Part 5

But it must not be supposed that this is merely an antiquarian collection: the best work now going on all over the world is represented, and one may see by the superb examples of modern Berlin work and of Minton that England and Germany are engaged in a competition for excellence which bids fair to distance anything done in the past. What admirable work Minton can do may be estimated by the embossed and tinted tiles surrounding the ten columns which support the roof of this gallery. They reproduce the finest colors of the Celadon porcelain of Sèvres. Around each column are letters forming the names of the ten greatest potters--Vitalis (whose name was found on a red vase of Samian-ware discovered in London in 1845), Giorgio Andreoli, Luca della Robbia, Veit Hirschvogel of Nuremberg (1441-1525), Xanto of Urbino (1547), Palissy (1510-89), François Cherpentier (maker of the Henri Deux ware, otherwise called faïence d’Oiron), Böttcher (1681-1719), Wedgwood (1730-95), and last, not least, Pousa, with whom began the list of wondrous accidents with which the history and traditions of pottery abound. Pousa is said to have been a workman in the imperial porcelain factory of China. On one occasion the emperor had ordered some great work, and Pousa tried long to produce it--in vain. Finally, driven to despair, he plunged into the furnace. His self-immolation caused such an effect upon the ware in the furnace that it came out the most beautiful piece of porcelain ever known. Pousa is now the patron saint of porcelain-workers in China, and is kept near them in a little corpulent figure (porcelain), which is familiar to many parts of the world where its story and sanctity are unknown. The South Kensington Museum has carried out in its own case this tradition of happy accidents, having been remarkable for its good-luck. Some instances of it are in the Ceramic Gallery. Some years ago a terrible explosion of gas occurred in the house of the famous art collector and dealer, Mr. Gambart, at St. John’s Wood, by which the house-maid was killed. M. Alma Tadema was a guest in the house, and he had the presence of mind to open a window when he first perceived that gas was escaping, by which means the disaster was mainly limited to the dining-room. In this room were two large cabinets filled with splendid specimens of Flemish “graybeards,” beakers, and similar wares, and some of the best were smashed. As the fragments were about to be cleared away, a friend of Mr. Gambart’s, who was also connected with this museum, brought him an offer from the institution of £800 (as I have heard; at any rate, a sum that was generous) for the collection, broken and unbroken, and it was gratefully accepted. The skilled workmen at the museum have put the bits together with such adroitness that it requires a practised eye to distinguish the wares that suffered. The magnificent reproduction of the Alhambra Vase by Baron Davillier, elsewhere described, was exhibited at the Paris Exposition of 1867, and an agent of the museum found it “going a-begging;” he purchased it for far less than its actual value. And, indeed, I might instance a vast number of similar cases not only in this particular gallery--which we must now leave--but throughout the museum. The truth is, the South Kensington Museum has shown that the present is the great opportunity of museums, while it has done much to turn that tide on whose flood it floated to fortune, by awakening nations to the value of their treasures. The Oriental world, and, indeed, some portions of Southern Europe, have hitherto been unconscious of the value of their monuments, because only culture can prevent familiarity breeding contempt. Miss Frances Power Cobbe once expressed in my hearing the shock she received when, on first arriving at Old Alexandria, in Egypt, she found her luggage set down on an ancient monument resembling those treasured in the British Museum. How much the South Kensington Museum has reaped from the indifference to objects whose value is not intrinsic, and which for that reason are unique and inestimable, may appear incidentally as I proceed to describe some of them, adding what particulars I have been able to learn concerning their acquisition.

The little sixpenny guide-book sold at the door is necessarily provisional; the historical and descriptive volume which such an institution requires must remain a desideratum so long as the museum itself is changing and growing daily before our eyes. But the materials for that work exist; specialists have studied well the various departments; there exist nearly twenty large Blue-books recording the origin and growth of the museum; and when all these are sifted and their connected story told--enriched, as we may hope it will be, from the memories of those men who have founded and conducted the work to its present condition--the history so told will be in itself a sort of literary museum, replete with curiosities, picturesque incidents, and romance. In this scattered condition of the facts I have had to depend mainly on information given by the gentlemen just referred to, and what scraps I could pick up in old newspaper files and Blue-books. This it has appeared to me right to mention here, in explanation of any slightness and unsatisfactoriness that may be found in the details, or of the motley way in which they are put together.

If the history of this museum of civilization would record strange instances of popular neglect for great works of art, it must at the same time show that works of genius, in whatever perishable material embodied, have a strange vitality. The Milonian Venus, twice buried in the earth that she might not be harmed by the wrath of her Mars, has had experiences hardly more significant than those through which the sacred forms designed by Raphael--preserved by aid alike of king and regicide, by aid, too, of the neglect which left them hidden for a hundred years in lumber-rooms--have become the glorious inheritance of South Kensington.

The seven cartoons--what would not now be paid for the three that are lost![A]--were designed and drawn by the great artist and his scholars at the request of Pope Leo X. (1513) as copies for tapestry, and the tapestries made from them are now in the Vatican. They were made at Arras, and the cartoons--so called because drawn on card-board--were thrown into the warehouse there. Here they remained neglected until they were seen by Rubens, who advised Charles I. to purchase them for a tapestry establishment at Mortlake, near London. On the death of the king, Oliver Cromwell paid £300 for them, intending that the tapestry-works should be continued. On the fall of Cromwell they were confiscated, and, for a second time, were thrust away into a lumber-room, this time at Whitehall. Fortunately the designs were on strips of paper twelve feet long, which could roll up, and so they were able to survive such usage. The next time they attracted notice was in the reign of William III., by whose order Sir Christopher Wren prepared a room for them at Hampton Court. They were then carefully lined with cloth. They were never removed again until placed in the gallery prepared for them here, with the sometimes criticised and certainly remarkable inscription beneath each, “Lent by the Queen.” The last individual who clearly owned them was Oliver Cromwell, who paid what was supposed a large sum (£300) for works which no amount could purchase from the Protector’s true heir--the English Nation.

The museum is especially rich in old Italian glass. Some of these wine-glasses are nearly as light in weight as ordinary letter-paper, and the iridescence is most wonderful. One of the oldest forms has on it red Indian girls, dressed like Italian ballet-dancers of a very early period. There is reason to believe that this piece of glass was made soon after the discovery of America, when the enthusiasm about the region which the great Genoese had discovered filled all Italy. It is very plain that no portraits of the squaws could have reached the countrymen of Columbus when these dancers were designed. Mr. G. W. Cooke, Academician and landscape-painter, had in early life a studio in Venice, and he had a way of picking up bits of old glass in the shops, the keepers of which were often willing, for a few soldi, to part with things now worth (in some cases literally) their weight in gold. Afterward he had, I believe, a studio in Agerola, and there also found beautiful Italian glass. He collected in this way enough to fill three or four large cases. After they were collected a considerable quantity of ancient Spanish glass was obtained, and the fact was made apparent that the latter was in some cases an imitation of the former--the reverse being probably the case with the majolica, in which Italy would seem to have imitated the Hispano-Moresque “lustre-wares.” It is possible that a transfer of art-initiative from Spain to Italy may have been one of the first bad results of the banishment of the Moors, whose exquisite works are now models for our finest architects. With reference to the hypothesis that the theatrical squaws are to be referred to the interest that followed the discovery of America, I may mention that there are several curious instances in the museum where dates have been approximately fixed by the treatment of subjects. One notable example is a Japanese dish, on which is a rude but reverent representation of the baptism of Christ. Although certainty cannot be reached yet in the matter, it is possible that this dish was made before the extermination of Christianity from Japan (1641). However, it is known that before the discovery of kaolin in Europe the English and Dutch used to send over to China designs to be put on wares that were ordered. There are various pieces of china which are marked with English coats of arms, and a clergyman in Somersetshire has three pieces marked with scenes of the Passion. But I believe there is no instance where any such work is known to be Japanese, and, indeed, the latter had not formerly any great reputation in England.

There are eight magnificent Japanese bronzes in the museum, of which one is a figure of the beatified Buddha. It is impossible to gaze upon this grand figure (about fifteen feet high), seated with crossed legs, and open hands lying one in the other, without being impressed by a certain majesty in the ideal it represents, as well as astonished at the largeness of the undertaking which has produced a bronze of such size. The figure is seated, as it were, on the ground, and the round, infantine fulness and health of the face and the closed eyes render it probable that it was meant to represent the supreme moment when Sakya Muni attained, through humility and meditation, that sacred Buddhahood (enlightenment) which he had vainly sought by practising the severe asceticisms which the Brahmins enjoined upon him. “He met a certain Brahmin,” says the Siamese version, “named Sotiya, and from him accepted eight handfuls of long grass. The Master spread the grass on the ground to the east of the Bo-tree, and sat thereon, and the grass became a jewelled throne. The Lord, with well-steadied mind, turned his whole thought to attain through purity and love the exaltation of knowledge. And around him gathered the angels of many worlds with fragrant offerings, and the strains of their celestial concert resounded in the most distant universe.”

It is interesting to observe the strong impression made upon the casual visitors by this face so sweetly serene, so free from the lines which care and ambition trace upon the European face. I heard a little girl of thirteen years say, after her silent gaze, “How I would like to climb up and sit in his lap! Perhaps I would get some of his goodness.” How many little ones of the East have felt the same as they looked upon this face of perfect holiness!

The history of some of the other bronzes is as follows: An English sea-captain saw three large bells, each seven or eight feet high, about to be taken on a Japanese ship for ballast. He saw that they were of antique and curious design, and was told that they had belonged to a temple that had been destroyed. The Japanese seamen gladly parted with them for a small sum, and told him of similar things near by. These, which were two bronze vessels something like huge candlesticks, each four and a half feet high--probably meant to support large masts for flags--he found lying amidst rubbish of old metal. These noble bronzes are elegantly modelled with dragon ornaments, and indicate a development of skill in this direction which has never been equalled in Europe. Besides these there are two large incense-burners eight feet high, and wonderfully wrought with beautiful decorative and symbolical forms.

But the indifference of the Japanese to their ancient relics is paralleled by that which prevailed in the cathedral at Bois-le-Duc, Holland, a few years ago, and led to the transfer to this museum of one of the finest specimens of the French Renaissance that now exist. In the rage for repairs the authorities of the cathedral pulled down this, its magnificent rood-loft--which is marked 1623, and consists of the finest colored marbles and many perfectly sculptured statues--and substituted for it a conventional Gothic structure. This great rood-loft--it covers one whole wall, sixty feet in width, and is from thirty to forty feet high--was actually carted out in pieces as rubbish, and lay in a corner of the cathedral yard, when some English tourist, attracted by the beauty of one of the statues, made a small offer for it, and finally purchased the entire structure for a few pounds. Finding some difficulty in carrying it off, the tourist wrote to the directors of the museum about it, and was overjoyed when they agreed to purchase it for a thousand pounds. The museum was no less happy in securing for a tithe of its value this unique and admirable work, which is without damage of any kind, and stands in the New Court just as it did in the cathedral which was unable to appreciate its finest treasure. When the Queen of Holland recently visited the Museum, she was not a little disgusted when she came to this rood-loft and heard its history.

Most of the “finds” by which the collection of ecclesiastical architecture has been enriched have been made in Italy. One of the most valuable of these is a Florentine “Cantoria,” which has been affixed to the wall over the lower door-way of the North Court, and thus supplying promenaders in the corridor above with a little balcony from which the contents of the great room below may be best seen. This singing-gallery was the work of Baccio d’Agnolo, and was set up in the Church of Santa Maria Novella, in Florence, about the year 1500.

In the neighborhood of the same city, namely, at Fiesole, the Church of San Girolamo was found willing, for small sums, to despoil itself of two fine examples of its own great artist (1490), Andrea di Fiesole, otherwise Ferrucci, and two works of the artist, not without honor save in his own country--an altar-piece and a tabernacle--grace an arcade of this museum. But the most precious possessions of this character are the specimens of Della Robbia ware, of which this museum has more than fifty examples. There were two men who gave this ware its name--Luca and Andrea, uncle and nephew--and their work is almost equally excellent. One of the pieces is a large terra-cotta medallion, eleven feet in diameter, bearing the arms and emblems of King René of Anjou, which was fixed in an exterior wall near Florence about fifty years before America was discovered, and, after undergoing the weather of over four centuries, its colors are as brilliant and its finest mouldings as clear as if it had been made this year. An altar-piece, probably by Andrea della Robbia, representing the Adoration of the Magi, is certainly one of the finest works of art, pictorially as well as in modelling, that have come to us from the era in which he lived. There are some twenty figures in relief, and each face has its own physiognomical distinctiveness, each head its phrenological peculiarities, all as carefully portrayed as if Lavater and Spurzheim had watched over the work. A figure of the Virgin and Child, with an arched border of fruit and flowers, presents us with an expression which could only be conveyed fully if the matchless colors could be transferred to my page, but which entitles it to be classed among those great Madonnas of art history which have influenced civilization.

The most conspicuous object in the North Court is the reproduction by Mr. Franchi of a pulpit erected in the cathedral at Pisa by Giovanni Pisano in 1302-11. A fire occurred in the cathedral in 1596 by which this great work was damaged, and the panels--carvings in relief of Scripture subjects--were deposited in the crypt; other parts of the pulpit were removed to the arcades of the Campo Santo, and some others incorporated in the new pulpit of the cathedral. Some ten years ago Mr. Franchi, of whose wonderful skill the museum contains many evidences, obtained from the cathedral authorities permission to take casts of all these scattered parts of Pisano’s greatest work, and having done so, he put them together; and now, more than two centuries and a half after the structure vanished from Pisa, it has been set up at South Kensington. The reproduction has been so perfect--even to the toning of the marble (as it seems to be) by age--that no one could imagine it to be a reproduction. And it was certainly worthy of all this care. The supports of the circular tribune are groups of statues--Fortitude, holding a lion by the tail, head downward; Prudence, with compass and cornucopia; Justice, with scales; Charity, nursing twins; Temperantia, who, oddly enough, is quite nude and in the Medicean attitude; and the Evangelists. The statues, two-thirds the size of life, are grouped around eight columns, which they nearly conceal. At the top of these the tribune is enclosed by seven large panels, in which are finely carved the Nativity, the Adoration of the Wise Men, the Presentation in the Temple, the Massacre of the Innocents, the Betrayal, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection. This noble work justifies the ancient fame of Pisa as the home of sculpture.

The museum is particularly rich in Michael Angelos, considering that it has had to glean after the Glyptothek of Munich, the Vatican, and the Louvre. It possesses the beautiful Eros (see page 62) executed in the great sculptor’s twenty-fourth year (1497), also his statuette of St. Sebastian, unfinished, and showing the last touches of his chisel--as, without the intervening appliances of modern sculpture, he carved his idea directly on the marble. There is a female bust ascribed to him, and another work in which he participated, which is quite unique: this is a case of small models in wax and terra-cotta, of which twelve are by Michael Angelo. This case was for a long time in the Gherardini family, and was purchased by a Parliamentary grant in 1854 for the sum of £2110. One of these little models is that of the slave. Buonarotti’s two slaves or prisoners, the originals of which are in the Louvre, are here in good copies, the one exhibiting the physical suffering of the fettered man, the other the mental anguish of bondage. There are also admirable casts of other works by the same artist, the finest being the colossal figure of David, which stands in the new Tribune at Florence. This copy was presented to the museum by the late Grand-Duke of Tuscany, and is one of the many excellent fruits which have been gathered from the international league which European princes have entered into for the purpose of exchanging works of this character, and reciprocally aiding in the work of enriching the museums which constitute so important a feature of modern civilization. It is a happy characteristic of this museum that one meets in it very few objects whose interest or beauty is marred by association with war. The spoils are few, the tokens of friendship with foreign nations innumerable. Some pieces of work in gold brought back from Abyssinia and from the kingdom of Ashantee--the latter close to the famous umbrella of King Koffee--were exhibited, and a few of them remain here to show by their exquisite chasing that blows aimed at so-called savages are likely to fall upon the springing germs of civilization. The poorly designed but wonderfully chased and jewelled symbols of Theodore excited general admiration. The bird that was perched on the top of King Koffee’s state chair is also of fine workmanship. It is rude in design, truly; but it is hardly ruder than the gold dove, the ampulla which holds the oil used at English coronations; and perhaps, like the latter, it purposely imitated a primitive and consecrated form. These African trophies are unpleasantly suggestive of the worst phase of British policy, or impolicy; but they are slight incidents in a museum which will forever be considered the ripest fruit of the long Victorian and victorious era of Peace.

It is quite impossible for me to invite my reader to an exploration of the loan collections. Some of the ancient jewellery and gold work which has been, or is, shown here is not only intrinsically priceless and beautiful, but also historical, _e.g._, the Mexican sun-opal; the largest known aqua-marine, set as a sword-hilt, formerly belonging to the King of Naples (Joachim Murat); a cat’s-eye (largest known), formerly belonging to King Candy; a piece of amber in which is a small fish--all of which have been loaned by Beresford Hope, M.P. But the great treasure belonging to this gentleman, and long exhibited here, was the famous Cellini ewer. Previous to the great Revolution, it was part of the crown-jewels of France, and Mr. Hope has recently sold it to a collector in that country. This matchless work is ten and a half inches in height; the body is formed of two convex pieces of carved sardonyx, with a similar piece for pedestal; the handle and spout are of gold, covered with masks and figures richly enamelled, and set with rubies and diamonds. In place of this fragment of old French royalty, which the explosion sent flying and the Republic has lured back, is the brilliant gold missal case of Henrietta Maria. Some of the most beautiful specimens of ancient _repoussé_ gold work and enamels were, until recently, in a case made up chiefly from the collection of Mr. Gladstone, whose fondness for things of this kind, though rather indiscriminate, has done something to popularize the taste for them. In a recent Christmas satire, “The Fijiad,” the Prime Minister has been portrayed rather cleverly in his right environment:

“Great Homer’s bust upon the table stood-- Homer much talked of, little understood; Around the bust were ranged, with curious care, Gems of old Dresden or of Chelsea ware, Cracked teapots, marvels of ceramic art, Choice Faïence and Palissy set apart; For great Gladisseus, warrior of renown, For plates and pottery ransacked the town. Made dowagers and virtuosi stare, Collectors, jealous, tear their scanty hair.”