Part 4

Italy was in a very miserable and disturbed state during the dark centuries of the Middle Ages, being overrun by barbarous invaders and often afflicted by internecine wars, so that even without the leaden hand of the Church stifling all original talent, it is very improbable that any improvement in art could have been made.

For art to thrive, it is absolutely necessary that a country should be undisturbed and tolerably prosperous; although it by no means follows that a prosperous country _must_ produce great artists. Take, for instance, the Republic of Venice during the Middle Ages, which, whilst Italy was being vexed with endless invasions and civil war, enjoyed great prosperity; and yet not a single attempt was made by her artists to emancipate themselves from the dead level of Byzantine rules. On the contrary, the famous early mosaics of St. Mark’s are amongst the most characteristic specimens of Byzantine art which have been preserved to us.

Of their original splendor (as far as gold and workmanship could contribute to it) there can be no doubt, but of legitimate art there is no trace. Like all the work of this school, whether mosaic or fresco, the figures are done by routine, and are as lifeless and mean in character as the worst Byzantine types. Of course I am speaking of the series of _early_ mosaics in St. Mark’s. The later ones executed in the twelfth century, although very Byzantine in character, partake largely of the general improvement which was noticeable at that time.

The tremendous rapidity with which Byzantine frescoes used to be executed is no excuse for their badness. Had the artists given ten times the labor they would have done no better. All original design was prohibited; every thing was done from tracings of previous works. These tracings were reproduced on the wall to be painted, and the flesh tints were filled in with a uniform flat color, sometimes of a brick-dust and sometimes of a green hue. The draperies were done in the same way, first a flat tint and then a few unmeaning black lines to represent folds. This process was entirely mechanical, the lines having no respect whatever for the limbs underneath.

To give you a better idea of the rapidity with which whole churches can be decorated in the Byzantine style, I will give Didron’s description of Oriental fresco-painting. He was at Mount Athos about forty years ago, and had the opportunity of seeing a monk and his five assistants at work. Mount Athos has for the last thirteen centuries been the headquarters and principal laboratory of Byzantine art, and a countless number of pictures on wood are to this day exported thence as articles of commerce to the Russian Empire. M. Didron says: “One pupil spread the mortar on the wall; the master drew the outline, without either cartoon or tracings; another pupil laid on the colors; a third gilt the nimbi, painted the ornaments, and wrote the inscriptions, which the master dictated to him from memory; and lastly, two boys were fully occupied in grinding and mixing the colors.”

The subject was a Christ and eleven apostles (life size), and the time taken to complete the work was under an hour!

I am not quite sure but what a couple of months’ experience in the Mount Athos workshops might not be of advantage to some of our students in the antique school.

Our traveller adds (I think quite unnecessarily) that the work seemed to him very rude and coarse--but it can be easily understood that at this rate a whole church could be covered with frescoes in a few days. “C’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas de l’art.”

From what I have said, you will understand the unchangeable nature of Byzantine art. Pictures painted in this style may be more or less neatly executed, but their artistic merit varies very little, whether they be of the seventh or the nineteenth centuries, whether they decorate St. Mark’s at Venice or an obscure monastery on Mount Athos. As an illustration of this, note a picture in the National Gallery, by a Greek artist of the name of Emmanuel. The date of this work is 1650. It was therefore painted long after Titian, Raffaelle, P. Veronese, and all the great masters had departed this life, and yet with all their glorious works before his eyes what does this primeval artist produce? All I can say is, “Go and see for yourselves.” Other schools have their ups and downs. The Italian, the Flemish, the French, and the English schools have all had, and will continue to have, their periods of elevation and depression; but Byzantine painting always maintains its dead level, and will continue to do so as long as the Greek Church lasts.

Pictures of this school are often associated with ideas of sanctity, not only in holy Russia but in Western Europe. Almost all miracle-working pictures belong to this class. The Calabrian peasant, or the Andalusian muleteer, who would probably be unmoved by the Madonna di S. Sisto, is wrought up to a high pitch of religious fervor at the shrine of some olive Byzantine Virgin, with her pinched peevish face and wooden shoulders.

That this class of pictures has at all times been held to be peculiarly sacred, is proved from the fact that at Venice (even in the time of Titian) the cultivation of the stiff Byzantine style, for popular devotion, was maintained in juxtaposition with that of the most perfectly developed form of painting.

We may smile at the Venetian religious world, but I am not sure that at the present day an analogous tendency could not be imputed to some of us.

Is there not to some æsthetic nostrils a kind of odor of sanctity about mediæval perspective and composition? It is true that our revivalists do not wish to go back to the Byzantine period for our religious art; the Romanesque or at any rate the Quattro Cento style is the correct thing. But why go back at all? I can quite understand that in restoring an old cathedral it would be desirable to do so; but in a modern building (whether gothic or not) to reproduce forms which we know to be incorrect, and to introduce perspective which we know to be absurd, seems to me to be carrying our reverence for the past a little too far.

A letter appeared in the _Times_ last summer which is so much to the purpose that I really must read it to you:--

“_To the Editor of the ‘Times.’_”

June 30th.

“SIR,--I have before me a design for a window which it is proposed to place in a village church in Lincolnshire, as one of a group memorial of the late vicar, his widow, and two sons, clergymen, one of them a missionary of the Church Missionary Society who died in India. May I be allowed to describe the design? The window is of two lights. The dexter represents a cardinal in red hat and stockings, red robe with blue lining, and a nimbus round his head of a color resembling olive-green. The sinister light has an archbishop with mitre, pall, polychromatic vestments, and a blue nimbus round his head; in his left hand a pastoral staff, and in his right the Sacred Heart, crimson, with gold flames issuing from the top. The drawing is signed by an eminent London firm, and is submitted by the present vicar as a suitable memorial of his predecessor, who was an Evangelical of the old school, and of his widow, a lady whose dread of ‘Popery’ was almost morbid.”

Writers on art are fond of asserting that in spite of the repulsive ugliness of the Byzantine types, we ought to be grateful to the school for keeping the lamp of art alive during seven or eight centuries; but I think that the history of the great revival does not bear out this assertion. We find Giotto and his followers hampered with the old traditions. We find Byzantine work rampant in Venice down to the time of the Bellinis, impeding and indeed excluding all the various forms of progress which were spreading over Northern Italy; and it may be noticed that all the faults and weaknesses of the early Italian painters are traceable to Byzantine sources. I question very much whether the revival of art would not have been more rapid and complete had the Byzantine school never existed.

The early reformers, Cimabue, Giotto, and Duccio, would have had the great mosaics of the fifth century, and such remnants of ancient pagan art as were then known, to inspire them. They would have been unfettered by Byzantine tradition, and I think it probable that their works would have been better in every respect.

Every one with any experience knows that it is easier to instil sound principles of art into one who is totally uninstructed, than into one who has already contracted a bad style of drawing; and as it is with individuals, so also is it with schools and phases of art.

Then again it must be remembered that although the Byzantine school was the dominant one during the Middle Ages, there were, in Italy, France, and Germany, artists who had no connection with it, and whose compositions, as seen in manuscripts and missals, will bear favorable comparison with similar work by Greek artists of the same period.

I must refer you again to d’Agincourt’s book, where you will find a great number of outlines from these miniatures.

In judging these works you must not, however, form your opinion as to their merits entirely by d’Agincourt’s illustrations. They give a very fair idea of the drawing and composition, but the charm of these small paintings lies in their color and execution, which are sometimes very beautiful.

The Bayeux tapestry, for instance, though charming in the original, becomes very uninteresting and ugly when translated into black and white.

The transition from Byzantine to Romanesque art was so gradual that it is very difficult to decide when the change took place. Byzantine rules and traditions had taken such firm root, that it was not till the end of the fourteenth century that its influence was finally overcome.

We are, however, approaching the time of Guido da Siena and Guinto da Pisa, and it is pleasant at last to know (or to suppose we know) the names of two artists after centuries of anonymous work. The fact of these names having been preserved shows at any rate that their bearers were not mere workmen bound to execute the morbid fancies of the Church, but painters of some repute, whose creations, though still very cramped and stiff, show better modelling and a more intelligent execution than are to be found in the works of their predecessors.

Every one has heard of Cimabue, but comparatively few have seen his frescoes. I imagine that his best work is in the Church of St. Francis at Assisi. I once spent six weeks at Assisi, and devoted a good deal of time to the wall-paintings of the church.

The frescoes of Cimabue seemed to me infinitely better than his panel pictures, but they were (even then) in such a state of decay that it was difficult to form an opinion of them. This was twenty-two years ago, and since that time I believe that the progress of decay has been very rapid indeed. The Arundel Society had some admirable _fac-simile_ drawings of these works executed five years ago.

It is curious how much more rapidly all the old frescoes are decaying now than formerly.

I attribute this accelerated rate of ruin to the presence of gas in the towns. At Pisa the Campo Santo frescoes are deteriorating much more rapidly than before the introduction of gas into the town. I don’t know whether Assisi is now blessed with a gasometer, but if it is, poor old Cimabue’s work is doomed.

His famous Madonna, which was carried in triumphant procession through the streets of Florence, is painted quite in the Greek style. The flesh is better modelled, and the draperies of the surrounding angels are much better drawn, than in any previous example of Byzantine work, but I cannot understand the enthusiasm of the Florentines.

The specimen we have in the National Gallery appears to me to have been much re-painted; the heads especially (although ugly enough to be early work) are of a later character, and are painted in the fumbling, uncertain way which is characteristic of restorers.

There are other artists of this period whose works show a great improvement on the old Byzantine. These are Toriti, who executed some fine mosaics in Rome; the brothers Cosmati, also of Rome; and Gaddo Gaddi, the Florentine. The mosaics of the last named in the dome of the baptistery at Florence are very highly commended, but they appear to me rather improved Byzantine than true Romanesque. Indeed, with the single exception of Cimabue’s frescoes at Assisi, I don’t know of any work of the thirteenth century which has a true Romanesque character at all. Giotto was (as every one knows) the pupil of Cimabue, and I believe that the truth of the old story about Cimabue finding him when a shepherd boy occupied in drawing a sheep, and taking him back to Florence as an apprentice, has not yet been doubted. We can easily imagine the respect and awe which this shepherd lad would feel for the greatest painter of the capital, and can readily believe that the work of his early youth would be founded entirely on that of his master. It is more than probable that he served his apprenticeship at the great sanctuary of piety and art which arose after the death of St. Francis at Assisi. At any rate it is there that his earliest known, and to my mind his best, works are to be found. The series of frescoes illustrative of the life of the saint, may be considered as the starting-point of historical painting in Italy. Compare the figures in these frescoes with the best work of Cimabue, and notice what an enormous advance has been made. Here we have natural, if somewhat timid, action, well-proportioned figures, and skilful arrangement of drapery. I confess I was surprised to hear that these works were anterior to his larger frescoes in the lower church, which represent the glorification of St. Francis, and which appeared to me to indicate a step backward toward Cimabue. It is probable that in these last-named frescoes, which adorn the compartments under the high altar, Giotto did not venture to depart much from the traditional arrangement of his predecessors, and accordingly we find the poor, meagre composition and the horizontal lines of heads cherished by the thirteenth century painters.

Giotto would require a whole lecture to himself, were I to attempt an account of what he did at Padua, Florence, Rome, and Naples. His _chefs-d’œuvre_ are said to be in Florence, at the Church of St. Croce. No less than four chapels in this church were decorated by him; but, alas! there is very little left. Time, whitewash, and the restorers, have done their work pretty effectually. Still, the mere outlines of many of the groups show that these works may very well have been the finest that the master ever produced.

I have seen the Arena Chapel at Padua, which is literally covered with Giotto’s frescoes. It is many years since I was there, and very possibly, were I to revisit the chapel, I might form a different opinion, but at the time I was disappointed with the paintings, which appeared to me weak in design and feeble in execution.

When we recollect that Giotto had the customs and prejudices of eight centuries to contend against, no antiques at hand to guide and purify his taste, no great predecessors to imitate, we cannot help paying homage to the genius of the man who produced the St. Francis series of frescoes at Assisi, and numberless other works, both at Florence and elsewhere. I think that the true explanation of his wonderful success is to be found in the old sheep-drawing anecdote. It shows that even as a shepherd boy he felt that nature was the foundation of art. Instead of working by mere routine, like the Byzantine painters, or, like his master Cimabue, endeavoring to improve in the same direction, he went direct to nature both for his compositions, his action, and his drapery.

To us it may appear the simplest thing in the world to make studies from nature for our pictures, but in the time of Giotto such a course would be unusual, and would be placed in the category of happy thoughts.

It may be argued that if he had lived in the tenth or eleventh century instead of the fourteenth, he would never have been allowed by his patrons to attempt such daring innovations. He must have remained in the old beaten track. This is no doubt true enough, and there may have been during the dark ages a dozen embryo Giottos whose genius had been strangled by ecclesiastical leading-strings; but we are none the less indebted to the man who gave the death-blow to the barbarous mechanical craft which for long centuries had usurped the place of art.

Although anxious to do full justice to Giotto as a great art reformer, I must admit that he had some very unpleasant peculiarities which were blindly adopted, and, indeed, exaggerated, by many of his followers. The most repulsive of these peculiarities is the sameness and meanness of his heads. In the only specimen we have of his in the National Gallery this fault is not conspicuous, but it is very noticeable in the pictures of his school. Indeed, the family likeness which pervades all the heads in the large Orcagna is almost ludicrous. In Giottesque heads the eyes are a great deal too close together and never fairly open. The nose is thin and pinched, and the jaws weak and shapeless. The type, in short, is diametrically the opposite of the antique, and is (it must be confessed) a very ignoble one.

The constant recurrence of this mean type is more apparent in his later than in his early works, and it is probable that many of these stereotyped heads were executed by his assistants, but nevertheless Giotto is answerable for them.

Italian sculpture, as well as Italian painting, is greatly indebted to Giotto, for it was he who designed the reliefs for the bronze gates of the baptistery at Florence. These designs were executed in masterly style by Andrea Pisano, and may be looked upon as the starting-point of Italian sculpture. In fact, it is as the father of modern art rather than as a perfect painter that the name of Giotto ought to be held in reverence. Many of his successors of the next century, whom I shall mention in the course of my lectures, approached much nearer to perfection than did Giotto. The composition of their pictures is less archaic, the heads have more individual character and are much better drawn; but we ought always to bear in mind, that had Giotto never lived, we should never have had a Masaccio, a Filippo Lippi, or a Beato Angelico, and probably neither a Leonardo nor a Raffaelle.

Louis Quatorze is reported to have said: “L’etat c’est moi”; and Giotto might with equal truth have declared: “L’art Romanesque c’est moi,” so all-pervading was his influence. Besides the works of his immediate followers, such as Taddeo Gaddi and Orcagna, Italy abounds with Giottesque frescoes, whose authors are unknown, or at least doubtful.

The most important of these nameless works are the large frescoes which cover the walls of the Capella degli Spagnuoli, in Sta. Maria Novella at Florence. When I first saw these frescoes they were ascribed to Taddeo Gaddi and Simone Memmi of Siena; but modern critics have justly, I think, pronounced against this authorship. They appeared to me to be of a later date, but I may have been misled by the disgraceful way in which they have been retouched.

This retouching, or rather repainting, has been the ruin of many of the early frescoes, and it is most extraordinary that in Italy (of all places in the world) such barbarous mangling should ever have been allowed. The real culprits are not the obscure bunglers who did the work, but the ignorant monks or town councillors who employed them.

These Sta. Maria Novella frescoes are very characteristic of the allegorical mania of the Romanesque period. One of them, we are told, is meant to represent the “Wisdom of the Church,” but the allegory is so obscure and the component parts so heterogeneous, that with the best intentions it is all but impossible to understand the painter’s meaning. Why should Grammar have a globe in her hand? and why should Logic have a serpent under her veil? What has Abraham done that he should be associated with arithmetic? and why should John of Damascus (who, for some occult reason, typifies Hope) be mending his pen? If the strange jumble in this fresco is bewildering, what shall we say to the companion fresco which represents “the activity of the Church”? A dozen or more different centres of activity are in full play simultaneously. The faithful are portrayed in one part of the fresco as men and women, and in another part as a flock of sheep. The Dominicanes, or Dominicans, are playfully represented as black and white dogs, who are defending the sheep against wolves. St. Dominic himself is preaching against heretics, who are entreating pardon and burning their books; but it is hopeless to give an idea of the confusion of imagery, of the blending of piety with punning in this extraordinary fresco. If I again refer in the course of my lectures to the Romanesque allegories, it is not that I am fascinated by them, but because they are so numerous and so typical of the period that it is impossible to ignore them.

It would, of course, be unjust to blame the artists for these allegories, or for the numerous “Inferno” pictures. They probably had to execute and make the best of the subjects that were given them. Dante may very likely be answerable for much of the questionable taste of the fourteenth century.

I shall endeavor, in my next lecture, to steer a middle course between the modern blind adoration of the fifteenth century work, and the cynical Philistinism which can discover nothing worthy of notice in this interesting period.[1]

LECTURE III.

ON THE PAINTERS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

Before proceeding to speak of the painters of the eighteenth century, it will not be out of place to give a general sketch of the state of the art toward the close of the seventeenth. I trust that in my last lecture I made it clear to you that after Rubens and Vandyke no painter of any talent appeared, to support the fame of the Flemish school, but that in the northern provinces of Flanders and in Holland a whole constellation of imitative painters arose, who, for truthful color and exquisite skill, have rarely been equalled, and never surpassed. This brilliant outburst of talent did not, however, last very long. Indeed, it may be said with truth, that all the best Dutch pictures were painted within the space of sixty years--from about 1620 to 1680. We then perceive a gradual decline of the school, not such a rapid decay as overtook the Antwerp and Brussels academies, but a perceptible inferiority both in the color and the handling; the former became more opaque and heavy, and less true, whilst the latter lost a good deal of its admirable dexterity.

I know of no Dutch paintings of first-rate excellence unless it be some of Van Huysum’s flower-pieces which were executed in the eighteenth century.

If we turn to Italy, we find the art of painting, which had been partially arrested in its downward course by the Eclectic and Naturalistic schools, now getting lower and lower. Devoid alike of original conception or good execution, the Italian painters of this time were little better than coarse decorators. When I say that Luca Giordano towers like a giant over his contemporaries, it will be easily understood what a pigmy race they must have been.

In France, Poussin, Lesueur, Lebrun, and Claude Gelée, all died in the latter half of the seventeenth century, leaving no worthy successors behind them.