Part 20
But one could easily point to pictures where the two sets of emotions seem to run so parallel that the idea that they reinforce one another is inevitably aroused. We might take, for instance, Giotto’s “Pietà.” In my description of that (p. 110), it will be seen that the two currents of feeling ran so together in my own mind that I regarded them as being completely fused. My emotion about the dramatic idea seemed to heighten my emotion about the plastic design. But at present I should be inclined to say that this fusion of two sets of emotion was only apparent and was due to my imperfect analysis of my own mental state.
Probably at this point we must hand over the question to the experimental psychologist. It is for him to discover whether this fusion is possible, whether, for example, such a thing as a song really exists, that is to say, a song in which neither the meaning of the words nor the meaning of the music predominates; in which music and words do not merely set up separate currents of feeling, which may agree in a general parallelism, but really fuse and become indivisible. I expect that the answer will be in the negative.
If on the other hand such a complete fusion of different kinds of emotion does take place, this would tend to substantiate the ordinary opinion that the æsthetic emotion has greater value in highly complicated compounds than in the pure state.
Supposing, then, that we are able to isolate in a work of art this purely æsthetic quality to which Mr. Clive Bell gives the name of “significant form.” Of what nature is it? And what is the value of this elusive and--taking the whole mass of mankind--rather uncommon æsthetic emotion which it causes? I put these questions without much hope of answering them, since it is of the greatest importance to recognise clearly what are the questions which remain to be solved.
I think we are all agreed that we mean by significant form something other than agreeable arrangements of form, harmonious patterns, and the like. We feel that a work which possesses it is the outcome of an endeavour to express an idea rather than to create a pleasing object. Personally, at least, I always feel that it implies the effort on the part of the artist to bend to our emotional understanding by means of his passionate conviction some intractable material which is alien to our spirit.
I seem unable at present to get beyond this vague adumbration of the nature of significant form. Flaubert’s “expression of the idea” seems to me to correspond exactly to what I mean, but, alas! he never explained, and probably could not, what he meant by the “idea.”
As to the value of the æsthetic emotion--it is clearly infinitely removed from those ethical values to which Tolstoy would have confined it. It seems to be as remote from actual life and its practical utilities as the most useless mathematical theorem. One can only say that those who experience it feel it to have a peculiar quality of “reality” which makes it a matter of infinite importance in their lives. Any attempt I might make to explain this would probably land me in the depths of mysticism. On the edge of that gulf I stop.
INDEX
Albigensian crusade, 99
American and Chinese art, 74
Architecture, domestic, 183
----, styles in, 180
Art and Christianity, 87
---- and the Franciscan movement, 87, 88
---- and Poetry, 194
----, associated ideas in, 159
----, classic, 159
----, emotion and form in, 194
----, public indifference to, 168
----, Realistic, 159
----, Romantic, 159
Artist and the community, 168
----, pure, 175
Asselin, 158
Associated ideas in art, 159
Assisi, upper church at, 103
----, great church at, 87
Assyrian art, 80
“Athenæum,” 52
Author and Cézanne, 191
---- and Gauguin, 191
---- and Impressionists, 190
---- and the public, 192
---- and Old Masters, 190, 191
---- and Seurat, 191
---- and van Goch, 191
---- and Mr. Walter Sickert, 190
---- and Mr. Wilson Steer, 190
Author’s æsthetic, 188, 189
---- house, 180
Aztecs and Incas, 70
Babelon, M., 77
Babylon and Nineveh bas-reliefs, 78
Baldovinetti, 126
---- and Ucello, 126
Baldovinetti’s _Madonna and Child_, 126
---- portrait in Nat. Gall., 126
---- _Trinity_; Accademia, Florence, 126
Balfour, Mr., 60
Baroque architect, 136
---- art and Catholic reaction, 138
---- art and Poussin, 138
---- idea and El Greco, 135-139
---- idea and Michelangelo, 136, 138
---- idea and Signorelli, 138
---- in Spanish and Italian art, 138
Bartolommeo, Fra, 164
Bastien-Lepage, 17
Beardsley and Antonio Pollajuolo, 153
---- and Mantegna, 153
---- and Nature, 153
Beardsley’s art, influences on, 153
Beauty, nature of, 193, 194
Beethoven, 19
Bell, Mr. Clive, book on art, 195, 199
Bellini, Giovanni, and Dürer, 133
Berenson, Mr., 100
Bernini and El Greco, 135, 136, 137
Besnard, M., 96, 97
Blake and the Byzantine style, 142
---- and Giotto, 111, 142
---- and the Old Testament, 140, 141
---- and Michelangelo, 141
---- and Tintoretto, 141
---- on poetry, 143
Blake’s temperament, 141
Bleek, Miss, 64
Blow, Mr., 180
Bobrinsky, Prince, 79, 80
Bode, Dr., 134
Bourgeois attitude to art, 168
Bramante, 136
Braque, 158
Bridges, Robert, 147
British public, 190
Browning, 42
Brunelleschi, 4
Bumble, 42
Bushman and Assyrian art, 58
---- and Palæolithic art, 61-63
Byzantine style and Blake, 142
Cabaner, 172
Caravaggio, 5
Cézanne, 42, 158
---- and Delacroix, 173
---- and El Greco, 139
---- and Ingres, 173
---- and Marchand, 184
---- and Poussin, 173
---- and Renoir, 177, 178
---- and Rubens’ method, 173
---- and Tintoretto’s method, 173
---- and Zola, 172
----, criticism of, 156
---- misunderstood by his contemporaries, 169
----, Poussin and El Greco, 138, 139
---- the perfect type of artist, 168, 171
Cézanne’s character, 169, 170, 171
Chateaubriand, 6
_Charpentier family_, by Renoir, 178
Chelsea Book Club, 65
Chinese and American art, 74
---- and Negro cultures, 67
---- art and Matisse, 158
---- landscape, Claude and, 150
---- painting, 21
Chosroes relief, 78, 79
Christianity and art, 87
Cimabue and Giotto, 103, 106, 107_n_
Cinematograph, 13
Cinquecento art and Giotto, 114
Classic art, 159
Claude and Chinese landscape, 150
---- and Corot, 150
---- and Turner, 146
Claude and Whistler, 150
----, Ruskin on, 145, 146
---- and Leonardo da Vinci, 146
---- and Rembrandt, 146
---- “Liber Veritatis,” 149
----, influence of Virgil on, 148, 152
Claude’s articulations, 145
---- figures, 146
---- romanticism, 150
Coco style, 29
Colour, Giotto’s, 114
Conceptual art, 62, 63
Contour in painting, 160, 161
Copée, 172
Corot and Claude, 150
---- as a draughtsman, 165
Corot’s drawing of a seated woman, 165
Cosima Tura, 176
Cosmati, 99, 100, 104
Cossa, 132
Credi, Lorenzo di, and Dürer, 133
Critic’s function, 189
Cubism, 192
---- and Marchand, 186
---- and Ucello, 124
Daddi, Bernardo, and Giotto, 108_n_
Dante, 2, 97, 98, 108, 110, 116
David, 5
“Decorators,” 190
Degas, 20, 176, 190
---- as a draughtsman, 165
Delacroix and Cézanne, 173
Derain, 158, 159, 193
---- and Marchand, 185
Dickens, 175
Dickey Doyle, 153
Doucet, 158
Drama, Italian, beginning of, 101_n_
Drawing of contours, great examples, 166
---- of the figure, 164
---- of Italian Primitives, 163
---- of Renoir and Ingres compared, 178
----, Persian, 163
Druet’s, M., photographs, 158
Duccio and Giotto, 106
Dürer and the Gothic tradition, 129
---- and Leonardo da Vinci, 127
---- and Lorenzo di Credi, 133
---- and Giovanni Bellini, 133
Dürer and Jacopo de’Barbari, 133
---- and Mantegna, 131, 132
---- and Pollajuolo, 133
---- and Raphael, 127
---- and Schongauer, 132
Dürer’s “Beetle,” 164
---- letters and diary, 127
El Greco and Baroque idea, 135-139
---- and Bernini, 135, 136, 137
---- and British public, 134
---- and Cézanne, 139
----, Poussin and Cézanne, 138, 139
Emotion and form in art, 194, 197
England and French Impressionism, 190
English Art considered, 190
Fatimite textiles, 79
Figure drawing, 164
Filippino Lippi, 163
Flaubert, 199
Flemish and Florentine art, 124
---- painting and Giotto, 110
Florentine art, a characteristic of, 125
---- and Flemish art, 124
Forli, Melozzo da, 104
Form in art, 107
Francesca, Piero della, 4
Franciscan movement and art, 87, 88
Francis, St., 2, 87, 88, 112
French art classic, 158, 159, 184
French, English and Russian art compared, 158
Gamp, Mrs., 97
Gauguin, 158, 175
Germans, the, 129
Ghiberti’s commentary, 87
Giorgione, 175
Giotto and Barnardo Daddi, 108_n_
---- and Blake, in, 142
---- and Cimabue, 103, 106, 107_n_
---- and Cinquecento art, 114
---- and classical architecture, 113
---- and Duccio, 106
---- and European art, 115
---- and Flemish painting, 110
---- and Leonardo da Vinci, 116
---- and Lorenzetti, 113
---- and Masaccio, 113
---- and pre-Raphaelitism, 103
Giotto and Raphael, 115
---- and Rembrandt, 110
---- as draughtsman, 115, 116
Giotto’s colour, 114
---- figure of Joachim, 111
---- invention of Tempera, 105
---- _Pietà_, 110, 198
---- place as an artist, 116
Goethe, 197, 198
Gothic tradition and Dürer, 129, 130
Græco-Roman art, 76, 77, 78
Grunwedel, Dr., 76
Guatemala and Yucatan, 71
Head, Henry, F.R.S., 62
Herbin, 158
Hermitage, 79
Holmes, Mr. C. J., 134
Homer, 97
House, author’s, 180
Houses, architects’, 179
----, builders’, 179
----, dwelling, 180
Huxley, 8
Jacquemart-André collection, 123-126
“Jane Eyre,” 185
_Jeremiah_ of Michelangelo, 23
Johnson, Dr., 65
Joyce, Mr., 69, 73, 75
Kaiser Friedrich Museum, 47, 134
----, the, 47
Karlsruhe Museum, 78
Keats, 147
Keene, Charles, as a draughtsman, 165
Kingsborough, Lord, 71
Kraft’s stonework, 129
Krell, Oswald, 130
Kunsthistorisches Akademie, Vienna, 129
Incas and Aztecs, 70
Ingres, 164
---- and Cézanne, 173
---- as a designer, 163
---- as a draughtsman, 162
----, effect of poverty on his art, 162
Ingres’ drawing, _The Apotheosis of Napoleon_, 163
---- painting and drawing compared, 163
Lecoq, Dr., 76
Leeche’s drawings, 28
Lehmann, Dr., 74
Leonardo da Vinci, 4, 24
---- and Claude, 146
---- and Dürer, 127
---- and Giotto, 116
L’Hote, 158
----, M., writings of, 192
“Liber Veritatis” of Claude, 149
Limoges enamels, 77
Lincoln Cathedral, 78
Line, the function of, in drawing, 160
----, qualities of, 115
----, rarity of great design expressed in, 163
Loewy, Prof., 56, 57
Lorenzetti and Giotto, 113
Malatesta, Sigismondo, 87
Mantegna and Beardsley, 153
---- and Dürer, 131, 132
---- and Rembrandt, 132
Marchand, 158
----, a classic artist, 184
---- and Cézanne, 184
---- and Cubism, 186
---- and Derain, 185
Masaccio and Giotto, 113
Matisse, 158, 193
---- and Chinese art, 158
---- as a draughtsman, 167
Maya art, 71, 72, 73
Melozzo da Forli, 105
Meredith, 28
Mesopotamian art, 79
Michelangelo, 19, 23, 24, 109
---- and Baroque idea, 136, 138
---- and Blake, 141
Middle Ages, 29
Millais’ drawing, 165
Milton, 147
Minzel as a draughtsman, 165
Modigliani as a draughtsman, 167
Monet, 17, 190
Money, Mr., 48
Music, 15
----, psychology of, 199
National Gallery, 134
Nature, 24, 25
Naturalists, 190
Navicella mosaic, 104
Negro and European sculpture, 66
Neolithic art, 63
Nuremberg school, 130
Old Testament and Blake, 140, 141
Ottley’s prints, 142
Oxford movement, 6
_Pall Mall Gazette_, 154
_Parapluies, Les_, by Renoir, 176
Patine, 38, 39
Pelliot, M., 76
Perspective, 124, 125
Picasso, 157, 158, 193
_Pietà_, by Giotto, 110
Pindar, 87
Pliny on painting, 160, 161
Podsnap, Mr., 179
Poetry and art, 194
----, Blake on, 143
Pollajuolo, Antonio and Beardsley, 153
----, 147
---- and Dürer, 133
Pompeii, 30, 79
Post-Impressionism, 194
Post-Impressionists at the Grafton Gallery, 191, 193
----, criticism of, 156, 157
Poussin, 159
---- and Baroque art, 138
---- and Cézanne, 173
----, El Greco, and Cézanne, 138
Pre-Raphaelite movement, 190
Primitives, study of, in England, 198
_Primum Mobile_ in Tarocchi prints, 133
Psychologists and art, 54
Public indifference to art, 168
Racine, 147
Raphael, 19, 164
---- and Dürer, 127
Raphael’s “Transfiguration,” 196, 198
Realistic art, 159
Rembrandt, 5, 20, 147
---- and Claude, 146
---- and Giotto, 110
---- and Mantegna, 132
---- as a draughtsman, 165, 166
Rembrandt’s characteristics, 165
Renaissance, 76
Renoir and Cézanne, 177, 178, 190
---- and Titian, 178
Renoir compared to Giorgione and Titian, 175
Renoir’s “Charpentier Family,” 178
---- “Les Parapluies,” 176, 178
Robida, 153
Rodin, 38
Romans, the, 129
Romantic art, 159
Romanticism, Claude’s, 150
Ross, Dr. Denman, 21
Rossetti’s relationship to Millais, 165
Rousseau, 156
Rowlandson’s style in drawing, 165
Rubens, 164, 175
Ruskin, 14, 38
---- on Claude, 145, 146
S. Bonaventura, 87, 101, 102
S. Francis, 2, 87, 88, 112
_S. Peter’s Crucifixion_, by Giotto, 107
Sassanid art, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80
Schongauer and Dürer, 132
Scrovegni, 110
Sculpture, Greek, 57
Shakespeare, 147
Shaw, Mr. Bernard, 41
Shelley, 42
Sickert, Mr. Walter, 175
Sicily, 77
Siegfried, 153
Sigismondo Malatesta, 87
“Significant Form,” 199
Signorelli and Baroque idea, 138
---- and Florence, 126
---- and Ucello, 126
---- and Umbrian art, 126
Signorelli’s _Holy Family_, 126
Smith, Robertson, 9
Song, psychology of, 199
Spectator of a picture, psychology of, 196, 197
Spencer, Herbert, 8, 9
Stefaneschi, Cardinal, 103, 104, 105, 108_n_
Stein, Dr., 76
Storr’s woodwork, 129, 130
Subject picture, 53
Sung, 32
Tahiti, 175
Tarrocchi engravings, 132
Tempera, Giotto’s invention, 105
Tennyson, 24, 26
Tiepolo, 161, 162
Tintoretto and Blake, 141
Titian, 19, 175
---- and Renoir compared, 178
Tolstoy, 16, 18, 19
Tolstoy’s “What is Art?” 193, 199
Todi, Jacopone di, 87
_Tondo_ of Michelangelo, 23
Tongue, Miss, 57, 59
Tura, Cosima, 177
Turner and Claude, 146
Tussaud, Mme., 5
Ucello, 4
---- and Baldovinetti, 126
---- and Cubism, 124
Ucello and Van Eyck, 124
---- and perspective, 124, 125
---- and Signorelli, 126
Ucello’s “St. George,” 123, 125
Vandyke, 164
Van Eyck and Ucello, 124
---- Gogh, 158
Varnish, 139
Vasari, 87, 169
---- and Ucello, 123
Victorians and art, 65
Viollet-le-Duc, 185
Virgil’s influence on Claude, 148, 152
Von Tschudi, 139
Waldus, Petrus, 99, 100
Watteau, 164
Wells, H. G., 36
“What is Art?” by Tolstoy, 18
Whistler, 7
---- and Beardsley, 154
---- and Claude, 150
---- and Ruskin, 190
Whistler’s Impressionism, 190
Whittier, 26
Young, Brigham, 74
Yucatan and Guatemala, 71
Zola, 5
---- and Cézanne, 172
Zuloaga, Señor, 155
THE END
PRINTED IN ENGLAND BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] From notes of a lecture given to the Fabian Society, 1917.
[2] New Quarterly, 1909.
[3] Rodin is reported to have said, “A woman, a mountain, a horse--they are all the same thing; they are made on the same principles.” That is to say, their forms, when viewed with the disinterested vision of the imaginative life, have similar emotional elements.
[4] I do not forget that at the death of Tennyson the writer in the _Daily Telegraph_ averred that “level beams of the setting moon streamed in upon the face of the dying bard”; but then, after all, in its way the _Daily Telegraph_ is a work of art.
[5] Athenæum, 1919.
[6] Athenæum, 1919.
[7] Reprinted with considerable alterations from “The Great State.” (Harper. 1912.)
[8] Athenæum, 1919.
[9] Burlington Magazine, 1910.
[10] “The Rendering of Nature in Early Greek Art.” By Emmanuel Loewy. Translated by J. Fothergill. Duckworth. 1907.
[11] “Bushman Drawings,” copied by M. Helen Tongue, with a preface by Henry Balfour. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1909. £3 3_s._ net.
[12] This absence of decorative feeling may be due to the irregular and vague outlines of the picture space. It is when the picture must be fitted within determined limits that decoration begins. I have noticed that children’s drawings are never decorative when they have the whole surface of a sheet of paper to draw on, but they will design a frieze with well-marked rhythm when they have only a narrow strip.
[13] This is certainly the case with the Australian Bushmen.
[14] Athenæum, 1920.
[15] Burlington Magazine, 1918.
[16] Thomas A. Joyce, (1) “South American Archæology,” London (Macmillan), 1912; (2) “Mexican Archæology,” London (Lee Warner), 1914; (3) “Central American Archæology,” London and New York (Putnam), 1916.
[17] _The Burlington Magazine_, vol. xvii., p. 22 (April, 1910).
[18] Burlington Magazine, 1910.
[19] G. Migeon, _Gazette des Beaux-Arts_, June, 1905, and “Manuel d’Art Musulman,” p. 226.
[20] I cannot help calling attention, though without any attempt at explaining it, to the striking similarity to these Sassanid and early Mohammedan water jugs shown by an example of Sung pottery lent by Mr. Eumorfopoulos to the recent exhibition at the Burlington Fine Arts Club, Case A, No. 43. Here a very similar form of spout is modelled into a phœnix’s head.
[21] The following, from the Monthly Review, 1901, is perhaps more than any other article here reprinted, at variance with the more recent expressions of my æsthetic ideas. It will be seen that great emphasis is laid on Giotto’s expression of the dramatic idea in his pictures. I still think this is perfectly true so far as it goes, nor do I doubt that an artist like Giotto did envisage such an expression. Where I should be inclined to disagree is that there underlies this article a tacit assumption not only that the dramatic idea may have inspired the artist to the creation of his form, but that the value of the form for us is bound up without recognition of the dramatic idea. It now seems to me possible by a more searching analysis of our experience in front of a work of art to disentangle our reaction to pure form from our reaction to its implied associated ideas.
[22] _Cf._ H. Thode: “Franz von Assisi.”
[23] Dr. J. P. Richter: “Lectures on the National Gallery.”
[24] One picture, however, ascribed by Vasari to Cimabue, namely, the Madonna of the National Gallery, does not bear the characteristics of this group. Dr. Richter’s argument for giving the Rucellai painting to Duccio depends largely on the likeness of this to the Maesta, but there is no reason to cling so closely to Vasari’s attributions. If we except the National Gallery Madonna, which shows the characteristics of the Siennese school, these pictures, including the Rucellai Madonna, will be found to cohere by many common peculiarities not shared by Duccio. Among these we may notice the following: The eye has the upper eyelid strongly marked; it has a peculiar languishing expression, due in part to the large elliptical iris (Duccio’s eyes have a small, bright, round iris with a keen expression); the nose is distinctly articulated into three segments; the mouth is generally slewed round from the perpendicular; the hands are curiously curved, and in all the Madonnas clutch the supports of the throne; the hair bows seen upon the halos have a constant and quite peculiar shape; the drapery is designed in rectilinear triangular folds, very different from Duccio’s more sinuous and flowing line. The folds of the drapery where they come to the contour of the figure have no effect upon the form of the outline, an error which Duccio never makes. Finally, the thrones in all these pictures have a constant form; they are made of turned wood with a high footstool, and are seen from the side; Duccio’s is of stone and seen from the front. That the Rucellai Madonna has a morbidezza which is wanting in the earlier works can hardly be considered a sufficient distinction to set against the formal characteristics. It is clearly a later work, painted probably about the year 1300, and Cimabue, like all the other artists of the time, was striving constantly in the direction of greater fusion of tones.
[25] I should speak now both with greater confidence and much greater enthusiasm of Cimabue. The attempt of certain scholars to dispose of him as a myth has broken down. The late Mr. H. P. Horne found that the documents cited by Dr. Richter to prove that Duccio executed the Rucellai Madonna referred to another picture. I had also failed in my estimate to consider fully the superb crucifix by Cimabue in the Museum of Sta. Croce, a work of supreme artistic merit. In general my defence of Cimabue, though right enough as far as it goes, appears to me too timid and my estimate of his artistic quality far too low (1920).
[26] The important position here assigned to the Roman school has been confirmed by the subsequent discovery of Cavallini’s frescoes in Sta. Cecilia at Rome (1920).
[27] “Drunken with the love of compassion of Christ, the blessed Francis would at times do such-like things as this; for the passing sweet melody of the spirit within him, seething over outwardly, did often find utterance in the French tongue, and the strain of the divine whisper that his ear had caught would break forth into a French song of joyous exulting.” Then pretending with two sticks to play a viol, “and making befitting gestures, (he) would sing in French of our Lord Jesus Christ.”--“The Mirror of Perfection,” edited by P. Sabatier, transl. by S. Evans.
[28] “Florentine Painters of the Renaissance and Central Italian Painters of the Renaissance,” by B. Berenson.
[29] This was the first “representation” of the kind in Italy, and is of interest as being the beginning of the Italian Drama, and also of that infinite series of allegorical pageants, sometimes sacred, sometimes secular, which for three centuries played such a prominent part in city life and affected Italian art very intimately.
[30] The Master of the Cecilia altar-piece has been the object of much research since this article was written, and a considerable number of important works are now ascribed to him with some confidence. He has been tentatively identified with Buffalonaceo by Dr. Siren. See _Burl. Mag._, December, 1919; January, October, 1920.
[31] This quality is to be distinguished from that conscious naturalistic study of atmospheric envelopment which engrossed the attention of some artists of the cinquecento; it is a decorative quality which may occur at any period in the development of painting if only an artist arises gifted with a sufficiently delicate sensitiveness to the surface-quality of his work.
[32] I cannot recall any example in pre-Giottesque art.
[33] Derived, no doubt, but greatly modified, from Cimabue’s treatment of the subject at Assisi.
[34] The attribution of the Stefaneschi altar-piece to Giotto is much disputed and some authorities give it to Bernardo Daddi. I still incline to the idea that it is the work of Giotto and the starting point of Bernardo Daddi’s style (1920).
[35] His name was Bianchi. ‘Faut il se plaindre,’ says M. Maurice Denis in his Théories, ‘qu’un Bianchi, plutôt que les laisser périr, ait ajouté un peu de la froidure de Flandrin aux fresques de Giotto à Santa Croce.’
[36] This passage now seems to me to underestimate the work of Giotto’s predecessors with which we are now much better acquainted (1920).
[37] Burlington Fine Arts Club Exhibition of Florentine Paintings, 1919.
[38] Burlington Magazine, 1914.
[39] Introduction to Dürer’s Letters and Diary. Merrymount Press, Boston (1909).
[40] See Plate, where I have also added Dürer’s version of the subject. This is of course a new design and not a copy of Mantegna’s drawing, though I suspect it is based on a vague memory of it. In any case it shows admirably the distinguishing points of Dürer’s methods of conception, his love of complexity, and his accumulation of decorative detail.
[41] Athenæum, 1920.
[42] Burlington Magazine, 1904.