. See how curiously the questions multiply on us. 1st, Is engraving to
+be only considered as cut work? 2d, For present designs multipliable
+without cutting, by the sunshine, what methods or instruments of drawing
+will be best? And now, 3dly, before we can discuss these questions at
+all, is there not another lying at the root of both,--namely, what a
+light-and-shade drawing itself properly _is_, and how it differs, or
+should differ, from a painting, whether by mere deficiency, or by some
+entirely distinct merit?
+
+15. For instance, you know how confidently it is said, in common talk
+about Turner, that his works are intelligible and beautiful when
+engraved, though incomprehensible as paintings. Admitting this to be so,
+do you suppose it is because the translation into light and shade is
+deficient in some qualities which the painting had, or that it possesses
+some quality which the painting had not? Does it please more because it
+is deficient in the color which confused a feeble spectator, and
+offended a dogmatic one,--or because it possesses a decision in its
+steady linear labor which interprets, or corrects, the swift penciling
+of the artist?
+
+16. Do you notice the two words I have just used, _Decision_, and
+_Linear_?--Decision, again introducing the idea of cuts or divisions, as
+opposed to gradations; Linear, as opposed to massive or broad?
+
+Yet we use all these words at different times in praise, while they
+evidently mark inconsistent qualities. Softness and decision, breadth
+and delineation, cannot co-exist in equal degrees. There must surely
+therefore be a virtue in the engraving inconsistent with that of the
+painting, and vice versa.
+
+Now, be clear about these three questions which we have to-day to
+answer.
+
+     A. Is all engraving to be cut work?
+
+     B. If it need not be cut work, but only the reproduction of a
+     drawing, what methods of executing a light-and-shade drawing
+     will be best?
+
+     C. Is the shaded drawing itself to be considered only as a
+     deficient or imperfect painting, or as a different thing from a
+     painting, having a virtue of its own, belonging to black and
+     white, as opposed to color?
+
+17. I will give you the answers at once, briefly, and amplify them
+afterwards.
+
+     A. All engraving must be cut work;--_that_ is its differentia.
+     Unless your effect be produced by cutting into some solid
+     substance, it is not engraving at all.
+
+     B. The proper methods for light-and-shade drawing vary
+     according to subject, and the degree of completeness
+     desired,--some of them having much in common with engraving,
+     and others with painting.
+
+     C. The qualities of a light-and-shade drawing ought to be
+     entirely different from those of a painting. It is not a
+     deficient or partial representation of a colored scene or
+     picture, but an entirely different reading of either. So that
+     much of what is intelligible in a painting ought to be
+     unintelligible in a light-and-shade study, and _vice versa_.
+
+You have thus three arts,--engraving, light-and-shade drawing, and
+painting.
+
+Now I am not going to lecture, in this course, on painting, nor on
+light-and-shade drawing, but on engraving only. But I must tell you
+something about light-and-shade drawing first; or, at least, remind you
+of what I have before told.
+
+18. You see that the three elementary lectures in my first volume are on
+Line, Light, and Color,--that is to say, on the modes of art which
+produce linear designs,--which produce effects of light,--and which
+produce effects of color.
+
+I must, for the sake of new students, briefly repeat the explanation of
+these.
+
+Here is an Arabian vase, in which the pleasure given to the eye is only
+by lines;--no effect of light, or of color, is attempted. Here is a
+moonlight by Turner, in which there are no lines at all, and no colors
+at all. The pleasure given to the eye is only by modes of light and
+shade, or effects of light. Finally, here is an early Florentine
+painting, in which there are no lines of importance, and no effect of
+light whatever; but all the pleasure given to the eye is in gayety and
+variety of color.
+
+19. I say, the pleasure given to the _eye_. The lines on this vase write
+something; but the ornamentation produced by the beautiful writing is
+independent of its meaning. So the moonlight is pleasant, first, as
+light; and the figures, first, as color. It is not the shape of the
+waves, but the light on them; not the expression of the figures, but
+their color, by which the _ocular_ pleasure is to be given.
+
+These three examples are violently marked ones; but, in preparing to
+draw _any_ object, you will find that, practically, you have to ask
+yourself, Shall I aim at the color of it, the light of it, or the lines
+of it? You can't have all three; you can't even have any two out of the
+three in equal strength. The best art, indeed, comes so near nature as
+in a measure to unite all. But the best is not, and cannot be, as good
+as nature; and the mode of its deficiency is that it must lose some of
+the color, some of the light, or some of the delineation. And in
+consequence, there is one great school which says, We will have the
+color, and as much light and delineation as are consistent with it.
+Another which says, We will have shade, and as much color and
+delineation as are consistent with it. The third, We will have
+delineation, and as much color and shade as are consistent with it.
+
+20. And though much of the two subordinate qualities may in each school
+be consistent with the leading one, yet the schools are evermore
+separate: as, for instance, in other matters, one man says, I will have
+my fee, and as much honesty as is consistent with it; another, I will
+have my honesty, and as much fee as is consistent with it. Though the
+man who will have his fee be subordinately honest,--though the man who
+will have his honor, subordinately rich, are they not evermore of
+diverse schools?
+
+So you have, in art, the utterly separate provinces, though in contact
+at their borders, of
+
+                      The Delineators;
+                      The Chiaroscurists; and
+                      The Colorists.
+
+21. The Delineators are the men on whom I am going to give you this
+course of lectures. They are essentially engravers, an engraved line
+being the best means of delineation. The Chiaroscurists are essentially
+draughtsmen with chalk, charcoal, or single tints. Many of them paint,
+but always with some effort and pain. Lionardo is the type of them; but
+the entire Dutch school consists of them, laboriously painting, without
+essential genius for color.
+
+The Colorists are the true painters; and all the faultless (as far, that
+is to say, as men's work can be so,) and consummate masters of art
+belong to them.
+
+22. The distinction between the colorist and chiaroscurist school is
+trenchant and absolute: and may soon be shown you so that you will never
+forget it. Here is a Florentine picture by one of the pupils of Giotto,
+of very good representative quality, and which the University galleries
+are rich in possessing. At the distance at which I hold it, you see
+nothing but a checker-work of brilliant, and, as it happens, even
+glaring colors. If you come near, you will find this patchwork resolve
+itself into a Visitation, and Birth of St. John; but that St.
+Elizabeth's red dress, and the Virgin's blue and white one, and the
+brown posts of the door, and the blue spaces of the sky, are painted in
+their own entirely pure colors, each shaded with more powerful tints of
+itself,--pale blue with deep blue, scarlet with crimson, yellow with
+orange, and green with richer green.
+
+The whole is therefore as much a mosaic work of brilliant color as if it
+were made of bits of glass. There is no effect of light attempted, or so
+much as thought of: you don't know even where the sun is: nor have you
+the least notion what time of day it is. The painter thinks you cannot
+be so superfluous as to want to know what time of day it is.
+
+23. Here, on the other hand, is a Dutch picture of good average quality,
+also out of the University galleries. It represents a group of cattle,
+and a herdsman watching them. And you see in an instant that the time is
+evening. The sun is setting, and there is warm light on the landscape,
+the cattle, and the standing figure.
+
+Nor does the picture in any conspicuous way seem devoid of color. On the
+contrary, the herdsman has a scarlet jacket, which comes out rather
+brilliantly from the mass of shade round it; and a person devoid of
+color faculty, or ill taught, might imagine the picture to be really a
+fine work of color.
+
+But if you will come up close to it, you will find that the herdsman has
+brown sleeves, though he has a scarlet jacket; and that the shadows of
+both are painted with precisely the same brown, and in several places
+with continuous touches of the pencil. It is only in the light that the
+scarlet is laid on.
+
+This at once marks the picture as belonging to the lower or
+chiaroscurist school, even if you had not before recognized it as such
+by its pretty rendering of sunset effect.
+
+24. You might at first think it a painting which showed greater skill
+than that of the school of Giotto. But the skill is not the primary
+question. The power of imagination is the first thing to be asked about.
+This Italian work imagines, and requires you to imagine also, a St.
+Elizabeth and St. Mary, to the best of your power. But this Dutch one
+only wishes you to imagine an effect of sunlight on cow-skin, which is a
+far lower strain of the imaginative faculty.
+
+Also, as you may see the effect of sunlight on cow-skin, in reality, any
+summer afternoon, but cannot so frequently see a St. Elizabeth, it is a
+far less useful strain of the imaginative faculty.
+
+And, generally speaking, the Dutch chiaroscurists are indeed persons
+without imagination at all,--who, not being able to get any pleasure out
+of their thoughts, try to get it out of their sensations; note, however,
+also their technical connection with the Greek school of shade, (see my
+sixth inaugural lecture, Sec. 158,) in which color was refused, not for the
+sake of deception, but of solemnity.
+
+25. With these final motives you are not now concerned; your present
+business is the quite easy one of knowing, and noticing, the universal
+distinction between the methods of treatment in which the aim is light,
+and in which it is color; and so to keep yourselves guarded from the
+danger of being misled by the, often very ingenious, talk of persons who
+have vivid color sensations without having learned to distinguish them
+from what else pleases them in pictures. There is an interesting volume
+by Professor Taine on the Dutch school, containing a valuable historical
+analysis of the influences which formed it; but full of the gravest
+errors, resulting from the confusion in his mind between color and tone,
+in consequence of which he imagines the Dutch painters to be colorists.
+
+26. It is so important for you to be grounded securely in these first
+elements of pictorial treatment, that I will be so far tedious as to
+show you one more instance of the relative intellectual value of the
+pure color and pure chiaroscuro school, not in Dutch and Florentine, but
+in English art. Here is a copy of one of the lost frescoes of our
+Painted Chamber of Westminster;--fourteenth-century work, entirely
+conceived in color, and calculated for decorative effect. There is no
+more light and shade in it than in a Queen of Hearts in a pack of
+cards;--all that the painter at first wants you to see is that the young
+lady has a white forehead, and a golden crown, and a fair neck, and a
+violet robe, and a crimson shield with golden leopards on it; and that
+behind her is clear blue sky. Then, farther, he wants you to read her
+name, "Debonnairete," which, when you have read, he farther expects you
+to consider what it is to be debonnaire, and to remember your Chaucer's
+description of the virtue:--
+
+    She was not brown, nor dun of hue,
+    But white as snowe, fallen new,
+    With eyen glad, and browes bent,
+    Her hair down to her heeles went,
+    And she was simple, as dove on tree,
+    Full debonnair of heart was she.
+
+27. You see Chaucer dwells on the color just as much as the painter
+does, but the painter has also given her the English shield to bear,
+meaning that good-humor, or debonnairete, cannot be maintained by
+self-indulgence;--only by fortitude. Farther note, with Chaucer, the
+"eyen glad," and brows "bent" (high-arched and calm), the strong life,
+(hair down to the heels,) and that her gladness is to be without
+subtlety,--that is to say, without the slightest pleasure in any form of
+advantage-taking, or any shrewd or mocking wit: "she was simple as dove
+on tree;" and you will find that the color-painting, both in the fresco
+and in the poem, is in the very highest degree didactic and
+intellectual; and distinguished, as being so, from all inferior forms of
+art. Farther, that it requires you yourself first to understand the
+nature of simplicity, and to like simplicity in young ladies better than
+subtlety; and to understand why the second of Love's five kind arrows
+(Beaute being the first)--
+
+    Simplece ot nom, la seconde
+    Qui maint homme parmi le monde
+    Et mainte dame fait amer.
+
+Nor must you leave the picture without observing that there is another
+reason for Debonnairete's bearing the Royal shield,--of all shields
+that, rather than another. "De-bonne-aire" meant originally "out of a
+good eagle's nest," the "aire" signifying the eagle's nest or eyrie
+especially, because it is flat, the Latin "area" being the root of all.
+
+And this coming out of a good nest is recognized as, of all things,
+needfulest to give the strength which enables people to be good-humored;
+and thus you have "debonnaire" forming the third word of the group, with
+"gentle" and "kind," all first signifying "of good race."
+
+You will gradually see, as we go on, more and more why I called my third
+volume of lectures Eagle's Nest; for I am not fantastic in these titles,
+as is often said; but try shortly to mark my chief purpose in the book
+by them.
+
+28. Now for comparison with this old art, here is a modern engraving,
+in which color is entirely ignored; and light and shade alone are used
+to produce what is supposed to be a piece of impressive religious
+instruction. But it is not a piece of religious instruction at
+all;--only a piece of religious sensation, prepared for the sentimental
+pleasure of young ladies; whom (since I am honored to-day by the
+presence of many) I will take the opportunity of warning against such
+forms of false theological satisfaction. This engraving represents a
+young lady in a very long and, though plain, very becoming white dress,
+tossed upon the waves of a terrifically stormy sea, by which neither her
+hair nor her becoming dress is in the least wetted; and saved from
+despair in that situation by closely embracing a very thick and solid
+stone Cross. By which far-sought and original metaphor young ladies are
+expected, after some effort, to understand the recourse they may have,
+for support, to the Cross of Christ, in the midst of the troubles of
+this world.
+
+29. As those troubles are for the present, in all probability, limited
+to the occasional loss of their thimbles when they have not taken care
+to put them into their work-boxes,--the concern they feel at the
+unsympathizing gayety of their companions,--or perhaps the
+disappointment at not hearing a favorite clergyman preach,--(for I will
+not suppose the young ladies interested in this picture to be affected
+by any chagrin at the loss of an invitation to a ball, or the like
+worldliness,)--it seems to me the stress of such calamities might be
+represented, in a picture, by less appalling imagery. And I can assure
+my fair little lady friends,--if I still have any,--that whatever a
+young girl's ordinary troubles or annoyances may be, her true virtue is
+in shaking them off, as a rose-leaf shakes off rain, and remaining
+debonnaire and bright in spirits, or even, as the rose would be, the
+brighter for the troubles; and not at all in allowing herself to be
+either drifted or depressed to the point of requiring religious
+consolation. But if any real and deep sorrow, such as no metaphor can
+represent, fall upon her, does she suppose that the theological advice
+of this piece of modern art can be trusted? If she will take the pains
+to think truly, she will remember that Christ Himself never says
+anything about holding by His Cross. He speaks a good deal of bearing
+it; but never for an instant of holding by it. It is His Hand, not His
+Cross, which is to save either you, or St. Peter, when the waves are
+rough. And the utterly reckless way in which modern religious teachers,
+whether in art or literature, abuse the metaphor somewhat briefly and
+violently leant on by St. Paul, simply prevents your understanding the
+meaning of any word which Christ Himself speaks on this matter! So you
+see this popular art of light and shade, catching you by your mere
+thirst of sensation, is not only undidactic, but the reverse of
+didactic--deceptive and illusory.
+
+30. This _popular_ art, you hear me say, scornfully; and I have told
+you, in some of my teaching in "Aratra Pentelici," that all great art
+must be popular. Yes, but great art is popular, as bread and water are
+to children fed by a father. And vile art is popular, as poisonous jelly
+is, to children cheated by a confectioner. And it is quite possible to
+make any kind of art popular on those last terms. The color school may
+become just as poisonous as the colorless, in the hands of fools, or of
+rogues. Here is a book I bought only the other day,--one of the things
+got up cheap to catch the eyes of mothers at bookstalls,--Puss in Boots,
+illustrated; a most definite work of the color school--red jackets and
+white paws and yellow coaches as distinct as Giotto or Raphael would
+have kept them. But the thing is done by fools for money, and becomes
+entirely monstrous and abominable. Here, again, is color art produced by
+fools for religion: here is Indian sacred painting,--a black god with a
+hundred arms, with a green god on one side of him and a red god on the
+other; still a most definite work of the color school. Giotto or Raphael
+could not have made the black more resolutely black, (though the whole
+color of the school of Athens is kept in distinct separation from one
+black square in it), nor the green more unquestionably green. Yet the
+whole is pestilent and loathsome.
+
+31. Now but one point more, and I have done with this subject for
+to-day.
+
+You must not think that this manifest brilliancy and Harlequin's-jacket
+character is essential in the color school. The essential matter is only
+that everything should be of _its own_ definite color: it may be
+altogether sober and dark, yet the distinctness of hue preserved with
+entire fidelity. Here, for instance, is a picture of Hogarth's,--one of
+quite the most precious things we have in our galleries. It represents a
+meeting of some learned society--gentlemen of the last century, very
+gravely dressed, but who, nevertheless, as gentlemen pleasantly did in
+that day,--you remember Goldsmith's weakness on the point--wear coats of
+tints of dark red, blue, or violet. There are some thirty gentlemen in
+the room, and perhaps seven or eight different tints of subdued
+claret-color in their coats; and yet every coat is kept so distinctly of
+its own proper claret-color, that each gentleman's servant would know
+his master's.
+
+Yet the whole canvas is so gray and quiet, that as I now hold it by this
+Dutch landscape, with the vermilion jacket, you would fancy Hogarth's
+had no color in it at all, and that the Dutchman was half-way to
+becoming a Titian; whereas Hogarth's is a consummate piece of the most
+perfect colorist school, which Titian could not beat, in its way; and
+the Dutchman could no more paint half an inch of it than he could summon
+a rainbow into the clouds.
+
+32. Here then, you see, are, altogether, five works, all of the
+absolutely pure color school:--
+
+  1. One, Indian,--Religious Art;
+  2. One, Florentine,--Religious Art;
+  3. One, English,--from Painted Chamber, Westminster,--Ethic Art;
+  4. One, English,--Hogarth,--Naturalistic Art;
+  5. One, English,--to-day sold in the High Street,--Caricaturist Art.
+
+And of these, the Florentine and old English are divine work,
+God-inspired; full, indeed, of faults and innocencies, but divine, as
+good children are.
+
+Then this by Hogarth is entirely wise and right; but worldly-wise, not
+divine.
+
+While the old Indian, and this, with which we feed our children at this
+hour, are entirely damnable art;--every bit of it done by the direct
+inspiration of the devil,--feeble, ridiculous,--yet mortally poisonous
+to every noble quality in body and soul.
+
+33. I have now, I hope, guarded you sufficiently from the danger either
+of confusing the inferior school of chiaroscuro with that of color, or
+of imagining that a work must necessarily be good, on the sole ground of
+its belonging to the higher group. I can now proceed securely to
+separate the third school, that of Delineation, from both; and to
+examine its special qualities.
+
+It begins (see "Inaugural Lectures," Sec. 137) in the primitive work of
+races insensible alike to shade and to color, and nearly devoid of
+thought and of sentiment, but gradually developing into both.
+
+Now as the design is primitive, so are the means likely to be primitive.
+A line is the simplest work of art you can produce. What are the
+simplest means you can produce it with?
+
+A Cumberland lead-pencil is a work of art in itself, quite a
+nineteenth-century machine. Pen and ink are complex and scholarly; and
+even chalk or charcoal not always handy.
+
+But the primitive line, the first and last, generally the best of lines,
+is that which you have elementary faculty of at your fingers' ends, and
+which kittens can draw as well as you--the scratch.
+
+The first, I say, and the last of lines. Permanent exceedingly,--even in
+flesh, or on mahogany tables, often more permanent than we desire. But
+when studiously and honorably made, divinely permanent, or
+delightfully--as on the venerable desks of our public schools, most of
+them, now, specimens of wood engraving dear to the heart of England.
+
+34. Engraving, then, is, in brief terms, the Art of Scratch. It is
+essentially the cutting into a solid substance for the sake of making
+your ideas as permanent as possible, graven with an iron pen in the
+Rock forever. _Permanence_, you observe, is the object, not
+multiplicability;--that is quite an accidental, sometimes not even a
+desirable, attribute of engraving. Duration of your work--fame, and
+undeceived vision of all men, on the pane of glass of the window on a
+wet day, or on the pillars of the castle of Chillon, or on the walls
+of the pyramids;--a primitive art,--yet first and last with us.
+
+Since then engraving, we say, is essentially cutting into the surface of
+any solid; as the primitive design is in lines or dots, the primitive
+cutting of such design is a scratch or a hole; and scratchable solids
+being essentially three--stone, wood, metal,--we shall have three great
+schools of engraving to investigate in each material.
+
+35. On tablet of stone, on tablet of wood, on tablet of steel,--the
+first giving the law to everything; the second true Athenian, like
+Athena's first statue in olive-wood, making the law legible and homely;
+and the third true Vulcanian, having the splendor and power of
+accomplished labor.
+
+Now of stone engraving, which is joined inseparably with sculpture and
+architecture, I am not going to speak at length in this course of
+lectures. I shall speak only of wood and metal engraving. But there is
+one circumstance in stone engraving which it is necessary to observe in
+connection with the other two branches of the art.
+
+The great difficulty for a primitive engraver is to make his scratch
+deep enough to be visible. Visibility is quite as essential to your fame
+as permanence; and if you have only your furrow to depend on, the
+engraved tablet, at certain times of day, will be illegible, and passed
+without notice.
+
+But suppose you fill in your furrow with something black, then it will
+be legible enough at once; and if the black fall out or wash out, still
+your furrow is there, and may be filled again by anybody.
+
+Therefore, the noble stone engravers, using marble to receive their
+furrow, fill that furrow with marble ink.
+
+And you have an engraved plate to purpose;--with the whole sky for its
+margin! Look here--the front of the church of San Michele of
+Lucca,--white marble with green serpentine for ink; or here,--the steps
+of the Giant's Stair, with lead for ink; or here,--the floor of the
+Pisan Duomo, with porphyry for ink. Such cutting, filled in with color
+or with black, branches into all sorts of developments,--Florentine
+mosaic on the one hand, niello on the other, and infinite minor arts.
+
+36. Yet we must not make this filling with color part of our definition
+of engraving. To engrave is, in final strictness, "to decorate a surface
+with furrows." (Cameos, in accuratest terms, are minute sculptures, not
+engravings.) A plowed field is the purest type of such art; and is, on
+hilly land, an exquisite piece of decoration.
+
+Therefore it will follow that engraving distinguishes itself from
+ordinary drawing by greater need of muscular effort.
+
+The quality of a pen drawing is to be produced easily,--deliberately,
+always,[C] but with a point that _glides_ over the paper. Engraving, on
+the contrary, requires always force, and its virtue is that of a line
+produced by pressure, or by blows of a chisel.
+
+It involves, therefore, always, ideas of power and dexterity, but also
+of restraint; and the delight you take in it should involve the
+understanding of the difficulty the workman dealt with. You perhaps
+doubt the extent to which this feeling justly extends, (in the first
+volume of "Modern Painters," expressed under the head "Ideas of Power.")
+But why is a large stone in any building grander than a small one?
+Simply because it was more difficult to raise it. So, also, an engraved
+line is, and ought to be, recognized as more grand than a pen or pencil
+line, because it was more difficult to execute it.
+
+In this mosaic of Lucca front you forgive much, and admire much,
+because you see it is all cut in stone. So, in wood and steel, you ought
+to see that every line has been costly; but observe, costly of
+deliberative, no less than athletic or executive power. The main use of
+the restraint which makes the line difficult to draw, is to give time
+and motive for deliberation in drawing it, and to insure its being the
+best in your power.
+
+37. For, as with deliberation, so without repentance, your engraved line
+must be. It may, indeed, be burnished or beaten out again in metal, or
+patched and botched in stone; but always to disadvantage, and at pains
+which must not be incurred often. And there is a singular evidence in
+one of Duerer's finest plates that, in his time, or at least in his
+manner of work, it was not possible at all. Among the disputes as to the
+meaning of Duerer's Knight and Death, you will find it sometimes
+suggested, or insisted, that the horse's raised foot is going to fall
+into a snare. What has been fancied a noose is only the former outline
+of the horse's foot and limb, uneffaced.
+
+The engraved line is therefore to be conclusive; not experimental. "I
+have determined this," says the engraver. Much excellent pen drawing is
+excellent in being tentative,--in being experimental. Indeterminate, not
+through want of meaning, but through fullness of it--halting _wisely_
+between two opinions--feeling cautiously after clearer opinions. But
+your engraver has made up his opinion. This is so, and must forever be
+so, he tells you. A very proper thing for a thoughtful man to say; a
+very improper and impertinent thing for a foolish one to say. Foolish
+engraving is consummately foolish work. Look,--all the world,--look for
+evermore, says the foolish engraver; see what a fool I have been! How
+many lines I have laid for nothing! How many lines upon lines, with no
+precept, much less superprecept!
+
+38. Here, then, are two definite ethical characters in all engraved
+work. It is Athletic; and it is Resolute. Add one more; that it is
+Obedient;--in their infancy the nurse, but in their youth the slave, of
+the higher arts; servile, both in the mechanism and labor of it, and in
+its function of interpreting the schools of painting as superior to
+itself.
+
+And this relation to the higher arts we will study at the source of
+chief power in all the normal skill of Christendom, Florence; and
+chiefly, as I said, in the work of one Florentine master, Sandro
+Botticelli.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[A] "Inaugural Series," "Aratra Pentelici," and "Eagle's Nest."
+
+[B] My inaugural series of seven lectures (now published uniform in size
+with this edition. 1890).
+
+[C] Compare Inaugural Lectures, Sec. 144.
+
+
+
+
+                         LECTURE II.
+
+    THE RELATION OF ENGRAVING TO OTHER ARTS IN FLORENCE.
+
+
+39. From what was laid before you in my last lecture, you must now be
+aware that I do not mean, by the word 'engraving,' merely the separate
+art of producing plates from which black pictures may be printed.
+
+I mean, by engraving, the art of producing decoration on a surface by
+the touches of a chisel or a burin; and I mean by its relation to other
+arts, the subordinate service of this linear work, in sculpture, in
+metal work, and in painting; or in the representation and repetition of
+painting.
+
+And first, therefore, I have to map out the broad relations of the arts
+of sculpture, metal work, and painting, in Florence, among themselves,
+during the period in which the art of engraving was distinctly connected
+with them.[D]
+
+40. You will find, or may remember, that in my lecture on Michael Angelo
+and Tintoret I indicated the singular importance, in the history of art,
+of a space of forty years, between 1480, and the year in which Raphael
+died, 1520. Within that space of time the change was completed, from the
+principles of ancient, to those of existing, art;--a manifold change,
+not definable in brief terms, but most clearly characterized, and easily
+remembered, as the change of conscientious and didactic art, into that
+which proposes to itself no duty beyond technical skill, and no object
+but the pleasure of the beholder. Of that momentous change itself I do
+not purpose to speak in the present course of lectures; but my endeavor
+will be to lay before you a rough chart of the course of the arts in
+Florence up to the time when it took place; a chart indicating for you,
+definitely, the growth of conscience, in work which is distinctively
+conscientious, and the perfecting of expression and means of popular
+address, in that which is distinctively didactic.
+
+41. Means of popular address, observe, which have become singularly
+important to us at this day. Nevertheless, remember that the power of
+printing, or reprinting, black _pictures_,--practically contemporary
+with that of reprinting black _letters_,--modified the art of the
+draughtsman only as it modified that of the scribe. Beautiful and unique
+writing, as beautiful and unique painting or engraving, remain exactly
+what they were; but other useful and reproductive methods of both have
+been superadded. Of these, it is acutely said by Dr. Alfred
+Woltmann,[E]--
+
+     "A far more important part is played in the art-life of Germany
+     by the technical arts for the _multiplying_ of works; for
+     Germany, while it was the land of book-printing, is also the
+     land of picture-printing. Indeed, wood-engraving, which
+     preceded the invention of book-printing, _prepared the way for
+     it, and only left one step more necessary for it_.
+     _Book-printing_ and _picture-printing_ have both the same inner
+     cause for their origin, namely, the impulse to make each mental
+     gain a common blessing. Not merely princes and rich nobles were
+     to have the privilege of adorning their private chapels and
+     apartments with beautiful religious pictures; the poorest man
+     was also to have his delight in that which the artist had
+     devised and produced. It was not sufficient for him when it
+     stood in the church as an altar-shrine, visible to him and to
+     the congregation from afar; he desired to have it as his own,
+     to carry it about with him, to bring it into his own home. The
+     grand importance of wood-engraving and copperplate is not
+     sufficiently estimated in historical investigations. They were
+     not alone of use in the advance of art; they form an epoch in
+     the entire life of mind and culture. The idea embodied and
+     multiplied in pictures became like that embodied in the printed
+     word, the herald of every intellectual movement, and conquered
+     the world."
+
+42. "Conquered the world"? The rest of the sentence is true, but this,
+hyperbolic, and greatly false. It should have been said that both
+painting and engraving have conquered much of the good in the world,
+and, hitherto, little or none of the evil.
+
+Nor do I hold it usually an advantage to art, in teaching, that it
+_should_ be common, or constantly seen. In becoming intelligibly and
+kindly beautiful, while it remains solitary and unrivaled, it has a
+greater power. Westminster Abbey is more didactic to the English nation,
+than a million of popular illustrated treatises on architecture.
+
+Nay, even that it cannot be understood but with some difficulty, and
+must be sought before it can be seen, is no harm. The noblest didactic
+art is, as it were, set on a hill, and its disciples come to it. The
+vilest destructive and corrosive art stands at the street corners,
+crying, "Turn in hither; come, eat of my bread, and drink of my wine,
+which I have mingled."
+
+And Dr. Woltmann has allowed himself too easily to fall into the common
+notion of Liberalism, that bad art, disseminated, is instructive, and
+good art isolated, not so. The question is, first, I assure you, whether
+what art you have got is good or bad. If essentially bad, the more you
+see of it, the worse for you. Entirely popular art is all that is noble,
+in the cathedral, the council chamber, and the market-place; not the
+paltry colored print pinned on the wall of a private room.
+
+43. I despise the poor!--do I, think you? Not so. They only despise the
+poor who think them better off with police news, and colored tracts of
+the story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife, than they were with Luini
+painting on their church walls, and Donatello carving the pillars of
+their market-places.
+
+Nevertheless, the effort to be universally, instead of locally,
+didactic, modified advantageously, as you know, and in a thousand ways
+varied, the earlier art of engraving: and the development of its popular
+power, whether for good or evil, came exactly--so fate appointed--at a
+time when the minds of the masses were agitated by the struggle which
+closed in the Reformation in some countries, and in the desperate
+refusal of Reformation in others.[F] The two greatest masters of
+engraving whose lives we are to study, were, both of them, passionate
+reformers: Holbein no less than Luther; Botticelli no less than
+Savonarola.
+
+44. Reformers, I mean, in the full and, accurately, the only, sense. Not
+preachers of new doctrines; but witnesses against the betrayal of the
+old ones, which were on the lips of all men, and in the lives of none.
+Nay, the painters are indeed more pure reformers than the priests. They
+rebuked the manifest vices of men, while they realized whatever was
+loveliest in their faith. Priestly reform soon enraged itself into mere
+contest for personal opinions; while, without rage, but in stern rebuke
+of all that was vile in conduct or thought,--in declaration of the
+always-received faiths of the Christian Church, and in warning of the
+power of faith, and death,[G] over the petty designs of men,--Botticelli
+and Holbein together fought foremost in the ranks of the Reformation.
+
+45. To-day I will endeavor to explain how they attained such rank. Then,
+in the next two lectures, the technics of both,--their way of speaking;
+and in the last two, what they had got to say.
+
+First, then, we ask how they attained this rank;--who taught _them_ what
+they were finally best to teach? How far must every people--how far did
+this Florentine people--teach its masters, before _they_ could teach
+_it_?
+
+Even in these days, when every man is, by hypothesis, as good as
+another, does not the question sound strange to you? You recognize in
+the past, as you think, clearly, that national advance takes place
+always under the guidance of masters, or groups of masters, possessed of
+what appears to be some new personal sensibility or gift of invention;
+and we are apt to be reverent to these alone, as if the nation itself
+had been unprogressive, and suddenly awakened, or converted, by the
+genius of one man.
+
+No idea can be more superficial. Every nation must teach its tutors, and
+prepare itself to receive them; but the fact on which our impression is
+founded--the rising, apparently by chance, of men whose singular gifts
+suddenly melt the multitude, already at the point of fusion; or suddenly
+form, and _in_form, the multitude which has gained coherence enough to
+be capable of formation,--enables us to measure and map the gain of
+national intellectual territory, by tracing first the lifting of the
+mountain chains of its genius.
+
+46. I have told you that we have nothing to do at present with the great
+transition from ancient to modern habits of thought which took place at
+the beginning of the sixteenth century. I only want to go as far as that
+point;--where we shall find the old superstitious art represented
+_finally_ by Perugino, and the modern scientific and anatomical art
+represented _primarily_ by Michael Angelo. And the epithet bestowed on
+Perugino by Michael Angelo, 'goffo nell' arte,' dunce, or blockhead, in
+art,--being, as far as my knowledge of history extends, the most cruel,
+the most false, and the most foolish insult ever offered by one great
+man to another,--does you at least good service, in showing how
+trenchant the separation is between the two orders of artists,[H]--how
+exclusively we may follow out the history of all the 'goffi nell' arte,'
+and write our Florentine Dunciad, and Laus Stultitiae, in peace; and
+never trench upon the thoughts or ways of these proud ones, who showed
+their fathers' nakedness, and snatched their masters' fame.
+
+47. The Florentine dunces in art are a multitude; but I only want you to
+know something about twenty of them.
+
+Twenty!--you think that a grievous number? It may, perhaps, appease
+you a little to be told that when you really have learned a very little,
+accurately, about these twenty dunces, there are only five more men
+among the artists of Christendom whose works I shall ask you to examine
+while you are under my care. That makes twenty-five altogether,--an
+exorbitant demand on your attention, you still think? And yet, but a
+little while ago, you were all agog to get me to go and look at Mrs. A's
+sketches, and tell you what was to be thought about _them_; and I've had
+the greatest difficulty to keep Mrs. B's photographs from being shown
+side by side with the Raphael drawings in the University galleries. And
+you will waste any quantity of time in looking at Mrs. A's sketches or
+Mrs. B's photographs; and yet you look grave, because, out of nineteen
+centuries of European art-labor and thought, I ask you to learn
+something seriously about the works of five-and-twenty men!
+
+48. It is hard upon you, doubtless, considering the quantity of time you
+must nowadays spend in trying which can hit balls farthest. So I will
+put the task into the simplest form I can.
+
+                  1200                1300                1400
+                   |        1250       |        1350       |
+                   +         +         +         +         +
+    Niccola Pisano |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | | | | | |
+                 Arnolfo |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | | |
+                   Cimabue |-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | | | |
+             Giovanni Pisano |-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | |
+                   Andrea Pisano |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | |
+                          Giotto |-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | |
+                                 Orcagna |-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | |
+
+
+                  1400                1500                1600
+                   |        1450       |        1550       |
+                   +         +         +         +         +
+     Quercia |-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
+Brunelleschi |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
+      Ghiberti |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
+     Donatello |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | | | | | | |
+ Luca della Robbia |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | | | | | |
+       Filippo Lippi |-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | | | | | | |
+      Giovanni Bellini |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | |
+                Mantegna |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | | |
+              Verrocchio |-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | | | | |
+                  Perugino |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | |
+                  Botticelli |-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | |
+                           Luini |-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | |
+                           Duerer |-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | |
+                              Cima |-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | |
+                           Carpaccio |-|-|-|-| | | | | | | |
+                           Correggio |-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | |
+                               Holbein |-|-|-|-|-| | | | | |
+                                Tintoret |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|
+
+Here are the names of the twenty-five men,[I] and opposite each, a line
+indicating the length of his life, and the position of it in his
+century. The diagram still, however, needs a few words of explanation.
+Very chiefly, for those who know anything of my writings, there is
+needed explanation of its not including the names of Titian, Reynolds,
+Velasquez, Turner, and other such men, always reverently put before you
+at other times.
+
+They are absent, because I have no fear of your not looking at these.
+All your lives through, if you care about art, you will be looking at
+them. But while you are here at Oxford, I want to make you learn what
+you should know of these earlier, many of them weaker, men, who yet, for
+the very reason of their greater simplicity of power, are better guides
+for you, and of whom some will remain guides to all generations. And,
+as regards the subject of our present course, I have a still more
+weighty reason;--Vandyke, Gainsborough, Titian, Reynolds, Velasquez, and
+the rest, are essentially portrait painters. They give you the likeness
+of a man: they have nothing to say either about his future life, or his
+gods. 'That is the look of him,' they say: 'here, on earth, we know no
+more.'
+
+49. But these, whose names I have engraved, have something to
+say--generally much,--either about the future life of man, or about his
+gods. They are therefore, literally, seers or prophets. False prophets,
+it may be, or foolish ones; of that you must judge; but you must read
+before you can judge; and read (or hear) them consistently; for you
+don't know them till you have heard them out. But with Sir Joshua, or
+Titian, one portrait is as another: it is here a pretty lady, there a
+great lord; but speechless, all;--whereas, with these twenty-five men,
+each picture or statue is not merely another person of a pleasant
+society, but another chapter of a Sibylline book.
+
+50. For this reason, then, I do not want Sir Joshua or Velasquez in my
+defined group; and for my present purpose, I can spare from it even four
+others:--namely, three who have _too_ special gifts, and must each be
+separately studied--Correggio, Carpaccio, Tintoret;--and one who has no
+special gift, but a balanced group of many--Cima. This leaves twenty-one
+for classification, of whom I will ask you to lay hold thus. You must
+continually have felt the difficulty caused by the names of centuries
+not tallying with their years;--the year 1201 being the first of the
+thirteenth century, and so on. I am always plagued by it myself, much as
+I have to think and write with reference to chronology; and I mean for
+the future, in our art chronology, to use as far as possible a different
+form of notation.
+
+51. In my diagram the vertical lines are the divisions of tens of years;
+the thick black lines divide the centuries. The horizontal lines, then,
+at a glance, tell you the length and date of each artist's life. In one
+or two instances I cannot find the date of birth; in one or two more,
+of death; and the line indicates then only the ascertained[J] period
+during which the artist worked.
+
+And, thus represented, you see nearly all their lives run through the
+year of a new century; so that if the lines representing them were
+needles, and the black bars of the years 1300, 1400, 1500 were magnets,
+I could take up nearly all the needles by lifting the bars.
+
+52. I will actually do this, then, in three other simple diagrams. I
+place a rod for the year 1300 over the lines of life, and I take up all
+it touches. I have to drop Niccola Pisano, but I catch five. Now, with
+my rod of 1400, I have dropped Orcagna indeed, but I again catch five.
+Now, with my rod of 1500, I indeed drop Filippo Lippi and Verrocchio,
+but I catch seven. And here I have three pennons, with the staves of the
+years 1300, 1400, and 1500 running through them,--holding the names of
+nearly all the men I want you to study in easily remembered groups of
+five, five, and seven. And these three groups I shall hereafter call the
+1300 group, 1400 group, and 1500 group.
+
+
+                                        1300.
+                                         ^
+                                         |
+1240-1302 Cimabue            +-+-+-+-+-+-+
+                                         |
+1250-1321 Giovanni Pisano      +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
+                                         |
+1232-1310 ARNOLFO           -+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
+                                         |
+1270-1345 Andrea Pisano            +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
+                                         |
+1276-1336 Giotto                     +-+-+-+-+-+
+
+
+                             1400.
+                              ^
+                              |
+1374-1438 Quercia        -+-+-+-+-+-+-+
+                              |
+1381-1455 Ghiberti        +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
+                              |
+1377-1446 BRUNELLESCHI    +-+-+-+-+-+-+-
+                              |
+1386-1468 Donatello         +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
+                              |
+1400-1481 Luca                +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
+
+
+                                       1500.
+                                        ^
+                                        |
+1431-1506 Mantegna         -+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
+                                        |
+1457-1515 Botticelli            +-+-+-+-+-+-
+                                        |
+1426-1516 Bellini         +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
+                                        |
+1446-1524 PERUGINO            +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
+                                        |
+1470-1535 Luini                   +-+-+-+-+-+-+-
+                                        |
+1471-1527 Duerer                    -+-+-+-+-+-
+                                        |
+1498-1543 Holbein                       +-+-+-+-+
+
+53. But why should four unfortunate masters be dropped out?
+
+Well, I want to drop them out, at any rate; but not in disrespect. In
+hope, on the contrary, to make you remember them very separately
+indeed;--for this following reason.
+
+We are in the careless habit of speaking of men who form a great number
+of pupils, and have a host of inferior satellites round them, as masters
+of great schools.
+
+But before you call a man a master, you should ask, Are his pupils
+greater or less than himself? If they are greater than himself, he is a
+master indeed;--he has been a true teacher. But if all his pupils are
+less than himself, he may have been a great _man_, but in all
+probability has been a bad _master_, or no master.
+
+Now these men, whom I have signally left out of my groups, are true
+_Masters_.
+
+Niccola Pisano taught all Italy; but chiefly his own son, who succeeded,
+and in some things very much surpassed him.
+
+Orcagna taught all Italy, after him, down to Michael Angelo. And these
+two--Lippi, the religious schools, Verrocchio, the artist schools, of
+their century.
+
+Lippi taught Sandro Botticelli; and Verrocchio taught Lionardo da Vinci,
+Lorenzo di Credi, and Perugino. Have I not good reason to separate the
+masters of such pupils from the schools they created?
+
+54. But how is it that I can drop just the cards I want out of my pack?
+
+Well, certainly I force and fit matters a little: I leave some men out
+of my list whom I should like to have in it;--Benozzo Gozzoli, for
+instance, and Mino da Fiesole; but I can do without them, and so can you
+also, for the present. I catch Luca by a hair's-breadth only, with my
+1400 rod; but on the whole, with very little coaxing, I get the groups
+in this memorable and quite literally 'handy' form. For see, I write my
+lists of five, five, and seven, on bits of pasteboard; I hinge my rods
+to these; and you can brandish the school of 1400 in your left hand, and
+of 1500 in your right, like--railway signals;--and I wish all railway
+signals were as clear. Once learn, thoroughly, the groups in this
+artificially contracted form, and you can refine and complete afterwards
+at your leisure.
+
+55. And thus actually flourishing my two pennons, and getting my grip of
+the men, in either hand, I find a notable thing concerning my two flags.
+The men whose names I hold in my left hand are all sculptors; the men
+whose names I hold in my right are all painters.
+
+You will infallibly suspect me of having chosen them thus on purpose.
+No, honor bright!--I chose simply the greatest men,--those I wanted to
+talk to you about. I arranged them by their dates; I put them into three
+conclusive pennons; and behold what follows!
+
+56. Farther, note this: in the 1300 group, four out of the five men are
+architects as well as sculptors and painters. In the 1400 group, there
+is one architect; in the 1500, none. And the meaning of that is, that in
+1300 the arts were all united, and duly led by architecture; in 1400,
+sculpture began to assume too separate a power to herself; in 1500,
+painting arrogated all, and, at last, betrayed all. From which, with
+much other collateral evidence, you may justly conclude that the three
+arts ought to be practiced together, and that they naturally are so. I
+long since asserted that no man could be an architect who was not a
+sculptor. As I learned more and more of my business, I perceived also
+that no man could be a sculptor who was not an architect;--that is to
+say, who had not knowledge enough, and pleasure enough in structural
+law, to be able to build, on occasion, better than a mere builder. And
+so, finally, I now positively aver to you that nobody, in the graphic
+arts, can be quite rightly a master of anything, who is not master of
+everything!
+
+57. The junction of the three arts in men's minds, at the best times, is
+shortly signified in these words of Chaucer. Love's Garden,
+
+                        Everidele
+    Enclosed was, and walled well
+    With high walls, embatailled,
+    Portrayed without, and well entayled
+    With many rich portraitures.
+
+The French original is better still, and gives four arts in unison:--
+
+    Quant suis avant un pou ale
+    Et vy un vergier grant et le,
+    Bien cloz de bon mur batillie
+    Pourtrait dehors, et entaillie
+    Ou (for au) maintes riches escriptures.
+
+Read also carefully the description of the temples of Mars and Venus in
+the Knight's Tale. Contemporary French uses 'entaille' even of solid
+sculpture and of the living form; and Pygmalion, as a perfect master,
+professes wood carving, ivory carving, waxwork, and iron-work, no less
+than stone sculpture:--
+
+    Pimalion, uns entaillieres
+    Pourtraians en fuz[K] et en pierres,
+    En mettaux, en os, et en cire,
+    Et en toute autre matire.
+
+58. I made a little sketch, when last in Florence, of a subject which
+will fix the idea of this unity of the arts in your minds. At the base
+of the tower of Giotto are two rows of hexagonal panels, filled with
+bas-reliefs. Some of these are by unknown hands,--some by Andrea Pisano,
+some by Luca della Robbia, two by Giotto himself; of these I sketched
+the panel representing the art of Painting.
+
+You have in that bas-relief one of the foundation-stones of the most
+perfectly built tower in Europe; you have that stone carved by its
+architect's own hand; you find, further, that this architect and
+sculptor was the greatest painter of his time, and the friend of the
+greatest poet; and you have represented by him a painter in his
+shop,--bottega,--as symbolic of the entire art of painting.
+
+59. In which representation, please note how carefully Giotto shows you
+the tabernacles or niches, in which the paintings are to be placed. Not
+independent of their frames, these panels of his, you see!
+
+Have you ever considered, in the early history of painting, how
+important also is the history of the frame maker? It is a matter, I
+assure you, needing your very best consideration. For the frame was made
+before the picture. The painted window is much, but the aperture it
+fills was thought of before it. The fresco by Giotto is much, but the
+vault it adorns was planned first. Who thought of these;--who built?
+
+Questions taking us far back before the birth of the shepherd boy of
+Fesole--questions not to be answered by history of painting only, still
+less of painting in _Italy_ only.
+
+60. And in pointing out to you this fact, I may once for all prove to
+you the essential unity of the arts, and show you how impossible it is
+to understand one without reference to another. Which I wish you to
+observe all the more closely, that you may use, without danger of being
+misled, the data, of unequaled value, which have been collected by Crowe
+and Cavalcaselle, in the book which they have called a History of
+Painting in Italy, but which is in fact only a dictionary of details
+relating to that history. Such a title is an absurdity on the face of
+it. For, first, you can no more write the history of painting in Italy
+than you can write the history of the south wind in Italy. The sirocco
+does indeed produce certain effects at Genoa, and others at Rome; but
+what would be the value of a treatise upon the winds, which, for the
+honor of any country, assumed that every city of it had a native
+sirocco?
+
+But, further,--imagine what success would attend the meteorologist who
+should set himself to give an account of the south wind, but take no
+notice of the north!
+
+And, finally, suppose an attempt to give you an account of either wind,
+but none of the seas, or mountain passes, by which they were nourished,
+or directed.
+
+61. For instance, I am in this course of lectures to give you an account
+of a single and minor branch of graphic art,--engraving. But observe how
+many references to local circumstances it involves. There are three
+materials for it, we said;--stone, wood, and metal. Stone engraving is
+the art of countries possessing marble and gems; wood engraving, of
+countries overgrown with forest; metal engraving, of countries
+possessing treasures of silver and gold. And the style of a stone
+engraver is formed on pillars and pyramids; the style of a wood engraver
+under the eaves of larch cottages; the style of a metal engraver in the
+treasuries of kings. Do you suppose I could rightly explain to you the
+value of a single touch on brass by Finiguerra, or on box by Bewick,
+unless I had grasp of the great laws of climate and country; and could
+trace the inherited sirocco or tramontana of thought to which the souls
+and bodies of the men owed their existence?
+
+62. You see that in this flag of 1300 there is a dark strong line in the
+center, against which you read the name of Arnolfo.
+
+In writing our Florentine Dunciad, or History of Fools, can we possibly
+begin with a better day than All Fools' Day? On All Fools' Day--the
+first, if you like better so to call it, of the month of _opening_,--in
+the year 1300, is signed the document making Arnolfo a citizen of
+Florence, and in 1310 he dies, chief master of the works of the
+cathedral there. To this man, Crowe and Cavalcaselle give half a page,
+out of three volumes of five hundred pages each.
+
+But lower down in my flag, (not put there because of any inferiority,
+but by order of chronology,) you will see a name sufficiently familiar
+to you--that of Giotto; and to him, our historians of painting in Italy
+give some hundred pages, under the impression, stated by them at page
+243 of their volume, that "in his hands, art in the Peninsula became
+entitled for the first time to the name of Italian."
+
+63. Art became Italian! Yes, but _what_ art? Your authors give a
+perspective--or what they call such,--of the upper church of Assisi, as
+if that were merely an accidental occurrence of blind walls for Giotto
+to paint on!
+
+But how came the upper church of Assisi there? How came it to be
+vaulted--to be aisled? How came Giotto to be asked to paint upon it?
+
+The art that built it, good or bad, must have been an Italian one,
+before Giotto. He could not have painted on the air. Let us see how his
+panels were made for him.
+
+64. This Captain--the center of our first group--Arnolfo, has always
+hitherto been called 'Arnolfo di Lapo;'--Arnolfo the son of Lapo.
+
+Modern investigators come down on us delightedly, to tell us--Arnolfo
+was _not_ the son of Lapo.
+
+In these days you will have half a dozen doctors, writing each a long
+book, and the sense of all will be,--Arnolfo wasn't the son of Lapo.
+Much good may you get of that!
+
+Well, you will find the fact to be, there was a great Northman builder, a
+true son of Thor, who came down into Italy in 1200, served the order of
+St. Francis there, built Assisi, taught Arnolfo how to build, with Thor's
+hammer, and disappeared, leaving his name uncertain--Jacopo--Lapo--nobody
+knows what. Arnolfo always recognizes this man as his true father, who put
+the soul-life into him; he is known to his Florentines always as Lapo's
+Arnolfo.
+
+That, or some likeness of that, is the vital fact. You never can get at
+the literal limitation of living facts. They disguise themselves by the
+very strength of their life: get told again and again in different ways
+by all manner of people;--the literalness of them is turned topsy-turvy,
+inside-out, over and over again;--then the fools come and read them
+wrong side upwards, or else, say there never was a fact at all. Nothing
+delights a true blockhead so much as to prove a negative;--to show that
+everybody has been wrong. Fancy the delicious sensation, to an
+empty-headed creature, of fancying for a moment that he has emptied
+everybody else's head as well as his own! nay, that, for once, his own
+hollow bottle of a head has had the best of other bottles, and has been
+_first_ empty;--first to know--nothing.
+
+65. Hold, then, steadily the first tradition about this Arnolfo. That
+his real father was called "Cambio" matters to you not a straw. That he
+never called himself Cambio's Arnolfo--that nobody else ever called him
+so, down to Vasari's time, is an infinitely significant fact to you. In
+my twenty-second letter in Fors Clavigera you will find some account of
+the noble habit of the Italian artists to call themselves by their
+masters' names, considering their master as their true father. If not
+the name of the master, they take that of their native place, as having
+owed the character of their life to that. They rarely take their own
+family name: sometimes it is not even known,--when best known, it is
+unfamiliar to us. The great Pisan artists, for instance, never bear any
+other name than 'the Pisan;' among the other five-and-twenty names in my
+list, not above six, I think, the two German, with four Italian, are
+family names. Perugino, (Peter of Perugia,) Luini, (Bernard of Luino,)
+Quercia, (James of Quercia,) Correggio, (Anthony of Correggio,) are
+named from their native places. Nobody would have understood me if I had
+called Giotto, 'Ambrose Bondone;' or Tintoret, Robusti; or even Raphael,
+Sanzio. Botticelli is named from his master; Ghiberti from his
+father-in-law; and Ghirlandajo from his work. Orcagna, who _did_, for a
+wonder, name himself from his father, Andrea Cione, of Florence, has
+been always called 'Angel' by everybody else; while Arnolfo, who never
+named himself from his father, is now like to be fathered against his
+will.
+
+But, I again beg of you, keep to the old story. For it represents,
+however inaccurately in detail, clearly in sum, the fact, that some
+great master of German Gothic at this time came down into Italy, and
+changed the entire form of Italian architecture by his touch. So that
+while Niccola and Giovanni Pisano are still virtually Greek artists,
+experimentally introducing Gothic forms, Arnolfo and Giotto adopt the
+entire Gothic ideal of form, and thenceforward use the pointed arch and
+steep gable as the limits of sculpture.
+
+66. Hitherto I have been speaking of the relations of my twenty-five men
+to each other. But now, please note their relations altogether to the
+art before them. These twenty-five include, I say, all the great masters
+of _Christian_ art.
+
+Before them, the art was too savage to be Christian; afterwards, too
+carnal to be Christian.
+
+Too savage to be Christian? I will justify that assertion hereafter; but
+you will find that the European art of 1200 includes all the most
+developed and characteristic conditions of the style in the north which
+you have probably been accustomed to think of as NORMAN, and which you
+may always most conveniently call so; and the most developed conditions
+of the style in the south, which, formed out of effete Greek, Persian,
+and Roman tradition, you may, in like manner, most conveniently express
+by the familiar word BYZANTINE. Whatever you call them, they are in
+origin adverse in temper, and remain so up to the year 1200. Then an
+influence appears, seemingly that of one man, Nicholas the Pisan, (our
+first MASTER, observe,) and a new spirit adopts what is best in each,
+and gives to what it adopts a new energy of its own; namely, this
+conscientious and didactic power which is the speciality of its
+progressive existence. And just as the new-born and natural art of
+Athens collects and reanimates Pelasgian and Egyptian tradition,
+purifying their worship, and perfecting their work, into the living
+heathen faith of the world, so this new-born and natural art of Florence
+collects and animates the Norman and Byzantine tradition, and forms out
+of the perfected worship and work of both, the honest Christian faith,
+and vital craftsmanship, of the world.
+
+67. Get this first summary, therefore, well into your minds. The word
+'Norman' I use roughly for North-savage;--roughly, but advisedly. I mean
+Lombard, Scandinavian, Frankish; everything north-savage that you can
+think of, except Saxon. (I have a reason for that exception; never mind
+it just now.)[L]
+
+All north-savage I call NORMAN, all south-savage I call BYZANTINE; this
+latter including dead native Greek primarily--then dead foreign Greek,
+in Rome;--then Arabian--Persian--Phoenician--Indian--all you can think
+of, in art of hot countries, up to this year 1200, I rank under the one
+term Byzantine. Now all this cold art--Norman, and all this hot
+art--Byzantine, is virtually dead, till 1200. It has no conscience, no
+didactic power;[M] it is devoid of both, in the sense that dreams are.
+
+Then in the thirteenth century, men wake as if they heard an alarum
+through the whole vault of heaven, and true human life begins again, and
+the cradle of this life is the Val d'Arno. There the northern and
+southern nations meet; there they lay down their enmities; there they
+are first baptized unto John's baptism for the remission of sins; there
+is born, and thence exiled,--thought faithless, for breaking the font of
+baptism to save a child from drowning, in his 'bel San Giovanni,'--the
+greatest of Christian poets; he who had pity even for the lost.
+
+68. Now, therefore, my whole history of _Christian_ architecture and
+painting begins with this Baptistery of Florence, and with its
+associated Cathedral. Arnolfo brought the one into the form in which you
+now see it; he laid the foundation of the other, and that to purpose,
+and he is therefore the CAPTAIN of our first school.
+
+For this Florentine Baptistery[N] is the great one of the world. Here is
+the center of Christian knowledge and power.
+
+And it is one piece of large _engraving_. White substance, cut into, and
+filled with black, and dark-green.
+
+No more perfect work was afterwards done; and I wish you to grasp the
+idea of this building clearly and irrevocably,--first, in order (as I
+told you in a previous lecture) to quit yourselves thoroughly of the
+idea that ornament should be decorated construction; and, secondly, as
+the noblest type of the intaglio ornamentation, which developed itself
+into all minor application of black and white to engraving.
+
+69. That it should do so first at Florence, was the natural sequence,
+and the just reward, of the ancient skill of Etruria in chased
+metal-work. The effects produced in gold, either by embossing or
+engraving, were the direct means of giving interest to his surfaces at
+the command of the 'auri faber,' or orfevre: and every conceivable
+artifice of studding, chiseling, and interlacing was exhausted by the
+artists in gold, who were at the head of the metal-workers, and from
+whom the ranks of the sculptors were reinforced.
+
+The old French word 'orfroiz,' (aurifrigia,) expresses essentially what
+we call 'frosted' work in gold; that which resembles small dew or
+crystals of hoar-frost; the 'frigia' coming from the Latin frigus. To
+chase, or enchase, is not properly said of the gold; but of the jewel
+which it secures with hoops or ridges, (French, _en_chasser[O]). Then
+the armorer, or cup and casket maker, added to this kind of decoration
+that of flat inlaid enamel; and the silver-worker, finding that the
+raised filigree (still a staple at Genoa) only attracted tarnish, or got
+crushed, early sought to decorate a surface which would bear external
+friction, with labyrinths of safe incision.
+
+70. Of the _security_ of incision as a means of permanent decoration, as
+opposed to ordinary carving, here is a beautiful instance in the base of
+one of the external shafts of the Cathedral of Lucca; thirteenth-century
+work, which by this time, had it been carved in relief, would have been
+a shapeless remnant of indecipherable bosses. But it is still as safe as
+if it had been cut yesterday, because the smooth round mass of the
+pillar is entirely undisturbed; into that, furrows are cut with a chisel
+as much under command and as powerful as a burin. The effect of the
+design is trusted entirely to the depth of these incisions--here dying
+out and expiring in the light of the marble, there deepened, by drill
+holes, into as definitely a black line as if it were drawn with ink;
+and describing the outline of the leafage with a delicacy of touch and
+of perception which no man will ever surpass, and which very few have
+rivaled, in the proudest days of design.
+
+71. This security, in silver plates, was completed by filling the
+furrows with the black paste which at once exhibited and preserved them.
+The transition from that niello-work to modern engraving is one of no
+real moment: my object is to make you understand the qualities which
+constitute the _merit_ of the engraving, whether charged with niello or
+ink. And this I hope ultimately to accomplish by studying with you some
+of the works of the four men, Botticelli and Mantegna in the south,
+Duerer and Holbein in the north, whose names I have put in our last flag,
+above and beneath those of the three mighty painters, Perugino the
+captain, Bellini on one side--Luini on the other.
+
+The four following lectures[P] will contain data necessary for such
+study: you must wait longer before I can place before you those by which
+I can justify what must greatly surprise some of my audience--my having
+given Perugino the captain's place among the three painters.
+
+72. But I do so, at least primarily, because what is commonly thought
+affected in his design is indeed the true remains of the great
+architectural symmetry which was soon to be lost, and which makes him
+the true follower of Arnolfo and Brunelleschi; and because he is a sound
+craftsman and workman to the very heart's core. A noble, gracious, and
+quiet laborer from youth to death,--never weary, never impatient, never
+untender, never untrue. Not Tintoret in power, not Raphael in
+flexibility, not Holbein in veracity, not Luini in love,--their gathered
+gifts he has, in balanced and fruitful measure, fit to be the guide, and
+impulse, and father of all.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[D] Compare "Aratra Pentelici," Sec. 154.
+
+[E] "Holbein and His Time," 4to, Bentley, 1872, (a very valuable book,)
+p. 17. Italics mine.
+
+[F] See Carlyle, "Frederick," Book III., chap. viii.
+
+[G] I believe I am taking too much trouble in writing these lectures.
+This sentence, Sec. 44, has cost me, I suppose, first and last, about as
+many hours as there are lines in it;--and my choice of these two words,
+faith and death, as representatives of power, will perhaps, after all,
+only puzzle the reader.
+
+[H] He is said by Vasari to have called Francia the like. Francia is a
+child compared to Perugino; but a finished working-goldsmith and
+ornamental painter nevertheless; and one of the very last men to be
+called 'goffo,' except by unparalleled insolence.
+
+[I] The diagram used at the lecture is engraved on page 30; the reader
+had better draw it larger for himself, as it had to be made
+inconveniently small for this size of leaf.
+
+[J] 'Ascertained,' scarcely any date ever is, quite satisfactorily. The
+diagram only represents what is practically and broadly true. I may have
+to modify it greatly in detail.
+
+[K] For fust, log of wood, erroneously 'fer' in the later printed
+editions. Compare the account of the works of Art and Nature, towards
+the end of the Romance of the Rose.
+
+[L] Of course it would have been impossible to express in any accurate
+terms, short enough for the compass of a lecture, the conditions of
+opposition between the Heptarchy and the Northmen;--between the
+Byzantine and Roman;--and between the Byzantine and Arab, which form
+minor, but not less trenchant, divisions of Art-province, for subsequent
+delineation. If you can refer to my "Stones of Venice," see Sec. 20 of its
+first chapter.
+
+[M] Again much too broad a statement: not to be qualified but by a
+length of explanation here impossible. My lectures on Architecture, now
+in preparation ("Val d'Arno"), will contain further detail.
+
+[N] At the side of my page, here, I find the following memorandum, which
+was expanded in the viva-voce lecture. The reader must make what he can
+of it, for I can't expand it here.
+
+_Sense_ of Italian Church plan.
+
+Baptistery, to make Christians in; house, or dome, for them to pray and
+be preached to in; bell-tower, to ring all over the town, when they were
+either to pray together, rejoice together, or to be warned of danger.
+
+Harvey's picture of the Covenanters, with a shepherd on the outlook, as
+a campanile.
+
+[O] And 'chassis,' a window frame, or tracery.
+
+[P] This present lecture does not, as at present published, justify its
+title; because I have not thought it necessary to write the viva-voce
+portions of it which amplified the 69th paragraph. I will give the
+substance of them in better form elsewhere; meantime the part of the
+lecture here given may be in its own way useful.
+
+
+
+
+                        LECTURE III.
+
+               THE TECHNICS OF WOOD ENGRAVING.
+
+
+73. I am to-day to begin to tell you what it is necessary you should
+observe respecting methods of manual execution in the two great arts of
+engraving. Only to _begin_ to tell you. There need be no end of telling
+you such things, if you care to hear them. The theory of art is soon
+mastered; but 'dal detto al fatto, v'e gran tratto;' and as I have
+several times told you in former lectures, every day shows me more and
+more the importance of the Hand.
+
+74. Of the hand as a Servant, observe,--not of the hand as a Master. For
+there are two great kinds of manual work: one in which the hand is
+continually receiving and obeying orders; the other in which it is
+acting independently, or even giving orders of its own. And the
+dependent and submissive hand is a noble hand; but the independent or
+imperative hand is a vile one.
+
+That is to say, as long as the pen, or chisel, or other graphic
+instrument, is moved under the direct influence of mental attention, and
+obeys orders of the brain, it is working nobly;--the moment it moves
+independently of them, and performs some habitual dexterity of its own,
+it is base.
+
+75. _Dexterity_--I say;--some 'right-handedness' of its own. We might
+wisely keep that word for what the hand does at the mind's bidding; and
+use an opposite word--sinisterity,--for what it does at its own. For
+indeed we want such a word in speaking of modern art; it is all full of
+sinisterity. Hands independent of brains;--the left hand, by division of
+labor, not knowing what the right does,--still less what it ought to do.
+
+76. Turning, then, to our special subject. All engraving, I said, is
+intaglio in the solid. But the solid, in wood engraving, is a coarse
+substance, easily cut; and in metal, a fine substance, not easily.
+Therefore, in general, you may be prepared to accept ruder and more
+elementary work in one than the other; and it will be the means of
+appeal to blunter minds.
+
+You probably already know the difference between the actual methods of
+producing a printed impression from wood and metal; but I may perhaps
+make the matter a little more clear. In metal engraving, you cut
+ditches, fill them with ink, and press your paper into them. In wood
+engraving, you leave ridges, rub the tops of them with ink, and stamp
+them on your paper.
+
+The instrument with which the substance, whether of the wood or steel,
+is cut away, is the same. It is a solid plowshare, which, instead of
+throwing the earth aside, throws it up and out, producing at first a
+simple ravine, or furrow, in the wood or metal, which you can widen by
+another cut, or extend by successive cuts. This (Fig. 1) is the general
+shape of the solid plowshare: but it is of course made sharper or
+blunter at pleasure. The furrow produced is at first the wedge-shaped or
+cuneiform ravine, already so much dwelt upon in my lectures on Greek
+sculpture.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 1]
+
+77. Since, then, in wood printing, you print from the surface left
+solid; and, in metal printing, from the hollows cut into it, it follows
+that if you put few touches on wood, you draw, as on a slate, with white
+lines, leaving a quantity of black; but if you put few touches on metal,
+you draw with black lines, leaving a quantity of white.
+
+Now the eye is not in the least offended by quantity of white, but is,
+or ought to be, greatly saddened and offended by quantity of black.
+Hence it follows that you must never put little work on wood. You must
+not sketch upon it. You may sketch on metal as much as you please.
+
+78. "Paradox," you will say, as usual. "Are not all our journals,--and
+the best of them, Punch, par excellence,--full of the most brilliantly
+swift and slight sketches, engraved on wood; while line-engravings take
+ten years to produce, and cost ten guineas each when they are done?"
+
+Yes, that is so; but observe, in the first place, what appears to you a
+sketch on wood is not so at all, but a most laborious and careful
+imitation of a sketch on paper; whereas when you see what appears to be
+a sketch on metal, it _is_ one. And in the second place, so far as the
+popular fashion is contrary to this natural method,--so far as we do in
+reality try to produce effects of sketching in wood, and of finish in
+metal,--our work is wrong.
+
+Those apparently careless and free sketches on the wood ought to have
+been stern and deliberate; those exquisitely toned and finished
+engravings on metal ought to have looked, instead, like free ink
+sketches on white paper. That is the theorem which I propose to you for
+consideration, and which, in the two branches of its assertion, I hope
+to prove to you; the first part of it, (that wood-cutting should be
+careful,) in this present lecture; the second, (that metal-cutting
+should be, at least in a far greater degree than it is now, slight, and
+free,) in the following one.
+
+79. Next, observe the distinction in respect of _thickness_, no less
+than number, of lines which may properly be used in the two methods.
+
+In metal engraving, it is easier to lay a fine line than a thick one;
+and however fine the line may be, it lasts;--but in wood engraving it
+requires extreme precision and skill to leave a thin dark line, and when
+left, it will be quickly beaten down by a careless printer. Therefore,
+the virtue of wood engraving is to exhibit the qualities and power of
+_thick_ lines; and of metal engraving, to exhibit the qualities and
+power of _thin_ ones.
+
+All thin dark lines, therefore, in wood, broadly speaking, are to be
+used only in case of necessity; and thick lines, on metal, only in case
+of necessity.
+
+80. Though, however, thin _dark_ lines cannot easily be produced in
+wood, thin _light_ ones may be struck in an instant. Nevertheless, even
+thin light ones must not be used, except with extreme caution. For
+observe, they are equally useless as outline, and for expression of
+mass. You know how far from exemplary or delightful your boy's first
+quite voluntary exercises in white line drawing on your slate were? You
+could, indeed, draw a goblin satisfactorily in such method;--a round O,
+with arms and legs to it, and a scratch under two dots in the middle,
+would answer the purpose; but if you wanted to draw a pretty face, you
+took pencil or pen, and paper--not your slate. Now, that instinctive
+feeling that a white outline is wrong, is deeply founded. For Nature
+herself draws with diffused light, and concentrated dark;--never, except
+in storm or twilight, with diffused dark, and concentrated light; and
+the thing we all like best to see drawn--the human face--cannot be drawn
+with white touches, but by extreme labor. For the pupil and iris of the
+eye, the eyebrow, the nostril, and the lip are all set in dark on pale
+ground. You can't draw a white eyebrow, a white pupil of the eye, a
+white nostril, and a white mouth, on a dark ground. Try it, and see what
+a specter you get. But the same number of dark touches, skillfully
+applied, will give the idea of a beautiful face. And what is true of the
+subtlest subject you have to represent, is equally true of inferior
+ones. Nothing lovely can be quickly represented by white touches. You
+must hew out, if your means are so restricted, the form by sheer labor;
+and that both cunning and dextrous. The Florentine masters, and Duerer,
+often practice the achievement, and there are many drawings by the
+Lippis, Mantegna, and other leading Italian draughtsmen, completed to
+great perfection with the white line; but only for the sake of severest
+study, nor is their work imitable by inferior men. And such studies,
+however accomplished, always mark a disposition to regard chiaroscuro
+too much, and local color too little.
+
+We conclude, then, that we must never trust, in wood, to our power of
+outline with white; and our general laws, thus far determined, will
+be--thick lines in wood; thin ones in metal; complete drawing on wood;
+sketches, if we choose, on metal.
+
+81. But why, in wood, lines at all? Why not cut out white _spaces_, and
+use the chisel as if its incisions were so much white paint? Many fine
+pieces of wood-cutting are indeed executed on this principle. Bewick
+does nearly all his foliage so; and continually paints the light plumes
+of his birds with single touches of his chisel, as if he were laying on
+white.
+
+But this is not the finest method of wood-cutting. It implies the idea
+of a system of light and shade in which the shadow is totally black.
+Now, no light and shade can be good, much less pleasant, in which all
+the shade is stark black. Therefore the finest wood-cutting ignores
+light and shade, and expresses only form, and _dark local color_. And it
+is convenient, for simplicity's sake, to anticipate what I should
+otherwise defer telling you until next lecture, that fine metal
+engraving, like fine wood-cutting, ignores light and shade; and that, in
+a word, all good engraving whatsoever does so.
+
+82. I hope that my saying so will make you eager to interrupt me. 'What!
+Rembrandt's etchings, and Lupton's mezzotints, and Le Keux's
+line-work,--do you mean to tell us that these ignore light and shade?'
+
+I never said that _mezzotint_ ignored light and shade, or ought to do
+so. Mezzotint is properly to be considered as chiaroscuro drawing on
+metal. But I do mean to tell you that both Rembrandt's etchings, and Le
+Keux's finished line-work, are misapplied labor, in so far as they
+regard chiaroscuro; and that consummate engraving never uses it as a
+primal element of pleasure.
+
+[Illustration: THE LAST FURROW.
+
+(Fig. 2) Facsimile from Holbein's woodcut.]
+
+83. We have now got our principles so far defined that I can proceed to
+illustration of them by example.
+
+Here are facsimiles, very marvelous ones,[Q] of two of the best wood
+engravings ever produced by art,--two subjects in Holbein's Dance of
+Death. You will probably like best that I should at once proceed to
+verify my last and most startling statement, that fine engraving
+disdained chiaroscuro.
+
+This vignette (Fig. 2) represents a sunset in the open mountainous
+fields of southern Germany. And Holbein is so entirely careless about
+the light and shade, which a Dutchman would first have thought of, as
+resulting from the sunset, that, as he works, he forgets altogether
+where his light comes from. Here, actually, the shadow of the figure is
+cast from the side, right across the picture, while the sun is in front.
+And there is not the slightest attempt to indicate gradation of light in
+the sky, darkness in the forest, or any other positive element of
+chiaroscuro.
+
+This is not because Holbein cannot give chiaroscuro if he chooses. He is
+twenty times a stronger master of it than Rembrandt; but he, therefore,
+knows exactly when and how to use it; and that wood engraving is not the
+proper means for it. The quantity of it which is needful for his story,
+and will not, by any sensational violence, either divert, or vulgarly
+enforce, the attention, he will give; and that with an unrivaled
+subtlety. Therefore I must ask you for a moment or two to quit the
+subject of technics, and look what these two woodcuts mean.
+
+84. The one I have first shown you is of a plowman plowing at evening.
+It is Holbein's object, here, to express the diffused and intense light
+of a golden summer sunset, so far as is consistent with grander
+purposes. A modern French or English chiaroscurist would have covered
+his sky with fleecy clouds, and relieved the plowman's hat and his
+horses against it in strong black, and put sparkling touches on the
+furrows and grass. Holbein scornfully casts all such tricks aside; and
+draws the whole scene in pure white, with simple outlines.
+
+[Illustration: THE TWO PREACHERS.
+
+(Fig. 3) Facsimile from Holbein's woodcut.]
+
+85. And yet, when I put it beside this second vignette, (Fig. 3,) which
+is of a preacher preaching in a feebly lighted church, you will feel
+that the diffused warmth of the one subject, and diffused twilight in
+the other, are complete; and they will finally be to you more impressive
+than if they had been wrought out with every superficial means of
+effect, on each block.
+
+For it is as a symbol, not as a scenic effect, that in each case the
+chiaroscuro is given. Holbein, I said, is at the head of the
+painter-reformers, and his Dance of Death is the most energetic and
+telling of all the forms given, in this epoch, to the _Rationalist_
+spirit of reform, preaching the new Gospel of Death,--"It is no matter
+whether you are priest or layman, what you believe, or what you do: here
+is the end." You shall see, in the course of our inquiry, that
+Botticelli, in like manner, represents the _Faithful_ and _Catholic_
+temper of reform.
+
+86. The teaching of Holbein is therefore always melancholy,--for the
+most part purely rational; and entirely furious in its indignation
+against all who, either by actual injustice in this life, or by what he
+holds to be false promise of another, destroy the good, or the energy,
+of the few days which man has to live. Against the rich, the luxurious,
+the Pharisee, the false lawyer, the priest, and the unjust judge,
+Holbein uses his fiercest mockery; but he is never himself unjust; never
+caricatures or equivocates; gives the facts as he knows them, with
+explanatory symbols, few and clear.
+
+87. Among the powers which he hates, the pathetic and ingenious
+preaching of untruth is one of the chief; and it is curious to find his
+biographer, knowing this, and reasoning, as German critics nearly always
+do, from acquired knowledge, not perception, imagine instantly that he
+sees hypocrisy in the face of Holbein's preacher. "How skillfully,"
+says Dr. Woltmann, "is the preacher propounding his doctrines; how
+thoroughly is his hypocrisy expressed in the features of his
+countenance, and in the gestures of his hands." But look at the cut
+yourself, candidly. I challenge you to find the slightest trace of
+hypocrisy in either feature or gesture. Holbein knew better. It is not
+the hypocrite who has power in the pulpit. It is the _sincere_ preacher
+of untruth who does mischief there. The hypocrite's place of power is in
+trade, or in general society; none but the sincere ever get fatal
+influence in the pulpit. This man is a refined gentleman--ascetic,
+earnest, thoughtful, and kind. He scarcely uses the vantage even of his
+pulpit,--comes aside out of it, as an eager man would, pleading; he is
+intent on being understood--_is_ understood; his congregation are
+delighted--you might hear a pin drop among them: one is asleep indeed,
+who cannot see him, (being under the pulpit,) and asleep just because
+the teacher is as gentle as he is earnest, and speaks quietly.
+
+88. How are we to know, then, that he speaks in vain? First, because
+among all his hearers you will not find one shrewd face. They are all
+either simple or stupid people: there is one nice woman in front of all,
+(else Holbein's representation had been caricature,) but she is not a
+shrewd one.
+
+Secondly, by the light and shade. The church is not in extreme
+darkness--far from that; a gray twilight is over everything, but the sun
+is totally shut out of it;--not a ray comes in even at the
+window--_that_ is darker than the walls, or vault.
+
+Lastly, and chiefly, by the mocking expression of Death. Mocking, but
+not angry. The man has been preaching what he thought true. Death laughs
+at him, but is not indignant with him.
+
+Death comes quietly: _I_ am going to be preacher now; here is your own
+hour-glass, ready for me. You have spoken many words in your day. But
+"of the things which you have spoken, _this_ is the sum,"--your
+death-warrant, signed and sealed. There's your text for to-day.
+
+89. Of this other picture, the meaning is more plain, and far more
+beautiful. The husbandman is old and gaunt, and has passed his days, not
+in speaking, but pressing the iron into the ground. And the payment for
+his life's work is, that he is clothed in rags, and his feet are bare on
+the clods; and he has no hat--but the brim of a hat only, and his long,
+unkempt gray hair comes through. But all the air is full of warmth and
+of peace; and, beyond his village church, there is, at last, light
+indeed. His horses lag in the furrow, and his own limbs totter and fail:
+but one comes to help him. 'It is a long field,' says Death; 'but we'll
+get to the end of it to-day,--you and I.'
+
+90. And now that we know the meaning, we are able to discuss the
+technical qualities farther.
+
+Both of these engravings, you will find, are executed with blunt lines;
+but more than that, they are executed with quiet lines, entirely steady.
+
+Now, here I have in my hand a lively woodcut of the present day--a good
+average type of the modern style of wood-cutting, which you will all
+recognize.[R]
+
+The shade in this is drawn on the wood, (not _cut_, but drawn, observe,)
+at the rate of at least ten lines in a second: Holbein's, at the rate of
+about one line in three seconds.[S]
+
+91. Now there are two different matters to be considered with respect to
+these two opposed methods of execution. The first, that the rapid work,
+though easy to the artist, is very difficult to the wood-cutter; so that
+it implies instantly a separation between the two crafts, and that your
+wood-cutter has ceased to be a draughtsman. I shall return to this
+point. I wish to insist on the other first; namely, the effect of the
+more deliberate method on the drawing itself.
+
+92. When the hand moves at the rate of ten lines in a second, it is
+indeed under the government of the muscles of the wrist and shoulder;
+but it cannot possibly be under the complete government of the brains. I
+am able to do this zigzag line evenly, because I have got the use of the
+hand from practice; and the faster it is done, the evener it will be.
+But I have no mental authority over every line I thus lay: chance
+regulates them. Whereas, when I draw at the rate of two or three seconds
+to each line, my hand disobeys the muscles a little--the mechanical
+accuracy is not so great; nay, there ceases to be any _appearance_ of
+dexterity at all. But there is, in reality, more manual skill required
+in the slow work than in the swift,--and all the while the hand is
+thoroughly under the orders of the brains. Holbein deliberately
+resolves, for every line, as it goes along, that it shall be so thick,
+so far from the next,--that it shall begin here, and stop there. And he
+is deliberately assigning the utmost quantity of meaning to it, that a
+line will carry.
+
+93. It is not fair, however, to compare common work of one age with the
+best of another. Here is a woodcut of Tenniel's, which I think contains
+as high qualities as it is possible to find in modern art.[T] I hold it
+as beyond others fine, because there is not the slightest caricature in
+it. No face, no attitude, is pushed beyond the degree of natural humor
+they would have possessed in life; and in precision of momentary
+expression, the drawing is equal to the art of any time, and shows power
+which would, if regulated, be quite adequate to producing an immortal
+work.
+
+94. Why, then, is it _not_ immortal? You yourselves, in compliance with
+whose demand it was done, forgot it the next week. It will become
+historically interesting; but no man of true knowledge and feeling will
+ever keep this in his cabinet of treasure, as he does these woodcuts of
+Holbein's.
+
+The reason is that this is base coin,--alloyed gold. There _is_ gold in
+it, but also a quantity of brass and lead--willfully added--to make it
+fit for the public. Holbein's is beaten gold, seven times tried in the
+fire. Of which commonplace but useful metaphor the meaning here is,
+first, that to catch the vulgar eye a quantity of,--so-called,--light
+and shade is added by Tenniel. It is effective to an ignorant eye, and
+is ingeniously disposed; but it is entirely conventional and false,
+unendurable by any person who knows what chiaroscuro is.
+
+Secondly, for one line that Holbein lays, Tenniel has a dozen. There
+are, for instance, a hundred and fifty-seven lines in Sir Peter Teazle's
+wig, without counting dots and slight cross-hatching;--but the entire
+face and flowing hair of Holbein's preacher are done with forty-five
+lines, all told.
+
+95. Now observe what a different state of mind the two artists must be
+in on such conditions;--one, never in a hurry, never doing anything that
+he knows is wrong; never doing a line badly that he can do better; and
+appealing only to the feelings of sensitive persons, and the judgment of
+attentive ones. That is Holbein's habit of soul. What is the habit of
+soul of every modern engraver? Always in a hurry; everywhere doing
+things which he knows to be wrong--(Tenniel knows his light and shade to
+be wrong as well as I do)--continually doing things badly which he was
+able to do better; and appealing exclusively to the feelings of the
+dull, and the judgment of the inattentive.
+
+Do you suppose that is not enough to make the difference between mortal
+and immortal art,--the original genius being supposed alike in both?[U]
+
+96. Thus far of the state of the artist himself. I pass, next to the
+relation between him and his subordinate, the wood-cutter.
+
+The modern artist requires him to cut a hundred and fifty-seven lines in
+the wig only,--the old artist requires him to cut forty-five for the
+face, and long hair, altogether. The actual proportion is roughly, and
+on the average, about one to twenty of cost in manual labor, ancient to
+modern,--the twentieth part of the mechanical labor, to produce an
+immortal instead of a perishable work,--the twentieth part of the labor;
+and--which is the greatest difference of all--that twentieth part, at
+once less mechanically difficult, and more mentally pleasant. Mr. Otley,
+in his general History of Engraving, says, "The greatest difficulty in
+wood engraving occurs in clearing out the minute quadrangular lights;"
+and in any modern woodcut you will see that where the lines of the
+drawing cross each other to produce shade, the white interstices are cut
+out so neatly that there is no appearance of any jag or break in the
+lines; they look exactly as if they had been drawn with a pen. It is
+chiefly difficult to cut the pieces clearly out when the lines cross at
+right angles; easier when they form oblique or diamond-shaped
+interstices; but in any case some half-dozen cuts, and in square
+crossings as many as twenty, are required to clear one interstice.
+Therefore if I carelessly draw six strokes with my pen across other six,
+I produce twenty-five interstices, each of which will need at least six,
+perhaps twenty, careful touches of the burin to clear out.--Say ten for
+an average; and I demand two hundred and fifty exquisitely precise
+touches from my engraver, to render ten careless ones of mine.
+
+97. Now I take up Punch, at his best. The whole of the left side of John
+Bull's waistcoat--the shadow on his knee-breeches and great-coat--the
+whole of the Lord Chancellor's gown, and of John Bull's and Sir Peter
+Teazle's complexions, are worked with finished precision of
+cross-hatching. These have indeed some purpose in their texture; but in
+the most wanton and gratuitous way, the wall below the window is
+cross-hatched too, and that not with a double, but a treble line (Fig.
+4).
+
+There are about thirty of these columns, with thirty-five interstices
+each: approximately, 1,050--certainly not fewer--interstices to be
+deliberately cut clear, to get that two inches square of shadow. Now
+calculate--or think enough to feel the impossibility of calculating--the
+number of woodcuts used daily for our popular prints, and how many men
+are night and day cutting 1,050 square holes to the square inch, as the
+occupation of their manly life. And Mrs. Beecher Stowe and the North
+Americans fancy they have abolished slavery!
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 4.]
+
+98. The workman cannot have even the consolation of pride; for his task,
+even in its finest accomplishment, is not really difficult,--only
+tedious. When you have once got into the practice, it is as easy as
+lying. To cut regular holes WITHOUT a purpose is easy enough; but to cut
+_ir_regular holes WITH a purpose, that is difficult, forever;--no tricks
+of tool or trade will give you power to do that.
+
+The supposed difficulty--the thing which, at all events, it takes time
+to learn, is to cut the interstices neat, and each like the other. But
+is there any reason, do you suppose, for their being neat, and each like
+the other? So far from it, they would be twenty times prettier if they
+were irregular, and each different from the other. And an old
+wood-cutter, instead of taking pride in cutting these interstices smooth
+and alike, resolutely cuts them rough and irregular; taking care, at the
+same time, never to have any more than are wanted, this being only one
+part of the general system of intelligent manipulation, which made so
+good an artist of the engraver that it is impossible to say of any
+standard old woodcut, whether the draughtsman engraved it himself or
+not. I should imagine, from the character and subtlety of the touch,
+that every line of the Dance of Death had been engraved by Holbein; we
+know it was not, and that there can be no certainty given by even the
+finest pieces of wood execution of anything more than perfect harmony
+between the designer and workman. And consider how much this harmony
+demands in the latter. Not that the modern engraver is unintelligent in
+applying his mechanical skill: very often he greatly improves the
+drawing; but we never could mistake his hand for Holbein's.
+
+99. The true merit, then, of wood execution, as regards this matter of
+cross-hatching, is first that there be no more crossing than necessary;
+secondly, that all the interstices be various, and rough. You may look
+through the entire series of the Dance of Death without finding any
+cross-hatching whatever, except in a few unimportant bits of background,
+so rude as to need scarcely more than one touch to each interstice.
+Albert Duerer crosses more definitely; but yet, in any fold of his
+drapery, every white spot differs in size from every other, and the
+arrangement of the whole is delightful, by the kind of variety which the
+spots on a leopard have.
+
+On the other hand, where either expression or form can be rendered by
+the shape of the lights and darks, the old engraver becomes as careful
+as in an ordinary ground he is careless.
+
+The endeavor, with your own hand, and common pen and ink, to copy a
+small piece of either of the two Holbein woodcuts (Figures 2 and 3) will
+prove this to you better than any words.
+
+100. I said that, had Tenniel been rightly trained, there might have
+been the making of a Holbein, or nearly a Holbein, in him. I do not
+know; but I can turn from his work to that of a man who was not trained
+at all, and who was, without training, Holbein's equal.
+
+Equal, in the sense that this brown stone, in my left hand, is the
+equal, though not the likeness, of that in my right. They are both of
+the same true and pure crystal; but the one is brown with iron, and
+never touched by forming hand; the other has never been in rough
+companionship, and has been exquisitely polished. So with these two men.
+The one was the companion of Erasmus and Sir Thomas More. His father was
+so good an artist that you cannot always tell their drawings asunder.
+But the other was a farmer's son; and learned his trade in the back
+shops of Newcastle.
+
+Yet the first book I asked you to get was his biography; and in this
+frame are set together a drawing by Hans Holbein, and one by Thomas
+Bewick. I know which is most scholarly; but I do _not_ know which is
+best.
+
+101. It is much to say for the self-taught Englishman;--yet do not
+congratulate yourselves on his simplicity. I told you, a little while
+since, that the English nobles had left the history of birds to be
+written, and their spots to be drawn, by a printer's lad;--but I did not
+tell you their farther loss in the fact that this printer's lad could
+have written their own histories, and drawn their own spots, if they had
+let him. But they had no history to be written; and were too closely
+maculate to be portrayed;--white ground in most places altogether
+obscured. Had there been Mores and Henrys to draw, Bewick could have
+drawn them; and would have found his function. As it was, the nobles of
+his day left him to draw the frogs, and pigs, and sparrows--of his day,
+which seemed to him, in his solitude, the best types of its Nobility. No
+sight or thought of beautiful things was ever granted him;--no heroic
+creature, goddess-born--how much less any native Deity--ever shone upon
+him. To his utterly English mind, the straw of the sty, and its
+tenantry, were abiding truth;--the cloud of Olympus, and its tenantry, a
+child's dream. He could draw a pig, but not an Aphrodite.
+
+102. The three pieces of woodcut from his Fables (the two lower ones
+enlarged) in the opposite plate, show his utmost strength and utmost
+rudeness. I must endeavor to make you thoroughly understand both:--the
+magnificent artistic power, the flawless virtue, veracity,
+tenderness,--the infinite humor of the man; and yet the difference
+between England and Florence, in the use they make of such gifts in
+their children.
+
+For the moment, however, I confine myself to the examination of
+technical points; and we must follow our former conclusions a little
+further.
+
+[Illustration: I.
+
+Things Celestial and Terrestrial, as apparent to the English Mind.]
+
+103. Because our lines in wood must be thick, it becomes an extreme
+virtue in wood engraving to economize lines,--not merely, as in all
+other art, to save time and power, but because, our lines being
+necessarily blunt, we must make up our minds to do with fewer, by many,
+than are in the object. But is this necessarily a disadvantage?
+
+_Absolutely_, an immense disadvantage,--a woodcut never can be so
+beautiful or good a thing as a painting, or line engraving. But in its
+own separate and useful way, an excellent thing, because, practiced
+rightly, it exercises in the artist, and summons in you, the habit of
+abstraction; that is to say, of deciding what are the essential points
+in the things you see, and seizing these; a habit entirely necessary to
+strong humanity; and so natural to all humanity, that it leads, in its
+indolent and undisciplined states, to all the vulgar amateur's liking of
+sketches better than pictures. The sketch seems to put the thing for him
+into a concentrated and exciting form.
+
+104. Observe, therefore, to guard you from this error, that a bad sketch
+is good for nothing; and that nobody can make a good sketch unless they
+generally are trying to finish with extreme care. But the abstraction of
+the essential particulars in his subject by a line-master, has a
+peculiar didactic value. For painting, when it is complete, leaves it
+much to your own judgment what to look at; and, if you are a fool, you
+look at the wrong thing;--but in a fine woodcut, the master says to you,
+"You _shall_ look at this, or at nothing."
+
+105. For example, here is a little tailpiece of Bewick's, to the fable
+of the Frogs and the Stork.[V] He is, as I told you, as stout a reformer
+as Holbein,[W] or Botticelli, or Luther, or Savonarola; and, as an
+impartial reformer, hits right and left, at lower or upper classes, if
+he sees them wrong. Most frequently, he strikes at vice, without
+reference to class; but in this vignette he strikes definitely at the
+degradation of the viler popular mind which is incapable of being
+governed, because it cannot understand the nobleness of kingship. He
+has written--better than written, engraved, sure to suffer no slip of
+type--his legend under the drawing; so that we know his meaning:
+
+"Set them up with a king, indeed!"
+
+106. There is an audience of seven frogs, listening to a speaker, or
+croaker, in the middle; and Bewick has set himself to show in all, but
+especially in the speaker, essential frogginess of mind--the marsh
+temper. He could not have done it half so well in painting as he has
+done by the abstraction of wood-outline. The characteristic of a manly
+mind, or body, is to be gentle in temper, and firm in constitution; the
+contrary essence of a froggy mind and body is to be angular in temper,
+and flabby in constitution. I have enlarged Bewick's orator-frog for
+you, Plate I. c., and I think you will feel that he is entirely
+expressed in those essential particulars.
+
+This being perfectly good wood-cutting, notice especially its
+deliberation. No scrawling or scratching, or cross-hatching, or '_free_'
+work of any sort. Most deliberate laying down of solid lines and dots,
+of which you cannot change one. The real difficulty of wood engraving is
+to cut every one of these black lines or spaces of the exactly right
+shape, and not at all to cross-hatch them cleanly.
+
+107. Next, examine the technical treatment of the pig, above. I have
+purposely chosen this as an example of a white object on dark ground,
+and the frog as a dark object on light ground, to explain to you what I
+mean by saying that fine engraving regards local color, but not light
+and shade. You see both frog and pig are absolutely without light and
+shade. The frog, indeed, casts a shadow; but his hind leg is as white as
+his throat. In the pig you don't even know which way the light falls.
+But you know at once that the pig is white, and the frog brown or green.
+
+108. There are, however, two pieces of chiaroscuro _implied_ in the
+treatment of the pig. It is assumed that his curly tail would be light
+against the background--dark against his own rump. This little piece of
+heraldic quartering is absolutely necessary to solidify him. He would
+have been a white ghost of a pig, flat on the background, but for that
+alternative tail, and the bits of dark behind the ears. Secondly: Where
+the shade is necessary to suggest the position of his ribs, it is given
+with graphic and chosen points of dark, as few as possible; not for the
+sake of the shade at all, but of the skin and bone.
+
+109. That, then, being the law of refused chiaroscuro, observe further
+the method of outline. We said that we were to have thick lines in wood,
+if possible. Look what thickness of black outline Bewick has left under
+our pig's chin, and above his nose.
+
+But that is not a line at all, you think?
+
+No;--a modern engraver would have made it one, and prided himself on
+getting it fine. Bewick leaves it actually thicker than the snout, but
+puts all his ingenuity of touch to vary the forms, and break the
+extremities of his white cuts, so that the eye may be refreshed and
+relieved by new forms at every turn. The group of white touches filling
+the space between snout and ears might be a wreath of fine-weather
+clouds, so studiously are they grouped and broken.
+
+And nowhere, you see, does a single black line cross another.
+
+Look back to Figure 4, page 54, and you will know, henceforward, the
+difference between good and bad wood-cutting.
+
+110. We have also, in the lower woodcut, a notable instance of Bewick's
+power of abstraction. You will observe that one of the chief characters
+of this frog, which makes him humorous,--next to his vain endeavor to
+get some firmness into his fore feet,--is his obstinately angular
+hump-back. And you must feel, when you see it so marked, how important a
+general character of a frog it is to have a hump-back,--not at the
+shoulders, but the loins.
+
+111. Here, then, is a case in which you will see the exact function that
+anatomy should take in art.
+
+All the most scientific anatomy in the world would never have taught
+Bewick, much less you, how to draw a frog.
+
+But when once you _have_ drawn him, or looked at him, so as to know his
+points, it then becomes entirely interesting to find out _why_ he has a
+hump-back. So I went myself yesterday to Professor Rolleston for a
+little anatomy, just as I should have gone to Professor Phillips for a
+little geology; and the Professor brought me a fine little active frog;
+and we put him on the table, and made him jump all over it, and then the
+Professor brought in a charming Squelette of a frog, and showed me that
+he needed a projecting bone from his rump, as a bird needs it from its
+breast,--the one to attach the strong muscles of the hind legs, as the
+other to attach those of the fore legs or wings. So that the entire
+leaping power of the frog is in his hump-back, as the flying power of
+the bird is in its breast-bone. And thus this Frog Parliament is most
+literally a Rump Parliament--everything depending on the hind legs, and
+nothing on the brains; which makes it wonderfully like some other
+Parliaments we know of nowadays, with Mr. Ayrton and Mr. Lowe for their
+aesthetic and acquisitive eyes, and a rump of Railway Directors.
+
+112. Now, to conclude, for want of time only--I have but touched on the
+beginning of my subject,--understand clearly and finally this simple
+principle of all art, that the best is that which realizes absolutely,
+if possible. Here is a viper by Carpaccio: you are afraid to go near it.
+Here is an arm-chair by Carpaccio: you who came in late, and are
+standing, to my regret, would like to sit down in it. This is consummate
+art; but you can only have that with consummate means, and exquisitely
+trained and hereditary mental power.
+
+With inferior means, and average mental power, you must be content to
+give a rude abstraction; but if rude abstraction _is_ to be made, think
+what a difference there must be between a wise man's and a fool's; and
+consider what heavy responsibility lies upon you in your youth, to
+determine, among realities, by what you will be delighted, and, among
+imaginations, by whose you will be led.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Q] By Mr. Burgess. The toil and skill necessary to produce a facsimile
+of this degree of precision will only be recognized by the reader who
+has had considerable experience of actual work.
+
+[R] The ordinary title-page of Punch.
+
+[S] In the lecture-room, the relative rates of execution were shown; I
+arrive at this estimate by timing the completion of two small pieces of
+shade in the two methods.
+
+[T] John Bull, as Sir Oliver Surface, with Sir Peter Teazle and Joseph
+Surface. It appeared in Punch, early in 1863.
+
+[U] In preparing these passages for the press, I feel perpetual need of
+qualifications and limitations, for it is impossible to surpass the
+humor, or precision of expressional touch, in the really golden parts of
+Tenniel's works; and they _may_ be immortal, as representing what is
+best in their day.
+
+[V] From Bewick's AEsop's Fables.
+
+[W] See _ante_, Sec. 43.
+
+
+
+
+                         LECTURE IV.
+
+              THE TECHNICS OF METAL ENGRAVING.
+
+
+113. We are to-day to examine the proper methods for the technical
+management of the most perfect of the arms of precision possessed by the
+artist. For you will at once understand that a line cut by a
+finely-pointed instrument upon the smooth surface of metal is
+susceptible of the utmost fineness that can be given to the _definite_
+work of the human hand. In drawing with pen upon paper, the surface of
+the paper is slightly rough; necessarily, two points touch it instead of
+one, and the liquid flows from them more or less irregularly, whatever
+the draughtsman's skill. But you cut a metallic surface with one edge
+only; the furrow drawn by a skater on the surface of ice is like it on a
+large scale. Your surface is polished, and your line may be wholly
+faultless, if your hand is.
+
+114. And because, in such material, effects may be produced which no
+penmanship could rival, most people, I fancy, think that a steel plate
+half engraves itself; that the workman has no trouble with it, compared
+to that of a pen draughtsman.
+
+To test your feeling in this matter accurately, here is a manuscript
+book written with pen and ink, and illustrated with flourishes and
+vignettes.
+
+You will all, I think, be disposed, on examining it, to exclaim, How
+wonderful! and even to doubt the possibility of every page in the book
+being completed in the same manner. Again, here are three of my own
+drawings, executed with the pen, and Indian ink, when I was fifteen.
+They are copies from large lithographs by Prout; and I imagine that most
+of my pupils would think me very tyrannical if I requested them to do
+anything of the kind themselves. And yet, when you see in the shop
+windows a line engraving like this,[X] or this,[X] either of which
+contains, alone, as much work as fifty pages of the manuscript book, or
+fifty such drawings as mine, you look upon its effect as quite a matter
+of course,--you never say 'how wonderful' _that_ is, nor consider how
+you would like to have to live, by producing anything of the same kind
+yourselves.
+
+[Illustration: II.
+
+The Star of FLORENCE.]
+
+115. Yet you cannot suppose it is in reality easier to draw a line with
+a cutting point, not seeing the effect at all, or, if any effect, seeing
+a gleam of light instead of darkness, than to draw your black line at
+once on the white paper? You cannot really think[Y] that there is
+something complacent, sympathetic, and helpful in the nature of steel;
+so that while a pen-and-ink sketch may always be considered an
+achievement proving cleverness in the sketcher, a sketch on steel comes
+out by mere favor of the indulgent metal; or that the plate is woven
+like a piece of pattern silk, and the pattern is developed by pasteboard
+cards punched full of holes? Not so. Look close at this engraving, or
+take a smaller and simpler one, Turner's Mercury and Argus,--imagine it
+to be a drawing in pen and ink, and yourself required similarly to
+produce its parallel! True, the steel point has the one advantage of not
+blotting, but it has tenfold or twentyfold disadvantage, in that you
+cannot slur, nor efface, except in a very resolute and laborious way,
+nor play with it, nor even see what you are doing with it at the moment,
+far less the effect that is to be. You must _feel_ what you are doing
+with it, and know precisely what you have got to do; how deep, how
+broad, how far apart your lines must be, etc. and etc., (a couple of
+lines of etceteras would not be enough to imply all you must know). But
+suppose the plate _were_ only a pen drawing: take your pen--your
+finest--and just try to copy the leaves that entangle the head of Io,
+and her head itself; remembering always that the kind of work required
+here is mere child's play compared to that of fine figure engraving.
+Nevertheless, take a small magnifying glass to this--count the dots and
+lines that gradate the nostrils and the edges of the facial bone; notice
+how the light is left on the top of the head by the stopping, at its
+outline, of the coarse touches which form the shadows under the leaves;
+examine it well, and then--I humbly ask of you--try to do a piece of it
+yourself! You clever sketcher--you young lady or gentleman of
+genius--you eye-glassed dilettante--you current writer of criticism
+royally plural,--I beseech you,--do it yourself; do the merely etched
+outline yourself, if no more. Look you,--you hold your etching needle
+this way, as you would a pencil, nearly; and then,--you scratch with it!
+it is as easy as lying. Or if you think that too difficult, take an
+easier piece;--take either of the light sprays of foliage that rise
+against the fortress on the right, pass your lens over them--look how
+their fine outline is first drawn, leaf by leaf; then how the distant
+rock is put in between, with broken lines, mostly stopping before they
+touch the leaf-outline; and again, I pray you, do it yourself,--if not
+on that scale, on a larger. Go on into the hollows of the distant
+rock,--traverse its thickets,--number its towers;--count how many lines
+there are in a laurel bush--in an arch--in a casement; some hundred and
+fifty, or two hundred, deliberately drawn lines, you will find, in every
+square quarter of an inch;--say _three thousand to the inch_,--each,
+with skillful intent, put in its place! and then consider what the
+ordinary sketcher's work must appear, to the men who have been trained
+to this!
+
+116. "But might not more have been done by three thousand lines to a
+square inch?" you will perhaps ask. Well, possibly. It may be with lines
+as with soldiers: three hundred, knowing their work thoroughly, may be
+stronger than three thousand less sure of their aim. We shall have to
+press close home this question about numbers and purpose presently;--it
+is not the question now. Suppose certain results required,--atmospheric
+effects, surface textures, transparencies of shade, confusions of
+light,--then, more could _not_ be done with less. There are engravings
+of this modern school, of which, with respect to their particular aim,
+it may be said, most truly, they "cannot be better done."
+
+Here is one just finished,--or, at least, finished to the eyes of
+ordinary mortals, though its fastidious master means to retouch it;--a
+quite pure line engraving, by Mr. Charles Henry Jeens; (in calling it
+pure line, I mean that there are no mixtures of mezzotint or any
+mechanical tooling, but all is steady hand-work,) from a picture by Mr.
+Armytage, which, without possessing any of the highest claims to
+admiration, is yet free from the vulgar vices which disgrace most of our
+popular religious art; and is so sweet in the fancy of it as to deserve,
+better than many works of higher power, the pains of the engraver to
+make it a common possession. It is meant to help us to imagine the
+evening of the day when the father and mother of Christ had been seeking
+Him through Jerusalem: they have come to a well where women are drawing
+water; St. Joseph passes on,--but the tired Madonna, leaning on the
+well's margin, asks wistfully of the women if they have seen such and
+such a child astray. Now will you just look for a while into the lines
+by which the expression of the weary and anxious face is rendered; see
+how unerring they are,--how calm and clear; and think how many questions
+have to be determined in drawing the most minute portion of any
+one,--its curve,--its thickness,--its distance from the next,--its own
+preparation for ending, invisibly, where it ends. Think what the
+precision must be in these that trace the edge of the lip, and make it
+look quivering with disappointment, or in these which have made the
+eyelash heavy with restrained tears.
+
+117. Or if, as must be the case with many of my audience, it is
+impossible for you to conceive the difficulties here overcome, look
+merely at the draperies, and other varied substances represented in the
+plate; see how silk, and linen, and stone, and pottery, and flesh, are
+all separated in texture, and gradated in light, by the most subtle
+artifices and appliances of line,--of which artifices, and the nature of
+the mechanical labor throughout, I must endeavor to give you to-day a
+more distinct conception than you are in the habit of forming. But as I
+shall have to blame some of these methods in their general result, and I
+do not wish any word of general blame to be associated with this most
+excellent and careful plate by Mr. Jeens, I will pass, for special
+examination, to one already in your reference series, which for the rest
+exhibits more various treatment in its combined landscape, background,
+and figures; the Belle Jardiniere of Raphael, drawn and engraved by the
+Baron Desnoyers.
+
+You see, in the first place, that the ground, stones, and other coarse
+surfaces are distinguished from the flesh and draperies by broken and
+wriggled lines. Those broken lines cannot be executed with the burin,
+they are etched in the early states of the plate, and are a modern
+artifice, never used by old engravers; partly because the older men were
+not masters of the art of etching, but chiefly because even those who
+were acquainted with it would not employ lines of this nature. They have
+been developed by the importance of landscape in modern engraving, and
+have produced some valuable results in small plates, especially of
+architecture. But they are entirely erroneous in principle, for the
+surface of stones and leaves is not broken or jagged in this manner, but
+consists of mossy, or blooming, or otherwise organic texture, which
+cannot be represented by these coarse lines; their general consequence
+has therefore been to withdraw the mind of the observer from all
+beautiful and tender characters in foreground, and eventually to destroy
+the very school of landscape engraving which gave birth to them.
+
+Considered, however, as a means of relieving more delicate textures,
+they are in some degree legitimate, being, in fact, a kind of chasing or
+jagging one part of the plate surface in order to throw out the delicate
+tints from the rough field. But the same effect was produced with less
+pains, and far more entertainment to the eye, by the older engravers,
+who employed purely ornamental variations of line; thus in Plate IV.,
+opposite Sec. 137, the drapery is sufficiently distinguished from the grass
+by the treatment of the latter as an ornamental arabesque. The grain of
+wood is elaborately engraved by Marc Antonio, with the same purpose, in
+the plate given in your Standard Series.
+
+118. Next, however, you observe what difference of texture and force
+exists between the smooth, continuous lines themselves, which are all
+really _engraved_. You must take some pains to understand the nature of
+this operation.
+
+The line is first cut lightly through its whole course, by absolute
+decision and steadiness of hand, which you may endeavor to imitate if
+you like, in its simplest phase, by drawing a circle with your
+compass-pen; and then, grasping your penholder so that you can push the
+point like a plow, describing other circles inside or outside of it, in
+exact parallelism with the mathematical line, and at exactly equal
+distances. To approach, or depart, with your point at finely gradated
+intervals, may be your next exercise, if you find the first unexpectedly
+easy.
+
+119. When the line is thus described in its proper course, it is plowed
+deeper, where depth is needed, by a second cut of the burin, first on
+one side, then on the other, the cut being given with gradated force so
+as to take away most steel where the line is to be darkest. Every line
+of gradated depth in the plate has to be thus cut eight or ten times
+over at least, with retouchings to smooth and clear all in the close.
+Jason has to plow his field ten-furrow deep, with his fiery oxen well in
+hand, all the while.
+
+When the essential lines are thus produced in their several directions,
+those which have been drawn across each other, so as to give depth of
+shade, or richness of texture, have to be farther enriched by dots in
+the interstices; else there would be a painful appearance of network
+everywhere; and these dots require each four or five jags to produce
+them; and each of these jags must be done with what artists and
+engravers alike call 'feeling,'--the sensibility, that is, of a hand
+completely under mental government. So wrought, the dots look soft, and
+like touches of paint; but mechanically dug in, they are vulgar and
+hard.
+
+120. Now, observe, that, for every piece of shadow throughout the work,
+the engraver has to decide with what quantity and kind of line he will
+produce it. Exactly the same quantity of black, and therefore the same
+depth of tint in general effect, may be given with six thick lines; or
+with twelve, of half their thickness; or with eighteen, of a third of
+the thickness. The second six, second twelve, or second eighteen, may
+cross the first six, first twelve, or first eighteen, or go between
+them; and they may cross at any angle. And then the third six may be put
+between the first six, or between the second six, or across both, and at
+any angle. In the network thus produced, any kind of dots may be put in
+the severally shaped interstices. And for any of the series of
+superadded lines, dots, of equivalent value in shade, may be
+substituted. (Some engravings are wrought in dots altogether.) Choice
+infinite, with multiplication of infinity, is, at all events, to be
+made, for every minute space, from one side of the plate to the other.
+
+121. The excellence of a beautiful engraving is primarily in the use of
+these resources to exhibit the qualities of the original picture, with
+delight to the eye in the method of translation; and the language of
+engraving, when once you begin to understand it, is, in these respects,
+so fertile, so ingenious, so ineffably subtle and severe in its grammar,
+that you may quite easily make it the subject of your life's
+investigation, as you would the scholarship of a lovely literature.
+
+But in doing this, you would withdraw, and necessarily withdraw, your
+attention from the higher qualities of art, precisely as a grammarian,
+who is that, and nothing more, loses command of the matter and substance
+of thought. And the exquisitely mysterious mechanisms of the engraver's
+method have, in fact, thus entangled the intelligence of the careful
+draughtsmen of Europe; so that since the final perfection of this
+translator's power, all the men of finest patience and finest hand have
+stayed content with it;--the subtlest draughtsmanship has perished from
+the canvas,[Z] and sought more popular praise in this labyrinth of
+disciplined language, and more or less dulled or degraded thought. And,
+in sum, I know no cause more direct or fatal, in the destruction of the
+great schools of European art, than the perfectness of modern line
+engraving.
+
+122. This great and profoundly to be regretted influence I will prove
+and illustrate to you on another occasion. My object to-day is to
+explain the perfectness of the art itself; and above all to request you,
+if you will not look at pictures instead of photographs, at least not to
+allow the cheap merits of the chemical operation to withdraw your
+interest from the splendid human labor of the engraver. Here is a little
+vignette from Stothard, for instance, in Rogers' poems, to the lines,
+
+    "Soared in the swing, half pleased and half afraid,
+     'Neath sister elms, that waved their summer shade."
+
+You would think, would you not? (and rightly,) that of all difficult
+things to express with crossed black lines and dots, the face of a young
+girl must be the most difficult. Yet here you have the face of a bright
+girl, radiant in light, transparent, mysterious, almost breathing,--her
+dark hair involved in delicate wreath and shade, her eyes full of joy
+and sweet playfulness,--and all this done by the exquisite order and
+gradation of a very few lines, which, if you will examine them through a
+lens, you find dividing and checkering the lip, and cheek, and chin, so
+strongly that you would have fancied they could only produce the effect
+of a grim iron mask. But the intelligences of order and form guide them
+into beauty, and inflame them with delicatest life.
+
+123. And do you see the size of this head? About as large as the bud of
+a forget-me-not! Can you imagine the fineness of the little pressures of
+the hand on the steel, in that space, which at the edge of the almost
+invisible lip, fashioned its less or more of smile?
+
+My chemical friends, if you wish ever to know anything rightly
+concerning the arts, I very urgently advise you to throw all your vials
+and washes down the gutter-trap; and if you will ascribe, as you think
+it so clever to do, in your modern creeds, all virtue to the sun, use
+that virtue through your own heads and fingers, and apply your solar
+energies to draw a skillful line or two, for once or twice in your life.
+You may learn more by trying to engrave, like Goodall, the tip of an
+ear, or the curl of a lock of hair, than by photographing the entire
+population of the United States of America,--black, white, and
+neutral-tint.
+
+And one word, by the way, touching the complaints I hear at my having
+set you to so fine work that it hurts your eyes. You have noticed that
+all great sculptors--and most of the great painters of Florence--began
+by being goldsmiths. Why do you think the goldsmith's apprenticeship is
+so fruitful? Primarily, because it forces the boy to do small work, and
+mind what he is about. Do you suppose Michael Angelo learned his
+business by dashing or hitting at it? He laid the foundation of all his
+after power by doing precisely what I am requiring my own pupils to
+do,--copying German engravings in facsimile! And for your eyes--you all
+sit up at night till you haven't got any eyes worth speaking of. Go to
+bed at half-past nine, and get up at four, and you'll see something out
+of them, in time.
+
+124. Nevertheless, whatever admiration you may be brought to feel, and
+with justice, for this lovely workmanship,--the more distinctly you
+comprehend its merits, the more distinctly also will the question rise
+in your mind, How is it that a performance so marvelous has yet taken no
+rank in the records of art of any permanent or acknowledged kind? How
+is it that these vignettes from Stothard and Turner,[AA] like the
+woodcuts from Tenniel, scarcely make the name of the engraver known; and
+that they never are found side by side with this older and apparently
+ruder art, in the cabinets of men of real judgment? The reason is
+precisely the same as in the case of the Tenniel woodcut. This modern
+line engraving is alloyed gold. Rich in capacity, astonishing in
+attainment, it nevertheless admits willful fault, and misses what it
+ought first to have attained. It is therefore, to a certain measure,
+vile in its perfection; while the older work is noble even in its
+failure, and classic no less in what it deliberately refuses, than in
+what it rationally and rightly prefers and performs.
+
+125. Here, for instance, I have enlarged the head of one of Duerer's
+Madonnas for you out of one of his most careful plates.[AB] You think it
+very ugly. Well, so it is. Don't be afraid to think so, nor to say so.
+Frightfully ugly; vulgar also. It is the head, simply, of a fat Dutch
+girl, with all the pleasantness left out. There is not the least doubt
+about that. Don't let anybody force Albert Duerer down your throats; nor
+make you expect pretty things from him. Stothard's young girl in the
+swing, or Sir Joshua's Age of Innocence, is in quite angelic sphere of
+another world, compared to this black domain of poor, laborious Albert.
+We are not talking of female beauty, so please you, just now, gentlemen,
+but of engraving. And the merit, the classical, indefeasible, immortal
+merit of this head of a Dutch girl with all the beauty left out, is in
+the fact that every line of it, as engraving, is as good as can
+be;--good, not with the mechanical dexterity of a watch-maker, but with
+the intellectual effort and sensitiveness of an artist who knows
+precisely what can be done, and ought to be attempted, with his assigned
+materials. He works easily, fearlessly, flexibly; the dots are not all
+measured in distance; the lines not all mathematically parallel or
+divergent. He has even missed his mark at the mouth in one place, and
+leaves the mistake, frankly. But there are no petrified mistakes; nor is
+the eye so accustomed to the look of the mechanical furrow as to accept
+it for final excellence. The engraving is full of the painter's higher
+power and wider perception; it is classically perfect, because duly
+subordinate, and presenting for your applause only the virtues proper to
+its own sphere. Among these, I must now reiterate, the first of all is
+the _decorative_ arrangement of _lines_.
+
+126. You all know what a pretty thing a damask tablecloth is, and how a
+pattern is brought out by threads running one way in one space, and
+across in another. So, in lace, a certain delightfulness is given by the
+texture of meshed lines.
+
+Similarly, on any surface of metal, the object of the engraver is, or
+ought to be, to cover it with lovely _lines_, forming a lace-work, and
+including a variety of spaces, delicious to the eye.
+
+And this is his business, primarily; before any other matter can be
+thought of, his work must be ornamental. You know I told you a
+sculptor's business is first to cover a surface with pleasant _bosses_,
+whether they mean anything or not; so an engraver's is to cover it with
+pleasant _lines_, whether they mean anything or not. That they should
+mean something, and a good deal of something, is indeed desirable
+afterwards; but first we must be ornamental.
+
+127. Now if you will compare Plate II. at the beginning of this lecture,
+which is a characteristic example of good Florentine engraving, and
+represents the Planet and power of Aphrodite, with the Aphrodite of
+Bewick in the upper division of Plate I., you will at once understand
+the difference between a primarily ornamental, and a primarily
+realistic, style. The first requirement in the Florentine work, is that
+it shall be a lovely arrangement of lines; a pretty thing upon a page.
+Bewick _has_ a secondary notion of making his vignette a pretty thing
+upon a page. But he is overpowered by his vigorous veracity, and bent
+first on giving you his idea of Venus. Quite right, he would have been,
+mind you, if he had been carving a statue of her on Mount Eryx; but not
+when he was engraving a vignette to AEsop's fables. To engrave well is to
+ornament a surface well, not to create a realistic impression. I beg
+your pardon for my repetitions; but the point at issue is the root of
+the whole business, and I _must_ get it well asserted, and variously.
+
+Let me pass to a more important example.
+
+128. Three years ago, in the rough first arrangement of the copies in
+the Educational Series, I put an outline of the top of Apollo's scepter,
+which, in the catalogue, was said to be probably by Baccio Bandini of
+Florence, for your first real exercise; it remains so, the olive being
+put first only for its mythological rank.
+
+The series of engravings to which the plate from which that exercise is
+copied belongs, are part of a number, executed chiefly, I think, from
+early designs of Sandro Botticelli, and some in great part by his hand.
+He and his assistant, Baccio, worked together; and in such harmony, that
+Bandini probably often does what Sandro wants, better than Sandro could
+have done it himself; and, on the other hand, there is no design of
+Bandini's over which Sandro does not seem to have had influence.
+
+And wishing now to show you three examples of the finest work of the
+old, the renaissance, and the modern schools,--of the old, I will take
+Baccio Bandini's Astrologia, Plate III., opposite. Of the renaissance,
+Duerer's Adam and Eve. And of the modern, this head of the daughter of
+Herodias, engraved from Luini by Beaugrand, which is as
+affectionately and sincerely wrought, though in the modern manner, as
+any plate of the old schools.
+
+[Illustration: III.
+
+"At ev'ning from the top of Fesole."]
+
+129. Now observe the progress of the feeling for light and shade in the
+three examples.
+
+The first is nearly all white paper; you think of the outline as the
+constructive element throughout.
+
+The second is a vigorous piece of _white_ and _black_--not of _light_
+and _shade_,--for all the high lights are equally white, whether of
+flesh, or leaves, or goat's hair.
+
+The third is complete in chiaroscuro, as far as engraving can be.
+
+Now the dignity and virtue of the plates is in the exactly inverse ratio
+of their fullness in chiaroscuro.
+
+Bandini's is excellent work, and of the very highest school. Duerer's
+entirely accomplished work, but of an inferior school. And Beaugrand's,
+excellent work, but of a vulgar and non-classical school.
+
+And these relations of the schools are to be determined by the quality
+in the _lines_; we shall find that in proportion as the light and shade
+is neglected, the lines are studied; that those of Bandini are perfect;
+of Duerer perfect, only with a lower perfection; but of Beaugrand,
+entirely faultful.
+
+130. I have just explained to you that in modern engraving the lines are
+cut in clean furrow, widened, it may be, by successive cuts; but,
+whether it be fine or thick, retaining always, when printed, the aspect
+of a continuous line drawn with the pen, and entirely black throughout
+its whole course.
+
+Now we may increase the delicacy of this line to any extent by simply
+printing it in gray color instead of black. I obtained some very
+beautiful results of this kind in the later volumes of 'Modern
+Painters,' with Mr. Armytage's help, by using subdued purple tints; but,
+in any case, the line thus engraved must be monotonous in its character,
+and cannot be expressive of the finest qualities of form.
+
+Accordingly, the old Florentine workmen constructed the line _itself_,
+in important places, of successive minute touches, so that it became a
+chain of delicate links which could be opened or closed at
+pleasure.[AC] If you will examine through a lens the outline of the face
+of this Astrology, you will find it is traced with an exquisite series
+of minute touches, susceptible of accentuation or change absolutely at
+the engraver's pleasure; and, in result, corresponding to the finest
+conditions of a pencil line drawing by a consummate master. In the fine
+plates of this period, you have thus the united powers of the pen and
+pencil, and both absolutely secure and multipliable.
+
+131. I am a little proud of having independently discovered, and had the
+patience to carry out, this Florentine method of execution for myself,
+when I was a boy of thirteen. My good drawing-master had given me some
+copies calculated to teach me freedom of hand; the touches were rapid
+and vigorous,--many of them in mechanically regular zigzags, far beyond
+any capacity of mine to imitate in the bold way in which they were done.
+But I was resolved to have them, somehow; and actually facsimiled a
+considerable portion of the drawing in the Florentine manner, with the
+finest point I could cut to my pencil, taking a quarter of an hour to
+forge out the likeness of one return in the zigzag which my master
+carried down through twenty returns in two seconds; and so successfully,
+that he did not detect my artifice till I showed it him,--on which he
+forbade me ever to do the like again. And it was only thirty years
+afterwards that I found I had been quite right after all, and working
+like Baccio Bandini! But the patience which carried me through that
+early effort, served me well through all the thirty years, and enabled
+me to analyze, and in a measure imitate, the method of work employed by
+every master; so that, whether you believe me or not at first, you will
+find what I tell you of their superiority, or inferiority, to be true.
+
+132. When lines are studied with this degree of care, you may be sure
+the master will leave room enough for you to see them and enjoy them,
+and not use any at random. All the finest engravers, therefore, leave
+much white paper, and use their entire power on the outlines.
+
+133. Next to them come the men of the Renaissance schools, headed by
+Duerer, who, less careful of the beauty and refinement of the line,
+delight in its vigor, accuracy, and complexity. And the essential
+difference between these men and the moderns is that these central
+masters cut their line for the most part with a single furrow, giving it
+depth by force of hand or wrist, and retouching, _not in the furrow
+itself, but with others beside it_.[AD] Such work can only be done well
+on copper, and it can display all faculty of hand or wrist, precision of
+eye, and accuracy of knowledge, which a human creature can possess. But
+the dotted or hatched line is not used in this central style, and the
+higher conditions of beauty never thought of.
+
+In the Astrology of Bandini,--and remember that the Astrologia of the
+Florentine meant what we mean by Astronomy, and much more,--he wishes
+you first to look at the face: the lip half open, faltering in wonder;
+the amazed, intense, dreaming gaze; the pure dignity of forehead,
+undisturbed by terrestrial thought. None of these things could be so
+much as attempted in Duerer's method; he can engrave flowing hair, skin
+of animals, bark of trees, wreathings of metal-work, with the free hand;
+also, with labored chiaroscuro, or with sturdy line, he can reach
+expressions of sadness, or gloom, or pain, or soldierly strength,--but
+pure beauty,--never.
+
+134. Lastly, you have the Modern school, deepening its lines in
+successive cuts. The instant consequence of the introduction of this
+method is the restriction of curvature; you cannot follow a complex
+curve again with precision through its furrow. If you are a dextrous
+plowman, you can drive your plow any number of times along the simple
+curve. But you cannot repeat again exactly the motions which cut a
+variable one.[AE] You may retouch it, energize it, and deepen it in
+parts, but you cannot cut it all through again equally. And the
+retouching and energizing in parts is a living and intellectual process;
+but the cutting all through, equally, a mechanical one. The difference
+is exactly such as that between the dexterity of turning out two similar
+moldings from a lathe, and carving them with the free hand, like a Pisan
+sculptor. And although splendid intellect, and subtlest sensibility,
+have been spent on the production of some modern plates, the mechanical
+element introduced by their manner of execution always overpowers both;
+nor _can any plate of consummate value ever be produced in the modern
+method_.
+
+135. Nevertheless, in landscape, there are two examples in your
+Reference series, of insuperable skill and extreme beauty: Miller's
+plate, before instanced, of the Grand Canal, Venice; and E. Goodall's of
+the upper fall of the Tees. The men who engraved these plates might have
+been exquisite artists; but their patience and enthusiasm were held
+captive in the false system of lines, and we lost the painters; while
+the engravings, wonderful as they are, are neither of them worth a
+Turner etching, scratched in ten minutes with the point of an old fork;
+and the common types of such elaborate engraving are none of them worth
+a single frog, pig, or puppy, out of the corner of a Bewick vignette.
+
+136. And now, I think, you cannot fail to understand clearly what you
+are to look for in engraving, as a separate art from that of painting.
+Turn back to the 'Astrologia' as a perfect type of the purest school.
+She is gazing at stars, and crowned with them. But the stars are _black_
+instead of shining! You cannot have a more decisive and absolute proof
+that you must not look in engraving for chiaroscuro.
+
+Nevertheless, her body is half in shade, and her left foot; and she
+casts a shadow, and there is a bar of shade behind her.
+
+All these are merely so much acceptance of shade as may relieve the
+forms, and give value to the linear portions. The face, though turned
+from the light, is shadowless.
+
+Again. Every lock of the hair is designed and set in its place with the
+subtlest care, but there is no luster attempted,--no texture,--no
+mystery. The plumes of the wings are set studiously in their
+places,--they, also, lusterless. That even their filaments are not
+drawn, and that the broad curve embracing them ignores the anatomy of a
+bird's wing, are conditions of design, not execution. Of these in a
+future lecture.[AF]
+
+[Illustration: IV.
+
+"By the Springs of PARNASSUS."]
+
+137. The 'Poesia,' Plate IV., opposite, is a still more severe, though
+not so generic, an example; its decorative foreground reducing it almost
+to the rank of goldsmith's ornamentation. I need scarcely point out to
+you that the flowing water shows neither luster nor reflection; but
+notice that the observer's attention is supposed to be so close to every
+dark touch of the graver that he will see the minute dark spots which
+indicate the sprinkled shower falling from the vase into the pool.
+
+138. This habit of strict and calm attention, constant in the artist,
+and expected in the observer, makes all the difference between the art
+of Intellect, and of mere sensation. For every detail of this plate has
+a meaning, if you care to understand it. This is Poetry, sitting by the
+fountain of Castalia, which flows first out of a formal urn, to show
+that it is not artless; but the rocks of Parnassus are behind, and on
+the top of them--only one tree, like a mushroom with a thick stalk. You
+at first are inclined to say, How very absurd, to put only one tree on
+Parnassus! but this one tree is the Immortal Plane Tree, planted by
+Agamemnon, and at once connects our Poesia with the Iliad. Then, this
+is the hem of the robe of Poetry,--this is the divine vegetation which
+springs up under her feet,--this is the heaven and earth united by her
+power,--this is the fountain of Castalia flowing out afresh among the
+grass,--and these are the drops with which, out of a pitcher, Poetry is
+nourishing the fountain of Castalia.
+
+All which you may find out if you happen to know anything about
+Castalia, or about poetry; and pleasantly think more upon, for yourself.
+But the poor dunces, Sandro and Baccio, feeling themselves but 'goffi
+nell' arte,' have no hope of telling you all this, except suggestively.
+They can't engrave grass of Parnassus, nor sweet springs so as to look
+like water; but they can make a pretty damasked surface with ornamental
+leaves, and flowing lines, and so leave you something to think of--if
+you will.
+
+139. 'But a great many people won't, and a great many more can't; and
+surely the finished engravings are much more delightful, and the only
+means we have of giving any idea of finished pictures, out of our
+reach.'
+
+Yes, all that is true; and when we examine the effects of line engraving
+upon taste in recent art, we will discuss these matters; for the
+present, let us be content with knowing what the best work is, and why
+it is so. Although, however, I do not now press further my cavils at the
+triumph of modern line engraving, I must assign to you, in few words,
+the reason of its recent decline. Engravers complain that photography
+and cheap wood-cutting have ended their finer craft. No complaint can be
+less grounded. They themselves destroyed their own craft, by vulgarizing
+it. Content in their beautiful mechanism, they ceased to learn, and to
+feel, as artists; they put themselves under the order of publishers and
+print-sellers; they worked indiscriminately from whatever was put into
+their hands,--from Bartlett as willingly as from Turner, and from
+Mulready as carefully as from Raphael. They filled the windows of
+print-sellers, the pages of gift books, with elaborate rubbish, and
+piteous abortions of delicate industry. They worked cheap, and
+cheaper,--smoothly, and more smoothly,--they got armies of assistants,
+and surrounded themselves with schools of mechanical tricksters,
+learning their stale tricks with blundering avidity. They had
+fallen--before the days of photography--into providers of frontispieces
+for housekeepers' pocket-books. I do not know if photography itself,
+their redoubted enemy, has even now ousted them from that last refuge.
+
+140. Such the fault of the engraver,--very pardonable; scarcely
+avoidable,--however fatal. Fault mainly of humility. But what has _your_
+fault been, gentlemen? what the patrons' fault, who have permitted so
+wide waste of admirable labor, so pathetic a uselessness of obedient
+genius? It was yours to have directed, yours to have raised and rejoiced
+in, the skill, the modesty, the patience of this entirely gentle and
+industrious race;--copyists with their _heart_. The common
+painter-copyists who encumber our European galleries with their easels
+and pots, are, almost without exception, persons too stupid to be
+painters, and too lazy to be engravers. The real copyists--the men who
+can put their soul into another's work--are employed at home, in their
+narrow rooms, striving to make their good work profitable to all men.
+And in their submission to the public taste they are truly national
+servants as much as Prime Ministers are. They fulfill the demand of the
+nation; what, as a people, you wish to have for possession in art, these
+men are ready to give you.
+
+And what have you hitherto asked of them?--Ramsgate Sands, and Dolly
+Vardens, and the Paddington Station,--these, I think, are typical of
+your chief demands; the cartoons of Raphael--which you don't care to see
+themselves; and, by way of a flight into the empyrean, the Madonna di
+San Sisto. And literally, there are hundreds of cities and villages in
+Italy in which roof and wall are blazoned with the noblest divinity and
+philosophy ever imagined by men; and of all this treasure, I can, as far
+as I know, give you not _one_ example, in line engraving, by an English
+hand!
+
+Well, you are in the main matter right in this. You want essentially
+Ramsgate Sands and the Paddington Station, because there you can see
+yourselves.
+
+Make yourselves, then, worthy to be seen forever, and let English
+engraving become noble as the record of English loveliness and honor.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[X] Miller's large plate of the Grand Canal, Venice, after Turner; and
+Goodall's, of Tivoli, after Turner. The other examples referred to are
+left in the University Galleries.
+
+[Y] This paragraph was not read at the lecture, time not allowing:--it
+is part of what I wrote on engraving some years ago, in the papers for
+the Art Journal, called the Cestus of Aglaia. (Refer now to "On the Old
+Road.")
+
+[Z] An effort has lately been made in France, by Meissonier, Gerome, and
+their school, to recover it, with marvelous collateral skill of
+engravers. The etching of Gerome's Louis XIV. and Moliere is one of the
+completest pieces of skillful mechanism ever put on metal.
+
+[AA] I must again qualify the too sweeping statement of the text. I
+think, as time passes, some of these nineteenth century line engravings
+will become monumental. The first vignette of the garden, with the cut
+hedges and fountain, for instance, in Rogers' poems, is so consummate in
+its use of every possible artifice of delicate line, (note the look of
+_tremulous_ atmosphere got by the undulatory etched lines on the
+pavement, and the broken masses, worked with dots, of the fountain
+foam,) that I think it cannot but, with some of its companions, survive
+the refuse of its school, and become classic. I find in like manner,
+even with all their faults and weaknesses, the vignettes to Heyne's
+Virgil to be real art-possessions.
+
+[AB] Plate XI., in the Appendix, taken from the engraving of the Virgin
+sitting in the fenced garden, with two angels crowning her.
+
+[AC] The method was first developed in engraving designs on
+silver--numbers of lines being executed with dots by the punch, for
+variety's sake. For niello, and printing, a transverse cut was
+substituted for the blow. The entire style is connected with the later
+Roman and Byzantine method of drawing lines with the drill hole, in
+marble. See above, Lecture II., Section 70.
+
+[AD] This most important and distinctive character was pointed out to me
+by Mr. Burgess.
+
+[AE] This point will be further examined and explained in the Appendix.
+
+[AF] See Appendix, Article I.
+
+
+
+
+                         LECTURE V.
+
+         DESIGN IN THE GERMAN SCHOOLS OF ENGRAVING.
+
+
+141. By reference to the close of the preface to 'Eagle's Nest,' you
+will see, gentlemen, that I meant these lectures, from the first, rather
+to lead you to the study of the characters of two great men, than to
+interest you in the processes of a secondary form of art. As I draw my
+materials into the limited form necessary for the hour, I find my
+divided purpose doubly failing; and would fain rather use my time to-day
+in supplying the defects of my last lecture, than in opening the greater
+subject, which I must treat with still more lamentable inadequacy.
+Nevertheless, you must not think it is for want of time that I omit
+reference to other celebrated engravers, and insist on the special power
+of these two only. Many not inconsiderable reputations are founded
+merely on the curiosity of collectors of prints, or on partial skill in
+the management of processes; others, though resting on more secure
+bases, are still of no importance to you in the general history of art;
+whereas you will find the work of Holbein and Botticelli determining for
+you, without need of any farther range, the principal questions of
+moment in the relation of the Northern and Southern schools of design.
+Nay, a wider method of inquiry would only render your comparison less
+accurate in result. It is only in Holbein's majestic range of capacity,
+and only in the particular phase of Teutonic life which his art adorned,
+that the problem can be dealt with on fair terms. We Northerns can
+advance no fairly comparable antagonist to the artists of the South,
+except at that one moment, and in that one man. Rubens cannot for an
+instant be matched with Tintoret, nor Memling with Lippi; while
+Reynolds only rivals Titian in what he learned from him. But in Holbein
+and Botticelli we have two men trained independently, equal in power of
+intellect, similar in material and mode of work, contemporary in age,
+correspondent in disposition. The relation between them is strictly
+typical of the constant aspects to each other of the Northern and
+Southern schools.
+
+142. Their point of closest contact is in the art of engraving, and this
+art is developed entirely as the servant of the great passions which
+perturbed or polluted Europe in the fifteenth century. The impulses
+which it obeys are all new; and it obeys them with its own nascent
+plasticity of temper. Painting and sculpture are only modified by them;
+but engraving is educated.
+
+These passions are in the main three; namely,
+
+1. The thirst for classical literature, and the forms of proud and false
+taste which arose out of it, in the position it had assumed as the enemy
+of Christianity.
+
+2. The pride of science, enforcing (in the particular domain of Art)
+accuracy of perspective, shade, and anatomy, never before dreamed of.
+
+3. The sense of error and iniquity in the theological teaching of the
+Christian Church, felt by the highest intellects of the time, and
+necessarily rendering the formerly submissive religious art impossible.
+
+To-day, then, our task is to examine the peculiar characters of the
+Design of the Northern Schools of Engraving, as affected by these great
+influences.
+
+143. I have not often, however, used the word 'design,' and must clearly
+define the sense in which I now use it. It is vaguely used in common
+art-parlance; often as if it meant merely the drawing of a picture, as
+distinct from its color; and in other still more inaccurate ways. The
+accurate and proper sense, underlying all these, I must endeavor to make
+clear to you.
+
+'Design' properly signifies that power in any art-work which has a
+purpose other than of imitation, and which is 'designed,' composed, or
+separated to that end. It implies the rejection of some things, and the
+insistence upon others, with a given object.[AG]
+
+Let us take progressive instances. Here is a group of prettily dressed
+peasant children, charmingly painted by a very able modern artist--not
+absolutely without design, for he really wishes to show you how pretty
+peasant children can be, (and, in so far, is wiser and kinder than
+Murillo, who likes to show how ugly they can be); also, his group is
+agreeably arranged, and its component children carefully chosen.
+Nevertheless, any summer's day, near any country village, you may come
+upon twenty groups in an hour as pretty as this; and may see--if you
+have eyes--children in them twenty times prettier than these. A
+photograph, if it could render them perfectly, and in color, would far
+excel the charm of this painting; for in it, good and clever as it is,
+there is nothing supernatural, and much that is subnatural.
+
+144. Beside this group of, in every sense of the word, 'artless' little
+country girls, I will now set one--in the best sense of the
+word--'artful' little country girl,--a sketch by Gainsborough.
+
+You never saw her like before. Never will again, now that Gainsborough
+is dead. No photography,--no science,--no industry, will touch or reach
+for an instant this _super_-naturalness. You will look vainly through
+the summer fields for such a child. "Nor up the lawn, nor by the wood,"
+is she. Whence do you think this marvelous charm has come? Alas! if we
+knew, would not we all be Gainsboroughs? This only you may practically
+ascertain, as surely as that a flower will die if you cut its root away,
+that you cannot alter a single touch in Gainsborough's work without
+injury to the whole. Half a dozen spots, more or less, in the printed
+gowns of these other children whom I first showed you, will not make the
+smallest difference to them; nor a lock or two more or less in their
+hair, nor a dimple or two more or less in their cheeks. But if you alter
+one wave of the hair of Gainsborough's girl, the child is gone. Yet the
+art is so subtle, that I do not expect you to believe this. It looks so
+instinctive, so easy, so 'chanceux,'--the French word is better than
+ours. Yes, and in their more accurate sense, also, 'Il a de la chance.'
+A stronger Designer than he was with him. He could not tell you himself
+how the thing was done.
+
+145. I proceed to take a more definite instance--this Greek head of the
+Lacinian Juno. The design or appointing of the forms now entirely
+prevails over the resemblance to Nature. No real hair could ever be
+drifted into these wild lines, which mean the wrath of the Adriatic
+winds round the Cape of Storms.
+
+And yet, whether this be uglier or prettier than Gainsborough's
+child--(and you know already what I think about it, that no Greek
+goddess was ever half so pretty as an English girl, of pure clay and
+temper,)--uglier or prettier, it is more dignified and impressive. It at
+least belongs to the domain of a lordlier, more majestic, more guiding
+and ordaining art.
+
+146. I will go back another five hundred years, and place an Egyptian
+beside the Greek divinity. The resemblance to Nature is now all but
+lost, the ruling law has become all. The lines are reduced to an easily
+counted number, and their arrangement is little more than a decorative
+sequence of pleasant curves cut in porphyry,--in the upper part of
+their contour following the outline of a woman's face in profile,
+over-crested by that of a hawk, on a kind of pedestal. But that the
+sign-engraver meant by his hawk, Immortality, and by her pedestal, the
+House or Tavern of Truth, is of little importance now to the passing
+traveler, not yet preparing to take the sarcophagus for his place of
+rest.
+
+147. How many questions are suggested to us by these transitions! Is
+beauty contrary to law, and grace attainable only through license? What
+we gain in language, shall we lose in thought? and in what we add of
+labor, more and more forget its ends?
+
+Not so.
+
+Look at this piece of Sandro's work, the Libyan Sibyl.[AH]
+
+It is as ordered and normal as the Egyptian's--as graceful and facile as
+Gainsborough's. It retains the majesty of old religion; it is invested
+with the joy of newly awakened childhood.
+
+Mind, I do not expect you--do not wish you--to enjoy Botticelli's dark
+engraving as much as Gainsborough's aerial sketch; for due comparison of
+the men, painting should be put beside painting. But there is enough
+even in this copy of the Florentine plate to show you the junction of
+the two powers in it--of prophecy, and delight.
+
+148. Will these two powers, do you suppose, be united in the same manner
+in the contemporary Northern art? That Northern school is my subject
+to-day; and yet I give you, as type of the intermediate condition
+between Egypt and England--not Holbein, but Botticelli. I am obliged to
+do this; because in the Southern art, the religious temper remains
+unconquered by the doctrines of the Reformation. Botticelli was--what
+Luther wished to be, but could not be--a reformer still believing in the
+Church: his mind is at peace; and his art, therefore, can pursue the
+delight of beauty, and yet remain prophetic. But it was far otherwise in
+Germany. There the Reformation of manners became the destruction of
+faith; and art therefore, not a prophecy, but a protest. It is the
+chief work of the greatest Protestant who ever lived,[AI] which I ask
+you to study with me to-day.
+
+149. I said that the power of engraving had developed itself during the
+introduction of three new--(practically and vitally new, that is to
+say)--elements, into the minds of men: elements which briefly may be
+expressed thus:
+
+    1. Classicism, and Literary Science.
+
+    2. Medicine, and Physical Science.[AJ]
+
+    3. Reformation, and Religious Science.
+
+And first of Classicism.
+
+You feel, do not you, in this typical work of Gainsborough's, that his
+subject as well as his picture is 'artless' in a lovely sense;--nay, not
+only artless, but ignorant, and unscientific, in a beautiful way? You
+would be afterwards remorseful, I think, and angry with yourself--seeing
+the effect produced on her face--if you were to ask this little lady to
+spell a very long word? Also, if you wished to know how many times the
+sevens go in forty-nine, you would perhaps wisely address yourself
+elsewhere. On the other hand, you do not doubt that _this_ lady[AK]
+knows very well how many times the sevens go in forty-nine, and is more
+Mistress of Arts than any of us are Masters of them.
+
+150. You have then, in the one case, a beautiful simplicity, and a
+blameless ignorance; in the other, a beautiful artfulness, and a wisdom
+which you do not dread,--or, at least, even though dreading, love. But
+you know also that we may remain in a hateful and culpable ignorance;
+and, as I fear too many of us in competitive effort feel, become
+possessed of a hateful knowledge.
+
+Ignorance, therefore, is not evil absolutely; but, innocent, may be
+lovable.
+
+Knowledge also is not good absolutely; but, guilty, may be hateful.
+
+So, therefore, when I now repeat my former statement, that the first
+main opposition between the Northern and Southern schools is in the
+simplicity of the one, and the scholarship of the other, that statement
+may imply sometimes the superiority of the North, and sometimes of the
+South. You may have a heavenly simplicity opposed to a hellish (that is
+to say, a lustful and arrogant) scholarship; or you may have a barbarous
+and presumptuous ignorance opposed to a divine and disciplined wisdom.
+Ignorance opposed to learning in both cases; but evil to good, as the
+case may be.
+
+151. For instance: the last time I was standing before Raphael's
+arabesques in the Loggias of the Vatican, I wrote down in my pocket-book
+the description, or, more modestly speaking, the inventory, of the small
+portion of that infinite wilderness of sensual fantasy which happened to
+be opposite me. It consisted of a woman's face, with serpents for hair,
+and a virgin's breasts, with stumps for arms, ending in blue
+butterflies' wings, the whole changing at the waist into a goat's body,
+which ended below in an obelisk upside-down, to the apex at the bottom
+of which were appended, by graceful chains, an altar, and two bunches of
+grapes.
+
+Now you know in a moment, by a glance at this 'design'--beautifully
+struck with free hand, and richly gradated in color,--that the master
+was familiar with a vast range of art and literature: that he knew all
+about Egyptian sphinxes, and Greek Gorgons; about Egyptian obelisks, and
+Hebrew altars; about Hermes, and Venus, and Bacchus, and satyrs, and
+goats, and grapes.
+
+You know also--or ought to know, in an instant,--that all this learning
+has done him no good; that he had better have known nothing than any of
+these things, since they were to be used by him only to such purpose;
+and that his delight in armless breasts, legless trunks, and obelisks
+upside-down, has been the last effort of his expiring sensation, in the
+grasp of corrupt and altogether victorious Death. And you have thus, in
+Gainsborough as compared with Raphael, a sweet, sacred, and living
+simplicity, set against an impure, profane, and paralyzed knowledge.
+
+152. But, next, let us consider the reverse conditions.
+
+Let us take instance of contrast between faultful and treacherous
+ignorance, and divinely pure and fruitful knowledge.
+
+In the place of honor at the end of one of the rooms of your Royal
+Academy--years ago--stood a picture by an English Academician, announced
+as a representation of Moses sustained by Aaron and Hur, during the
+discomfiture of Amalek. In the entire range of the Pentateuch, there is
+no other scene (in which the visible agents are mortal only) requiring
+so much knowledge and thought to reach even a distant approximation to
+the probabilities of the fact. One saw in a moment that the painter was
+both powerful and simple, after a sort; that he had really sought for a
+vital conception, and had originally and earnestly read his text, and
+formed his conception. And one saw also in a moment that he had chanced
+upon this subject, in reading or hearing his Bible, as he might have
+chanced on a dramatic scene accidentally in the street. That he knew
+nothing of the character of Moses,--nothing of his law,--nothing of the
+character of Aaron, nor of the nature of a priesthood,--nothing of the
+meaning of the event which he was endeavoring to represent, of the
+temper in which it would have been transacted by its agents, or of its
+relations to modern life.
+
+153. On the contrary, in the fresco of the earlier scenes in the life of
+Moses, by Sandro Botticelli, you know--not 'in a moment,' for the
+knowledge of knowledge cannot be so obtained; but in proportion to the
+discretion of your own reading, and to the care you give to the picture,
+you _may_ know,--that here is a sacredly guided and guarded learning;
+here a Master indeed, at whose feet you may sit safely, who can teach
+you, better than in words, the significance of both Moses' law and
+Aaron's ministry; and not only these, but, if he chose, could add to
+this an exposition as complete of the highest philosophies both of the
+Greek nation, and of his own; and could as easily have painted, had it
+been asked of him, Draco, or Numa, or Justinian, as the herdsman of
+Jethro.
+
+154. It is rarely that we can point to an opposition between faultful,
+because insolent, ignorance, and virtuous, because gracious, knowledge,
+so direct, and in so parallel elements, as in this instance. In general,
+the analysis is much more complex. It is intensely difficult to indicate
+the mischief of involuntary and modest ignorance, calamitous only in a
+measure; fruitful in its lower field, yet sorrowfully condemned to that
+lower field--not by sin, but fate.
+
+When first I introduced you to Bewick, we closed our too partial
+estimate of his entirely magnificent powers with one sorrowful
+concession--he could draw a pig, but not a Venus.
+
+Eminently he could so, because--which is still more sorrowfully to be
+conceded--he liked the pig best. I have put now in your educational
+series a whole galaxy of pigs by him; but, hunting all the fables
+through, I find only one Venus, and I think you will all admit that she
+is an unsatisfactory Venus.[AL] There is honest simplicity here; but you
+regret it; you miss something that you find in Holbein, much more in
+Botticelli. You see in a moment that this man knows nothing of Sphinxes,
+or Muses, or Graces, or Aphrodites; and, besides, that, knowing nothing,
+he would have no liking for them even if he saw them; but much prefers
+the style of a well-to-do English housekeeper with corkscrew curls, and
+a portly person.
+
+155. You miss something, I said, in Bewick which you find in Holbein.
+But do you suppose Holbein himself, or any other Northern painter, could
+wholly quit himself of the like accusations? I told you, in the second
+of these lectures, that the Northern temper, refined from savageness,
+and the Southern, redeemed from decay, met, in Florence. Holbein and
+Botticelli are the purest types of the two races. Holbein is a civilized
+boor; Botticelli a reanimate Greek. Holbein was polished by
+companionship with scholars and kings, but remains always a burgher of
+Augsburg in essential nature. Bewick and he are alike in temper; only
+the one is untaught, the other perfectly taught. But Botticelli _needs_
+no teaching. He is, by his birth, scholar and gentleman to the heart's
+core. Christianity itself can only inspire him, not refine him. He is as
+tried gold chased by the jeweler,--the roughest part of him is the
+outside.
+
+Now how differently must the newly recovered scholastic learning tell
+upon these two men. It is all out of Holbein's way; foreign to his
+nature, useless at the best, probably cumbrous. But Botticelli receives
+it as a child in later years recovers the forgotten dearness of a
+nursery tale; and is more himself, and again and again himself, as he
+breathes the air of Greece, and hears, in his own Italy, the lost voice
+of the Sibyl murmur again by the Avernus Lake.
+
+156. It is not, as we have seen, every one of the Southern race who can
+thus receive it. But it graces them all; is at once a part of their
+being; destroys them, if it is to destroy, the more utterly because it
+so enters into their natures. It destroys Raphael; but it graces him,
+and is a part of him. It all but destroys Mantegna; but it graces him.
+And it does not hurt Holbein, just because it does _not_ grace
+him--never is for an instant a part of him. It is with Raphael as with
+some charming young girl who has a new and beautifully made dress
+brought to her, which entirely becomes her,--so much, that in a little
+while, thinking of nothing else, she becomes _it_; and is only the
+decoration of her dress. But with Holbein it is as if you brought the
+same dress to a stout farmer's daughter who was going to dine at the
+Hall; and begged her to put it on that she might not discredit the
+company. She puts it on to please you; looks entirely ridiculous in it,
+but is not spoiled by it,--remains herself, in spite of it.
+
+157. You probably have never noticed the extreme awkwardness of Holbein
+in wearing this new dress; you would the less do so because his own
+people think him all the finer for it, as the farmer's wife would
+probably think her daughter. Dr. Woltmann, for instance, is enthusiastic
+in praise of the splendid architecture in the background of his
+Annunciation. A fine mess it must have made in the minds of simple
+German maidens, in their notion of the Virgin at home! I cannot show you
+this Annunciation; but I have under my hand one of Holbein's Bible cuts,
+of the deepest seriousness and import--his illustration of the
+Canticles, showing the Church as the bride of Christ.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+You could not find a subject requiring more tenderness, purity, or
+dignity of treatment. In this maid, symbolizing the Church, you ask for
+the most passionate humility, the most angelic beauty: "Behold, thou art
+fair, my dove." Now here is Holbein's ideal of that fairness; here is
+his "Church as the Bride."
+
+I am sorry to associate this figure in your minds, even for a moment,
+with the passages it is supposed to illustrate; but the lesson is too
+important to be omitted. Remember, Holbein represents the temper of
+Northern Reformation. He has all the nobleness of that temper, but also
+all its baseness. He represents, indeed, the revolt of German truth
+against Italian lies; but he represents also the revolt of German
+animalism against Hebrew imagination. This figure of Holbein's is
+half-way from Solomon's mystic bride, to Rembrandt's wife, sitting on
+his knee while he drinks.
+
+But the key of the question is not in this. Florentine animalism has at
+this time, also, enough to say for itself. But Florentine animalism, at
+this time, feels the joy of a gentleman, not of a churl. And a
+Florentine, whatever he does,--be it virtuous or sinful, chaste or
+lascivious, severe or extravagant,--does it with a grace.
+
+158. You think, perhaps, that Holbein's Solomon's bride is so ungraceful
+chiefly because she is overdressed, and has too many feathers and
+jewels. No; a Florentine would have put any quantity of feathers and
+jewels on her, and yet never lost her grace. You shall see him do it,
+and that to a fantastic degree, for I have an example under my hand.
+Look back, first, to Bewick's Venus (Lecture III.). You can't accuse her
+of being overdressed. She complies with every received modern principle
+of taste. Sir Joshua's precept that drapery should be "drapery, and
+nothing more," is observed more strictly even by Bewick than by Michael
+Angelo. If the absence of decoration could exalt the beauty of his
+Venus, here had been her perfection.
+
+Now look back to Plate II. (Lecture IV.), by Sandro; Venus in her
+planet, the ruling star of Florence. Anything more grotesque in
+conception, more unrestrained in fancy of ornament, you cannot find,
+even in the final days of the Renaissance. Yet Venus holds her divinity
+through all; she will become majestic to you as you gaze; and there is
+not a line of her chariot wheels, of her buskins, or of her throne,
+which you may not see was engraved by a gentleman.
+
+[Illustration: V.
+
+"Heat considered as a Mode of Motion."
+
+Florentine Natural Philosophy.]
+
+159. Again, Plate V., opposite, is a facsimile of another engraving of
+the same series--the Sun in Leo. It is even more extravagant in
+accessories than the Venus. You see the Sun's epaulets before you see
+the sun; the spiral scrolls of his chariot, and the black twisted rays
+of it, might, so far as types of form only are considered, be a design
+for some modern court-dress star, to be made in diamonds. And yet all
+this wild ornamentation is, if you will examine it, more purely Greek in
+spirit than the Apollo Belvedere.
+
+You know I have told you, again and again, that the soul of Greece is
+her veracity; that what to other nations were fables and symbolisms, to
+her became living facts--living gods. The fall of Greece was instant
+when her gods again became fables. The Apollo Belvedere is the work of a
+sculptor to whom Apollonism is merely an elegant idea on which to
+exhibit his own skill. He does not himself feel for an instant that the
+handsome man in the unintelligible attitude,[AM] with drapery hung over
+his left arm, as it would be hung to dry over a clothes-line, is the
+Power of the Sun. But the Florentine believes in Apollo with his whole
+mind, and is trying to explain his strength in every touch.
+
+For instance; I said just now, "You see the sun's epaulets before the
+sun." Well, _don't_ you, usually, as it rises? Do you not continually
+mistake a luminous cloud for it, or wonder where it is, behind one?
+Again, the face of the Apollo Belvedere is agitated by anxiety, passion,
+and pride. Is the sun's likely to be so, rising on the evil and the
+good? This Prince sits crowned and calm: look at the quiet fingers of
+the hand holding the scepter,--at the restraint of the reins merely by a
+depression of the wrist.
+
+160. You have to look carefully for those fingers holding the scepter,
+because the hand--which a great anatomist would have made so exclusively
+interesting--is here confused with the ornamentation of the arm of the
+chariot on which it rests. But look what the ornamentation is;--fruit
+and leaves, abundant, in the mouth of a cornucopia. A quite vulgar and
+meaningless ornament in ordinary renaissance work. Is it so here, think
+you? Are not the leaves and fruits of earth in the Sun's hand?[AN]
+
+You thought, perhaps, when I spoke just now of the action of the right
+hand, that less than a depression of the wrist would stop horses such as
+those. You fancy Botticelli drew them so, because he had never seen a
+horse; or because, able to draw fingers, he could not draw hoofs! How
+fine it would be to have, instead, a prancing four-in-hand, in the style
+of Piccadilly on the Derby-day, or at least horses like the real Greek
+horses of the Parthenon!
+
+Yes; and if they had had real ground to trot on, the Florentine would
+have shown you he knew how they should trot. But these have to make
+their way up the hill-side of other lands. Look to the example in your
+standard series, Hermes Eriophoros. You will find his motion among
+clouds represented precisely in this laboring, failing, half-kneeling
+attitude of limb. These forms, toiling up through the rippled sands of
+heaven, are--not horses;--they are clouds themselves, _like_ horses, but
+only a little like. Look how their hoofs lose themselves, buried in the
+ripples of cloud; it makes one think of the quicksands of Morecambe Bay.
+
+And their tails--what extraordinary tufts of tails, ending in points!
+Yes; but do you not see, nearly joining with them, what is not a horse
+tail at all; but a flame of fire, kindled at Apollo's knee? All the rest
+of the radiance about him shoots _from_ him. But this is rendered _up_
+to him. As the fruits of the earth are in one of his hands, its fire is
+in the other. And all the warmth, as well as all the light of it, are
+his.
+
+We had a little natural philosophy, gentlemen, as well as theology, in
+Florence, once upon a time.
+
+161. Natural philosophy, and also natural art, for in this the Greek
+reanimate was a nobler creature than the Greek who had died. His art had
+a wider force and warmer glow. I have told you that the first Greeks
+were distinguished from the barbarians by their simple humanity; the
+second Greeks--these Florentine Greeks reanimate--are human more
+strongly, more deeply, leaping from the Byzantine death at the call of
+Christ, "Loose him, and let him go." And there is upon them at once the
+joy of resurrection, and the solemnity of the grave.
+
+[Illustration: VI.
+
+Fairness of the Sea and Air.
+
+In VENICE and ATHENS.]
+
+162. Of this resurrection of the Greek, and the form of the tomb he had
+been buried in "those four days," I have to give you some account in the
+last lecture. I will only to-day show you an illustration of it which
+brings us back to our immediate question as to the reasons why Northern
+art could not accept classicism. When, in the closing lecture of "Aratra
+Pentelici,"[AO] I compared Florentine with Greek work, it was to point
+out to you the eager passions of the first as opposed to the formal
+legalism and proprieties of the other. Greek work, I told you, while
+truthful, was also restrained, and never but under majesty of law; while
+Gothic work was true, in the perfect law of Liberty or Franchise. And
+now I give you in facsimile (Plate VI.) the two Aphrodites thus
+compared--the Aphrodite Thalassia of the Tyrrhene seas, and the
+Aphrodite Urania of the Greek skies. You may not at first like the
+Tuscan best; and why she is the best, though both are noble, again I
+must defer explaining to next lecture. But now turn back to Bewick's
+Venus, and compare her with the Tuscan Venus of the Stars, (Plate II.);
+and then here, in Plate VI., with the Tuscan Venus of the Seas, and the
+Greek Venus of the Sky. Why is the English one vulgar? What is it, in
+the three others, which makes them, if not beautiful, at least
+refined?--every one of them 'designed' and drawn, indisputably, by a
+gentleman?
+
+I never have been so puzzled by any subject of analysis as, for these
+ten years, I have been by this. Every answer I give, however plausible
+it seems at first, fails in some way, or in some cases. But there is
+the point for you, more definitely put, I think, than in any of my
+former books;--at present, for want of time, I must leave it to your own
+thoughts.
+
+163. II. The second influence under which engraving developed itself, I
+said, was that of medicine and the physical sciences. Gentlemen, the
+most audacious, and the most valuable, statement which I have yet made
+to you on the subject of practical art, in these rooms, is that of the
+evil resulting from the study of anatomy. It is a statement so
+audacious, that not only for some time I dared not make it to you, but
+for ten years, at least, I dared not make it to myself. I saw, indeed,
+that whoever studied anatomy was in a measure injured by it; but I kept
+attributing the mischief to secondary causes. It _can't_ be this drink
+itself that poisons them, I said always. This drink is medicinal and
+strengthening: I see that it kills them, but it must be because they
+drink it cold when they have been hot, or they take something else with
+it that changes it into poison. The drink itself _must_ be good. Well,
+gentlemen, I found out the drink itself to be poison at last, by the
+breaking of my choicest Venice glass. I could not make out what it was
+that had killed Tintoret, and laid it long to the charge of chiaroscuro.
+It was only after my thorough study of his Paradise, in 1870, that I
+gave up this idea, finding the chiaroscuro, which I had thought
+exaggerated, was, in all original and undarkened passages, beautiful and
+most precious. And then at last I got hold of the true clue: "Il disegno
+di Michel Agnolo." And the moment I had dared to accuse that, it
+explained everything; and I saw that the betraying demons of Italian
+art, led on by Michael Angelo, had been, not pleasure, but knowledge;
+not indolence, but ambition; and not love, but horror.
+
+164. But when first I ventured to tell you this, I did not know, myself,
+the fact of all most conclusive for its confirmation. It will take me a
+little while to put it before you in its total force, and I must first
+ask your attention to a minor point. In one of the smaller rooms of the
+Munich Gallery is Holbein's painting of St. Margaret and St. Elizabeth
+of Hungary,--standard of his early religious work. Here is a photograph
+from the St. Elizabeth; and, in the same frame, a French lithograph of
+it. I consider it one of the most important pieces of comparison I have
+arranged for you, showing you at a glance the difference between true
+and false sentiment. Of that difference, generally, we cannot speak
+to-day, but one special result of it you are to observe;--the omission,
+in the French drawing, of Holbein's daring representation of disease,
+which is one of the vital honors of the picture. Quite one of the chief
+strengths of St. Elizabeth, in the Roman Catholic view, was in the
+courage of her dealing with disease, chiefly leprosy. Now observe, I say
+_Roman_ Catholic view, very earnestly just now; I am not at all sure
+that it is so in a Catholic view--that is to say, in an eternally
+Christian and Divine view. And this doubt, very nearly now a certainty,
+only came clearly into my mind the other day after many and many a
+year's meditation on it. I had read with great reverence all the
+beautiful stories about Christ's appearing as a leper, and the like; and
+had often pitied and rebuked myself alternately for my intense dislike
+and horror of disease. I am writing at this moment within fifty yards of
+the grave of St. Francis, and the story of the likeness of his feelings
+to mine had a little comforted me, and the tradition of his conquest of
+them again humiliated me; and I was thinking very gravely of this, and
+of the parallel instance of Bishop Hugo of Lincoln, always desiring to
+do service to the dead, as opposed to my own unmitigated and
+Louis-Quinze-like horror of funerals;--when by chance, in the cathedral
+of Palermo, a new light was thrown for me on the whole matter.
+
+165. I was drawing the tomb of Frederick II., which is shut off by a
+grating from the body of the church; and I had, in general, quite an
+unusual degree of quiet and comfort at my work. But sometimes it was
+paralyzed by the unconscious interference of one of the men employed in
+some minor domestic services about the church. When he had nothing to
+do, he used to come and seat himself near my grating, not to look at my
+work, (the poor wretch had no eyes, to speak of,) nor in any way
+meaning to be troublesome; but there was his habitual seat. His nose had
+been carried off by the most loathsome of diseases; there were two vivid
+circles of scarlet round his eyes; and as he sat, he announced his
+presence every quarter of a minute (if otherwise I could have forgotten
+it) by a peculiarly disgusting, loud, and long expectoration. On the
+second or third day, just I had forced myself into some forgetfulness of
+him, and was hard at my work, I was startled from it again by the
+bursting out of a loud and cheerful conversation close to me; and on
+looking round, saw a lively young fledgling of a priest, seventeen or
+eighteen years old, in the most eager and spirited chat with the man in
+the chair. He talked, laughed, and spat, himself, companionably, in the
+merriest way, for a quarter of an hour; evidently without feeling the
+slightest disgust, or being made serious for an instant, by the aspect
+of the destroyed creature before him.
+
+166. His own face was simply that of the ordinary vulgar type of
+thoughtless young Italians, rather beneath than above the usual
+standard; and I was certain, as I watched him, that he was not at all my
+superior, but very much my inferior, in the coolness with which he
+beheld what was to me so dreadful. I was positive that he could look
+this man in the face, precisely because he could _not_ look,
+discerningly, at any beautiful or noble thing; and that the reason I
+dared not, was because I had, spiritually, as much better eyes than the
+priest, as, bodily, than his companion.
+
+Having got so much of clear evidence given me on the matter, it was
+driven home for me a week later, as I landed on the quay of Naples.
+Almost the first thing that presented itself to me was the sign of a
+traveling theatrical company, displaying the principal scene of the
+drama to be enacted on their classical stage. Fresh from the theater of
+Taormina, I was curious to see the subject of the Neapolitan popular
+drama. It was the capture, by the police, of a man and his wife who
+lived by boiling children. One section of the police was coming in,
+armed to the teeth, through the passage; another section of the police,
+armed to the teeth, and with high feathers in its caps, was coming up
+through a trap-door. In fine dramatic unconsciousness to the last
+moment, like the clown in a pantomime, the child-boiler was represented
+as still industriously chopping up a child, pieces of which, ready for
+the pot, lay here and there on the table in the middle of the picture.
+The child-boiler's wife, however, just as she was taking the top off the
+pot to put the meat in, had caught a glimpse of the foremost policeman,
+and stopped, as much in rage as in consternation.
+
+167. Now it is precisely the same feeling, or want of feeling, in the
+lower Italian (nor always in the lower classes only) which makes him
+demand the kind of subject for his secular drama; and the Crucifixion
+and Pieta for his religious drama. The only part of Christianity he can
+enjoy is its horror; and even the saint and saintess are not always
+denying themselves severely, either by the contemplation of torture, or
+the companionship with disease.
+
+Nevertheless, we must be cautious, on the other hand, to allow full
+value to the endurance, by tender and delicate persons, of what is
+really loathsome or distressful to them in the service of others; and I
+think this picture of Holbein's indicative of the exact balance and
+rightness of his own mind in this matter, and therefore of his power to
+conceive a true saint also. He had to represent St. Catherine's chief
+effort;--he paints her ministering to the sick, and, among them, is a
+leper; and finding it thus his duty to paint leprosy, he courageously
+himself studies it from the life. Not to insist on its horror; but to
+assert it, to the needful point of fact, which he does with medical
+accuracy.
+
+Now here is just a case in which science, in a subordinate degree, is
+really required for a spiritual and moral purpose. And you find Holbein
+does not shrink from it even in this extreme case in which it is most
+painful.
+
+168. If, therefore, you _do_ find him in other cases not using it, you
+may be sure he knew it to be unnecessary.
+
+Now it may be disputable whether in order to draw a living Madonna, one
+needs to know how many ribs she has; but it would have seemed
+indisputable that in order to draw a skeleton, one must know how many
+ribs _it_ has.
+
+Holbein is par excellence the draughtsman of skeletons. His painted
+Dance of Death was, and his engraved Dance of Death is, principal of
+such things, without any comparison or denial. He draws skeleton after
+skeleton, in every possible gesture; but never so much as counts their
+ribs! He neither knows nor cares how many ribs a skeleton has. There are
+always enough to rattle.
+
+Monstrous, you think, in impudence,--Holbein for his carelessness, and I
+for defending him! Nay, I triumph in him; nothing has ever more pleased
+me than this grand negligence. Nobody wants to know how many ribs a
+skeleton has, any more than how many bars a gridiron has, so long as the
+one can breathe, and the other broil; and still less, when the breath
+and the fire are both out.
+
+169. But is it only of the bones, think you, that Holbein is
+careless?[AP] Nay, incredible though it may seem to you,--but, to me,
+explanatory at once of much of his excellence,--he did not know anatomy
+at all! I told you in my Preface,[AQ] already quoted, Holbein studies
+the face first, the body secondarily; but I had no idea, myself, how
+completely he had refused the venomous science of his day. I showed you
+a dead Christ of his, long ago. Can you match it with your academy
+drawings, think you? And yet he did not, and would not, know anatomy.
+_He_ would not; but Duerer would, and did:--went hotly into it--wrote
+books upon it, and upon 'proportions of the human body,' etc., etc., and
+all your modern recipes for painting flesh. How did his studies prosper
+his art?
+
+People are always talking of his Knight and Death, and his Melancholia,
+as if those were his principal works. They are his characteristic ones,
+and show what he might have been _without_ his anatomy; but they were
+mere by-play compared to his Greater Fortune, and Adam and Eve. Look at
+these. Here is his full energy displayed; here are both male and female
+forms drawn with perfect knowledge of their bones and muscles, and modes
+of action and digestion,--and I hope you are pleased.
+
+But it is not anatomy only that Master Albert studies. He has a taste
+for optics also; and knows all about refraction and reflection. What
+with his knowledge of the skull inside, and the vitreous lens outside,
+if any man in the world is to draw an eye, here's the man to do it,
+surely! With a hand which can give lessons to John Bellini, and a care
+which would fain do all so that it can't be done better, and
+acquaintance with every crack in the cranium, and every humor in the
+lens,--if we can't draw an eye, we should just like to know who can!
+thinks Albert.
+
+So having to engrave the portrait of Melanchthon, instead of looking at
+Melanchthon as ignorant Holbein would have been obliged to do,--wise
+Albert looks at the room window; and finds it has four cross-bars in it,
+and knows scientifically that the light on Melanchthon's eye must be a
+reflection of the window with its four bars--and engraves it so,
+accordingly; and who shall dare to say, now, it isn't like Melanchthon?
+
+Unfortunately, however, it isn't, nor like any other person in his
+senses; but like a madman looking at somebody who disputes his hobby.
+While in this drawing of Holbein's, where a dim gray shadow leaves a
+mere crumb of white paper,--accidentally it seems, for all the fine
+scientific reflection,--behold, it is an eye indeed, and of a noble
+creature.
+
+170. What is the reason? do you ask me; and is all the common teaching
+about generalization of details true, then?
+
+No; not a syllable of it is true. Holbein is right, not because he draws
+more generally, but more truly, than Duerer. Duerer draws what he knows is
+there; but Holbein, only what he sees. And, as I have told you often
+before, the really scientific artist is he who not only asserts bravely
+what he _does_ see, but confesses honestly what he does _not_. You must
+not draw all the hairs in an eyelash; not because it is sublime to
+generalize them, but because it is impossible to see them. How many
+hairs there are, a sign painter or anatomist may count; but how few of
+them you can see, it is only the utmost masters, Carpaccio, Tintoret,
+Reynolds, and Velasquez, who count, or know.
+
+171. Such was the effect, then, of his science upon Duerer's ideal of
+beauty, and skill in portraiture. What effect had it on the temper and
+quantity of his work, as compared with poor ignorant Holbein's! You have
+only three portraits, by Duerer, of the great men of his time, and those
+bad ones; while he toils his soul out to draw the hoofs of satyrs, the
+bristles of swine, and the distorted aspects of base women and vicious
+men.
+
+What, on the contrary, has ignorant Holbein done for you? Shakespeare
+and he divide between them, by word and look, the Story of England under
+Henry and Elizabeth.
+
+172. Of the effect of science on the art of Mantegna and Marc Antonio,
+(far more deadly than on Duerer's,) I must tell you in a future
+lecture;--the effect of it on their minds, I must partly refer to now,
+in passing to the third head of my general statement--the influence of
+new Theology. For Duerer and Mantegna, chiefly because of their science,
+forfeited their place, not only as painters of men, but as servants of
+God. Neither of them has left one completely noble or completely
+didactic picture; while Holbein and Botticelli, in consummate pieces of
+art, led the way before the eyes of all men, to the purification of
+their Church and land.
+
+173. III. But the need of reformation presented itself to these two men
+last named on entirely different terms.
+
+To Holbein, when the word of the Catholic Church proved false, and its
+deeds bloody; when he saw it selling permission of sin in his native
+Augsburg, and strewing the ashes of its enemies on the pure Alpine
+waters of Constance, what refuge was there for _him_ in more ancient
+religion? Shall he worship Thor again, and mourn over the death of
+Balder? He reads Nature in her desolate and narrow truth, and she
+teaches him the Triumph of Death.
+
+But, for Botticelli, the grand gods are old, are immortal. The priests
+may have taught falsely the story of the Virgin;--did they not also lie,
+in the name of Artemis, at Ephesus;--in the name of Aphrodite, at
+Cyprus?--but shall, therefore, Chastity or Love be dead, or the full
+moon paler over Arno? Saints of Heaven and Gods of Earth!--shall _these_
+perish because vain men speak evil of them! Let _us_ speak good forever,
+and grave, as on the rock, for ages to come, the glory of Beauty, and
+the triumph of Faith.
+
+174. Holbein had bitterer task.
+
+Of old, the one duty of the painter had been to exhibit the virtues of
+this life, and hopes of the life to come. Holbein had to show the vices
+of this life, and to obscure the hope of the future. "Yes, we walk
+through the valley of the shadow of death, and fear all evil, for Thou
+art not with us, and Thy rod and Thy staff comfort us not." He does not
+choose this task. It is thrust upon him,--just as fatally as the burial
+of the dead is in a plague-struck city. These are the things he sees,
+and must speak. He will not become a better artist thereby; no drawing
+of supreme beauty, or beautiful things, will be possible to him. Yet we
+cannot say he ought to have done anything else, nor can we praise him
+specially in doing this. It is his fate; the fate of all the bravest in
+that day.
+
+[Illustration: THE CHILD'S BEDTIME.
+
+(Fig. 5) Facsimile from Holbein's woodcut.]
+
+175. For instance, there is no scene about which a shallow and feeble
+painter would have been more sure to adopt the commonplaces of the creed
+of his time than the death of a child,--chiefly, and most of all, the
+death of a country child,--a little thing fresh from the cottage and the
+field. Surely for such an one, angels will wait by its sick bed, and
+rejoice as they bear its soul away; and over its shroud flowers will be
+strewn, and the birds will sing by its grave. So your common
+sentimentalist would think, and paint. Holbein sees the facts, as they
+verily are, up to the point when vision ceases. He speaks, then, no
+more.
+
+The country laborer's cottage--the rain coming through its roof, the
+clay crumbling from its partitions, the fire lighted with a few chips
+and sticks on a raised piece of the mud floor,--such dais as can be
+contrived, for use, not for honor. The damp wood sputters; the smoke,
+stopped by the roof, though the rain is not, coils round again, and
+down. But the mother can warm the child's supper of bread and milk
+so--holding the pan by the long handle; and on mud floor though it be,
+they are happy,--she, and her child, and its brother,--if only they
+could be left so. They shall not be left so: the young thing must leave
+them--will never need milk warmed for it any more. It would fain
+stay,--sees no angels--feels only an icy grip on its hand, and that it
+cannot stay. Those who loved it shriek and tear their hair in vain,
+amazed in grief. 'Oh, little one, must you lie out in the fields then,
+not even under this poor torn roof of thy mother's to-night?'
+
+[Illustration: "HE THAT HATH EARS TO HEAR, LET HIM HEAR."
+
+(Fig. 6) Facsimile from Holbein's woodcut.]
+
+176. Again: there was not in the old creed any subject more definitely
+and constantly insisted on than the death of a miser. He had been happy,
+the old preachers thought, till then: but his hour has come; and the
+black covetousness of hell is awake and watching; the sharp harpy claws
+will clutch his soul out of his mouth, and scatter his treasure for
+others. So the commonplace preacher and painter taught. Not so Holbein.
+The devil want to snatch his soul, indeed! Nay, he never _had_ a soul,
+but of the devil's giving. His misery to begin on his death-bed! Nay, he
+had never an unmiserable hour of life. The fiend is with him now,--a
+paltry, abortive fiend, with no breath even to blow hot with. He
+supplies the hell-blast _with a machine_. It is winter, and the rich man
+has his furred cloak and cap, thick and heavy; the beggar, bare-headed
+to beseech him, skin and rags hanging about him together, touches his
+shoulder, but all in vain; there is other business in hand. More haggard
+than the beggar himself, wasted and palsied, the rich man counts with
+his fingers the gain of the years to come.
+
+But of those years, infinite that are to be, Holbein says nothing. 'I
+know not; I see not. This only I see, on this very winter's day, the low
+pale stumbling-block at your feet, the altogether by you unseen and
+forgotten Death. You shall not pass _him_ by on the other side; here is
+a fasting figure in skin and bone, at last, that will stop you; and for
+all the hidden treasures of earth, here is your spade: dig now, and find
+them.'
+
+177. I have said that Holbein was condemned to teach these things. He
+was not happy in teaching them, nor thanked for teaching them. Nor was
+Botticelli for his lovelier teaching. But they both could do no
+otherwise. They lived in truth and steadfastness; and with both, in
+their marvelous design, veracity is the beginning of invention, and love
+its end.
+
+I have but time to show you, in conclusion, how this affectionate
+self-forgetfulness protects Holbein from the chief calamity of the
+German temper, vanity, which is at the root of all Duerer's weakness.
+Here is a photograph of Holbein's portrait of Erasmus, and a fine proof
+of Duerer's. In Holbein's, the face leads everything; and the most lovely
+qualities of the face lead in that. The cloak and cap are perfectly
+painted, just because you look at them neither more nor less than you
+would have looked at the cloak in reality. You don't say, 'How
+brilliantly they are touched,' as you would with Rembrandt; nor 'How
+gracefully they are neglected,' as you would with Gainsborough; nor 'How
+exquisitely they are shaded,' as you would with Lionardo; nor 'How
+grandly they are composed,' as you would with Titian. You say only,
+'Erasmus is surely there; and what a pleasant sight!' You don't think of
+Holbein at all. He has not even put in the minutest letter H, that I can
+see, to remind you of him. Drops his H's, I regret to say, often enough.
+'My hand should be enough for you; what matters my name?' But now, look
+at Duerer's. The very first thing you see, and at any distance, is this
+great square tablet with
+
+    "The image of Erasmus, drawn from the life by Albert Duerer,
+        1526,"
+
+and a great straddling A.D. besides. Then you see a cloak, and a table,
+and a pot, with flowers in it, and a heap of books with all their
+leaves and all their clasps, and all the little bits of leather gummed
+in to mark the places; and last of all you see Erasmus's face; and when
+you do see it, the most of it is wrinkles.
+
+All egotism and insanity, this, gentlemen. Hard words to use; but not
+too hard to define the faults which rendered so much of Duerer's great
+genius abortive, and to this day paralyze, among the details of a
+lifeless and ambitious precision, the student, no less than the artist,
+of German blood. For too many an Erasmus, too many a Duerer, among them,
+the world is all cloak and clasp, instead of face or book; and the first
+object of their lives is to engrave their initials.
+
+178. For us, in England, not even so much is at present to be hoped; and
+yet, singularly enough, it is more our modesty, unwisely submissive,
+than our vanity, which has destroyed our English school of engraving.
+
+At the bottom of the pretty line engravings which used to represent,
+characteristically, our English skill, one saw always _two_
+inscriptions. At the left-hand corner, "Drawn by--so-and-so;" at the
+right-hand corner, "Engraved by--so-and-so." Only under the worst and
+cheapest plates--for the Stationers' Almanack, or the like--one saw
+sometimes, "Drawn and engraved by--so-and-so," which meant nothing more
+than that the publisher would not go to the expense of an artist, and
+that the engraver haggled through as he could. (One fortunate exception,
+gentlemen, you have in the old drawings for your Oxford Almanack, though
+the publishers, I have no doubt, even in that case, employed the
+cheapest artist they could find.[AR]) But in general, no engraver
+thought himself able to draw; and no artist thought it his business to
+engrave.
+
+179. But the fact that this and the following lecture are on the subject
+of design in engraving, implies of course that in the work we have to
+examine, it was often the engraver himself who designed, and as often
+the artist who engraved.
+
+And you will observe that the only engravings which bear imperishable
+value are, indeed, in this kind. It is true that, in wood-cutting, both
+Duerer and Holbein, as in our own days Leech and Tenniel, have workmen
+under them who can do all they want. But in metal cutting it is not so.
+For, as I have told you, in metal cutting, ultimate perfection of Line
+has to be reached; and it can be reached by none but a master's hand;
+nor by his, unless in the very moment and act of designing. Never,
+unless under the vivid first force of imagination and intellect, can the
+Line have its full value. And for this high reason, gentlemen, that
+paradox which perhaps seemed to you so daring, is nevertheless deeply
+and finally true, that while a woodcut may be laboriously finished, a
+grand engraving on metal must be comparatively incomplete. For it must
+be done, throughout, with the full fire of temper in it, visibly
+governing its lines, as the wind does the fibers of cloud.
+
+180. The value hitherto attached to Rembrandt's etchings, and others
+imitating them, depends on a true instinct in the public mind for this
+virtue of line. But etching is an indolent and blundering method at the
+best; and I do not doubt that you will one day be grateful for the
+severe disciplines of drawing required in these schools, in that they
+will have enabled you to know what a line may be, driven by a master's
+chisel on silver or marble, following, and fostering as it follows, the
+instantaneous strength of his determined thought.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[AG] If you paint a bottle only to amuse the spectator by showing him
+how like a painting may be to a bottle, you cannot be considered, in
+art-philosophy, as a designer. But if you paint the cork flying out of
+the bottle, and the contents arriving in an arch at the mouth of a
+recipient glass, you are so far forth a designer or signer; probably
+meaning to express certain ultimate facts respecting, say, the
+hospitable disposition of the landlord of the house; but at all events
+representing the bottle and glass in a designed, and not merely natural,
+manner. Not merely natural--nay, in some sense non-natural, or
+supernatural. And all great artists show both this fantastic condition
+of mind in their work, and show that it has arisen out of a
+communicative or didactic purpose. They are the Signpainters of God.
+
+I have added this note to the lecture in copying my memoranda of it here
+at Assisi, June 9th, being about to begin work in the Tavern, or
+Tabernaculum, of the Lower Church, with its variously significant four
+great 'signs.'
+
+[AH] Plate X., Lecture VI.
+
+[AI] I do not mean the greatest teacher of reformed faith; but the
+greatest protestant against faith unreformed.
+
+[AJ] It has become the permitted fashion among modern mathematicians,
+chemists, and apothecaries, to call themselves 'scientific men,' as
+opposed to theologians, poets, and artists. They know their sphere to be
+a separate one; but their ridiculous notion of its being a peculiarly
+scientific one ought not to be allowed in our Universities. There is a
+science of Morals, a science of History, a science of Grammar, a science
+of Music, and a science of Painting; and all these are quite beyond
+comparison higher fields for human intellect, and require accuracies of
+intenser observation, than either chemistry, electricity, or geology.
+
+[AK] The Cumaean Sibyl, Plate VII., Lecture VI.
+
+[AL] Lecture III., Sec. 101.
+
+[AM] I read somewhere, lately, a new and very ingenious theory about the
+attitude of the Apollo Belvedere, proving, to the author's satisfaction,
+that the received notion about watching the arrow was all a mistake. The
+paper proved, at all events, one thing--namely, the statement in the
+text. For an attitude which has been always hitherto taken to mean one
+thing, and is plausibly asserted now to mean another, must be in itself
+unintelligible.
+
+[AN] It may be asked, why not corn also? Because that belongs to Ceres,
+who is equally one of the great gods.
+
+[AO] "Aratra Pentelici," Sec. 181.
+
+[AP] Or inventive! See Woltmann, p. 267. "The shinbone, or the lower
+part of the arm, exhibits only one bone, while the upper arm and thigh
+are often allowed the luxury of two!"
+
+[AQ] See ante, Sec. 141. The "preface" is that to "The Eagle's Nest."
+
+[AR] The drawings were made by Turner, and are now among the chief
+treasures of the Oxford Galleries. I ought to add some notice of Hogarth
+to this lecture in the Appendix; but fear I shall have no time: besides,
+though I have profound respect for Hogarth, as, in literature, I have
+for Fielding, I can't criticise them, because I know nothing of their
+subjects.
+
+
+
+
+                         LECTURE VI.
+
+       DESIGN IN THE FLORENTINE SCHOOLS OF ENGRAVING.
+
+
+181. In the first of these lectures, I stated to you their subject, as
+the investigation of the engraved work of a group of men, to whom
+engraving, as a means of popular address, was above all precious,
+because their art was distinctively didactic.
+
+Some of my hearers must be aware that, of late years, the assertion that
+art should be didactic has been clamorously and violently derided by the
+countless crowd of artists who have nothing to represent, and of writers
+who have nothing to say; and that the contrary assertion--that art
+consists only in pretty colors and fine words,--is accepted, readily
+enough, by a public which rarely pauses to look at a picture with
+attention, or read a sentence with understanding.
+
+182. Gentlemen, believe me, there never was any great advancing art yet,
+nor can be, without didactic purpose. The leaders of the strong schools
+are, and must be always, either teachers of theology, or preachers of
+the moral law. I need not tell you that it was as teachers of theology
+on the walls of the Vatican that the masters with whose names you are
+most familiar obtained their perpetual fame. But however great their
+fame, you have not practically, I imagine, ever been materially assisted
+in your preparation for the schools either of philosophy or divinity by
+Raphael's 'School of Athens,' by Raphael's 'Theology,'--or by Michael
+Angelo's 'Judgment.' My task, to-day, is to set before you some part of
+the design of the first Master of the works in the Sistine Chapel; and I
+believe that, from his teaching, you will, even in the hour which I ask
+you now to give, learn what may be of true use to you in all your future
+labor, whether in Oxford or elsewhere.
+
+183. You have doubtless, in the course of these lectures, been
+occasionally surprised by my speaking of Holbein and Sandro Botticelli,
+as Reformers, in the same tone of respect, and with the same implied
+assertion of their intellectual power and agency, with which it is usual
+to speak of Luther and Savonarola. You have been accustomed, indeed, to
+hear painting and sculpture spoken of as supporting or enforcing Church
+doctrine; but never as reforming or chastising it. Whether Protestant or
+Roman Catholic, you have admitted what in the one case you held to be
+the abuse of painting in the furtherance of idolatry,--in the other, its
+amiable and exalting ministry to the feebleness of faith. But neither
+has recognized,--the Protestant his ally,--or the Catholic his enemy, in
+the far more earnest work of the great painters of the fifteenth
+century. The Protestant was, in most cases, too vulgar to understand the
+aid offered to him by painting; and in all cases too terrified to
+believe in it. He drove the gift-bringing Greek with imprecations from
+his sectarian fortress, or received him within it only on the condition
+that he should speak no word of religion there.
+
+184. On the other hand, the Catholic, in most cases too indolent to
+read, and, in all, too proud to dread, the rebuke of the reforming
+painters, confused them with the crowd of his old flatterers, and little
+noticed their altered language or their graver brow. In a little while,
+finding they had ceased to be amusing, he effaced their works, not as
+dangerous, but as dull; and recognized only thenceforward, as art, the
+innocuous bombast of Michael Angelo, and fluent efflorescence of
+Bernini. But when you become more intimately and impartially acquainted
+with the history of the Reformation, you will find that, as surely and
+earnestly as Memling and Giotto strove in the north and south to set
+forth and exalt the Catholic faith, so surely and earnestly did Holbein
+and Botticelli strive, in the north, to chastise, and, in the south, to
+revive it. In what manner, I will try to-day briefly to show you.
+
+185. I name these two men as the reforming leaders: there were many,
+rank and file, who worked in alliance with Holbein; with Botticelli, two
+great ones, Lippi and Perugino. But both of these had so much pleasure
+in their own pictorial faculty, that they strove to keep quiet, and out
+of harm's way,--involuntarily manifesting themselves sometimes, however;
+and not in the wisest manner. Lippi's running away with a novice was not
+likely to be understood as a step in Church reformation correspondent to
+Luther's marriage.[AS] Nor have Protestant divines, even to this day,
+recognized the real meaning of the reports of Perugino's 'infidelity.'
+Botticelli, the pupil of the one, and the companion of the other, held
+the truths they taught him through sorrow as well as joy; and he is the
+greatest of the reformers, because he preached without blame; though the
+least known, because he died without victory.
+
+I had hoped to be able to lay before you some better biography of him
+than the traditions of Vasari, of which I gave a short abstract some
+time back in Fors Clavigera (Letter XXII.); but as yet I have only added
+internal evidence to the popular story, the more important points of
+which I must review briefly. It will not waste your time if I
+read,--instead of merely giving you reference to,--the passages on which
+I must comment.
+
+186. "His father, Mariano Filipepi, a Florentine citizen, brought him up
+with care, and caused him to be instructed in all such things as are
+usually taught to children before they choose a calling. But although
+the boy readily acquired whatever he wished to learn, yet was he
+constantly discontented; neither would he take any pleasure in reading,
+writing, or accounts, insomuch that the father, disturbed by the
+eccentric habits of his son, turned him over in despair to a gossip of
+his, called Botticello, who was a goldsmith, and considered a very
+competent master of his art, to the intent that the boy might learn the
+same."
+
+"He took no pleasure in reading, writing, nor accounts"! You will find
+the same thing recorded of Cimabue; but it is more curious when stated
+of a man whom I cite to you as typically a gentleman and a scholar. But
+remember, in those days, though there were not so many entirely correct
+books issued by the Religious Tract Society for boys to read, there were
+a great many more pretty things in the world for boys to see. The Val
+d'Arno was Pater-noster Row to purpose; their Father's Row, with books
+of His writing on the mountain shelves. And the lad takes to looking at
+things, and thinking about them, instead of reading about them,--which I
+commend to you also, as much the more scholarly practice of the two. To
+the end, though he knows all about the celestial hierarchies, he is not
+strong in his letters, nor in his dialect. I asked Mr. Tyrwhitt to help
+me through with a bit of his Italian the other day. Mr. Tyrwhitt could
+only help me by suggesting that it was "Botticelli for so-and-so." And
+one of the minor reasons which induced me so boldly to attribute these
+sibyls to him, instead of Bandini, is that the lettering is so ill done.
+The engraver would assuredly have had his lettering all right,--or at
+least neat. Botticelli blunders through it, scratches impatiently out
+when he goes wrong: and as I told you there's no repentance in the
+engraver's trade, leaves all the blunders visible.
+
+187. I may add one fact bearing on this question lately communicated to
+me.[AT] In the autumn of 1872 I possessed myself of an Italian book of
+pen drawings, some, I have no doubt, by Mantegna in his youth, others by
+Sandro himself. In examining these, I was continually struck by the
+comparatively feeble and blundering way in which the titles were
+written, while all the rest of the handling was really superb; and still
+more surprised when, on the sleeves and hem of the robe of one of the
+principal figures of women, ("Helena rapita da Paris,") I found what
+seemed to be meant for inscriptions, intricately embroidered; which
+nevertheless, though beautifully drawn, I could not read. In copying
+Botticelli's Zipporah this spring, I found the border of her robe
+wrought with characters of the same kind, which a young painter, working
+with me, who already knows the minor secrets of Italian art better than
+I,[AU] assures me are letters,--and letters of a language hitherto
+undeciphered.
+
+188. "There was at that time a close connection and almost constant
+intercourse between the goldsmiths and the painters, wherefore Sandro,
+who possessed considerable ingenuity, and was strongly disposed to the
+arts of design, became enamored of painting, and resolved to devote
+himself entirely to that vocation. He acknowledged his purpose at once
+to his father; and the latter, who knew the force of his inclination,
+took him accordingly to the Carmelite monk, Fra Filippo, who was a most
+excellent painter of that time, with whom he placed him to study the
+art, as Sandro himself had desired. Devoting himself thereupon entirely
+to the vocation he had chosen, Sandro so closely followed the
+directions, and imitated the manner, of his master, that Fra Filippo
+conceived a great love for him, and instructed him so effectually, that
+Sandro rapidly attained to such a degree in art as none would have
+predicted for him."
+
+I have before pointed out to you the importance of training by the
+goldsmith. Sandro got more good of it, however, than any of the other
+painters so educated,--being enabled by it to use gold for light to
+color, in a glowing harmony never reached with equal perfection, and
+rarely attempted, in the later schools. To the last, his paintings are
+partly treated as work in niello; and he names himself, in perpetual
+gratitude, from this first artisan master. Nevertheless, the fortunate
+fellow finds, at the right moment, another, even more to his mind, and
+is obedient to him through his youth, as to the other through his
+childhood. And this master loves him; and instructs him 'so
+effectually,'--in grinding colors, do you suppose, only; or in laying of
+lines only; or in anything more than these?
+
+189. I will tell you what Lippi must have taught any boy whom he loved.
+First, humility, and to live in joy and peace, injuring no man--if such
+innocence might be. Nothing is so manifest in every face by him, as its
+gentleness and rest. Secondly, to finish his work perfectly, and in such
+temper that the angels might say of it--not he himself--'Iste perfecit
+opus.' Do you remember what I told you in the Eagle's Nest (Sec. 53), that
+true humility was in hoping that angels might sometimes admire _our_
+work; not in hoping that we should ever be able to admire _theirs_?
+Thirdly,--a little thing it seems, but was a great one,--love of
+flowers. No one draws such lilies or such daisies as Lippi. Botticelli
+beat him afterwards in roses, but never in lilies. Fourthly, due honor
+for classical tradition. Lippi is the only religious painter who dresses
+John Baptist in the camelskin, as the Greeks dressed Heracles in the
+lion's--over the head. Lastly, and chiefly of all,--Le Pere Hyacinthe
+taught his pupil certain views about the doctrine of the Church, which
+the boy thought of more deeply than his tutor, and that by a great deal;
+and Master Sandro presently got himself into such question for painting
+heresy, that if he had been as hot-headed as he was true-hearted, he
+would soon have come to bad end by the tar-barrel. But he is so sweet
+and so modest, that nobody is frightened; so clever, that everybody is
+pleased: and at last, actually the Pope sends for him to paint his own
+private chapel,--where the first thing my young gentleman does, mind
+you, is to paint the devil in a monk's dress, tempting Christ! The
+sauciest thing, out and out, done in the history of the Reformation, it
+seems to me; yet so wisely done, and with such true respect otherwise
+shown for what was sacred in the Church, that the Pope didn't mind: and
+all went on as merrily as marriage bells.
+
+190. I have anticipated, however, in telling you this, the proper course
+of his biography, to which I now return.
+
+"While still a youth he painted the figure of Fortitude, among those
+pictures of the Virtues which Antonio and Pietro Pollaiuolo were
+executing in the Mercatanzia, or Tribunal of Commerce, in Florence. In
+Santo Spirito, a church of the same city, he painted a picture for the
+chapel of the Bardi family: this work he executed with great diligence,
+and finished it very successfully, depicting certain olive and palm
+trees therein with extraordinary care."
+
+It is by a beautiful chance that the first work of his, specified by his
+Italian biographer, should be the Fortitude.[AV] Note also what is said
+of his tree drawing.
+
+"Having, in consequence of this work, obtained much credit and
+reputation, Sandro was appointed by the Guild of Porta Santa Maria to
+paint a picture in San Marco, the subject of which is the Coronation of
+Our Lady, who is surrounded by a choir of angels--the whole extremely
+well designed, and finished by the artist with infinite care. He
+executed various works in the Medici Palace for the elder Lorenzo, more
+particularly a figure of Pallas on a shield wreathed with vine branches,
+whence flames are proceeding: this he painted of the size of life. A San
+Sebastiano was also among the most remarkable of the works executed for
+Lorenzo. In the church of Santa Maria Maggiore, in Florence, is a Pieta,
+with small figures, by this master: this is a very beautiful work. For
+different houses in various parts of the city Sandro painted many
+pictures of a round form, with numerous figures of women undraped. Of
+these there are still two examples at Castello, a villa of the Duke
+Cosimo,--one representing the birth of Venus, who is borne to earth by
+the Loves and Zephyrs; the second also presenting the figure of Venus
+crowned with flowers by the Graces: she is here intended to denote the
+Spring, and the allegory is expressed by the painter with extraordinary
+grace."
+
+Our young Reformer enters, it seems, on a very miscellaneous course of
+study; the Coronation of Our Lady; St. Sebastian; Pallas in
+vine-leaves; and Venus,--without fig-leaves. Not wholly Calvinistic, Fra
+Filippo's teaching seems to have been! All the better for the boy--being
+such a boy as he was: but I cannot in this lecture enter farther into my
+reasons for saying so.
+
+191. Vasari, however, has shot far ahead in telling us of this picture
+of the Spring, which is one of Botticelli's completest works. Long
+before he was able to paint Greek nymphs, he had done his best in
+idealism of greater spirits; and, while yet quite a youth, painted, at
+Castello, the Assumption of Our Lady, with "the patriarchs, the
+prophets, the apostles, the evangelists, the martyrs, the confessors,
+the doctors, the virgins, and the hierarchies!"
+
+Imagine this subject proposed to a young, (or even old) British Artist,
+for his next appeal to public sensation at the Academy! But do you
+suppose that the young British artist is wiser and more civilized than
+Lippi's scholar, because his only idea of a patriarch is of a man with a
+long beard; of a doctor, the M.D. with the brass plate over the way; and
+of a virgin, Miss ---- of the ---- theater?
+
+Not that even Sandro was able, according to Vasari's report, to conduct
+the entire design himself. The proposer of the subject assisted him; and
+they made some modifications in the theology, which brought them both
+into trouble--so early did Sandro's innovating work begin, into which
+subjects our gossiping friend waives unnecessary inquiry, as follows.
+
+"But although this picture is exceedingly beautiful, and ought to have
+put envy to shame, yet there were found certain malevolent and
+censorious persons who, not being able to affix any other blame to the
+work, declared that Matteo and Sandro had erred gravely in that matter,
+and had fallen into grievous heresy.
+
+"Now, whether this be true or not, let none expect the judgment of that
+question from me: it shall suffice me to note that the figures executed
+by Sandro in that work are entirely worthy of praise; and that the pains
+he took in depicting those circles of the heavens must have been very
+great, to say nothing of the angels mingled with the other figures, or
+of the various foreshortenings, all which are designed in a very good
+manner.
+
+"About this time Sandro received a commission to paint a small picture
+with figures three parts of a braccio high,--the subject an Adoration of
+the Magi.
+
+"It is indeed a most admirable work; the composition, the design, and
+the coloring are so beautiful that every artist who examines it is
+astonished; and, at the time, it obtained so great a name in Florence,
+and other places, for the master, that Pope Sixtus IV. having erected
+the chapel built by him in his palace at Rome, and desiring to have it
+adorned with paintings, commanded that Sandro Botticelli should be
+appointed Superintendent of the work."
+
+192. Vasari's words, "about this time," are evidently wrong. It must
+have been many and many a day after he painted Matteo's picture that he
+took such high standing in Florence as to receive the mastership of the
+works in the Pope's chapel at Rome. Of his position and doings there, I
+will tell you presently; meantime, let us complete the story of his
+life.
+
+"By these works Botticelli obtained great honor and reputation among the
+many competitors who were laboring with him, whether Florentines or
+natives of other cities, and received from the Pope a considerable sum
+of money; but this he consumed and squandered totally, during his
+residence in Rome, where he lived without due care, as was his habit."
+
+193. Well, but one would have liked to hear _how_ he squandered his
+money, and whether he was without care--of other things than money.
+
+It is just possible, Master Vasari, that Botticelli may have laid out
+his money at higher interest than you know of; meantime, he is advancing
+in life and thought, and becoming less and less comprehensible to his
+biographer. And at length, having got rid, somehow, of the money he
+received from the Pope; and finished the work he had to do, and
+uncovered it,--free in conscience, and empty in purse, he returned to
+Florence, where, "being a sophistical person, he made a comment on a
+part of Dante, and drew the Inferno, and put it in engraving, in which
+he consumed much time; and not working for this reason, brought infinite
+disorder into his affairs."
+
+194. Unpaid work, this engraving of Dante, you perceive,--consuming much
+time also, and not appearing to Vasari to be work at all. It is but a
+short sentence, gentlemen,--this, in the old edition of Vasari, and
+obscurely worded,--a very foolish person's contemptuous report of a
+thing to him totally incomprehensible. But the thing itself is
+out-and-out the most important fact in the history of the religious art
+of Italy. I can show you its significance in not many more words than
+have served to record it.
+
+Botticelli had been painting in Rome; and had expressly chosen to
+represent there,--being Master of Works, in the presence of the Defender
+of the Faith,--the foundation of the Mosaic law; to his mind the Eternal
+Law of God,--that law of which modern Evangelicals sing perpetually
+their own original psalm, "Oh, how hate I Thy law! it is my abomination
+all the day." Returning to Florence, he reads Dante's vision of the Hell
+created by its violation. He knows that the pictures he has painted in
+Rome cannot be understood by the people; they are exclusively for the
+best trained scholars in the Church. Dante, on the other hand, can only
+be read in manuscript; but the people could and would understand _his_
+lessons, if they were pictured in accessible and enduring form. He
+throws all his own lauded work aside,--all for which he is most honored,
+and in which his now matured and magnificent skill is as easy to him as
+singing to a perfect musician. And he sets himself to a servile and
+despised labor,--his friends mocking him, his resources failing him,
+infinite 'disorder' getting into his affairs--of this world.
+
+195. Never such another thing happened in Italy any more. Botticelli
+engraved her Pilgrim's Progress for her, putting himself in prison to
+do it. She would not read it when done. Raphael and Marc Antonio were
+the theologians for her money. Pretty Madonnas, and satyrs with
+abundance of tail,--let our pilgrim's progress be in _these_ directions,
+if you please.
+
+Botticelli's own pilgrimage, however, was now to be accomplished
+triumphantly, with such crowning blessings as Heaven might grant to him.
+In spite of his friends and his disordered affairs, he went his own
+obstinate way; and found another man's words worth engraving as well as
+Dante's; not without perpetuating, also, what he deemed worthy of his
+own.
+
+196. What would that be, think you? His chosen works before the Pope in
+Rome?--his admired Madonnas in Florence?--his choirs of angels and
+thickets of flowers? Some few of these yes, as you shall presently see;
+but "the best attempt of this kind from his hand is the Triumph of
+Faith, by Fra Girolamo Savonarola, of Ferrara, of whose sect our artist
+was so zealous a partisan that he totally abandoned painting, and not
+having any other means of living, he fell into very great difficulties.
+But his attachment to the party he had adopted increased; he became what
+was then called a Piagnone, or Mourner, and abandoned all labor;
+insomuch that, finding himself at length become old, being also very
+poor, he must have died of hunger had he not been supported by Lorenzo
+de' Medici, for whom he had worked at the small hospital of Volterra and
+other places, who assisted him while he lived, as did other friends and
+admirers of his talents."
+
+197. In such dignity and independence--having employed his talents not
+wholly at the orders of the dealer--died, a poor bedesman of Lorenzo de'
+Medici, the President of that high academy of art in Rome, whose
+Academicians were Perugino, Ghirlandajo, Angelico, and Signorelli; and
+whose students, Michael Angelo and Raphael.
+
+'A worthless, ill-conducted fellow on the whole,' thinks Vasari, 'with a
+crazy fancy for scratching on copper.'
+
+Well, here are some of the scratches for you to see; only, first, I must
+ask you seriously for a few moments to consider what the two powers
+were, which, with this iron pen of his, he has set himself to reprove.
+
+198. Two great forms of authority reigned over the entire civilized
+world, confessedly, and by name, in the Middle Ages. They reign over it
+still, and must forever, though at present very far from confessed; and,
+in most places, ragingly denied.
+
+The first power is that of the Teacher, or true Father; the Father 'in
+God.' It may be--happy the children to whom it is--the actual father
+also; and whose parents have been their tutors. But, for the most part,
+it will be some one else who teaches them, and molds their minds and
+brain. All such teaching, when true, being from above, and coming down
+from the Father of Lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow
+of turning, is properly that of the holy Catholic '[Greek: ekklesia],'
+council, church, or papacy, of many fathers in God, not of one.
+Eternally powerful and divine; reverenced of all humble and lowly
+scholars, in Jewry, in Greece, in Rome, in Gaul, in England, and beyond
+sea, from Arctic zone to zone.
+
+The second authority is the power of National Law, enforcing justice in
+conduct by due reward and punishment. Power vested necessarily in
+magistrates capable of administering it with mercy and equity; whose
+authority, be it of many or few, is again divine, as proceeding from the
+King of kings, and was acknowledged, throughout civilized Christendom,
+as the power of the Holy Empire, or Holy Roman Empire, because first
+throned in Rome; but it is forever also acknowledged, namelessly, or by
+name, by all loyal, obedient, just, and humble hearts, which truly
+desire that, whether for them or against them, the eternal equities and
+dooms of Heaven should be pronounced and executed; and as the wisdom or
+word of their Father should be taught, so the will of their Father
+should be done, on earth, as it is in heaven.
+
+199. You all here know what contention, first, and then what corruption
+and dishonor, had paralyzed these two powers before the days of which we
+now speak. Reproof, and either reform or rebellion, became necessary
+everywhere. The northern Reformers, Holbein, and Luther, and Henry, and
+Cromwell, set themselves to their task rudely, and, it might seem,
+carried it through. The southern Reformers, Dante, and Savonarola, and
+Botticelli, set hand to their task reverently, and, it seemed, did not
+by any means carry it through. But the end is not yet.
+
+200. Now I shall endeavor to-day to set before you the art of
+Botticelli, especially as exhibiting the modesty of great imagination
+trained in reverence, which characterized the southern Reformers; and as
+opposed to the immodesty of narrow imagination, trained in self-trust,
+which characterized the northern Reformers.
+
+'The modesty of great _imagination_;' that is to say, of the power which
+conceives all things in true relation, and not only as they affect
+ourselves. I can show you this most definitely by taking one example of
+the modern, and unschooled temper, in Bewick;[AW] and setting it beside
+Botticelli's treatment of the same subject of thought,--namely, the
+meaning of war, and the reforms necessary in the carrying on of war.
+
+201. Both the men are entirely at one in their purpose. They yearn for
+peace and justice to rule over the earth, instead of the sword; but see
+how differently they will say what is in their hearts to the people they
+address. To Bewick, war was more an absurdity than it was a horror: he
+had not seen battle-fields, still less had he read of them, in ancient
+days. He cared nothing about heroes,--Greek, Roman, or Norman. What he
+knew, and saw clearly, was that Farmer Hodge's boy went out of the
+village one holiday afternoon, a fine young fellow, rather drunk, with
+a colored ribbon in his hat; and came back, ten years afterwards, with
+one leg, one eye, an old red coat, and a tobacco-pipe in the pocket of
+it. That is what he has got to say, mainly. So, for the pathetic side of
+the business, he draws you two old soldiers meeting as bricklayers'
+laborers; and for the absurd side of it, he draws a stone, sloping
+sideways with age, in a bare field, on which you can just read, out of a
+long inscription, the words "glorious victory;" but no one is there to
+read them,--only a jackass, who uses the stone to scratch himself
+against.
+
+202. Now compare with this Botticelli's reproof of war. _He_ had seen
+it, and often; and between noble persons;--knew the temper in which the
+noblest knights went out to it;--knew the strength, the patience, the
+glory, and the grief of it. He would fain see his Florence in peace; and
+yet he knows that the wisest of her citizens are her bravest soldiers.
+So he seeks for the ideal of a soldier, and for the greatest glory of
+war, that in the presence of these he may speak reverently, what he must
+speak. He does not go to Greece for his hero. He is not sure that even
+her patriotic wars were always right. But, by his religious faith, he
+cannot doubt the nobleness of the soldier who put the children of Israel
+in possession of their promised land, and to whom the sign of the
+consent of heaven was given by its pausing light in the valley of
+Ajalon. Must then setting sun and risen moon stay, he thinks, only to
+look upon slaughter? May no soldier of Christ bid them stay otherwise
+than so? He draws Joshua, but quitting his hold of the sword: its hilt
+rests on his bent knee; and he kneels before the sun, not commands it;
+and this is his prayer:--
+
+"Oh, King of kings, and Lord of lords, who alone rulest always in
+eternity, and who correctest all our wanderings,--Giver of melody to the
+choir of the angels, listen Thou a little to our bitter grief, and come
+and rule us, oh Thou highest King, with Thy love which is so sweet!"
+
+Is not that a little better, and a little wiser, than Bewick's jackass?
+Is it not also better, and wiser, than the sneer of modern science?
+'What great men are we!--we, forsooth, can make almanacs, and know that
+the earth turns round. Joshua indeed! Let us have no more talk of the
+old-clothes-man.'
+
+All Bewick's simplicity is in that; but none of Bewick's understanding.
+
+203. I pass to the attack made by Botticelli upon the guilt of wealth.
+So I had at first written; but I should rather have written, the appeal
+made by him against the cruelty of wealth, then first attaining the
+power it has maintained to this day.
+
+The practice of receiving interest had been confined, until this
+fifteenth century, with contempt and malediction, to the profession, so
+styled, of usurers, or to the Jews. The merchants of Augsburg introduced
+it as a convenient and pleasant practice among Christians also; and
+insisted that it was decorous and proper even among respectable
+merchants. In the view of the Christian Church of their day, they might
+more reasonably have set themselves to defend adultery.[AX] However,
+they appointed Dr. John Eck, of Ingoldstadt, to hold debates in all
+possible universities, at their expense, on the allowing of interest;
+and as these Augsburgers had in Venice their special mart, Fondaco,
+called of the Germans, their new notions came into direct collision with
+old Venetian ones, and were much hindered by them, and all the more,
+because, in opposition to Dr. John Eck, there was preaching on the other
+side of the Alps. The Franciscans, poor themselves, preached mercy to
+the poor: one of them, Brother Marco of San Gallo, planned the 'Mount of
+Pity' for their defense, and the merchants of Venice set up the first in
+the world, against the German Fondaco. The dispute burned far on towards
+our own times. You perhaps have heard before of one Antonio, a merchant
+of Venice, who persistently retained the then obsolete practice of
+lending money gratis, and of the peril it brought him into with the
+usurers. But you perhaps did not before know why it was the flesh, or
+heart of flesh, in him, that they so hated.
+
+204. Against this newly risen demon of authorized usury, Holbein and
+Botticelli went out to war together. Holbein, as we have partly seen in
+his designs for the Dance of Death, struck with all his soldier's
+strength.[AY] Botticelli uses neither satire nor reproach. He turns
+altogether away from the criminals; appeals only to heaven for defense
+against them. He engraves the design which, of all his work, must have
+cost him hardest toil in its execution,--the Virgin praying to her Son
+in heaven for pity upon the poor: "For these are also my children."[AZ]
+Underneath, are the seven works of Mercy; and in the midst of them, the
+building of the Mount of Pity: in the distance lies Italy, mapped in
+cape and bay, with the cities which had founded mounts of pity,--Venice
+in the distance, chief. Little seen, but engraved with the master's
+loveliest care, in the background there is a group of two small
+figures--the Franciscan brother kneeling, and an angel of Victory
+crowning him.
+
+205. I call it an angel of Victory, observe, with assurance; although
+there is no legend claiming victory, or distinguishing this angel from
+any other of those which adorn with crowns of flowers the nameless
+crowds of the blessed. For Botticelli has other ways of speaking than by
+written legends. I know by a glance at this angel that he has taken the
+action of it from a Greek coin; and I know also that he had not, in his
+own exuberant fancy, the least need to copy the action of any figure
+whatever. So I understand, as well as if he spoke to me, that he expects
+me, if I am an educated gentleman, to recognize this particular action
+as a Greek angel's; and to know that it is a temporal victory which it
+crowns.
+
+206. And now farther, observe, that this classical learning of
+Botticelli's, received by him, as I told you, as a native element of his
+being, gives not only greater dignity and gentleness, but far wider
+range, to his thoughts of Reformation. As he asks for pity from the
+cruel Jew to the _poor_ Gentile, so he asks for pity from the proud
+Christian to the _untaught_ Gentile. Nay, for more than pity, for
+fellowship, and acknowledgment of equality before God. The learned men
+of his age in general brought back the Greek mythology as
+anti-Christian. But Botticelli and Perugino, as pre-Christian; nor only
+as pre-Christian, but as the foundation of Christianity. But chiefly
+Botticelli, with perfect grasp of the Mosaic and classic theology,
+thought over and seized the harmonies of both; and he it was who gave
+the conception of that great choir of the prophets and sibyls, of which
+Michael Angelo, more or less ignorantly borrowing it in the Sistine
+Chapel, in great part lost the meaning, while he magnified the aspect.
+
+207. For, indeed, all Christian and heathen mythology had alike become
+to Michael Angelo only a vehicle for the display of his own powers of
+drawing limbs and trunks: and having resolved, and made the world of his
+day believe, that all the glory of design lay in variety of difficult
+attitude, he flings the naked bodies about his ceiling with an
+upholsterer's ingenuity of appliance to the corners they could fit, but
+with total absence of any legible meaning. Nor do I suppose that one
+person in a million, even of those who have some acquaintance with the
+earlier masters, takes patience in the Sistine Chapel to conceive the
+original design. But Botticelli's mastership of the works evidently was
+given to him as a theologian, even more than as a painter; and the
+moment when he came to Rome to receive it, you may hold for the crisis
+of the Reformation in Italy. The main effort to save her priesthood was
+about to be made by her wisest Reformer,--face to face with the head of
+her Church,--not in contest with him, but in the humblest subjection to
+him; and in adornment of his own chapel for his own delight, and more
+than delight, if it might be.
+
+208. Sandro brings to work, not under him, but with him, the three other
+strongest and worthiest men he knows, Perugino, Ghirlandajo, and Luca
+Signorelli. There is evidently entire fellowship in thought between
+Botticelli and Perugino. They two together plan the whole; and
+Botticelli, though the master, yields to Perugino the principal place,
+the end of the chapter, on which is to be the Assumption of the Virgin.
+It was Perugino's favorite subject, done with his central strength;
+assuredly the crowning work of his life, and of lovely Christian art in
+Europe.
+
+Michael Angelo painted it out, and drew devils and dead bodies all over
+the wall instead. But there remains to us, happily, the series of
+subjects designed by Botticelli to lead up to this lost one.
+
+209. He came, I said, not to attack, but to restore the Papal authority.
+To show the power of inherited honor, and universal claim of divine law,
+in the Jewish and Christian Church,--the law delivered first by Moses;
+then, in final grace and truth, by Christ.
+
+He designed twelve great pictures, each containing some twenty figures
+the size of life, and groups of smaller ones scarcely to be counted.
+Twelve pictures,--six to illustrate the giving of the law by Moses; and
+six, the ratification and completion of it by Christ. Event by event,
+the jurisprudence of each dispensation is traced from dawn to close in
+this correspondence.
+
+       1. Covenant of Circumcision.
+       2. Entrance on his Ministry by Moses.
+       3. Moses by the Red Sea.
+       4. Delivery of Law on Sinai.
+       5. Destruction of Korah.
+       6. Death of Moses.
+       7. Covenant of Baptism.
+       8. Entrance on His Ministry by Christ.
+       9. Peter and Andrew by the Sea of Galilee.
+      10. Sermon on Mount.
+      11. Giving Keys to St. Peter.
+      12. Last Supper.
+
+Of these pictures, Sandro painted three himself, Perugino three, and the
+Assumption; Ghirlandajo one, Signorelli one, and Rosselli four.[BA] I
+believe that Sandro intended to take the roof also, and had sketched out
+the main succession of its design; and that the prophets and sibyls
+which he meant to paint, he drew first small, and engraved his drawings
+afterwards, that some part of the work might be, at all events, thus
+communicable to the world outside of the Vatican.
+
+210. It is not often that I tell you my beliefs; but I am forced here,
+for there are no dates to found more on. Is it not wonderful that among
+all the infinite mass of fools' thoughts about the "majestic works of
+Michael Angelo" in the Sistine Chapel, no slightly more rational person
+has ever asked what the chapel was first meant to be like, and how it
+was to be roofed?
+
+Nor can I assume myself, still less you, that all these prophets and
+sibyls are Botticelli's. Of many there are two engravings, with
+variations: some are inferior in parts, many altogether. He signed none;
+never put grand tablets with 'S. B.' into his skies; had other letters
+than those to engrave, and no time to spare. I have chosen out of the
+series three of the sibyls, which have, I think, clear internal evidence
+of being his; and these you shall compare with Michael Angelo's. But
+first I must put you in mind what the sibyls were.
+
+211. As the prophets represent the voice of God in man, the sibyls
+represent the voice of God in nature. They are properly all forms of one
+sibyl, [Greek: Dios Boule], the counsel of God; and the chief one, at
+least in the Roman mind, was the Sibyl of Cumae. From the traditions of
+her, the Romans, and we through them, received whatever lessons the
+myth, or fact, of sibyl power has given to mortals.
+
+How much have you received, or may you yet receive, think you, of that
+teaching? I call it the myth, or fact; but remember that, _as_ a myth,
+it _is_ a fact. This story has concentrated whatever good there is in
+the imagination or visionary powers in women, inspired by nature only.
+The traditions of witch and gypsy are partly its offshoots. You despise
+both, perhaps. But can you, though in utmost pride of your supreme
+modern wisdom, suppose that the character--say, even of so poor and
+far-fallen a sibyl as Meg Merrilies--is only the coinage of Scott's
+brain; or that, even being no more, it is valueless? Admit the figure of
+the Cumaean Sibyl, in like manner, to be the coinage only of Virgil's
+brain. As such, it, and the words it speaks, are yet facts in which we
+may find use, if we are reverent to them.
+
+To me, personally, (I must take your indulgence for a moment to speak
+wholly of myself,) they have been of the truest service--quite material
+and indisputable.
+
+I am writing on St. John's Day, in the monastery of Assisi; and I had no
+idea whatever, when I sat down to my work this morning, of saying any
+word of what I am now going to tell you. I meant only to expand and
+explain a little what I said in my lecture about the Florentine
+engraving. But it seems to me now that I had better tell you what the
+Cumaean Sibyl has actually done for me.
+
+212. In 1871, partly in consequence of chagrin at the Revolution in
+Paris, and partly in great personal sorrow, I was struck by acute
+inflammatory illness at Matlock, and reduced to a state of extreme
+weakness; lying at one time unconscious for some hours, those about me
+having no hope of my life. I have no doubt that the immediate cause of
+the illness was simply, eating when I was not hungry; so that modern
+science would acknowledge nothing in the whole business but an extreme
+and very dangerous form of indigestion; and entirely deny any
+interference of the Cumaean Sibyl in the matter.
+
+I once heard a sermon by Dr. Guthrie, in Edinburgh, upon the wickedness
+of fasting. It was very eloquent and ingenious, and finely explained the
+superiority of the Scotch Free Church to the benighted Catholic Church,
+in that the Free Church saw no merit in fasting. And there was no
+mention, from beginning to end of the sermon, of even the existence of
+such texts as Daniel i. 12, or Matthew vi. 16.
+
+Without the smallest merit, I admit, in fasting, I was nevertheless
+reduced at Matlock to a state very near starvation; and could not rise
+from my pillow, without being lifted, for some days. And in the first
+clearly pronounced stage of recovery, when the perfect powers of spirit
+had returned, while the body was still as weak as it well could be, I
+had three dreams, which made a great impression on me; for in ordinary
+health my dreams are supremely ridiculous, if not unpleasant; and in
+ordinary conditions of illness, very ugly, and always without the
+slightest meaning. But these dreams were all distinct and impressive,
+and had much meaning, if I chose to take it.
+
+213. The first[BB] was of a Venetian fisherman, who wanted me to follow
+him down into some water which I thought was too deep; but he called me
+on, saying he had something to show me; so I followed him; and
+presently, through an opening, as if in the arsenal wall, he showed me
+the bronze horses of St. Mark's, and said, 'See, the horses are putting
+on their harness.'
+
+The second was of a preparation at Rome, in St. Peter's, (or a vast hall
+as large as St. Peter's,) for the exhibition of a religious drama. Part
+of the play was to be a scene in which demons were to appear in the sky;
+and the stage servants were arranging gray fictitious clouds, and
+painted fiends, for it, under the direction of the priests. There was a
+woman dressed in black, standing at the corner of the stage watching
+them, having a likeness in her face to one of my own dead friends; and I
+knew somehow that she was not that friend, but a spirit; and she made me
+understand, without speaking, that I was to watch, for the play would
+turn out other than the priests expected. And I waited; and when the
+scene came on, the clouds became real clouds, and the fiends real
+fiends, agitating them in slow quivering, wild and terrible, over the
+heads of the people and priests. I recollected distinctly, however, when
+I woke, only the figure of the black woman mocking the people, and of
+one priest in an agony of terror, with the sweat pouring from his brow,
+but violently scolding one of the stage servants for having failed in
+some ceremony, the omission of which, he thought, had given the devils
+their power.
+
+The third dream was the most interesting and personal. Some one came to
+me to ask me to help in the deliverance of a company of Italian
+prisoners who were to be ransomed for money. I said I had no money. They
+answered, Yes, I had some that belonged to me as a brother of St.
+Francis, if I would give it up. I said I did not know even that I _was_
+a brother of St. Francis; but I thought to myself, that perhaps the
+Franciscans of Fesole, whom I had helped to make hay in their field in
+1845, had adopted me for one; only I didn't see how the consequence of
+that would be my having any money. However, I said they were welcome to
+whatever I had; and then I heard the voice of an Italian woman singing;
+and I have never heard such divine singing before nor since;--the sounds
+absolutely strong and real, and the melody altogether lovely. If I could
+have written it! But I could not even remember it when I woke,--only how
+beautiful it was.
+
+214. Now these three dreams have, every one of them, been of much use to
+me since; or so far as they have failed to be useful, it has been my own
+fault, and not theirs; but the chief use of them at the time was to give
+me courage and confidence in myself, both in bodily distress, of which I
+had still not a little to bear; and worse, much mental anxiety about
+matters supremely interesting to me, which were turning out ill. And
+through all such trouble--which came upon me as I was recovering, as if
+it meant to throw me back into the grave,--I held out and recovered,
+repeating always to myself, or rather having always murmured in my ears,
+at every new trial, one Latin line,
+
+    Tu ne cede malis, sed contra fortior ito.
+
+Now I had got this line out of the tablet in the engraving of Raphael's
+vision, and had forgotten where it came from. And I thought I knew my
+sixth book of Virgil so well, that I never looked at it again while I
+was giving these lectures at Oxford, and it was only here at Assisi,
+the other day, wanting to look more accurately at the first scene by the
+lake Avernus, that I found I had been saved by the words of the Cumaean
+Sibyl.
+
+215. "Quam tua te Fortuna sinet," the completion of the sentence, has
+yet more and continual teaching in it for me now; as it has for all men.
+Her opening words, which have become hackneyed, and lost all present
+power through vulgar use of them, contain yet one of the most immortal
+truths ever yet spoken for mankind; and they will never lose their power
+of help for noble persons. But observe, both in that lesson, "Facilis
+descensus Averni," etc.; and in the still more precious, because
+universal, one on which the strength of Rome was founded,--the burning
+of the books,--the Sibyl speaks only as the voice of Nature, and of her
+laws;--not as a divine helper, prevailing over death; but as a mortal
+teacher warning us against it, and strengthening us for our mortal time;
+but not for eternity. Of which lesson her own history is a part, and her
+habitation by the Avernus lake. She desires immortality, fondly and
+vainly, as we do ourselves. She receives, from the love of her _refused_
+lover, Apollo, not immortality, but length of life;--her years to be as
+the grains of dust in her hand. And even this she finds was a false
+desire; and her wise and holy desire at last is--to die. She wastes
+away; becomes a shade only, and a voice. The Nations ask her, What
+wouldst thou? She answers, Peace; only let my last words be true.
+"L'ultimo mie parlar sie verace."
+
+[Illustration: VII.
+
+For a time, and times.]
+
+216. Therefore, if anything is to be conceived, rightly, and chiefly, in
+the form of the Cumaean Sibyl, it must be of fading virginal beauty, of
+enduring patience, of far-looking into futurity. "For after my death
+there shall yet return," she says, "another virgin."
+
+    Jam redit et virgo;--redeunt Saturnia regna,
+    Ultima Cumaei venit jam carminis aetas.
+
+Here then is Botticelli's Cumaean Sibyl. She is armed, for she is the
+prophetess of Roman fortitude;--but her faded breast scarcely
+raises the corselet; her hair floats, not falls, in waves like the
+currents of a river,--the sign of enduring life; the light is full on
+her forehead: she looks into the distance as in a dream. It is
+impossible for art to gather together more beautifully or intensely
+every image which can express her true power, or lead us to understand
+her lesson.
+
+[Illustration: VIII.
+
+The Nymph beloved of Apollo.
+
+(MICHAEL ANGELO.)]
+
+217. Now you do not, I am well assured, know one of Michael Angelo's
+sibyls from another: unless perhaps the Delphian, whom of course he
+makes as beautiful as he can. But of this especially Italian prophetess,
+one would have thought he might, at least in some way, have shown that
+he knew the history, even if he did not understand it. She might have
+had more than one book, at all events, to burn. She might have had a
+stray leaf or two fallen at her feet. He could not indeed have painted
+her only as a voice; but his anatomical knowledge need not have hindered
+him from painting her virginal youth, or her wasting and watching age,
+or her inspired hope of a holier future.
+
+218. Opposite,--fortunately, photograph from the figure itself, so that
+you can suspect me of no exaggeration,--is Michael Angelo's Cumaean
+Sibyl, wasting away. It is by a grotesque and most strange chance that
+he should have made the figure of this Sibyl, of all others in the
+chapel, the most fleshly and gross, even proceeding to the monstrous
+license of showing the nipples of the breast as if the dress were molded
+over them like plaster. Thus he paints the poor nymph beloved of
+Apollo,--the clearest and queenliest in prophecy and command of all the
+sibyls,--as an ugly crone, with the arms of Goliath, poring down upon a
+single book.
+
+219. There is one point of fine detail, however, in Botticelli's Cumaean
+Sibyl, and in the next I am going to show you, to explain which I must
+go back for a little while to the question of the direct relation of the
+Italian painters to the Greek. I don't like repeating in one lecture
+what I have said in another; but to save you the trouble of reference,
+must remind you of what I stated in my fourth lecture on Greek birds,
+when we were examining the adoption of the plume crests in armor, that
+the crest signifies command; but the diadem, _obedience_; and that every
+crown is primarily a diadem. It is the thing that binds, before it is
+the thing that honors.
+
+Now all the great schools dwell on this symbolism. The long flowing hair
+is the symbol of life, and the [Greek: diadema] of the law restraining
+it. Royalty, or kingliness, over life, restraining and glorifying. In
+the extremity of restraint--in death, whether noble, as of death to
+Earth, or ignoble, as of death to Heaven, the [Greek: diadema] is
+fastened with the mort-cloth: "Bound hand and foot with grave-clothes,
+and the face bound about with the napkin."
+
+220. Now look back to the first Greek head I ever showed you, used as
+the type of archaic sculpture in Aratra Pentelici, and then look at the
+crown in Botticelli's Astrologia. It is absolutely the Greek form,--even
+to the peculiar oval of the forehead; while the diadem--the governing
+law--is set with appointed stars--to rule the destiny and thought. Then
+return to the Cumaean Sibyl. She, as we have seen, is the symbol of
+enduring life--almost immortal. The diadem is withdrawn from the
+forehead--reduced to a narrow fillet--here, and the hair thrown free.
+
+[Illustration: IX.
+
+In the woods of Ida.]
+
+221. From the Cumaean Sibyl's diadem, traced only by points, turn to
+that of the Hellespontic, (Plate 9, opposite). I do not know why
+Botticelli chose her for the spirit of prophecy in old age; but he has
+made this the most interesting plate of the series in the definiteness
+of its connection with the work from Dante, which becomes his own
+prophecy in old age. The fantastic yet solemn treatment of the gnarled
+wood occurs, as far as I know, in no other engravings but this, and the
+illustrations to Dante; and I am content to leave it, with little
+comment, for the reader's quiet study, as showing the exuberance of
+imagination which other men at this time in Italy allowed to waste
+itself in idle arabesque, restrained by Botticelli to his most earnest
+purposes; and giving the withered tree-trunks, hewn for the rude throne
+of the aged prophetess, the same harmony with her fading spirit which
+the rose has with youth, or the laurel with victory. Also in its
+weird characters, you have the best example I can show you of the orders
+of decorative design which are especially expressible by engraving, and
+which belong to a group of art instincts scarcely now to be understood,
+much less recovered, (the influence of modern naturalistic imitation
+being too strong to be conquered)--the instincts, namely, for the
+arrangement of pure line, in labyrinthine intricacy, through which the
+grace of order may give continual clue. The entire body of ornamental
+design, connected with writing, in the Middle Ages seems as if it were a
+sensible symbol, to the eye and brain, of the methods of error and
+recovery, the minglings of crooked with straight, and perverse with
+progressive, which constitute the great problem of human morals and
+fate; and when I chose the title for the collected series of these
+lectures, I hoped to have justified it by careful analysis of the
+methods of labyrinthine ornament, which, made sacred by Theseian
+traditions,[BC] and beginning, in imitation of physical truth, with the
+spiral waves of the waters of Babylon as the Assyrian carved them,
+entangled in their returns the eyes of men, on Greek vase and Christian
+manuscript--till they closed in the arabesques which sprang round the
+last luxury of Venice and Rome.
+
+But the labyrinth of life itself, and its more and more interwoven
+occupation, become too manifold, and too difficult for me; and of the
+time wasted in the blind lanes of it, perhaps that spent in analysis or
+recommendation of the art to which men's present conduct makes them
+insensible, has been chiefly cast away. On the walls of the little room
+where I finally revise this lecture,[BD] hangs an old silken sampler of
+great-grandame's work: representing the domestic life of Abraham:
+chiefly the stories of Isaac and Ishmael. Sarah at her tent-door,
+watching, with folded arms, the dismissal of Hagar: above, in a
+wilderness full of fruit trees, birds, and butterflies, little Ishmael
+lying at the root of a tree, and the spent bottle under another; Hagar
+in prayer, and the angel appearing to her out of a wreathed line of
+gloomily undulating clouds, which, with a dark-rayed sun in the midst,
+surmount the entire composition in two arches, out of which descend
+shafts of (I suppose) beneficent rain; leaving, however, room, in the
+corner opposite to Ishmael's angel, for Isaac's, who stays Abraham in
+the sacrifice; the ram in the thicket, the squirrel in the plum tree
+above him, and the grapes, pears, apples, roses, and daisies of the
+foreground, being all wrought with involution of such ingenious
+needlework as may well rank, in the patience, the natural skill, and the
+innocent pleasure of it, with the truest works of Florentine engraving.
+Nay; the actual tradition of many of the forms of ancient art is in many
+places evident,--as, for instance, in the spiral summits of the flames
+of the wood on the altar, which are like a group of first-springing
+fern. On the wall opposite is a smaller composition, representing
+Justice with her balance and sword, standing between the sun and moon,
+with a background of pinks, borage, and corn-cockle: a third is only a
+cluster of tulips and iris, with two Byzantine peacocks; but the spirits
+of Penelope and Ariadne reign vivid in all the work--and the richness of
+pleasurable fancy is as great still, in these silken labors, as in the
+marble arches and golden roof of the cathedral of Monreale.
+
+But what is the use of explaining or analyzing it? Such work as this
+means the patience and simplicity of all feminine life; and can be
+produced, among _us_ at least, no more. Gothic tracery itself, another
+of the instinctive labyrinthine intricacies of old, though analyzed to
+its last section, has become now the symbol only of a foolish
+ecclesiastical sect, retained for their shibboleth, joyless and
+powerless for all good. The very labyrinth of the grass and flowers of
+our fields, though dissected to its last leaf, is yet bitten bare, or
+trampled to slime, by the Minotaur of our lust; and for the traceried
+spire of the poplar by the brook, we possess but the four-square furnace
+tower, to mingle its smoke with heaven's thunder-clouds.[BE]
+
+We will look yet at one sampler more of the engraved work, done in the
+happy time when flowers were pure, youth simple, and imagination
+gay,--Botticelli's Libyan Sibyl.
+
+Glance back first to the Hellespontic, noting the close fillet, and the
+cloth bound below the face, and then you will be prepared to understand
+the last I shall show you, and the loveliest of the southern
+Pythonesses.
+
+[Illustration: X.
+
+Grass of the Desert.]
+
+222. A less deep thinker than Botticelli would have made her parched
+with thirst, and burnt with heat. But the voice of God, through nature,
+to the Arab or the Moor, is not in the thirst, but in the fountain--not
+in the desert, but in the grass of it. And this Libyan Sibyl is the
+spirit of wild grass and flowers, springing in desolate places.
+
+You see, her diadem is a wreath of them; but the blossoms of it are not
+fastening enough for her hair, though it is not long yet--(she is only
+in reality a Florentine girl of fourteen or fifteen)--so the little
+darling knots it under her ears, and then makes herself a necklace of
+it. But though flowing hair and flowers are wild and pretty, Botticelli
+had not, in these only, got the power of Spring marked to his mind. Any
+girl might wear flowers; but few, for ornament, would be likely to wear
+grass. So the Sibyl shall have grass in her diadem; not merely
+interwoven and bending, but springing and strong. You thought it ugly
+and grotesque at first, did not you? It was made so, because precisely
+what Botticelli wanted you to look at.
+
+But that's not all. This conical cap of hers, with one bead at the
+top,--considering how fond the Florentines are of graceful head-dresses,
+this seems a strange one for a young girl. But, exactly as I know the
+angel of Victory to be Greek, at his Mount of Pity, so I know this
+head-dress to be taken from a Greek coin, and to be meant for a Greek
+symbol. It is the Petasus of Hermes--the mist of morning over the dew.
+Lastly, what will the Libyan Sibyl say to you? The letters are large on
+her tablet. Her message is the oracle from the temple of the Dew: "The
+dew of thy birth is as the womb of the morning."--"Ecce venientem diem,
+et latentia aperientem, tenebit gremio gentium regina."
+
+223. Why the daybreak came not then, nor yet has come, but only a deeper
+darkness; and why there is now neither queen nor king of nations, but
+every man doing that which is right in his own eyes, I would fain go on,
+partly to tell you, and partly to meditate with you: but it is not our
+work for to-day. The issue of the Reformation which these great
+painters, the scholars of Dante, began, we may follow, farther, in the
+study to which I propose to lead you, of the lives of Cimabue and
+Giotto, and the relation of their work at Assisi to the chapel and
+chambers of the Vatican.
+
+224. To-day let me finish what I have to tell you of the style of
+southern engraving. What sudden bathos in the sentence, you think! So
+contemptible the question of style, then, in painting, though not in
+literature? You study the 'style' of Homer; the style, perhaps, of
+Isaiah; the style of Horace, and of Massillon. Is it so vain to study
+the style of Botticelli?
+
+In all cases, it is equally vain, if you think of their style first. But
+know their purpose, and then, their way of speaking is worth thinking
+of. These apparently unfinished and certainly unfilled outlines of the
+Florentine,--clumsy work, as Vasari thought them,--as Mr. Otley and most
+of our English amateurs still think them,--are these good or bad
+engraving?
+
+You may ask now, comprehending their motive, with some hope of answering
+or being answered rightly. And the answer is, They are the finest
+gravers' work ever done yet by human hand. You may teach, by process of
+discipline and of years, any youth of good artistic capacity to engrave
+a plate in the modern manner; but only the noblest passion, and the
+tenderest patience, will ever engrave one line like these of Sandro
+Botticelli.
+
+225. Passion, and patience! Nay, even these you may have to-day in
+England, and yet both be in vain. Only a few years ago, in one of our
+northern iron-foundries, a workman of intense power and natural
+art-faculty set himself to learn engraving;--made his own tools; gave
+all the spare hours of his laborious life to learn their use; learnt it;
+and engraved a plate which, in manipulation, no professional engraver
+would be ashamed of. He engraved his blast furnace, and the casting of a
+beam of a steam engine. This, to him, was the power of God,--it was his
+life. No greater earnestness was ever given by man to promulgate a
+Gospel. Nevertheless, the engraving is absolutely worthless. The blast
+furnace _is not_ the power of God; and the life of the strong spirit was
+as much consumed in the flames of it, as ever driven slave's by the
+burden and heat of the day.
+
+How cruel to say so, if he yet lives, you think! No, my friends; the
+cruelty will be in you, and the guilt, if, having been brought here to
+learn that God is your Light, you yet leave the blast furnace to be the
+only light of England.
+
+226. It has been, as I said in the note above (Sec. 200), with extreme pain
+that I have hitherto limited my notice of our own great engraver and
+moralist, to the points in which the disadvantages of English
+art-teaching made him inferior to his trained Florentine rival. But,
+that these disadvantages were powerless to arrest or ignobly depress
+him;--that however failing in grace and scholarship, he should never
+fail in truth or vitality; and that the precision of his unerring
+hand[BF]--his inevitable eye--and his rightly judging heart--should
+place him in the first rank of the great artists not of England only,
+but of all the world and of all time:--that _this_ was possible to him,
+was simply because he lived a _country_ life. Bewick himself,
+Botticelli himself, Apelles himself, and twenty times Apelles, condemned
+to slavery in the hell-fire of the iron furnace, could have
+done--NOTHING. Absolute paralysis of all high human faculty _must_
+result from labor near fire. The poor engraver of the piston-rod had
+faculties--not like Bewick's, for if he had had those, he never would
+have endured the degradation; but assuredly, (I know this by his work,)
+faculties high enough to have made him one of the most accomplished
+figure painters of his age. And they are scorched out of him, as the sap
+from the grass in the oven: while on his Northumberland hill-sides,
+Bewick grew into as stately life as their strongest pine.
+
+227. And therefore, in words of his, telling consummate and unchanging
+truth concerning the life, honor, and happiness of England, and bearing
+directly on the points of difference between class and class which I
+have not dwelt on without need, I will bring these lectures to a close.
+
+"I have always, through life, been of opinion that there is no business
+of any kind that can be compared to that of a man who farms his own
+land. It appears to me that every earthly pleasure, with health, is
+within his reach. But numbers of these men (the old statesmen) were
+grossly ignorant, and in exact proportion to that ignorance they were
+sure to be offensively proud. This led them to attempt appearing above
+their station, which hastened them on to their ruin; but, indeed, this
+disposition and this kind of conduct invariably leads to such results.
+There were many of these lairds on Tyneside; as well as many who held
+their lands on the tenure of 'suit and service,' and were nearly on the
+same level as the lairds. Some of the latter lost their lands (not
+fairly, I think) in a way they could not help; many of the former, by
+their misdirected pride and folly, were driven into towns, to slide away
+into nothingness, and to sink into oblivion, while their 'ha' houses'
+(halls), that ought to have remained in their families from generation
+to generation, have moldered away. I have always felt extremely grieved
+to see the ancient mansions of many of the country gentlemen, from
+somewhat similar causes, meet with a similar fate. The gentry should,
+in an especial manner, prove by their conduct that they are guarded
+against showing any symptom of foolish pride; at the same time that they
+soar above every meanness, and that their conduct is guided by truth,
+integrity, and patriotism. If they wish the people to partake with them
+in these good qualities, they must set them the example, without which
+no real respect can ever be paid to them. Gentlemen ought never to
+forget the respectable station they hold in society, and that they are
+the natural guardians of public morals and may with propriety be
+considered as the head and the heart of the country, while 'a bold
+peasantry' are, in truth, the arms, the sinews, and the strength of the
+same; but when these last are degraded, they soon become dispirited and
+mean, and often dishonest and useless."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"This singular and worthy man[BG] was perhaps the most invaluable
+acquaintance and friend I ever met with. His moral lectures and advice
+to me formed a most important succedaneum to those imparted by my
+parents. His wise remarks, his detestation of vice, his industry, and
+his temperance, crowned with a most lively and cheerful disposition,
+altogether made him appear to me as one of the best of characters. In
+his workshop I often spent my winter evenings. This was also the case
+with a number of young men who might be considered as his pupils; many
+of whom, I have no doubt, he directed into the paths of truth and
+integrity, and who revered his memory through life. He rose early to
+work, lay down when he felt weary, and rose again when refreshed. His
+diet was of the simplest kind; and he ate when hungry, and drank when
+dry, without paying regard to meal-times. By steadily pursuing this mode
+of life he was enabled to accumulate sums of money--from ten to thirty
+pounds. This enabled him to get books, of an entertaining and moral
+tendency, printed and circulated at a cheap rate. His great object was,
+by every possible means, to promote honorable feelings in the minds of
+youth, and to prepare them for becoming good members of society. I have
+often discovered that he did not overlook ingenious mechanics, whose
+misfortunes--perhaps mismanagement--had led them to a lodging in
+Newgate. To these he directed his compassionate eye, and for the
+deserving (in his estimation), he paid their debt, and set them at
+liberty. He felt hurt at seeing the hands of an ingenious man tied up in
+prison, where they were of no use either to himself or to the community.
+This worthy man had been educated for a priest; but he would say to me,
+'Of a "trouth," Thomas, I did not like their ways.' So he gave up the
+thoughts of being a priest, and bent his way from Aberdeen to Edinburgh,
+where he engaged himself to Allan Ramsay, the poet, then a bookseller at
+the latter place, in whose service he was both shopman and bookbinder.
+From Edinburgh he came to Newcastle. Gilbert had had a liberal education
+bestowed upon him. He had read a great deal, and had reflected upon what
+he had read. This, with his retentive memory, enabled him to be a
+pleasant and communicative companion. I lived in habits of intimacy with
+him to the end of his life; and, when he died, I, with others of his
+friends, attended his remains to the grave at the Ballast Hills."
+
+And what graving on the sacred cliffs of Egypt ever honored them, as
+that grass-dimmed furrow does the mounds of our Northern land?
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[AS] The world was not then ready for Le Pere Hyacinthe;--but the real
+gist of the matter is that Lippi did, openly and bravely, what the
+highest prelates in the Church did basely and in secret; also he loved,
+where they only lusted; and he has been proclaimed therefore by
+them--and too foolishly believed by us--to have been a shameful person.
+Of his true life, and the colors given to it, we will try to learn
+something tenable, before we end our work in Florence.
+
+[AT] I insert supplementary notes, when of importance, in the text of
+the lecture, for the convenience of the general reader.
+
+[AU] Mr. Charles F. Murray.
+
+[AV] Some notice of this picture is given at the beginning of my third
+Morning in Florence, 'Before the Soldan.'
+
+[AW] I am bitterly sorry for the pain which my partial references to the
+man whom of all English artists whose histories I have read, I most
+esteem, have given to one remaining member of his family. I hope my
+meaning may be better understood after she has seen the close of this
+lecture.
+
+[AX] Read Ezekiel xviii.
+
+[AY] See also the account by Dr. Woltmann of the picture of the Triumph
+of Riches. 'Holbein and his Time,' p. 352.
+
+[AZ] These words are engraved in the plate, as spoken by the Virgin.
+
+[BA] Cosimo Rosselli, especially chosen by the Pope for his gay
+coloring.
+
+[BB] I am not certain of their order at this distance of time.
+
+[BC] Callimachus, 'Delos,' 304, etc.
+
+[BD] In the Old King's Arms Hotel, Lancaster.
+
+[BE] A manufacturer wrote to me the other day, "We don't _want_ to make
+smoke!" Who said they did?--a hired murderer does not want to commit
+murder, but does it for sufficient motive. (Even our shipowners don't
+want to drown their sailors; they will only do it for sufficient
+motive.) If the dirty creatures _did_ want to make smoke, there would be
+more excuse for them: and that they are not clever enough to consume it,
+is no praise to them. A man who can't help his hiccough leaves the room:
+why do they not leave the England they pollute?
+
+[BF] I know no drawing so subtle as Bewick's, since the fifteenth
+century, except Holbein's and Turner's. I have been greatly surprised
+lately by the exquisite water-color work in some of Stothard's smaller
+vignettes; but he cannot set the line like Turner or Bewick.
+
+[BG] Gilbert Gray, bookbinder. I have to correct the inaccurate--and
+very harmfully inaccurate, expression which I used of Bewick, in Love's
+Meinie (Sec. 3), 'a printer's lad at Newcastle.' His first master was a
+goldsmith and engraver, else he could never have been an artist. I am
+very heartily glad to make this correction, which establishes another
+link of relation between Bewick and Botticelli; but my error was partly
+caused by the impression which the above description of his "most
+invaluable friend" made on me, when I first read it.
+
+Much else that I meant to correct, or promised to explain, in this
+lecture, must be deferred to the Appendix; the superiority of the Tuscan
+to the Greek Aphrodite I may perhaps, even at last, leave the reader to
+admit or deny as he pleases, having more important matters of debate on
+hand. But as I mean only to play with Proserpina during the spring, I
+will here briefly anticipate a statement I mean in the Appendix to
+enforce, namely, of the extreme value of colored copies by hand, of
+paintings whose excellence greatly consists in color, as auxiliary to
+engravings of them. The prices now given without hesitation for nearly
+worthless original drawings by fifth-rate artists, would obtain for the
+misguided buyers, in something like a proportion of ten to one, most
+precious copies of drawings which can only be represented at all in
+engraving by entire alteration of their treatment, and abandonment of
+their finest purposes. I feel this so strongly that I have given my best
+attention, during upwards of ten years, to train a copyist to perfect
+fidelity in rendering the work of Turner; and having now succeeded in
+enabling him to produce facsimiles so close as to look like replicas,
+facsimiles which I must sign with my own name and his, in the very work
+of them, to prevent their being sold for real Turner vignettes, I can
+obtain no custom for him, and am obliged to leave him to make his bread
+by any power of captivation his original sketches may possess in the
+eyes of a public which maintains a nation of copyists in Rome, but is
+content with black and white renderings of great English art; though
+there is scarcely one cultivated English gentleman or lady who has not
+been twenty times in the Vatican, for once that they have been in the
+National Gallery.
+
+
+
+
+                           NOTES.
+
+
+228. I. The following letter, from one of my most faithful readers,
+corrects an important piece of misinterpretation in the text. The waving
+of the reins must be only in sign of the fluctuation of heat round the
+Sun's own chariot:--
+
+                                      "Spring Field, Ambleside,
+                                               "February 11, 1875.
+
+"Dear Mr. Ruskin,--Your fifth lecture on Engraving I have to hand.
+
+"Sandro intended those wavy lines meeting under the Sun's right[BH]
+hand, (Plate V.) primarily, no doubt, to represent the four ends of the
+four reins dangling from the Sun's hand. The flames and rays are seen to
+continue to radiate from the platform of the chariot between and beyond
+these ends of the reins, and over the knee. He may have wanted to
+acknowledge that the warmth of the earth was Apollo's, by making these
+ends of the reins spread out separately and wave, and thereby inclose a
+form like a flame. But I cannot think it.
+
+                        "Believe me,
+                            "Ever yours truly,
+                                "CHAS. WM. SMITH."
+
+II. I meant to keep labyrinthine matters for my Appendix; but the
+following most useful by-words from Mr. Tyrwhitt had better be read at
+once:--
+
+"In the matter of Cretan Labyrinth, as connected by Virgil with the
+Ludus Trojae, or equestrian game of winding and turning, continued in
+England from twelfth century; and having for last relic the maze[BI]
+called 'Troy Town,' at Troy Farm, near Somerton, Oxfordshire, which
+itself resembles the circular labyrinth on a coin of Cnossus in Fors
+Clavigera. (Letter 23, p. 12.)
+
+"The connecting quotation from Virg., AEn., V. 588, is as follows:
+
+    'Ut quondam Creta fertur Labyrinthus in alta
+    Parietibus textum caecis iter, ancipitemque
+    Mille viis habuisse dolum, qua signa sequendi
+    Falleret indeprensus et inremeabilis error.
+    Haud alio Teucruen nati vestigia cursu
+    Impediunt, texuntque fagas et proelia ludo,
+    Delphinum similes.'"
+
+Labyrinth of Ariadne, as cut on the Downs by shepherds from time
+immemorial,--
+
+Shakespeare, 'Midsummer Night's Dream,' Act ii., sc. 2:
+
+"_Oberon._ The nine-men's morris[BJ] is filled up with mud;
+           And the quaint mazes in the wanton green
+           By lack of tread are undistinguishable."
+
+The following passage, 'Merchant of Venice,' Act iii., sc. 2, confuses
+(to all appearance) the Athenian tribute to Crete, with the story of
+Hesione: and may point to general confusion in the Elizabethan mind
+about the myths:
+
+"_Portia._ ... with much more love
+           Than young Alcides, when he did reduce
+           The virgin-tribute paid by howling Troy
+           To the sea monster."[BK]
+
+Theseus is the Attic Hercules, however; and Troy may have been a sort of
+house of call for mythical monsters, in the view of midland shepherds.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[BH] "Would not the design have looked better, to us, on the plate than
+on the print? On the plate, the reins would be in the left hand; and the
+whole movement be from the left to the right? The two different forms
+that the radiance takes would symbolize respectively heat and light,
+would they not?"
+
+[BI] Strutt, pp. 97-8, ed. 1801.
+
+[BJ] Explained as "a game still played by the shepherds, cowkeepers,"
+etc., in the midland counties.
+
+[BK] See Iliad, 20, 145.
+
+
+[Illustration: XI.
+
+"Obediente Domino voci hominis."]
+
+
+
+
+                          APPENDIX.
+
+
+                         ARTICLE I.
+
+     NOTES ON THE PRESENT STATE OF ENGRAVING IN ENGLAND.
+
+229. I have long deferred the completion of this book, because I had
+hoped to find time to show, in some fullness, the grounds for my
+conviction that engraving, and the study of it, since the development of
+the modern finished school, have been ruinous to European knowledge of
+art. But I am more and more busied in what I believe to be better work,
+and can only with extreme brevity state here the conclusions of many
+years' thought.
+
+These, in several important particulars, have been curiously enforced on
+me by the carelessness shown by the picture dealers about the copies
+from Turner which it has cost Mr. Ward and me[BL] fifteen years of study
+together to enable ourselves to make. "They are only copies," say
+they,--"nobody will look at them."
+
+230. It never seems to occur even to the most intelligent persons that
+an engraving also is 'only a copy,' and a copy done with refusal of
+color, and with disadvantage of means in rendering shade. But just
+because this utterly inferior copy can be reduplicated, and introduces a
+different kind of skill, in another material, people are content to lose
+all the composition, and all the charm, of the original,--so far as
+these depend on the chief gift of a _painter_,--color; while they are
+gradually misled into attributing to the painter himself qualities
+impertinently added by the engraver to make his plate popular: and,
+which is far worse, they are as gradually and subtly prevented from
+looking, in the original, for the qualities which engraving could never
+render. Further, it continually happens that the very best
+color-compositions engrave worst; for they often extend colors over
+great spaces at equal pitch, and the green is as dark as the red, and
+the blue as the brown; so that the engraver can only distinguish them by
+lines in different directions, and his plate becomes a vague and dead
+mass of neutral tint; but a bad and forced piece of color, or a piece of
+work of the Bolognese school, which is everywhere black in the shadows,
+and colorless in the lights, will engrave with great ease, and appear
+spirited and forcible. Hence engravers, as a rule, are interested in
+reproducing the work of the worst schools of painting.
+
+Also, the idea that the merit of an engraving consisted in light and
+shade, has prevented the modern masters from even attempting to render
+works dependent mainly on outline and expression; like the early
+frescoes, which should indeed have been the objects of their most
+attentive and continual skill: for outline and expression are entirely
+within the scope of engraving; and the scripture histories of an aisle
+of a cloister might have been engraved, to perfection, with little more
+pains than are given by ordinary workmen to round a limb by Correggio,
+or imitate the texture of a dress by Sir Joshua,--and both, at last,
+inadequately.
+
+231. I will not lose more time in asserting or lamenting the mischief
+arising out of the existing system: but will rapidly state what the
+public should now ask for.
+
+1. Exquisitely careful engraved outlines of all remaining frescoes of
+the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries in Italy, with so
+much pale tinting as may be explanatory of their main masses; and with
+the local darks and local lights brilliantly relieved. The Arundel
+Society have published some meritorious plates of this kind from
+Angelico,--not, however, paying respect enough to the local colors, but
+conventionalizing the whole too much into outline.
+
+2. Finished small plates for book illustration. The cheap wood-cutting
+and etching of popular illustrated books have been endlessly mischievous
+to public taste: they first obtained their power in a general reaction
+of the public mind from the insipidity of the lower school of line
+engraving, brought on it by servile persistence in hack work for
+ignorant publishers. The last dregs of it may still be seen in the
+sentimental landscapes engraved for cheap ladies' pocket-books. But the
+woodcut can never, educationally, take the place of serene and
+accomplished line engraving; and the training of young artists in whom
+the gift of delineation prevails over their sense of color, to the
+production of scholarly, but small plates, with their utmost honor of
+skill, would give a hitherto unconceived dignity to the character and
+range of our popular literature.
+
+3. Vigorous mezzotints from pictures of the great masters, which
+originally present noble contrasts of light and shade. Many Venetian
+works are magnificent in this character.
+
+4. Original design by painters themselves, decisively engraved in few
+lines--(_not_ etched); and with such insistence by dotted work on the
+main contours as we have seen in the examples given from Italian
+engraving.
+
+5. On the other hand, the men whose quiet patience and exquisite manual
+dexterity are at present employed in producing large and costly plates,
+such as that of the Belle Jardiniere de Florence, by M. Boucher
+Desnoyers, should be entirely released from their servile toil, and
+employed exclusively in producing colored copies, or light drawings,
+from the original work. The same number of hours of labor, applied with
+the like conscientious skill, would multiply precious likenesses of the
+real picture, full of subtle veracities which no steel line could
+approach, and conveying, to thousands, true knowledge and unaffected
+enjoyment of painting; while the finished plate lies uncared for in the
+portfolio of the virtuoso, serving only, so far as it is seen in the
+printseller's window by the people, to make them think that sacred
+painting must always be dull, and unnatural.
+
+232. I have named the above engraving, because, for persons wishing to
+study the present qualities and methods of line-work, it is a pleasant
+and sufficient possession, uniting every variety of texture with great
+serenity of unforced effect, and exhibiting every possible artifice and
+achievement in the distribution of even and rugged, or of close and open
+line; artifices for which,--while I must yet once more and emphatically
+repeat that they are illegitimate, and could not be practiced in a
+revived school of classic art,--I would fain secure the reader's
+reverent admiration, under the conditions exacted by the school to which
+they belong. Let him endeavor, with the finest point of pen or pencil he
+can obtain, to imitate the profile of this Madonna in its relief against
+the gray background of the water surface; let him examine, through a
+good lens, the way in which the lines of the background are ended in a
+lance-point as they approach it; the exact equality of depth of shade
+being restored by inserted dots, which prepare for the transition to the
+manner of shade adopted in the flesh: then let him endeavor to trace
+with his own hand some of the curved lines at the edge of the eyelid, or
+in the rounding of the lip; or if these be too impossible, even a few of
+the quiet undulations which gradate the folds of the hood behind the
+hair; and he will, I trust, begin to comprehend the range of delightful
+work which would be within the reach of such an artist, employed with
+more tractable material on more extended subject.
+
+233. If, indeed, the present system were capable of influencing the mass
+of the people, and enforcing among them the subtle attention necessary
+to appreciate it, something might be pleaded in defense of its severity.
+But all these plates are entirely above the means of the lower middle
+classes, and perhaps not one reader in a hundred can possess himself,
+for the study I ask of him, even of the plate to which I have just
+referred. What, in the stead of such, he can and does possess, let him
+consider,--and, if possible, just after examining the noble qualities of
+this conscientious engraving.
+
+234. Take up, for an average specimen of modern illustrated works, the
+volume of Dickens's 'Master Humphrey's Clock,' containing 'Barnaby
+Rudge.'
+
+You have in that book an entirely profitless and monstrous story, in
+which the principal characters are a coxcomb, an idiot, a madman, a
+savage blackguard, a foolish tavern-keeper, a mean old maid, and a
+conceited apprentice,--mixed up with a certain quantity of ordinary
+operatic pastoral stuff, about a pretty Dolly in ribbons, a lover with a
+wooden leg, and an heroic locksmith. For these latter, the only elements
+of good, or life, in the filthy mass of the story,[BM] observe that the
+author must filch the wreck of those old times of which we fiercely and
+frantically destroy every living vestige, whenever it is possible. You
+cannot have your Dolly Varden brought up behind the counter of a railway
+station; nor your jolly locksmith trained at a Birmingham brass-foundry.
+And of these materials, observe that you can only have the ugly ones
+illustrated. The cheap popular art cannot draw for you beauty, sense, or
+honesty; and for Dolly Varden, or the locksmith, you will look through
+the vignettes in vain. But every species of distorted folly and
+vice,--the idiot, the blackguard, the coxcomb, the paltry fool, the
+degraded woman,--are pictured for your honorable pleasure in every page,
+with clumsy caricature, struggling to render its dullness tolerable by
+insisting on defect,--if perchance a penny or two more may be coined out
+of the Cockney reader's itch for loathsomeness.
+
+235. Or take up, for instance of higher effort, the 'Cornhill Magazine'
+for this month, July, 1876. It has a vignette of Venice for an
+illuminated letter. That is what your decorative art has become, by help
+of Kensington! The letter to be produced is a T. There is a gondola in
+the front of the design, with the canopy slipped back to the stern like
+a saddle over a horse's tail. There is another in the middle distance,
+all gone to seed at the prow, with its gondolier emaciated into an oar,
+at the stern; then there is a Church of the Salute, and a Ducal
+Palace,--in which I beg you to observe all the felicity and dexterity of
+modern cheap engraving; finally, over the Ducal Palace there is
+something, I know not in the least what meant for, like an umbrella
+dropping out of a balloon, which is the ornamental letter T. Opposite
+this ornamental design, there is an engraving of two young ladies and a
+parasol, between two trunks of trees. The white face and black feet of
+the principal young lady, being the points of the design, are done with
+as much care,--not with as much dexterity,--as an ordinary sketch of Du
+Maurier's in Punch. The young lady's dress, the next attraction, is done
+in cheap white and black cutting, with considerably less skill than that
+of any ordinary tailor's or milliner's shop-book pattern drawing. For
+the other young lady, and the landscape, take your magnifying glass, and
+look at the hacked wood that forms the entire shaded surface--one mass
+of idiotic scrabble, without the remotest attempt to express a single
+leaf, flower, or clod of earth. It is such landscape as the public sees
+out of its railroad window at sixty miles of it in the hour--and good
+enough for such a public.
+
+236. Then turn to the last--the poetical plate, p. 122: "Lifts her--lays
+her down with care." Look at the gentleman with a spade, promoting the
+advance, over a hillock of hay, of the reposing figure in the
+black-sided tub. Take your magnifying glass to _that_, and look what a
+dainty female arm and hand your modern scientific and anatomical schools
+of art have provided you with! Look at the tender horizontal flux of the
+sea round the promontory point above. Look at the tender engraving of
+the linear light on the divine horizon, above the ravenous sea-gull.
+Here is Development and Progress for you, from the days of Perugino's
+horizon, and Dante's daybreaks! Truly, here it seems
+
+    "Si che le bianche e le vermiglie guance
+    Per troppa etate divenivan rance."
+
+237. I have chosen no gross or mean instances of modern work. It is one
+of the saddest points connected with the matter that the designer of
+this last plate is a person of consummate art faculty, but bound to the
+wheel of the modern Juggernaut, and broken on it. These woodcuts, for
+'Barnaby Rudge' and the 'Cornhill Magazine,' are favorably
+representative of the entire illustrative art industry of the modern
+press,--industry enslaved to the ghastly service of catching the last
+gleams in the glued eyes of the daily more bestial English
+mob,--railroad born and bred, which drags itself about the black world
+it has withered under its breath, in one eternal grind and
+shriek,--gobbling,--staring,--chattering,--giggling,--trampling out
+every vestige of national honor and domestic peace, wherever it sets the
+staggering hoof of it; incapable of reading, of hearing, of thinking, of
+looking,--capable only of greed for money, lust for food, pride of
+dress, and the prurient itch of momentary curiosity for the politics
+last announced by the newsmonger, and the religion last rolled by the
+chemist into electuary for the dead.
+
+238. In the miserably competitive labor of finding new stimulus for the
+appetite--daily more gross--of this tyrannous mob, we may count as lost,
+beyond any hope, the artists who are dull, docile, or distressed enough
+to submit to its demands; and we may count the dull and the distressed
+by myriads;--and among the docile, many of the best intellects we
+possess. The few who have sense and strength to assert their own place
+and supremacy, are driven into discouraged disease by their isolation,
+like Turner and Blake; the one abandoning the design of his 'Liber
+Studiorum' after imperfectly and sadly, against total public neglect,
+carrying it forward to what it is,--monumental, nevertheless, in
+landscape engraving; the other producing, with one only majestic series
+of designs from the book of Job, nothing for his life's work but
+coarsely iridescent sketches of enigmatic dream.
+
+239. And, for total result of our English engraving industry during the
+last hundred and fifty years, I find that practically at this moment I
+cannot get a _single_ piece of true, sweet, and comprehensible art, to
+place for instruction in any children's school! I can get, for ten
+pounds apiece, well-engraved portraits of Sir Joshua's beauties showing
+graceful limbs through flowery draperies; I can get--dirt-cheap--any
+quantity of Dutch flats, ditches, and hedges, enlivened by cows chewing
+the cud, and dogs behaving indecently; I can get heaps upon heaps of
+temples, and forums, and altars, arranged as for academical competition,
+round seaports, with curled-up ships that only touch the water with the
+middle of their bottoms. I can get, at the price of lumber, any quantity
+of British squires flourishing whips and falling over hurdles; and, in
+suburban shops, a dolorous variety of widowed mothers nursing babies in
+a high light with the Bible on a table, and baby's shoes on a chair.
+Also, of cheap prints, painted red and blue, of Christ blessing little
+children, of Joseph and his brethren, the infant Samuel, or Daniel in
+the lions' den, the supply is ample enough to make every child in these
+islands think of the Bible as a somewhat dull story-book, allowed on
+Sunday;--but of trained, wise, and worthy art, applied to gentle
+purposes of instruction, no single example can be found in the shops of
+the British printseller or bookseller. And after every dilettante tongue
+in European society has filled drawing-room and academy alike with idle
+clatter concerning the divinity of Raphael and Michael Angelo, for these
+last hundred years, I cannot at this instant, for the first school which
+I have some power of organizing under St. George's laws, get a good
+print of Raphael's Madonna of the tribune, or an ordinarily intelligible
+view of the side and dome of St. Peter's!
+
+240. And there are simply no words for the mixed absurdity and
+wickedness of the present popular demand for art, as shown by its supply
+in our thoroughfares. Abroad, in the shops of the Rue de Rivoli,
+brightest and most central of Parisian streets, the putrescent remnant
+of what was once Catholicism promotes its poor gilded pedlars' ware of
+nativity and crucifixion into such honorable corners as it can find
+among the more costly and studious illuminations of the brothel: and
+although, in Pall Mall, and the Strand, the large-margined
+Landseer,--Stanfield,--or Turner-proofs, in a few stately windows, still
+represent, uncared-for by the people, or inaccessible to them, the power
+of an English school now wholly perished,--these are too surely
+superseded, in the windows that stop the crowd, by the thrilling
+attraction with which Dore, Gerome, and Tadema have invested the
+gambling table, the dueling ground, and the arena; or by the more
+material and almost tangible truth with which the apothecary-artist
+stereographs the stripped actress, and the railway mound.
+
+241. Under these conditions, as I have now repeatedly asserted, no
+professorship, nor school, of art can be of the least use to the general
+public. No race can understand a visionary landscape, which blasts its
+real mountains into ruin, and blackens its river-beds with foam of
+poison. Nor is it of the least use to exhibit ideal Diana at Kensington,
+while substantial Phryne may be worshiped in the Strand. The only
+recovery of our art-power possible,--nay, when once we know the full
+meaning of it, the only one desirable,--must result from the
+purification of the nation's heart, and chastisement of its life:
+utterly hopeless now, for our adult population, or in our large cities,
+and their neighborhood. But, so far as any of the sacred influence of
+former design can be brought to bear on the minds of the young, and so
+far as, in rural districts, the first elements of scholarly education
+can be made pure, the foundation of a new dynasty of thought may be
+slowly laid. I was strangely impressed by the effect produced in a
+provincial seaport school for children, chiefly of fishermen's families,
+by the gift of a little colored drawing of a single figure from the
+Paradise of Angelico in the Accademia of Florence. The drawing was
+wretched enough, seen beside the original; I had only bought it from the
+poor Italian copyist for charity: but, to the children, it was like an
+actual glimpse of heaven; they rejoiced in it with pure joy, and their
+mistress thanked me for it more than if I had sent her a whole library
+of good books. Of such copies, the grace-giving industry of young
+girls, now worse than lost in the spurious charities of the bazaar, or
+selfish ornamentations of the drawing-room, might, in a year's time,
+provide enough for every dame-school in England; and a year's honest
+work of the engravers employed on our base novels, might represent to
+our advanced students every frescoed legend of philosophy and morality
+extant in Christendom.
+
+242. For my own part, I have no purpose, in what remains to me of
+opportunity, either at Oxford or elsewhere, to address any farther
+course of instruction towards the development of existing schools. After
+seeing the stream of the Teviot as black as ink, and a putrid carcass of
+a sheep lying in the dry channel of the Jed, under Jedburgh Abbey, (the
+entire strength of the summer stream being taken away to supply a single
+mill,) I know, finally, what value the British mind sets on the
+'beauties of nature,' and shall attempt no farther the excitement of its
+enthusiasm in that direction. I shall indeed endeavor to carry out, with
+Mr. Ward's help, my twenty years' held purpose of making the real
+character of Turner's work known, to the persons who, formerly
+interested by the engravings from him, imagined half the merit was of
+the engraver's giving. But I know perfectly that to the general people,
+trained in the midst of the ugliest objects that vice can design, in
+houses, mills, and machinery, _all_ beautiful form and color is as
+invisible as the seventh heaven. It is not a question of appreciation at
+all; the thing is physically invisible to them, as human speech is
+inaudible during a steam whistle.
+
+243. And I shall also use all the strength I have to convince those,
+among our artists of the second order, who are wise and modest enough
+not to think themselves the matches of Turner or Michael Angelo, that in
+the present state of art they only waste their powers in endeavoring to
+produce original pictures of human form or passion. Modern aristocratic
+life is too vulgar, and modern peasant life too unhappy, to furnish
+subjects of noble study; while, even were it otherwise, the
+multiplication of designs by painters of second-rate power is no more
+desirable than the writing of music by inferior composers. They may,
+with far greater personal happiness, and incalculably greater advantage
+to others, devote themselves to the affectionate and sensitive copying
+of the works of men of just renown. The dignity of this self-sacrifice
+would soon be acknowledged with sincere respect; for copies produced by
+men working with such motive would differ no less from the common
+trade-article of the galleries than the rendering of music by an
+enthusiastic and highly trained executant differs from the grinding of a
+street organ. And the change in the tone of public feeling, produced by
+familiarity with such work, would soon be no less great than in their
+musical enjoyment, if having been accustomed only to hear black
+Christys, blind fiddlers, and hoarse beggars scrape or howl about their
+streets, they were permitted daily audience of faithful and gentle
+orchestral rendering of the work of the highest classical masters.
+
+244. I have not, until very lately, rightly appreciated the results of
+the labor of the Arundel Society in this direction. Although, from the
+beginning, I have been honored in being a member of its council, my
+action has been hitherto rather of check than help, because I thought
+more of the differences between our copies and the great originals, than
+of their unquestionable superiority to anything the public could
+otherwise obtain.
+
+I was practically convinced of their extreme value only this last
+winter, by staying at the house of a friend in which the Arundel
+engravings were the principal decoration; and where I learned more of
+Masaccio from the Arundel copy of the contest with Simon Magus, than in
+the Brancacci chapel itself; for the daily companionship with the
+engraving taught me subtleties in its composition which had escaped me
+in the multitudinous interest of visits to the actual fresco.
+
+But the work of the Society has been sorely hindered hitherto, because
+it has had at command only the skill of copyists trained in foreign
+schools of color, and accustomed to meet no more accurate requisitions
+than those of the fashionable traveler. I have always hoped for, and
+trust at last to obtain, co-operation with our too mildly laborious
+copyists, of English artists possessing more brilliant color faculty;
+and the permission of our subscribers to secure for them the great ruins
+of the noble past, undesecrated by the trim, but treacherous, plastering
+of modern emendation.
+
+245. Finally, I hope to direct some of the antiquarian energy often to
+be found remaining, even when love of the picturesque has passed away,
+to encourage the accurate delineation and engraving of historical
+monuments, as a direct function of our schools of art. All that I have
+generally to suggest on this matter has been already stated with
+sufficient clearness in the first of my inaugural lectures at Oxford:
+and my forthcoming 'Elements of Drawing'[BN] will contain all the
+directions I can give in writing as to methods of work for such purpose.
+The publication of these has been hindered, for at least a year, by the
+abuses introduced by the modern cheap modes of printing engravings. I
+find the men won't use any ink but what pleases them; nor print but with
+what pressure pleases them; and if I can get the foreman to attend to
+the business, and choose the ink right, the men change it the moment he
+leaves the room, and threaten to throw up the job when they are
+detected. All this, I have long known well, is a matter of course, in
+the outcome of modern principles of trade; but it has rendered it
+hitherto impossible for me to produce illustrations, which have been
+ready, as far as my work or that of my own assistants is concerned, for
+a year and a half. Any one interested in hearing of our progress--or
+arrest, may write to my Turner copyist, Mr. Ward:[BO] and, in the
+meantime, they can help my designs for art education best by making
+these Turner copies more generally known; and by determining, when they
+travel, to spend what sums they have at their disposal, not in fady
+photography, but in the encouragement of any good _water-color_ and
+_pencil_ draughtsmen whom they find employed in the _galleries_ of
+Europe.
+
+
+                               ARTICLE II.
+
+                             DETACHED NOTES.
+
+                                   I.
+
+      _On the series of Sibyl engravings attributed to Botticelli._
+
+246. Since I wrote the earlier lectures in this volume, I have been made
+more doubtful on several points which were embarrassing enough before,
+by seeing some better (so-called) impressions of my favorite plates
+containing light and shade which did not improve them.
+
+I do not choose to waste time or space in discussion, till I know more
+of the matter; and that more I must leave to my good friend Mr. Reid of
+the British Museum to find out for me; for I have no time to take up the
+subject myself, but I give, for frontispiece to this Appendix, the
+engraving of Joshua referred to in the text, which however beautiful in
+thought, is an example of the inferior execution and more elaborate
+shade which puzzle me. But whatever is said in the previous pages of the
+plates chosen for example, by whomsoever done, is absolutely
+trustworthy. Thoroughly fine they are, in their existing state, and
+exemplary to all persons and times. And of the rest, in fitting place I
+hope to give complete--or at least satisfactory account.
+
+
+                                   II.
+
+  _On the three excellent engravers representative of the first, middle,
+                           and late schools._
+
+[Illustration: XII.
+
+The Coronation in the Garden.]
+
+247. I have given opposite a photograph, slightly reduced from the Duerer
+Madonna, alluded to often in the text, as an example of his best
+conception of womanhood. It is very curious that Duerer, the least
+able of all great artists to represent womanhood, should of late have
+been a very principal object of feminine admiration. The last thing a
+woman should do is to write about art. They never see anything in
+pictures but what they are told, (or resolve to see out of
+contradiction,)--or the particular things that fall in with their own
+feelings. I saw a curious piece of enthusiastic writing by an Edinburgh
+lady, the other day, on the photographs I had taken from the tower of
+Giotto. She did not care a straw what Giotto had meant by them, declared
+she felt it her duty only to announce what they were to _her_; and wrote
+two pages on the bas-relief of Heracles and Antaeus--assuming it to be
+the death of Abel.
+
+248. It is not, however, by women only that Duerer has been over-praised.
+He stands so alone in his own field, that the people who care much for
+him generally lose the power of enjoying anything else rightly; and are
+continually attributing to the force of his imagination quaintnesses
+which are merely part of the general mannerism of his day.
+
+The following notes upon him, in relation to two other excellent
+engravers, were written shortly for extempore expansion in lecturing. I
+give them, with the others in this terminal article, mainly for use to
+myself in future reference; but also as more or less suggestive to the
+reader, if he has taken up the subject seriously, and worth, therefore,
+a few pages of this closing sheet.
+
+249. The men I have named as representative of all the good ones
+composing their school, are alike resolved their engraving shall be
+lovely.
+
+But Botticelli, the ancient, wants, with as little engraving, as much
+Sibyl as possible.
+
+Duerer, the central, wants, with as much engraving as possible, anything
+of Sibyl that may chance to be picked up with it.
+
+Beaugrand, the modern, wants, as much Sibyl as possible, and as much
+engraving too.
+
+250. I repeat--for I want to get this clear to you--Botticelli wants,
+with as little engraving, as much Sibyl as possible. For his head is
+full of Sibyls, and his heart. He can't draw them fast enough: one
+comes, and another and another; and all, gracious and wonderful and
+good, to be engraved forever, if only he had a thousand hands and lives.
+He scratches down one, with no haste, with no fault, divinely careful,
+scrupulous, patient, but with as few lines as possible. 'Another
+Sibyl--let me draw another, for heaven's sake, before she has burnt all
+her books, and vanished.'
+
+Duerer is exactly Botticelli's opposite. He is a workman, to the heart,
+and will do his work magnificently. 'No matter what I do it on, so that
+my craft be honorably shown. Anything will do; a Sibyl, a skull, a
+Madonna and Christ, a hat and feather, an Adam, an Eve, a cock, a
+sparrow, a lion with two tails, a pig with five legs,--anything will do
+for me. But see if I don't show you what engraving is, be my subject
+what it may!'
+
+251. Thirdly: Beaugrand, I said, wants as much Sibyl as possible, and as
+much engraving. He is essentially a copyist, and has no ideas of his
+own, but deep reverence and love for the work of others. He will give
+his life to represent another man's thought. He will do his best with
+every spot and line,--exhibit to you, if you will only look, the most
+exquisite completion of obedient skill; but will be content, if you will
+not look, to pass his neglected years in fruitful peace, and count every
+day well spent that has given softness to a shadow, or light to a smile.
+
+
+                                  III.
+
+    _On Duerer's landscape, with reference to the sentence on p. 101_:
+                        "I hope you are pleased."
+
+252. I spoke just now only of the ill-shaped body of this figure of
+Fortune, or Pleasure. Beneath her feet is an elaborate landscape. It is
+all drawn out of Duerer's head;--he would look at bones or tendons
+carefully, or at the leaf details of foreground;--but at the breadth
+and loveliness of real landscape, never.
+
+He has tried to give you a bird's-eye view of Germany; rocks, and woods,
+and clouds, and brooks, and the pebbles in their beds, and mills, and
+cottages, and fences, and what not; but it is all a feverish dream,
+ghastly and strange, a monotone of diseased imagination.
+
+And here is a little bit of the world he would not look at--of the great
+river of his land, with a single cluster of its reeds, and two boats,
+and an island with a village, and the way for the eternal waters opened
+between the rounded hills.[BP]
+
+It is just what you may see any day, anywhere,--innocent, seemingly
+artless; but the artlessness of Turner is like the face of
+Gainsborough's village girl, and a joy forever.
+
+
+                                   IV.
+
+                       _On the study of anatomy._
+
+253. The virtual beginner of artistic anatomy in Italy was a man called
+'The Poulterer'--from his grandfather's trade; 'Pollajuolo,' a man of
+immense power, but on whom the curse of the Italian mind in this age[BQ]
+was set at its deepest.
+
+Any form of passionate excess has terrific effects on body and soul, in
+nations as in men; and when this excess is in rage, and rage against
+your brother, and rage accomplished in habitual deeds of blood,--do you
+think Nature will forget to set the seal of her indignation upon the
+forehead? I told you that the great division of spirit between the
+northern and southern races had been reconciled in the Val d'Arno. The
+Font of Florence, and the Font of Pisa, were as the very springs of the
+life of the Christianity which had gone forth to teach all nations,
+baptizing them in the name of the Prince of Peace. Yet these two brother
+cities were to each other--I do not say as Abel and Cain, but as
+Eteocles and Polynices, and the words of AEschylus are now fulfilled in
+them to the uttermost. The Arno baptizes their dead bodies:--their
+native valley between its mountains is to them as the furrow of a
+grave;--"and so much of their land they have, as is sepulcher." Nay, not
+of Florence and Pisa only was this true: Venice and Genoa died in
+death-grapple; and eight cities of Lombardy divided between them the joy
+of leveling Milan to her lowest stone. Nay, not merely in city against
+city, but in street against street, and house against house, the fury of
+the Theban dragon flamed ceaselessly, and with the same excuse upon
+men's lips. The sign of the shield of Polynices, Justice bringing back
+the exile, was to them all, in turn, the portent of death: and their
+history, in the sum of it and substance, is as of the servants of Joab
+and Abner by the pool of Gibeon. "They caught every one his fellow by
+the head, and thrust his sword in his fellow's side; so they fell down
+together: wherefore that place was called 'the field of the strong
+men.'"
+
+254. Now it is not possible for Christian men to live thus, except under
+a fever of insanity. I have before, in my lectures on Prudence and
+Insolence in art, deliberately asserted to you the logical accuracy of
+the term 'demoniacal possession'[BR]--the being in the power or
+possession of a betraying spirit; and the definite sign of such insanity
+is delight in witnessing pain, usually accompanied by an instinct that
+gloats over or plays with physical uncleanness or disease, and always by
+a morbid egotism. It is not to be recognized for demoniacal power so
+much by its _viciousness_, as its _paltriness_,--the taking pleasure in
+minute, contemptible, and loathsome things.[BS] Now, in the middle of
+the gallery of the Brera at Milan, there is an elaborate study of a
+dead Christ, entirely characteristic of early fifteenth century Italian
+madman's work. It is called--and was presented to the people as--a
+Christ; but it _is_ only an anatomical study of a vulgar and ghastly
+dead body, with the soles of the feet set straight at the spectator, and
+the rest foreshortened. It is either Castagno's or Mantegna's,--in my
+mind, set down to Castagno; but I have not looked at the picture for
+years, and am not sure at this moment. It does not matter a straw which:
+it is exactly characteristic of the madness in which all of
+them--Pollajuolo, Castagno, Mantegna, Lionardo da Vinci, and Michael
+Angelo, polluted their work with the science of the sepulcher,[BT] and
+degraded it with presumptuous and paltry technical skill. Foreshorten
+your Christ, and paint Him, if you can, half putrefied,--that is the
+scientific art of the Renaissance.
+
+255. It is impossible, however, in so vast a subject to distinguish
+always the beginner of things from the establisher. To the poulterer's
+son, Pollajuolo, remains the eternal shame of first making insane
+contest the only subject of art; but the two _establishers_ of anatomy
+were Lionardo and Michael Angelo. You hear of Lionardo chiefly because
+of his Last Supper, but Italy did not hear of him for that. This was not
+what brought _her_ to worship Lionardo--but the Battle of the Standard.
+
+
+                                   V.
+
+                   _Fragments on Holbein and others._
+
+256. Of Holbein's St. Elizabeth, remember, she is not a perfect Saint
+Elizabeth, by any means. She is an honest and sweet German lady,--the
+best he could see; he could do no better;--and so I come back to my old
+story,--no man can do better than he sees: if he can reach the nature
+round him, it is well; he may fall short of it; he cannot rise above it;
+"the best, in this kind, are but shadows."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Yet that intense veracity of Holbein is indeed the strength and glory of
+all the northern schools. They exist only in being true. Their work
+among men is the definition of what is, and the abiding by it. They
+cannot dream of what is not. They make fools of themselves if they try.
+Think how feeble even Shakspere is when he tries his hand at a
+Goddess;--women, beautiful and womanly, as many as you choose; but who
+cares what his Minerva or Juno says, in the masque of the Tempest? And
+for the painters--when Sir Joshua tries for a Madonna, or Vandyke for a
+Diana--they can't even _paint_! they become total simpletons. Look at
+Rubens' mythologies in the Louvre, or at modern French heroics, or
+German pietisms! Why, all--Cornelius, Hesse, Overbeck, and David--put
+together, are not worth one De Hooghe of an old woman with a broom
+sweeping a back-kitchen. The one thing we northerns can do is to find
+out what is fact, and insist on it: mean fact it may be, or noble--but
+fact always, or we die.
+
+257. Yet the intensest form of northern realization can be matched in
+the south, when the southerns choose. There are two pieces of animal
+drawing in the Sistine Chapel unrivaled for literal veracity. The sheep
+at the well in front of Zipporah; and afterwards, when she is going
+away, leading her children, her eldest boy, like every one else, has
+taken his chief treasure with him, and this treasure is his pet dog. It
+is a little sharp-nosed white fox-terrier, full of fire and life; but
+not strong enough for a long walk. So little Gershom, whose name was
+"the stranger" because his father had been a stranger in a strange
+land,--little Gershom carries his white terrier under his arm, lying on
+the top of a large bundle to make it comfortable. The doggie puts its
+sharp nose and bright eyes out, above his hand, with a little roguish
+gleam sideways in them, which means,--if I can read rightly a dog's
+expression,--that he has been barking at Moses all the morning and has
+nearly put him out of temper:--and without any doubt, I can assert to
+you that there is not any other such piece of animal painting in the
+world,--so brief, intense, vivid, and absolutely balanced in truth: as
+tenderly drawn as if it had been a saint, yet as humorously as
+Landseer's Lord Chancellor poodle.
+
+258. Oppose to--
+
+  Holbein's Veracity--Botticelli's Fantasy.
+     "      Shade         "        Color.
+     "      Despair       "        Faith.
+     "      Grossness     "        Purity.
+
+True Fantasy. Botticelli's Tree in Hellespontic Sibyl. Not a real tree
+at all--yet founded on intensest perception of beautiful reality. So the
+swan of Clio, as opposed to Duerer's cock, or to Turner's swan.
+
+The Italian power of abstraction into one mythologic
+personage--Holbein's death is only literal. He has to split his death
+into thirty different deaths; and each is but a skeleton. But Orcagna's
+death is one--the power of death itself. There may thus be as much
+_breadth in thought_, as in execution.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+259. What then, we have to ask, is a man _conscious of_ in what he sees?
+
+For instance, in all Cruikshank's etchings--however slight the
+outline--there is an intense consciousness of light and shade, and of
+local color, _as a part_ of light and shade; but none of color itself.
+He was wholly incapable of coloring; and perhaps this very deficiency
+enabled him to give graphic harmony to engraving.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Bewick--snow-pieces, etc. _Gray_ predominant; _perfect sense of color_,
+coming out in patterns of birds;--yet so uncultivated, that he engraves
+the brown birds better than pheasant or peacock!
+
+For quite perfect consciousness of color makes engraving impossible, and
+you have instead--Correggio.
+
+
+                                   VI.
+
+                    _Final notes on light and shade._
+
+260. You will find in the 138th and 147th paragraphs of my Inaugural
+lectures, statements which, if you were reading the book by yourselves,
+would strike you probably as each of them difficult, and in some degree
+inconsistent,--namely, that the school of color has exquisite character
+and sentiment; but is childish, cheerful, and fantastic; while the
+school of shade is deficient in character and sentiment; but supreme in
+intellect and veracity. "The way by light and shade," I say, "is taken
+by men of the highest powers of thought and most earnest desire for
+truth."
+
+The school of shade, I say, is deficient in character and sentiment.
+Compare any of Duerer's Madonnas with any of Angelico's.
+
+Yet you may discern in the Apocalypse engravings that Duerer's mind was
+seeking for truths, and dealing with questions, which no more could have
+occurred to Angelico's mind than to that of a two-years-old baby.
+
+261. The two schools unite in various degrees; but are always
+distinguishably generic, the two headmost masters representing each
+being Tintoret and Perugino. The one, deficient in sentiment, and
+continually offending us by the want of it, but full of intellectual
+power and suggestion.
+
+The other, repeating ideas with so little reflection that he gets blamed
+for doing the same thing over again, (Vasari); but exquisite in
+sentiment and the conditions of taste which it forms, so as to become
+the master of it to Raphael and to all succeeding him; and remaining
+such a type of sentiment, too delicate to be felt by the latter
+practical mind of Dutch-bred England, that Goldsmith makes the
+admiration of him the test of absurd connoisseurship. But yet, with
+under-current of intellect, which gets him accused of free-thinking, and
+therefore with under-current of entirely exquisite chiaroscuro.
+
+Light and shade, then, imply the understanding of things--Color, the
+imagination and the sentiment of them.
+
+262. In Turner's distinctive work, color is scarcely acknowledged unless
+under influence of sunshine. The sunshine is his treasure; his lividest
+gloom contains it; his grayest twilight regrets it, and remembers. Blue
+is always a blue shadow; brown or gold, always light;--nothing is
+cheerful but sunshine; wherever the sun is not, there is melancholy or
+evil. Apollo is God; and all forms of death and sorrow exist in
+opposition to him.
+
+But in Perugino's distinctive work,--and therefore I have given him the
+captain's place over all,--there is simply _no_ darkness, _no_ wrong.
+Every color is lovely, and every space is light. The world, the
+universe, is divine: all sadness is a part of harmony; and all gloom, a
+part of peace.
+
+                          THE END.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[BL] See note to the close of this article, p. 156.
+
+[BM] The raven, however, like all Dickens's animals, is perfect: and I
+am the more angry with the rest because I have every now and then to
+open the book to look for him.
+
+[BN] "Laws of Fesole."
+
+[BO] 2, Church Terrace, Richmond, Surrey. NOTE.--I have hitherto
+permitted Mr. Ward to copy any Turner drawing he was asked to do; but,
+finding there is a run upon the vignettes of Loch Lomond and Derwent, I
+have forbidden him to do more of them for the present, lest his work
+should get the least mechanical. The admirable drawings of Venice, by my
+good assistant, Mr. Bunney, resident there, will become of more value to
+their purchasers every year, as the buildings from which they are made
+are destroyed. I was but just in time, working with him at Verona, to
+catch record of Fra Giocondo's work in the smaller square; the most
+beautiful Renaissance design in North Italy.
+
+[BP] The engraving of Turner's "Scene on the Rhine" (near Bingen?) with
+boats on the right, and reedy foreground on the left; the opening
+between its mountain banks in central distance. It is exquisitely
+engraved, the plate being of the size of the drawing, about ten inches
+by six, and finished with extreme care and feeling.
+
+[BQ] See the horrible picture of St. Sebastian by him in our own
+National Gallery.
+
+[BR] See "The Eagle's Nest," Sec. 79.
+
+[BS] As in the muscles of the legs and effort in stretching bows, of the
+executioners, in the picture just referred to.
+
+[BT] Observe, I entirely distinguish the study of _anatomy_--i.e., of
+intense bone and muscle--from study of the nude, as the Greeks practiced
+it. This for an entirely great painter is absolutely necessary; but yet
+I believe, in the case of Botticelli, it was nobly restricted. The
+following note by Mr. Tyrwhitt contains, I think, the probable truth:--
+
+"The facts relating to Sandro Botticelli's models, or rather to his
+favorite model (as it appears to me), are but few; and it is greatly to
+be regretted that his pictures are seldom dated;--if it were certain in
+what order they appeared, what follows here might approach moral
+certainty.
+
+"There is no doubt that he had great personal regard for Fra Filippo, up
+to that painter's death in 1469, Sandro being then twenty-two years old.
+He may probably have got only good from him; anyhow he would get a
+strong turn for Realism,--i.e. the treatment of sacred and all other
+subjects in a realistic manner. He is described in Crowe and
+Cavalcaselle from Filippino Lippi's Martyrdom of St. Peter, as a sullen
+and sensual man, with beetle brows, large fleshy mouth, etc., etc.
+Probably he was a strong man, and intense in physical and intellectual
+habit.
+
+"This man, then, begins to paint in his strength, with
+conviction--rather happy and innocent than not--that it is right to
+paint any beautiful thing, and best to paint the most beautiful,--say in
+1470, at twenty-three years of age. The allegorical Spring and the
+Graces, and the Aphrodite now in the Ufficii, were painted for Cosmo,
+and seem to be taken by Vasari and others as early, or early-central,
+works in his life: also the portrait of Simonetta Vespucei[1]. He is
+known to have painted much in early life for the Vespucei and the
+Medici;--and this daughter of the former house seems to have been
+inamorata or mistress of Giuliano de' Medici, murdered by the Pazzi in
+1478. Now it seems agreed by Crowe and Cavalcaselle, Pater, etc., (and I
+am quite sure of it myself as to the pictures mentioned)--first, that
+the same slender and long-throated model appears in Spring, the
+Aphrodite, Calumny, and other works.[2] Secondly, that she was
+Simonetta, the original of the Pitti portrait.
+
+"Now I think she must have been induced to let Sandro draw from her
+whole person undraped, more or less; and that he must have done so as
+such a man probably would, in strict honor as to deed, word, and
+_definite_ thought, but under occasional accesses of passion of which he
+said nothing, and which in all probability and by grace of God refined
+down to nil, or nearly so, as he got accustomed to look in honor at so
+beautiful a thing. (He may have left off the undraped after her death.)
+First, her figure is absolutely fine Gothic; I don't think any antique
+is so slender. Secondly, she has the sad, passionate, and exquisite
+Lombard mouth. Thirdly, her limbs shrink together, and she seems not
+quite to have 'liked it' or been an accustomed model. Fourthly, there is
+tradition, giving her name to all those forms.
+
+"Her lover Giuliano was murdered in 1478, and Savonarola hanged and
+burnt in 1498. Now, can her distress, and Savonarola's preaching,
+between them, have taken, in few years, all the carnality out of Sandro,
+supposing him to have come already, by seventy-eight, to that state in
+which the sight of her delighted him, without provoking ulterior
+feelings? All decent men accustomed to draw from the nude tell us they
+get to that.
+
+"Sandro's Dante is dated as published in 1482. He may have been
+saddening by that time, and weary of beauty, pure or mixed;--though he
+went on painting Madonnas, I fancy. (Can Simonetta be traced in any of
+them? I think not. The Sistine paintings extend from 1481 to 1484,
+however. I cannot help thinking Zipporah is impressed with her.) After
+Savonarola's death, Sandro must have lost heart, and gone into Dante
+altogether. Most ways in literature and art lead to Dante; and this
+question about the nude and the purity of Botticelli is no exception to
+the rule.
+
+"Now in the Purgatorio, Lust is the last sin of which we are to be made
+pure, and it has to be burnt out of us; being itself as searching as
+fire, as smoldering, devouring, and all that. Corruptio: optimi pessima;
+and it is the most searching and lasting of evils, because it really is
+a corruption attendant on true Love, which is eternal--whatever the word
+means. That this is so, seems to me to demonstrate the truth of the Fall
+of Man from the condition of moral very-goodness in God's sight. And I
+think that Dante connected the purifying pains of his intermediate state
+with actual sufferings in this life, working out repentance,--in himself
+and others. And the 'torment' of this passion, to the repentant or
+resisting, or purity-seeking soul is decidedly like the pain of physical
+burning.
+
+"Further, its casuistry is impracticable; because the more you stir the
+said 'fire' the stronger hold it takes. Therefore, men and women are
+_rightly_ secret about it, and detailed confessions unadvisable. Much
+talk about 'hypocrisy' in this matter is quite wrong and unjust. Then,
+its connection with female beauty, as a cause of love between man and
+woman, seems to me to be the inextricable nodus of the Fall, the here
+inseparable mixture of good and evil, till soul and body are parted. For
+the sense of seen Beauty is the awakening of Love, at whatever distance
+from any kind of return or sympathy--as with a rose, or what not. Sandro
+may be the man who has gone nearest to the right separation of Delight
+from Desire: supposing that he began with religion and a straight
+conscience; saw lovingly the error of Fra Filippo's way; saw with
+intense distant love the error of Simonetta's; and reflected on Florence
+and _its_ way, and drew nearer and nearer to Savonarola, being yet too
+big a man for asceticism; and finally wearied of all things and sunk
+into poverty and peace."
+
+[1] Pitti, Stanza di Prometeo, 348.
+
+[2] I think Zipporah may be a remembrance of her.
+
++----------------------------------------------------------------------+
+|                         TRANSCRIBERS' NOTES                          |
+|                                                                      |
+|                                                                      |
+| General: Corrections to punctuation have not been individually       |
+|     documented                                                       |
+|                                                                      |
+| List of Plates: Fac-simile standardised to Facsimile (3 occurrences) |
+|                                                                      |
+| List of Plates, Illustration III: Fesole standardised to Fesole      |
+|                                                                      |
+| List of Plates: Obedienta corrected to Obediente                     |
+|                                                                      |
+| Pages 10, 31, 105: Leonardo standardised to Lionardo                 |
+|                                                                      |
+| Pages 26, 78: nell' arte as in original                              |
+|                                                                      |
+| Page 27: Diagram has been split into two parts as it was too wide to |
+|     display                                                          |
+|                                                                      |
+| Page 27: Durer standardised to Duerer (in diagram)                    |
+|                                                                      |
+| Page 46: line work standardised to line-work (first occurrence)      |
+|                                                                      |
+| Page 47, 51, 54, 70, 151: wood-cuts standardised to woodcuts         |
+|                                                                      |
+| Page 50, 51, 53, 56, 57, 59, 70, 107, 147: wood-cut standardised to  |
+|     woodcut                                                          |
+|                                                                      |
+| Page 76: dexterous standardised to dextrous                          |
+|                                                                      |
+| Page 103: "Holbein had bitterer task." as in the original            |
+|                                                                      |
+| Page 112: beame corrected to became                                  |
++----------------------------------------------------------------------+
+
+
+
+
+
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