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preferences, or his preferences happen to coincide more nearly with what his feeling for pure plastic design would dictate. For instance, the length, thinness, and isolation of our limbs render them extremely refractory to fine plastic treatment, and the negro scores heavily by his willingness to reduce the limbs to a succession of ovoid masses sometimes scarcely longer than they are broad. Generally speaking, one may say that his plastic sense leads him to give its utmost amplitude and relief to all the protuberant parts of the body, and to get thereby an extraordinarily emphatic and impressive sequence of planes. So far from clinging to two dimensions, as we tend to do, he actually underlines, as it were, the three-dimensionalness of his forms. It is in some such way, I suspect, that he manages to give to his forms their disconcerting vitality, the suggestion that they make of being not mere echoes of actual figures, but of possessing an inner life of their own. If the negro artist wanted to make people believe in the potency of his idols he certainly set about it in the right way.
Besides the logical comprehension of plastic form which the negro shows, he has also an exquisite taste in his handling of material. No doubt in this matter his endless leisure has something to do with the marvellous finish of these works. An instance of this is seen in the treatment of the tattoo cicatrices. These are always rendered in relief, which means that the artist has cut away the whole surface around them. I fancy most sculptors would have found some less laborious method of interpreting these markings. But this patient elaboration of the surface is characteristic of most of these works. It is seen to perfection in a wooden cup covered all over with a design of faces and objects that look like clubs in very low relief. Thegalbeof this cup shows a subtlety and refinement of taste comparable to that of the finest Oriental craftsmen.
It is curious that a people who produced such great artists did not produce also a culture in our sense of the word. This shows that two factors are necessary to produce the cultures which distinguish civilised peoples. There must be, of course, the creative artist, but there must also be the power of conscious critical appreciation and comparison. If we imagined such an apparatus of critical appreciation as the Chinese have possessed from the earliest timesapplied to this negro art, we should have no difficulty in recognising its singular beauty. We should never have been tempted to regard it as savage or unrefined. It is for want of a conscious critical sense and the intellectual powers of comparison and classification that the negro has failed to create one of the great cultures of the world, and not from any lack of the creative æsthetic impulse, nor from lack of the most exquisite sensibility and the finest taste. No doubt also the lack of such a critical standard to support him leaves the artist much more at the mercy of any outside influence. It is likely enough that the negro artist, although capable of such profound imaginative understanding of form, would accept our cheapest illusionist art with humble enthusiasm.
NOTHING in the history of our Western civilisation is more romantic nor for us more tantalising than the story of the discovery and the wanton destruction of the ancient civilisations of America. Here were two complex civilisations which had developed in complete independence of the rest of the world; even so completely independent of each other that, for all their general racial likeness, they took on almost opposite characters. If only we could know these alternative efforts of the human animal to come to terms with nature and himself with something like the same fulness with which we know the civilisations of Greece and Rome, what might we not learn about the fundamental necessities of mankind? They would have been for us the opposite point of our orbit; they would have given us a parallax from which we might have estimated the movements of that dimmest and most distant phenomenon, the social nature of man. And as it is, what scraps of ill-digested and ill-arranged information and what fragments of ruined towns have to suffice us! Still, so fascinating is the subject that we owe Mr. Joyce[16]a debt of gratitude for the careful and thorough accumulation of all the material which the archæological remains afford. These by themselves would be only curious or beautiful as the case may be; their full value and significance can only come out when they are illustrated by whatever is known of their place in the historical sequence of the civilisations. Mr. Joyce gives us what is known of the outlines of Mexican and Peruvian history as far as it can be deciphered from the early accounts of Spanish invaders and from the original documents, and he brings the facts thus established to bear on the antiquities. Unfortunately for the reader of these books, the story is terribly involved and complicatedeven when it is not dubious. Thus in Mexico we have to deal with an almost inextricable confusion of tribes and languages having much in common, but each interpreting their common mythology and religion in a special manner. Even Greek mythology, which we once seemed to know fairly well, takes on under the pressure of modern research an unfamiliar formlessness—becomes indistinct and shifting in its outlines; and the various civilisations of Mexico, each with its innumerable gods and goddesses with varying names and varying attributes, produce on the mind a sense of bewildering and helpless wonder, and still more a sense of pervading horror at the underlying nature of the human imagination. For one quality emerges in all the different aspects of their religions, its hideous inhumanity and cruelty, its direct inspiration of all the most ingenious tortures both in peace and war—above all, the close alliance between religion and war, and going with both of these the worship of suffering as an end in itself. Only at one point in this nightmare of inhumanity do we get a momentary sense of pleasure—itself a savage one—that is in the knowledge that at certain sacred periods the priests, whose main business was the torturing of others, were themselves subjected to the purificatory treatment. A bas-relief in the British Museum shows with grim realism the figure of a kneeling priest with pierced tongue, pulling a rope through the hole. Under such circumstances one would at least hesitate to accuse the priesthood of hypocrisy.
When we turn to Peru the picture is less grim. The Incas do not seem to have been so abjectly religious as the Aztecs; they had at least abolished human sacrifice, which the Aztecs practised on a colossal scale, and though the tyranny of the governing classes was more highly organised, it was inspired by a fairly humane conception.
But we must leave the speculations on such general questions, which are as regards these books incidental to the main object, and turn to the consideration of the archæological remains and the investigation of their probable sequence and dating.
Our attitude to the artistic remains of these civilisations has a curious history. The wonder of the Spanish invaders at the sight of vast and highly organised civilisations where only savagery was expected has never indeed ceased, but the interest in their remainshas changed from time to time. The first emotion they excited besides wonder was the greed of the conquerors for the accumulated treasure. Then among the more cultivated Spaniards supervened a purely scientific curiosity to which we owe most of our knowledge of the indigenous legend and history. Then came the question of origins, which is still as fascinating and unsettled as ever, and to the belief that the Mexicans were the lost ten tribes of Israel we owe Lord Kingsborough’s monumental work in nine volumes on Mexican antiquities. To such odd impulses perhaps, rather than to any serious appreciation of their artistic merits, we owe the magnificent collection of Mexican antiquities in the British Museum. Indeed, it is only in this century that, after contemplating them from every other point of view, we have begun to look at them seriously as works of art. Probably the first works to be admitted to this kind of consideration were the Peruvian pots in the form of highly realistic human heads and figures.[17]
Still more recently we have come to recognise the beauty of Aztec and Maya sculpture, and some of our modern artists have even gone to them for inspiration. This is, of course, one result of the general æsthetic awakening which has followed on the revolt against the tyranny of the Græco-Roman tradition.
Both in Mexico and Peru we have to deal with at least two, possibly four, great cultures, each overthrown in turn by the invasion of less civilised, more warlike tribes, who gradually adopt the general scheme of the older civilisation. In Mexico there is no doubt about the superiority, from an artistic point of view, of the earlier culture—the Aztecs had everything to learn from the Maya, and they never rose to the level of their predecessors. The relation is, in fact, curiously like that of Rome to Greece. Unfortunately we have to learn almost all we know of Maya culture through their Aztec conquerors, but the ruins of Yucatan and Guatemala are by far the finest and most complete vestiges left to us.
In Peru also we find in the Tihuanaco gateway a monument of some pre-Inca civilisation, and one that in regard to the art of sculpture far surpasses anything that the later culture reveals. It is of special interest, moreover, for its strong stylistic likeness to the Mayasculpture of Yucatan. This similarity prompts the interesting speculation that the earlier civilisations of the two continents had either a common origin or points of contact, whereas the Inca and Aztec cultures seem to drift entirely apart. The Aztecs carry on at a lower level the Maya art of sculpture, whereas the Incas seem to drop sculpture almost entirely, a curious fact in view of the ambitious nature of their architectural and engineering works. One seems to guess that the comparatively humane socialistic tyranny of the Incas developed more and more along purely practical lines, whilst the hideous religiosity of the Aztecs left a certain freedom to the imaginative artist.
In looking at the artistic remains of so remote and strange a civilisation one sometimes wonders how far one can trust one’s æsthetic appreciation to interpret truly the feelings which inspired it. In certain works one cannot doubt that the artist felt just as we feel in appreciating his work. This must, I think, hold on the one hand of the rich ornamental arabesques of Maya buildings or the marvellous inlaid feather and jewel work of either culture; and on the other hand, when we look at the caricatural realistic figures of Truxillo pottery we need scarcely doubt that the artist’s intention agrees with our appreciation, for such a use of the figure is more or less common to all civilisations. But when we look at the stylistic sculpture of Maya and Aztec art, are we, one wonders, reading in an intention which was not really present? One wonders, for instance, how far external and accidental factors may not have entered in to help produce what seems to us the perfect and delicate balance between representational and purely formal considerations. Whether the artist was not held back both by ritualistic tradition and the difficulty of his medium from pushing further the actuality of his presentation—whether, in fact, the artist deplored or himself approved just that reticence which causes our admiration. At times Maya sculpture has a certain similarity to Indian religious sculptural reliefs, particularly in the use of flat surfaces entirely incrusted with ornaments in low relief; but on the whole the comparison is all in favour of the higher æsthetic sensibility of the Maya artists, whose co-ordination of even the most complicated forms compares favourably with the incoherent luxuriance of most Indian work.
In this, as in so many of its characteristics, Maya art comes much nearer to early Chinese sculpture; and again one wonders that such a civilisation should have produced such sensitive and reasoned designs—designs which seem to imply a highly developed self-conscious æsthetic sensibility. Nor do the Maya for all their hieratic ritualism seem to fall into the dead, mechanical repetition which the endless multiplication of religious symbols usually entails, as, for instance, most markedly in Egyptian art. But this strange difference between what we know of Mexican civilisation and what we might have interpreted from the art alone is only one more instance of the isolation of the æsthetic from all other human activities. The Frontispiece to this book gives an example of Maya sculpture from Piedras Negras. Mr. Joyce, in his learned and plausible theory of the dating of Mexican monuments, ascribes these remains to a date of about 50-200A.D.
They are certainly among the finest remains of Maya sculpture, and this example shows at once the extreme richness of the decorative effect and the admirable taste with which this is co-ordinated in a plastic whole in which the figure has its due predominance. Though the relief of the ornamental part is kept flat and generally square in section, it has nothing of the dryness and tightness that such a treatment often implies.
Mr. Joyce’s books are compiled with amazing industry, and contain a vast accumulation of information. If we have a complaint, it is that for those who are not specialists this information is poured out in almost too uniform a flood, with too little by way of general ideas to enable the mind to grasp or relate them properly. If some of the minor details of obscure proper names had been relegated to the notes, it would have been possible to seize the general outlines more readily. The books are rather for reference than adapted to consecutive reading. In his judgments on the various speculations to which these civilisations have given rise Mr. Joyce is, as one would expect from so careful a scholar, cautious and negative. He does not, as far as I remember, even allude to the theory of the Lost Ten Tribes, but he does condescend to discuss the theory of cultural influence from Eastern Asia which has more than once been put forward by respectable ethnologists. He decides against this fascinating hypothesis more definitely than one would expect—more
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definitely, I should say, than the facts before us allow. He declares, for instance, that the calendrical system of Mexico shows no similarity with those of Eastern Asia, whereas Dr. Lehmann gives a circumstantial account of a very curious likeness, the almost exact correspondence of two quite peculiar systems of reckoning. My own bias in favour of the theory of Eastern Asiatic influence is, I confess, based on what may seem very insufficient grounds, namely, the curious likeness of the general treatment of naturalistic forms and the peculiar character of the stylisation of natural forms in early Chinese and American art. It is of course impossible to define a likeness of general character which depends so largely on feeling, but it consists to some extent in the predilection for straight lines and rectangles—a spiral in nature becoming in both early Chinese and American art a sequence of rectangular forms with rounded corners. What is more remarkable is that the further back we go in Chinese art the greater the resemblance becomes, so that a Chou bronze, or still more the carved horns which have survived from the Shang dynasty, are extraordinarily like Maya or Tihuanaco sculpture. Again, it is curious to note how near to early Chinese bronzes are the tripod vases of the Guetar Indians. All these may of course be of quite independent origin, but their similarity cannot be dismissed lightly in view of the long persistence in any civilisation of such general habits of design. Thus the general habits of design of the Cretan civilisation persisted into Greek and even Roman and Christian art; the habits of design of Chinese artists have persisted, though through great modifications, for more than three thousand years. One other fact which may seem almost too isolated and insignificant may perhaps be put forward here. In a history of the Mormons, published in 1851, there is given a figure of an inscribed bronze (see Figure) which was dug up by the Mormons in Utah in 1843. Since Brigham Young pretended to have dug up the original book of Mormon his followers had a superstitious reverence for all such treasure trove, and probably the bronzestill exists and might be worth investigation. Now this drawing, here reproduced, looks to me like an extremely bad and unintelligent reproduction of an early Chinese object, in general appearance not unlike certain early pieces of jade. It is fairly certain that at the time the Mormons discovered this, no such objects had found their way out of China, since the interest in and knowledge of this period of Chinese art is of much later growth. So it appears conceivable that the object, whatever its nature, is a relic of some early cultural invasion from Eastern Asia. The physical possibilities of such invasions from the Far East certainly seem to be under-estimated by Mr. Joyce.
IT would be hard to exaggerate the importance of this exhibition for those who are interested in the history not alone of Oriental but of European art. Perhaps the most fascinating problem that presents itself to the art historian is that of the origins of mediæval art. Until we understand more or less completely how in the dim centuries of the later Empire and early middle age the great transformation of Græco-Roman into mediæval art was accomplished, we cannot quite understand the Renaissance itself, nor even the form which the whole modern art of Europe has come in the course of centuries to assume. And on this problem the Munich exhibition throws many illuminating sidelights. Early Mohammedan art is seen here to be a meeting point of many influences. There are still traces of the once widespread Hellenistic tradition, though this is seen to be retreating before the refluent wave of aboriginal ideas. Sassanid art had already been the outcome of these contending forces, and the pre-eminence of Sassanid art in forming early Mohammedan styles is clearly brought out in this exhibition. Then there is a constant exchange with Byzantium, and finally continual waves of influence, sometimes fertilising, sometimes destructive, from that great reservoir of Central Asian civilisation, the importance of which is now at last being gradually revealed to us by the discoveries of Dr. Stein, Drs. Lecoq and Grunwedel, and M. Pelliot.
And through this great clearing-house of early Mohammedan art there are signs of influences passing from West to East. The most striking example is that of the plate in cloisonnée enamel from the Landes Museum at Innsbruck. Here we have the one certain example of Mohammedan cloisonnée enamel established by its dedicationto a prince of the Orthokid dynasty of the twelfth century. It is extraordinary that this solitary example should alone have survived from what must, judging from the technical excellence of this specimen, have once been a flourishing craft. The general effect of the intricate pattern of animal forms upon a whiteish ground suggests, on the one hand, the earliest examples of Limoges enamels, and on the other the early Chinese, and there can be little doubt that the Chinese did in fact derive their knowledge of cloisonnée, which they themselves called “Western ware,” from these early Mohammedan craftsmen, who had themselves learned the technique from Byzantium.
But on the whole the stream of influence is in the opposite direction, from East to West, and one realises at Munich that in the great period of artistic discovery and formation of styles the near East and the West were developing in closest contact and harmony. Indeed the most fertile, if not actually the most resplendent, period of both arts, was attained whilst they were still almost indistinguishable. If it were not for the habit of these early Mohammedan craftsmen of interweaving inscriptions into their designs, a habit which endears them quite especially to art-historians, how many works of Oriental manufacture would have been ascribed to Europe? In spite of these inscriptions, indeed, such an authority as M. Babelon has sought to place to the account of Western artists the superb cut crystal vessels, of which the noblest example is the inscribed ewer of the tenth century in the treasury of S. Mark’s. Or take again the textiles. In the exhibition there are a number of fragments of textiles of the tenth to the twelfth centuries, in which the general principle of design is the same; for the most part the surface is covered by circular reserves in which severely conventionalised figures of hunters, lions, or monsters are placed in pairs symmetrically confronted. Only minute study has enabled specialists to say that some were made in Sassanid, Persia, some in Byzantium, some in Sicily, and some in Western Europe. The dominant style in all these is again derived from Sassanid art. And here once more one must note the strange recrudescence after so long of Assyrian types and motives, and its invasion of Western Europe, through Byzantium, Sicily, and Spain.
What strikes us most in comparing Græco-Roman art with thenew art which gradually emerges in the middle ages is that, on the one hand, we have a series of decorative designs never so remarkable for vitality as for their elegance, and become by the time of the Roman Empire only less perfunctory and mechanical than the patterns of modern times; and on the other hand an art in which the smallest piece of pattern-making shows a tense vitality even in its most purely geometrical manifestations, and the figure is used with a new dramatic expressiveness unhindered by the artist’s ignorance of actual form. Now in the splendid photographs of the Sassanid rock carvings which Dr. Sarre has taken and which are exposed at Munich, we can see something of this process of the creation of the new vital system of design. In the earlier reliefs, those of the time of Sapor, we have, it is true, a certain theatrical splendour of pose and setting, but in the actual forms some flaccidity and inflation. The artists who wrought them show still the predominance of the worn-out Hellenistic tradition which spread in Alexander’s wake over Asia. In the stupendous relief of Chosroes at Tak-i-Bostan, on the other hand, we have all the dramatic energy, the heraldic splendour of the finest mediæval art, and the source of this new inspiration is seen to be the welling up once more of the old indigenous Mesopotamian art. We have once more that singular feeling for stress, for muscular tension, and for dramatic oppositions, which distinguish the bas-reliefs of Babylon and Nineveh from all other artistic expressions of the antique world. It would be possible by the help of exhibits at Munich to trace certain Assyrian forms right through to Mediæval European art. Take, for instance, the lion heads on the pre-Babylonian mace from Goudea in the Louvre; one finds a precisely similar convention for the lion head on the Sassanid repoussé metalwork found in Russia. Once again it occurs in the superb carved rock crystal waterspout lent by the Karlsruhe Museum (Room 54), and one finds it again on the font of Lincoln Cathedral and in the lions that support the doorway columns of Italian cathedrals. In all these there is a certain community of style, a certain way of symbolising the leonine nature which one may look for in vain in Greek and Græco-Roman art.
Even if this seem too forced an interpretation of facts, it is none the less clear that everywhere in early Mohammedan art thisrecrudescence of Assyrian forms may be traced, and that their influence was scarcely less upon Europe than upon the near East. Dr. Sarre has taken a tracing of the pattern which is represented in low relief upon the robes of Chosroes in the Tak-i-Bostan relief. In South Kensington Museum there is an almost identical piece of silk brocade which actually comes from the ruins of Khorsabad, and in the same museum one may find more than one Byzantine imitation of this design and closely similar ones made in Sicily; and the conventional winged monster which forms the basis of these designs has a purely Assyrian air.
In Egypt, too, it would seem that there was before the Arab invasion a marked recrudescence of indigenous native design which enabled the Coptic craftsmen gradually to transform the motives given to them by Roman conquerors into something entirely non-Hellenistic. And the incredible beauty of the Fatimite textiles of the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries, of which a few precious relics are shown in Room 17, preserve something, especially in the bird forms, of this antique derivation.
But to return once more to Sassanid art. The specimens from the Hermitage and Prince Bobrinsky’s collections form an object lesson of extraordinary interest in the development of early Mohammedan art. They have inherited and still retain that extreme realisation of massive splendour, that fierce assertion of form and positive statement of relief which belongs to the art of the great primitive Empires, and most of all to the art of Mesopotamia, and yet they already adumbrate the forms of Mohammedan art into which they pass by insensible degrees. Here, too, we find vestiges of the dying Hellenistic tradition. One of Prince Bobrinsky’s bronzes, a great plate, has, for instance, a design composed of classic vases, from which spring stems which bend round into a series of circles, a design which might almost be matched as regards form, though not as regards spirit, in the wall decorations of Pompeii. Or take again the superb repoussé silver plate representing a Sassanid king spearing a lion. Here the floating drapery of the king and the edge of his tunic show a deliberately schematised rendering of the traditional folds of the Greek peplos. But how much more Assyrian than Greek is the whole effect—the dramatic tension of the figuresexpressed by an emphasis on all the lines of muscular effort, as in the legs of the horse and the lions. How Assyrian, too, is the feeling for relief, and the predilection for imbricated or closely set parallel lines as in the lions’ manes. In the conventional rock under one of the lions one seems to see also a hint of Chinese forms.
Still more Assyrian is another plate, the arrangement of which recalls the reliefs of Assurbanipal or Sennacherib, and yet already there are forms which anticipate Mohammedan art; the gate of the city, its crenelations, and the forms of the helmets of the soldiers, all have an air of similarity with far later Mohammedan types. Another plate, not reproduced here, shows a Sassanid king regaling himself with wine and music, and gives already more than a hint of the favourite designs of the Rhages potters or the bronze workers of Mossoul.
Among Prince Bobrinsky’s bronzes which were found in the Caucasus is a late Sassanid aquamanile in the form of a bird. It is already almost Mohammedan, though retaining something of the extreme solidity and weight of earlier art. Once more, in the aggressive schematisation of the form of the tail and the suggestion of feathers by a series of deeply marked parallel lines, we get a reminiscence of Assyrian art, while in the treatment of the crest there is the more florid interweaving of curves which adumbrate not only Mohammedan but Indian forms.
In the aquamanile in the form of a horse (see Plate) the Sassanid influence is still predominant, but there can be no doubt that this is already Mohammedan, probably of the eighth or ninth century. We have already here the characteristics of Fatimite bronzes, of which a few specimens are shown at Munich. The great griffin of Pisa could not, of course, be moved from the Campo Santo, nor are the two specimens in the Louvre shown, but the stag from the Bavarian National Museum is there and affords a most interesting comparison with Prince Bobrinsky’s horse. Both have the same large generalisation of form, and in both we have the curious effect of solidity and mass produced by the shortened hind legs, with the half-squatting movement to which that gives rise.
The Bobrinsky horse is obviously more primitive, and probably indicates the beginnings of a school of bronze plastic in Mesopotamia
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nearly parallel to that of Egypt. This school, however, never developed as fully along sculptural lines, and at a comparatively early date abandoned sculpture for the art of bronze inlay, of which Mossoul was the great centre in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In the incised designs on the horse we have an example of the early forms of the palmette ornament and of the interlacing curves which form the basis of most subsequent Mohammedan patterns. Within the reserves formed by theintreccieare small figures, of which one—that of a man seated and playing the lute—can just be made out in the reproduction. It is already typical of the figure design which the Mohammedan artists developed in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
By way of comparison with this Mesopotamian example, Plate, Fig. 2, shows a supreme example of Fatimite sculpture of the twelfth century. It is, indeed, a matter for regret that Mohammedan artists so soon abandoned an art for which they showed such extraordinary aptitude. The lion which comes from the Kassel Museum has already been published by M. Migeon,[19]but is of such rare beauty and interest in relation to the Sassanid works here described that it seemed desirable to reproduce it again. It shows the peculiar characteristics of all the art produced for the Fatimite court, its exquisite perfection and refinement of taste, its minuteness of detail and finish together with a large co-ordination of parts, a rhythmic feeling for contour and the sequence of planes, which have scarcely ever been equalled. And all these qualities of refinement, almost of sophistication, which Fatimite art possesses, do not, as we see here, destroy the elementary imaginative feeling for the vitality of animal forms. In the case in which this masterpiece of Mohammedan sculpture is shown there is also seen the celebrated lion which once belonged to the painter Fortuny. Noble though this is in general conception, the coarseness of its workmanship and the want of subtlety in its proportions, in comparison with the Kassel lion, makes it evident that it is not from the same school of Egyptian craftsmen, but probably of Spanish origin.
Yet another of the Bobrinsky bronzes of about the same date as the horse is already typically Mohammedan as may be seenby the leaf forms and theintreccieof the crest, but how much of the antique Sassanid proportions and sense of relief is still retained! It is believed to be from Western Turkestan and of the eighth or ninth century. One must suppose that Sassanid forms travelled North and East as well as South and West, and helped in the formation of that Central Asian art which becomes the dominant factor in the later centuries of Mohammedan, more especially of Persian, art.
Before leaving the question of Sassanid influences I must mention the series of bronze jugs in the Bobrinsky and Sarre collections. The general form is obviously derived from classic originals, but they have a peculiar spout of a rectangular shape placed at right angles on the top of the main opening. The effect of this is to give two openings, one for pouring the water in, the other for pouring it out at right angles. Now in the early Mossoul water jugs we see numerous examples of what are clearly derivations of this form passing by gradual degrees into the familiar neck with spout attached but not separated, which is typical of later Mohammedan water jugs. This evolution can be traced step by step in the Munich Exhibition, and leaves no doubt of the perfect continuity of Sassanid and Mohammedan forms.[20]
One of the features of early Mohammedan art is the vitality of its floral and geometrical ornament, the system of which is uniformly spread throughout the Mohammedan world. The question of where and how this system of ornament arose is not easily solved, but there are indications that Egypt was the place of its earliest development. Its characteristic forms seem certainly derived from the universal palmette of Græco-Roman decoration. The palmette, so rigid, unvarying and frequently so lifeless in the hands of Græco-Roman artists, became the source of the flexible and infinitely varied systems of Mohammedan design, so skilfully interwoven, so subtly adapted to their purpose, that the supremacy of Mohammedan art in this particular has been recognised and perpetuated in the word Arabesque.It is curious to note that the history of this development is almost a repetition of what occurred many centuries before in the formation of the system of Celtic ornament. There, too, the Greek palmette was the point of departure. The Celtic bronze-workers adopted a cursive abbreviation of it which allowed of an almost too unrestrained flexibility in their patterns, but one peculiarly adapted to their bronze technique. In the case of Mohammedan art it would seem that the change from the palmette was effected by Coptic wood-carvers and by the artists who decorated in plaster the earliest Egyptian mosques. Indeed, one may suspect that the transformation of Græco-Roman ornament had already been initiated by Coptic workers in pre-Mohammedan times. One or two exhibits of Coptic reliefs in woodwork in Room 48 show how far this process had already gone. The Coptic wood-carvers arrived at an extremely simple and economical method of decoration by incisions with a gouge, each ending in a spiral curve, and so set as to leave in relief a sequence of forms resembling a half-palmette, and at times approaching very closely to the characteristic interlacing “trumpet” forms of Celtic ornament. A similar method was employed with even greater freedom and with a surprising richness and variety of effect in the plaster decorations of the earliest mosques, such as that of Ibn Tulun. In this way there was developed a singularly easy and rhythmic manner of filling any given space with interlaced and confluent forms suited to the caligraphic character of Mohammedan design. It cannot be denied that in course of time it pandered to the besetting sin of the oriental craftsman, his intolerable patience and thoughtless industry, and became in consequence as dead in its mere intricacy and complexity as the Græco-Roman original in its frigid correctness. The periods of creation in ornamental design seem indeed to be even rarer than those of creation in the figurative arts, and if the greater part of Mohammedan art shows, along with increasing technical facility, a constant degradation in ornamental design it is no exception to a universal rule. At any rate, up to the end of the thirteenth century its vitality was as strong and its adaptability even greater than the ornamental design of Christian Europe.
The design based on the half-palmette adapted itself easily to other materials than wood and plaster. In an even more cursiveform it was used alike by miniaturists and the closely allied painters on pottery. Of the former a good instance is that of a manuscript of Dioscorides, written and painted by Abdullah ben el-Fadhl in the year 1223A.D.It is of Mesopotamian origin and shows in the decorative treatment of the figures a close affinity with the painting on contemporary pottery from Rakka. It is surprising how much character and even humour the artist gives to figures which are conceived in a purely calligraphic and abstract manner, and what richness and nobility of style there is in the singularly economical and rapid indications of brocaded patterns in the robes. Here we see how, in the hands of the miniaturists, the half-palmette ornament becomes even more cursive and flexible, more readily adapted to any required space than in the hands of the wood-carver and plasterer.
The whole of the figure-design of this period, as seen in the pottery of Rakka, Rhages, and Sultanabad, shows the same characteristics. It is all calligraphic rather than naturalistic, but it is notable how much expression is attained within the flexible formula which these Mohammedan artists had evolved. The requirements of the potter’s craft stimulated the best elements of such a school of draughtsmanship, and for their power of creating an illusion of real existence by the sheer swiftness and assurance of their rhythm, few draughtsmen have surpassed the unknown masters who threw their indications of scenes from contemporary life upon the fragile bowls and lustred cups of early Syrian and Persian pottery.
It is generally believed now that not only in ceramics and metal work, but even in glass, Fatimite culture was pre-eminent. Probably no such collection of enamelled oriental glass has ever been brought together as that at Munich.
An example of glass of Egyptian origin bearing the date 737A.D., belonging to Dr. Fouquet, shows how early the manufacture of glass was already established in Egypt. To Egypt, too, must be ascribed the splendid crystals and carved glass-work in which the Munich Exhibition is particularly rich. One of these is the so-called Hedwig glass from the Rijksmuseum, at Amsterdam. It has two finely conventionalised lions and eagles which resemble the types of Fatimite sculpture. It is described by Migeon (“Manuel,” p. 378)as being of moulded glass, but the design is probably cut on the wheel in the manner employed for rock-crystal. Among the examples of carved crystal one of the finest is the less well-known example of a waterspout in the shape of a lion’s head, lent by the Karlsruhe Museum. In all these figures the distinctive quality of Fatimite art, its combination of massive grandeur of design with extreme refinement, are apparent.
None the less, the evidence in favour of Syrian and Mesopotamian centres of glass-industry is very strong, and if many of the pieces, especially the earliest ones, are still relegated to Egypt, some of the finest are still ascribed, though on no very conclusive grounds, to the Syrian workshops. The finest of these belong to the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, and, generally speaking, the work of the fourteenth century shows a decline. Perhaps the most splendid specimen known is the large bottle from the treasury of S. Stephen’s, Vienna. The glass in this and the kindred piece from the same place shows a peculiar brownish yellow tone almost of the colour of honey, which gives the most perfect background to the enamelled figure-decoration. In the choice of subjects with a predominance of scenes from the chase there is undoubtedly a considerable resemblance to the scenes on the encrusted bronze work of Mossoul, and this, so far as it goes, makes in favour of a Syrian origin. But whatever their origin, the finest of these pieces show a decorative splendour and a perfection of taste which has assured their appreciation from the days of the Crusaders. Already in the inventory of Charles V. of France such pieces, frequently mounted on silver stands, figure among the King’s choicest treasures. Nor was the appreciation of this beautiful craft confined to Europe. One of the many proofs of a continual interchange between the Mohammedan and Chinese civilisations is seen in the number of examples of this glass which have come from China. In Munich there is a magnificent bowl lent by Dr. Sarre which is of Chinese provenance, and numerous other pieces have been recorded.
The collection of incrusted bronzes at Munich is extremely rich, ranging from the twelfth-century work, in which plastic relief is still used, accompanied by sparse incrustations of red copper upon the almost strawy yellow bronze, to the fourteenth and fifteenth-centurywork, in which plastic relief has altogether disappeared, and elaborate incrustations of silver and even gold give to the surface an extreme profusion of delicate interwoven traceries. Here, too, the earliest work shows the finest sense of design. The specimen from the Piet Latauderie collection, still retains in its relief of stylistic animals a feeling for mass and grandeur inherited from Sassanid metal-workers, and the incrustations, though exquisitely wrought, are kept in due subordination to the general design. Some of the thirteenth-century pieces, though already tending to too great intricacy, still attain to a finely co-ordinated effect by the use of reserves filled with boldly designed figures. Some of the best of these contain scenes borrowed from Christian mythology, among which I may mention, as a superb example, the great bowl belonging to the Duc d’Arenberg.
I have alluded at various points to the influence of Chinese art upon Mohammedan. Among the most decisive and curious instances of this is a bronze mirror with the signs of the Zodiac in relief. Round the edge is an inscription of dedication to one of the Orthokid princes. It is of Mesopotamian workmanship. Here the derivation from Chinese mirrors, which date back to Han times, is unmistakable, and is seen in every detail, even to the griffin-head in the centre, pierced to allow of the string by which it was carried.
Image unvavailable: Persian Painting, end of 13th century Morgan Collection Plate V.Persian Painting, end of 13th centuryMorgan CollectionPlate V.
WE find abundant evidences in studying early Christian art that Christianity at its origin exercised no new stimulating influence upon its development, but if it were claimed for the Franciscan movement that it brought about the great outburst of Italian art the position would be harder to refute: and indeed what S. Francis accomplished, the literal acceptance by official Christendom of Christ’s teaching, was tantamount to the foundation of a new religion, and the heresy of some of his followers, who regarded his as a final dispensation superseding that of the New Testament, can scarcely have seemed unreasonable to those who witnessed the change in the temper of society which his example brought about. S. Francis was the great orthodox heretic. What he effected within the bounds of the Church, for a time at all events, was only accomplished for later times by a rupture with the Papal power. He established the idea of the equality of all men before God and the immediate relationship of the individual soul to the Deity. He enabled every man to be his own priest. To the fervour with which these ideas were grasped by his countrymen we may ascribe to some extent the extreme individualism of the Italian Renaissance, the absence of the barriers of social caste to theaspirations of the individual and the passionate assertion on his part of the right to the free use of all his activities. No doubt the individualism of, say, a Sigismondo Malatesta in the fifteenth century was very different to anything which S. Francis would have approved; none the less such a view of life was rendered possible by the solvent action of his teaching on the fixed forms of society.
But of more immediate importance to our purpose is the æsthetic element in S. Francis’ teaching. To say that in his actions S. Francis aimed at artistic effect would perhaps give a wrong impression of his character, but it is true that his conception of holiness was almost as much an æsthetic as a moral one. To those who know S. Bonaventura’s life a number of stories will suggest themselves, which indicate a perfectly harmonious attitude to life rather than a purely moral one: stories such as that of the sheep which was given to him, and which he received joyfully because of its simplicity and innocence, “and holding it in his hands he admonished it to be intent to praise God and to keep itself from offending the brethren; and the sheep observed fully the commandment of the Blessed Francis, and when it heard the brethren singing in the choir ran thither quickly, and without any teaching bent before the altar of the Blessed Virgin and bleated, as though it had human reason.”
S. Francis, the “Jongleur de Dieu,” was actually a poet before his conversion, and his whole life had the pervading unity and rhythm of a perfect work of art. Not that he was a conscious artist. The whole keynote of the Franciscan teaching was its spontaneity, but his feelings for moral and æsthetic beauty were intimately united. Indeed, his life, like the Italian art which in a sense arose from it, like the Gothic French art which was a simultaneous expression of the same spirit, implies an attitude, as rare in life as in art, in which spiritual and sensuous beauty are so inextricably interwoven that instead of conflicting they mutually intensify their effects.
Not only was the legend of S. Francis’ life full of suggestions of poetical and artistic material, but his followers rewrote the New Testament from the Franciscan point of view, emphasising the poetical and dramatic elements of the story. In particular they shifted the focus of interest by making the relationship of the Virgin to her son the central motive of the whole. It will be seen thatItalian artists down to Raphael turned rather to the Franciscan than the Vulgate version.[22]In fact, S. Bonaventura and the great poet of the movement, the cultivated and ecstatic Jacopone di Todi, did for the Christian legend very much what Pindar did for classical mythology; without altering the doctrine they brought into full relief its human and poetical significance.
It is not surprising, then, to find that the great church at Assisi, built with all the magnificence that the whole of Italy could contribute to honour the spouse of Divine Poverty, should be the cradle of the new art of Italy—the neo-Christian or Franciscan art, as we might almost call it.
The lower church of S. Francesco was probably decorated almost immediately after the building was finished, between 1240 and 1250, but these early works are almost obliterated by a second decoration undertaken after 1300. We must therefore turn to the upper church, the paintings of which were probably completed before 1300, as the chief source of our knowledge of the emergence of the new Italian style. It was there that the Italian genius first attained to self-expression in the language of monumental painting—a language which no other nation of modern Europe has ever been able to command except in rare and isolated instances.
And here we plunge at once into a very difficult, perhaps an insoluble problem: who were the painters who carried out this immense scheme of decoration? The archives of the church have been searched in vain, and we are left with a sentence of Ghiberti’s commentary, and Vasari, who here proves an uncertain guide, so that we are thrown chiefly on the resources of internal evidence.
The paintings of the upper church may be briefly enumerated thus: In the choir are faint remains of frescoes of the life of the Virgin; in the right transept a Crucifixion and other subjects almost obliterated; in the left transept another Crucifixion, better preserved, and archangels in the triforium. The nave is divided into an upper and lower series; the upper series contains scenes of the Old and New Testaments, the lower is devoted to the legend of S. Francis, and in alternate vaults of the roof are paintings of single figures.
It would be out of place to discuss all these frescoes in detail,but it may be worth while to select certain typical ones, around which the rest may be grouped, and see how far they bear out what little documentary and traditional authority we have.
We will begin with the Crucifixion of the left transept, which is clearly by an artist of decided and marked personality. It is certainly less pleasing and less accomplished than the works of the later Byzantine school, and in spite of certain motives, such as the floating drapery of the Christ, which show Byzantine reminiscences, it is derived in the main from the native Italian tradition. This is shown in the stumpy proportions of the figures and the crude, not to say hideous, realism of the faces of the crowd. The classical origin of the tradition is still traceable in the sandalled feet and the reminiscence of the toga in some of the draperies. But the chief interest lies in the serious attempt made by the artist to give dramatic reality to the scene in a way never attempted by the less human Byzantines. The action of the Magdalen throwing up both arms in despair is really impressive, and this is a more vivacious rendering of a gesture traditional in Western early Christian art; an instance occurs in the fifth century MS. of Genesis at Vienna. But the artist shows his originality more in the expressive and sometimes beautiful poses of the weeping angels and the natural movements of the Virgin and S. John.
Very nearly allied to this are the archangels of the triforium, and some of the frescoes of the upper scenes in the nave, such as the Nativity and the Betrayal. These belong to the same group, though they are not necessarily by the master of the Crucifixion himself.
As we proceed along the nave, still keeping to the upper series, we come upon another distinct personality, whose work is typified in the Deception of Isaac. In certain qualities this master is not altogether unlike the master of the Crucifixion. Like him, he replaces the purely schematic linear rendering of drapery by long streaks of light and dark paint, so arranged as to give the idea of actual modelling in relief. But he does this not only with greater naturalism, but with a greatly increased sense of pure beauty. The painting is not hieratic and formal, as the Byzantine would have made it, nor has it that overstrained attempt at dramatic vehemence which we saw in the Crucifixion. The faces have remarkable beauty, and throughoutthere is a sense of placid and dignified repose which is rare in mediæval work. It is, in fact, decidedly classical, and classical, too, in a sense different from the vague reminiscences of classic origin which permeate early Christian art, and were faintly echoed in the Crucifixion. Rachel especially, with her full, well-rounded eyes, wide apart and set deep in their sockets, her straight nose and small mouth, might almost have come straight from a Pompeian picture.
The hair, too, instead of being in tangled masses, as in the Crucifixion, or rendered by parallel lines, as in the Sacrifice of Isaac, is drawn into elegantly disposed curls, which yet have something of the quality of hair, and which remind us of the treatment in classic bronzes.
The last vault of the nave, with the Doctors of the Church, is by an artist who is extremely similar to the last, and clearly belongs to the same group. The level brows nearly meeting over the bridge of the nose, the straight profile and the curled hair show the similarity, as does also the drapery. The classic tendencies of this artist may be seen in the amorini caryatides in the extreme corners of the spandril, while the decoration of one of the arches of the church by the same hand has, arising from an urn of pure classic design, a foliated scrollwork, in which centaurs disport themselves.
In the lower series representing the Life of S. Francis we are at once struck by the resemblances to the last two paintings. The Pope, who is approving the rule of S. Francis, is almost a repetition of one of the Doctors of the Church. We have the same peculiar drapery with shiny, slippery, high lights, broadly washed on in well-disposed folds. The faces, too, though they are more individual and far more expressive, are, nevertheless, built on the same lines. They have similar straight profiles, the same deeply-cut level brows, which tend to meet in a line across the nose. The general impression it makes is that it is by a younger artist than the master of the Esau fresco, but one who has a keener feeling for reality and a far deeper sense of the dramatic situation.
We will now turn to the historical evidence. The earliest and best is that of Ghiberti (early fifteenth century), who tells us simply that Giotto painted the S. Francis legend. Vasari says that Cimabue worked first in the lower church with Greek artists, and then did thewhole of the upper church, except the S. Francis legend, which he ascribes to Giotto. In addition to these we have a sixteenth-century MS. and an account of the church by Petrus Rudolphus of the same period, which agree that both Giotto and Cimabue painted in the upper church.
We may take it, then, that we have fairly good evidence for ascribing the S. Francis series in the main to Giotto, and a consensus of traditional opinion that somewhere in the other frescoes we ought to discover Cimabue.
The name of Cimabue is fraught with tender associations. To the last generation, happy in its innocence, it was familiar as a household word. Browning could sing without a qualm: “My painter—who, but Cimabue?” The cult of Cimabue became fashionable; it offended Philistine nostrils and received its due castigation from Mr. Punch. And now, alas, he would be a bold man who dared to say that he admired Cimabue, who dared to do more than profess a pious belief in his existence. Only recently a distinguished critic[23]has endeavoured to hand over to Duccio di Buoninsegna the very stronghold of the Cimabue faith, the altar-piece of the Rucellai Chapel in Sta. Maria Novella. But the myth dies hard, and Florentine guides will still point out the portraits of all Cimabue’s relations in the little figures round the frame. Ever since the time of Rumohr, however, who considered him to be little more than an emanation of Vasari’s brain heated by patriotic fervour, it has been established that we have no documentary evidence for any single picture by him. We do know, however, that at the very end of his life he executed the mosaic of the apse in the cathedral at Pisa. But this is a much restored work, and originally can have been little but an adaptation of a Byzantine design, and it throws no light on his work as a painter. In any case, all criticisms of his reputation in his own day, whether deserved or not, must fall to the ground before Dante’s celebrated lines, “Credette Cimabue nella pittura Tener lo campo, ed ora ha Giotto il grido,” for on this point Dante is first-rate evidence. And that being the case, there is a probability, almost amounting to certainty, that the man who “held the field” in painting would be requisitioned for the greatest national undertaking of his day, the decoration ofS. Francesco at Assisi, even though, as we have seen, it would be impossible to accept Vasari’s statement that he did the whole.
In looking for Cimabue among the groups of the upper church which we have selected, it will be worth while to take as an experimental guide other works ascribed traditionally to our artist. If these should agree in their artistic qualities with one another and with any one group at Assisi, we shall have some probability in favour of our view. And the result of such a process is to find in the master of the Crucifixion our elusive and celebrated painter.
It would be wearisome to go in detail through all these works; it will suffice to say that in certain marked peculiarities they all agree with one another and with the Crucifixion. The most striking likeness will be found between the heads which appear under the Virgin’s throne in the picture in the Academy at Florence, which Vasari attributes to Cimabue, and the grotesque heads to the right of the Crucifixion. There is the same crude attempt at realism, the same peculiar matted hair, the same curious drawing of the eye-socket which gives the appearance of spectacles. The characteristics of this picture will again be found in the Cimabue of the Louvre which comes from Pisa, where he is known to have worked. Very similar, too, in innumerable details of architectural setting, of movement of hands and heads, and of drapery is the fresco of the Madonna Enthroned and S. Francis, in the lower church at Assisi. Finally, the Rucellai Madonna, in spite of its very superior qualities, which must be due to its being a later work, answers in many detailed tests to the characteristics of this group of paintings.[24]
And now, having found our Cimabue in the master of the Crucifixion, what must our verdict be on his character as an artist? Frankly we must admit that he is not to be thought of in the same category with the master of the Esau fresco, much less with Duccio or Giotto.[25]There is, however, in his work that spark of vitality which the Italians rightly prized above Byzantine accomplishment. He gave to his historical compositions a rude dramatic vigour, and to his Madonnas and Angels a suggestion of sentimental charm which borders on affectation; he was, in fact, a sentimental realist whose relation to the Byzantine masters must have been something like that of Caravaggio to the academic school of the Caracci.
We come next to the master of the Deception of Isaac, and the closely allied, if not identical, painter who did the Four Doctors of the vault. We have already noticed the likeness of these works to the legend of S. Francis, which we may take provisionally to be Giotto’s; but, in spite of the similarity of technique, they are inspired by a very diverse sentiment. They are not dramatic and intense as Giotto’s; they show a more conscious aspiration after style; the artist will not allow the requirements of formal beauty to be disturbed by the desire for expressive and life-like gestures. Where, then, could an artist of this period acquire such a sense of pure classic beauty in painting? In sculpture it might be possible to find classic models throughout Italy as Niccolo did at Pisa, but Rome was the only place which could fulfil the requirements for a painter. There must at this time have been many more remains of classical painting among the ruins of the Palatine than are now to be seen, and it is a natural conclusion that the artist who painted the figure of Rachel was directlyinspired by them. Nor is there anything difficult in the assumption that this unknown precursor of Giotto was a Roman artist, for the Roman school of painting was by far the most precocious of any in Italy. At Subiaco there are frescoes, some of which must date from the lifetime of S. Francis, which already, as in the portrait of S. Francis himself, show a certain freedom from Byzantine formalism. But it is in the works of the Cosmati, Jacopo Torriti, Rusutti, and Cavallini in the latter half of the thirteenth century that we see how vigorous and progressive an art was springing up in Rome.[26]Had not the removal of the Popes to Avignon in the fourteenth century left the city a prey to internal discord, we can hardly doubt that the Roman would have been one of the greatest and earliest developed schools of Italian painting. As it is, we find in the mosaics under the apse of Sta. Maria in Trastevere, executed about the year 1290, compositions in every way comparable to Giotto’s frescoes. These mosaics, too, have architectural accessories which are very similar to the architecture of the “Doctors of the Church” at Assisi. The architecture based on a study of classic forms is of the kind always associated with the Cosmati family. It will be seen that it is quite distinct from the architecture of Cimabue’s and Duccio’s Madonnas, but that it becomes the normal treatment in Giotto’s frescoes.
There is, then, a curiously close analogy between the origins of neo-Christian painting and neo-Christian sculpture in Italy; just as Giovanni Pisano’s work was preceded by the purely classic revival which culminated in Niccolo’s Baptistery pulpit, so in painting Giotto’s work emerges from a similar classic revival based on the study of Roman wall-paintings. The perfect similarity between Niccolo Pisano’s sentiment and that of the master of the Esau fresco may be realised by comparing the action of Rachel’s hand in the fresco with that of the Virgin in the Annunciation of the Baptistery pulpit. In both we have the same autarchic conception of character conveyed by the same measured ease of gesture, which contrasts vividly with the more expansive ideals of neo-Christian art, of which Giotto appears from the first as the most perfect representative.
In examining the series of frescoes describing the life of S.Francis we find varieties in the proportions of the figures and in the types of features which suggest the co-operation of more than one artist, but the spirit that inspires the compositions throughout is one. And this afflatus which suddenly quickens so much that was either tentative or narrowly accomplished into a new fulness of life, a new richness of expression, is, we may feel certain, due to the genius of Giotto.
If we look at one of these frescoes, such, for example, as the Presepio at Greccio, and at the same time endeavour to transport ourselves into the position of a contemporary spectator, what will strike us most immediately and make the most startling general impression is its actuality. Here at last, after so many centuries of copying the traditional forms handed down from a moribund Pagan art—centuries during which these abstractions had become entirely divorced from the life of the time—here at last was an artist who gave a scene as it must have happened, with every circumstance evidently and literally rendered. The scene of the institution of the Presepio takes place in a little chapel divided from the body of the church by a marble wall. The pulpit and crucifix are therefore seen from behind, the latter leaning forward into the church and showing from the chapel only the wooden battens and fastenings of the back. The singing-desk in the centre is drawn with every detail of screws and adjustments, while the costume of the bystanders is merely the ordinary fashionable dress of the day. The research for actuality could not be carried farther than this. When some years ago a French painter painted the scene of Christ at the house of the Pharisee with the figures in evening dress it aroused the most vehement protests, and produced for a time a shock of bewilderment and surprise. This is not to suggest any real analogy between the works of the two artists, but merely that the innovation made by Giotto must have been in every way as surprising to his contemporaries. Nor was Giotto’s, like M. Béraud’s, asuccès de scandale; on the contrary, it was immediately recognised as satisfying a want which had been felt ever since the legend of S. Francis, the setting of which belonged to their own time and country, had been incorporated by the Italians in their mythology. The earliest artists had tried to treat the subject according to the formulas of Byzantine biblical scenes, but with such unsatisfactory results as may be seen in the altar-piece of the BardiChapel of Sta. Croce at Florence. In Giotto’s frescoes at Assisi it acquired for the first time a treatment in which the desire for actuality was fully recognised. But actuality alone would not have satisfied Giotto’s patrons; it was necessary that the events should be presented as scenes of everyday life, but it was also necessary that they should possess that quality of universal and eternal significance which distinguishes a myth from a mere historical event. It was even more necessary that they should be heroic than that they should be actual. And it was in his power to satisfy such apparently self-contradictory conditions that Giotto’s unique genius manifested itself. It was this that made him the greatest story-teller in line, the supreme epic-painter of the world. The reconciliation of these two aims, actuality and universality, is indeed the severest strain on the power of expression. To what a temperature must the imagination be raised before it can fuse in its crucible those refractory squalid trivialities unconsecrated by time and untinged by romance with which the artist must deal if he is to be at once “topical” and heroic, to be at one and the same time in “Ercles’ vein” and Mrs. Gamp’s. Even in literature it is a rare feat. Homer could accomplish it, and Dante, but most poets must find a way round. In Dante the power is constantly felt. He could not only introduce the politics and personalities of his own time, but he could use such similes as that of old tailors peering for their needles’ eyes, a half-burnt piece of paper, dogs nozzling for fleas, and still more unsavoury trivialities, without for a moment lowering the high key in which his comedy was pitched. The poet deals, however, with the vague and blurred mental images which words call up, but the painter must actually present the semblance of the thing in all its drab familiarity. And yet Giotto succeeded. He could make the local and particular stand for a universal idea.
But, without detracting in any way from what was due to Giotto’s superlative genius, it may be admitted that something was given by the propitious moment of his advent. For the optics of the imagination are variable: in an age like the present, men and events grow larger as they recede into the mist of the past; it is rarely that we think of a man as truly great till he has for long received the consecration of death. But there must be periods when men have a surerconfidence in their own judgments—periods of such creative activity that men can dare to measure the reputations of their contemporaries, which are of their own creation, against the reputations of antiquity—and in such periods the magnifying, mythopoetical effect, which for us comes only with time, takes place at once, and swells their contemporaries to heroic proportions. It was thus that Dante saw those of his own time—could even see himself—in the proportions they must always bear. The fact that S. Francis was canonised two years after death, and within twenty years was commemorated by the grandest monument in Italy, is a striking proof of that superb self-confidence.
We will return to the frescoes: the evidence for their being in the main by Giotto himself rests not only on the general consensus of tradition, but upon the technical characteristics and, most of all, upon the imaginative conception of the subjects. None the less, in so big a work it is probable that assistants were employed to carry out Giotto’s designs, and this will account for many slight discrepancies of style. Certain frescoes, however—notably the last three of the series—show such marked differences that we must suppose that one of these assistants rose to the level of an original creative artist.
In the fresco of S. Francis kneeling before the Pope, we have already noticed Giotto’s close connection with the artists of the Roman school. Their influence is not confined to the figures and drapery; the architecture—in which it may be noted, by the way, that Giotto has already arrived instinctively at the main ideas of linear perspective—with its minute geometrical inlays, its brackets and mouldings, derived from classic forms, is entirely in the manner of the Cosmati. But the composition illustrates, none the less, the differences which separate him from the master of the Esau fresco. Giotto is at this stage of his career not only less accomplished, but he has nothing of that painter’s elegant classical grace. He has, instead, the greatest and rarest gift of dramatic expressiveness. For though the poses, especially of the bishop seated on the Pope’s left, lack grace, and the faces show but little research for positive beauty or regularity of feature, the actual scene, the dramatic situation, is given in an entirely new and surprising way. Of what overwhelming importance forthe history of the world this situation was, perhaps Giotto himself could scarcely realise. For this probably represents, not the approbation of the order of minor brethren by Honorius III., which was a foregone conclusion, but the permission to preach given by Innocent III., a far more critical moment in the history of the movement. For Innocent III., in whom the Papacy reached the zenith of its power, had already begun the iniquitous Albigensian crusade, and was likely to be suspicious of any unofficial religious teaching. It cannot have been with unmixed pleasure that he saw before him this poverty-stricken group of Francis and his eleven followers, whose appearance declared in the plainest terms their belief in that primitive communistic Christianity which, in the case of Petrus Waldus, had been branded by excommunication. In fact, the man who now asked for the Papal blessing on his mission was in most respects a Waldensian. Francis (the name Francesco is itself significant) was probably by birth, certainly by predilection[27]and temperament, half a Frenchman; his mother came from Provence, and his father had business connections at Lyons; so that it is not impossible that Francis was influenced by what he knew, through them, of the Waldensian movement. In any case, his teaching was nearly identical with that of Petrus Waldus; both taught religious individualism and, by precept at all events, communism. It was, therefore, not unnatural that Innocent should not respond at once to S. Francis’ application. According to one legend, the Pope’s first advice to him was to consort with swine, as befitted one of his miserable appearance. But, whatever his spontaneous impulses may have been, he had the good sense to accept the one man through whom the Church could again become popular and democratic.
Of all that this acceptance involved, no one who lived before the Reformation could understand the full significance, but Giotto has here expressed something of the dramatic contrasts involved in this meeting of the greatest of saints and the most dominating ofpopes—something of the importance of the moment when the great heretic was recognised by the Church.
In the fresco of S. Francis before the Sultan we have a means of comparing Giotto at this period with the later Giotto of the Bardi Chapel, in Florence where the same scene is treated with more intimate psychological imagination; but here already the story is told with a vividness and simplicity which none but Giotto could command. The weak and sinuous curves of the discomfited sages, the ponderous and massive contour of the indignant Sultan, show that Giotto’s command of the direct symbolism of line is at least as great as Duccio’s in the Three Maries, while his sense of the roundness and solid relief of the form is, as Mr. Berenson[28]has ably pointed out, far greater. We find in the Sultan, indeed, the type for which Giotto showed a constant predilection—a well-formed, massive body, with high rounded shoulders and short neck, but with small and shapely hands. As is natural in the work of an artist who set himself so definitely to externalise the tension of a critical moment, his hands are always eloquent; it is impossible to find in his work a case where the gestures of the hands are not explicit indications of a particular emotion. The architecture in this fresco is a remarkable evidence of the classical tendencies which he inherited from the Cosmati school. The Sultan’s throne has, it is true, a quasi-Gothic gable, but the coffered soffit, and the whole of the canopy opposite to it, with its winged genii, pilasters, and garlands are derived from classic sources.