§LXVIII. As an index of the greatness of nations, it is a less certain test, or, rather, we are not so well agreed on the meaningof the term “greatness” respecting them. A nation may produce a great effect, and take up a high place in the world’s history, by the temporary enthusiasm or fury of its multitudes, without being truly great; or, on the other hand, the discipline of morality and common sense may extend its physical power or exalt its well-being, while yet its creative and imaginative powers are continually diminishing. And again: a people may take so definite a lead over all the rest of the world in one direction, as to obtain a respect which is not justly due to them if judged on universal grounds. Thus the Greeks perfected the sculpture of the human body; threw their literature into a disciplined form, which has given it a peculiar power over certain conditions of modern mind; and were the most carefully educated race that the world has seen; but a few years hence, I believe, we shall no longer think them a greater people than either the Egyptians or Assyrians.
§LXIX. If, then, ridding ourselves as far as possible of prejudices owing merely to the school-teaching which remains from the system of the Renaissance, we set ourselves to discover in what races the human soul, taken all in all, reached its highest magnificence, we shall find, I believe, two great families of men, one of the East and South, the other of the West and North: the one including the Egyptians, Jews, Arabians, Assyrians, and Persians; the other, I know not whence derived, but seeming to flow forth from Scandinavia, and filling the whole of Europe with its Norman and Gothic energy. And in both these families, wherever they are seen in their utmost nobleness, there the grotesque is developed in its utmost energy; and I hardly know whether most to admire the winged bulls of Nineveh, or the winged dragons of Verona.
§LXX. The reader who has not before turned his attention to this subject may, however, at first have some difficulty in distinguishing between the noble grotesque of these great nations, and the barbarous grotesque of mere savages, as seen in the work of the Hindoo and other Indian nations; or, more grossly still, in that of the complete savage of the Pacificislands; or if, as is to be hoped, he instinctively feels the difference, he may yet find difficulty in determining wherein that difference consists. But he will discover, on consideration, that the noble grotesqueinvolves the true appreciation of beauty, though the mind may wilfully turn to other images or the hand resolutely stop short of the perfection which it must fail, if it endeavored, to reach; while the grotesque of the Sandwich islander involves no perception or imagination of anything above itself. He will find that in the exact proportion in which the grotesque results from an incapability of perceiving beauty, it becomes savage or barbarous; and that there are many stages of progress to be found in it even in its best times, much truly savage grotesque occurring in the fine Gothic periods, mingled with the other forms of the ignoble grotesque resulting from vicious inclinations or base sportiveness. Nothing is more mysterious in the history of the human mind, than the manner in which gross and ludicrous images are mingled with the most solemn subjects in the work of the middle ages, whether of sculpture or illumination; and although, in great part, such incongruities are to be accounted for on the various principles which I have above endeavored to define, in many instances they are clearly the result of vice and sensuality. The general greatness of seriousness of an age does not effect the restoration of human nature; and it would be strange, if, in the midst of the art even of the best periods, when that art was entrusted to myriads of workmen, we found no manifestations of impiety, folly, or impurity.
§LXXI. It needs only to be added that in the noble grotesque, as it is partly the result of a morbid state of the imaginative power, that power itself will be always seen in a high degree; and that therefore our power of judging of the rank of a grotesque work will depend on the degree in which we are in general sensible of the presence of invention. The reader may partly test this power in himself by referring to the Plate given in the opening of this chapter, in which, on the left, is a piece of noble and inventive grotesque, a head of the lion-symbol of St. Mark, from the Veronese Gothic; the otheris a head introduced as a boss on the foundation of the Palazzo Corner della Regina at Venice, utterly devoid of invention, made merely monstrous by exaggerations of the eyeballs and cheeks, and generally characteristic of that late Renaissance grotesque of Venice, with which we are at present more immediately concerned.43
§LXXII. The developement of that grotesque took place under different laws from those which regulate it in any other European city. For, great as we have seen the Byzantine mind show itself to be in other directions, it was marked as that of a declining nation by the absence of the grotesque element; and, owing to its influence, the early Venetian Gothic remained inferior to all other schools in this particular character. Nothing can well be more wonderful than its instant failure in any attempt at the representation of ludicrous or fearful images, more especially when it is compared with the magnificent grotesque of the neighboring city of Verona, in which the Lombard influence had full sway. Nor was it until the last links of connexion with Constantinople had been dissolved, that the strength of the Venetian mind could manifest itself in this direction. But it had then a new enemy to encounter. The Renaissance laws altogether checked its imagination in architecture; and it could only obtain permission to express itself by starting forth in the work of the Venetian painters, filling them with monkeys and dwarfs, even amidst the most serious subjects, and leading Veronese and Tintoret to the most unexpected and wild fantasies of form and color.
§LXXIII. We may be deeply thankful for this peculiar reserveof the Gothic grotesque character to the last days of Venice. All over the rest of Europe it had been strongest in the days of imperfect art; magnificently powerful throughout the whole of the thirteenth century, tamed gradually in the fourteenth and fifteenth, and expiring in the sixteenth amidst anatomy and laws of art. But at Venice, it had not been received when it was elsewhere in triumph, and it fled to the lagoons for shelter when elsewhere it was oppressed. And it was arrayed by the Venetian painters in robes of state, and advanced by them to such honor as it had never received in its days of widest dominion; while, in return, it bestowed upon their pictures that fulness, piquancy, decision of parts, and mosaic-like intermingling of fancies, alternately brilliant and sublime, which were exactly what was most needed for the developement of their unapproachable color-power.
§LXXIV. Yet, observe, it by no means follows that because the grotesque does not appear in the art of a nation, the sense of it does not exist in the national mind. Except in the form of caricature, it is hardly traceable in the English work of the present day; but the minds of our workmen are full of it, if we would only allow them to give it shape. They express it daily in gesture and gibe, but are not allowed to do so where it would be useful. In like manner, though the Byzantine influence repressed it in the early Venetian architecture, it was always present in the Venetian mind, and showed itself in various forms of national custom and festival;actedgrotesques, full of wit, feeling, and good-humor. The ceremony of the hat and the orange, described in the beginning of this chapter, is one instance out of multitudes. Another, more rude, and exceedingly characteristic, was that instituted in the twelfth century in memorial of the submission of Woldaric, the patriarch of Aquileia, who, having taken up arms against the patriarch of Grado, and being defeated and taken prisoner by the Venetians, was sentenced, not to death, but to send every year on “Fat Thursday” sixty-two large loaves, twelve fat pigs, and a bull, to the Doge; the bull being understood to represent the patriarch, and the twelve pigs his clergy: and the ceremoniesof the day consisting in the decapitation of these representatives, and a distribution of their joints among the senators; together with a symbolic record of the attack upon Aquileia, by the erection of a wooden castle in the rooms of the Ducal Palace, which theDoge and the Senateattacked and demolished with clubs. As long as the Doge and the Senate were truly kingly and noble, they were content to let this ceremony be continued; but when they became proud and selfish, and were destroying both themselves and the state by their luxury, they found it inconsistent with their dignity, and it was abolished, as far as the Senate was concerned, in 1549.44
§LXXV. By these and other similar manifestations, the grotesque spirit is traceable through all the strength of the Venetian people. But again: it is necessary that we should carefully distinguish between it and the spirit of mere levity. I said, in the fifth chapter, that the Venetians were distinctively a serious people, serious, that is to say, in the sense in which the English are a more serious people than the French; though the habitual intercourse of our lower classes in London has a tone of humor in it which I believe is untraceable in that of the Parisian populace. It is one thing to indulge in playful rest, and another to be devoted to the pursuit of pleasure: and gaiety of heart during the reaction after hard labor, and quickened by satisfaction in the accomplished duty or perfected result, is altogether compatible with, nay, even in some sort arises naturally out of, a deep internal seriousness of disposition; this latter being exactly the condition of mind which, as we have seen, leads to the richest developements of the playful grotesque; while, on the contrary, the continual pursuit of pleasure deprives the soul of all alacrity and elasticity, and leaves it incapable of happy jesting, capable only of that which is bitter, base, and foolish. Thus, throughout the whole of the early career of the Venetians, though there is much jesting, there is no levity; on the contrary there is an intense earnestness both in their pursuit of commercial and political successes,and in their devotion to religion,45which led gradually to the formation of that highly wrought mingling of immovable resolution with secret thoughtfulness, which so strangely, sometimes so darkly, distinguishes the Venetian character at the time of their highest power, when the seriousness was left, but the conscientiousness destroyed. And if there be any one sign by which the Venetian countenance, as it is recorded for us, to the very life, by a school of portraiture which has never been equalled (chiefly because no portraiture ever had subjects so noble),—I say, if there be one thing more notable than another in the Venetian features, it is this deep pensiveness and solemnity. In other districts of Italy, the dignity of the heads which occur in the most celebrated compositions is clearly owing to the feeling of the painter. He has visibly raised or idealized his models, and appears always to be veiling the faults or failings of the human nature around him, so that the best of his work is that which has most perfectly taken the color of his own mind; and the least impressive, if not the least valuable, that which appears to have been unaffected and unmodified portraiture. But at Venice, all is exactly the reverse of this. The tone of mind in the painter appears often in some degree frivolous or sensual; delighting in costume, in domestic and grotesque incident, and in studies of the naked form. But the moment he gives himself definitely to portraiture, all is noble and grave; the more literally true his work, the more majestic; and the same artist who will produce little beyond what is commonplace in painting a Madonna or an apostle, will rise into unapproachable sublimity when his subject is a member of the Forty, or a Master of the Mint.
Such, then, were the general tone and progress of the Venetian mind, up to the close of the seventeenth century. First, serious, religious, and sincere; then, though serious still, comparatively deprived of conscientiousness, and apt to decline into stern and subtle policy: in the first case, the spirit of the noble grotesque not showing itself in art at all, but only inspeech and action; in the second case, developing itself in painting, through accessories and vivacities of composition, while perfect dignity was always preserved in portraiture. A third phase rapidly developed itself.
§LXXVI. Once more, and for the last time, let me refer the reader to the important epoch of the death of the Doge Tomaso Mocenigo in 1423, long ago indicated as the commencement of the decline of the Venetian power. That commencement is marked, not merely by the words of the dying Prince, but by a great and clearly legible sign. It is recorded, that on the accession of his successor, Foscari, to the throne, “Si festeggio dalla citta uno anno intero:” “The city kept festival for a whole year.” Venice had in her childhood sown, in tears, the harvest she was to reap in rejoicing. She now sowed in laughter the seeds of death.
Thenceforward, year after year, the nation drank with deeper thirst from the fountains of forbidden pleasure, and dug for springs, hitherto unknown, in the dark places of the earth. In the ingenuity of indulgence, in the varieties of vanity, Venice surpassed the cities of Christendom, as of old she surpassed them in fortitude and devotion; and as once the powers of Europe stood before her judgment-seat, to receive the decisions of her justice, so now the youth of Europe assembled in the halls of her luxury, to learn from her the arts of delight.
It is as needless, as it is painful, to trace the steps of her final ruin. That ancient curse was upon her, the curse of the cities of the plain, “Pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness.” By the inner burning of her own passions, as fatal as the fiery reign of Gomorrah, she was consumed from her place among the nations; and her ashes are choking the channels of the dead salt sea.
27Mutinelli, Annali Urbani, lib. i. p. 24; and the Chronicle of 1738, quoted by Galliciolli: “attrovandosi allora la giesia de Sta. Maria Formosa sola giesia del nome della gloriosa Vergine Maria.”28Or from the brightness of the cloud, according to the Padre who arranged the “Memorie delle Chiese di Venezia,” vol. iii. p. 7. Compare Corner, p. 42. This first church was built in 639.29Perhaps both Corner and the Padre founded their diluted information on the short sentence of Sansovino: “Finalmente, l’anno 1075, fu ridotta a perfezione da Paolo Barbetta, sul modello del corpo di mezzo della chiesa di S. Marco.” Sansovino, however, gives 842, instead of 864, as the date of the first rebuilding.30Or at least for its principal families. VideAppendix 8, “Early Venetian Marriages.”31“Nazionale quasi la ceremonia, perciocche per essa nuovi difensori ad acquistar andava la patria, sostegni nuovi le leggi, la Liberta.”—Mutinelli.32“Vestita,per antico uso, di bianco, e con chiome sparse giù per le spalle, conteste con fila d’oro.” “Dressed according to ancient usage in white, and with her hair thrown down upon her shoulders, interwoven with threads of gold.” This was when she was first brought out of her chamber to be seen by the guests invited to the espousals. “And when the form of the espousal has been gone through, she is led, to the sound of pipes and trumpets, and other musical instruments, round the room,dancing serenely all the time, and bowing herself before the guests(ballando placidamente, e facendo inchini ai convitati); and so she returns to her chamber: and when other guests have arrived, she again comes forth, and makes the circuit of the chamber. And this is repeated for an hour or somewhat more; and then, accompanied by many ladies who wait for her, she enters a gondola without its felze (canopy), and, seated on a somewhat raised seat covered with carpets, with a great number of gondolas following her, she goes to visit the monasteries and convents, wheresoever she has any relations.”33Sansovino.34English, “Malmsey.” The reader will find a most amusing account of the negotiations between the English and Venetians, touching the supply of London with this wine, in Mr. Brown’s translation of the Giustiniani papers. SeeAppendix IX.35“XV. diebus et octo diebus ante festum Mariarum omni anno.”—Galliciolli.The same precautions were taken before the feast of the Ascension.36Casa Vittura.37The keystone of the arch on its western side, facing the canal.38The inscriptions are as follows:To the left of the reader.“VINCENTIUS CAPELLUS MARITIMARUMRERUM PERITISSIMUS ET ANTIQUORUMLAUDIBUS PAR, TRIREMIUM ONERARIARUM PRÆFECTUS, AB HENRICO VII. BRITANNIÆ REGE INSIGNE DONATUS CLASSIS LEGATUS V. IMP. DESIG. TER CLASSEM DEDUXIT, COLLAPSAM NAVALEM DISCIPLINAM RESTITUIT, AD ZACXINTHUMAURIÆ CÆSARIS LEGATO PRISCAMVENETAM VIRTUTEM OSTENDIT.”To the right of the reader.“IN AMBRACIO SINU BARBARUSSUM OTTHOMANICÆ CLASSIS DUCEM INCLUSITPOSTRIDIE AD INTERNITIONEM DELETURUS NISI FATA CHRISTIANIS ADVERSAVETUISSENT. IN RYZONICO SINU CASTRO NOVOEXPUGNATO DIVI MARCI PROCURUNIVERSO REIP CONSENSU CREATUSIN PATRIA MORITUR TOTIUS CIVITATISMŒRORE, ANNO ÆTATIS LXXIV. MDCXLII. XIV. KAL SEPT.”39The Love of God is, however, always shown by the predominance, or greater sum, of good, in the end; but never by the annihilation of evil. The modern doubts of eternal punishment are not so much the consequence of benevolence as of feeble powers of reasoning. Every one admits that God brings finite good out of finite evil. Why not, therefore, infinite good out of infinite evil?40Let the reader examine, with special reference to this subject, the general character of the language of Iago.41This opposition of art to inspiration is long and gracefully dwelt upon by Plato, in his “Phædrus,” using, in the course of his argument, almost the words of St Paul:καλλιον μαρτυροῦσιν οἱ παλαιοὶ μανίαν σωφροσυνης τὴν ἐκ Θεοῦ τῆς παῤ ἀνθρώπων γιγνομένης: “It is the testimony of the ancients, thatthe madness which is of God is a nobler thing than the wisdom which is of men;” and again, “He who sets himself to any work with which the Muses have to do,” (i. e. to any of the fine arts,) “without madness, thinking that by art alone he can do his work sufficiently, will be found vain and incapable, and the work of temperance and rationalism will be thrust aside and obscured by that of inspiration.” The passages to the same effect, relating especially to poetry, are innumerable in nearly all ancient writers; but in this of Plato, the entire compass of the fine arts is intended to be embraced.No one acquainted with other parts of my writings will suppose me to be an advocate of idle trust in the imagination. But it is in these days just as necessary to allege the supremacy of genius as the necessity of labor; for there never was, perhaps, a period in which the peculiar gift of the painter was so little discerned, in which so many and so vain efforts have been made to replace it by study and toil. This has been peculiarly the case with the German school, and there are few exhibitions of human error more pitiable than the manner in which the inferior members of it, men originally and for ever destitute of the painting faculty, force themselves into an unnatural, encumbered, learned fructification of tasteless fruit, and pass laborious lives in setting obscurely and weakly upon canvas the philosophy, if such it be, which ten minutes’ work of a strong man would have put into healthy practice, or plain words. I know not anything more melancholy than the sight of the huge German cartoon, with its objective side, and subjective side; and mythological division, and symbolical division, and human and Divine division; its allegorical sense, and literal sense; and ideal point of view, and intellectual point of view; its heroism of well-made armor and knitted brows; its heroinism of graceful attitude and braided hair; its inwoven web of sentiment, and piety, and philosophy, and anatomy, and history, all profound: and twenty innocent dashes of the hand of one God-made painter, poor old Bassan or Bonifazio, were worth it all, and worth it ten thousand times over.Not that the sentiment or the philosophy is base in itself. They will make a good man, but they will not make a good painter,—no, nor the millionth part of a painter. They would have been good in the work and words of daily life; but they are good for nothing in the cartoon, if they are there alone. And the worst result of the system is the intense conceit into which it cultivates a weak mind. Nothing is so hopeless, so intolerable, as the pride of a foolish man who has passed through a process of thinking, so as actually to have found something out. He believes there is nothing else to be found out in the universe. Whereas the truly great man, on whom the Revelations rain till they bear him to the earth with their weight, lays his head in the dust, and speaks thence—often in broken syllables. Vanity is indeed a very equally divided inheritance among mankind; but I think that among the first persons, no emphasis is altogether so strong as that on the GermanIch. I was once introduced to a German philosopher-painter before Tintoret’s “Massacre of the Innocents.” He looked at it superciliously, and said it “wanted to be restored.” He had been himself several years employed in painting a “Faust” in a red jerkin and blue fire; which made Tintoret appear somewhat dull to him.42I have before stated (“Modern Painters” vol. ii.) that the first function of the imagination is the apprehension of ultimate truth.43Note especially, in connexion with what was advanced in Vol. II. respecting our English neatness of execution, how the base workman has cut the lines of the architecture neatly and precisely round the abominable head: but the noble workman has used his chisel like a painter’s pencil, and sketched the glory with a few irregular lines, anything rather than circular; and struck out the whole head in the same frank and fearless way, leaving the sharp edges of the stone as they first broke, and flinging back the crest of hair from the forehead with half a dozen hammer-strokes, while the poor wretch who did the other was half a day in smoothing its vapid and vermicular curls.44The decree is quoted by Mutinelli, lib. i. p. 46.45SeeAppendix 9.
27Mutinelli, Annali Urbani, lib. i. p. 24; and the Chronicle of 1738, quoted by Galliciolli: “attrovandosi allora la giesia de Sta. Maria Formosa sola giesia del nome della gloriosa Vergine Maria.”
28Or from the brightness of the cloud, according to the Padre who arranged the “Memorie delle Chiese di Venezia,” vol. iii. p. 7. Compare Corner, p. 42. This first church was built in 639.
29Perhaps both Corner and the Padre founded their diluted information on the short sentence of Sansovino: “Finalmente, l’anno 1075, fu ridotta a perfezione da Paolo Barbetta, sul modello del corpo di mezzo della chiesa di S. Marco.” Sansovino, however, gives 842, instead of 864, as the date of the first rebuilding.
30Or at least for its principal families. VideAppendix 8, “Early Venetian Marriages.”
31“Nazionale quasi la ceremonia, perciocche per essa nuovi difensori ad acquistar andava la patria, sostegni nuovi le leggi, la Liberta.”—Mutinelli.
32“Vestita,per antico uso, di bianco, e con chiome sparse giù per le spalle, conteste con fila d’oro.” “Dressed according to ancient usage in white, and with her hair thrown down upon her shoulders, interwoven with threads of gold.” This was when she was first brought out of her chamber to be seen by the guests invited to the espousals. “And when the form of the espousal has been gone through, she is led, to the sound of pipes and trumpets, and other musical instruments, round the room,dancing serenely all the time, and bowing herself before the guests(ballando placidamente, e facendo inchini ai convitati); and so she returns to her chamber: and when other guests have arrived, she again comes forth, and makes the circuit of the chamber. And this is repeated for an hour or somewhat more; and then, accompanied by many ladies who wait for her, she enters a gondola without its felze (canopy), and, seated on a somewhat raised seat covered with carpets, with a great number of gondolas following her, she goes to visit the monasteries and convents, wheresoever she has any relations.”
33Sansovino.
34English, “Malmsey.” The reader will find a most amusing account of the negotiations between the English and Venetians, touching the supply of London with this wine, in Mr. Brown’s translation of the Giustiniani papers. SeeAppendix IX.
35“XV. diebus et octo diebus ante festum Mariarum omni anno.”—Galliciolli.The same precautions were taken before the feast of the Ascension.
36Casa Vittura.
37The keystone of the arch on its western side, facing the canal.
38The inscriptions are as follows:
To the left of the reader.
“VINCENTIUS CAPELLUS MARITIMARUM
RERUM PERITISSIMUS ET ANTIQUORUM
LAUDIBUS PAR, TRIREMIUM ONERARIA
RUM PRÆFECTUS, AB HENRICO VII. BRI
TANNIÆ REGE INSIGNE DONATUS CLAS
SIS LEGATUS V. IMP. DESIG. TER CLAS
SEM DEDUXIT, COLLAPSAM NAVALEM DIS
CIPLINAM RESTITUIT, AD ZACXINTHUM
AURIÆ CÆSARIS LEGATO PRISCAM
VENETAM VIRTUTEM OSTENDIT.”
To the right of the reader.
“IN AMBRACIO SINU BARBARUSSUM OTTHO
MANICÆ CLASSIS DUCEM INCLUSIT
POSTRIDIE AD INTERNITIONEM DELETU
RUS NISI FATA CHRISTIANIS ADVERSA
VETUISSENT. IN RYZONICO SINU CASTRO NOVO
EXPUGNATO DIVI MARCI PROCUR
UNIVERSO REIP CONSENSU CREATUS
IN PATRIA MORITUR TOTIUS CIVITATIS
MŒRORE, ANNO ÆTATIS LXXIV. MDCXLII. XIV. KAL SEPT.”
39The Love of God is, however, always shown by the predominance, or greater sum, of good, in the end; but never by the annihilation of evil. The modern doubts of eternal punishment are not so much the consequence of benevolence as of feeble powers of reasoning. Every one admits that God brings finite good out of finite evil. Why not, therefore, infinite good out of infinite evil?
40Let the reader examine, with special reference to this subject, the general character of the language of Iago.
41This opposition of art to inspiration is long and gracefully dwelt upon by Plato, in his “Phædrus,” using, in the course of his argument, almost the words of St Paul:καλλιον μαρτυροῦσιν οἱ παλαιοὶ μανίαν σωφροσυνης τὴν ἐκ Θεοῦ τῆς παῤ ἀνθρώπων γιγνομένης: “It is the testimony of the ancients, thatthe madness which is of God is a nobler thing than the wisdom which is of men;” and again, “He who sets himself to any work with which the Muses have to do,” (i. e. to any of the fine arts,) “without madness, thinking that by art alone he can do his work sufficiently, will be found vain and incapable, and the work of temperance and rationalism will be thrust aside and obscured by that of inspiration.” The passages to the same effect, relating especially to poetry, are innumerable in nearly all ancient writers; but in this of Plato, the entire compass of the fine arts is intended to be embraced.
No one acquainted with other parts of my writings will suppose me to be an advocate of idle trust in the imagination. But it is in these days just as necessary to allege the supremacy of genius as the necessity of labor; for there never was, perhaps, a period in which the peculiar gift of the painter was so little discerned, in which so many and so vain efforts have been made to replace it by study and toil. This has been peculiarly the case with the German school, and there are few exhibitions of human error more pitiable than the manner in which the inferior members of it, men originally and for ever destitute of the painting faculty, force themselves into an unnatural, encumbered, learned fructification of tasteless fruit, and pass laborious lives in setting obscurely and weakly upon canvas the philosophy, if such it be, which ten minutes’ work of a strong man would have put into healthy practice, or plain words. I know not anything more melancholy than the sight of the huge German cartoon, with its objective side, and subjective side; and mythological division, and symbolical division, and human and Divine division; its allegorical sense, and literal sense; and ideal point of view, and intellectual point of view; its heroism of well-made armor and knitted brows; its heroinism of graceful attitude and braided hair; its inwoven web of sentiment, and piety, and philosophy, and anatomy, and history, all profound: and twenty innocent dashes of the hand of one God-made painter, poor old Bassan or Bonifazio, were worth it all, and worth it ten thousand times over.
Not that the sentiment or the philosophy is base in itself. They will make a good man, but they will not make a good painter,—no, nor the millionth part of a painter. They would have been good in the work and words of daily life; but they are good for nothing in the cartoon, if they are there alone. And the worst result of the system is the intense conceit into which it cultivates a weak mind. Nothing is so hopeless, so intolerable, as the pride of a foolish man who has passed through a process of thinking, so as actually to have found something out. He believes there is nothing else to be found out in the universe. Whereas the truly great man, on whom the Revelations rain till they bear him to the earth with their weight, lays his head in the dust, and speaks thence—often in broken syllables. Vanity is indeed a very equally divided inheritance among mankind; but I think that among the first persons, no emphasis is altogether so strong as that on the GermanIch. I was once introduced to a German philosopher-painter before Tintoret’s “Massacre of the Innocents.” He looked at it superciliously, and said it “wanted to be restored.” He had been himself several years employed in painting a “Faust” in a red jerkin and blue fire; which made Tintoret appear somewhat dull to him.
42I have before stated (“Modern Painters” vol. ii.) that the first function of the imagination is the apprehension of ultimate truth.
43Note especially, in connexion with what was advanced in Vol. II. respecting our English neatness of execution, how the base workman has cut the lines of the architecture neatly and precisely round the abominable head: but the noble workman has used his chisel like a painter’s pencil, and sketched the glory with a few irregular lines, anything rather than circular; and struck out the whole head in the same frank and fearless way, leaving the sharp edges of the stone as they first broke, and flinging back the crest of hair from the forehead with half a dozen hammer-strokes, while the poor wretch who did the other was half a day in smoothing its vapid and vermicular curls.
44The decree is quoted by Mutinelli, lib. i. p. 46.
45SeeAppendix 9.
§I. I fear this chapter will be a rambling one, for it must be a kind of supplement to the preceding pages, and a general recapitulation of the things I have too imperfectly and feebly said.
The grotesques of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the nature of which we examined in the last chapter, close the career of the architecture of Europe. They were the last evidences of any feeling consistent with itself, and capable of directing the efforts of the builder to the formation of anything worthy the name of a style or school. From that time to this, no resuscitation of energy has taken place, nor does any for the present appear possible. How long this impossibility may last, and in what direction with regard to art in general, as well as to our lifeless architecture, our immediate efforts may most profitably be directed, are the questions I would endeavor briefly to consider in the present chapter.
§II. That modern science, with all its additions to the comforts of life, and to the fields of rational contemplation, has placed the existing races of mankind on a higher platform than any that preceded them, none can doubt for an instant; and I believe the position in which we find ourselves is somewhat analogous to that of thoughtful and laborious youth succeeding a restless and heedless infancy. Not long ago, it was said to me by one of the masters of modern science: “When men invented the locomotive, the child was learning to go; when they invented the telegraph, it was learning to speak.” He looked forward to the manhood of mankind, as assuredly the nobler in proportion to the slowness of its developement. Whatmight not be expected from the prime and middle strength of the order of existence whose infancy had lasted six thousand years? And, indeed, I think this the truest, as well as the most cheering, view that we can take of the world’s history. Little progress has been made as yet. Base war, lying policy, thoughtless cruelty, senseless improvidence,—all things which, in nations, are analogous to the petulance, cunning, impatience, and carelessness of infancy,—have been, up to this hour, as characteristic of mankind as they were in the earliest periods; so that we must either be driven to doubt of human progress at all, or look upon it as in its very earliest stage. Whether the opportunity is to be permitted us to redeem the hours that we have lost; whether He, in whose sight a thousand years are as one day, has appointed us to be tried by the continued possession of the strange powers with which He has lately endowed us; or whether the periods of childhood and of probation are to cease together, and the youth of mankind is to be one which shall prevail over death, and bloom for ever in the midst of a new heaven and a new earth, are questions with which we have no concern. It is indeed right that we should look for, and hasten, so far as in us lies, the coming of the Day of God; but not that we should check any human efforts by anticipations of its approach. We shall hasten it best by endeavoring to work out the tasks that are appointed for us here; and, therefore, reasoning as if the world were to continue under its existing dispensation, and the powers which have just been granted to us were to be continued through myriads of future ages.
§III. It seems to me, then, that the whole human race, so far as their own reason can be trusted, may at present be regarded as just emergent from childhood; and beginning for the first time to feel their strength, to stretch their limbs, and explore the creation around them. If we consider that, till within the last fifty years, the nature of the ground we tread on, of the air we breathe, and of the light by which we see, were not so much as conjecturally conceived by us; that the duration of the globe, and the races of animal life by which itwas inhabited, are just beginning to be apprehended; and that the scope of the magnificent science which has revealed them, is as yet so little received by the public mind, that presumption and ignorance are still permitted to raise their voices against it unrebuked; that perfect veracity in the representation of general nature by art has never been attempted until the present day, and has in the present day been resisted with all the energy of the popular voice;46that the simplest problems of social science are yet so little understood, as that doctrines of liberty and equality can be openly preached, and so successfully as to affect the whole body of the civilized world with apparently incurable disease; that the first principles of commerce were acknowledged by the English Parliament only a few months ago, in its free trade measures, and are still so little understood by the million, that no nation dares to abolish its custom-houses;47that the simplest principles of policy are still not so much as stated, far less received, and that civilized nations persist in the belief that the subtlety and dishonesty which they know to be ruinous in dealings between man and man, are serviceable in dealings between multitude and multitude; finally, that the scope of the Christian religion, which we have been taught for two thousand years, is still so little conceived by us, that we suppose the laws of charity and of self-sacrifice bear upon individuals in all their social relations, and yet do not bear upon nations in any of their political relations;—when, I say, we thus review the depth of simplicity in which the humanrace are still plunged with respect to all that it most profoundly concerns them to know, and which might, by them, with most ease have been ascertained, we can hardly determine how far back on the narrow path of human progress we ought to place the generation to which we belong, how far the swaddling clothes are unwound from us, and childish things beginning to be put away.
On the other hand, a power of obtaining veracity in the representation of material and tangible things, which, within certain limits and conditions, is unimpeachable, has now been placed in the hands of all men,48almost without labor. The foundation of every natural science is now at last firmly laid, not a day passing without some addition of buttress and pinnacle to their already magnificent fabric. Social theorems, if fiercely agitated, are therefore the more likely to be at last determined, so that they never can be matters of question more. Human life has been in some sense prolonged by the increased powers of locomotion, and an almost limitless power of converse. Finally, there is hardly any serious mind in Europe but is occupied, more or less, in the investigation of the questions which have so long paralyzed the strength of religious feeling, and shortened the dominion of religious faith. And we may therefore at least look upon ourselves as so far in a definite state of progress, as to justify our caution in guarding against the dangers incident to every period of change, and especially to that from childhood into youth.
§IV. Those dangers appear, in the main, to be twofold; consisting partly in the pride of vain knowledge, partly in the pursuit of vain pleasure. A few points are still to be noticed with respect to each of these heads.
Enough, it might be thought, had been said already, touching the pride of knowledge; but I have not yet applied the principles, at which we arrived in the third chapter, to the practical questions of modern art. And I think those principles, together with what were deduced from the consideration of the nature of Gothic in the second volume, so necessary and vital, not only with respect to the progress of art, but even to the happiness of society, that I will rather run the risk of tediousness than of deficiency, in their illustration and enforcement.
In examining the nature of Gothic, we concluded that one of the chief elements of power in that, and inall goodarchitecture, was the acceptance of uncultivated and rude energy in the workman. In examining the nature of Renaissance, we concluded that its chief element of weakness was that pride of knowledge which not only prevented all rudeness in expression, but gradually quenched all energy which could only be rudely expressed; nor only so, but, for the motive and matter of the work itself, preferred science to emotion, and experience to perception.
§V. The modern mind differs from the Renaissance mind in that its learning is more substantial and extended, and its temper more humble; but its errors, with respect to the cultivation of art, are precisely the same,—nay, as far as regards execution, even more aggravated. We require, at present, from our general workmen, more perfect finish than was demanded in the most skilful Renaissance periods, except in their very finest productions; and our leading principles in teaching, and in the patronage which necessarily gives tone to teaching, are, that the goodness of work consists primarily in firmness of handling and accuracy of science, that is to say, in hand-work and head-work; whereas heart-work, which is theonework we want, is not only independent of both, but often, in great degree, inconsistent with either.
§VI. Here, therefore, let me finally and firmly enunciate the great principle to which all that has hitherto been stated is subservient:—that art is valuable or otherwise, only as it expressesthe personality, activity, and living perception of a good and great human soul; that it may express and contain this with little help from execution, and less from science; and that if it have not this, if it show not the vigor, perception, and invention of a mighty human spirit, it is worthless. Worthless, I mean, asart; it may be precious in some other way, but, as art, it is nugatory. Once let this be well understood among us, and magnificent consequences will soon follow. Let me repeat it in other terms, so that I may not be misunderstood. All art is great, and good, and true, only so far as it is distinctively the work ofmanhoodin its entire and highest sense; that is to say, not the work of limbs and fingers, but of the soul, aided, according to her necessities, by the inferior powers; and therefore distinguished in essence from all products of those inferior powers unhelped by the soul. For as a photograph is not a work of art, though it requires certain delicate manipulations of paper and acid, and subtle calculations of time, in order to bring out a good result; so, neither would a drawinglikea photograph, made directly from nature, be a work of art, although it would imply many delicate manipulations of the pencil and subtle calculations of effects of color and shade. It is no more art49to manipulate a camel’s hair pencil, than to manipulate a china tray and a glass vial. It is no more art to lay on color delicately, than to lay on acid delicately. It is no more art to use the cornea and retina for the reception of an image, than to use a lens and a piece of silvered paper. But the moment that inner part of the man, or rather that entire and only being of the man, of which cornea and retina, fingers and hands, pencils and colors, are all the mere servants and instruments;50that manhood which has light in itself, though theeyeball be sightless, and can gain in strength when the hand and the foot are hewn off and cast into the fire; the moment this part of the man stands forth with its solemn “Behold, it is I,” then the work becomes art indeed, perfect in honor, priceless in value, boundless in power.
§VII. Yet observe, I do not mean to speak of the body and soul as separable. The man is made up of both: they are to be raised and glorified together, and all art is an expression of the one, by and through the other. All that I would insist upon is, the necessity of the whole man being in his work; the bodymustbe in it. Hands and habits must be in it, whether we will or not; but the nobler part of the man may often not be in it. And that nobler part acts principally in love, reverence, and admiration, together with those conditions of thought which arise out of them. For we usually fall into much error by considering the intellectual powers as having dignity in themselves, and separable from the heart; whereas the truth is, that the intellect becomes noble and ignoble according to the food we give it, and the kind of subjects with which it is conversant. It is not the reasoning power which, of itself, is noble,but the reasoning power occupied with its proper objects. Half of the mistakes of metaphysicians have arisen from their not observing this; namely, that the intellect, going through the same processes, is yet mean or noble according to the matter it deals with, and wastes itself away in mere rotatory motion, if it be set to grind straws and dust. If we reason only respecting words, or lines, or any trifling and finite things, the reason becomes a contemptible faculty; but reason employed on holy and infinite things, becomes herself holy and infinite. So that, by work of the soul, I mean the reader always to understand the work of the entire immortal creature, proceeding from a quick, perceptive, and eager heart, perfected by the intellect, and finally dealt with by the hands, under the direct guidance of these higher powers.
§VIII. And now observe, the first important consequence of our fully understanding this preëminence of the soul, will be the due understanding of that subordination of knowledge respecting which so much has already been said. For it must be felt at once, that the increase of knowledge, merely as such, does not make the soul larger or smaller; that, in the sight of God, all the knowledge man can gain is as nothing: but that the soul, for which the great scheme of redemption was laid, be it ignorant or be it wise, is all in all; and in the activity, strength, health, and well-being of this soul, lies the main difference, in His sight, between one man and another. And that which is all in all in God’s estimate is also, be assured, all in all in man’s labor; and to have the heart open, and the eyes clear, and the emotions and thoughts warm and quick, and not the knowing of this or the other fact, is the state needed for all mighty doing in this world. And therefore finally, for this, the weightiest of all reasons, let us take no pride in our knowledge. We may, in a certain sense, be proud of being immortal; we may be proud of being God’s children; we may be proud of loving, thinking, seeing, and of all that we are by no human teaching: but not of what we have been taught by rote; not of the ballast and freight of the ship of the spirit, but only of its pilotage, without which all the freight will only sink it faster,and strew the sea more richly with its ruin. There is not at this moment a youth of twenty, having received what we moderns ridiculously call education, but he knows more of everything, except the soul, than Plato or St. Paul did; but he is not for that reason a greater man, or fitter for his work, or more fit to be heard by others, than Plato or St. Paul. There is not at this moment a junior student in our schools of painting, who does not know fifty times as much about the art as Giotto did; but he is not for that reason greater than Giotto; no, nor his work better, nor fitter for our beholding. Let him go on to know all that the human intellect can discover and contain in the term of a long life, and he will not be one inch, one line, nearer to Giotto’s feet. But let him leave his academy benches, and, innocently, as one knowing nothing, go out into the highways and hedges, and there rejoice with them that rejoice, and weep with them that weep; and in the next world, among the companies of the great and good, Giotto will give his hand to him, and lead him into their white circle, and say, “This is our brother.”
§IX. And the second important consequence of our feeling the soul’s preëminence will be our understanding the soul’s language, however broken, or low, or feeble, or obscure in its words; and chiefly that great symbolic language of past ages, which has now so long been unspoken. It is strange that the same cold and formal spirit which the Renaissance teaching has raised amongst us, should be equally dead to the languages of imitation and of symbolism; and should at once disdain the faithful rendering of real nature by the modern school of the Pre-Raphaelites, and the symbolic rendering of imagined nature in the work of the thirteenth century. But so it is; and we find the same body of modern artists rejecting Pre-Raphaelitism because it is not ideal! and thirteenth century work, because it is not real!—their own practice being at once false and un-ideal, and therefore equally opposed to both.
§X. It is therefore, at this juncture, of much importance to mark for the reader the exact relation of healthy symbolism and of healthy imitation; and, in order to do so, let usreturn to one of our Venetian examples of symbolic art, to the central cupola of St. Mark’s. On that cupola, as has been already stated, there is a mosaic representing the Apostles on the Mount of Olives, with an olive-tree separating each from the other; and we shall easily arrive at our purpose, by comparing the means which would have been adopted by a modern artist bred in the Renaissance schools,—that is to say, under the influence of Claude and Poussin, and of the common teaching of the present day,—with those adopted by the Byzantine mosaicist to express the nature of these trees.
§XI. The reader is doubtless aware that the olive is one of the most characteristic and beautiful features of all Southern scenery. On the slopes of the northern Apennines, olives are the usual forest timber; the whole of the Val d’Arno is wooded with them, every one of its gardens is filled with them, and they grow in orchard-like ranks out of its fields of maize, or corn, or vine; so that it is physically impossible, in most parts of the neighborhood of Florence, Pistoja, Lucca, or Pisa, to choose any site of landscape which shall not owe its leading character to the foliage of these trees. What the elm and oak are to England, the olive is to Italy; nay, more than this, its presence is so constant, that, in the case of at least four fifths of the drawings made by any artist in North Italy, he must have been somewhat impeded by branches of olive coming between him and the landscape. Its classical associations double its importance in Greece; and in the Holy Land the remembrances connected with it are of course more touching than can ever belong to any other tree of the field. Now, for many years back, at least one third out of all the landscapes painted by English artists have been chosen from Italian scenery; sketches in Greece and in the Holy Land have become as common as sketches on Hampstead Heath; our galleries also are full of sacred subjects, in which, if any background be introduced at all, the foliage of the olive ought to have been a prominent feature.
And here I challenge the untravelled English reader to tell me what an olive-tree is like?
§XII. I know he cannot answer my challenge. He has no more idea of an olive-tree than if olives grew only in the fixed stars. Let him meditate a little on this one fact, and consider its strangeness, and what a wilful and constant closing of the eyes to the most important truths it indicates on the part of the modern artist. Observe, a want of perception, not of science. I do not want painters to tell me any scientific facts about olive-trees. But it had been well for them to have felt and seen the olive-tree; to have loved it for Christ’s sake, partly also for the helmed Wisdom’s sake which was to the heathen in some sort as that nobler Wisdom which stood at God’s right hand, when He founded the earth and established the heavens. To have loved it, even to the hoary dimness of its delicate foliage, subdued and faint of hue, as if the ashes of the Gethsemane agony had been cast upon it for ever; and to have traced, line by line, the gnarled writhing of its intricate branches, and the pointed fretwork of its light and narrow leaves, inlaid on the blue field of the sky, and the small rosy-white stars of its spring blossoming, and the beads of sable fruit scattered by autumn along its topmost boughs—the right, in Israel, of the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow,—and, more than all, the softness of the mantle, silver grey, and tender like the down on a bird’s breast, with which, far away, it veils the undulation of the mountains;—these it had been well for them to have seen and drawn, whatever they had left unstudied in the gallery.
§XIII. And if the reader would know the reason why this has not been done (it is one instance only out of the myriads which might be given of sightlessness in modern art), and will ask the artists themselves, he will be informed of another of the marvellous contradictions and inconsistencies in the base Renaissance art; for it will be answered him, that it is not right, nor according to law, to draw trees so that one should be known from another, but that trees ought to be generalized into a universal idea of a tree: that is to say, that the very school which carries its science in the representation of man down to the dissection of the most minute muscle, refuses somuch science to the drawing of a tree as shall distinguish one species from another; and also, while it attends to logic, and rhetoric, and perspective, and atmosphere, and every other circumstance which is trivial, verbal, external, or accidental, in what it either says or sees, it willnotattend to what is essential and substantial,—being intensely solicitous, for instance, if it draws two trees, one behind the other, that the farthest off shall be as much smaller as mathematics show that it should be, but totally unsolicitous to show, what to the spectator is a far more important matter, whether it is an apple or an orange tree.
§XIV. This, however, is not to our immediate purpose. Let it be granted that an idea of an olive-tree is indeed to be given us in a special manner; how, and by what language, this idea is to be conveyed, are questions on which we shall find the world of artists again divided; and it was this division which I wished especially to illustrate by reference to the mosaics of St. Mark’s.
Now the main characteristics of an olive-tree are these. It has sharp and slender leaves of a greyish green, nearly grey on the under surface, and resembling, but somewhat smaller than, those of our common willow. Its fruit, when ripe, is black and lustrous; but of course so small, that, unless in great quantity, it is not conspicuous upon the tree. Its trunk and branches are peculiarly fantastic in their twisting, showing their fibres at every turn; and the trunk is often hollow, and even rent into many divisions like separate stems, but the extremities are exquisitely graceful, especially in the setting on of the leaves; and the notable and characteristic effect of the tree in the distance is of a rounded and soft mass or ball of downy foliage.
§XV. Supposing a modern artist to address himself to the rendering of this tree with his best skill: he will probably draw accurately the twisting of the branches, but yet this will hardly distinguish the tree from an oak: he will also render the color and intricacy of the foliage, but this will only confuse the idea of an oak with that of a willow. The fruit, and thepeculiar grace of the leaves at the extremities, and the fibrous structure of the stems, will all be too minute to be rendered consistently with his artistical feeling of breadth, or with the amount of labor which he considers it dexterous and legitimate to bestow upon the work: but, above all, the rounded and monotonous form of the head of the tree will be at variance with his ideas of “composition;” he will assuredly disguise or break it, and the main points of the olive-tree will all at last remain untold.
§XVI. Now observe, the old Byzantine mosaicist begins his work at enormous disadvantage. It is to be some one hundred and fifty feet above the eye, in a dark cupola; executed not with free touches of the pencil, but with square pieces of glass; not by his own hand, but by various workmen under his superintendence; finally, not with a principal purpose of drawing olive-trees, but mainly as a decoration of the cupola. There is to be an olive-tree beside each apostle, and their stems are to be the chief lines which divide the dome. He therefore at once gives up the irregular twisting of the boughs hither and thither, but he will not give up their fibres. Other trees have irregular and fantastic branches, but the knitted cordage of fibres is the olive’s own. Again, were he to draw the leaves of their natural size, they would be so small that their forms would be invisible in the darkness; and were he to draw them so large as that their shape might be seen, they would look like laurel instead of olive. So he arranges them in small clusters of five each, nearly of the shape which the Byzantines give to the petals of the lily, but elongated so as to give the idea of leafage upon a spray; and these clusters,—his object always, be it remembered, beingdecorationnot less thanrepresentation,—he arranges symmetrically on each side of his branches, laying the whole on a dark ground most truly suggestive of the heavy rounded mass of the tree, which, in its turn, is relieved against the gold of the cupola. Lastly, comes the question respecting the fruit. The whole power and honor of the olive is in its fruit; and, unless that be represented, nothing is represented. But if the berries were colored black or green, they would betotally invisible; if of any other color, utterly unnatural, and violence would be done to the whole conception. There is but one conceivable means of showing them, namely to represent them as golden. For the idea of golden fruit of various kinds was already familiar to the mind, as in the apples of the Hesperides, without any violence to the distinctive conception of the fruit itself.51So the mosaicist introduced small round golden berries into the dark ground between each leaf, and his work was done.
§XVII.On the opposite plate, the uppermost figure on the left is a tolerably faithful representation of the general effect of one of these decorative olive-trees; the figure on the right is the head of the tree alone, showing the leaf clusters, berries, andinterlacingof the boughs as they leave the stem. Each bough is connected with a separate line of fibre in the trunk, and the junctions of the arms and stem are indicated, down to the very root of the tree, with a truth in structure which may well put to shame the tree anatomy of modern times.
§XVIII.The white branching figures upon the serpentine band below are two of the clusters of flowers which form the foreground of a mosaic in the atrium. I have printed the whole plate in blue, because that color approaches more nearly than black to the distant effect of the mosaics, of which the darker portions are generally composed of blue, in greater quantity than any other color. But the waved background in this instance, is of various shades of blue and green alternately, with one narrow black band to give it force; the whole being intended to represent the distant effect and color of deep grass, and the wavy line toexpress its bending motion, just as the same symbol is used to represent the waves of water. Then the two white clusters are representative of the distinctly visibleherbage close to the spectator, having buds and flowers of two kinds, springing in one case out of the midst of twisted grass, and in the other out of their own proper leaves; the clusters being kept each so distinctly symmetrical, as to form, when set side by side, an ornamental border of perfect architectural severity; and yet each cluster different from the next, and every flower, and bud, and knot of grass, varied in form and thought. The way the mosaic tesseræ are arranged, so as to give the writhing of the grass blades round the stalks of the flowers, is exceedingly fine.
The tree circles below are examples of still more severely conventional forms, adopted, on principle, when the decoration is to be in white and gold, instead of color; these ornaments being cut in white marble on the outside of the church, and the ground laid in with gold, though necessarily here represented, like the rest of the plate, in blue. And it is exceedingly interesting to see how the noble workman, the moment he is restricted to more conventional materials, retires into more conventional forms, and reduces his various leafage into symmetry, now nearly perfect; yet observe, in the central figure, where the symbolic meaning of the vegetation beside the cross required it to be more distinctly indicated, he has given it life and growth by throwing it into unequal curves on the opposite sides.
§XIX.I believe the reader will now see, that in these mosaics, which the careless traveller is in the habit of passing by with contempt, there is a depth of feeling and of meaning greater than in most of the best sketches from nature of modern times; and, without entering into any question whether these conventional representations are as good as, under the required limitations, it was possible to render them, they are at all events good enough completely to illustrate that mode of symbolical expression which appeals altogether to thought, and in no wise trusts to realization. And little as, in the present state of our schools, such an assertion is likely to be believed, the fact is that this kind of expression is theonly one allowable in noble art.
§XX.I pray the reader to have patience with me for a few moments. I do not mean that no art is noble but Byzantine mosaic; but no art is noble which in any wise depends upon direct imitation for its effect upon the mind. This was asserted in the opening chapters of “Modern Painters,” but not upon the highest grounds; the results at which we have now arrived in our investigation of early art, will enable me to place it on a loftier and firmer foundation.
§XXI.We have just seen that all great art is the work of the whole living creature, body and soul, and chiefly of the soul. But it is not onlythe workof the whole creature, it likewiseaddressesthe whole creature. That in which the perfect being speaks, must also have the perfect being to listen. I am not to spend my utmost spirit, and give all my strength and life to my work, while you, spectator or hearer, will give me only the attention of half your soul. You must be all mine, as I am all yours; it is the only condition on which we can meet each other. All your faculties, all that is in you of greatest and best, must be awake in you, or I have no reward. The painter is not to cast the entire treasure of his human nature into his labor, merely to please a part of the beholder: not merely to delight his senses, not merely to amuse his fancy, not merely to beguile him into emotion, not merely to lead him into thought, but to doallthis. Senses, fancy, feeling, reason, the whole of the beholding spirit, must be stilled in attention or stirred with delight; else the laboring spirit has not done its work well. For observe, it is not merely itsrightto be thus met, face to face, heart to heart; but it is itsdutyto evoke its answering of the other soul; its trumpet call must be so clear, that though the challenge may by dulness or indolence be unanswered, there shall be no error as to the meaning of the appeal; there must be a summons in the work, which it shall be our own fault if we do not obey. We require this of it, we beseech this of it. Most men do not know what is in them, till they receive this summons from their fellows: their hearts die within them, sleep settles upon them, the lethargy of the world’s miasmata; there is nothing for which theyare so thankful as for that cry, “Awake, thou that sleepest.” And this cry must be most loudly uttered to their noblest faculties; first of all to the imagination, for that is the most tender, and the soonest struck into numbness by the poisoned air; so that one of the main functions of art in its service to man, is to arouse the imagination from its palsy, like the angel troubling the Bethesda pool; and the art which does not do this is false to its duty, and degraded in its nature. It is not enough that it be well imagined, it must task the beholder also to imagine well; and this so imperatively, that if he does not choose to rouse himself to meet the work, he shall not taste it, nor enjoy it in any wise. Once that he is well awake, the guidance which the artist gives him should be full and authoritative: the beholder’s imagination must not be suffered to take its own way, or wander hither and thither; but neither must it be left at rest; and the right point of realization, for any given work of art, is that which will enable the spectator to complete it for himself, in the exact way the artist would have him, but not that which will save him the trouble of effecting the completion. So soon as the idea is entirely conveyed, the artist’s labor should cease; and every touch which he adds beyond the point when, with the help of the beholder’s imagination, the story ought to have been told, is a degradation to his work. So that the art is wrong, which either realizes its subject completely, or fails in giving such definite aid as shall enable it to be realized by the beholding imagination.
§XXII.It follows, therefore, that the quantity of finish or detail which may rightly be bestowed upon any work, depends on the number and kind of ideas which the artist wishes to convey, much more than on the amount of realization necessary to enable the imagination to grasp them. It is true that the differences of judgment formed by one or another observer are in great degree dependent on their unequal imaginative powers, as well as their unequal efforts in following the artist’s intention; and it constantly happens that the drawing which appears clear to the painter in whose mind the thought is formed, isslightly inadequate to suggest it to the spectator. These causes of false judgment, or imperfect achievement, must always exist, but they are of no importance. For, in nearly every mind, the imaginative power, however unable to act independently, is so easily helped and so brightly animated by the most obscure suggestion, that there is no form of artistical language which will not readily be seized by it, if once it set itself intelligently to the task; and even without such effort there are few hieroglyphics of which, once understanding that it is to take them as hieroglyphics, it cannot make itself a pleasant picture.
§XXIII.Thus, in the case of all sketches, etchings, unfinished engravings, &c., no one ever supposes them to be imitations. Black outlines on white paper cannot produce a deceptive resemblance of anything; and the mind, understanding at once that it is to depend on its own powers for great part of its pleasure, sets itself so actively to the task that it can completely enjoy the rudest outline in which meaning exists. Now, when it is once in this temper, the artist is infinitely to be blamed who insults it by putting anything into his work which is not suggestive: having summoned the imaginative power, he must turn it to account and keep it employed, or it will run against him in indignation. Whatever he does merely to realize and substantiate an idea is impertinent; he is like a dull story-teller, dwelling on points which the hearer anticipates or disregards. The imagination will say to him: “I knew all that before; I don’t want to be told that. Go on; or be silent, and let me go on in my own way. I can tell the story better than you.”
Observe, then, whenever finish is given for the sake of realization, it is wrong; whenever it is given for the sake of adding ideas it is right. All true finish consists in the addition of ideas, that is to say, in giving the imagination more food; for once well awaked, it is ravenous for food: but the painter who finishes in order to substantiate takes the food out of its mouth, and it will turn and rend him.
§XXIV.Let us go back, for instance, to our olive grove,—or, lest the reader should be tired of olives, let it be an oak copse,—and consider the difference between the substantiating and the imaginative methods of finish in such a subject. A few strokes of the pencil, or dashes of color, will be enough to enable the imagination to conceive a tree; and in those dashes of color Sir Joshua Reynolds would have rested, and would have suffered the imagination to paint what more it liked for itself, and grow oaks, or olives, or apples, out of the few dashes of color at its leisure. On the other hand, Hobbima, one of the worst of the realists, smites the imagination on the mouth, and bids it be silent, while he sets to work to paint his oak of the right green, and fill up its foliage laboriously with jagged touches, and furrow the bark all over its branches, so as, if possible, to deceive us into supposing that we are looking at a real oak; which, indeed, we had much better do at once, without giving any one the trouble to deceive us in the matter.
§XXV.Now, the truly great artist neither leaves the imagination to itself, like Sir Joshua, nor insults it by realization, like Hobbima, but finds it continual employment of the happiest kind. Having summoned it by his vigorous first touches, he says to it: “Here is a tree for you, and it is to be an oak. Now I know that you can make it green and intricate for yourself, but that is not enough: an oak is not only green and intricate, but its leaves have most beautiful and fantastic forms which I am very sure you are not quite able to complete without help; so I will draw a cluster or two perfectly for you, and then you can go on and do all the other clusters. So far so good: but the leaves are not enough; the oak is to be full of acorns, and you may not be quite able to imagine the way they grow, nor the pretty contrast of their glossy almond-shaped nuts with the chasing of their cups; so I will draw a bunch or two of acorns for you, and you can fill up the oak with others like them. Good: but that is not enough; it is to be a bright day in summer, and all the outside leaves are to be glittering in the sunshine as if their edges were of gold: I cannot paint this, but you can; so I will really gild some of theedges nearest you,52and you can turn the gold into sunshine, and cover the tree with it. Well done: but still this is not enough; the tree is so full foliaged and so old that the wood birds come in crowds to build there; they are singing, two or three under the shadow of every bough. I cannot show you them all; but here is a large one on the outside spray, and you can fancy the others inside.”
§XXVI.In this way the calls upon the imagination are multiplied as a great painter finishes; and from these larger incidents he may proceed into the most minute particulars, and lead the companion imagination to the veins in the leaves and the mosses on the trunk, and the shadows of the dead leaves upon the grass, but always multiplying thoughts, or subjects of thought, never working for the sake of realization; the amount of realization actually reached depending on his space, his materials, and the nature of the thoughts he wishes to suggest. In the sculpture of an oak-tree, introduced above an Adoration of the Magi on the tomb of the Doge Marco Dolfino (fourteenth century), the sculptor has been content with a few leaves, a single acorn, and a bird; while, on the other hand, Millais’ willow-tree with the robin, in the background of his “Ophelia,” or the foreground of Hunt’s “Two Gentlemen of Verona,” carries the appeal to the imagination into particulars so multiplied and minute, that the work nearly reaches realization. But it does not matter how near realization the work may approach in its fulness, or how far off it may remain in its slightness, so long as realization is not the end proposed, but the informing one spirit of the thoughts of another. And in this greatness and simplicity of purpose all noble art is alike, however slight its means, or however perfect, from the rudest mosaics of St. Mark’s to the most tender finishing of the “Huguenot” or the “Ophelia.”
§XXVII.Only observe, in this matter, that a greater degreeof realization is often allowed, for the sake of color, than would be right without it. For there is not any distinction between the artists of the inferior and the nobler schools more definite than this; that the firstcolor for the sake of realization, and the secondrealize for the sake of color. I hope that, in the fifth chapter, enough has been said to show the nobility of color, though it is a subject on which I would fain enlarge whenever I approach it: for there is none that needs more to be insisted upon, chiefly on account of the opposition of the persons who have no eye for color, and who, being therefore unable to understand that it is just as divine and distinct in its power as music (only infinitely more varied in its harmonies), talk of it as if it were inferior and servile with respect to the other powers of art;53whereas it is so far from being this, that wherever it enters it must take the mastery, and, whatever else is sacrificed for its sake,it, at least, must be right. This is partly the case even with music: it is at our choice, whether we will accompany a poem with music, or not; but, if we do, the musicmustbe right, and neither discordant nor inexpressive. The goodness and sweetness of the poem cannot save it, if the music be harsh or false; but, if the music be right, the poem may be insipid or inharmonious, and still saved by the notes to which it is wedded. But this is far more true of color. If that be wrong, all is wrong. No amount of expression orinvention can redeem an ill-colored picture; while, on the other hand, if the color be right, there is nothing it will not raise or redeem; and, therefore, wherever color enters at all, anythingmaybe sacrificed to it, and, rather than it should be false or feeble, everythingmustbe sacrificed to it: so that, when an artist touches color, it is the same thing as when a poet takes up a musical instrument; he implies, in so doing, that he is a master, up to a certain point, of that instrument, and can produce sweet sound from it, and is able to fit the course and measure of his words to its tones, which, if he be not able to do, he had better not have touched it. In like manner, to add color to a drawing is to undertake for the perfection of a visible music, which, if it be false, will utterly and assuredly mar the whole work; if true, proportionately elevate it, according to its power and sweetness. But, in no case ought the color to be added in order to increase the realization. The drawing or engraving is all that the imagination needs. To “paint” the subject merely to make it more real, is only to insult the imaginative power and to vulgarize the whole. Hence the common, though little understood feeling, among men of ordinary cultivation, that an inferior sketch is always better than a bad painting; although, in the latter, there may verily be more skill than in the former. For the painter who has presumed to touch color without perfectly understanding it, not for the color’s sake, nor because he loves it, but for the sake of completion merely, has committed two sins against us; he has dulled the imagination by not trusting it far enough, and then, in this languid state, he oppresses it with base and false color; for all color that is not lovely, is discordant; there is no mediate condition. So, therefore, when it is permitted to enter at all, it must be with the predetermination that, cost what it will, the color shall be right and lovely: and I only wish that, in general, it were better understood that apainter’sbusiness isto paint, primarily; and that all expression, and grouping, and conceiving, and what else goes to constitute design,are of less importance than color, in a colored work. And so they were always considered in the noble periods; andsometimes all resemblance to nature whatever (as in painted windows, illuminated manuscripts, and such other work) is sacrificed to the brilliancy of color; sometimes distinctness of form to its richness, as by Titian, Turner, and Reynolds; and, which is the point on which we are at present insisting, sometimes, in the pursuit of its utmost refinements on the surfaces of objects, an amount of realization becomes consistent with noble art, which would otherwise be altogether inadmissible, that is to say, which no great mind could otherwise have either produced or enjoyed. The extreme finish given by the Pre-Raphaelites is rendered noble chiefly by their love of color.
§XXVIII.So then, whatever may be the means, or whatever the more immediate end of any kind of art, all of it that is good agrees in this, that it is the expression of one soul talking to another, and is precious according to the greatness of the soul that utters it. And consider what mighty consequences follow from our acceptance of this truth! what a key we have herein given us for the interpretation of the art of all time! For, as long as we held art to consist in any high manual skill, or successful imitation of natural objects, or any scientific and legalized manner of performance whatever, it was necessary for us to limit our admiration to narrow periods and to few men. According to our own knowledge and sympathies, the period chosen might be different, and our rest might be in Greek statues, or Dutch landscapes, or Italian Madonnas; but, whatever our choice, we were therein captive, barred from all reverence but of our favorite masters, and habitually using the language of contempt towards the whole of the human race to whom it had not pleased Heaven to reveal the arcana of the particular craftsmanship we admired, and who, it might be, had lived their term of seventy years upon the earth, and fitted themselves therein for the eternal world, without any clear understanding, sometimes even with an insolent disregard, of the laws of perspective and chiaroscuro.