1Anacreon, Ode 12th.2Herod, i. 59.3Lucian (Micyllus).4Aristophanes, Plutus.5Hippias Major, 208.
1Anacreon, Ode 12th.
2Herod, i. 59.
3Lucian (Micyllus).
4Aristophanes, Plutus.
5Hippias Major, 208.
CHAPTER IV.
DURER AND SALVATOR.
“EMIGRAVIT.”
§ 1. Byreferring to the first analysis of our subject, it will be seen we have next to examine the art which cannot conquer the evil, but remains at war with, or in captivity to it.
Up to the time of the Reformation it was possible for men even of the highest powers of intellect to obtain a tranquillity of faith, in the highest degree favorable to the pursuit of any particular art. Possible, at least, we see it to have been; there is no need—nor, so far as I see, any ground, for argument about it. I am myself unable to understand how it was so; but the fact is unquestionable. It is not that I wonder at men’s trust in the Pope’s infallibility, or in his virtue; nor at their surrendering their private judgment; nor at their being easily cheated by imitations of miracles; nor at their thinking indulgences could be purchased with money. But I wonder at this one thing only; the acceptance of the doctrine of eternal punishment as dependent on accident of birth, or momentary excitement of devotional feeling. I marvel at the acceptance of the system (as stated in its fulness by Dante) which condemned guiltless persons to the loss of heaven because they had lived before Christ, and which made the obtaining of Paradise turn frequently on a passing thought or a momentary invocation. How this came to pass, it is no part of our work here to determine. That in this faith, it was possible to attain entire peace of mind; to live calmly, and die hopefully, is indisputable.
§ 2. But this possibility ceased at the Reformation. Thenceforward human life became a school of debate, troubled and fearful. Fifteen hundred years of spiritual teaching were called into fearful question, whether indeed it had been teaching byangels or devils? Whatever it had been, there was no longer any way of trusting it peacefully.
A dark time for all men. We cannot now conceive it. The great horror of it lay in this:—that, as in the trial-hour of the Greek, the heavens themselves seemed to have deceived those who had trusted in them.
“We had prayed with tears; we had loved with our hearts. There was no choice of way open to us. No guidance from God or man, other than this, and behold, it was a lie. ‘When He, the Spirit of Truth, is come, He shall guide you into all truth.’ And He has guided us intonotruth. There can be no such Spirit. There is no Advocate, no Comforter. Has there been no Resurrection?”
§ 3. Then came the Resurrection of Death. Never since man first saw him, face to face, had his terror been so great. “Swallowed up in victory:” alas! no; but king over all the earth. All faith, hope, and fond belief were betrayed. Nothing of futurity was now sure but the grave.
For the Pan-Athenaic Triumph and the Feast of Jubilee, there came up, through fields of spring, the dance of Death.
The brood of weak men fled from the face of him. A new Bacchus and his crew this, with worm for snake and gall for wine. They recoiled to such pleasure as yet remained possible to them—feeble infidelities, and luxurious sciences, and so went their way.
§ 4. At least, of the men with whom we are concerned—the artists—this was almost the universal fate. They gave themselves to the following of pleasure only; and as a religious school, after a few pale rays of fading sanctity from Guido, and brown gleams of gipsy Madonnahood from Murillo, came utterly to an end.
Three men only stood firm, facing the new Dionysiac revel, to see what would come of it.
Two in the north, Holbein and Durer, and, later, one in the south, Salvator.
But the ground on which they stood differed strangely; Durer and Holbein, amidst the formal delights, the tender religions, and practical science, of domestic life and honest commerce. Salvator, amidst the pride of lascivious wealth, and the outlawed distress of impious poverty.
§ 5. It would be impossible to imagine any two phases of scenery or society more contrary in character, more opposite in teaching, than those surrounding Nuremberg and Naples, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. What they were then, both districts still to all general intents remain. The cities have in each case lost their splendor and power, but not their character. The surrounding scenery remains wholly unchanged. It is still in our power, from the actual aspect of the places, to conceive their effect on the youth of the two painters.
§ 6. Nuremberg is gathered at the base of a sandstone rock, rising in the midst of a dry but fertile plain. The rock forms a prolonged and curved ridge, of which the concave side, at the highest point, is precipitous; the other slopes gradually to the plain. Fortified with wall and tower along its whole crest, and crowned with a stately castle, it defends the city—not with its precipitous side—but with its slope. The precipice is turned to the town. It wears no aspect of hostility towards the surrounding fields; the roads lead down into them by gentle descents from the gates. To the south and east the walls are on the level of the plain; within them, the city itself stands on two swells of hill, divided by a winding river. Its architecture has, however, been much overrated. The effect of the streets, so delightful to the eye of the passing traveller, depends chiefly on one appendage of the roof, namely, its warehouse windows. Every house, almost without exception, has at least one boldly opening dormer window, the roof of which sustains a pulley for raising goods; and the underpart of this strong overhanging roof is always carved with a rich pattern, not of refined design, but effective.1Among these comparatively modern structures are mingled, however, not unfrequently, others, turreted at the angles, which are true Gothic of the fifteenth, some of the fourteenth, century; and the principal churches remain nearly as in Durer’s time. Their Gothic is none of it good, nor even rich (though the façades have their ornament so distributed as to give them a sufficientlyelaborate effect at a distance); their size is diminutive; their interiors mean, rude, and ill-proportioned, wholly dependent for their interest on ingenious stone cutting in corners, and finely-twisted ironwork; of these the mason’s exercises are in the worst possible taste, possessing not even the merit of delicate execution; but the designs in metal are usually meritorious, and Fischer’s shrine of St. Sebald is good, and may rank with Italian work.2
§ 7. Though, however, not comparable for an instant to any great Italian or French city, Nuremberg possesses one character peculiar to itself, that of a self-restrained, contented, quaint domesticity. It would be vain to expect any first-rate painting, sculpture, or poetry, from the well-regulated community of merchants of small ware. But it is evident they were affectionate and trustworthy—that they had playful fancy, and honorable pride. There is no exalted grandeur in their city, nor any deep beauty; but an imaginative homeliness, mingled with some elements of melancholy and power, and a few even of grace.
This homeliness, among many other causes, arises out of one in chief. The richness of the houses depends, as I just said, on the dormer windows: but their deeper character on the pitch and space of roofs. I had to notice long ago how much our English cottage depended for expression on its steep roof. The German house does so in far greater degree. Plate 76 is engraved3from a slight pen-and-ink sketch of mine on the ramparts of Nuremberg, showing a piece of its moat and wall, and a little corner of the city beneath the castle; of which the tower on the extreme right rises just in front of Durer’s house. Thecharacter of this scene approaches more nearly that which Durer would see in his daily walks, than most of the modernized inner streets. In Durer’s own engraving, “The Cannon,” the distance (of which the most important passage is facsimiled in my Elements of Drawing, p. 111) is an actual portrait of part of the landscape seen from those castle ramparts, looking towards Franconian Switzerland.
§ 8. If the reader will be at the pains to turn to it, he will see at a glance the elements of the Nuremberg country, as they still exist. Wooden cottages, thickly grouped, enormously high in the roofs; the sharp church spire, small and slightly grotesque, surmounting them; beyond, a richly cultivated, healthy plain bounded by woody hills. By a strange coincidence the very plant which constitutes the staple produce of those fields, is in almost ludicrous harmony with the grotesqueness and neatness of the architecture around; and one may almost fancy that the builders of the little knotted spires and turrets of the town, and workers of its dark iron flowers, are in spiritual presence, watching and guiding the produce of the field,—when one finds the footpaths bordered everywhere, by the bossy spires and lustrous jetty flowers of the black hollyhock.
§ 9. Lastly, when Durer penetrated among those hills of Franconia he would find himself in a pastoral country, much resembling the Gruyère districts of Switzerland, but less thickly inhabited, and giving in its steep, though not lofty, rocks,—its scattered pines,—and its fortresses and chapels, the motives of all the wilder landscape introduced by the painter in such pieces as his St. Jerome, or St. Hubert. His continual and forced introduction of sea in almost every scene, much as it seems to me to be regretted, is possibly owing to his happy recollections of the sea-city where he received the rarest of all rewards granted to a good workman; and, for once in his life, was understood.
§ 10. Among this pastoral simplicity and formal sweetness of domestic peace, Durer had to work out his question concerning the grave. It haunted him long; he learned to engrave death’s heads well before he had done with it; looked deeper than any other man into those strange rings, their jewels lost; and gaveanswer at last conclusively in his great Knight and Death—of which more presently. But while the Nuremberg landscape is still fresh in our minds, we had better turn south quickly and compare the elements of education which formed, and of creation which companioned, Salvator.
§ 11. Born with a wild and coarse nature (how coarse I will show you soon), but nevertheless an honest one, he set himself in youth hotly to the war, and cast himself carelessly on the current of life. No rectitude of ledger-lines stood in his way; no tender precision of household customs; no calm successions of rural labor. But past his half-starved lips rolled profusion of pitiless wealth; before him glared and swept the troops of shameless pleasure. Above him muttered Vesuvius; beneath his feet shook the Solfatara.
In heart disdainful, in temper adventurous; conscious of power, impatient of labor, and yet more of the pride of the patrons of his youth, he fled to the Calabrian hills, seeking, not knowledge, but freedom. If he was to be surrounded by cruelty and deceit, let them at least be those of brave men or savage beasts, not of the timorous and the contemptible. Better the wrath of the robber, than enmity of the priest; and the cunning of the wolf than of the hypocrite.
§ 12. We are accustomed to hear the south of Italy spoken of as a beautiful country. Its mountain forms are graceful above others, its sea-bays exquisite in outline and hue; but it is only beautiful in superficial aspect. In closer detail it is wild and melancholy. Its forests are sombre-leafed, labyrinth-stemmed; the carubbe, the olive, laurel, and ilex, are alike in that strange feverish twisting of their branches, as if in spasms of half human pain:—Avernus forests; one fears to break their boughs, lest they should cry to us from their rents; the rocks they shade are of ashes, or thrice-molten lava; iron sponge, whose every pore has been filled with fire. Silent villages, earthquake-shaken, without commerce, without industry, without knowledge, without hope, gleam in white ruin from hill-side to hill-side; far-winding wrecks of immemorial walls surround the dust of cities long forsaken: the mountain streams moan through the cold arches of their foundations, green with weed, and rage over the heaps of their fallen towers. Far above, inthunder-blue serration, stand the eternal edges of the angry Apennine, dark with rolling impendence of volcanic cloud.
§ 13. Yet even among such scenes as these, Salvator might have been calmed and exalted, had he been, indeed, capable of exaltation. But he was not of high temper enough to perceive beauty. He had not the sacred sense—the sense of color; all the loveliest hues of the Calabrian air were invisible to him; the sorrowful desolation of the Calabrian villages unfelt. He saw only what was gross and terrible,—the jagged peak, the splintered tree, the flowerless bank of grass, and wandering weed, prickly and pale. His temper confirmed itself in evil, and became more and more fierce and morose; though not, I believe, cruel, ungenerous, or lascivious. I should not suspect Salvator of wantonly inflicting pain. His constantly painting it does not prove he delighted in it; he felt the horror of it, and in that horror, fascination. Also, he desired fame, and saw that here was an untried field rich enough in morbid excitement to catch the humor of his indolent patrons. But the gloom gained upon him, and grasped him. He could jest, indeed, as men jest in prison-yards (he became afterwards a renowned mime in Florence); his satires are full of good mocking, but his own doom to sadness is never repealed.
§ 14. Of all men whose work I have ever studied, he gives me most distinctly the idea of a lost spirit. Michelet calls him “Ce damné Salvator,” perhaps in a sense merely harsh and violent; the epithet to me seems true in a more literal, more merciful sense,—“That condemned Salvator.” I see in him, notwithstanding all his baseness, the last traces of spiritual life in the art of Europe. He was the last man to whom the thought of a spiritual existence presented itself as a conceivable reality. All succeeding men, however powerful—Rembrandt, Rubens, Vandyke, Reynolds—would have mocked at the idea of a spirit. They were men of the world; they are never in earnest, and they are never appalled. But Salvator was capable of pensiveness, of faith, and of fear. The misery of the earth is a marvel to him; he cannot leave off gazing at it. The religion of the earth is a horror to him. He gnashes his teeth at it, rages at it, mocks and gibes at it. He would have acknowledged religion, had he seen any that was true. Anything rather than that basenesswhich he did see. “If there is no other religion than this of pope and cardinals, let us to the robber’s ambush and the dragon’s den.” He was capable of fear also. The gray spectre, horse-headed, striding across the sky—(in the Pitti Palace)—its bat wings spread, green bars of the twilight seen between its bones; it was no play to him—the painting of it. Helpless Salvator! A little early sympathy, a word of true guidance, perhaps, had saved him. What says he of himself? “Despiser of wealth and of death.” Two grand scorns; but, oh, condemned Salvator! the question is not for man what he can scorn, but what he can love.
§ 15. I do not care to trace the various hold which Hades takes on this fallen soul. It is no part of my work here to analyze his art, nor even that of Durer; all that we need to note is the opposite answer they gave to the question about death.
To Salvator it came in narrow terms. Desolation, without hope, throughout the fields of nature he had to explore; hypocrisy and sensuality, triumphant and shameless, in the cities from which he derived his support. His life, so far as any nobility remained in it, could only pass in horror, disdain, or despair. It is difficult to say which of the three prevails most in his common work; but his answer to the great question was of despair only. He represents “Umana Fragilita” by the type of a skeleton with plumy wings, leaning over a woman and child; the earth covered with ruin round them—a thistle, casting its seed, the only fruit of it. “Thorns, also, and thistles shall it bring forth to thee.” The same tone of thought marks all Salvator’s more earnest work.
§ 16. On the contrary, in the sight of Durer, things were for the most part as they ought to be. Men did their work in his city and in the fields round it. The clergy were sincere. Great social questions unagitated; great social evils either non-existent, or seemingly a part of the nature of things, and inevitable. His answer was that of patient hope; and twofold, consisting of one design in praise of Fortitude, and another in praise of Labor. The Fortitude, commonly known as the “Knight and Death,” represents a knight riding through a dark valley overhung by leafless trees, and with a great castle on a hill beyond. Beside him, but a little in advance, rides Death on a pale horse. Deathis gray-haired and crowned;—serpents wreathed about his crown; (the sting of death involved in the kingly power). He holds up the hour-glass, and looks earnestly into the knight’s face. Behind him follows Sin; but Sin powerless; he has been conquered and passed by, but follows yet, watching if any way of assault remains. On his forehead are two horns—I think, of sea-shell—to indicate his insatiableness and instability. He has also the twisted horns of the ram, for stubbornness, the ears of an ass, the snout of a swine, the hoofs of a goat. Torn wings hang useless from his shoulders, and he carries a spear with two hooks, for catching as well as wounding. The knight does not heed him, nor even Death, though he is conscious of the presence of the last.
He rides quietly, his bridle firm in his hand, and his lips set close in a slight sorrowful smile, for he hears what Death is saying; and hears it as the word of a messenger who brings pleasant tidings, thinking to bring evil ones. A little branch of delicate heath is twisted round his helmet. His horse trots proudly and straight; its head high, and with a cluster of oak on the brow where on the fiend’s brow is the sea-shell horn. But the horse of Death stoops its head; and its rein catches the little bell which hangs from the knight’s horse-bridle, making it toll, as a passing bell.4
§ 17. Durer’s second answer is the plate of “Melencholia,” which is the history of the sorrowful toil of the earth, as the “Knight and Death” is of its sorrowful patience under temptation.
Salvator’s answer, remember, is in both respects that of despair. Death as he reads, lord of temptation, is victor over the spirit of man; and lord of ruin, is victor over the work of man. Durer declares the sad, but unsullied conquest over Death thetempter; and the sad, but enduring conquest over Death the destroyer.
§ 18. Though the general intent of the Melencholia is clear, and to be felt at a glance, I am in some doubt respecting its special symbolism. I do not know how far Durer intended to show that labor, in many of its most earnest forms, is closely connected with the morbid sadness, or “dark anger,” of the northern nations. Truly some of the best work ever done for man, has been in that dark anger;5but I have not yet been able to determine for myself how far this is necessary, or how far great work may also be done with cheerfulness. If I knew what the truth was, I should be able to interpret Durer better; meantime the design seems to me his answer to the complaint, “Yet is his strength labor and sorrow.”
“Yes,” he replies, “but labor and sorrow are his strength.”
§ 19. The labor indicated is in the daily work of men. Not the inspired or gifted labor of the few (it is labor connected with the sciences, not with the arts), shown in its four chief functions: thoughtful, faithful, calculating and executing.
Thoughtful, first; all true power coming of that resolved, resistless calm of melancholy thought. This is the first and last message of the whole design. Faithful, the right arm of the spirit resting on the book. Calculating (chiefly in the sense of self-command), the compasses in her right hand. Executive—roughest instruments of labor at her feet: a crucible, and geometrical solids, indicating her work in the sciences. Over her head the hour-glass and the bell, for their continual words, “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do.” Beside her, childish labor (lesson-learning?) sitting on an old millstone, with a tablet on its knees. I do not know what instrument it has in its hand. At her knees, a wolf-hound asleep. In the distance, a comet (the disorder and threatening of the universe) setting, the rainbow dominant over it. Her strong body is close girded forwork; at her waist hang the keys of wealth; but the coin is cast aside contemptuously under her feet. She has eagles’ wings, and is crowned with fair leafage of spring.
Yes, Albert of Nuremberg, it was a noble answer, yet an imperfect one. This is indeed the labor which is crowned with laurel and has the wings of the eagle. It was reserved for another country to prove, for another hand to portray, the labor which is crowned with fire, and has the wings of the bat.
1To obtain room for the goods, the roofs slope steeply, and their other dormer windows are richly carved—but all are of wood; and, for the most part, I think, some hundred years later than Durer’s time. A large number of the oriel and bow windows on the façades are wooden also, and of recent date.2His piece in the cathedral of Magdeburg is strangely inferior, wanting both the grace of composition and bold handling of the St. Sebald’s. The bronze fountains at Nuremberg (three, of fame, in as many squares) are highly wrought, and have considerable merit; the ordinary ironwork of the houses, with less pretension, is, perhaps, more truly artistic. In Plate 52, the right-hand figure is a characteristic example of the bell-handle at the door of a private house, composed of a wreath of flowers and leafage twisted in a spiral round an upright rod, the spiral terminating below in a delicate tendril; the whole of wrought iron. It is longer than represented, some of the leaf-links of the chain being omitted in the dotted spaces, as well as the handle, which, though often itself of leafage, is always convenient for the hand.3By Mr. Le Keux, very admirably.4This was first pointed out to me by a friend—Mr. Robin Allen. It is a beautiful thought; yet, possibly, an after-thought, I have some suspicion that there is an alteration in the plate at that place, and that the rope to which the bell hangs was originally the line of the chest of the nearer horse, as the grass-blades about the lifted hind leg conceal the lines which could not, in Durer’s way of work, be effaced, indicating its first intended position. What a proof of his general decision of handling is involved in this “repentir”!5“Yet withal, you see that the Monarch is a great, valiant, cautious, melancholy, commanding man”—Friends in Council, last volume, p. 269; Milverton giving an account of Titian’s picture of Charles the Fifth. (Compare Ellesmere’s description of Milverton himself, p. 140.) Read carefully also what is said further on respecting Titian’s freedom, and fearless with holding of flattery; comparing it with the note on Giorgione and Titian.
1To obtain room for the goods, the roofs slope steeply, and their other dormer windows are richly carved—but all are of wood; and, for the most part, I think, some hundred years later than Durer’s time. A large number of the oriel and bow windows on the façades are wooden also, and of recent date.
2His piece in the cathedral of Magdeburg is strangely inferior, wanting both the grace of composition and bold handling of the St. Sebald’s. The bronze fountains at Nuremberg (three, of fame, in as many squares) are highly wrought, and have considerable merit; the ordinary ironwork of the houses, with less pretension, is, perhaps, more truly artistic. In Plate 52, the right-hand figure is a characteristic example of the bell-handle at the door of a private house, composed of a wreath of flowers and leafage twisted in a spiral round an upright rod, the spiral terminating below in a delicate tendril; the whole of wrought iron. It is longer than represented, some of the leaf-links of the chain being omitted in the dotted spaces, as well as the handle, which, though often itself of leafage, is always convenient for the hand.
3By Mr. Le Keux, very admirably.
4This was first pointed out to me by a friend—Mr. Robin Allen. It is a beautiful thought; yet, possibly, an after-thought, I have some suspicion that there is an alteration in the plate at that place, and that the rope to which the bell hangs was originally the line of the chest of the nearer horse, as the grass-blades about the lifted hind leg conceal the lines which could not, in Durer’s way of work, be effaced, indicating its first intended position. What a proof of his general decision of handling is involved in this “repentir”!
5“Yet withal, you see that the Monarch is a great, valiant, cautious, melancholy, commanding man”—Friends in Council, last volume, p. 269; Milverton giving an account of Titian’s picture of Charles the Fifth. (Compare Ellesmere’s description of Milverton himself, p. 140.) Read carefully also what is said further on respecting Titian’s freedom, and fearless with holding of flattery; comparing it with the note on Giorgione and Titian.
CHAPTER V.
CLAUDE AND POUSSIN.
§ 1. Itwas stated in the last chapter that Salvator was the last painter of Italy on whom any fading trace of the old faithful spirit rested. Carrying some of its passion far into the seventeenth century, he deserved to be remembered together with the painters whom the questioning of the Reformation had exercised, eighty years before. Not so his contemporaries. The whole body of painters around him, but chiefly those of landscape, had cast aside all regard for the faith of their fathers, or for any other; and founded a school of art properly called “classical,”1of which the following are the chief characteristics.
§ 2. The belief in a supreme benevolent Being having ceased, and the sense of spiritual destitution fastening on the mind, together with the hopeless perception of ruin and decay in the existing world, the imagination sought to quit itself from the oppression of these ideas by realizing a perfect worldly felicity, in which the inevitable ruin should at least be lovely, and the necessarily short life entirely happy and refined. Labor must be banished, since it was to be unrewarded. Humiliation and degradation of body must be prevented since there could be no compensation for them by preparation of the soul for another world. Let us eat and drink (refinedly), for to-morrow we die, and attain the highest possible dignity as men in this world, since we shall have none as spirits in the next.
§ 3. Observe, this is neither the Greek nor the Roman spirit. Neither Claude, nor Poussin, nor any other painter or writer, properly termed “classical,” ever could enter into the Greek orRoman heart, which was as full, in many cases fuller, of the hope of immortality than our own.
On the absence of belief in a good supreme Being, follows, necessarily, the habit of looking to ourselves for supreme judgment in all matters, and for supreme government. Hence, first, the irreverent habit of judgment instead of admiration. It is generally expressed under the justly degrading term “good taste.”
§ 4. Hence, in the second place, the habit of restraint or self-government (instead of impulsive and limitless obedience), based upon pride, and involving, for the most part, scorn of the helpless and weak, and respect only for the orders of men who have been trained to this habit of self-government. Whence the title classical, from the Latinclassicus.
§ 5. The school is, therefore, generally to be characterized as that of taste and restraint. As the school of taste, everything is, in its estimation, beneath it, so as to be tasted or tested; not above it, to be thankfully received. Nothing was to be fed upon as bread; but only palated as a dainty. This spirit has destroyed art since the close of the sixteenth century, and nearly destroyed French literature, our English literature being at the same time severely depressed, and our education (except in bodily strength) rendered nearly nugatory by it, so far as it affects common-place minds. It is not possible that the classical spirit should ever take possession of a mind of the highest order. Pope is, as far as I know, the greatest man who ever fell strongly under its influence; and though it spoiled half his work, he broke through it continually into true enthusiasm and tender thought.2Again, as the school of reserve, it refuses to allow itself in any violent or “spasmodic” passion; the schools of literature which have been in modern times called “spasmodic,” being reactionary against it. The word, though an ugly one, is quite accurate, the most spasmodic books in the world being Solomon’s Song, Job, and Isaiah.
§ 6. The classical landscape, properly so called, is thereforethe representative of perfectly trained and civilized human life, associated with perfect natural scenery and with decorative spiritual powers.
I will expand this definition a little.
1. Perfectly civilized human life; that is, life freed from the necessity of humiliating labor, from passions inducing bodily disease, and from abusing misfortune. The personages of the classical landscape, therefore, must be virtuous and amiable; if employed in labor, endowed with strength such as may make it not oppressive. (Considered as a practicable ideal, the classical life necessarily implies slavery, and the command, therefore, of a higher order of men over a lower, occupied in servile work.) Pastoral occupation is allowable as a contrast with city life. War, if undertaken by classical persons, must be a contest for honor, more than for life, not at all for wealth,3and free from all fearful or debasing passion. Classical persons must be trained in all the polite arts, and, because their health is to be perfect, chiefly in the open air. Hence, the architecture around them must be of the most finished kind, the rough country and ground being subdued by frequent and happy humanity.
§ 7. 2. Such personages and buildings must be associated with natural scenery, uninjured by storms or inclemency of climate (such injury implying interruption of the open air life); and it must be scenery conducing to pleasure, not to material service; all cornfields, orchards, olive-yards, and such like, being under the management of slaves,4and the superior beings having nothing to do with them; but passing their lives under avenues of scented and otherwise delightful trees—under picturesque rocks, and by clear fountains.
§ 8. 3. The spiritual powers in classical scenery must be decorative; ornamental gods, not governing gods; otherwise they could not be subjected to the principles of taste, but woulddemand reverence. In order, therefore, as far as possible, without taking away their supernatural power, to destroy their dignity, they are made more criminal and capricious than men, and, for the most part, those only are introduced who are the lords of lascivious pleasures. For the appearance of any great god would at once destroy the whole theory of the classical life; therefore, Pan, Bacchus, and the Satyrs, with Venus and the Nymphs, are the principal spiritual powers of the classical landscape. Apollo with the Muses appear as the patrons of the liberal arts. Minerva rarely presents herself (except to be insulted by judgment of Paris); Juno seldom, except for some purpose of tyranny; Jupiter seldom, but for purpose of amour.
§ 9. Such being the general ideal of the classical landscape, it can hardly be necessary to show the reader how such charm as it possesses must in general be strong only over weak or second-rate orders of mind. It has, however, been often experimentally or playfully aimed at by great men; but I shall only take note of its two leading masters.
§ 10. I. Claude. As I shall have no farther occasion to refer to this painter, I will resume, shortly, what has been said of him throughout the work. He had a fine feeling for beauty of form and considerable tenderness of perception. Vol. I., p. 76; vol. III., p. 318. His aërial effects are unequalled. Vol. III., p. 318. Their character appears to me to arise rather from a delicacy of bodily constitution in Claude, than from any mental sensibility; such as they are, they give a kind of feminine charm to his work, which partly accounts for its wide influence. To whatever the character may be traced, it reads him incapable of enjoying or painting anything energetic or terrible. Hence the weakness of his conceptions of rough sea. Vol. I., p. 77.
II. He had sincerity of purpose. Vol. III., p. 318. But in common with other landscape painters of his day, neither earnestness, humility, nor love, such as would ever cause him to forget himself. Vol. I., p. 77.
That is to say, so far as he felt the truth, he tried to be true; but he never felt it enough to sacrifice supposed propriety, or habitual method to it. Very few of his sketches, and none of his pictures, show evidence of interest in other natural phenomena than the quiet afternoon sunshine which would fall methodicallyinto a composition. One would suppose he had never seen scarlet in a morning cloud, nor a storm burst on the Apennines. But he enjoys a quiet misty afternoon in a ruminant sort of way (Vol. III., p. 322), yet truly; and strives for the likeness of it, therein differing from Salvator, who never attempts to be truthful, but only to be impressive.
§ 11. III. His seas are the most beautiful in old art. Vol. I., p. 345. For he studied tame waves, as he did tame skies, with great sincerity, and some affection; and modelled them with more care not only than any other landscape painter of his day, but even than any of the greater men; for they, seeing the perfect painting of sea to be impossible, gave up the attempt, and treated it conventionally. But Claude took so much pains about this, feeling it was one of hisfortes, that I suppose no one can model a small wave better than he.
IV. He first set the pictorial sun in the pictorial heaven. Vol. III., p. 318. We will give him the credit of this, with no drawbacks.
V. He had hardly any knowledge of physical science (Vol. I., p. 76), and shows a peculiar incapacity of understanding the main point of a matter. Vol. III., p. 321. Connected with which incapacity is his want of harmony in expression. Vol. II., p. 151. (Compare, for illustration of this, the account of the picture of the Mill in the preface to Vol. I.)
§ 12. Such were the principal qualities of the leading painter of classical landscape, his effeminate softness carrying him to dislike all evidences of toil, or distress, or terror, and to delight in the calm formalities which mark the school.
Although he often introduces romantic incidents and mediæval as well as Greek or Roman personages, his landscape is always in the true sense classic—everything being “elegantly” (selectingly or tastefully), not passionately, treated. The absence of indications of rural labor, of hedges, ditches, haystacks, ploughed fields, and the like; the frequent occurrence of ruins of temples, or masses of unruined palaces; and the graceful wildness of growth in his trees, are the principal sources of the “elevated” character which so many persons feel in his scenery.
There is no other sentiment traceable in his work than this weak dislike to entertain the conception of toil or suffering.Ideas of relation, in the true sense, he has none; nor ever makes an effort to conceive an event in its probable circumstances, but fills his foregrounds with decorative figures, using commonest conventionalism to indicate the subject he intends. We may take two examples, merely to show the general character of such designs of his.
§ 13. 1. St. George and the Dragon.
The scene is a beautiful opening in woods by a river side, a pleasant fountain springs on the right, and the usual rich vegetation covers the foreground. The dragon is about the size of ten bramble leaves, and is being killed by the remains of a lance, barely the thickness of a walking-stick, in his throat, curling his tail in a highly offensive and threatening manner. St. George, notwithstanding, on a prancing horse, brandishes his sword, at about thirty yards’ distance from the offensive animal.
A semicircular shelf of rocks encircles the foreground, by which the theatre of action is divided into pit and boxes. Some women and children having descended unadvisedly into the pit, are helping each other out of it again, with marked precipitation. A prudent person of rank has taken a front seat in the boxes,—crosses his legs, leans his head on his hand, and contemplates the proceedings with the air of a connoisseur. Two attendants stand in graceful attitudes behind him, and two more walk away under the trees, conversing on general subjects.
§ 14. 2. Worship of the Golden Calf.
The scene is nearly the same as that of the St. George; but, in order better to express the desert of Sinai, the river is much larger, and the trees and vegetation softer. Two people, uninterested in the idolatrous ceremonies, are rowing in a pleasure boat on the river. The calf is about sixteen inches long (perhaps, we ought to give Claude credit for remembering that it was made of ear-rings, though he might as well have inquired how large Egyptian ear-rings were). Aaron has put it on a handsome pillar, under which five people are dancing, and twenty-eight, with several children, worshipping. Refreshments for the dancers are provided in four large vases under a tree on the left, presided over by a dignified person holding a dog in a leash. Under the distant group of trees appears Moses, conducted by some younger personage (Nadab or Abihu). This younger personage holds uphis hands, and Moses, in the way usually expected of him, breaks the tables of the law, which are as large as an ordinary octavo volume.
§ 15. I need not proceed farther, for any reader of sense or ordinary powers of thought can thus examine the subjects of Claude, one by one, for himself. We may quit him with these few final statements concerning him.
The admiration of his works was legitimate, so far as it regarded their sunlight effects and their graceful details. It was base, in so far as it involved irreverence both for the deeper powers of nature, and carelessness as to conception of subject. Large admiration of Claude is wholly impossible in any period of national vigor in art. He may by such tenderness as he possesses, and by the very fact of his banishing painfulness, exercise considerable influence over certain classes of minds; but this influence is almost exclusively hurtful to them.
§ 16. Nevertheless, on account of such small sterling qualities as they possess, and of their general pleasantness, as well as their importance in the history of art, genuine Claudes must always possess a considerable value, either as drawing-room ornaments or museum relics. They may be ranked with fine pieces of China manufacture, and other agreeable curiosities, of which the price depends on the rarity rather than the merit, yet always on a merit of a certain low kind.
§ 17. The other characteristic master of classical landscape is Nicolo Poussin.
I named Claude first, because the forms of scenery he has represented are richer and more general than Poussin’s; but Poussin has a far greater power, and his landscapes, though more limited in material, are incomparably nobler than Claude’s. It would take considerable time to enter into accurate analysis of Poussin’s strong but degraded mind; and bring us no reward, because whatever he has done has been done better by Titian. His peculiarities are, without exception, weaknesses, induced in a highly intellectual and inventive mind by being fed on medals, books, and bassi-relievi instead of nature, and by the want of any deep sensibility. His best works are his Bacchanalian revels, always brightly wanton and wild, full of frisk and fire; but they are coarser than Titian’s, and infinitely less beautiful. In allminglings of the human and brutal character he leans on the bestial, yet with a sternly Greek severity of treatment. This restraint, peculiarly classical, is much too manifest in him; for, owing to his habit of never letting himself be free, he does nothing as well as it ought to be done, rarely even as well as he can himself do it; and his best beauty is poor, incomplete, and characterless, though refined. The Nymph pressing the honey in the “Nursing of Jupiter,” and the Muse leaning against the tree, in the “Inspiration of Poet” (both in the Dulwich Gallery), appear to me examples of about his highest reach in this sphere.
§ 18. His want of sensibility permits him to paint frightful subjects, without feeling any true horror: his pictures of the Plague, the Death of Polydectes, &c., are thus ghastly in incident, sometimes disgusting, but never impressive. The prominence of the bleeding head in the Triumph of David marks the same temper. His battle pieces are cold and feeble; his religious subjects wholly nugatory, they do not excite him enough to develop even his ordinary powers of invention. Neither does he put much power into his landscape when it becomes principal; the best pieces of it occur in fragments behind his figures. Beautiful vegetation, more or less ornamental in character, occurs in nearly all his mythological subjects, but his pure landscape is notable only for its dignified reserve; the great squareness and horizontality of its masses, with lowness of tone, giving it a deeply meditative character. His Deluge might be much depreciated, under this head of ideas of relation, but it is so uncharacteristic of him that I pass it by. Whatever power this lowness of tone, light in the distance, &c., give to his landscape, or to Gaspar’s (compare Vol. II., Chapter on Infinity, § 12), is in both conventional and artificial.
I have nothing, therefore, to add farther, here, to what was said of him in Vol. I. (p. 89); and, as no other older masters of the classical landscape are worth any special note, we will pass on at once to a school of humbler but more vital power.
1The word “classical” is carelessly used in the preceding volumes, to signify the characters of the Greek or Roman nations. Henceforward, it is used in a limited and accurate sense, as defined in the text.2Cold-hearted, I have called him. He was so in writing the Pastorals, of which I then spoke; but in after-life his errors were those of his time, his wisdom was his own; it would be well if we also made it ours.3Because the pursuit of wealth is inconsistent at once with the peace and dignity of perfect life.4It is curious, as marking the peculiarity of the classical spirit in its resolute degradation of the lower orders, that a sailing-vessel is hardly admissible in a classical landscape, because its management implies too much elevation of the inferior life. But a galley, with oars, is admissible, because the rowers may be conceived as absolute slaves.
1The word “classical” is carelessly used in the preceding volumes, to signify the characters of the Greek or Roman nations. Henceforward, it is used in a limited and accurate sense, as defined in the text.
2Cold-hearted, I have called him. He was so in writing the Pastorals, of which I then spoke; but in after-life his errors were those of his time, his wisdom was his own; it would be well if we also made it ours.
3Because the pursuit of wealth is inconsistent at once with the peace and dignity of perfect life.
4It is curious, as marking the peculiarity of the classical spirit in its resolute degradation of the lower orders, that a sailing-vessel is hardly admissible in a classical landscape, because its management implies too much elevation of the inferior life. But a galley, with oars, is admissible, because the rowers may be conceived as absolute slaves.