Part 5

When one enters from the bright sun, St. Mark's appears dim and dark; but you must not judge by that. To appreciate its beauties, the student should visit the church day after day. Gradually they will unfold themselves. That is what constitutes one of the charms of St. Mark's. It is as though one were in a carved-out cave of gold and purple, on a voyage of discovery all by oneself. At first you can see nothing; but as your eyes become accustomed to the darkness, colours begin to grow upon you out of the gloom. Some minutes must elapse before you realise that the floor, which at first you took to be of a deep-toned grey stone, is a mosaic composed of thousands of differently coloured marbles--that you are walking on precious marbles of peacock hues. Golden gleams above your head attract you to the domed ceiling, and, to your delight and amazement, you discover that it is formed entirely of gold mosaic. You are passing a dim recess, and you see a blurred mass of rich colour; after a time you realise that you are looking at a famous masterpiece by one of the great Italian painters. You sit there as in a dream; and one by one the pictures and the mosaics, the Gothic images, the cupolas, the arches, the marbles, the alabaster, the porphyry, and the jasper appear to you--until what was darkness and gloom appears to be teeming and vibrating with colour.

St. Mark's carries one away from the everyday world. On the ignorant and the uninitiated it has a marvellous effect. Men and women and children flock to it by the thousands daily. Many and fervent are the worshippers one sees praying before some special saint or beloved Madonna. Some are weeping, and others kneel for hours on the cold stones. The unhappy people of Venice have many sins and sorrows, and there is much that is comforting to them in this rich, majestic church. The fainting spirit is revived and the most desperate person stimulated as he looks about him at the sparkling mosaic roof, the rich walls, and the dimly burning lamps. There is much in precious stones, music, sculptured figures, in pictures of heaven and hell, that appeals to these people. An infinite and pitiful God somewhere about them, these peasants of poor imaginations cannot understand. They want a faith that they can cling to--almost something that they can finger and touch. St. Mark's is to the poor of Venice like a beautifully illustrated Bible. There, in the cupolas, the story of the Old Testament is presented in mosaic, plainly for every eye to see, for the youngest and least educated to understand. It touches them, and appeals to them, and keeps their faith burning bright and clear. There they have the seven days of creation represented,--mysterious, weird, and primitive,--discs of gold and silver representing the sun and the moon. There are the Tree of Knowledge, the Temptation, the Fall, and the Expulsion from Paradise. Then comes the slaying of Abel by Cain, Adam and Eve tilling the ground. There is a strange mosaic of the Ark, with the animals going in two by two on a background of gold; there are the stories of Abraham, of Joseph, and of Moses, all quaintly executed, full of detail and without regard to anatomy. There is no struggle to imitate Nature, and the colouring is good.

In the time when St. Mark's was built there were no cheap Bibles, and, if there had been any, the poorer classes could not have read them. Thus the great Church was an endless boon to them, one which could never be quite exhausted. Many and splendid are the lessons these mosaics and pictures taught and continue to teach. The mysteries and beauties of the Bible are impressed upon the mind in a manner that cannot be effaced. All the virtues are there--Temperance quenching fire with water; Charity, mother of the virtues, and the last attained in human life; Patience; Modesty; Chastity; Prudence; Lowliness of Thought, Kindness, and Compassion; and Love which is Stronger than Death. These lessons the Venetians have continually before them, to help them to bear the troubles of this world, and giving them hope for the peace of another. Most of the pictures in mosaic are typically Byzantine, mainly symbolical and of the first school of design in Venice. Upon these pictures the people of Venice live and thrive spiritually: the pleasure is real and pure. Colour has a great influence upon the emotions, just as music has; and colour was used in the earliest times to stimulate devotion and repentance. There are pictures in which the most profound emotion is expressed. When one sees the pictures of Christ's life and passion, one cannot but be touched.

By the medium of paintings in the churches, people began to understand and appreciate art, and to feel the need of it in their homes. Not only is St. Mark's an education to the poor and the ignorant: it is also an education to the student and to the artist. Here you have pictures of the nation of fishermen at their greatest period; also you find legends splendidly told, such as the story of the two merchants who brought the bones of St. Mark from Alexandria under cover of pork, crying "Swine! swine!" You see the priests, the Doge, and the people of Venice as they were in the days of her power.

In one of the dim corners of St. Mark's is a statue of an old man on crutches with a finger on his lip. This is a Byzantine architect who was sent to Pietro Orseolo from Constantinople, as the cleverest Eastern builder of his time, to construct St. Mark's Church. He was a bow-legged dwarf, and undertook to build this marvellous edifice, unequalled in its beauty, on condition that a statue of himself should be placed in a conspicuous position in the Church. This was arranged. One day the Doge overheard the architect say that he could not execute the work in the way he had intended. "Then," said Orseolo, "I am absolved from my promise"; and he merely erected a small statue of the architect in a corner of the Church.

Think of the makers of St. Mark's--the great men who worked together with brains and hands to make her what she is! The army of artists, painting, designing, sculpturing, one after the other from generation to generation in this great cathedral! Titian, Tintoretto, Palma, Pilotto, Salviati, and Sebastian were among the painters whose designs were used for the mosaics; Bozza, Vincenzo, Bianchini, and Passerini, among the master mosaicists; Pietro Lombardo, Alberghetti, and Massegna, among the sculptors. Then, the other thousands, all men of extraordinary talent, of whom astonishingly little is known, fervent workers! Throughout eight centuries they worked, and with what care and skill and patience! At what a cost, too, these masterpieces must have been achieved! Think of the temples and the quarries that have been robbed of their gold, and of the marbles, the alabaster, and the porphyry. All the saints and prophets and martyrs are there; the stories of the Virgin, of the Passion, and of Calvary; all the scenes from the Old and New Testaments.

The early Venetians seem to have revelled in colour and in rich materials. The builders laid on the richest colour and the most brilliant jewels they could find. They were exiles from ancient and beautiful cities, and when they succeeded in war their first thought was to bring home shiploads of precious materials. Just as the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Arabs had an intense love of colour, so had the early Venetians, who used precious stones in great abundance, even in their own private houses. A most extraordinary thing is that there is nothing vulgar about the costliness of St. Mark's. Although both inside and out it is rich beyond words, rich in precious stones, rich in every way, the building is full of reserve. There is no ostentation, no vulgarity. The jewels used in its construction do not for one moment interfere with one's sense of the beautiful, or with reverence and religion. They simply give a rare luxurious feeling to the place, and in the ignorant inspire respect for a Church thus encased and honoured with the richest in the land.

Then, again, the jewels do not form a principal part of the ornamentation. One looks first at the exquisite workmanship; and afterwards are noticed the precious materials, which form a subordinate part and do not interfere with the design. It is almost as though a veil had been swept over the whole building, both inside and out, bringing together this wealth of colour and forming it into a complete whole. It has the effect of a marvellous glaze--of a picture that has had a thin glaze swept over it. Wherever you look, the Church teems with colour; but it seems to be piercing through a veil. It is not vivid positive colour, but colour breaking through a skin. In the East I have seen millions of pounds' worth of jewels in one heap, with the sun shining on them, and I was overpowered with this wealth, I was inspired with their costliness;--but St. Mark's does not affect you at all in this way. Rich man and peasant are alike in this respect: they are elevated and stimulated in that building, not because of its costliness, but because of its extreme beauty. The technique is marvellous, but not obvious: the moment you are conscious of technique you may be sure that the work is poor. You never wonder how St. Mark's was built; and that is the highest tribute to the marvellous arts which it expresses.

PAINTERS OF THE RENAISSANCE

One of the chief characteristics of the Venetian school of painters, and one of the most attractive to all art lovers, is their great appreciation of colour. In most of their work colour seems to be the chief motive. Pictures by Venetian painters never suggest drawings. They strike you not as having been coloured afterwards, but as having been painted essentially for the colour. One sees this throughout the whole school. And in their paintings they do not go to extremes. There is no exaggeration in their colouring. They do not err, as do so many schools, either on the foxy-red side or on the cold steely colouring. Unfortunately, much of the beautiful colouring of these pictures is lost by age. One has to become accustomed to that ugly brown skin which has formed upon the surface before one can realise what great colourists these early Venetians really were. The pictures somehow cause one to resent oil as a medium. One realises how different they must have looked when fresh from the easel, and wishes that these great masters could have painted with a medium more lasting--as did the Chinese, whose works are as young and fresh now as if they had been painted yesterday: the years have left no trace whatever: the simple colouring is the same to-day as it was a hundred years ago. Many of the earlier paintings, those of the Gothic Venetians, the less-known men, are a good deal better preserved. Their canvasses have not turned black; the glazings have not departed; and there is no smoky film upon them, as in the case of the works of the great masters, such as Titian, Tintoretto, and Giovanni Bellini, men who came a hundred years afterwards. It may very possibly be that the pigment which painters used then was purer and less adulterated. Certainly one sees in the various schools all over the world that the older the pictures are the better preserved they are. Age never improves a picture--unless, indeed, it is an extremely bad one, when time serves as a thin veil.

Undoubtedly these great colourists, the Venetians, influenced the various schools of painters all over the world, and are still influencing them. Originally they worked for the churches, and colour was used exactly as music was used--to appeal to the senses, to the emotions: to influence the people, to teach them biblical stories and parables. It also educated the people to understand painting and to feel the need of it in their daily lives.

At about this time the Renaissance began to express itself, not only in poetry and other literature, but also in paintings; and it found clearer utterance in Venice than elsewhere. The conditions at this time were perfect for the development of art. Venice at that period lent herself to art. She was at peace with the whole world, and she was prosperous. The people were joyous, gay, and light-hearted. They longed for everything that made life pleasant. Naturally, they wanted colour. And Venice was not affected by that wave of science which swept over the rest of Italy. The Venetians were not at all absorbed in literature and archæology. They wanted merely to be joyous. This was an ideal atmosphere for the painter. Such a condition of things could not but create a fine artistic period. The painter is not concerned with science and learning, or should not be. Such a condition of mind would result in feeble, academical work--in struggling to tell a story with his medium, instead of producing a beautiful design. That is partly why the Venetian school has had such a strong influence on art, even until the present day. The conditions were perfect for the development of art, because the patrons were capable of appreciating beautiful form and beautiful colour. Because the public would have it, this new school of painters appeared. The demand was created, and the supply came.

There was undoubtedly great friction among the painters of this period, exactly as there has been lately with the modern impressionists and the academic painters. Some of the old Venetians resented the new school that was springing up; but they had eventually to bend and try to paint in sympathy with the senses and emotion of their patrons. You find this new mode of thought expressed strongly even in the churches and in the treatment of religious subjects. The old ideals were altered. Men no longer painted saints and Madonnas as mild, attenuated people. The figures were lifelike and full of actuality. The women were Venetian women of the period dressed in splendid robes and dignified; the men were healthy, full-blooded, and joyous. Florence, however, at this particular period was undergoing quite a different mood. The Florentines preferred to express themselves in poetry and in prose. That was the language the masses understood. Painting was not popular. There has always been a literary atmosphere about Florence, and one feels it there to this day; it is essentially the city for the student.

When painting became so much a vogue in Venice, painters began to try and perfect the art in every possible way. They struggled for actuality. Art began to develop in the direction of realism. The Venetians wanted form and colour in their pictures; but they wanted also a suggestion of distance and atmosphere. In those early pictures you find that painters smeared their distance to give it a blurred look. That was the beginning of perspective. Painters of this period seem to have been marvellously modern. They were quite in the movement. There has never been any attempt at harking back to earlier periods.

Venice was very wealthy at this time, and Venetian people never missed an opportunity of parading wealth. They loved glory where the State was concerned, and encouraged pageantry by both land and sea. They loved to see Doge and senators in their gorgeous robes, either on the piazza or on the Grand Canal. Then there came a demand for painted records of these processions and ceremonials. All this was encouraged by the State for political reasons. Pageantry entertained the people, and at the same time made them less inquisitive. Much better, these great officials argued, that the people should be enjoying things in this way than that they should begin to inquire into the doings of the State. Gentile Bellini and Carpaccio were the first pageant painters of the period. Paolo Veronese, who came much later, also loved pageantry, elevated it to the height of serious art, and idealised prosaic magnificence. He painted great banquets, and combined ceremony, splendour, and worldliness with childlike naturalness and simplicity.

First of all, as has been shown, it was the Church that called for pictures--to represent their saints and to enforce biblical legends. Painting became more and more popular. People became more and more educated to understand painting, until at last they wanted their domestic and social lives depicted. Also they wanted to hang these pictures in their homes. Pictures were neither so rare nor so expensive in those days as they are now, and people could afford to buy them--even the lower and the middle classes. Immediately there sprang up painters who satisfied the demand. In those days there were no academies and no salons wherein artists fought to outdo one another as to the size and eccentricity of their pictures; there were no vulgar struggles of that kind. Painters simply supplied to the best of their ability the wants of the people. Naturally, the public required small pictures, suitable to the size of their houses. Therefore, they needed gay and beautiful colour, and pictures in which the subjects did not obtrude themselves forcibly. Thus, in the natural course of events pageantry found less favour, and pictures of social and domestic life found more. Religious subjects were rather deserted. By the aid of books people could learn all the stories of the Bible. Besides, they were not at that period in a devotional or contrite mood. They were too happy and full of life to feel any pressing need for religion.

Painting took much the same position with the Venetians as music has with us now. The fashion for triumphal marches and the clashing of cymbals in processional pictures had died out, and the vogue of symphonies and sonatas had come in. No one at that time seemed quite capable of satisfying the public taste. Carpaccio, whose subtle yet brilliant colouring would have exactly suited it, never undertook these subjects. Giovanni Bellini attempted them; but his style was too severe for the gaiety of the period.

However, there was not long to wait. Soon appeared a man who told the public what they wanted and gave it to them. He swept away conventions and revolutionised art all over the world. He was a genius--Giorgione. Pupil of Bellini and Carpaccio, he combined the qualities of both. When he was quite a youth painters all over the world followed his methods. Curiously enough, there are not a dozen of this great master's works preserved at the present day. The bulk of them were frescoes which long ago disappeared. The few that remain are quite enough to make one realise what a great master he was. The picture which most appeals to me is an altar-piece of the Virgin and Child at Castelfranco. It is painted in the pure Giorgione spirit. St. George in armour is at one side, resting on a spear which seems to be coming right out of the picture; while on the other side there is a monk, and in the background are a banner of rich brocade and a small landscape.

The Renaissance, the rejuvenation of art, seems to have slowly developed until at length it culminated in Giorgione. He was the man who opened the door, the one great modern genius of his period, whose influence remains and is felt to this day. Velasquez would never have been known but for Giorgione. Imagine this young man with his new ideas and his sweeps of golden colouring suddenly appearing in a studio full of men, all painting in the correct severe style established at the period. Such a man must needs influence all his fellows. Even Giovanni Bellini, the Watts of his day, acknowledged the young man's genius, and almost unconsciously began to mingle Giorgione's style with his own. We cannot realise what they meant at that period--these new ideas of Giorgione. He created just as much of a "furore" as when Benvenuto Cellini, in his sculpture, allowed a limb to hang over the edge of a pedestal. He needed this to complete his design. Since then almost everyone that has modelled has hung a limb over a pedestal. But Benvenuto Cellini started this new era. So, in much the same sort of way, did Giorgione. He cut away from convention, and introduced landscape as backgrounds to his figure subjects. He was the first to get actuality and movement in the arrangement of drapery. The Venetian public had long been waiting, though unconsciously, for this work; and Giorgione was so well in touch with the needs of the people that the moment he gave them what they wanted they would take nothing else.

In the work of Giorgione the Renaissance finds its most genuine expression. It is the Renaissance at its height. Both Giorgione and Titian were village boys brought to Venice by their parents and placed under the care of Giovanni Bellini to learn art. They must have been of very much the same age. It is interesting to watch the career of these boys--the two different natures--the impulsiveness of the one and the plodding perseverance of the other. Giorgione shot like a meteor early and bright into the world of art, scattering the clouds in the firmament, bold, crowding the work and the pleasure of a lifetime in a few short years. His work was a delight to him, and life itself was full of everything that was beautiful. He was surrounded always by a multitude of admiring comrades, imitating him and urging him on. Giorgione was ever restless and impetuous by nature. When commissions flagged and he had no particular work in hand, he took to painting the outside of his own house. He cared not a whit for convention. He followed his own tastes and his own feelings. He converted his home into a glow of crimson and gold,--great forms starting up along the walls, sweet cherub boys, fables of Greece and Rome,--a dazzling confusion of brilliant tints and images. Think how this palace must have appeared reflected in the waters of the Canal! Unfortunately, the sun and the wind fought with this masterly canvas, conquered, and bore all these beautiful things away. Indeed, many of Giorgione's works were frescoes, and the sea air swept away much of the glory of his life. His career was brief but gay, full of work and full of colour. This impetuous painter died in the very heyday of his success. Some say he died of grief at being deserted by a lady whom he loved; others that he caught the plague.

Of what a different nature was Titian! He studied in the same bottega as Giorgione, and was brought up under much the same conditions. But he was a patient worker, absorbing the knowledge of everyone about him, ever learning and experimenting; never completing. He did not think of striking off on a new line, of executing bold and original work. He wanted to master not one side of painting but all sides. He waited until his knowledge should be complete before he declared himself, before he really accomplished anything. He absorbed the new principles of his comrade Giorgione, as he absorbed everything else that was good, with unerring instinct and steady power. Titian was never led away in any one direction. He was always open to any new suggestion. As it happened, it was just as well that Titian worked thus at his leisure, and Giorgione with haste and fever. Titian had ninety-nine years to live; Giorgione had but thirty-four. There is an interesting anecdote told by Vasari with regard to these two young men. They were both at work on the painting of a large building, the Fondaco dei Tedeschi; Titian painting the wall facing the street, and Giorgione the side towards the canal. Several gentlemen, not knowing which was the particular work of either artist, went one day to inspect the building, and declared that the wall facing the Merceria far excelled in beauty that of the river front. Giorgione was so indignant at this slight that he declared that he would neither see nor speak to Titian again.