The question as to the exact shape of the toga has never been settled, and most likely never will be. The older authorities say that it was rectilinear on one side and curvilinear on the other; but more modern writers say it was of the shape of two segmentsof a circle joined together. I am inclined to favor this latter opinion. It would in this case be folded in two before being put on, and the complicated and multitudinous folds would be easily accounted for.
It is doubtful when it was first worn, but it certainly was in fashion during the kings, and it would therefore be the proper clothing for Numa Pompilius, the elder Brutus, Tarquin, and the other personages of that period. The mode of wearing it in these ancient times was slightly different to the fashion which prevailed in the time of the Cæsars. Instead of being brought round the bodyunderthe right arm it was laidoverthe shoulder, thus covering the whole right arm. This must have been extremely inconvenient, and although when sitting in judgment or taking part in some state ceremonials, the ancient Roman senators may have muffled themselves up in this way, it is impossible to believe that they did not adopt some more comfortable way of draping themselves when actively employed.
We are told that in early times the toga was theonlygarment worn by the men, but I suspect that this is a mistake. I rather think that a short sleeveless tunic was always worn.
I shall refer to the toga again, but I wish to proceed chronologically, and to finish what I have to say about the costume of the earliest Roman period. Whatever may have been the custom with the men, the women certainly wore a long tunic, and a shorterone underneath. It is well to avoid giving them the chlamys, as we have no evidence that they wore it: but a cloak was certainly customary. It was either of the toga, semicircular make, or cut square like the Greek pallium. Care should be taken, in dressing Roman figures of this period, to keep the costumes very simple and primitive.
The togas of the Roman kings are said to have been striped with purple. Pliny mentions this, and in a matter of this sort he is likely to have been correct.
Silk was introduced into Europe about this time, but the material was far too costly to be generally worn. We may suppose that a luxurious monarch like Tarquinius Superbus may have worn a tunic of Oriental silk, but luxury of this kind was not general, as it became six hundred years later under the emperors.
The same stern sobriety of costume should be observed in painting subjects of the Consulate.
Scipio Africanus, Regulus, Coriolanus, and the other heroes of this period, should be clothed with Spartan plainness. White (or at any rate monochromatic) cloaks and togas, armor composed of iron, bronze, and leather would be the proper clothing during the Consulate.
We now come to the Imperial period; and here I would remark that in the Augustine age, luxury had not reached that point of extravagance and badtaste which it acquired afterward. The toga was still the ample woollen cloak of preceding ages, and was worn over a simple short tunic. I ought, however, to mention that in the time of Augustus the toga began to be discarded in favor of more convenient garments. It was, however, always worn on ceremonial or state occasions, and great care was taken with the adjustment of the folds. A Roman gentleman would dress for a dinner at Lucullus’, or a grand show at the Colosseum, by putting on a clean white toga.
The toga pulla was made of the wool of black sheep. It was of a coarser texture than the white toga, and was worn by mourners. The toga picta was, as its name implies, embroidered with colors. The toga prætexta had a purple or rather what we should call a lake-colored border. It was worn by young people, and also by magistrates and other officials. The purple and white striped toga, already mentioned as having been worn by the old Roman kings, was also worn, under the Empire, by the “equites,” or mounted knights. The emperor alone had the privilege of wearing a toga entirely of purple. The female cloak of this period was the palla, which is only another form of the word pallium. It differed only from the toga in being rectangular.
The long tunic worn over the inner one (the gown in short) of the Roman matrons was called a “stola.” The lower part of it was crimped or plaited, so as toform a kind of flounce. This explains the numerous minute folds we see about the feet and ankles in many of the portrait statues.
I ought not to omit mentioning a very important article of female dress, viz., the “strophium.” It was the same as the Greek “strophion,” and seems to have been of universal use. It was a broad band, supposed to have been made of kid leather, and was wound round the waist to give support, and to improve what dressmakers call the figure. It was put on over the inner tunic, and therefore corresponds exactly with the modern corset. It does not appear that either the Greek or Roman ladies attached any value to a thin waist, and this strophium was worn for comfort and not in compliance with the fashion.
The Romans (I am still speaking of the Augustan age) wore in time of war the “sagum.” This was a cloak made of thick woollen material, and fastened in front or on the shoulder with a brooch. It was, in fact, identical with some forms of the Greek chlamys. The “paludamentum” was the same kind of garment, made of finer wool, and used by the officers. The sagum and paludamentum were not exclusively military, as in time of war it was the custom for civilians to throw aside their togas and assume this war-like garb. The “lacerna” was very commonly worn by the Roman citizens either simply over the tunic, or in cold weather over the togas as well. It was very much the same kind as the sagum, and worn inthe same way. It was almost always of a dark color. The “pœnula” was a circular cloak, with a hole in the middle to put the head through. It was slit open in front from the bottom, about half-way up, so as to give a little freedom to the arms. It was made of thick cloth, and generally had a hood. It was a garment essentially for bad weather, and must have greatly resembled our Inverness capes, or rather what is called a “poncho.”
The want of head-coverings amongst the higher classes of both the ancient Greeks and Romans has always struck me as being very singular. The Etruscans, like the semi-oriental peoples of Asia Minor, had a great variety of head-gear.
Caps of all shapes, more or less richly ornamented, were common amongst the Etruscans; but the Roman citizens (at least the upper ten thousand) seem to have had nothing to protect the head from the sun’s rays. We all know that habit will do a great deal; our Bluecoat boys do not suffer by going about bareheaded; but I cannot help thinking that an elderly Roman senator must occasionally have found the want of a hat on his way to the forum.
You will not often have to paint pictures of the ancient Etruscans. I need not therefore say much about their rich and varied dresses. I may, however, mention that their wardrobe bore about the same relation to the Roman costume that the Asia Minor dresses did to the Greek. There was anOriental and sometimes an Egyptian tendency about the cut and ornamentation of their garments. Instead of the classical sandal of the Romans they wore shoes, and even boots, made of some soft material. In short, they were more effeminate in their tastes. The more wealthy an Etruscan was, the richer would be his garments. He resembled in this respect many modern Orientals, whereas his neighbor of ancient Rome would (at least in the Augustan age) affect the greatest simplicity.
A Roman patrician would as soon think of decking himself out in an embroidered and spangle tunic, as an English gentleman would of assuming the plush and gorgeous livery of a Belgravian footman.
Luxury and effeminacy of dress began to creep into fashion in Rome as early as the time of Tiberius, who (probably because he did not wish to have any imitation of the finery of his own court) promulgated very strict sumptuary laws as to dress.
These laws were enforced and even made more stringent by some of his successors, but fashion was too strong even for Roman emperors; and under such sovereigns as Heliogabalus, but little was left of the ancient Roman simplicity. In one particular alone did the Romans of the Decadence contrast favorably with their neighbors the Etruscans—I mean in the matter of jewelry. The Roman noble, even of the most degraded period, never decked himself out with necklaces, armlets, and breast ornaments ofgold like the Etruscan. The only jewelry he wore was a signet ring.
The Roman ladies were less sparing of ornament, but even they did not load themselves with gold trinkets of every description after the Oriental and Etruscan fashion. Much of this Roman jewelry was of very beautiful design, and has been most conscientiously imitated by Castellani.
With regard to the fashion of wearing the hair and beard, it is certain that up to the third centuryB.C., the Romans wore their hair long and did not shave.
If, therefore, you have to paint any subject of the time of the kings, it would be incorrect to represent your personages with cropped hair and clean shaven, as though they were Romans of the later Consulate and Augustan age.
Some Sicilian barbers, who came over to Rome about the beginning of the third centuryB.C., introduced the custom of shaving and having the hair cut short, and this custom continued without intermission until the time of Hadrian or Trajan, when beards came into fashion again. The Sybarites, of a later period than this, used to oil their hair and sprinkle it with gold-dust. Wigs were also worn, by men as well as by women. If the emperor of the time happened to have a crop of thick curly hair, it was astonishing what a number of curly crops of hair suddenly appeared in Rome. Perhapswe need not go as far back as ancient Rome for phenomena of this kind. It is needless for me to describe the stiff, tasteless style of hair-dressing which prevailed amongst the ladies of the later Empire. It was their uncouth artificial coiffures which were imitated in France and England about the beginning of the century. It was this pseudo-classical style both of hair-dressing and apparel which made our grandmothers and great-grandmothers such unlovable objects.
A real classical revival after the puff and powder of the preceding generation, a return to the best Greek and Roman fashions, would have been a great blessing both to society in general and to the arts especially; but such classicism as prevailed under the first Napoleon was hardly an improvement on the perruques and pig-tails that preceded it.
The Roman military dress is so well known from the bas-reliefs of the times of Trajan, Hadrian, and Vespasian, that I need not go into any details respecting it. The only remark I would make is, that the linen drawers we see indicated in the sculptures, were not worn in the army before the wars of Gaul and Germany.
The dresses of the time of Constantine and his successors are very little known.
To some artists this is rather an attraction, as affording an opportunity of invention in costume,which is denied to them in a better known period; and it must be admitted that, provided they keep to what was likely to have been worn, no one can prove them to be wrong.
There are a few coins and medals in existence which give some idea of the appearance of an emperor or great personage, but of the dress of the common people we know nothing for certain.
In conclusion, I would remark that correctness in the matter of costume is far more necessary to an artist now than it was formerly. In this age of archæology and research we find, even on the stage, the most scrupulous fidelity observed, and it behooves us, as artists, not to lag behind.
You will find, both in the Academy library and at South Kensington, many excellent works on costume, and with such a mass of information within your reach it will be unpardonable if you fall into the anachronisms and absurdities of our ancestors.
Inthe lectures I am about to deliver on Early Italian Art, I shall not enter into minute detail, nor shall I attempt a history ofallthe painters of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries who deserve mention. All I can hope to give you is a sort of bird’s-eye view of the various phases through which the Art of Painting passed from its lowest ebb to its highest development.
I feel as if you were a party of excursionists about to be personally conducted across a great art continent, and as if it behooved me, as your conductor, to perform my duty with judgment and discretion.
We shall have a vast desert to cross, where nothing is found to break the dull and ugly monotony of the scene. We cannot do better than take the express train for this part of our journey, and get over the ground as quickly as possible.
Substituting miles for years, we shall, when we have accomplished something like a thousand miles, begin to notice signs of a more fertile soil. These indications will be very faint at first, but after a time the objects of interest will become more frequent,and we shall leave our train and take to riding or driving so as to get a better view of what we are passing. After a drive of a hundred miles the country will become so interesting that we shall buckle on our knapsacks and perform the rest of the journey on foot.
To continue the parallel, I would remind you that you are only excursionists, and not leisurely travellers desirous of becoming thoroughly acquainted with the products of the country they are about to traverse.
To acquire a thorough knowledge of the decay and revival of art, it would be necessary to consult the numerous and learned treatises on the subject, and to study the political and social state of Italy during the Middle Ages.
Such a study, though doubtless very instructive, would be rather a dry subject for a lecture, even if I were equal to the task. I shall, therefore, attempt nothing of the kind, and having always had a tender feeling for those whose attendance here is compulsory, and admiration for those who come of their own free will, I shall endeavor to be as little tedious as possible, whilst imparting to you a sort ofrésuméof mediæval painting and the early Italian schools.
The designs and paintings which have been discovered in the catacombs are commonly held to be the earliest specimens we possess of Christian art; and if by Christian art we mean the representationof Biblical and New Testament subjects, they undoubtedlyarethe earliest. If, however, by Christian art we mean the peculiar style which grew up and was fostered by the early Church, we must look elsewhere, for these paintings are essentially pagan in style.
In common with the paintings of the Constantine baths, and with the numerous decorative designs discovered in the pagan catacombs of the period, they are clearly derived direct from classical sources.
They vary in merit according to the skill of the artist who executed them, and also according to the epoch of their production, those of the second century being infinitely superior to those of the third and fourth. In the earliest of these paintings, the Good Shepherd replaces Orpheus, Elias replaces Apollo, and so on, but the style is in no way distinguishable from contemporary Roman wall-paintings. The arabesque ornamentation of the panels is exactly similar, and although the subjects are such as Moses striking the rock, Jonah swallowed by the whale, Daniel in the lions’ den, and various Christian miracles, these interesting works cannot be considered in any other light than specimens of late Roman art adapted to the illustration of Scriptural subjects.
These catacomb paintings look to me more like copies of better things than original paintings. They appear to have been done by decorative artists, who would naturally be more at home with the ornamentalborders and arabesques than with the figures. We may often notice this kind of inequality of work in modern houses.
The skilled workmen employed by the professional decorator will execute with consummate neatness all the ornamental parts, but if any figure is introduced into the panels it will be a coarse replica of some Pompeii muse, nymph, or cupid, possibly quite good enough for the purpose, but hardly indicative of the state of art of the period.
In the paintings of the third and fourth centuries there is a very noticeable decline in the drawing and execution, but there is still a reminiscence of a classical style. The draperies are still disposed with something like taste, and the heads, though very rude and clumsy, have not the barbaric hideousness of a later period. The last flicker of the antique lamp is to be found in those catacomb paintings of the fourth and fifth centuries.
When I say that they are not Christian in style, I mean that they are not ecclesiastical. Speaking strictly, from a common-sense rather than from an art point of view, it appears to me that the simple garments and the un-nimbi’d heads of the personages are more in keeping with the spirit of the New Testament than the gold and the gorgeous ornamentation of a later period. However that may be, viewed simply as works of art, they are the natural sequence to Pompeii and the later forms of Roman mural painting.
The case is very different with the large Roman and Ravenna mosaics of the fourth and fifth centuries, but before proceeding to criticise these productions, I should wish to say a few words about antique mosaic work.
The art of depicting objects by means of small cubes of marble, stone, or terra-cotta was invented about 300 years before the Christian era.
From a very simple beginning it gradually developed itself, until under the first emperors we find the most complicated ornaments, and even large historical compositions, executed in mosaic. The use of mosaic for the floors of temples and dwelling-houses was universal wherever the Romans spread. It was not confined to Imperial Rome or to luxurious Pompeii, but is invariably found wherever a wealthy Roman planted his villa, whether in the vicinity of the great Sahara Desert, or in the less savage neighborhood of the Isle of Wight. As your average modern Briton cannot do without his carpets, so the ancient Roman could not be happy without his tessellated pavement. In spite, however, of this widespread fashion, we do not find mosaic used as a means of wall decoration; it was almost exclusively employed for floors and tables. Some of these small cabinet pieces are beautifully inlaid, and, as works of art, are by no means contemptible. In a very few which have been preserved to us, we find specimens of the “opus sectile” of the Romans. This differedfrom ordinary mosaic by the tesseræ being cut into the form of the object to be depicted, and then accurately put together like a puzzle map. The well-known four pigeons perched on a tazza, discovered at Tivoli, is, I believe, the most beautiful specimen extant of the ordinary Roman cabinet mosaic.
The examples of Roman tessellated work applied to perpendicular surfaces are so rare and so unimportant that we cannot consider them as prototypes of the subsequent gigantic mosaic wall-pictures. The intermediate links are at any rate wanting. There is one, and only one, mosaic, that of St. Costanza, near Rome, which might be viewed as the missing link. It is supposed to have been executed toward the end of the fourth century, and belongs essentially to the decorative school of ancient pagan art. Indeed, so numerous are the little cupids and genii, and so prodigal has the artist been of vine tendrils, that the building containing it was formerly supposed to have been a temple of Bacchus. It is now, however, known that this, the earliest specimen of wall mosaic, was executed not in honor of Bacchus, but as a monument to the Christian Emperor Constantine’s two daughters.
Not until the fifth century do we get to those colossal figures, those blue and gold backgrounds, those richly ornamented draperies, which constitute the true starting-point of ecclesiastical art. We often hear that Cimabue is the father of modern art, butthe only reason for making him a kind of art Adam is because his name has been handed down to us. The real fathers of modern Christian art are the nameless authors of these gorgeous though somewhat grim mosaics.
Most art historians have included these splendid works in the later Roman period. They cannot certainly be called truly Byzantine, although they have a decided Byzantine flavor about them, and it is probable that many of them were executed by Greek or Byzantine artists; but, on the other hand, they are so strikingly dissimilar to late Roman work that they ought to be classed in a school by themselves. The forms of the figures are of course stiff and lifeless, if compared to the antique or to sixteenth-century art; but they are quite graceful and animated when compared with the dead ugliness of the real Byzantine work. There is a certain grandeur,sui generis, about them (particularly in the Justinian and Theodora mosaics of Ravenna) quite independent of their size and gorgeous ornamentation, which we never find in later Byzantine work.
The mosaics of the sixth century are in no way different in style from those of the fifth. The finest specimens of this period are the well-known mosaics of SS. Cosmo and Damiano in Rome. The head and figure of the gigantic Christ, which forms the centre, has been much eulogized by critics; but I confess I was disappointed when I last saw thismosaic. Size, and perhaps antiquity, have a good deal to do with the awe-inspiring qualities attributed to this work.
If the art displayed in this figure were really of a high quality, some of its beauty would be retained in a reproduction on a small scale. However much the panels of the Sistine Chapel may be reduced, they always retain their original grandeur, whereas this over-praised figure appears to me to lose all its imposing appearance when copied or engraved on a small scale.
Of historical or Biblical compositions, properly so-called, there are none extant of this period. The cause of this is partly no doubt owing to the nature of the materials then in use. Mosaic is certainly not suitable for figures in action, nor for complicated compositions; but there is also another reason for the absence of subject-pictures during the whole of the long interval between the early Roman emperors and Giotto, and that is, they were not wanted.
There were no wealthy patricians in those dark ages who required their villas decorated, no Mæcenas to give a helping hand to struggling genius. The Church was the only patron the poor artists of the period had, and a very hard and narrow-minded patron she was, reducing men who (for aught we know) may have had some talent, to the level of mere workmen and artificers, strictly limiting the range of their subjects and fettering them with traditional rules.
We are now fast approaching the true Byzantine period of art. Historians tell us that Byzantine or Greek Christian art was the offspring of the Eastern Church, influenced originally by ancient Greek art. It seems hard to believe that these hideous deformities should have descended from ancient Greek sculpture. It is a kind of Darwinian theory turned upside down, but still it may be true.
Ancient Greek does not necessarily mean the art of Phidias and Praxiteles. It may mean the barbaric sculpture which preceded the advent of these great masters, and I confess there is something in the odious grimace and the stiff draperies of Byzantine figures which reminds me of certain very early Greek work.
The introduction of the Byzantine style into Italy seems to have been very gradual. The school existed at Constantinople certainly in the fifth century, and possibly much earlier.
Its influence may be traced in the large Italian mosaics of the sixth century, but it was not till near the year 700, when Constantinople was fairly established as the capital of the world, that it became in all its ugliness the dominant school in Italy.
The Church of the fifth and sixth centuries, with all its narrow-mindedness in the choice of subjects, gave the artist a certain amount of liberty in his drawing and flesh-painting, but about the year 700 even this liberty was denied him.
Certain types were invented by monkish painters, that is, by men who were violently opposed to every thing that made life agreeable. These men, it is needless to say, were quite untrained artists, but in their uncouth way they endeavored to substitute their own ideal of humanity for the real thing, and they succeeded only too well. The ghastly type being once firmly established, all subsequent artists of this school were obliged to conform to it. In the second Nicene Council,A.D.787, it was decreed that:
“It is not the invention of the painter which creates the picture, but an inviolable law, a tradition of the Church. It is not the painters, but the holy fathers, who have to invent and to dictate.
“To them manifestly belongs the composition, to the painter only the execution.”
As I have already stated, there is good reason for believing that the holy fathers not only dictated the composition, but interfered pretty considerably with the execution, insisting as they did on ascetic, cadaverous heads and an indiscriminate use of gold.
There may have been another cause besides morbid asceticism which in the ninth century caused the Church to adopt such an unearthly type of humanity; namely, the fear of the Jews and Mahometans, who were very numerous at Constantinople.
It was natural that the growing sanctity of the grim mosaics should be associated in the minds bothof Jew and Mahometan with idol-worship, and accordingly we find that the Emperor Leo the Isaurian wished to conciliate his non-Christian subjects by the prohibition of all representation of the human form.
This, however, did not suit the monks. A synod was called, and ultimately it was agreed that sculpture alone should be interdicted; but may we not suppose that a kind of compromise was made about painting, and that it was settled that any near approach to the human form should be tabooed, that art in short was to be of the nature of that which graced the Auld Brig of Ayr?—
“Forms like some bedlam statuary’s dream,The crazed creations of misguided whim,Forms might be worshipped on the bended knee,And still the second dread command be free,Their likeness is not found on earth, in air, or sea.”
“Forms like some bedlam statuary’s dream,The crazed creations of misguided whim,Forms might be worshipped on the bended knee,And still the second dread command be free,Their likeness is not found on earth, in air, or sea.”
“Forms like some bedlam statuary’s dream,The crazed creations of misguided whim,Forms might be worshipped on the bended knee,And still the second dread command be free,Their likeness is not found on earth, in air, or sea.”
Kugler’s description of these Byzantine heads is so good that I cannot refrain from giving it. He says:
“The large ill-shaped eyes stare straight forward; a deep unhappy line, in which ill-humor seems to have taken up its permanent abode, extends from brow to brow beneath the bald and heavily-wrinkled forehead. The nose has the broad ridge of the antique still left above, but is narrow and pinched below, the anxious nostrils corresponding with the deep lines on each side of them.
“The mouth is small, but the somewhat protruding lower lip is in character with the melancholy of the whole picture. As long as such representations are confined to gray-headed saints and ecclesiastics they may be tolerated, but when the introduction of a kind of smirk is intended to convey the idea of a youthful countenance this type becomes intolerable. Even the Madonna, to whose countenance the meagreness of asceticism was hardly applicable, here assumes a thoroughly peevish expression, and was certainly never represented under so unattractive an aspect.”
I have given you this quotation from Kugler, in order to show you the opinion of a learned and liberal-minded writer, who certainly cannot be called a severe critic.
He goes on to compare Byzantine with Chinese art, which is, I think, rather hard upon the poor Celestials.
Both styles of figure-painting are equally conventional, and equally untrue to nature, but Chinese figures are far more cheerful and decorative than the unhappy Byzantine.
A room decorated by a Chinese artist would be a pleasant place to live in; but who except a long-distance walker, a forty days’ faster, or one of our modern votaries of self-inflicted martyrdom, would care about inhabiting a house hung with Byzantine pictures?
In these pictures the draperies gradually became more and more wooden, until at last they got to be thoroughly in keeping with the heads. There was a traditional arrangement of folds derived from the late Roman works, but this arrangement, though originally founded on sound principles, became in the hands of Byzantine artificers most untrue and stupid. The folds used to be indicated by a number of unmeaning straight lines, regardless of the form underneath.
The one redeeming feature in the art of Byzantium was the treatment of ornament. Founded partly on the late Roman as existing in numerous temples of Asia Minor during the reign of the Cæsars, and partly on the Persian style as seen at Persepolis, Palmyra, and elsewhere, Byzantine ornamentation is both rich and graceful. The Arabs and Moors carried the intricacies of Byzantine tracery still further, until thene plus ultrawas reached at the Alhambra; but to my taste the original Byzantine style of ornamentation is bolder and more effective than the elaborate Mauresque.
There is no want of taste or invention betrayed here. Indeed there is far more variety than in the somewhat overloaded Roman style of ornamentation, as may be seen at once by comparing Byzantine capitals with the debased Corinthian of the Romans. This excellence (not only in architectural detail but in every department of ornamental art)shows clearly that when the artists had free play they where not deficient in taste, and that we must ascribe the utter badness of Byzantine figure-painting to the proper cause; namely, to the veto the Church seems to have set on the study of the human form.
The principal difference between the Byzantine and Romanesque ornamentation is the more frequent occurrence in the latter of geometrical patterns, formed principally by squares and equilateral triangles intersecting each other. The walls and pavements of the Romanesque churches of Italy abound with examples of this geometric decoration. In Romanesque ornament again, gold and mosaic are not so universally used as in Byzantine; but the transition between the two styles was so gradual, and they were so closely connected, that it is almost impossible to draw the line between them.
Italy was in a very miserable and disturbed state during the dark centuries of the Middle Ages, being overrun by barbarous invaders and often afflicted by internecine wars, so that even without the leaden hand of the Church stifling all original talent, it is very improbable that any improvement in art could have been made.
For art to thrive, it is absolutely necessary that a country should be undisturbed and tolerably prosperous; although it by no means follows that a prosperous countrymustproduce great artists. Take,for instance, the Republic of Venice during the Middle Ages, which, whilst Italy was being vexed with endless invasions and civil war, enjoyed great prosperity; and yet not a single attempt was made by her artists to emancipate themselves from the dead level of Byzantine rules. On the contrary, the famous early mosaics of St. Mark’s are amongst the most characteristic specimens of Byzantine art which have been preserved to us.
Of their original splendor (as far as gold and workmanship could contribute to it) there can be no doubt, but of legitimate art there is no trace. Like all the work of this school, whether mosaic or fresco, the figures are done by routine, and are as lifeless and mean in character as the worst Byzantine types. Of course I am speaking of the series ofearlymosaics in St. Mark’s. The later ones executed in the twelfth century, although very Byzantine in character, partake largely of the general improvement which was noticeable at that time.
The tremendous rapidity with which Byzantine frescoes used to be executed is no excuse for their badness. Had the artists given ten times the labor they would have done no better. All original design was prohibited; every thing was done from tracings of previous works. These tracings were reproduced on the wall to be painted, and the flesh tints were filled in with a uniform flat color, sometimes of a brick-dust and sometimes of a green hue. Thedraperies were done in the same way, first a flat tint and then a few unmeaning black lines to represent folds. This process was entirely mechanical, the lines having no respect whatever for the limbs underneath.
To give you a better idea of the rapidity with which whole churches can be decorated in the Byzantine style, I will give Didron’s description of Oriental fresco-painting. He was at Mount Athos about forty years ago, and had the opportunity of seeing a monk and his five assistants at work. Mount Athos has for the last thirteen centuries been the headquarters and principal laboratory of Byzantine art, and a countless number of pictures on wood are to this day exported thence as articles of commerce to the Russian Empire. M. Didron says: “One pupil spread the mortar on the wall; the master drew the outline, without either cartoon or tracings; another pupil laid on the colors; a third gilt the nimbi, painted the ornaments, and wrote the inscriptions, which the master dictated to him from memory; and lastly, two boys were fully occupied in grinding and mixing the colors.”
The subject was a Christ and eleven apostles (life size), and the time taken to complete the work was under an hour!
I am not quite sure but what a couple of months’ experience in the Mount Athos workshops might not be of advantage to some of our students in the antique school.
Our traveller adds (I think quite unnecessarily) that the work seemed to him very rude and coarse—but it can be easily understood that at this rate a whole church could be covered with frescoes in a few days. “C’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas de l’art.”
From what I have said, you will understand the unchangeable nature of Byzantine art. Pictures painted in this style may be more or less neatly executed, but their artistic merit varies very little, whether they be of the seventh or the nineteenth centuries, whether they decorate St. Mark’s at Venice or an obscure monastery on Mount Athos. As an illustration of this, note a picture in the National Gallery, by a Greek artist of the name of Emmanuel. The date of this work is 1650. It was therefore painted long after Titian, Raffaelle, P. Veronese, and all the great masters had departed this life, and yet with all their glorious works before his eyes what does this primeval artist produce? All I can say is, “Go and see for yourselves.” Other schools have their ups and downs. The Italian, the Flemish, the French, and the English schools have all had, and will continue to have, their periods of elevation and depression; but Byzantine painting always maintains its dead level, and will continue to do so as long as the Greek Church lasts.
Pictures of this school are often associated withideas of sanctity, not only in holy Russia but in Western Europe. Almost all miracle-working pictures belong to this class. The Calabrian peasant, or the Andalusian muleteer, who would probably be unmoved by the Madonna di S. Sisto, is wrought up to a high pitch of religious fervor at the shrine of some olive Byzantine Virgin, with her pinched peevish face and wooden shoulders.
That this class of pictures has at all times been held to be peculiarly sacred, is proved from the fact that at Venice (even in the time of Titian) the cultivation of the stiff Byzantine style, for popular devotion, was maintained in juxtaposition with that of the most perfectly developed form of painting.
We may smile at the Venetian religious world, but I am not sure that at the present day an analogous tendency could not be imputed to some of us.
Is there not to some æsthetic nostrils a kind of odor of sanctity about mediæval perspective and composition? It is true that our revivalists do not wish to go back to the Byzantine period for our religious art; the Romanesque or at any rate the Quattro Cento style is the correct thing. But why go back at all? I can quite understand that in restoring an old cathedral it would be desirable to do so; but in a modern building (whether gothic or not) to reproduce forms which we know to be incorrect, and to introduce perspective which we know to be absurd, seems to me to be carrying our reverence for the past a little too far.
A letter appeared in theTimeslast summer which is so much to the purpose that I really must read it to you:—
“To the Editor of the ‘Times.’”June 30th.“Sir,—I have before me a design for a window which it is proposed to place in a village church in Lincolnshire, as one of a group memorial of the late vicar, his widow, and two sons, clergymen, one of them a missionary of the Church Missionary Society who died in India. May I be allowed to describe the design? The window is of two lights. The dexter represents a cardinal in red hat and stockings, red robe with blue lining, and a nimbus round his head of a color resembling olive-green. The sinister light has an archbishop with mitre, pall, polychromatic vestments, and a blue nimbus round his head; in his left hand a pastoral staff, and in his right the Sacred Heart, crimson, with gold flames issuing from the top. The drawing is signed by an eminent London firm, and is submitted by the present vicar as a suitable memorial of his predecessor, who was an Evangelical of the old school, and of his widow, a lady whose dread of ‘Popery’ was almost morbid.”
“To the Editor of the ‘Times.’”
June 30th.
“Sir,—I have before me a design for a window which it is proposed to place in a village church in Lincolnshire, as one of a group memorial of the late vicar, his widow, and two sons, clergymen, one of them a missionary of the Church Missionary Society who died in India. May I be allowed to describe the design? The window is of two lights. The dexter represents a cardinal in red hat and stockings, red robe with blue lining, and a nimbus round his head of a color resembling olive-green. The sinister light has an archbishop with mitre, pall, polychromatic vestments, and a blue nimbus round his head; in his left hand a pastoral staff, and in his right the Sacred Heart, crimson, with gold flames issuing from the top. The drawing is signed by an eminent London firm, and is submitted by the present vicar as a suitable memorial of his predecessor, who was an Evangelical of the old school, and of his widow, a lady whose dread of ‘Popery’ was almost morbid.”
Writers on art are fond of asserting that in spite of the repulsive ugliness of the Byzantine types, we ought to be grateful to the school for keeping the lamp of art alive during seven or eight centuries; but I think that the history of the great revival does not bear out this assertion. We find Giotto and his followers hampered with the old traditions. We find Byzantine work rampant in Venice down to the time of the Bellinis, impeding and indeed excludingall the various forms of progress which were spreading over Northern Italy; and it may be noticed that all the faults and weaknesses of the early Italian painters are traceable to Byzantine sources. I question very much whether the revival of art would not have been more rapid and complete had the Byzantine school never existed.
The early reformers, Cimabue, Giotto, and Duccio, would have had the great mosaics of the fifth century, and such remnants of ancient pagan art as were then known, to inspire them. They would have been unfettered by Byzantine tradition, and I think it probable that their works would have been better in every respect.
Every one with any experience knows that it is easier to instil sound principles of art into one who is totally uninstructed, than into one who has already contracted a bad style of drawing; and as it is with individuals, so also is it with schools and phases of art.
Then again it must be remembered that although the Byzantine school was the dominant one during the Middle Ages, there were, in Italy, France, and Germany, artists who had no connection with it, and whose compositions, as seen in manuscripts and missals, will bear favorable comparison with similar work by Greek artists of the same period.
I must refer you again to d’Agincourt’s book, where you will find a great number of outlines from these miniatures.
In judging these works you must not, however, form your opinion as to their merits entirely by d’Agincourt’s illustrations. They give a very fair idea of the drawing and composition, but the charm of these small paintings lies in their color and execution, which are sometimes very beautiful.
The Bayeux tapestry, for instance, though charming in the original, becomes very uninteresting and ugly when translated into black and white.
The transition from Byzantine to Romanesque art was so gradual that it is very difficult to decide when the change took place. Byzantine rules and traditions had taken such firm root, that it was not till the end of the fourteenth century that its influence was finally overcome.
We are, however, approaching the time of Guido da Siena and Guinto da Pisa, and it is pleasant at last to know (or to suppose we know) the names of two artists after centuries of anonymous work. The fact of these names having been preserved shows at any rate that their bearers were not mere workmen bound to execute the morbid fancies of the Church, but painters of some repute, whose creations, though still very cramped and stiff, show better modelling and a more intelligent execution than are to be found in the works of their predecessors.
Every one has heard of Cimabue, but comparatively few have seen his frescoes. I imagine that his best work is in the Church of St. Francis atAssisi. I once spent six weeks at Assisi, and devoted a good deal of time to the wall-paintings of the church.
The frescoes of Cimabue seemed to me infinitely better than his panel pictures, but they were (even then) in such a state of decay that it was difficult to form an opinion of them. This was twenty-two years ago, and since that time I believe that the progress of decay has been very rapid indeed. The Arundel Society had some admirablefac-similedrawings of these works executed five years ago.
It is curious how much more rapidly all the old frescoes are decaying now than formerly.
I attribute this accelerated rate of ruin to the presence of gas in the towns. At Pisa the Campo Santo frescoes are deteriorating much more rapidly than before the introduction of gas into the town. I don’t know whether Assisi is now blessed with a gasometer, but if it is, poor old Cimabue’s work is doomed.
His famous Madonna, which was carried in triumphant procession through the streets of Florence, is painted quite in the Greek style. The flesh is better modelled, and the draperies of the surrounding angels are much better drawn, than in any previous example of Byzantine work, but I cannot understand the enthusiasm of the Florentines.
The specimen we have in the National Gallery appears to me to have been much re-painted; theheads especially (although ugly enough to be early work) are of a later character, and are painted in the fumbling, uncertain way which is characteristic of restorers.
There are other artists of this period whose works show a great improvement on the old Byzantine. These are Toriti, who executed some fine mosaics in Rome; the brothers Cosmati, also of Rome; and Gaddo Gaddi, the Florentine. The mosaics of the last named in the dome of the baptistery at Florence are very highly commended, but they appear to me rather improved Byzantine than true Romanesque. Indeed, with the single exception of Cimabue’s frescoes at Assisi, I don’t know of any work of the thirteenth century which has a true Romanesque character at all. Giotto was (as every one knows) the pupil of Cimabue, and I believe that the truth of the old story about Cimabue finding him when a shepherd boy occupied in drawing a sheep, and taking him back to Florence as an apprentice, has not yet been doubted. We can easily imagine the respect and awe which this shepherd lad would feel for the greatest painter of the capital, and can readily believe that the work of his early youth would be founded entirely on that of his master. It is more than probable that he served his apprenticeship at the great sanctuary of piety and art which arose after the death of St. Francis at Assisi. At any rate it is there that his earliest known, and tomy mind his best, works are to be found. The series of frescoes illustrative of the life of the saint, may be considered as the starting-point of historical painting in Italy. Compare the figures in these frescoes with the best work of Cimabue, and notice what an enormous advance has been made. Here we have natural, if somewhat timid, action, well-proportioned figures, and skilful arrangement of drapery. I confess I was surprised to hear that these works were anterior to his larger frescoes in the lower church, which represent the glorification of St. Francis, and which appeared to me to indicate a step backward toward Cimabue. It is probable that in these last-named frescoes, which adorn the compartments under the high altar, Giotto did not venture to depart much from the traditional arrangement of his predecessors, and accordingly we find the poor, meagre composition and the horizontal lines of heads cherished by the thirteenth century painters.
Giotto would require a whole lecture to himself, were I to attempt an account of what he did at Padua, Florence, Rome, and Naples. Hischefs-d’œuvreare said to be in Florence, at the Church of St. Croce. No less than four chapels in this church were decorated by him; but, alas! there is very little left. Time, whitewash, and the restorers, have done their work pretty effectually. Still, the mere outlines of many of the groups show thatthese works may very well have been the finest that the master ever produced.
I have seen the Arena Chapel at Padua, which is literally covered with Giotto’s frescoes. It is many years since I was there, and very possibly, were I to revisit the chapel, I might form a different opinion, but at the time I was disappointed with the paintings, which appeared to me weak in design and feeble in execution.
When we recollect that Giotto had the customs and prejudices of eight centuries to contend against, no antiques at hand to guide and purify his taste, no great predecessors to imitate, we cannot help paying homage to the genius of the man who produced the St. Francis series of frescoes at Assisi, and numberless other works, both at Florence and elsewhere. I think that the true explanation of his wonderful success is to be found in the old sheep-drawing anecdote. It shows that even as a shepherd boy he felt that nature was the foundation of art. Instead of working by mere routine, like the Byzantine painters, or, like his master Cimabue, endeavoring to improve in the same direction, he went direct to nature both for his compositions, his action, and his drapery.
To us it may appear the simplest thing in the world to make studies from nature for our pictures, but in the time of Giotto such a course would be unusual, and would be placed in the category of happy thoughts.
It may be argued that if he had lived in the tenth or eleventh century instead of the fourteenth, he would never have been allowed by his patrons to attempt such daring innovations. He must have remained in the old beaten track. This is no doubt true enough, and there may have been during the dark ages a dozen embryo Giottos whose genius had been strangled by ecclesiastical leading-strings; but we are none the less indebted to the man who gave the death-blow to the barbarous mechanical craft which for long centuries had usurped the place of art.
Although anxious to do full justice to Giotto as a great art reformer, I must admit that he had some very unpleasant peculiarities which were blindly adopted, and, indeed, exaggerated, by many of his followers. The most repulsive of these peculiarities is the sameness and meanness of his heads. In the only specimen we have of his in the National Gallery this fault is not conspicuous, but it is very noticeable in the pictures of his school. Indeed, the family likeness which pervades all the heads in the large Orcagna is almost ludicrous. In Giottesque heads the eyes are a great deal too close together and never fairly open. The nose is thin and pinched, and the jaws weak and shapeless. The type, in short, is diametrically the opposite of the antique, and is (it must be confessed) a very ignoble one.
The constant recurrence of this mean type is moreapparent in his later than in his early works, and it is probable that many of these stereotyped heads were executed by his assistants, but nevertheless Giotto is answerable for them.
Italian sculpture, as well as Italian painting, is greatly indebted to Giotto, for it was he who designed the reliefs for the bronze gates of the baptistery at Florence. These designs were executed in masterly style by Andrea Pisano, and may be looked upon as the starting-point of Italian sculpture. In fact, it is as the father of modern art rather than as a perfect painter that the name of Giotto ought to be held in reverence. Many of his successors of the next century, whom I shall mention in the course of my lectures, approached much nearer to perfection than did Giotto. The composition of their pictures is less archaic, the heads have more individual character and are much better drawn; but we ought always to bear in mind, that had Giotto never lived, we should never have had a Masaccio, a Filippo Lippi, or a Beato Angelico, and probably neither a Leonardo nor a Raffaelle.
Louis Quatorze is reported to have said: “L’etat c’est moi”; and Giotto might with equal truth have declared: “L’art Romanesque c’est moi,” so all-pervading was his influence. Besides the works of his immediate followers, such as Taddeo Gaddi and Orcagna, Italy abounds with Giottesque frescoes, whose authors are unknown, or at least doubtful.
The most important of these nameless works arethe large frescoes which cover the walls of the Capella degli Spagnuoli, in Sta. Maria Novella at Florence. When I first saw these frescoes they were ascribed to Taddeo Gaddi and Simone Memmi of Siena; but modern critics have justly, I think, pronounced against this authorship. They appeared to me to be of a later date, but I may have been misled by the disgraceful way in which they have been retouched.
This retouching, or rather repainting, has been the ruin of many of the early frescoes, and it is most extraordinary that in Italy (of all places in the world) such barbarous mangling should ever have been allowed. The real culprits are not the obscure bunglers who did the work, but the ignorant monks or town councillors who employed them.
These Sta. Maria Novella frescoes are very characteristic of the allegorical mania of the Romanesque period. One of them, we are told, is meant to represent the “Wisdom of the Church,” but the allegory is so obscure and the component parts so heterogeneous, that with the best intentions it is all but impossible to understand the painter’s meaning. Why should Grammar have a globe in her hand? and why should Logic have a serpent under her veil? What has Abraham done that he should be associated with arithmetic? and why should John of Damascus (who, for some occult reason, typifies Hope) be mending his pen? If the strange jumble in this fresco is bewildering, what shall we say tothe companion fresco which represents “the activity of the Church”? A dozen or more different centres of activity are in full play simultaneously. The faithful are portrayed in one part of the fresco as men and women, and in another part as a flock of sheep. The Dominicanes, or Dominicans, are playfully represented as black and white dogs, who are defending the sheep against wolves. St. Dominic himself is preaching against heretics, who are entreating pardon and burning their books; but it is hopeless to give an idea of the confusion of imagery, of the blending of piety with punning in this extraordinary fresco. If I again refer in the course of my lectures to the Romanesque allegories, it is not that I am fascinated by them, but because they are so numerous and so typical of the period that it is impossible to ignore them.
It would, of course, be unjust to blame the artists for these allegories, or for the numerous “Inferno” pictures. They probably had to execute and make the best of the subjects that were given them. Dante may very likely be answerable for much of the questionable taste of the fourteenth century.
I shall endeavor, in my next lecture, to steer a middle course between the modern blind adoration of the fifteenth century work, and the cynical Philistinism which can discover nothing worthy of notice in this interesting period.[1]
Beforeproceeding to speak of the painters of the eighteenth century, it will not be out of place to give a general sketch of the state of the art toward the close of the seventeenth. I trust that in my last lecture I made it clear to you that after Rubens and Vandyke no painter of any talent appeared, to support the fame of the Flemish school, but that in the northern provinces of Flanders and in Holland a whole constellation of imitative painters arose, who, for truthful color and exquisite skill, have rarely been equalled, and never surpassed. This brilliant outburst of talent did not, however, last very long. Indeed, it may be said with truth, that all the best Dutch pictures were painted within the space of sixty years—from about 1620 to 1680. We then perceive a gradual decline of the school, not such a rapid decay as overtook the Antwerp and Brussels academies, but a perceptible inferiority both in the color and the handling; the former became more opaque and heavy, and less true, whilst the latter lost a good deal of its admirable dexterity.
I know of no Dutch paintings of first-rate excellence unless it be some of Van Huysum’s flower-pieces which were executed in the eighteenth century.
If we turn to Italy, we find the art of painting, which had been partially arrested in its downward course by the Eclectic and Naturalistic schools, now getting lower and lower. Devoid alike of original conception or good execution, the Italian painters of this time were little better than coarse decorators. When I say that Luca Giordano towers like a giant over his contemporaries, it will be easily understood what a pigmy race they must have been.
In France, Poussin, Lesueur, Lebrun, and Claude Gelée, all died in the latter half of the seventeenth century, leaving no worthy successors behind them.
Germany, owing perhaps to her long civil wars and political troubles, had produced no great artist since Holbein, and the English school was as yet non-existent, so we may easily comprehend the very low level to which art sank toward the beginning of the eighteenth century. When I say that the English school was non-existent in the seventeenth century, I do not mean that there were no painters in England. The Stuart princes were generally liberal patrons of art, but all the best painters patronized by them were foreigners. Vandyke, Sir Peter Lely, and even Sir G. Kneller, were all foreigners, and the country was inundated withthird-rate Flemish and Italian painters. Of the latter, Verrio is a good typical example. Charles II employed him to cover the ceilings and walls of his palaces with tasteless sprawling allegories, and we learn from Walpole that the sums paid by the king, or rather by the unfortunate country, for these wretched parodies of Italian decorative painting, were very considerable.
I think that of late years Sir Peter Lely has had scant justice done to his talent. A contemporary of Vandyke, his portraits have many points of resemblance with those of that master. His inferiority is chiefly noticeable in the hands, dresses, and accessories of his portraits, but his female heads are often very beautiful, and are singularly characteristic of the period.
Sir Godfrey Kneller, although he lived well into the eighteenth century, must be looked upon as a seventeenth-century painter, all his best work having been done when he was comparatively young. He is another of those predecessors of Reynolds whom it has been the fashion to villify and decry. I have seen portraits by Kneller which were infinitely better than much of the highly-praised portraiture of the last century; but unfortunately this clever though intensely vain artist regarded painting more as a lucrative trade than as a liberal profession. No one can wish that Kneller had devoted his talents to the stupid allegorical style then in fashion, instead ofsticking to portraits; but what may be wished is that he had been more conscientious, and less greedy for money, in the particular branch of art to which he devoted himself.
In speaking of court patronage I noticed that the painters encouraged by the Stuarts were all foreigners, but this does not seem to have been done from systematic neglect of native talent, but simply because no painters worthy of the name were born in England. The only real Englishman of the century who rose above mediocrity was William Dobson, and he had no reason to complain of want of royal patronage, for King Charles appointed him at a very early age to be court painter on the death of Vandyke, and used to call him the English Tintoretto.
From what I have seen of Dobson’s I don’t think I should have compared him to Tintoretto. Nevertheless I consider him as a genuine artist, and had he not died at the age of thirty-six he would probably have achieved much greater fame.
I ought not to omit mentioning John Riley, whose work was often taken for Lely’s. Walpole describes him as having been humble and modest, and adds that with a quarter of Kneller’s vanity he might have persuaded the world that he was as great a master. I think the anecdote told of him greatly in his favor, that Charles II, after sitting to him, exclaimed, on seeing the picture, “Is this like me? then, oddsfish! I am an ugly fellow.” In such an age of flattery andfalsehood it is quite refreshing to meet with an honest painter.
To give you an idea of the deplorable state of the art of painting toward the beginning of the eighteenth century, I will quote from Horace Walpole, who, although by no means a good art-critic, was a man of great taste and shrewdness. Speaking of the accession of the House of Hanover, he says:—“We are now arrived at the period in which the arts were sunk to the lowest ebb in Britain. From the stiffness introduced by Holbein and the Flemish masters we were fallen into a loose and (if I may use the word) dissolute kind of painting. Sir Godfrey Kneller still lived, but only in name, which he prostituted by suffering the most wretched daubings of hired substitutes to pass for his works, while at most he gave himself the trouble of painting the face of the person who sat to him. His successors thought they had caught his free manner when they neglected drawing and finishing.”
Walpole goes on to deplore the frightful fashions of the period, and remarks that Dahl, D’Agar, Richardson, Jervas, and others, “rebuffed by such barbarous forms, and not possessing genius enough to deviate from what they saw, clothed all their personages with a loose drapery and airy mantles, which not onlywerenot butcouldnot be the dress of any age or nation. All these casual and loose wrappings were imitated from nothing; they seldomhave any folds or chiaroscuro, drawing and color being equally forgotten.”
There are hundreds of these portraits still in existence, but they are generally relegated to attics and dark corridors of old country-seats, and no one ever thinks of looking at them. The owner does not like to make a bonfire of the effigies of his ancestors, but he stows them away where they will not be seen. Setting aside all questions of art, these insipid productions are valueless as likenesses. We feel that not only the dresses, but the faces themselves could not be of any age or nation.
Walpole, like most men of his time, cared but little about historical or decorative painting, and his remarks on the decadence of art relate solely to portraiture, but there is no doubt that figure-painting had deteriorated just as much.
George I, was totally devoid of taste, and the second George (as is well known) hated “boetry and bainting.” The only employers of artists (I cannot call them patrons) were country gentlemen and a few noblemen who wanted their portraits painted. The wonder to me is, not that the portraits of Richardson and Jervas are so bad, but that they are not worse.
As the century proceeded, portrait-painting in England did not improve. We find that, between 1730 and 1750, Thomas Hudson was at the head of the profession, and no words can express better thanthis fact how deep the art had sunk. The only representative of large historical painting at the beginning of the century was Sir James Thornhill. I do not feel for this artist the same antipathy that I do for his predecessors, Verrio and Laguerre.
Indeed, I think that had Sir James lived at any other period he would have become a really great artist.
He was a very fair draughtsman, and understood the art of grouping with taste and dignity; but he had not the genius necessary to break away altogether from the ignoble style of his day.
It would be a profitless task to enumerate the crowd of insipid foreign painters who found a market for their work in England during the first half of the eighteenth century. I prefer passing on at once to Hogarth, who stands up like a giant amongst his dwarfish contemporaries.Heat any rate possessed original genius, and his manual skill, though inferior to that of the best Dutchmen, was by no means contemptible. His portraits are amongst the best and most characteristic of the century, and I can find nothing in his attempts at a higher kind of art, as illustrated by his “Sigismunda” (in the National Gallery), to justify either the savage onslaught of Walpole or the contemptuous pity of Reynolds. On the contrary, it appears to me that this much-abused picture is a very respectable performance, and I fail to see any presumption in a skilful and accomplishedartist like Hogarth seeking to escape from the loathsome task of always painting scenes of vice, misery, or folly.
Sir Joshua ought to have recollected his own “Death of Dido,” and other attempts in what he calls “the great historical style,” before taxing Hogarth with imprudence and presumption.
As in these lectures I have often ventured to criticise, and, as some may think, to speak disrespectfully of our first President and his discourses, I should like to state that though I do not admire his pictures as universally as some do, I consider him to have been a thorough artist; by which I mean that he was saturated with love for his profession. To him, painting, instead of being a task, was the greatest pleasure in life, and in pursuit of this pleasure he was indefatigable. We owe him a deep debt of gratitude as the great regenerator of art in this country.
The great French art-reformer, David, went back to the antique, and to nature (who is older still); and this seems to me the more logical method. But there is no doubt that, practically (considering Sir Joshua’s own idiosyncrasies and the state in which he found English portraiture), an intelligent study of the old masters was the best rope for hauling British art off the mudbank on which she had so long been stranded.
The name of Reynolds as a portrait-painter isalmost as much respected abroad as it is here. Most of his work is faded and otherwise much deteriorated, but fortunately the excellent engravings of his portraits will to all ages preserve his fame as a man of great power, taste, and refinement.
I confess myself quite unable to appreciate Gainsborough’s pictures as they are at present appreciated. I don’t mean to say that I undervalueallhis work. I have seen heads by him which I admired exceedingly, but I must protest against the blind fetishism which would compel us to accept as good work any weak, trashy picture which bears his name. I have read laudatory notices both of him and Romney which would tempt one to say with Borachio, “See what a deformed thief this Fashion is!”
I would recommend young artists to bear in mind a pithy old saying, to the effect that “One man may steal a horse while another may not look over the hedge”; and to beware of treating landscape, or portraiture either, in the Gainsborough style. Should they be misled into any thing of the kind, they will find to their cost that the loose, flimsy manner which is greatly admired in the fashionable painter of the last century, will not be tolerated for one instant in a modern picture.
Amongst the early members of this Academy, Cotes, Dance, and Ramsay were all portrait-painters, who have, in my opinion, fully as good a right tocelebrity as Gainsborough; but their merits are ignored, whilst inferior works attributed to Gainsborough fetch thousands of pounds.
Amongst the figure-painters of the eighteenth-century academicians, I consider Copley to have been far the best. When I compare his honest, manly work with that of his contemporaries, Angelica Kaufman and West, I am always struck by its immeasurable superiority. Indeed, considering that portraiture had been the only branch of the art cultivated in England since the days of Holbein, and bearing in mind how figure-drawing had been neglected, I look upon Copley’s pictures with something like admiration.
I cannot feel the same respect for Barry’s paintings at the Adelphi, although the effort evinced in these paintings is worthy of all praise. It was a much-needed protest against the all-absorbing fashionable portraiture of the day; but unfortunately the artist’s drawing was neither correct nor refined enough for this kind of work, and I fear it must be allowed that the execution of these heroic subjects is both weak and pretentious. In my opinion there are but two English figure-painters of the eighteenth century whose merit would be acknowledged by an intelligent foreign critic—by one, in short, who was ignorant of the market value of pictures, and whose judgment was, therefore, wholly unbiased. These two painters would be Hogarth and Copley.We will now see what sort of artists this century of puff and powder produced in France.
In France the seventeenth century had been a very remarkable period for art, for it was then that Poussin, Lesueur, Claude Gelée, and Lebrun all lived and died. Thus, while in England all historical and landscape painting was a complete blank, France produced some of the greatest artists that have ever lived. They (at least three of them, Poussin, Lesueur, and Claude) were great in the largest sense of the word. Classic, religious, and landscape painting must always,ceteris paribus, take precedence of homely genre and prosaic portraiture. Invention is a higher quality than power of imitation, particularly when, as in the case of these three painters, the inventive power flowed without effort and was exercised with rare taste and judgment. With these three great artists I coupled Lebrun, not because I consider him by any means their equal, but because he was the founder of a good deal of the art which found favor in France during the eighteenth century. It is with this century that we have to deal; so, without further preamble, I will begin with Jean Jouvenet.
This artist (but little known out of France) narrowly escaped becoming a great painter. His early pictures have a good deal of Poussin’s classical manner about them. Lebrun thought so highly of the young artist that he employed him as anassistant in the large battle-pieces he was executing for Louis XIV at Versailles.
Here he no doubt acquired a good deal of Lebrun’s vigor and facility, but lost the pure taste and classical feeling he had derived from Poussin. He was a very prolific painter, and all his works are either life-size or larger than life. They are remarkably well drawn and vigorously colored, but they lack the one quality which makes Lesueur’s work so attractive, viz., simplicity and reverential feeling.
It is by no means necessary that the painter of religious subjects should be an ascetic, nor even what is commonly called a religious man, but it is necessary that he should import into his work some of the spirit of Christianity, just as it is necessary for the painter of pagan heroes and nymphs to imbue himself with the spirit of classical art until it becomes a second nature to him.
In Jouvenet’s numerous pictures of New Testament subjects the action is too violent, and the painter has evidently thought more about displaying his own skill than doing justice to his subject.
In Rubens’ Biblical pictures we often find the same kind of vulgar bustle and common types, but every thing is pardoned to Rubens on account of his brilliant color.
Jouvenet’s color, though fairly good, was not of that transcendent quality which would condone his very unbiblical style of composition.