Brogi Photo.]LEONARDO DA VINCI. FRESCO OF "THE LAST SUPPER."
Brogi Photo.]
LEONARDO DA VINCI. FRESCO OF "THE LAST SUPPER."
The picture of the Virgin of the Rocks and the portrait, Madonna Lisa del Gioconde, in the Louvre, show the quality of his painting—the characteristic subtlety of expression, mysteriousness, and very elaborate finish.
After his return to Florence began his rivalry with another gigantic artistic personality of that time of wonders—Michael Angelo, who was then, in the early years of the sixteenth century, about twenty-two years younger. The strong but jealous individuality of both, in spite of admiration for each other's genius, unfortunately stood in the way of friendship and co-operation. They remained rivals and competitors. They contended for the painting of the great Council Hall in the Palazzo Vecchio at Florence, and both prepared cartoons. Leonardo chose for his subject the defeat of the Milanese by the Florentine army in 1440; Michael Angelo a party of Florentine soldiers surprised while bathing in the Arno. Leonardo's design was chosen, but he spent so much time in experimenting and in preparing the wall to receive oil-painting, which he preferred to fresco, that, changes of government happening, the scheme was finally abandoned, and both cartoons, though shown for several years, were finally lost, only a copy of Michael Angelo's remaining, and an engraving from it.
The experimental nature of Leonardo seems to have prevented his completing many works, while he was full of projects of all kinds, too many of which were never realized. The fine cartoon ofthe Virgin and St. Anna was never painted. This cartoon, or a good copy, is now in the possession of the Royal Academy.
Alinari Photo.]LEONARDO DA VINCI. STUDY FOR THE HEAD OF CHRIST.
Alinari Photo.]
LEONARDO DA VINCI. STUDY FOR THE HEAD OF CHRIST.
In 1514 Leonardo was, like so many great Italian artists, invited to Rome by the pope (then Leo X.), but more in his character of philosopher, mechanic, and alchemist than as a painter. There he met Raphael, then at the height of his fame, engaged in painting the Stanzi of the Vatican. But Leonardo was ill-pleased on the whole with his Roman visit. The pope was said to have become dissatisfied with his speculative and dilatory habits. His old rival, Michael Angelo, was there, and finally he left and set out for Pavia, where Francis I. of France then held his Court. By him Leonardo was received with honour and favour, and went with him to France as principal Court painter, only, however, as it proved, to die there on May 2nd, 1516.
In the work of Leonardo's great rival, Michael Angelo, the art of the Italian Renascence may be said to have reached its culminating point, and after him decline sets in. It is as if the wonderful structure of inventive artistic genius had been piled by the life labours of generations to an ambitious and dangerous height, and at last had given way under the strain, or perhaps, like the sun-flower, the same force which raises the splendid rayed head and enables it to outface the sun, at last forces it earthwards again.
Michael Angelo Buonarotti was born at Settignano, near Florence, in the year 1474. His ambition, personal pride, and masterfulness of temper possibly may be traced to his progenitors—a once noble family. It was, too, against the prejudice of his father that he finally decided his career, becoming the apprentice of Ghirlandajo,It was in the days when Lorenzo the Magnificent ruled over Florence, and the young Michael Angelo became a student in the Academy, foundedupon the strength of a collection of antique marbles, busts, statues, fragments in the palace and gardens of that prince. This alone would be sufficient to give a strong classical bias to his style.
Alinari Photo.]BUST OF MICHAEL ANGELO BUONAROTTI (S. CROCE, FLORENCE).
Alinari Photo.]
BUST OF MICHAEL ANGELO BUONAROTTI (S. CROCE, FLORENCE).
There is a story of Michael Angelo's first attempt in marble when he was about fifteen—a copy of an antique mask of an old laughing faun: he treated this with a spirit and vivacity of his own, and Lorenzo de Medici was struck by its cleverness; but he said, "Thou shouldst have remembered that old folks do not retain all their teeth: some of them are always wanting." The young sculptor at once struck one or two out, giving the mask a more grotesque expression.
On this evidence of cleverness Lorenzo took entire charge of Michael Angelo. With the marks of princely favour, however, he was destined to carry another mark, not so agreeable, ever after, owing to, as some say, the jealousy of Torregiano, a fellow pupil, who in a quarrel struck him, some accounts say with his fist, some with a mallet, and so gave him the broken nose which is characteristic of the portraits of Michael Angelo. Torregiano in consequence suffered banishment from Florence. In his own account of the affray to Benvenuto Cellini he declares the provocation came from Michael Angelo. The favour and protection of Lorenzo did not last long, as in his eighteenth year Michael Angelo lost his patron by death.
It was Lorenzo's son Piero who set him one wintry day to make a statue out of the snow—rather a wasteful proceeding for a Michael Angelo, though, as the late Mr. Walter Pater has said,there is a certain reminiscence of the feeling of the snow statue in the suggestive and half-finished figures of the tombs of the Medici.
A. Braun & Co. Photo.]MICHAEL ANGELO. "THE CREATION OF MAN" (CEILING, SISTINE CHAPEL).
A. Braun & Co. Photo.]
MICHAEL ANGELO. "THE CREATION OF MAN" (CEILING, SISTINE CHAPEL).
With the fall of the Medici family and their exile from Florence, Michael Angelo, as one of their retainers, had to fly also, and took refuge in Bologna, where he pursued his work as a sculptor. At the age of twenty-two he produced the "Pietà" in marble, now in St. Peter's at Rome.
In 1502 he was again recalled to Florence. In 1504 took place the competition with Leonardo of the cartoons for the Palazzo Vecchio, already spoken of.
In 1506 Michael Angelo was called to Rome by Pope Julius II. The pope employed him to design the sumptuous sculptural monument destined for his own tomb, for which the famous colossal Moses was executed, and the slaves or prisoners, but these, like the tomb, never were finished.
But his great work in Rome, the great work of his life, was the decoration of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, the walls of which had been painted by earlier artists of the Florentine school: Signorelli, Cosimo Rosselli, Perugino, Ghirlandajo, Botticelli. The ceiling remained unadorned, and now Michael Angelo was called upon to design his great sacred epic of painting, having to deal with a space 150 feet in length by 50 feet in breadth, upon the concave surface of a round vault, without any architectural or structural enrichment or division save the windows. The theme was the fall and redemption of mankind according to the Bible history.
MICHAEL ANGELO. CEILING OF THE SISTINE CHAPEL.
MICHAEL ANGELO. CEILING OF THE SISTINE CHAPEL.
At first it appears that Michael Angelo, as it issaid, doubtful of his own skill in fresco, called in the aid of painters from Florence to aid him in carrying out his design, but was so disappointed with their work that he effaced it and dismissed them. He then shut himself up and proceeded to devote himself to the gigantic work alone, preparing the colours with his own hands, showing how thorough an individualist he must have been, contrary to the practice of his own time, which was to work with pupils and assistants. He began with the end towards the door, and in two compartments first painted "The Deluge" and "The Vineyard of Noah"; the figures are on a smaller scale, which he afterwards abandoned for a larger, bolder treatment. He spent twenty-two months in painting the ceiling, exclusive of the time spent in preparing the cartoons. The work was uncovered to the public view on All Saints' Day, 1512.
The sculpturesque and architectural feeling which, really stronger in Michael Angelo's work than that of the painter, is very decidedly manifested both in the general plan of the design and in individual figures and details. In order to bring so great a scheme into comprehensive form it was necessary to divide and subdivide the blank ceiling with painted architectural mouldings and ribs into spaces and panels. The titanic youthful figures placed between, upon the ledges and brackets of the framework of the subjects, are very fine and characteristic in style, and essentially sculptors' designs; each would work out as a separate statue, though for all that each single figure, as each figure of every group, bears a certain relationto the rest and fills a harmonious and necessary place in the scheme. The colour is subdued and quiet. It has a gray, cool effect in the chapel, gray blues, pale greens and whites being muchused in the draperies, and the chief decorative effect being gained by the opposition of brown flesh tones to the broad, light marble-like framework, or the landscape and sky backgrounds ofthe subject panels. This great work was completed by Michael Angelo in his thirty-ninth year.
Alinari Photo.]MICHAEL ANGELO. "THE DELPHIC SIBYL" (SISTINE CHAPEL).
Alinari Photo.]
MICHAEL ANGELO. "THE DELPHIC SIBYL" (SISTINE CHAPEL).
Alinari Photo.]MICHAEL ANGELO. TOMB OF GIULIANO DE MEDICI. FLORENCE.
Alinari Photo.]
MICHAEL ANGELO. TOMB OF GIULIANO DE MEDICI. FLORENCE.
Alinari Photo.]MICHAEL ANGELO. TOMB OF LORENZO DE MEDICI. FLORENCE.
Alinari Photo.]
MICHAEL ANGELO. TOMB OF LORENZO DE MEDICI. FLORENCE.
Another great monumental work in which hisarchitectural and sculptural genius come out are the tombs of the Medici in the Church of San Lorenzo. The seated figures of Lorenzo and Giuliano de Medici are placed in the recesses of a Renascence arcade, in front of which are marble sarcophagi, and upon the lids recline figures of Night and Morning, and of Dawn and Twilight respectively. They are very bold and powerful in design, and extremely characteristic in style and treatment, having a certain titanic energy and tragic unrest, as well as pensive mystery, about them, which belong to the strong personality of their designer.
Poet, as well as painter, architect, and sculptor, we see him moving amid the political troubles and vicissitudes of his time, a proud and stormy spirit, a man of extraordinary energy, which impresses itself upon all his works. The designer of St. Peter's, the painter of the Sistine, and anon as engineer called to fortify Florence; austere and abstemious of habit, proud and imperious, and yet tenderly solicitous for his aged father, and devoted to his old servant Urbino, whom he tenderly nursed in his last illness.
The great artist lived till eighty-nine, and died in Rome, the scene of his monumental labours, on February 18th, 1564.
As showing the alertness and activity of his mind in old age, he is said to have made a drawing of himself as an aged man in a go-cart, with the motto,Ancora impara(still learning), a true emblem for a great man who, in spite of his knowledge, feels that in view of the unknown he knows nothing.
These are a few, a very few, individualities out of the drama of Italian art, briefly sketched, but distinct as they are, they are not detached like isolated statues upon pedestals from the characteristics of their age. They are great because they embody those characteristics; they are like rich jewels strung upon a golden chain—the golden chain of inventive tradition which unites them—which, while leaving each artist free in his own sphere, brings his work into relation and harmony with that of his contemporaries, his predecessors, and his successors. Some may prefer to take the jewels separately and admire them without reference to the chain; but, I think, to fully understand and appreciate the genius of individual artists one must never leave out of account their relation to their time, and its influences, the relation of their particular art to the state of the arts generally; for among these are the factors which have contributed to make them what we find them in their works; just as the colour and relief of a figure or a head depends largely upon its background.
IN my last chapter I compared tradition in art to a golden chain, and the striking individualities which arise from time to time as the jewels upon such a chain. The history of art and the evolution of design may be regarded either from the point of view of the jewels or from the point of view of the ordinary links; and if we wish to take a just and comprehensive view I think we must not only consider the luminous points, but the system—the links—by which they are connected and related. Looking out into the clear night we see a vast mass of brilliant stars of all degrees of magnitude apparently flung into space without order or relation, but the studies of astronomers have revealed that they are the central suns of systems around which revolve planets invisible to us; but these star-suns themselves become lost, and merged in the countless myriads that form the silvery cloud we call the milky way. So it is in the history of art and the evolution of design. At first we are attracted by the brilliant personalities, surrounded by satellites, that seem to sum up in their work whole epochs, and remain typical and central points in the wide spaces of time; but further research reveals their relation to otherpersonalities not so distinct, on whom the full light of popular favour has not flashed, and presently we get beyond personalities altogether, and in the work of remote antiquity see only the results of the labours of generations, purely typical forms of art, the monumental record of races, of nations, of dynasties, the work, not of individual men, but of collectiveman.
Of such we may find examples in the art of ancient Egypt, of Assyria, of Persia, and in the archaic and primitive art of all kinds, from the fragments of pottery from the plain of Troy to the carved paddles of the Polynesian islanders.
The art and craft of building—architecture, the fundamental art, can only be traced back to its primitive forms in different countries as practised among different races and peoples. The origin of its distinctive styles, and its principal constructive features, were determined long ago under the influence of climate and local materials, by the collective thought and co-operative labour of mankind schooled by necessity and experience.
Yes, it is a history of constant adaptation to conditions and united labour and invention from our primitive ancestor, who improved upon the natural shelter of the tree by interlacing its pendent branches with other branches and stakes fixed in the ground; who burned the ends of their timbers, so that as piles they could be driven more easily into the mud to support the platforms of the wattled lake dwellings, when there were no steel axes. From the early colonists of our race, the Aryan wagoners, who perhaps took the idea of the primitive gable and roof timbers from the tiltof the wagon, or the supports of the tent-coverings; from the ingenuity of the Mongolian settlers by the riverside, making the framing of their houses and supporting their roofs by the bamboo, utilizing the hollow canes for the jointing and bracketing of the supports, and terminating the ends ornamentally by inserting grotesquely carved heads. The chain of invention is unbroken up to modern scientific engineering and calculated principles of building construction, which but sums up and systematizes the collective experience of ages.
We see, too, the collective hand of tradition and the adherence to accustomed forms in the adoption or imitation of features of timber construction in stone construction and ornament by the ancients; as, for instance, in the form of the Persian capital from Persepolis, and in the dentil ornament of classical architecture mentioned in the preceding chapters.
Out of necessity springs construction; out of construction springs ornament. We cannot find the individual in either, both being the result of slow and gradual evolution, requiring long periods of time and continuity of custom, life, and habit, and the continuous associated labour of communities, wherein the individual is of less importance than the maintenance of the social organism. At first the preservation of the gens, the tribe, the protection and service of the village community, the handing on of tradition and folk-lore, until, with conquest and extension and consolidation into a nation, settled industries, and religious faith and ritual, the desire arises to clothe the mythical and spiritualideas of a people in permanent monumental form and colour.
A cathedral represents the collective art, work, and thought of centuries. The names of its builders, its masons, its carvers, its glaziers, are lost; the heads and hands that carried out the work, whose invention and feeling, whose very life have been wrought into the stone and the wood and the glass, have left no other record. An abbot's or a bishop's name may be given as having planned or raised the money for this choir or that porch at different times, but the artists and craftsmen who did the work generally remain unknown. They worked in their craft in harmony with the workers in kindred crafts, and as brother members of their guild, and instead of building up merely personal reputations really evolved collectively the distinctive architectural style and decorative types of their age.
This is one reason why a Gothic cathedral is so impressive. We see the growth of an organic style, starting, perhaps, with the round arch and massive Norman pier, and passing through the transition to the lancet arch of the early pointed to the moulded arch and the clustered shaft and foliated capital, with the ribbed, vaulted roof covering the long nave with a network of recurring constructive lines, and meeting overhead in carved bosses, or spreading into Tudor fans. Or we may mark the gradual evolution of the window from the round headed, deep-set loop-hole of the Byzantine and Norman period into the long lancet-pointed panel of geometric glass; and see then how by degrees the light, first divided into two bya shaft, suggested the clustering of many lights together, as in great western or eastern windows, dividing them by mullions breaking into geometric tracery in the pointed heads; and thus raising a beautiful pierced screen of stone to hold the coloured glass and reveal its splendour against the full light of the sky.
Can we name the inventors of these changes, the evolvers of these beauties of our constructive art? Do we not feel that by their very nature they could not have been claimed by any individual mind alone or have reached perfection in a single lifetime? They are the natural result of a free and vital condition in art, moved by the unity of faith and feeling, wherein men work together as brothers in unity, each free in his own sphere, but never isolated, and never losing his sense of relation to the rest.
Thus we get the harmonious effect of a great orchestra, where, though every variety of instrument may be played, all are subordinated, or co-ordinated, to the musical scheme, and produce that impression of power and sweetness by cadences that may be now soft as the whispers of the summer winds over a field of wheat, and anon sweep like a tempest with the fury of thundering waves upon the utmost shores of sound.
The emotions produced by such forms of collective art lift the mind out of the personal region altogether; they are akin, indeed, to the feelings awakened in the presence of wild nature. We seem to hear the voice of Time himself out of the caverns of the past, the song of life, like that of a child in the sunlight, and the half-articulate,pathetic murmur of the voices of birds and beasts; the hush of the wood at noon-tide, the transfiguration of the afterglow, and the mystery of night.
In the primitive ornament of all peoples we find the same or similar typical forms constantly recurring, the germs of pattern design afterwards developed, complicated, and refined upon: the chequer, the zigzag, the fret, the circle, the spiral volute, the twisting scroll—can we ascribe their invention to any individual mind or hand? Can the mechanician tell us who were the inventors of the wheel, the lever, the mode of producing fire, the canoe, the paddle, the spade, the plough, the vessel of clay, the axe, the hammer, the needle, or even spinning and weaving? Yet they are inventions of incalculable importance to human life, which without them could not maintain itself, much less build upon them, as it were, the vast and complex structure of modern invention, of science, and of art.
A form in ornament once found, however, is repeated. The eye grows accustomed to it, takes delight in it, and expects its recurrence. It becomes established by use and wont, and is often associated with fundamental ideas of life and the universe itself. Thus we get traditional ornament, handed on from generation to generation, its origin and meaning perhaps lost—like the pictorial significance of the individual letters of our alphabet, which everybody uses, but which require a special kind of study and research to explain their real meaning and original forms.
Side by side with this liking for the accustomed,this demand for the expected, appears to have grown up another feeling, a love of change and variety equally natural and human.
NATURAL VARIATION IN REPETITION OF ORNAMENTAL FORMS. PRIMARY SCHOOL CHILDREN DRAWING ON THE BLACKBOARD, PHILADELPHIA.
NATURAL VARIATION IN REPETITION OF ORNAMENTAL FORMS. PRIMARY SCHOOL CHILDREN DRAWING ON THE BLACKBOARD, PHILADELPHIA.
NATURAL VARIATION IN REPETITION OF ORNAMENTAL FORMS. PRIMARY SCHOOL CHILDREN DRAWING ON THE BLACKBOARD, PHILADELPHIA.
NATURAL VARIATION IN REPETITION OF ORNAMENTAL FORMS. PRIMARY SCHOOL CHILDREN DRAWING ON THE BLACKBOARD, PHILADELPHIA.
In ornament variation may at first be unconscious, and might have arisen from the natural tendency of the hand to vary a form in repeating it (as ourown experience will tell us), while it requires an effort to reproduce its exact counterpart. This tendency to vary the same form, in repeating it, by different individuals is illustrated by the little American children cultivating their facility of hand by drawing on the blackboard. This natural variation, having a rich and pleasant effect, is encouraged until conscious and studied invention and ingenuity of individual artists in the varying of designs take its place.
Tradition in design may no doubt be largely attributed to the influence of the workshop, or what we should now call technical necessities, the use of certain tools and materials giving a certain character of their own in the rendering of form, as one may see even in the case of such a matter as quality of outline (important enough in all design) if we compare the differences between a form drawn with the pencil, the pen, with the brush, or with charcoal. A certain typical treatment becomes naturally evolved in the course of practice which seems proper to each method, while the treatment is sure to be slightly varied in the hands of every individual. Of course a strong artistic personality may greatly modify tradition in any art, though such an one is seldom entirely free from its influence; and the greatest artists in past times have generally built upon it, and have become what they are rather because of an existing vital tradition admitting of individual variation.
This was largely the case, I think, with the great masters of the Italian Renascence, some of whom I spoke of in the previous chapter. The general standard of excellence was maintained bytheir contemporaries. A great individual artist arises and only by degrees distinguishes himself by his personal choice and treatment, his variation of practice or method, grafting on to the stem perhaps some new rare flower. He raises the standard higher, he imports new elements, he influences tradition, and the lamp is handed on.
Giotto's art would not have been what it was but for the Byzantine influence under which he was trained. Without losing certain fine qualities of the dignity and serenity of the earlier art, he infused fresh life and prepared the way for the greater freedom and naturalism of his successors. The various schools of painting are closely linked, and if the links were complete we should perhaps be more struck with the resemblances, the similarities, than the differences.
The great structure of style is raised stone by stone: the labour of generations of artists gradually advances the standard of excellence. Now and then a greater mind appears, and by some new thought or method, fresh sentiment or point of view, raises the standard higher, and so an epoch is marked in art.
Great cleavages from time to time occur which disturb the orderly progression and connection, like cataclysms in nature—earthquakes and upheavals which break the continuity of the geologic beds and throw them upon different levels; but the strong social and collective tendency in man is always to repair and reform, to re-unite scattered fragments and to form new traditions both in life and art.
In an age which has seen the development of an organized industrial system of extraordinary and minute division of labour under the factory system, and has now entered an epoch of further specialization of labour with the invention and use of complicated machinery driven by steam and electric power, in association with which labour becomes not only specialized but almost automatic, we perhaps hardly need reminding of the collective influence, since for the effective supply of the big world-marketallproducts are the result of collective human labour.
Such an organization of machine production as every effective factory displays, of collective labour, though not organized for the collective benefit, but rather wastefully contending with other factories for private profit-making in a fierce and unscrupulous warfare of commercial competition—such organizations can hardly be favourable to the production of fine and beautiful art. The art, the wonder, the invention, if anywhere, must really be sought in the means rather than the ends. The machines which produce our wares are marvels of ingenuity, of mechanical adaptation, of economy of force, but the finished product is often most depressing. One may see in print works, for instance, those wonderful colour printing machines capable of printing seven, and even twelve, colours from the rollers in succession upon the cloth as it passes through, often turning out extremely tame and commonplace patterns on cheap material, which look much more interesting as engraved upon the polished copper roller than they ever do on the cloth.
Well, it may be said, the remedy is with us—with the designers. We have only to use our invention in producing good and attractive designs, adapted to the process and material, and the factory and the machine will do the rest.
AXMINSTER CARPET WEAVING.
AXMINSTER CARPET WEAVING.
It is conceivable, certainly, that where the object issolelyto produce something at once beautiful and serviceable, by a chain of associated and intelligent labour, with the most ingenious machines at the command of the designers, wonderful things might be done; but it is a question whether, if a design be ever so good, we should not grow tired of it if we saw it produced in enormous quantities. Yetthat, after all, is the object of our factories, of our improved machinery, to produce in enormous quantities—not primarily to supply the world'sneeds either, but in order to sell at a profit. Art, however, is only concerned with quality—to make everything as good of its kind as possible, to seek variety, beauty, appropriateness.
TAPESTRY CARPET WEAVING.
TAPESTRY CARPET WEAVING.
We have yet to see whether industrial production, organized on the modern system, is equal to theold handicraftsman with his simple methods, as far as artistic results are concerned.
So far the Indian, with his hand-block printing his pattern on his strip of muslin or cotton, or dipping his tied cloth into the dye, produces more artistic results than all our wonderful machinery. Mechanical perfection is one thing, and artistic feeling quite another, and the more as an end a people seeks after the first the less it is likely to care for or understand the other.
The chain of production, too, may be mechanically complete, as in our best factories it may be said to be as far as organization goes, yet we may be still far from the finer sympathetic chain ofartisticassociation by means of which the best work is produced. In this we must include the stimulus of external beauty and harmonious surroundings, as well as individual freedom.
Such a condition of things might have been found in any craft's-guild, and seen in full working order in any workshop of the Middle Ages.
Such an interior as is pictured by Etienne Delaune, a celebrated goldsmith of Paris, as late as the sixteenth century, of his own atelier, engraved by himself, shows us a group of artist craftsmen working together with all the tools and implements of their art around them. Of the three seated at the bench one is engraving or chasing; another at work upon a watch, drilling apparently; while the third is doing some finerepousséwork. The young man at the furnace is probably enamelling, and a boy at the wheel appears to be wire-drawing. A great variety of tools are placed in exemplary order upon the walls—pincers, pliers, files, shears,hammers, punches, a small anvil, crucibles, and a pair of bellows for the furnace.
INTERIOR OF THE ATELIER OF ETIENNE DELAUNE, PARIS, 1576.
INTERIOR OF THE ATELIER OF ETIENNE DELAUNE, PARIS, 1576.
There are still some crafts which are worked in this simple artistic co-operative way, and have undergone but little changes of method since the Middle Ages. Indeed, one might sayallthe finer artistic handicrafts; and it is noteworthy that the tools used are of the same type—the sculptor's mallet and chisel, the painter's palette and brushes, for instance, have remained practically unchanged in form from time immemorial.
Those who have seen glass blowing and the formation of glass vessels must have been struck by the skill and celerity displayed by the craftsmen at the furnace mouth, under very trying conditions, and also by the necessity of effective help at certain movements, when the molten glass is made to revolve upon the bar by one man, while the shape is given to it by another. The master craftsman generally seems to have two assistants, but the amount of co-operation necessary in forming the vessels depends much upon their size, small pieces being completed by one alone.
There are glass works still working, such as those at Whitefriars, which have been there since the sixteenth century. The circle of furnace mouths, the ruddy glow falling upon the faces and figures of the workers, form a striking scene. By a skill of manipulation that might well appear magical seen for the first time, the craftsmen produce vessels of any variety of shape, constantly returning the work as it progresses to the fire. Though the work seems to lend itself to the varying invention of the designer, they can reproducethe section sketched in chalk on a black panel at the side of the furnace in a completed form to exact measurement.
GLASS BLOWING.
GLASS BLOWING.
The art of the printer of books, to which so much interest has of late been drawn, and which has been revived as an art by Mr. William Morrisat his Kelmscott Press, affords another instance of the necessity of intelligent and artistic co-operation.
INTERIOR OF A PRINTING OFFICE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY (FROM JOST AMMAN).
INTERIOR OF A PRINTING OFFICE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY (FROM JOST AMMAN).
To begin with, there is the paper; a good tough handmade paper, like drawing paper, is wanted for rich and bright impressions of type or woodcuts. This must be made from the best linen rags, and each sheet is manipulated by the hands, by means of a wired frame of wood dipped into the pulp and cunningly shaken so that it (the pulp) shall spread over the wires evenly to form, when dry, the sheet of paper.
Then the type-founding must be looked after. Lettering of good form must be designed, and so designed that each letter must be separate and yet capable of forming words without undue gaps, and also legible pages of agreeable type, good in the mass and good in the single letters and words. The type-founder and designer must therefore be a man of taste and cultivation, he must have a knowledge of alphabets, of early printing and of historic MSS. and calligraphy, and he must be a capable designer, able to appreciate the niceties of line, the value of a curve, of balance and mass, proportion and appropriate scale.
Mr. Morris had several typical ancient types photographed upon a large scale so as to more easily compare their design and structure, and founded his own designs for his Kelmscott founts more or less upon them, giving them, whether Roman or Gothic, a distinctive character of their own. This is about as near as one can get in our conscious, selective way to old methods, in which individuals from time to time introduced small variations, while adhering to the general style and form, so that the collective traditional influence and historic continuity is preserved withthe cumulative advantages of individual invention.
Of the placing of the type-page upon the paper, regarding the double page of the open book as the true unit, I have before spoken, and a great deal of art comes into the setting of the type, so as to disperse it without leaving "rivers" or gaps—much as a designer of a repeating pattern would seek to avoid running into awkward accidental lines. Constructive principle would here come in, and should be serviceable to the printer in enabling him to preserve a pleasant and harmonious ornamental effect in his page.
The designer of printers' ornaments and book illustrations, too, if he wishes to make his work an essential and harmonious part of the book is, while free in his own sphere, bound to remember the conditions under which his work will be produced and seen; and, so far from regarding these conditions as restraints, should rather regard them as sources of suggestion in the treatment of his designs, making his initial letters and decorative borders and headings natural links to unite the formal ornamental element of the type-page with the informal inclosed panel of figure design which, in its treatment of line or black and white mass, may be but an extension of the same principles found in any individual letter of the type-mass. The mechanical reason for this is, of course, that it simplifies the process of printing, type and woodcut being subject to the same pressure.
With good paper and ink, with good, well-cut type and woodcut ornaments and illustrations, the success of the book now depends upon the actualprinter, as defective printing, poor impressions, the blocks not up to full strength, the impressions blurred, would spoil the effect of the best work. Bright, clean impressions are wanted, and much care and skill are required to secure such, as well as time to allow the sheets to dry well before being made up into book form.
GOLD-TOOLED BOOK COVER. DESIGNED BY T. J. COBDEN-SANDERSON.
GOLD-TOOLED BOOK COVER. DESIGNED BY T. J. COBDEN-SANDERSON.
Finally the binder takes up the tale of collective skill necessary to the production of that one of the most beautiful of beautiful things—a beautiful book.
GOLD-TOOLED BOOK COVER. DESIGNED BY T. J. COBDEN-SANDERSON.
GOLD-TOOLED BOOK COVER. DESIGNED BY T. J. COBDEN-SANDERSON.
Here, of course, an immense amount of art may be called in over and above neat and careful craftsmanship in the preliminary but most necessarystages of "forwarding," as Mr. Cobden-Sanderson has told us. Beautiful binding, indeed, may display some of the most refined qualities of decorative art in disposition of line and pattern, while it affords in gold tooling another instance ofstrict limitation of method lending itself to free invention and fancy.
The artist is under the necessity of building up his lines and constructing his forms by the repetition of the impress of certain tools, the most resourceful designer being shown by the decorative use he is able to make of few and simple forms. An examination of the designs by Mr. Cobden-Sanderson, given here, will show that they are built up of very few units. A flower, a leaf, a stem, and straight lines of borders with the lettering, which is also an important ornamental unit. Everything depends upon the taste and skill with which they are used.
From the single example of the chain of associated labour necessary to the production of a book, we may see then how much depends upon intelligent and harmonious co-operation in collective work. Where each process is so important, where the skill and taste of each worker is so necessary to the complete result, one can hardly say that one is more important than another—certainly not less essential. We see, too, howinter-dependent the work of each is. Each stone in the structure must be well and truly laid, or sound progress and satisfactory completion are impossible. Art in all its manifold developments always teaches us this. Fault or failure at one stage may ruin the whole work.
Are the foundations less important than the wall; is the wall less important than the window; is the roof less essential to the house than the carving of its porch, or the painting of its interior?
If we realize the close and necessary links that unite all workers, that are essential to the production of things useful or beautiful, or both, should not we do well to strive to make the association closer and more complete than it is, and thus hand on the lamp of good tradition in design and workmanship, however far we must look forward to the enlargement of our horizon and the harmonizing of human life, and its freedom from the sinister powers and false ideals that now oppress and deceive it? And if we accept the truth that art is unity, and that what the unit is the mass may become, should we not strive, each in his sphere, whatever our main work may be, to do it worthily and well? remembering that it is better to do a small thing well than a big thing badly, and that it is the spirit in which our work is done, not the place it may accidentally occupy, or the class to which it may belong, or the reward it may receive in the ordinary estimation, that makes it great or little.