CHAPTER II.
ART.
Inreviewing the various realms of art in the age of Leo X., we shall first consider the origin and progress of the architecture peculiar to that great stage of human development, and then proceed to notice briefly the sculpture, painting, and other correlative productions. The sources of illustration are so numerous, and the material so abundant, it will be necessary to observe comprehensiveness as far as possible in the exploration of each department.
The facts of history require us to resume the consideration of debased Roman art at its nadir of utter degradation in the fifth century, and thence to follow it as it arises with a new life, transformed into two original types, Gothic and Byzantine, till both blended in the Christian architecture of the thirteenth century, and this in turn perished before the rising influence of the Renaissance. The old Romanesque prevailed from the time of Constantine to that of Justinian, and always remained the molding influence in Teutonic art. The Byzantine style absorbed into itself oriental lightness and beauty, traversed the whole domain of superannuated civilization in the East, and, with all its modifying charms, in due time coalesced with the more rugged and progressive element in the far West.
Justinian ascended the throne of the East, in 527. By him the celebrated architect Anthemius was invited to Constantinople, and Saint Sophia was built. This famous church was so splendid that the emperor is said to have exclaimed on its completion: "Glory be to God, who hath thought me worthy to accomplish so great a work. I have vanquished thee, O Solomon." Then an aërial cupola was first erected, a model of bold design and skillful execution. This was the third edifice on the same spot since the original by Constantine, and combined all the skill, taste, and munificenceof the age. Its columns of granite, porphyry, and green marble, its semi-domes and walls incrusted with precious stones, its various members, admirable by their size and beauty, and all embellished with a rich profusion of jaspers, gems, and costly metals, furnished a rich repast to the curiosity of travelers, and was a magnificent monument of metropolitan pride. Simultaneous with the creation of the Byzantine type, arose the well-defined Romanesque at Ravenna, the seat of the Greek Exarchate. Unlike the old capital of the world, which she now came to rival in importance, Ravenna possessed no ruined temples whose spoils could be used in constructing new buildings. Being obliged to think for themselves and design every detail, the architects introduced a degree of originality of conception and harmony of proportions into their plans and elevations utterly unknown in the Roman examples. Theodoric had been educated at Constantinople, and was far from being insensible to the national advantages derived from science and art. Great care was bestowed on architecture and sculpture, so that under this royal patron all the Italian cities acquired the useful or splendid decorations of churches, aqueducts, baths, and palaces. The death of Theodoric occurred in 526. His mausoleum, now called Santa Maria della Rotunda, as well as the cotemporaneous church of Santa Apollinaris, still in existence at Ravenna, attest an immense stride in advance of the old Roman style. It was upon these constructions that the peculiar external decoration was first applied which became so remarkably developed in its westward course.
Justinian united the whole of Italy to his dominions in 553, and Ravenna thenceforth became the seat of the government of the Greeks. The new basilicas with which the city was speedily adorned introduced the cupola, and employed the block capitals which had been invented at Constantinople, ornamented with foliage in low relief, in imitation of basket work. But before the end of the sixth century, the Lombards came into supreme power, and still more marked improvement supervened in monumental art. As the pious entreaties of his Athenian bride had long before induced Honorius to exert himself in behalf of sacred works, and the daughter of Theodosius, Galla Placidia, a princess greatly afflicted, found consolation in decorating Ravenna with Christian temples; so Theodolinda,daughter of Garibaldus, Duke of Bavaria, and wife of Agilulfus, the fourth Lombard king, persuaded her husband to abjure his Arian heresies, and to protect the arts. Churches and palaces were multiplied, especially in Pavia, which the Lombard kings chose for their usual abode. The seventh century, and a part of the eighth, was a period of comparative tranquillity, and, under the auspices of this new and active race, the architecture of Italy was greatly improved. The Lombards imported no architects from the North, but availed themselves of the men and means furnished by the conquered country, still retaining the Romanesque form, but investing it internally and externally with a profusion of characteristic ornament. Until the seventh century Christian symbols were admitted into the churches with a sparing hand, but now the greatest license seems to have been given to ornamentation of every sort. Not only does architecture, more than all other material things, co-operate in manifesting the fulfillment of those sacred prophecies, in the deep truth of which is rooted the ever-thriving tree of salvation, but it also bears the clearest trace of national character and pursuits. The Lombards were great hunters, and along their wide façades and around their soaring porticoes they built with constructive sculpture all the wild energy of the daring and tumultuous chase. As a compendious abstract of the picturesque in outline, the impressive in substance, and the exciting in association, architecture exercises the magic of romance, where she emulates the majesty of nature, and portrays her myriad forms; when she unites the regulated precisions of human design, with the bold irregularities of divine creation; or when she presents us the hoary reminiscences of past heroes, whose deeds of good and ill gave radiant light or melancholy shadow to the times in which they lived. No thoughtful spirit can unmoved revert to those sons of barbarians who, as the triumphs of supreme art, caused the castle and cathedral to surmount the natural Goliath, in defiance of the giant mountain; when the huge walls, mellowed by time, even to the very tint of the majestic rock on which they stand, seem of that rock a part, whence lofty towers, festooned by the ivy "garland of eternity," look down upon prosperous towns as they gleam from afar amid patriarchal oaks.
At the commencement of the eighth century, the hopes beganto show much solicitude in behalf of the arts. In that age they gained great temporal advantages, and their revenues enabled them to do immense good for Italy. But the era of Charlemagne, which opened about the middle of the eighth century and continued into the ninth, was one in which a greater number of grand edifices were dedicated to Christianity. Rising to extensive dominion, this extraordinary man did much to restore the arts and promote the cause of universal civilization. Meanwhile the decrepit empire of the East was becoming too feeble to employ her architects and artisans, so that when the auxiliary help was needed it was thence derived to plan and execute the supreme seat of civil and ecclesiastical power beyond the Alps. At Aix-la-Chapelle a new form of art arose, to which the general name of Gothic may be correctly applied, meaning thereby all the styles which were introduced by those Teutonic tribes of barbarians who overwhelmed the Roman empire, and established themselves within its boundaries. Exactly in the ratio this barbarian element prevailed along the course of its westward development, architecture flourished in originality and beauty, the aggregated worth of which was always found at the point remotest from its source. All the western styles were derived from Roman art, but before the tenth century the originals had been forgotten, and a new type appeared wholly independent of the old one. The forms of the pillars, of the piers, and the arches they support, are different as created by Gothic genius. The whole edifice is roofed with intersecting vaults, which have become an integral part of the inner design, while buttresses afford firm support outside.
But we must trace the derivation of a new element which is combined with the Lombard type in the wilds of Germany. In the ninth century, on the designs of a Greek artist, rose the cathedral of Saint Mark, at Venice, the largest Byzantine church in Italy. Saint Anthony of Padua bore this eastern element still nearer its destined goal, and at Pisa it was absorbed into the older and mightier element; but the perfect manner of amalgamation did not obliterate either of the original components. The cathedral at Pisa, whose architect was Buschetto, a Greek, was built in the beginning of the eleventh century, and was completely differenced from the previous basilicas by the addition of transepts, thus assuming theform of a Latin cross. Just half a century earlier, the beautiful church of Saint Miniato, near Florence, had presented the first coupled piers, and made the first timid attempt at vaulting the nave. But the Pisan progress went much further, by boldly extending the Ravenna apse into a spacious choir beyond the transepts, with well-defined triforium galleries over the pier arches. These are all striking approximations toward consummate art, but we still have a five-aisled basilica with the aisles vaulted, and a flat wooden roof covering the nave. The most observable feature of the exterior is the extravagant display of columns and other members not essential to the construction. Arcades rise over arcades, and orders succeed to orders almost without end. All which in the temples of Athens had been rectangular and symmetrical, in the Byzantine churches, and all under their influence, became curved, dwarfed, and rounded; so that, after the Romans had deprived the Greek architecture of its consistency, the Christian Greeks themselves obliterated every trace of excellence yet spared by the Romans, and made the architecture of their heathen ancestors owe its final annihilation to the same nation to whom it had been indebted for its glorious growth.
But that nothing should be lost to western art, the Byzantine Romanesque was made to sweep most widely over the old world, and enter Europe at the remotest point. "On the wings of Mohammed's spreading creed," says Hope, "wafted from land to land by the boundless conquest of his followers, the architecture of Constantinople, extending one way to the furthest extremities of India, and the other to the utmost outskirts of Spain, prevailed throughout the whole of the regions intervening between the Ganges and the Guadalquiver; in every one of the different tracks into which it was imported, still equally different from the aborigines, or early possessors. Thus, while in none of the various and distant countries, we observe previous to the adoption of Islamism the slightest approach to those inventions, the pride and the stay of architecture—the arch and the cupola; in all of them alike, on the very first settling in them of the Mohammedans, we see these noble features immediately appearing, from the application of Greek skill, in the full maturity of form they had attained among themselves."
Leaving the Saracenic Romanesque to return by Sicily and Spaininto southern France, and thence to ascend the height of mediæval culmination, let us proceed in the grand central track of Teutonic art.
The Rhine is the great channel of modern civilization, and near its banks are the clearest indications of progressive art. The original cathedral at Treves was built by the pious mother of Constantine, and seems, like the cotemporary church at Jerusalem, to have consisted of two distinct edifices, one circular, the other square. These two forms entered into diversified combinations thenceforth, and ever constituted the peculiarity of German architecture. The tenth and eleventh centuries afford many curious specimens which are important in the history of art. Such are the cathedrals of Spire, Worms, Mayence, and others yet extant, and which attest extraordinary solidity and magnificence. The western apse of the cathedral at Mayence is perhaps the only example in Germany where a triapsal arrangement has been attempted with polygonal instead of circular forms. Surely a new type of art is near. At this point, too, we have witnessed enough of progressive spire-growth in Germany to believe that the origin of that aspiring member lies amid the towers which cluster so copiously on the churches by the Rhine, and especially the beautiful group of indigenous art at Cologne.
The Norman Romanesque was produced in no one instance before the year 1050, and before 1150 it was entirely superseded. Indeed, all the great typical examples were executed during the last half of the eleventh century. The arrangements of these are more like the Rhenish basilicas than any others, and yet do they differ from them by many degrees of superiority. They formed the last stage in the progress toward consummate invention; and the western façade of Saint Stephens, at Caen, for example, may be regarded as the prototype of all the Gothic cathedrals which immediately succeeded. All this was produced in the fitting order of time and place. For eight centuries the Northmen continued to press toward lower latitudes, everywhere disseminating their hardy habits, pure ethics, deep sentiments of freedom, and superior impress of art. Lombards redeemed Italy, Goths ennobled Spain, Franks cultivated Gaul, and, at the needful moment, William the Conqueror was made ready to transfer all the glorious accumulation of civilizing elements to Saxon England.
Ecclesiastical architecture especially reflected one pervading dominant sentiment of the Norman mind—perpetuity. They excelled all nations in the use and ornamentation of the circular arch. Centuries before Christ this had existed, and was by the dull Roman subordinated to mechanical necessities, when he would support his stupendous works; but hitherto it had been applied to base purposes only. That line which the sun and stars trace in their course, the holy shape of the majestic vault of heaven, the Teuton found debased to ignoble purposes, and, rescuing it from the fosse, the aqueduct, and the sudarium, he bent it in consecrated granite above his reverent head, a copy of the arch under which his fathers prayed—the sky. And this rugged Christian art which, with the brain and heart of grand Norman prelates, passes into England, is the introduction of a new principle altogether from the florid Byzantine element at the same time approaching from the opposite point. The one is the product of a mind whose dominant faculties were reason and faith; the other projected by a fervid imagination, bearing in its shape internal evidence of its birthplace, the South; beautiful indeed, but earthly in its beauty, and in the effect it produces on the soul, according well with the dreamy habits of the Saracen, but inappropriate for the uses of that religion which "casteth down imaginations."
Thus Lombardy, Germany, and Normandy, took great successive strides in architectural progress, but neither of them attained to Gothic art of the true Christian type, according to the popular designation. There can now be no doubt but that the Pointed style was invented by the Franks. As on the western edge of continental Europe Romanesque architecture was perfected, and then directly passed to England; so in western France, the aspiring Gothic broke into consummate freedom and beauty, and was thence diffused over the world. It was introduced into Germany, Italy, and the remoter regions, north and south, with innumerable modifications, but without a single improvement east of the meridian of its origin. On the contrary, in passing directly westward over the narrow field of England, it took three distinct forms of improved development, and then perished forever.
Down to a late period, the round Gothic style was executed by the Franks, in examples quite insignificant compared with thoseproduced in Normandy. Even in Paris the great church of St. Germain des Près, the burial-place of the earlier kings, and most splendid edifice of the capital, was not more than fifty feet in width, by two hundred in length, before the rebuilding of its chevet in the pointed style. But in the reign of Louis le Gros, 1108-1136, under whom the monarchy of France began to revive, architecture put on new vigor. The culminating point was reached under the reign of Louis le Jeune, and through the transcendent abilities of the Abbé Suger. He began building the Abbey of St. Denis in the pointed manner, 1144, which was still further elaborated with the erection of the Sante Chapelle by St. Louis, 1244, and which received its consummate finish at the completion of the choir of St. Owen at Rouen, by Mark d'Argent, in 1339. St. Denis, therefore, though certainly not the earliest, must be taken as the typical example of primary Gothic of France and of the world. It terminated the era of transition, and fixed the epoch when the northern pointed style became supreme. In due course arose the beautiful and stupendous works of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, which filled all Europe with the grandest monuments. Thus was completed a perfect cycle of the art, tracing it from its origin back to the place of its birth, Italy, which was also that of its earliest decline, and where it was smothered under Renaissant trash.
In England we may say that there was no ante Norman style whatever; at least all her alleged Saxon remains present nothing which could stand for a moment against a style that might lay claim to the slightest portion of artistic merit. At the beginning of the twelfth century the foreign style had become to a great extent naturalized, and assumed a separate existence. This is well exemplified in what remains of Lanfranc's building at Canterbury, and that of Walkelyn at Winchester. In these, and in the work of Gundulph at Rochester, there is scarcely any difference from the continental Norman except what may be ascribed to the inexperience of the workmen employed. Half a century earlier, the Germans fell under French influence and remained copyists to the end. The English, on the contrary, soon gained sufficient familiarity with the style to enable them to assert their independence, and become inventors of new and original forms of the finest architecture of that or any other age. The pointed arch was introducedat the rebuilding of the cathedral at Canterbury after the fire of 1174, by the architect William of Sens. But for a long time afterward the innovation was resisted by the English, and even down to the year 1200 the round arch was currently employed in conjunction with the pointed. But it then gave way, and for three centuries subsequently was entirely banished from both sacred and civil architecture.
The first great cathedral built in the new style throughout was Salisbury, begun in 1220 and finished essentially in 1258. When complete, its internal effect must have been extremely beautiful; far more so than that of its cotemporary and great rival at Amiens. Westminster Abbey was commenced twenty-five years later, and is evidently more imitative of the French style. Lincoln was finished about the year 1282, and is a beautiful specimen of the true Edwardian style of perfected English art. These are chiefly of the earliest period, orlancetstyle. The great storehouse of the second type, ordecoratedarchitecture is Exeter cathedral finished in the year 1330. Of the third period, orperpendicular, the nave of Winchester is the source and model of all. It was invented by the archbishop William of Wykeham, who with the vigor and strength of the grandest Norman architecture combined all the elegant symmetry of the purest pointed style. This was consummated in the year 1400. Now what is worthy of special notice is the fact that the three masterpieces of their respective types, the only ones that ever existed, or perhaps ever will, are in the three most western counties of England. From the tenth to the fifteenth century, there was a continuous series of buildings, one succeeding the other in the outgrowth of the same principle, and the last containing not only all the improvements previously introduced, but contributing something new itself toward perfecting a style which occupied the serious attention of all exalted minds, and an immense variety of operatives who carried out with masterly practical skill what their superiors in science designed. Thus the massive Norman pier was gradually lightened into the clustered shaft of elegant Gothic; the low wagon-vault expanded into the fairy roof of tracery, and the small window of primitive churches, became "a transparent wall of gorgeous hues" in the sublimest cathedrals, and, despite shameful neglect or abuse, still remain as the most wonderful miracles ofart. No buildings on earth are more interesting than the cathedrals of Europe, and especially of England, since each one stands the built-up chronicle of national architecture, on which, from crypt to spire, are recorded in significant language, the wonders of inventive genius and constructive-skill.
In tracing the hand of Providence in monumental art, it is important to observe that all original invention in architecture comes from Greece through Rome, and that the coloring thereof is also derived from the East. The Doric and Corinthian orders are the formative molds of all subsequent forms, the one of all Romanesque buildings, Byzantine, Lombard, and Norman; and the other of all Gothic, French, German, and English. Says Ruskin, in his Stones of Venice, "Those old Greeks gave the shaft; Rome gave the arch; the Arabs pointed and foliated the arch. The shaft and arch, the framework and strength of architecture, are from the race of Japhet: the spirituality and sanctity of it from Ishmael, Abraham, and Shem."
With the new style of building, were derived from the Romans the habit of consecrating ground so as entirely to withdraw it from secular purposes; the sprinkling of holy water; the burning of tapers at the altar; offerings to propitiate the Deity; the worship of divers saints and martyrs; and even the insignia and dress of the bishops and priests. Many of the pagan symbols also were adopted in the decoration of the new churches; a different signification being attached to them. For example, the palm-branch of Bacchus, the corn of Ceres, dove of Venus, Diana's stag, Juno's peacock, Jupiter's eagle, Cybele's lion, and Cupids changed into cherubs, were so copied from the ancients, and made emblematic of Christian doctrines. Orientation, or the elevation of a church with particular reference to the cardinal points was never regarded in Italy; but in moving westward the special law was increasingly observed, until arriving in England where every great mediæval front looks full at the setting sun. The eastern style of that age is doubtless related to Greek antiquity, but in the same way as the Latin Christian rhymes of the same period are to be classed with ancient literature. To refer all the wonders of Teutonic art to that primal origin is as unreasonable as it would be to consider the verses of Leoine latinists the source of the highest poetry from Dantèto Shakspeare. The simple fact is that from Carnac to Winchester there was perpetual development of increasing excellence; each remove being a monument of augmented good, and the last always the best.
We have seen that Christian architecture sprang from the ruins of paganism, and attained the loftiest growth. The mutual dependence of every thing on earth, whether in the primary creations of God, or the secondary creations of man, is strikingly exemplified in this art. Roman architecture was the offspring of Greece, and the parent of the Byzantine, Lombard, and Norman styles; from which again sprung that most magnificent proof of man's power over dull matter, the Pointed system of decorated construction. From first to last there is no gap nor pause in the progress of improvement. Even when fearful signs were seen in the heavens, and Rome, the former centre of civilization, had become a nest of robbers, art was still fostered under the auspices of Charlemagne. Other calamities impended, in the midst of which that mighty monarch passed away, and in the crypt of his famous church at Aix-la-Chapelle, royally robed and crowned, sceptred and enthroned, his good sword Joyeuse by his side, and the Bible on his knees, he was set to await, with the dull stare of a waxen image, the approaching advent of the Judgment Day. Still new principles took root, and the mighty tide of improvement swept onward. As the Tiber more and more murmured the sepulchral sentiment of romance, the Rhine teemed with the thrilling power of its living energy. Hence the thousand echoes of those castellated hills, and sacred associations around secluded vales, which form the diapason of a sublime antiquity. The beacon towers, melodious belfreys, festal halls, and moss-covered shrines, the desolate cloisters, the dungeons, and the very sepulchres repeat to each other, and to the susceptible visitant, the reiterated glories of king and kayser. Architecture is far more expressive of both public and private life than any other art can be. The sight of its dilapidated records reminds us of the God's Truces, of the Crusades, of Feudalism, and of Chivalry, the virtues, crimes, joys, and calamities of long lapsed centuries. Nor can we explore these hoary fabrics without remembering how their vaults resounded long ago with the psalmody and groans of our ancestors, who, during that tremendousstruggle, came to the foot of the altar, begging of God to give them strength to suffer and to hope.
Saracenic art is a highly enriched and magnificent variety of Romanesque, yet fantastic and incongruous, a sort of dead Gothic, presenting the pointed arch and other characteristics of that style, but without one spark of its pervading spirit. These lifeless forms were adopted by the Teutonic architects, and by them endued with life and power. They were the first to grasp the great law that construction and decoration must proceed from the same source, and in a masterly way they exemplified the fundamental principle which they had the sagacity to comprehend.
The Chapel of St. Nazario and St. Celso, erected at Ravenna in the fifth century, contains the only tombs which remain in their places of the whole line of Cæsars, whether oriental or occidental. Thenceforth dates a new monumental art, equally separate from the old world. Out of the arch came the vault, and out of the vault the cupola, that majestic ornament to which every other feature is subordinate, and which is the very life and soul of Byzantine architecture. The inspiration of the Cross produced nobler forms of outline than Ictinus or Callicrates could bestow on their most sumptuous works, when its spreading arms reared aloft the mighty lantern of St. Sophia, preparatory to the still brighter day when above shaft, and architrave, and pediment, should soar the matchless dome of Florence, and the heaven-bound spires of Strasbourg and Salisbury. But another element was requisite to this result, and was contributed by the genius of Lombardy. The campanile, bell-tower, or steeple, owes its origin entirely to Christianity amid western barbarians; as such a member was never attached to an idol-temple, and is forbidden still to the proudest mosques of the false prophet. Moreover, unlike the Saracens who never admitted animal forms into decorative construction, the Lombards copiously used it after every type and form. Saints, founders of churches, and legendary heroes were strangely intermixed with all the strange animals of the natural creation, carved in bas-reliefs on walls, capitals, and wherever, within the edifice or without, a void space was found to receive them. When the soaring nave of the Gothic minster supervened upon preceding art, and absorbed it all, then was superadded all the beautiful varieties ofvegetable life. In the clustered and banded stalks of its lofty pillars, the crisp leaves of its capitals and corbeled cornices, the interlacing arches of its fretted and embossed vaults, and the interminable complexities of its flowing tracery, were seen traits which comported well with the hues that sparkled from roof and chapter, walls and windows, and which recalled no work of man indeed, no rustic hut or savage cavern, but the sublimest temple of natural religion; the aspiring height of the slender pine, the spreading arms of the giant oak, rich with the varied tints of leaf and blossom, soothing as the rustle of balmy breezes, and melodious with the choral songs of ten thousand birds.
Romanesque architecture is the memento of that stage in progressive civilization when the church was yet subordinate to the state; when the civil and spiritual powers came into open collision, the dispute on investitures roused Europe to its very centre, and the battle-cry of Cæsar was lost in the crash of Pontifical thunder. But the aspiring lancets and pinnacles of the thirteenth century commemorate a wider culture and loftier aims. It was not simply a spirit which with one hand poured an unction on the brow of the ruler, and decked both crown and sceptre with the lily and the cross, and with the other girt the bishop and the abbot with ensigns of earthly power, and placed them foremost in the chief councils of the land. But the architecture of that day proclaims the progress of popular education, and is the artistic embodying of the northern spirit, the soul of chivalry and romance, the age of faith, and love, and valor. It is redolent of the lordly prelate and the consecrated knight; of Tancred and Richard grappling with the infidel; of Bayard dying with his eye fixed on his cross-hilted sword; of Wykeham every way a peer beside the throne of Edward, England's mighty king. Then the massy tower was surmounted with lofty turrets, from the midst of which shot up the tapering beauty of the airy spire, bearing the once despised Cross triumphant over every earthly power; while beneath lay the tombs of the great and noble, not with memorials of a fleeting world and signs of hopeless grief, but with the symbols of faith and charity, the hands still clasped in prayer, the eyes still fixed on the altar of God.
But the baneful hour came when a foreign influence and heathentaste obliterated many of these suggestive charms. The same infection which filled literature with the pedantry of a mythology whose beauty its imitators did not understand, defiled Christian churches with heathen idols, and for the cross, the lily, the holy legend, substituted the ox-scull, naked cupids, and the garland of a pagan sacrifice. Another spirit ruled in the realms of art, and had enthroned the eagle of Jove in the place of the Holy Dove. In Spain, the Netherlands, and in Scotland, there had been executed much clever building, but when the blow fell which destroyed further progress in this department, all excellence existed in English architecture alone. It is significant that not one four-centred arch was produced even so near as Scotland, while the last bloom of monumental art unfolded to perish forever in the frigid extravagance of Tudor Gothic. The budding forth of living architecture was cotemporaneous with one of the grandest augmentations of religious sentiment the world has ever known, and was signalized by the crusades and the organization of the great monastic orders. The first germination of this creative energy appeared about 1050, and chiefly among the Normans of France and England, where it swelled forth with extraordinary power and vividness. While this inspiration lasted, monumental art continued constantly to improve, and reached its highest excellence in the remotest West. After passing from a Herculean infancy to a graceful youth, and through a ripe maturity, a superannuated old age was reached, and it became extinct before the year 1550: so completely dead, that, since then, no architect in Europe has invented a new feature or composed a new beauty in that medium. The finest monuments, and the final goal of Gothic architecture are together illumined at sunset in western England, nearest to that wonder, Stonehenge, which was an antique, probably, long before Pericles ruled or Christ was born.
Florence is the only city of the old world that is said to be destitute of ruins. She is the fair metropolis of modern art; the home of science, rather, which came to displace the old artistic types, and create all things new. Such was her influence in the culminating power of the Renaissance under her great son, Leo X., whose pontificate was cotemporaneous with the radical overthrow of mediæval architecture. The Tuscan capital will best illustratethe approach and consummation of that result. The church of St. Maria Novella, projected in the year 1280, is a Latin cross, with nave and aisles. Simple and majestic, solid and light, it embraces an ensemble of beauties that makes it the fairest in Florence; and, according to Rica and Fineschi, the most graceful in Italy. This is the edifice which Michael Angelo termed his "gentle spouse," and was, doubtless, the precursor of Brunellesco's architecture. When beheld arrayed in its pomp on festal days, draped in silk and gold, with its altars lighted; or, better still, when contemplated in its severe simplicity, toward evening, when the grand shadows of the pillars cross each other, falling on the opposite walls, and the richly tinted rays stream through its storied windows, coloring every object around, the spectator feels himself exhilarated and ennobled with a thousand celestial thoughts. And be it remembered to the honor of the two Dominican architects, Fra Sisto and Fra Ristaro, that they went not to the outer world for models of such beauty as this; for it was not till 1294 that Arnolfo laid the foundation of St. Croce, and St. Maria del Fiore was not begun till 1298. But the latter building, the cathedral of Florence, is the masterpiece of Italian Gothic, one of the largest and finest churches produced in the middle ages. The nave and smaller domes of the choir were probably completed as they now stand, in the first quarter of the fourteenth century. The great octagon remained uncovered till Brunelleschi commenced the present dome in the year 1420, and finished it before his death, in 1444. The building may, therefore, be considered as essentially cotemporary with the cathedral of Cologne, and is very nearly of the same size. What a contrast in both spirit and form! Perhaps the most typical example of Italian art in its best period, is the tower erected close to the Duomo just referred to, from designs by Giotto, commenced in 1324, and probably finished at the time of his death, two years afterward. It is certainly a very beautiful structure, and worthy of the enthusiastic praise which it has received. The openings are happily graduated, and being covered with ornament from the base to the summit, it has not that naked look so repulsive in many others. The convent of St. Mark, whose history is identified with that of literature, arts, politics, and religion, was founded toward the close of the thirteenth century. Little did the magnificentCosimo imagine that he was there preparing an asylum for that terrible Savonarola, who was destined to dispute the dominion of Florence with his posterity. It was in the midst of these buildings that those great minds moved, the regenerators of Europe, "who first broke the universal gloom, sons of the morning."
If the Florentine monuments indicate the revival of science and the consequent debasement of art, the most impressive proof relative to this point is presented in the famous church of St. Peter at Rome. Nothing more pagan in form was ever erected on the seven hills where roamed the primitive she-wolf. Not as the mausoleum of a Christian martyr, but as the stupendous temple of some classic deity, it is doubtless full of surpassing attractions. Nothing was ever done for Leonidas or Camillus, for Regulus or for Julius Cæsar, in comparison with this monument to a humble fisherman. But what stranger to the purpose of its erection would ever think of him in the presence of this gorgeous shrine? Of the magnificent inscriptions raised to the wise and mighty of time, the sublimest must yield to that which encircles the sky-suspended vault of St. Peters. A conqueror of the habitable world once wept at having reached the limits of his sway; for, vast as was his ambition, it conceived of no such trophy as is written around that golden horizon, consigning the keys of heaven to one who ruled the empire of earth. But before that huge inscription had been raised to its pride of place, the last great transition of human society in the age of Leo X. transpired, the most sudden and complete of all revolutions, the change from the middle age to the modern, from the world without printed books to the world with them. St. Peters was coeval with the invention of printing, and the universal revival of science. Before the sacristy was finished, the splendid endeavors of Watt had been crowned with success; and in the interval had occurred the discovery of America and the Reformation. The fall of Catholic domination and Gothic art was coeval with the ending of that mighty cycle of mutation wherein the web of society had been unraveled and rewoven for a yet more auspicious use.
Sculpture was little practiced during the first mediæval centuries, but the church soon gave that art her patronage, and produced innumerable works. Plastic and pictorial art was from the earliest period employed in sacred places for the instruction of thepeople and the edification of the faithful. In 433, pope Sixtus dedicated to the "people of God" the Mosaics and sculptures in Santa Maria Maggiore, at Rome. St. John Damascenus, in the eighth century, reasoned earnestly in defense of statuary for religious purposes. "Images speak," exclaims the eloquent apologist; "they are neither mute nor lifeless blocks, like the idols of the pagans. Every figure that meets our gaze in a church relates, as if in words, the humiliation of Christ for his people, the miracles of the mother of God, the deeds and conflicts of the saints. Images open the heart and awake the intellect, and, in a marvelous and indescribable manner, engage us to imitate the persons they represent."
As Catholicism advanced it was subjected to opposing influences, and the faintest shadow that darkened, or the lightest breath that disturbed, the external prosperity or the internal harmony of the church, was immediately reflected by the pencil of the artist and the chisel of the sculptor. Almost every ancient edifice, therefore, becomes to the eye of careful observation a hieroglyphic record of the dogmas believed and the changes which transpired in the course of successive ages. During the centuries intervening between the ninth and seventeenth of our era, numerous cathedrals, parish churches, and private chapels, colleges, abbeys, and priories, teemed with an almost incredible profusion of figures, images, and sacred compositions, carved, sculptured, and engraved, as the medium of devout instruction. Time and violence have done much to deface or destroy these early works, but the western states of Europe, especially France and England, are even now immensely rich in statues and other sculptured works. The majority of the French cathedrals are illustrated with a vast variety of "Mirrors" in stone; but the most complete is that which adorns the masterpiece at Chartres, which has no less than eighteen hundred and fourteen statues on the exterior alone. The sculptures here open with the creation of the world, to illustrate which thirty-six tableaux and seventy-five statues are employed, beginning with the moment when God leaves his repose to create the heavens and the earth, and is continued to that in which Adam and Eve, having been guilty of disobedience, are driven from Paradise, to pass the remainder of their lives in tears and in labor. It is the genesis of organic and inorganic nature, of living creatures and reasoning beings; that in which thebiblical cosmogony is developed, and which leads to that terrible event, the fearful malediction pronounced upon man by his God. From theNaturalthe sculptor passed to theMoral Mirror, and showed how that man has a heart to be softened, a mind to be enlightened, and a body to be preserved. Thence arise the four orders of virtues, the theological, political, domestic, and personal; all placed in opposition to their contrary vices, as light is to darkness. Theological and political virtues, the influence of which is external, and suitable for the public arena, are placed without; domestic and personal virtues, which affect the individual and his family, are made to retire within, where they find shelter in stillness and comparative obscurity. Man's career is then continued from the creation to the last judgment, just as the sun pursues his course from east to west, and the remaining statues are employed to exhibit the history of the world, from the period of Adam and Eve down to the end of time. The inspired sculptor has, indeed, by the aid of the Prophets and of the Apocalypse, divined the future fate of man, long after his earthly existence should have terminated. This is the fourth and last division, completing what was called in the language of the middle ages, the "Mirror of the Universe." The intellectual framework of this stone Encyclopædia contained an entire poem, in the first canto of which we see reflected the image of nature; in the second, that of science; that of the moral sense in the third; of man in the fourth; and in the aggregate, the entire world.
In those days, the state of society was such as to allow little vent to the innermost thoughts of the finely endowed, and the pent-up mind was glad to expend a vast amount of thought and labor upon works which mechanical skill eventually came to supersede. Before the press could do the same work more effectually, the sculptor used a building as a book on which to announce in powerful language his own peculiar disposition, hopes, sentiments, and experience. The apparently grotesque carvings sometimes met with in the better period of sculptural art, are indubitably intended to illustrate fables, legends, romances, as well as individual creeds. But in the sixteenth century, a moral and political revolution spread widely in all countries, and led to a marked change in sculpture as in every other intellectual pursuit. Manual dexterity becamenearly perfect, and the capability of molding stone like wax, combined with the rapid unfolding of bold and novel ideas, induced a passionate love of fantastic ornament so peculiar to a vicious Renaissance style. Thus, while the figure sculpture of France and England still possessed a very peculiar and severe character, eminently ideal, in Italy, under the Pisani, plastic art grew to be dramatic and picturesque, the conventionalities of the antique were revived, and with the study of abstract beauty, came the loss of much freshness and individuality.
In the age when the republic of Florence bid one of her architects "build the greatest church in the world," all the fine arts rose simultaneously, and advanced with gigantic steps. Architecture and sculpture led the van, and had their chief seat in Tuscany, under the disciples of Nicholas of Pisa. Rienzi and Petrarch had been as diligent in the collection of gems and medals as in their search after classical manuscripts, and their example was not lost upon their successors. Poggio, Cosmo de Medici, and other illustrious private men gave origin to princely museums. The gallery of statues and other antiquities belonging to Lorenzo de Medici, and the academy annexed to it, constituted the great school in which, with many others, the genius of young Michael Angelo was formed. Berfoldo, the Florentine sculptor, an aged and experienced master, who had studied under Donatello, was the custodian of the Medician garden, and gave lessons to all the youthful cultivators of art. Poets hymned the praises of each splendid creation, and thus stimulated the most enthusiastic rivalry. Pindarus and Tirteus sang the glories of the Greeks, and why should not the bards of Florence enkindle in these young bosoms the love of a similar glory? It was a grand spectacle to behold the flower of Italian genius assembled, where chisel and hammer made the marble ring, and the emulative canvas glowed with most fascinating tints. Thus was this garden a lyceum for the philosopher, an arcadia for the poet, and an academy for the artist; and no quality that it could either elicit or impart was foreign to the mighty mind of Michael Angelo. He was the truest exponent of the fifteenth century, and should be regarded as the chief agent in substituting modern for mediæval art. He founded modern Italy immediately on ancient ruins, and did much to efface the memory of the middleages. Marble was to Michael Angelo what the Italian language was to the greatest of Florentine writers; and with a mind as vast and free as that of Dantè, of whom he was the warmest admirer, he simultaneously illustrated supreme ability in all the liberal arts.
While a new life impelled art in Germany, France, and the Netherlands, during the eleventh century, the appreciation of sculpture had already begun in Italy; and, at the end of the succeeding century, it had reached the lowest point of ignorance. But in the thirteenth century occurred the incident which was the occasion of a favorable reaction. Among the multitude of ancient marbles brought home from the East by the Pisan fleet at the time of rebuilding the cathedral of Pisa, was a bas-relief representing two subjects taken from the story of Phædra and Hippolytus. Being used as a decoration in the front of that noble building, young Nicholas observed, admired, and emulated its artistic worth. His successful endeavors led to a complete revolution in sculpture. In the fourteenth century, Andrew of Pisa continued the work of his predecessors, and was aided in keeping the art in an elevated path by Orgagna, and the brothers Agostino and Agnolo of Siena. At the beginning of the fifteenth century, under Donatello, and Ghiberti, sculpture had again attained a high degree of perfection. Other eminent proficients united with these great leaders, and carried forward the auspicious development into Germany where the artistic centre of sculpture, in the sixteenth century was fixed at Nuremberg, the residence of Adam Kraft, Peter Vischer, and his sons, Veit Stoss, and the great Albert Durer. Before the close of this century, however, the Italian renaissance became universally diffused in Germany, France, and Flanders, and superseded whatever of originality the native artists had until then preserved. Thenceforth, throughout the whole domain of the mediæval age, arabesques, festoons of flowers and fruit, branches, animals, and human figures, arranged in the most fantastic manner, took the place of all high art, and the excellence of sculpture was at an end. During the whole of the sixteenth century, and a great part of the seventeenth, from Michael Angelo and Leonardo da Vinci to the death of Salvator Rosa, the fine arts underwent an irresistible and humiliating decline.
Bronze casting early attained high excellence at Florence, andfurther north-west. The gates cast by Ghiberti, for the church of S. Giovanni, are perhaps the finest that ever came from human hands; and those of the cathedral of Pisa are excelled by none save these, which Michael Angelo pronounced to be fit for the portal of Heaven. In Mosaics and Gem engraving, also, the Italians greatly excelled previous to the seventeenth century, so fatal to the arts, literature, and morals of that fated land. All the beauties of Christian art faded away one after the other, and that same century witnessed the apostacy of painting, as well as sculpture, which, after having abjured its high and holy office of civil and religious instructress, sought to derive its inspirations from the Pagan Olympus.
Mediæval Italy exulted in art generally, and especially in painting; but it was of a type utterly unlike that which the ancients produced. The Greeks loved art because it enabled them to embody the images which were inspired by direct intercourse with earth's fairest forms, and they used it simply as the minister of nature, and of beauty. But the Italians were imbued with more celestial sympathies, and employed beauty and nature chiefly as the vehicles of spiritual sentiment and exalted aspirations. In the fifth century pictorial art was gradually Romanized in the hands of early Christianity, and became transformed as it was transmitted toward the West. Mount Athos and Constantinople, were, for many centuries, the great sources of artistic activity, which imparted to painting a peculiar style. Long after originality in literature had ceased in the East, and national life was there unknown, the creation of pictures faltered not, but they were dry and heavy, like the immobile Byzantine government, and served only to preserve the elements of noble art, while Christianity itself was laying the foundations for the future unity of Europe among the progressive races. Down to the tenth century, art was absolutely controlled by this frigid conventionalism, but great improvements supervened as soon as an appreciative race had been prepared.
As the effete world beyond the Adriatic expired, the republic of Venice arose and inherited all that the superseded orient had preserved. In point of art, down to the thirteenth century, she may be considered almost exclusively a Byzantine colony, inasmuch as her painters adhered entirely to the hereditary models. But asByzantium had condemned all the higher forms of plastic art, Venice could derive no assistance from that source, and, consequently, her sculpture bore an entirely new phase. The Venetian mosaics, especially, we may regard as the most legible record of the great transition and new creation which at this era transpired. As early as the year 882, large works in this compound style, in a church at Murano, represented Christ with the Virgin, between saints and archangels. With incomparably greater originality and force is this new type represented in the church of St. Mark, foundedA.D.976, the earliest mural pictures of which date back at least to the eleventh, perhaps even to the tenth century.
Mediæval painting perfected itself in the same way as ancient sculpture. The imperfect but severe and characteristic representations of primitive art became types, which later ages were slow to alter; they were copied and recopied until a great revolution in popular thought broke the fetters of conventional control. Such, in the olden times, was the victory over the Persians, the triumph of Greek independence; in the middle ages it was the struggle between the secular and sacred powers. As Æschylus and Phidias mark that epoch in the Periclean age, so Dantè and Giotto, with the Rhenish masters, form, in this respect, the great symbols of the age of Leo X. With them pure religious feeling is the most pervading impulse, and a sense of divinity habitually directs their hands; but the perception of the latter was more comprehensive, and rising above the narrow horizon of their predecessors, they soared beyond the periphery of actual life, and embraced the infinite. All leading spirits, like Dantè and Giotto, stood before the world, and, with the power of their genius, surveyed the whole extent of what was required by their age, religiously and politically. They were inspired by the belief which they glorified, and participated in benevolent struggles, not more by their writings than by their paintings. They extended the boundaries of the realm of art; its representations became richer and broader; the composition was rendered dramatical, the drawing and coloring natural; and a loftier development was occasioned by the discovery of monuments of the old civilization, which had been buried and forgotten for centuries. Art-elements which had before existed in a mummified state, now fell like over-ripe fruit; but not before the soil ofthe western world was sufficiently fitted to receive the precious seed.
After architecture, miniature drawing alone sustained the chief honor of art through a long course of centuries; and, without it, the history of painting could not be written. Born in the disastrous days of barbaric irruptions, miniature grew up within the shadow of the cloister, and contained within itself the germs of all the magnificence which the pencil of Italy finally produced. Enamored of solitude and contemplative life, the graphic industry of monks employed the darkest period of human history in preserving the precious fragments of the classics, while it adorned itself with the charms of liturgical poetry, and the wealth of biblical truth. Usually the same individual was at once a chronicler of pious legends, a transcriber of antique manuscripts, and a miniaturist, and his glowing lines were not more significant than the little pictures which gemmed the page. Above each vignette he was wont to wreathe a crown of flowers, that his written words might find an echo in the graces of his pencil; and the latter was a better interpreter of the author's heart than the barbarous idioms then spoken. The Idyl, the Eclogue, and the Epic, called forth all the power and graces of this refined art; and if Allighieri, in the Divina Commedia, records with honor the two great fathers of Italian painting, Cimabue and Giotto, he has not omitted the two most celebrated miniaturists of his age, Oderigi da Gubbio, and Franco of Bologna. This association of extremes was a proper one, since the ideas of large compositions lay inclosed in the smallest illuminations, like unfolded flowers, each shrined in its delicate bud.
Glass-painting sprang into existence simultaneously with miniature in the dark ages; and these inseparable companions were subjected to the same vicissitudes, and shared one common fate. The former was cultivated in Italy as early as the eighth century, as may be seen in the treatise on this subject and mosaic, published by Muratori; also in the work of the monk Theophilus, who flourished in the ninth century. Like miniature, it constituted the delight of the cloister for many an age, during which the cultivators of these twin-born arts produced many glorious monuments of their genius, when both species closed their career east of the Alps with Fra Eustachio of Florence. Perugino, Ghiberti, Donatello, and otherartists of the highest order, frequently furnished designs at a later period; but in preparing and coloring glass, the Italians were greatly excelled by more western races. The fifteenth century was the most luminous period of the art; in that which succeeded, it reached its perfection on the Atlantic shore and died.
Mediæval painting, properly so called, emerged from the Byzantine types in the thirteenth century. The superstitious rigor of symbolism was then escaped, and the infant genius of true art attained the earliest movements of creative power. This is shown in the Madonna of Duccio, at Siena, datedA.D., 1220, and which is the oldest existing picture, or movable work, by an Italian artist. Next in date, and superior as art, is the Madonna by Cimabue, in the Novella at Florence. But even this seems rather a petrified type of womanhood, and could hardly be regarded as the flaming morning-star of a day about to spread from the bay of Naples to the borders of the Rhine, bright with the splendors of Giotto, Perugino, Raphael, Fra Beato, Leonardo da Vinci, and the sweet masters of the German school. It is not our purpose to note particularly the character and career of individual painters, but to remind our readers of the great and wonderful law of progress, in this as in every other respect. For example, while the two leading universities of Bologna and Paris arose to feed the lamp of science, art, following the general movement, and in the same direction, elevated itself to greater dignity of development and conception. Poesy lisped with the Troubadours, but they were sent to prepare the way for the manly utterance of the great Allighieri; and painting, associating itself with the bards, did not give Giotto to the world till Dantè was prepared to sing the three kingdoms of the second life. From the first etchings on the walls of catacombs, and the primitive symbols of faith depicted on martyr-urns, actual advancement had not ceased: but a still more auspicious hour now dawned when forms of beauty appeared which rivaled the productions of Greece and Rome, excelling the ancients by the sublimity of those holy sentiments transfused from heaven into the heart and intellect of its cultivators.
Giovanni, of the noble family of Cimabue, was born in the year 1240, and on account of the great improvement which he wrought in his art, is looked upon, perhaps too exclusively, as the founderof modern painting. He was the disciple of a Greek mosaic painter at Florence, and worthily reproduced the excellence he was born to perpetuate.
Giotto, the son of Bondone, was born near Florence in the year 1276. It is said that he was a shepherd boy, and was discovered drawing a sheep upon a slab of stone by Cimabue, who took him home and instructed him in painting. In him the graphic art was associated with the ecstasy of a contemplative mind, and became a powerful and animated language. He did not astound or flatter the senses by the strength of tints, or the violent contrast of lights and shadows; but like his great successor, Angelico, in the urbanity and variety of lines, in the profiling of countenances, and in the ingenuous movement of the figure, he portrayed that harmony which pervades all creation, and which reveals itself most divinely in the gentle companion of man.
Amid the rugged Apennines about Umbria there was reared a simple and solitary school of painting in the fifteenth century, which gloried in sublime inspirations, and cultivated external beauty only to show the splendor of its conceptions. Such were Fabriano, Credi, Perugino, Pinturricchio, and Raphael who came down to Florence to mature their capacities and ennoble their art, in competition with the great leaders of the Tuscan school, Giotto Memmi, Gaddi, Spinello, Pietro Cavallini, and the rest. These are the men who first burst the trammels of dryness, meagreness and servile imitation; who first introduced a free, bold, and flowing outline, coupled with examples of dignified character, energetic action, and concentrated expression; invented chiaroscuro and grouping, and at the point of culmination imparted to their works a majesty unrivaled in the history of pictorial art. That was a memorable epoch truly, and for the imitative arts one of superlative glory. For while the people were struggling between tyranny and liberty; while philosophy was engaged in its deliriums about judicial astrology, and the civil code was cruel and oppressive, painting gradually approached that sovereign excellence to which the genius of Leonardo and Raphael were destined to exalt it; till, with the rapidity that signalized its ascent, it began to sink into decay and ruin.
It would seem that oil-painting was practiced in Giotto's time;but it came not into general use until about 1410, when this superior medium of art was either invented or revived by the Flemish artist, John Van Eyck, of Brughes. The place of this invention is significant, and still more the fact that ever since the progress of art and the perfection of color in Europe has neared that vicinity.
Next to the revival of ancient learning, and the progress of science, the age of Leo X. was indebted to the perfection of painting for its glory. It sprang from an inspiration as special, bore a character equally definite, and yet is invested with an excellence as absolute as that of Greek sculpture. It was a spiritual plant of the most delicate texture, the life of which may be defined as to its limits with the greatest precision. Our countryman, unfortunately now lost to literature, science, and art, Horace Binney Wallace, presents the facts in the following summary form: "The first bud broke through the hard rind of conventionality about the year 1220, and the scene of its first growth may be fixed at Siena; and by the year 1320 the germination of the whole trunk was decisively advanced. Cimabue and Giotto had spread examples of Art over all Italy. In the next century, till 1470, all the branches and sprays that the frame was to exhibit were grown; the leafage was luxuriantly full, and the buds of the flowers were formed, Memmi, the Gaddis, the Orgagnas, the Lippis, Massaccio, and, more than all, as relates to spiritual development, Fra Beato had lived and wrought. About 1470, the peerless blossom of Perfection began to expand, and continued open for seventy years, the brightest period of its glow being between 1500 and 1535. Its life declined and expired almost immediately. After 1570 nothing of original or progressive vitality was produced in Italy. Fra Bartolomeo had died in 1517; Leonardo in 1519; Raphael in 1520; Coreggio in 1534; Michael Angelo, at a great age, in 1563; Giorgione had died in 1511; John Bellini in 1516; Titian survived till 1576, at the age of 99; and Veronese died in 1588. The complete exhaustion of the vital force of Art, in the production of the great painters who were all living in 1500, is a noticeable fact. With the exception of the after-growth of the Bolognese school—of whom Dominicheno, Guido, and Guercino, alone are worth notice—which flourished between 1600 and 1660,nothing in the manner of the previous days, but false and feeble imitations appeared."
Great artists went westward often to execute masterpieces for the most appreciative and powerful patrons in the age of Leo, as before in the times of Augustus and Pericles, but progress in refinement called them eastward never. When the arts were in their highest vigor in Italy, they were wooed to the banks of the Seine and the Thames, by that true lover, Francis I., of France, and by the monied might of England. The richest art treasures on earth have ever since accumulated in the retreats where choice collections then were first commenced, as we shall have occasion more fully to state when we come to sketch the age now transpiring. For ten centuries the vast and progressive populace of continental Europe had no other representative than the Church; it was then that Art achieved its greatness under the fostering care of Catholicism, when the Church belonged to the People, and they were comparatively free. But when Religion sank into bigotry, and Art, instead of addressing the popular heart, was compelled to minister to the narrow demands of private patrons, she passed beyond seas, and awaited fairer auspices in the midst of a freer race.