1 Laus Deo!Introduction.I. Of the Origin and General Significance of the Legends represented in Art.
1 Laus Deo!
1 Laus Deo!
We cannot look round a picture gallery—we cannot turn over a portfolio of prints after the old masters, nor even the modern engravings which pour upon us daily, from Paris, Munich, or Berlin—without perceiving how many of the most celebrated productions of Art, more particularly those which have descended to us from the early Italian and German schools, represent incidents and characters taken from the once popular legends of the Catholic Church. This form of ‘Hero-Worship’ has become, since the Reformation, strange to us—as far removed from our sympathies and associations as if it were antecedent to the fall of Babylon and related to the religion of Zoroaster, instead of being left but two or three centuries behind us and closely connected with the faith of our forefathers and the history of civilisation and Christianity. Of late years, with a growing passion for the works of Art of the Middle Ages, there has arisen among us adesire to comprehend the state of feeling which produced them, and the legends and traditions on which they are founded;—a desire to understand, and to bring to some surer critical test, representations which have become familiar without being intelligible. To enable us to do this, we must pause for a moment at the outset; and, before we plunge into the midst of things, ascend to higher ground, and command a far wider range of illustration than has yet been attempted, in order to take cognizance of principles and results which, if not new, must be contemplated in a new relation to each other.
The Legendary Art of the Middle Ages sprang out of the legendary literature of the preceding ages. For three centuries at least, this literature, the only literature which existed at the time, formed the sole mental and moral nourishment of thepeopleof Europe. The romances of Chivalry, which long afterwards succeeded, were confined to particular classes, and left no impress on Art, beyond the miniature illuminations of a few manuscripts. This legendary literature, on the contrary, which had worked itself into the life of the people, became, like the antique mythology, as a living soul diffused through the loveliest forms of Art, still vivid and vivifying, even when the old faith in its mystical significance was lost or forgotten. And it is a mistake to suppose that these legends had their sole origin in the brains of dreaming monks. The wildest of them had some basis of truth to rest on, and the forms which they gradually assumed were but the necessary result of the age which produced them. They became the intense expression of that inner life, which revolted against the desolation and emptiness of the outward existence; of those crushed and outraged sympathies which cried aloud for rest, and refuge, and solace, and could nowhere find them. It will be said, ‘In the purer doctrine of theGospel.’ But where was that to be found? The Gospel was not then the heritage of the poor: Christ, as a comforter, walked not among men. His own blessed teaching was inaccessible except to the learned: it was shut up in rare manuscripts; it was perverted and sophisticated by the passions and the blindness of those few to whom itwasaccessible. The bitter disputes in the early Church relative to the nature of the Godhead, the subtle distinctions and incomprehensible arguments of the theologians, thedread entertained by the predominant church of any heterodox opinions concerning the divinity of the Redeemer, had all conspired to removeHim, in his personal character of Teacher and Saviour, far away from the hearts of the benighted and miserable people—far, far away into regions speculative, mysterious, spiritual, whither they could not, dared not follow Him. In this state of things, as it has been remarked by a distinguished writer, ‘Christ became the object of a remoter, a more awful adoration. The mind began, therefore, to seek out, or eagerly to seize, some other more material beings in closer alliance with human sympathies.’ And the same author, after tracing in vivid and beautiful language the dangerous but natural consequences of this feeling, thus sums up the result: ‘During the perilous and gloomy days of persecution, the reverence for those who endured martyrdom for the religion of Christ had grown up out of the best feelings of man’s improved nature. Reverence gradually grew into veneration, worship, adoration: and although the more rigid theology maintained a marked distinction between the honour shown to the martyrs, and that addressed to the Redeemer and the Supreme Being, the line was too fine and invisible not to be transgressed by excited popular feeling.’[1]
‘We live,’ says the poet, ‘through admiration, hope, and love.’ Out of these vital aspirations—not indeed always ‘well or wisely placed,’ but never, as in the heathen mythology, degraded to vicious and contemptible objects—arose and spread the universal passion for the traditional histories of the saints and martyrs,—personages endeared and sanctified in all hearts, partly as examples of the loftiest virtue, partly as benign intercessors between suffering humanity and that Deity who, in every other light than as a God of Vengeance, had been veiled from their eyes by the perversities of schoolmen and fanatics, till He had receded beyond their reach, almost beyond their comprehension. Of the prevalence and of the incalculable influence of this legendary literature from the seventh to the tenth century, that is, just about the period when Modern Art was struggling into existence, we have a most striking picture in Guizot’s ‘Histoire de la Civilisation.’‘As after the siege of Troy (says this philosophical and eloquent writer) there were found, in every city of Greece, men who collected the traditions and adventures of heroes, and sung them for the recreation of the people, till these recitals became a national passion, a national poetry, so, at the time of which we speak, the traditions of what may be called the heroic ages of Christianity had the same interest for the nations of Europe. There were men who made it their business to collect them, to transcribe them, to read or recite them aloud, for the edification and delight of the people. And this was the only literature, properly so called, of that time.‘
Now, if we go back to theauthentichistories of the sufferings and heroism of the early martyrs, we shall find enough there, both of the wonderful and the affecting, to justify the credulity and enthusiasm of the unlettered people, who saw no reason why they should not believe in one miracle as well as in another. In these universally diffused legends, we may recognise the means, at least one of the means, by which a merciful Providence, working through its own immutable laws, had provided against the utter depravation, almost extinction, of society. Of the ‘Dark Ages,’ emphatically so called, the period to which I allude was perhaps the darkest; it was ‘of Night’s black arch the key-stone.’ At a time when men were given over to the direst evils that can afflict humanity,—ignorance, idleness, wickedness, misery; at a time when the every-day incidents of life were a violation of all the moral instincts of mankind; at a time when all things seemed abandoned to a blind chance, or the brutal law of force; when there was no repose, no refuge, no safety anywhere; when the powerful inflicted, and the weak endured, whatever we can conceive of most revolting and intolerable; when slavery was recognised by law throughout Europe; when men fled to cloisters, to shut themselves from oppression, and women to shield themselves from outrage; when the manners were harsh, the language gross; when all the softer social sentiments, as pity, reverence, tenderness, found no resting-place in the actual relations of life; when for the higher ranks there was only the fierce excitement of war, and on the humbler classes lay the weary, dreary monotony of a stagnant existence, poor in pleasures of every kind, without aim, without hope;then—wondrous reaction of the ineffaceable instincts ofgood implanted within us!—arose a literature which reversed the outward order of things, which asserted and kept alive in the hearts of men those pure principles of Christianity which were outraged in their daily actions; a literature in which peace was represented as better than war, and sufferance more dignified than resistance; which exhibited poverty and toil as honourable, and charity as the first of virtues; which held up to imitation and emulation, self-sacrifice in the cause of good and contempt of death for conscience’ sake: a literature, in which the tenderness, the chastity, the heroism of woman, played a conspicuous part; which distinctly protested against slavery, against violence, against impurity in word and deed; which refreshed the fevered and darkened spirit with images of moral beauty and truth; revealed bright glimpses of a better land, where ‘the wicked cease from troubling,’ and brought down the angels of God with shining wings and bearing crowns of glory, to do battle with the demons of darkness, to catch the fleeting soul of the triumphant martyr, and carry it at once into a paradise of eternal blessedness and peace!
Now the Legendary Art of the three centuries which comprise the revival of learning, was, as I have said, the reflection of this literature, of this teaching. Considered in this point of view, can we easily overrate its interest and importance?
When, after the long period of darkness which followed upon the decline of the Roman Empire, the Fine Arts began to revive, the first, and for several ages the only, impress they received was that of the religious spirit of the time. Painting, Sculpture, Music, and Architecture, as they emerged one after another from the ‘formless void,’ were pressed into the service of the Church. But it is a mistake to suppose that in adroitly adapting the reviving Arts to her purposes, in that magnificent spirit of calculation which at all times characterised her, the Church from the beginning selected the subjects, or dictated the use that was to be made of them. We find, on the contrary, edicts and councilsrepressingthe popular extravagances in this respect, and denouncing those apocryphal versions of sacred events and traditions which had become the delight of the people. But vain were councils and edicts; the tide was too strong to be so checked. The Churchfound herself obliged to accept and mould to her own objects the exotic elements she could not eradicate. Sheabsorbed, so to speak, the evils and errors she could not expel. There seems to have been at this time a sort of compromise between the popular legends, with all their wild mixture of northern and classical superstitions, and the Church legends properly so called. The first great object to which reviving Art was destined, was to render the Christian places of worship a theatre of instruction and improvement for the people, to attract and to interest them by representations of scenes, events, and personages, already so familiar as to require no explanation, appealing; at once to their intelligence and their sympathies; embodying in beautiful shapes (beautiful at least in their eyes) associations and feelings and memories deep-rooted in their very hearts, and which had influenced, in no slight degree, the progress of civilisation, the development of mind. Upon these creations of ancient Art we cannot look asthosedid for whom they were created; we cannot annihilate the centuries which lie between us and them; we cannot, in simplicity of heart, forget the artist in the image he has placed before us, nor supply what may be deficient in his work, through a reverentially excited fancy. We are critical, not credulous. We no longer accept this polytheistic form of Christianity; and there is little danger, I suppose, of our falling again into the strange excesses of superstition to which it led. But if we have not much sympathy with modern imitations of Mediæval Art, still less should we sympathise with that narrow puritanical jealousy which holds the monuments of a real and earnest faith in contempt. All that God has permitted once to exist in the past should be considered as the possession of the present; sacred for example or warning, and held as the foundation on which to build up what is better and purer. It should seem an established fact, that all revolutions in religion, in government, and in art, which begin in the spirit of scorn, and in a sweeping destruction of the antecedent condition, only tend to a reaction. Our puritanical ancestors chopped off the heads of Madonnas and Saints, and paid vagabonds to smash the storied windows of our cathedrals;—now, are these rejected and outraged shapes of beauty coming back to us, or are we not rather going back to them? As a Protestant, I might fear lest in doing so we confound the eternal spirit of Christianity with the mutable forms in whichit has deigned to speak to the hearts of men, forms which must of necessity vary with the degree of social civilisation, and bear the impress of the feelings and fashions of the age which produced them; but I must also feel that we ought to comprehend, and to hold in due reverence, that which has once been consecrated to holiest aims, which has shown us what a magnificent use has been made of Art, and how it may still be adapted to good and glorious purposes, if, while we respect these time-consecrated images and types, we do not allow them to fetter us, but trust in the progressive spirit of Christianity to furnish us with new impersonations of the good—new combinations of the beautiful. I hate the destructive as I revere the progressive spirit. We must laugh if any one were to try and persuade us that the sun was guided along his blazing path by a ‘fair-haired god who touched a golden lyre;’ but shall we therefore cease to adore in the Apollo Belvedere the majestic symbol of light, the most divine impersonation of intellectual power and beauty? So of the corresponding Christian symbols:—may that time never come, when we shall look up to the effigy of the winged and radiant angel trampling down the brute-fiend, without a glow of faith in the perpetual supremacy and final triumph of good over evil!
It is about a hundred years since the passion, or the fashion, for collecting works of Art, began to be generally diffused among the rich and the noble of this land; and it is amusing to look back and to consider the perversions and affectations of the would-be connoisseurship during this period;—the very small stock of ideas on which people set up a pretension to taste—the false notions, the mixture of pedantry and ignorance, which everywhere prevailed. The publication of Richardson’s book, and Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Discourses, had this advantage,—that they, to a certain degree, diffused a more elevated idea of Art asArt, and that they placed connoisseurship on a better and truer basis. In those days we had Inquiries into the Principles of Taste, Treatises on the Sublime and Beautiful, Anecdotes of Painting; and we abounded in Antiquarian Essays on disputed Pictures and mutilated Statues: but then, and up to a late period, any inquiry into the true spirit and significance of works of Art, as connected with the history of Religion and Civilisation, would have appeared ridiculous—or perhapsdangerous:—we should have had another cry of ‘No Popery,’ and acts of parliament forbidding the importation of Saints and Madonnas. It was fortunate, perhaps, that connoisseurs meddled not with such high matters. They talked volubly and harmlessly of ‘hands,’ and ‘masters,’ and ‘schools,’—of ‘draperies,’ of ‘tints,’ of ‘handling,’—of ‘fine heads,’ ‘fine compositions;’ of ‘the grace of Raphael,’ and of the ‘Correggiosity of Correggio.’ The very manner in which the names of the painters were pedantically used instead of the name of the subject, is indicative of this factitious feeling; the only question at issue was, whether such a picture was a genuine ‘Raphael?’ such another a genuine ‘Titian?’ The spirit of the work—whetherthatwas genuine; how far it was influenced by the faith and the condition of the age which produced it; whether the conception was properly characteristic, and ofwhatit was characteristic—of the subject? or of the school? or of the time?—whether the treatment corresponded to the idea within our own souls, or was modified by the individuality of the artist, or by received conventionalisms of all kinds?—these were questions which had not then occurred to any one; and I am not sure that we are much wiser even now: yet, setting aside all higher considerations, how can we do common justice to the artist, unless we can bring his work to the test of truth? and how can we do this, unless we know what to look for, what wasintendedas to incident, expression, character? One result of our ignorance has been the admiration wasted on the flimsy mannerists of the later ages of Art; men who apparently had no definiteintentionin anything they did, except a dashing outline, or a delicate finish, or a striking and attractive management of colour.
It is curious, this general ignorance with regard to the subjects of Mediæval Art, more particularly now that it has become a reigning fashion among us. We find no such ignorance with regard to the subjects of Classical Art, because the associations connected with them form a part of every liberal education. Do we hear any one say, in looking at Annibal Caracci’s picture in the National Gallery, ‘Which is Silenus, and which is Apollo?’ Who ever confounds a Venus with a Minerva, or a Vestal with an Amazon; or would endure an undrapedJuno, or a beardless Jupiter? Even the gardener in Zeluco knew Neptune by his ‘fork,’ and Vulcan by his ‘lame leg.’ We are indeed so accustomed, in visiting the churches and the galleries abroad, and the collections at home, to the predominance of sacred subjects, that it has become a mere matter of course, and excites no particular interest and attention. We have heard it all accounted for by the fact that the Church and churchmen were the first, and for a long time the only, patrons of Art. In every sacred edifice, and in every public or private collection enriched from the plunder of sacred edifices, we look for the usual proportion of melancholy martyrdoms and fictitious miracles,—for the predominance of Madonnas and Magdalenes, St. Catherines and St. Jeromes: but why these should predominate, why certain events and characters from the Old and the New Testament should be continually repeated, and others comparatively neglected; whence the predilection for certain legendary personages, who seemed to be multiplied to infinity, and the rarity of others; of this we know nothing.
We have learned, perhaps, after running through half the galleries and churches in Europe, to distinguish a few of the attributes and characteristic figures which meet us at every turn, yet without any clear idea of their meaning, derivation, or relative propriety. The palm of victory, we know, designates the martyr triumphant in death. We so far emulate the critical sagacity of the gardener in Zeluco that we have learned to distinguish St. Laurence by his gridiron, and St. Catherine by her wheel. We are not at a loss to recognise the Magdalene’s ‘loose hair and lifted eye,’ even when without her skull and her vase of ointment. We learn to know St. Francis by his brown habit and shaven crown and wasted ardent features; but do we distinguish him from St. Anthony, or St. Dominick? As for St. George and the dragon—from the St. George of the Louvre,—Raphael’s,—who sits his horse with the elegant tranquillity of one assured of celestial aid, down to him ‘who swings on a sign post at mine hostess’s door,’—he is our familiar acquaintance. But who is that lovely being in the first blush of youth, who, bearing aloft the symbolic cross, stands with one foot on the vanquished dragon? ‘That is a copy after Raphael.’ And who is that majestic creature holdingher palm branch, while the unicorn crouches at her feet? ‘That is the famous Moretto at Vienna.’ Are we satisfied?—not in the least! but we try to look wiser, and pass on.
In the old times the painters of these legendary scenes and subjects could always reckon securely on certain associations and certain sympathies in the minds of the spectators. We have outgrown these associations, we repudiate these sympathies. We have taken these works from their consecrated localities, in which they once held each their dedicated place, and we have hung them in our drawing-rooms and our dressing-rooms, over our pianos and our side-boards—and now what do they say to us? That Magdalene, weeping amid her hair, who once spoke comfort to the soul of the fallen sinner—that Sebastian, arrow-pierced, whose upward ardent glance spoke of courage and hope to the tyrant-ridden serf,—that poor tortured slave, to whose aid St. Mark comes sweeping down from above,—can they speak tousof nothing save flowing lines and correct drawing and gorgeous colour? must we be told that one is a Titian, the other a Guido, the third a Tintoret, before we dare to melt in compassion or admiration?—or the moment we refer to their ancient religious signification and influence, must it be with disdain or with pity? This, as it appears to me, is to take not a rational, but rather a most irrational as well as a most irreverent, view of the question; it is to confine the pleasure and improvement to be derived from works of Art within very narrow bounds; it is to seal up a fountain of the richest poetry, and to shut out a thousand ennobling and inspiring thoughts. Happily there is a growing appreciation of these larger principles of criticism as applied to the study of Art. People look at the pictures which hang round their walls, and have an awakening suspicion that there is more in them than meets the eye—more than mere connoisseurship can interpret; and that they have another, a deeper, significance than has been dreamed of by picture dealers and picture collectors, or even picture critics.
At first, when entering on a subject so boundless and so diversified, we are at a loss for some leading classification which shall be distinct and intelligible, without being mechanical. It appears to me, that all sacred representations, in as far as they appeal to sentiment and imagination, resolve themselves into two great classes, which I shall call theDEVOTIONALand theHISTORICAL.
Devotional pictures are those which portray the objects of our veneration with reference only to their sacred character, whether standing singly or in company with others. They place before us no action or event, real or supposed. They are neither portrait nor history. A group of sacred personages where no action is represented, is called in Italian a ‘sacra conversazione:’ the wordconversazione, which signifies a society in which there is communion, being here, as it appears to me, used with peculiar propriety. All subjects, then, which exhibit to us sacred personages, alone or in groups, simply in the character of superior beings, must be considered asdevotionallytreated.
But a sacred subject, without losing wholly its religious import, becomes historical the moment it represents any story, incident, or action, real or imagined. All pictures which exhibit the events of Scripture story, all those which express the actions, miracles, and martyrdoms of saints, come under this class; and to this distinction I must call the attention of the reader, requesting that it may be borne in mind throughout this work.
We must also recollect that a story, action, or fact may be so represented as to become a symbol expressive of an abstract idea: and some scriptural and some legendary subjects may be devotional, or historical, according to the sentiment conveyed: for example, the Crucifixion and the Last Supper may be so represented as either to exhibit an event, or to express a symbol of our Redemption. The raising of Lazarus exhibits, in the catacombs, a mystical emblem of the general resurrection; in the grand picture by Sebastian del Piombo, in our National Gallery, it is a scene from the life of our Saviour. Among the legendarysubjects, the penance of the Magdalene, and St. Martin dividing his cloak, may be merely incidents, or they may be symbolical, the first of penitence, the latter of charity, in the general sense. And, again, there are some subjects which, though expressing a scene or an action, arewhollymystical and devotional in their import; as the vision of St. Augustine, and the marriage of St. Catherine.
Among the grandest of the devotional subjects, we may reckon those compositions which represent the whole celestial hierarchy; the divine personages of the Trinity, the angels and archangels, and the beatified spirits of the just. Such is the subject called the ‘Paradiso,’ so often met with in pictures and ecclesiastical decoration, where Christ is enthroned in glory: such is also the Coronation of the Virgin, that ancient and popular symbol of the triumph of Religion or the Church; the Adoration of the Lamb; and the Last Judgment, from the Apocalypse. The order of precedence in these sacred assemblages was early settled by ecclesiastical authority, and was almost as absolute as that of a modern code of honour. First after the Trinity, the Virgin Mary, asRegina Angelorum, and St. John the Baptist: then, in order, the Evangelists; the Patriarchs; the Prophets; the Apostles; the Fathers; the Bishops; the Martyrs; the Hermits; the Virgins; the Monks, Nuns, and Confessors.
As examples, I may cite the Paradiso of Angelico, in the Florence Academy; the Coronation of the Virgin by Hans Memling, in the Wallerstein collection, which contains not less than fifty-two figures, all individualised with their proper attributes; and which, if it were possible, should be considered in contrast with the Coronation by Angelico. The Flemish painter seems to have carried his intense impression of earthly and individual life into the regions of heaven; the Italian, through a purer inspiration, seems to have brought all Paradise down before us upon earth. In the Adoration of the Lamb by Van Eyck, there are not fewer than two hundred figures. For the Last Judgment, the grand compositions of Orcagna in the Campo Santo,—of Luca Signorelli and Angelico at Orvieto,—and the fresco of Michael Angelo in the Sistine Chapel, may be consulted.
Where the usual order is varied, there is generally some reason forit; for instance, in the exaltation of a favourite saint, as we sometimes find St. Dominick and St. Francis by the side of St. Peter and St. Paul: and among the miniatures of that extraordinary MS., the Hortus Deliciarum, now at Strasbourg, painted for a virgin abbess, there is a ‘Paradiso’ in which the painter, either by her command or in compliment to her, has placed the virgins immediately after the angels.
The representation of the Virgin and Child with saints grouped around them, is a devotional subject familiar to us from its constant recurrence. It also frequently happens that the tutelary saint of the locality, or the patron saint of the votary, is represented as seated on a raised throne in the centre; and other saints, though under every other circumstance taking a superior rank, become here accessories, and are placed on each side or lower down in the picture: for example, where St. Augustine is enthroned, and St. Peter and St. Paul stand on each side, as in a picture by B. Vivarini,[2]or where St. Barbara is enthroned, and Mary Magdalene and St. Catherine stand on each side, as in a picture by Matteo di Siena.[3]
In such pictures, the votary or donor is often introduced kneeling at the feet of his patron, either alone or accompanied by his wife and other members of his family: and to express the excess of his humility, he is sometimes so diminutive in proportion to the colossal object of his veneration, as to be almost lost to sight; we have frequent examples of thisnaïvetéof sentiment in the old mosaics and votive altar-pieces; for instance, in a beautiful old fresco at Assisi, where the Magdalene, a majestic figure about six feet high, holds out her hand in benediction to a little Franciscan friar about a foot in height: but it was abandoned as barbarous in the later schools of Art, and the votary, when retained, appears of the natural size; as in theMadonna del Donatoreof Raphael[4], where Sigismond Conti is almost the finest and most striking part of that inestimable picture: and in theMadonnaof the Meyer family by Holbein.[5]
When a bishop is introduced into a group of saints kneeling, while allthe others are standing, he may be supposed to be theDonatoreorDivoto, the person who presents the picture. When he is standing, he is one of the bishop-patrons or bishop-martyrs, of whom there are some hundreds, and who are more difficult to discriminate than any other pictured saints.
And this leads me to the subject of the so-calledanachronismsin devotional subjects, where personages who lived at different and distant periods of time are found grouped together. It is curious to find the critics of the last century treating with pity and ridicule, as the result of ignorance or a barbarous unformed taste, the noblest and most spiritual conceptions of poetic art. Even Sir Joshua Reynolds had so little idea of the true object and feeling of such representations, that he thinks it necessary to apologise for the error of the painter, or the mistaken piety of his employer. We must remember that the personages here brought together in their sacred character belong no more to our earth, but to heaven and eternity: for them there is no longer time or place; they are here assembled together in the perpetual ‘communion of saints,’—immortal contemporaries in that kingdom where the Angel of the Apocalypse proclaimed ‘that there should be time no longer.’
Such groups are sometimes arranged with an artless solemnity, all the personages standing and looking straight out of the picture at the worshipper. Sometimes there is a touch of dramatic sentiment, which, without interfering with the solemn devotional feeling, lights up the whole with the charm of a purpose: as in the Correggio at Parma, where St. Jerome presents his translation of the Scriptures to the infant Christ, while an angel turns the leaves, and Mary Magdalene, symbol of redemption and reconciliation, bends to kiss the feet of the Saviour.
Our ancestors of the middle ages were not particular in drawing that strong line of demarcation between the classical, Jewish and Christian periods of history, that we do. They saw only Christendom every where; they regarded the past only in relation to Christianity. Hence we find in the early ecclesiastical monuments and edifices such a strange assemblage of pagan, scriptural, and Christian worthies; as, Hector of Troy, Alexander the Great, King David, Judas Maccabeus, KingArthur, St. George, Godfrey of Boulogne, Lucretia, Virginia, Judith, St. Elizabeth, St. Bridget (as in the Cross of Nuremburg). In the curious Manual of Greek Art, published by Didron, we find the Greek philosophers and poets entering into a scheme of ecclesiastical decoration, as in the carved stalls in the Cathedral of Ulm, where Solon, Apollonius, Plutarch, Plato, Sophocles, are represented, holding each a scroll, on which is inscribed a passage from their works, interpreted into an allusion to the coming of Christ: and I have seen a picture of the Nativity in which the sibyls are dancing hand-in-hand around the cradle of the new-born Saviour. This may appear profane to some, but the comprehension of the whole universe within the pale of Christianity strikes me as being in the most catholic, as well as in the most poetical, spirit.
It is in devotional subjects that we commonly find those anthropomorphic representations of the Divinity which shock devout people; and which no excuse or argument can render endurable to those who see in them only ignorant irreverence, or intentional profaneness. It might be pleaded that the profaneness is not intentional; that emblems and forms are, in the imitative arts, what figures of speech are in language; that only through a figure of speech can any attempt be made to place the idea of Almighty Power before us. Familiar expressions, consecrated by Scripture usage, represent the Deity as reposing, waking, stretching forth his hand, sitting on a throne; as pleased, angry, vengeful, repentant; and the ancient painters, speaking the language proper to their art, appear to have turned these emblematical words into emblematical pictures. I forbear to say more on this point, because I have taken throughout the poetical and not the religious view of Art, and this is an objection which must be left, as a matter of feeling, to the amount of candour and knowledge in the critical reader.
In the sacred subjects, properly calledHISTORICAL, we must be careful to distinguish between those which areScriptural, representing scenes from the Old or New Testament; and those which areLegendary.
Of the first, for the present; I do not speak, as they will be fully treated hereafter.
The historical subjects from the lives of the saints consist principally ofMiraclesandMartyrdoms.
In the first, it is worth remarking that we have no pictured miracle which is not imitated from the Old or the New Testament (unless it be an obvious emblem, as where the saint carries his own head). There is no act of supernatural power related of any saint which is not recorded of some great scriptural personage. The object was to represent the favourite patron as a copy of the great universal type of beneficence,Christ our Redeemer. And they were not satisfied that the resemblance should lie in character only; but should emulate the power of Christ in his visible actions. We must remember that the common people of the middle ages did not, and could not, distinguish between miracles accredited by the testimony of Scripture, and those which were fabrications, or at least exaggerations. All miracles related as divine interposition were to them equally possible, equally credible. If a more extended knowledge of the natural laws renders us in these days less credulous, it also shows us that many things were possible, under particular conditions, which were long deemed supernatural.
We find in the legendary pictures, that the birth of several saints is announced by an angel, or in a dream, as in the stories of St. Catherine, St. Roch, &c. They exhibit precocious piety and wisdom, as in the story of St. Nicholas, who also calms a tempest, and guides the storm-tossed vessel safe to land. They walk on the water, as in the stories of St. Raymond and St. Hyacinth; or a river divides, to let them pass, as in the story of St. Alban. Saints are fed and comforted miraculously, or delivered from prison by angels; or resist fire, like the ‘Three Children.’ The multiplication of bread, and the transformation of water into wine, are standing miracles. But those which most frequently occur in pictures, are the healing of the sick, the lame, the blind; the casting out of demons, the restoration of the dead, or some other manifestation of compassionate and beneficent power.
Some of the pictured legends are partly scriptural, partly historical, as the story of St. Peter; others are clearly religious apologues founded on fact or tradition, as those of St. Mary of Egypt and St. Christopher; others are obviously and purely allegorical, as the Greekstory of St. Sophia (i. e. Heavenly Wisdom, ΣΟΦΙΑ) and her celestial progeny, St. Faith, St. Hope, and St. Charity, all martyred by the blind and cruel Pagans. The names sound as if borrowed from the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress;’ and it is curious to find Bunyan’s allegorical legend, the favourite picture-book of the people, appearing just at the time when the legends and pictures of the saints became objects of puritanical horror, and supplying their place in the popular imagination.
Martyrdoms are only too common: they present to us Christianity under its most mystical aspect—the deification of suffering; but to render these representations effective, they should be pathetic without being terrible, they should speak to us
Of melancholy fear subdued by faith,Of blessed consolations in distress;
Of melancholy fear subdued by faith,Of blessed consolations in distress;
Of melancholy fear subdued by faith,Of blessed consolations in distress;
Of melancholy fear subdued by faith,
Of blessed consolations in distress;
but not of the horrid cruelty of man towards man. It has been well remarked by my friend M. Rio, (to whose charming and eloquent exposition of Christian Art I refer with ever-new delight,) that the early painters of Western Christendom avoided these subjects, and that their prevalence in ecclesiastical decoration marked the decline of religious feeling, and the degeneracy of Art. But this remark does not apply to Byzantine Art; for we find from the exact description of a picture of the martyrdom of St. Euphemia (both the picture and the description dating from the third century), that such representations were then common, and were appealed to in the same manner as now, to excite the feelings of the people.
The martyrdoms generally met with are those of St. Peter and St. Paul, St. Stephen Protomartyr, St. Laurence, St. Catherine, and St. Sebastian. These we find everywhere, in all countries and localities. Where the patron of the church or chapel is a martyr, his martyrdom holds a conspicuous place, often over the high altar, and accompanied by all the moving circumstances which can excite the pity, or horror, or enthusiasm of the pious votaries; but in the best examples we find the saint preparing for his death, not suffering the torments actually inflicted; so that the mind is elevated by the sentiment of his courage, not disturbed and disgusted by the spectacle of his agonies.
While such assemblages of holy persons as are found grouped together in devotional pictures are to be considered as quite independent of chronology, we shall find that the selection has been neither capricious nor arbitrary, and, with a little consideration, we shall discover the leading idea in the mind of the artist that, at least, which was intended to be conveyed to the mind of the spectator, and which was much more intelligible in former times than it is now.
Sometimes we find certain saints placed in companionship, because they are the joint patrons and protectors of the city or locality for which the picture was painted. Thus in the Bologna pictures we constantly find the bishop St. Petronius, St. Eloy, St. Dominick, and the warrior St. Proculus; while in the Venetian pictures we have perpetual St. Marks, St. Georges, and St. Catherines.
Or, secondly, they are connected by kindred powers and attributes. Thus we find St. Sebastian, the patron against pestilence, in company with St. Roch, who ministered to the sick of the plague. Thus St. Catherine and St. Jerome, the two patrons of school theology, are often found in companionship. Where St. Catherine and St. Barbara are found together, the first figures as patroness of the ecclesiastical, and the second of the military, power—or they represent respectively the contemplative and the active life.
Or, thirdly, they are combined in the fancy by some inevitable association; as St. Augustine and St. Stephen are often in the same picture, because St. Augustine dedicated some of his most eloquent works to the glory of the martyr.
Or they were friends on earth, for which reason St. Cyprian and St. Cornelius are placed together.
Or their relics repose in the same spot; whence St. Stephen and St. Laurence have become almost inseparable. When St. Vincent and St. Laurence are placed together, (as in a lovely composition of Parmigiana where they sit reading out of the same book,) it is becauseof the similarity of their fate, and that the popular tradition supposed them to be brothers.
A point of more general importance, and capable of more definite explanation, is the predominance of certain sacred personages in particular schools of Art. St. Cosmo and St. Damian, for instance, are perpetually recurring in the Florentine pictures as the patron saints of the Medici family. In the Lombard pictures St. Ambrose is often found without his compeers—not as doctor of the Church, but as bishop of Milan. In the Siena pictures, we may look for the nun St. Catherine of Siena, and St. Ansano, the apostle of the Sienese, holding his banner and palm. And in the Augustine chapels and churches, St. Augustine figures, not as doctor of the Church, but as patriarch of the Order.
A bishop-martyr, holding his palm, and not otherwise designated either by name or attribute, would be—in one if Perugino’s pictures, St. Ercolano or St. Costanzo; in a Florentine picture, St. Donato or St. Romulo; if the picture were painted in the March of Ancona, it would probably be St. Apollinaris of Ravenna; at Naples it would be St. Januarius; at Paris, or in a picture painted for a French church, of which there are many in Italy, it would be St. Denis; and in German prints, St. Boniface or St. Lambert. I need not further multiply examples.
If the locality from which the picture came will sometimes determine the names of the personages, so the personages represented will often explain the purpose and intended situation of the picture. There is in Lord Ashburton’s gallery a noble group representing together St. Peter, St. Leonard, St. Martha, and Mary Magdalene. Such a combination points it out at once as intended for a charitable institution, and, on enquiry, we find that it was painted for the chapel of a brotherhood associated to redeem prisoners, to ransom slaves, to work for the poor, and to convert the sinner to repentance. Many such interesting and instructive analogies will be pointed out in the course of the following pages, and the observer of works of Art will discover others for himself.
I add here, in alphabetical order, those countries and localities of which the patron saints are distinguished in works of Art.[6]
Votive Picturesare those which have been dedicated in certain religious edifices, in fulfilment of vows; either as the expression of thanksgiving for blessings which have been vouchsafed, or propitiative against calamities to be averted. The far greater number of these pictures commemorate an escape from danger, sickness, death; and more especially, some visitation of the plague, that terrible and frequent scourge of the middle ages. The significance of such pictures is generally indicated by the presence of St. Sebastian or St. Roch, the patrons against the plague; or St. Cosmo and St. Damian, the healing and medical saints; accompanied by the patron saints of the country or locality, if it be a public act of devotion; or, if dedicated by private or individual piety, the donor kneels, presented by his own patron saint. In general, though not always, this expressive group is arranged in attendance on the enthroned Madonna and her divine Son, as the universal protectors from all evil. Such pictures are among the most interesting and remarkable of the works of sacred Art which remain to us, and have often a pathetic and poetical beauty, and an historical significance, which it is a chief purpose of these volumes to interpret and illustrate.