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Title: Bernini and other studies in the history of art
Author: Richard Norton
Release date: November 24, 2025 [eBook #77325]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: The Macmillan Company, 1914
Credits: Richard Tonsing, deaurider, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BERNINI AND OTHER STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF ART ***
BERNINI AND OTHER STUDIES
[Illustration: [Logo]]
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS
ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
TORONTO
[Illustration: PLATE I.]
BERNINI AND OTHER STUDIES
IN THE
HISTORY OF ART
BY
RICHARD NORTON
MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON
=NEW YORK=
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN AND COMPANY
1914
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1914,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1914.
=Norwood Press=
J. S. Cushing Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
PREFACE
The essays presented in the following pages are the product of no hasty
thought. I am grateful to the kind friends who have encouraged their
publication, and to the publishers for giving them so attractive a form.
The choice of illustrations has been difficult. It has seemed best,
however, to reproduce in full the little-known sketches of Bernini
showing the development, in his mind, of the design for the Piazza of
St. Peter’s, and the sculptor’s models wrought by his own hands. For the
rest I have thought that it would be more serviceable for the reader to
have a few typical examples illustrating the main points of the text
rather than a larger, and perhaps more confusing, selection of subjects
from the almost inexhaustible wealth of available material. I am under
deep obligation for the generous permission to include among the
illustrations material in the Brandegee Collection (at Faulkner Farm,
Brookline, Massachusetts) hitherto unpublished. The heliotype plates
were prepared and printed under the direction of Mr. William C. Ramsay,
of Boston.
RICHARD NORTON.
LONDON, July, 1914.
CONTENTS
BERNINI
I. AN ESTIMATE OF BERNINI 3
II. A COLLECTION OF SCULPTOR’S MODELS BY BERNINI 44
III. BERNINI’S DESIGNS FOR THE PIAZZA OF ST. PETER’S 50
ASPECTS OF THE ART OF SCULPTURE
I. THE ART OF PORTRAITURE, PARTICULARLY IN SCULPTURE 57
II. PHEIDIAS AND MICHAEL ANGELO 93
III. A HEAD OF ATHENA FOUND AT CYRENE 135
GIORGIONE
I. PAINTINGS ATTRIBUTED TO GIORGIONE 155
II. THE TRUE GIORGIONE 172
INDEX 215
PLATES
PLATES I AND II. PORTRAITS OF BERNINI
NUMBER
I. Bernini. Pencil Drawing, by himself (p. 12);
Brandegee Collection _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
II. Portrait, formerly thought to be of Velasquez,
probably of Bernini (p. 12, footnote 3);
Capitoline Gallery, Rome 4
PLATES III-X. WORKS OF BERNINI
III. Æneas and Anchises (p. 16); Borghese
Collection, Rome 8
IV. David (p. 17); Borghese Collection 12
V. Proserpina and Pluto (p. 17); Borghese
Collection 16
VI. Apollo and Daphne (p. 17); Borghese Collection 18
VII. Angel with the Crown of Thorns (p. 25); Church
of S. Andrea delle Fratte, Rome 22
VIII. Angel with a Scroll (p. 25); Church of S.
Andrea delle Fratte, Rome 24
IX. Saint Theresa (p. 30); Church of S. Maria
della Vittoria, Rome 30
X. Louis XIV (p. 39); Versailles 38
PLATES XI-XXVII. SCULPTOR’S MODELS BY BERNINI; BRANDEGEE COLLECTION
XI. Female figure in relief, with helmet (p. 46,
No. 1) 44
XII. Figure of Longinus, for St. Peter’s (p. 46,
No. 2) 44
XIII. Putti, for the decoration of the piers in St.
Peter’s (p. 47, Nos. 3 and 4) 44
XIV. Two saints, for the Ciborio in the Cappella
del Sacramento in St. Peter’s (p. 47, Nos.
5, 7) 46
XV. Two saints, for the Ciborio in the Cappella
del Sacramento in St. Peter’s (p. 47, Nos.
6, 8) 46
XVI. Bas-relief with half-figures (p. 47, No. 9) 46
XVII. Half figure of a Triton holding a woman on his
shoulders (p. 47, No. 10) 46
XVIII. Study for the head of the St. Jerome in the
Duomo of Siena (p. 47, No. 11) 46
XIX-XXIV. Models of Angels (pp. 47, 48, Nos. 12–21) 48
XXV. Standing male figure in high relief (p. 49,
No. 22) 48
XXVI. Oval bas-relief of the Virgin (p. 49, No. 23) 48
XXVII. Standing female figure, and standing Angel (p.
49, Nos. 24, 25) 48
PLATES XXVIII-XL. BERNINI’S DESIGNS FOR THE PIAZZA OF ST. PETER’S;
BRANDEGEE COLLECTION
XXVIII. Orb, surmounted by a cross; outline of a
crucified figure (p. 51, Nos. 1, 2) 50
XXIX. Outline plan of St. Peter’s church correlated
with a figure on a cross above lines
suggesting the colonnades (p. 52, Nos. 3, 4) 50
XXX. More complete correlation of the crucified
figure with St. Peter’s church (p. 52, Nos.
5, 6) 50
XXXI. Outline elevation of north half of the facade
of St. Peter’s, with the colonnade (p. 52,
No. 7) 52
XXXII. Sketches of the north colonnade (p. 53, No. 8) 52
XXXIII. More elaborate sketch of the north colonnade
(p. 53, No. 9) 52
XXXIV. Outline sketch of the outer end of the north
arm of the colonnade, treated as if in two
stories (p. 53, No. 10) 52
XXXV. Interior of inner end of north arm of
colonnade (p. 53, No. 11) 52
XXXVI. Plan and elevation of the Cortile di S. Damaso
(p. 53, No. 12) 54
XXXVII. Façade of St. Peter’s, with both colonnades
treated as if in two stories (p. 53, No. 13) 54
XXXVIII. View looking east from the front of St.
Peter’s (p. 54, No. 14) 54
XXXIX. The Borgo, looking toward St. Peter’s (p. 54,
No. 15) 54
XL. Correlation of the Piazza with the Orb (p. 54,
No. 16) 54
PLATES XLI-LI. PORTRAITS
XLI. Sheik-el-Beled, statue of wood, Fourth Dynasty
(p. 57); Boulak Museum, Cairo 58
XLII. Sheik-el-Beled, head of statue shown in plate
XLI 60
XLIII. Portrait, so-called Scipio type, now
identified as priest of Isis (p. 57); Museum
of Fine Arts, Boston 64
XLIV. Pericles (p. 78); British Museum 66
XLV. So-called Menander (p. 82); Brandegee
Collection 72
XLVI. Periander (p. 82); Vatican Museum 74
XLVII. Unknown Roman, terra-cotta (p. 85); Museum of
Fine Arts, Boston 78
XLVIII. Unknown old man, Roman (p. 85); Brandegee
Collection 84
XLIX. Antoninus Pius (p. 88); Brandegee Collection 86
L. Roman girl (p. 90); Museum of Fine Arts,
Boston 88
LI. Sabina? (p. 90); Brandegee Collection 90
PLATES LII-LIX. PHEIDIAS AND MICHAEL ANGELO
LII. Caryatid from the Erechtheum, Athens (p. 101);
British Museum 96
LIII. Madonna and Child, by Michael Angelo (p. 116);
Bruges 100
LIV. The Victor, by Michael Angelo (p. 116);
National Museum, Florence 106
LV. Bacchus with Satyr, by Michael Angelo (p.
116); National Museum, Florence 112
LVI. Eros, by Michael Angelo (p. 118); South
Kensington Museum 118
LVII. Ares and other Divinities (p. 118); Frieze of
the Parthenon, Athens 124
LVIII. So-called Athena Medici (p. 119); École des
Beaux-Arts, Paris 126
LIX. Madonna and Child, by Michael Angelo,
unfinished (p. 131); Church of S. Lorenzo,
Florence 130
PLATES LX, LXI. CYRENE ATHENA
LX. Profile view of head (p. 135); Cyrene 136
LXI. Front view of head 144
PLATES LXII-LXIX. PAINTINGS BY GIORGIONE
LXII. The Judgment of Solomon (p. 172); Kingston
Lacy, England 162
LXIII. Adoration of the Magi, or Epiphany (p. 175);
National Gallery, London 168
LXIV. Shepherd’s Offering (p. 180); in the Lord
Allandale Collection, London 174
LXV. The Storm, gypsy woman and soldier in the
foreground (p. 181); Giovanelli Palace,
Venice 180
LXVI. The Three Philosophers (p. 181); Vienna 186
LXVII. Head of Christ bearing the Cross (p. 185);
Gardner Collection, Boston 194
LXVIII. Portrait (p. 202); Wood Collection, Temple
Newsam, England 202
LXIX. Madonna and Child (p. 204); Vienna 204
BERNINI
I. AN ESTIMATE OF BERNINI
During the last hundred years there has come a great change in the
feeling of most people towards the art of the different epochs of the
Renaissance. Whereas our grandfathers and our great-grandfathers held
Carracci and Guido and others of the same time in high esteem, we are
now taught that these later men are of little value or interest in
comparison with the artists of the fifteenth century, and even the most
halting and stuttering “Primitive” is held of more worth than the more
able masters of the seventeenth century. This change is natural enough,
but betokens a lack of true understanding of the purpose and powers of
the fine arts.
The altered mental attitude in religious matters which renders most
people incapable of feeling the appeal of the mystical fervour of the
seventeenth century explains in a measure why the earlier work is
preferred; and added to this is the effect of the development of
archæological training which has given rise to an interest in the mere
search for origins—a search that has done infinite harm in blinding the
eyes of students to the fact that, for the world at large, it is far
more important to see whither life is carrying us than from what slow,
groping, and inexplicable protoplasm and haphazard chance it sprung. The
teachers of our universities go on in their dull round, like Dervishes,
repeating that the Parthenon was the most perfect expression of Greek
art, and there are those who cannot see the beauty of the silver vases
from Boscoreale because they choose to call them Roman. Without doubt
there are many sound reasons for the purely archæological study of
classic art, and recently a small but perceptive band of scholars has
raised Roman art from the ignorant neglect into which it had fallen and
given it the proper position due to any such able expression of great
ideas; this justifies the hope that the worth of the later Italian
schools will become once more manifest, not again to be forgotten.
The idea that the art of any civilized people rises by a steady and
constantly more perfect progression to one glorious peak of perfection
and then falls by rapid and recurring blunders to a waste of meaningless
effort is, I believe, due to the too frequent mistake of considering the
monuments of the arts as separate entities and as self-ordained rather
than as indices of vital currents of thought and life. The English
dictionary is not synonymous with English literature. Nor does the
will-o’-the-wisp phrase “art for art’s sake” mean that each work of art
is a unique and inexplicable phenomenon. Its true meaning is that the
artist, be he poet or sculptor or musician—no matter what form his art
takes—finds the only adequate expression of himself in the forms and
under the governance of the laws of the art which he follows. By so far
as he follows these laws is his work intelligible to other men; by so
far as he finds new combinations for the forms and new adaptations of
the laws to meet the new circumstances of ever changing life is he
original and great. When Shakespeare or Keats wrote a sonnet the verses
were not produced by them merely for the sake of using a certain
complicated formula of fourteen lines to make certain statements, nor
when Pheidias carved the Athena or Praxiteles the Hermes was it merely
with the idea of reproducing the human form in stone.
[Illustration: PLATE II.]
Had such been the motive of these poets and sculptors their results
would have had small value; but each one of them had something to say
that he could best express in the form chosen, some feeling towards life
he wished to share with others, and in this outgiving he steadily sought
to perfect the form that held his idea. The care he lavished on the
verse and marble so that the expression of this thought might be the
completest possible and truest to his idea, the delight in making his
chosen art conform to the laws of language or of gravity, while at the
same time it held the thought as a nest holds an egg, _that_ was art for
art’s sake, and a very different matter from mere technical dexterity.
All the arts are alike means of conveying ideas from brain to brain and
from the past and forgotten generations to those not yet thought of. No
one school ever told the whole truth, but only that part of it maybe
which local circumstances enable it to see. Each of them, from the
earliest which faded away before recorded time, to the latest which
looks eagerly forward to to-morrow with the hope of new accomplishment
and absorption in new truths discovered, is but as the searchlight
casting its sharp-defined ray through the immeasurable dark. The flames
of Priam’s pyre crimsoning the night which hung over the “topless
towers” were not marked on the Argive hills, but the message was flashed
hither and yon over the star-tracked sea, raising now hopes now fears,
till at Mycenæ no answering flame was lit, but instead the young Phœnix
was born.
And as no one school can answer all the questions, so no one single
pundit can tell all the truth even of his own school. In each honest,
unshamming workman there is something of truth, something others long
ago thrilled to or that others yet to come may also feel, something that
he knows with a clarity and conviction not to be equalled by any other.
In a sense he does express his time, but neither the artist nor any man
else is merely the product of his time, and the truly great ones go
ahead of it, following the gleam of the divine spark which each man is
born with to shelter in his heart as best he may. If it keep alight, by
God’s grace, his life becomes in truth art for art’s sake, and he is one
of the successful runners in the torch race across the great divide of
life that separates the hopeless past from the hopeful future.
Of such there are many to spur on the weary and to guide the strayed
back to the beacon path. In every man who has appealed to the masses,
whose ears have rung and whose heart has swelled with the loud cries of
“well done,” there is, be sure, something of the ultimate divine
truth—some no mockery—some sincerity which heated in the fires of his
soul and beaten with long pain and trouble on the anvil of his heart,
shall be, if we can grasp it, a treasure undiminishing so long as we
have breath to live.
Such an one was Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini, whose life was almost
coterminous with the seventeenth century (1598–1680). Honoured during
life by three courts, and at that time court patronage was a very
different thing to what it is now, he has of late been treated with a
disregard which is unjustified, and has been blamed for faults which
were not his. These false judgments can be traced back to the envy of
some of his contemporaries, who on the one hand accused him of ignorance
of the mechanics of his art and of stupidity of design, and on the
other, oftentimes, did their best to copy him. But it gives us pause
when we consider that notwithstanding the forces of jealousy backed by
powerful influence that were brought to bear on him he remained in the
eyes of artistic Italy during his sixty and more working years the
“Michael Angelo of the seicento.” And this estimate of him, if we lay
aside preconceived notions and formulas handed down to us by our
parents, and look at his work with our own eyes and study it in the
light of our own knowledge, will turn out to be the right one. Only the
rash and heedless dare say of one who acquired such admiration in his
own day that his work was poor and unworthy. And yet this is what is
said. His style is said to be extravagant and artificial and his violent
material effects are said to show that he was unable to express thought.
Even the group of Apollo and Daphne is held to exhibit his ignorance of
the proper domain of sculpture. It seems to me more likely that the
judgment of the artists and critics of the seventeenth century is apt to
be the correct one.
What would be artificial in an artist to-day was not so in Bernini, but
was, if we could see it and free our hearts from the bonds of tradition,
the most honest and simplest expression of a genius who had a new
message for those who would take the trouble to understand. Frequently
his work is criticised for not conforming to the “severe laws” of good
sculpture and in this criticism lies the common fallacy of letting
personal taste usurp the place of critical judgment. There are, of
course, laws of gravity, and of stress or strain to which a sculptor
must conform because they are in the nature of the material he uses,
just as there are optical laws which the painter should know; but there
are no laws to fix what the artist may or may not represent or the forms
which he should give to his representations. Personal taste is very well
in its place, but it is not criticism; and severe laws are good training
for our powers, but dependence on them leads to stagnation and not to
discovery. Because the stage-coach follows the old gray road is it
artificial of the aeroplane to soar through the trackless ether?
Probably most critics, when they speak of severe laws as fixed and
irrevocable, have in mind those followed by the Greeks of the fifth
century B.C.—surely of no later time, for what of the violent material
effects of Pergamon? But suppose portraits of the present-day business
kings were carved according to the one-time valid classic laws?
Strangely unlike the subject would such portraits be!
There is nothing ultimately right in severity nor ultimately wrong in
violence. The money-changers were not led from the temple by a ribbon
round their necks. The pioneer and path breaker must be violent. This
was Bernini’s work and purpose, and it is no more reasonable to blame
him for the insincerity and stupidity of his followers than to blame
Columbus for lynch law. As of many another, Bernini’s fame has been
dimmed by the follies and shams of his would-be imitators. Many tried to
imitate and surpass him, but it was not to be done. He had the quality
of genius which is more than the power of taking infinite pains. That
his pupils had, but they merely exaggerated the form of the outer husk
of his work till it lost all semblance of truth and became nothing but
untruth and error. In him was the divine spark, the light of which
showed new worlds for sculpture to work in and the heat of which moulded
his material into the eternal forms of beauty.
[Illustration: PLATE III.]
The study of Bernini is established on very strong foundations, and the
misinterpretation of his aims is inexcusable; for we have sure records
of every kind concerning him. From his surprising youth to his busy old
age we can trace his progress and the development of his powers. Of all
his numerous works scarcely one is lost, and such as have disappeared
are of no importance whatever in comparison with what remains. The full
account of his life was written by two contemporaries, one of them his
son, and this is amplified by many letters and other papers—accounts of
payments for his work, stories of his doings, plans for work sometimes
never undertaken and other times finally accomplished by himself or his
pupils, that have been turned up into the light after long sleep in
Italian archives.[1] It is all before us, and each chapter of his life
can be recalled from the Elysian fields. We grow eager with the same
hopes, we feel despondent at the same broken faith and pledges, we grow
interested in the same companionships, we rest after the same
magnificent accomplishments, and to the end we are keen in search of new
worlds to open up.
Even the look of him we know; what the appearance was as he moved among
the Popes and Kings, the Cardinals and Princes of Europe. What it was
for a man they saw we too can see. What it was of a heart he felt
dragging him on with engine throbs we can guess when our amazed eyes
rest on the Saint Theresa, the bust of Louis XIV, or the throne in St.
Peter’s. A strongly built, dark man, his thick hair whitening in old
age, but the quick eye never losing its brilliancy and piercing glance.
Of simple fashion in dress, as the pictures and drawings by himself and
others show him, for all his love of rich stuffs and floating draperies.
A ready and pleasant wit made him the best of company, though at times
withdrawn into himself by some mystical absorption. For just as the
great religious leaders, so the great artists are at times lifted by
some ecstasy away from actual surrounding fact and lost in worlds only
visible to their inner eye, and though visible never to be told of. At
other times his spirits broke forth in irrepressible gaiety which though
it might form itself as satire was never malevolent. Generous to a
fault, and always ready to lift up a friend, he was implacable towards
his enemies, and rightly showed them no mercy. He had the strength to be
a good hater,—not feebly excusing hypocrisy and meanness because the
hypocrite was weak or knew no better, but hating, not the poor miserable
individual, but his qualities, and, to the best of his own power,
destroying them. Proud and self-confident, but willing to answer
questions or to explain what might seem faults. A lonely man; one with
many acquaintances but few friends. Too sincere not to be shocked by the
heartless brutishness of the woman he loved, too honest a workman not to
be hurt by the attacks of envy, but never losing heart, always following
his ideal and seeking to eternize the beautiful visions of his bright
soul.
There are many portraits of him, some done with pencil or pen or graver,
others more elaborate oil paintings. They are the work of his friends,
or done by himself, and show him at various periods of life from young
manhood to old age. Naturally they vary in many ways, but the variance
is for the most part in the details of the outer shell of the man. The
thick dark locks of the youth give place to the thin gray hairs of the
old man; the full cheeks grow sunken and wrinkles frame the piercing
eyes; but in all the portraits certain characteristics remain constant.
A pencil drawing in the Galleria Nazionale in Rome is the best of the
youthful portraits.[2] It is by himself, done when he was some twenty
years old. It shows a finely shaped head with thick, waving hair. The
face is strongly modelled, and all the features noticeable; the nose
large and slightly bent, the chin square and strong. Lips full and
sensitive, but vigorous. Most noticeable of all are the eyes, large and
dark, set rather deeply under heavy brows, looking straightly and sadly
but imperturbably on the world. A face of power yet of sweetness. A man
to ask after and to watch what he will do in this world. Rather older we
see him in two drawings in the private collection of Prince Chigi in
Rome.[3] Life was testing him severely we know, but the eyes are still
steady, are still bright with the inner light that was leading him on,
and the mouth is still sweet and undrawn.
Of about the same time, or a little later maybe, is the oil portrait
supposed to be by himself (though for this there is little proof), in
the Uffizi.[4] No change yet in the character except in a strengthening
and making permanent the good qualities of his youth. The man has found
himself. Many years go by before we again see him face to face.
In the Gallery of St. Luke[5] and in the possession of Count Andreozzi
in Rome[6] are portraits of him in his last years, and a very fine
pencil drawing by himself in the Brandegee Collection (Plate I). All his
works were completed, his visits to the courts of Europe were over, he
is the “Michael Angelo of the seicento,” and yet he is just as simple in
his dress and pose as ever. Obviously a great man whose ideals were so
much greater to him than what he had accomplished that no possible
flattery could disturb the balance of his mental poise. One change there
is in the face more to be remarked than the higher forehead and the
fuller chin. The eyes are still bright and level, the mouth still as
soft and strong, but the sadness of expression has gone. Had he
realized, I wonder, that soon all the sorrows of life would be hidden
and lost under the gray church floor? Though the glad light of the sun
no longer shone upon his life his face is bright with a mystical light
as of the ranging stars which for countless thousands of years have
guided the feet of man.[7]
[Illustration: PLATE IV.]
It may be thought that I have given a fanciful interpretation to the
change that came in his face from youth to old age, but it can be shown
that some such thoughts as I have suggested moved him. About 1650, at a
time when his enemies had attacked his work in St. Peter’s and caused
him great financial damage and still greater hurt to his natural and
proper pride, the idea came to him to carve an allegory that should show
the ages what his feeling towards his critics, towards art and towards
life truly was. Allegories in painting or sculpture are usually, owing
to the fixed limitations of these arts, unintelligible, but no artist
ever lived who could have done as well as Bernini in making clear his
idea with the material he used. Even if we did not have his own words
about this group his thought would be seen, for his amazing command of
technique and his knowledge of statics made it possible for him to
combine figures with a freedom rarely equalled, and thereby to express
himself with an ease and fulness beyond the powers of most sculptors of
any time. Only one of the two figures which were to form the group was
ever finished, but there is a sepia sketch showing the whole
composition.
In it we see the winged figure of Time hovering above a beautiful woman
from whose nude body he lifts a mantle. She is Truth; in her hand she
holds an image of the Sun darting bright rays in all directions. This
group meant much to him; was perhaps the most personal and truly
expressive work he ever made, and till his death he kept it by him. In
his will he says that not without reason has he kept this statue of
Truth unveiled by Time which he wishes to remain for ever in the
possession of his descendants who, as they look on it, may remember that
the most lovely of the virtues is Truth and that if one works under her
guidance Time in the end reveals her. Are the “severe laws” of the
ancients any more severe than this rule Bernini held before himself and
wished his descendants never to forget, and is it sensible because at
first sight his work seems strange and unaccountable to damn it with
such words as “fantastic” or “baroque”?
The group was never finished, but in a dirty courtyard off the Corso in
Rome, neglected as only the Italians know how to neglect such things
till some outsider stirs their jaded appreciation to new interest, is
the Discovered Truth. Time on hasty wings flies by, but as Bernini knew,
Truth stays always, heedless of neglect, the fixed pole for all those
who set their aim beyond the bounds within which their earthly eyes
would prison them. And knowing this, it came to pass that his old face
was lit with a peaceful smile as he came to the evening of life.
Bernini’s work is of unusual variety, but the best of it falls into four
classes. There are the wonderful groups illustrating old world myths
that he produced in the full joy of life in his youth; there are the
amazing religious monuments in which he embodied with unrivalled skill
the mystical intensity of the religion whose chief priests he served;
there are the superbly joyous settings for fountains which though the
waters might dry up and cease to flow will still, so long as the stone
lasts, echo their murmuring music; and there are the long series of
magnificent busts on which he was employed from his very earliest days
to his latest. He was besides author, painter, illustrator, and
architect. I have no intention of cataloguing the long series of work
his never idle hand produced, but wish merely to point out some of the
forgotten beauties that he brought into being. In a measure, it is
possible to trace the source of his inspiration and in lesser degree to
foresee its outcome.
His father, Pietro, a Florentine, was a sculptor of no mean power before
him. His mother was of Naples, and in that southern, passionate city
Gian Lorenzo was born in 1598 and there he passed his first years. Some
day another Mendel may be able to establish what were the forces of
Florentine and Neapolitan blood that lay dormant in his young brain, but
for us is no such certainty, and we can only guess at the effect of the
father’s artistic occupations and the mother’s quick blood. In 1604,
when the boy was but six years old, his father moved to Rome, the city
his son was destined to impress with his genius as no city but Athens
has ever been impressed by a single artist. Working at first for his
father, he was only fourteen years old when he drew to himself the
attention of all the _connoscenti_ by two busts which, as Annibale
Carracci said, any artist after years of work might have been proud to
make. The admiration Bernini won for these works, to which I shall
return, led, as was the good habit of those days, to the patronage of
the Borghese pope, Paul V.
In the Borghese villa, the ruined grandeur of which is still the chief
pride of Rome, the young Bernini was surrounded by beautiful antique
marbles, some of which he was called upon to restore. This familiarity
with ancient sculpture, and this subjection in the task of restoration
of his own spirit to that of classic masters, had a very marked effect
on him—an effect which in its deepest sense lasted throughout his long
life, though its more obvious and visible manifestation soon waned and
faded away. That is to say, while his work at all times showed a perfect
comprehension of some of the fundamental laws of the material out of
which sculpture is formed, laws that were first clearly expounded by the
Greeks, it is only in a few of his earliest, and for a youth miraculous,
works that he shows a tendency to imitate classic form.
Four wonderful works were produced for the Borghese family. The Æneas
and Anchises (Plate III), the David (Plate IV), the Rape of Proserpina
(Plate V), and the exquisite group of Apollo and Daphne (Plate VI). All
these were finished when he was only twenty-seven. Realizing this, the
comparison of him with Michael Angelo no longer seems exaggerated, but
one sees further that no such comparison can perform the ordinary
service of all such juxtapositions, which is to afford a scale of better
or worse, for the two masters are supreme, each in his own individual
and original way, and incomparable.
[Illustration: PLATE V.]
Opinion may easily differ in regard to the first three of the works just
mentioned. To me the Æneas is the least pleasing and the David the least
successful artistically. The faults of both may be in part due to the
fact that in each case Bernini’s imagination was to a certain degree
hampered by work of other men which he seems to have set himself to
surpass, and even though it may be granted that he did surpass his
models, he would have done better, as in the Proserpina and Daphne, to
let his own genius lead him whither it would and ignore other
suggestion. The models I refer to are, in the case of the Æneas, the
Christ by Michael Angelo in Santa Maria sopra Minerva and for the David
the Borghese Warrior now in the Louvre, both works of small merit.[8]
The reason the Æneas seems to me unpleasing is because of the weakness
and unheroic look of the faces and figures, but others may not feel
this, and the skill of the group is undoubted. The lack of success in
the David is due to a slight failure in understanding the Greek motive
that Bernini was copying. Whether or not he had in mind the Borghese
Warrior as he carved this figure is a matter of slight importance. He
was in any case representing a single figure in a position of strongly
marked action, a problem that Myron magnificently solved in the
Discobolus. The Borghese Warrior is by no means so successful. The David
would rival the Discobolus had Bernini not made one mistake. The figure
is turned to the wrong side. As he stands, the right arm drawn back, the
left hand holding the stone in the sling in front of the body, the sling
must fall loose and dead, the body must again be flung forward and the
right arm swung upwards before the youth can get the momentum to hurl
the stone at his enemy. Had Bernini turned the figure the other way with
the left hand behind and the right in front of the body, this sense of
ineffectiveness in the pose would not have existed, and the whole body
would have been tensely set at the moment of rest between the action of
drawing back for the aim and the instantaneously following motion of the
cast.[9]
Though such slight criticism may be passed on these two works, the other
two, the Proserpina and Daphne are not open to any similar attack. They
are magnificent, and compel admiration even from those whose training
would tend to limit their preferences to work of another type. Never was
the spirit of the two stories more fully understood or more adequately
rendered. Never was marble managed in more masterful fashion and given
such flux and flow of life. One’s breath catches as one looks, for it
seems no longer a work of art before one’s eyes, but life itself. There
is the dark, passionate rape of Proserpine, her splendid soft body
shrinking and twisting in the grasp of the undeniable, compelling God of
the underworld. There is the sweet, sad loss of Daphne, her exquisite
springtime figure fading and changing into the rustling silver leaves in
fright at the too hasty claim of her lover. Her face is still lovely,
though the wide eyes and open mouth show her fear, but is there nothing
in her fear of loss of her dear pursuer? And what of him? Not to be
thought of as Olympian brother to the cruel, forceful Pluto. His face
and action betoken the tenderness that would save the woman he loves
from the heartless folly she would thoughtlessly commit. In the one
group the storm and rush of passion; in the other the tender restraint
of love. Both purely Greek and classic, and both carved with such
consummate mastery that we forget the marble and see only the dark
Tartarean glow and hear only the whispering of the sad leaves.
[Illustration: PLATE VI.]
The perfection of technique displayed in the works of Bernini’s youthful
years is obvious to anyone with the slightest knowledge of sculpture.
His knowledge of anatomy must have been almost instinctive, while he
used the chisel with an ease that few painters could rival with a brush.
His understanding, too, of balance and composition and of the forms the
marble could be given was a revelation, and infinitely enlarged the
field of sculpture. As a mere group, the Daphne has never been
surpassed, and Bernini himself recognised that, at least from the point
of view of technique, none of his later works were any more marvellous.
The spirit and character, however, of the later work are very different.
It is worth noting that his method of production differs greatly from
that of his predecessors. Hundreds of sepia drawings by him still exist
which show the fertility of his invention and the labour he spent in
getting the best design for his works. There are also many terra cotta
models for his statues, and in all of these we see a directness in the
way he approached his subject that differentiates him from the
forerunners in the art. Among the Greeks, among the painters at least,
it was not uncommon to think of the body and the drapery as separate and
to draw or model the first entirely nude and then afterwards to put
drapery over it. This habit was common enough during the Renaissance,
and the studies of such men as Dürer and Leonardo show that it was not
confined to the lesser men whose lack of skill and knowledge was helped
by such double process.
But among all the hundreds of sketches on paper and models in
terra-cotta that are left us of Bernini’s work there is scarcely a trace
of this method of procedure. He visualized each work in endless
different ways, making rapid but most skilful studies of them all, but
he saw the figure each time completed. The figures and drapery and
setting were one indivisible whole to him, and his uncommon knowledge of
anatomy, and the rare clearness of his mental vision, made it possible
for him when the final form of the work was fixed upon to work at it
from the outside inwards, and not, as in something built of blocks, from
the inside outwards. And while his sketches differ in this regard from
those of most other artists, the variety of them, especially the very
numerous ones for the same monument, show the pitch of excellence to
which art had arrived, for these sketches are no longer the record of
the artist’s search to learn _how_, but of his eager search _how best_.
Not that Bernini was unique in this. The fertility of invention of such
men as Domenico Tiepolo is as that of a tree putting forth leaves, but
no other artist illustrates these qualities and methods more completely
and masterfully than our Gian Lorenzo.
I have mentioned above the originality displayed by men such as Michael
Angelo and Bernini. Many another name could be added to these two, but
it is not of men I wish to speak, but of this quality of originality,
this crucible from which the old is drawn forth new, this Spring season
of the mind which clothes the old, dry stumps with fresh life. The word
is so often misused about the artists of to-day that its real
significance is lost and true originality is too often imitated by a
cheaper, rottener stuff. Every one of us is original in some degree. No
one, unless he be mentally dead, sees or feels or believes as his father
or grandfathers did before him. It may be the old belief was more
correct and the old eyes were sharper than the new. Only the purblind
and myopic think that all the early stages were wrong and that the
solitary Present is alone right. Were this so, how hopelessly wrong this
same Present would soon be! What a hideous precipice of error would this
life’s painful course appear! As in life, so it is in Art, and all
artists are original who are genuine and honest, who are spurred on only
by their ideals and their love for their work—who give up worshipping
the xoana and idols of a past day. It may be suggested that there is
little difference, or perhaps even none, between one’s own ideal and any
other suggested to us by some wrought image, whether in stone or verse
is no matter. But there is. There is the difference of life. The light
of one is of the dying embers, but the light of the other is of the
rising Sun which shows the path we follow till our feet grow slower and
slower, till at the last they halt and stop fixed. While the idol
remains but the symbol of the ideal it is right. When it becomes the God
it is wrong, or when doubt has cut its roots and sapped its strength and
we pay it service merely because to do so has become an easy habit. So
it is we come to see that the originality of these artists was not mere
novelty, but was truthfulness. It represents their beliefs, and what you
believe you believe for yourself alone. It shows us what their real,
sure-founded and enduring hopes and aims were. Mere novelty cannot be
believed in because it is accidental. It has neither root nor promise of
flower. It is the mirage of the salt desert, and it is this mere
queerness, mere strain, mere novelty which is too often mistaken for
originality. It is the paradox masquerading as the True Word. Just as
this world whirls like a “fretful midge” through space, ever in the same
track, a recurring course, but gradually unperceived moves elsewhither,
so do the great artists revolve, and impelled not by their own
wilfulness but by the power of the divine spark within them, slowly move
forward. And among that splendid company is Bernini.
The terra cotta studies in the Brandegee Collection[10] illustrate
clearly Bernini’s originality and the power to which I have referred
above, of seeing his visions in their completeness without having to
painfully build them up. I do not mean to imply that each separate
detail of his works was the same in his first vision of them as in their
finished form. He worked at them assiduously, and perfected them with
the greatest patience and care, but when they came into his mind they
rose before him like ghosts from the tomb—vague but entire.
It is noteworthy that most of these models are of angels, and as such
represent the religious work by which Bernini is best known, and on
which he was most often employed after his youth was past. By the time
he was twenty-five years old he had been employed by three Popes, and
before his death five others sought his aid and depended largely on his
genius in their endeavours to beautify Rome and to render their own fame
imperishable. These undertakings were of very various character, but the
greater number of them, such as statues of Saints, decoration of
chapels, altars and tabernacles, grave monuments of Popes and prelates,
were done with religious purpose and may be called his ecclesiastical
work. It is superb in its mastery, magnificent in effect, and while
utterly different from anything that had been done before, gives the
impression of complete and perfect sincerity. Though unlike earlier work
and though the religion that inspired and made it possible has changed
so that never again will an artist be able to give similar expression to
his ideals, still there is no ground for considering it merely curious
and the expression of insincerity or passing error. Anything that
affected so many thousands of men, which they found beautiful and
satisfying to their souls, must be in a measure true, must have in it
some portion of ultimate wisdom. Silence or contempt towards it, any
feeling but of sympathy with it, shows not a better knowledge but a
duller understanding.
[Illustration: PLATE VII.]
During the sixteenth century a great change had come about in the way
men looked at life. Discoveries were made of all sorts; on land for
men’s feet to follow or in mathematics and philosophy for their souls to
reach up to. Old dogmas became untenable and the roofs with which men
had sheltered their heads became scaffolding on which they planted their
feet. It was a time of revolution—the revolution of the wheel of life
which advances as it turns. I have called attention to the fact that the
artists in their search for the fullest possible expression of their
thought often threw off dozens of designs for a single work before
finding the one most adequate. Technique no longer hampered them in the
slightest way, and they readily changed their mode in accordance with
new views, no longer blindly following the old guides. The work of
Titian is one of the most obvious illustrations of this. In his youth he
followed, like the Indian, the steps of his leaders, but as he aged, he
broke from them more and more, till at the end he arrived in a world his
teachers could never have imagined. Bernini had a similar experience.
One of the commonest complaints brought against Bernini is that he
introduced the habit of decorating the archivolts or domed roofs of the
churches with figures of angels fluttering about like great white birds,
and in this complaint no distinction is made between the idea that
underlay this scheme of decoration and the inappropriate and exaggerated
use of it made often by his imitators. From the earliest times of the
Renaissance, this scheme had been used. Bernini did not invent it. The
Gothic portals and towers of France are crowded with figures of saints
and kings, of angels and demons. In orderly ranks they guard the gates
or singly spring into mid air from the balconies. In Italy the shepherds
of the people stood in pulpits which rested on the strong shoulders of
Christ’s soldiers or on the steady wings of the heavenly host, while
high o’erhead (as in the Portinari Chapel in S. Eustorgio, Milan), a
ring of winged figures, hand holding hand, danced and sang, and down the
long aisles and in the dark chapels every sleeper in his stony bed was
guarded by the faithful spirits.
Why then find fault with Bernini and think he erred in doing what all
the world found good? If Bernini is mistaken in putting marble figures
above our heads, why excuse Correggio for the circling swarms with which
he covered the church domes, or Michael Angelo for the cataract of
figures with which he covered the Sistine Chapel? All such work must be
considered for its suggestion, not from the point of view of its actual
substance. Why, if the conventional and halting work of the nameless
early artists is good, should the masterly work of Bernini be considered
bad? Only because the modern world thinks it foolish to believe in
anthropomorphic angels and having no belief, has lost the power of
understanding symbols. And also the antagonism Bernini’s work arouses is
due to the fad for the primitive and incomplete. The very lack of power
that every early artist tried to rid himself of is now thought to be his
chief value and grace, and as in the daily press a missing word puzzle
attracts more attention than a sonnet so the halting early work finds
more admirers than the later perfect art.
[Illustration: PLATE VIII.]
Perfect as they are, there is something more than anthropomorphism in
Bernini’s angels. Earlier artists, even the best of the Florentines,
when representing these heavenly messengers, almost always make them so
solid and human that the wings are utterly inadequate, or else they
suggest the body by a thin and shapeless swirl of drapery topped by a
perfectly substantial head. In either case the result is unsatisfactory,
for though the figures conform to the usual idea of angels as effeminate
human forms with wings, the chief impression they make is of
inconsistent and impossible anatomical combinations.
They fail just as the archaic Greek centaurs with human feet fail. When
one looks at Bernini’s angels, the two done in his youth for the altar
of Sant’ Agostino, or the two for instance which he carved in later
years for the Ponte Sant’ Angelo, but which were considered too
beautiful to be exposed in the open air and are now sheltered in Sant’
Andrea delle Fratte (Plates VII, VIII), or at the one which kneels on
the left hand of the _Ciborio_ in the _Cappella del Sacramento_ in Saint
Peter’s, one has no sense of unreality. The bodies are human in form,
but spiritual in their lightness and grace. The wings are strong and
large, and yet so feathery as to seem almost transparent. The drapery
falls and clings to and fits the body as a cloud might, and the face and
action express a perfect and soul-filling adoration that finds
expression in tireless worship and unending song of praise. These are
the true “sexless souls, ideal quires.”
This same strong religious feeling is shown with equal certainty in
other figures by Bernini which are better known than his angels. These
are the figures of saints which he made in his middle and later years.
The earliest of them, that of Santa Bibiana, done in 1626, when he was
still a young man, shows in the arrangement and pose of the figure the
influence of the antique. The technique exhibits the same magnificent
ease and the same power of reproducing the various qualities of drapery
and flesh and hair that we saw before in the Borghese groups, and there
is in the face and gesture the expression of self-effacement in
religious ecstasy that is the most noticeable quality of the later
figures of this kind. As he grows older, these two characteristics of
technical differentiation of surface and of ecstatic expression altered.
While he lost no atom of technical power he tended to lay less stress on
the appearance of the mere surface of his figures and to pay more
attention to and show forth more clearly their mental condition. In
doing this he brought into being figures as truly representative of the
religion of his time as those of Michael Angelo or any other sculptor of
any epoch.
Religious emotion must always call forth strong feeling, but the
strength is sometimes shown in terms of apparent restraint, at others it
shows itself in violent action. Athena Parthenos is as emotional as the
Santa Theresa and Savonarola, and Luther is as violent as the Crusaders.
The seventeenth century was a time when men thought it no shame to show
their feelings. The Puritans showed them as clearly as the Italians,
though in a less pleasant form. If to-day it is difficult to realize and
sympathize with the sentiment shown in Bernini’s Sant’ Andrea, or
Daniel, or Maria di Magdala, it is not because of our superiority, but
rather because we have lost a very precious sense and power of spiritual
levitation. Look at the Habakkuk. Is it not a splendid presentation of
the prophet who was burdened with the grievance which he beheld, who saw
for so long the righteous compassed about by a “bitter and hasty” race
that he felt the Lord would never respond to his cry? But even as he
complains the visible answer of the Lord appears, and the Angel with
playful tenderness pulls at his hair so that his face is upturned to the
light of Heaven, not any longer dark with earth’s despair, as he bids
him write the vision of the Lord’s judgment that shall not tarry—write
it so that he may run who readeth. And Habakkuk still points to the
iniquity that blackens the world and the angel points to the inevitably
approaching woe. It is superbly original. It is deeply felt.
The St. Jerome in the Duomo at Siena is another very striking figure; if
it seems to most observers unpleasant, this is mainly because it does
not conform to the conventional and uncharacteristic way they are
accustomed to see Jerome represented. As a subject for artists he has
been treated far more often by painters than by sculptors, and in the
paintings the mere beauty of colour and of surroundings adds charms
which are uncharacteristic of, and distract from, the real interest of
the figure. When carved by Bernini, there is nothing but the figure to
consider—whether it be suggestive of the real man as we know him by his
writings or not. Probably most people if asked what image the name of
the saint brought to their minds would recall the print by Dürer or some
painting such as that by Catena in the National Gallery. But splendid as
the print and the painting are, it is only by a pleasant fiction and by
refusing to regard the truth that they can be thought to represent in
any way the Saint as he was among men. They show a very gentle old man
in the neatest and quietest of surroundings, peacefully writing his
comments on the scriptures.
It can hardly be supposed that his contemporaries regarded Jerome
primarily as a peaceful and abstracted scholar. Surely Bernini did not,
but instead shows us the unhappy wanderer and ascetic monk. Scholarship
was only one phase, and among the people with whom he lived scarcely the
most important phase of St. Jerome’s life. To his contemporaries he
showed himself chiefly as an acrid controversialist taking a leading
part in the “strife of tongues.” Unhappy in his Pannonian home, he spent
a restless youth wandering over Europe, but instead of peace found only
momentary forgetfulness in pleasures, the remembrance of which brought
deep sorrow in his later years. Then he turned to asceticism and sought
by living as an anchorite in the desert to conform himself to the
teachings of his Lord. But the degradation of such a life, the unnatural
and disgusting view it took of the image of his Maker and the temple of
his soul, the morbid introspection and sterility of selfish
self-mortification, brought him trouble and pain, not calm, till, at
last, an old man, he died in Bethlehem thoroughly disheartened with the
iniquity of the world and the horrors resultant on the destruction of
Rome by the barbarians.
Such is the man Bernini sets before us. The battered, wayworn feet; the
strong, coarse body; the ragged, unkempt hair show the life he led. The
face bending with closed eyes dreamily over the figure of the crucified
Christ betrays his holy, misdirected zeal. What he was, and what he
stood for, could not be shown more clearly than our sculptor has shown
it here.
Equally fine, and in certain ways more beautiful, is the statue of
Daniel in the lions’ den, which Bernini made in 1656 for Cardinal Chigi,
who placed it with the Habakkuk in Santa Maria del Popolo. The youthful
and splendidly built figure rests on one knee, his hands upraised in
attitude of prayer, his head bent back with eyes wide open gazing
upwards. From one shoulder, beside his body and over his legs, falls in
wind-blown folds a single heavy mantle. A great lion crouches behind
him, licking his foot. In its perfect physical beauty, in its not
over-emphasised anatomy and in its entirely successful composition, by
which great movement is given the appearance of completeness and
stability, the figure is more closely allied to Bernini’s earlier works
than to the mystical passionate figures such as the Jerome or Mary of
Magdala or others of this period. It is unnecessary to dwell on the
beauty of the figure and the technical skill it displays, for these can
be seen by anyone whose eye and hand have been trained at all.
There is one less obvious point, however, to which I wish to draw
attention, for it is as good an example as could be of what I have
mentioned above. I refer to the way the legs show through the heavy
drapery that covers them. The mantle does actually clothe the leg. It is
not a mere addition. It takes its shape and movement from the leg
beneath it. The one cannot be thought of without the other. Were the
statue destroyed, and did only the right hip or left knee remain, one
would instantly recognise what parts of the figure these were. But
classic though the figure is in general appearance—it might almost be
one of the Niobids—the feeling of absolute ecstatic faith is very
clearly given in the upturned face and the reaching arms.[11] Now there
have been times—great and noble times—when men did believe that God
would send angels to shut the mouths of lions, and when men felt no
fear, but only a carefree trust in His help if true innocency could be
found in them.
Such work is not baroque, nor decadent, nor over-emotional, as it is
commonly and thoughtlessly said to be, but it is a very adequate and
convincing representation of a powerful and uplifting spiritual
condition. It is just as fine as the graver and more sombre figures of
Greece, or as the sad and ponderous figures of Michael Angelo.
Of all the figures of this period in Bernini’s development the most
famous is the Saint Theresa (Plate IX). It is hopeless to express in
words the great beauty of this figure. This can no more be done than the
full perfection of any great poem can be rendered in a translation. The
work is perfect in itself, and what of this kind can be shown in
sculpture is here expressed with complete and ultimate adequacy. That
most people are startled and shocked when they first see the figure is
due to the fact that they do not think of what the scene really means,
and they are not accustomed to seeing scenes of divine significance
treated with perfect simplicity and pure faith.
[Illustration: PLATE IX.]
Not that such scenes ought not to be so treated, but few are the artists
who feel deeply enough or whose technique is finished enough to enable
them to represent a scene of this sort so clearly and beautifully. As a
result, the artist falls back on forms which have been repeated so often
that they have become conventional and no longer can give the beholder
the full impression of their meaning. No one is offended on seeing the
Son of God bleeding on the cross around which surges a host of idle
spectators, or at seeing Him in the manger before which all the nobles
of Florence kneel in various theatric attitudes. But Saint Theresa is a
figure new to them, and to have her shown in the crisis of her ecstasy
with other figures looking on from the walls of the chapel, offends
their “sense of propriety” and seems “paradoxical,” “perfervid” and
“inconsequent.”[12]
Were this a fair criticism, a large number of the most beautiful works
of Christian art would fall under the same condemnation. Far more
paradoxical than Bernini’s figure are the representations of the
Marriage of Saint Catharine, and they are quite as unpleasing if thought
of in their literal sense. As for the figures looking at the Saint from
the “opera boxes” at the sides of the chapel, it must be remembered that
at this time most of the drama in Italy was founded on religious
subjects, and such dramatic representation made a very deep appeal to
men’s minds. The critics who find the Saint Theresa in bad taste do not
hesitate to form part of the audience when Christ’s Passion is played
among the hills of Oberammergau, and they will no longer be afraid to
render Bernini the homage that is his due when they cease lazily to
measure his work by conservative standards. The glory of a comet is not
measured by the Eddystone Light nor a miracle by the conventions of
ordinary society.
One other point concerning this statue remains to be considered. A
recent critic[13] says that “there are many ecstasies, and Bernini has
chosen something that borders closely on the most displeasing.” In this
he expresses a common opinion, based, I believe, on a misconception, and
on ugly, puritanical prudishness. Possibly there are many ecstasies, but
religious ecstasy, the ecstasy of the Saint in joining herself to the
spiritual existence of Christ, and the pure and natural ecstasy of love
when self is lost in the future of the race, are as nearly as possible
identical. The Venus de Medici is far more displeasing than the Saint
Theresa.
In one portion of the group Bernini certainly did fail, and in a way
that is surprising. Usually his figures of angels are successful, but
the one standing over Saint Theresa is assuredly very bad. Its figure is
unconvincing, and its face, with tilted nose and silly smile, is more
that of a Greek _paniskos_ than of a heavenly messenger. But
notwithstanding this blemish, no work by Michael Angelo or any other
sculptor ever made the beholder forget so completely the substance out
of which it is carved, and think only of the scene represented as
Bernini has done here. He has given the softness of life to the
snow-white stone. His hand and mind worked in perfect accord and
produced a work unrivalled in technique and of very great beauty.
Another statue of similar character is the Beata Albertona. It is a
little less delicate in treatment and more emphatic in expression than
the Saint Theresa, but is, none the less, of very great beauty and
power.
Were a man’s failures as worth study as his successes, I could mention
works by Bernini which are distinctly bad. The Maria di Magdala is one.
Though full of feeling, the figure of the Saint is coarse and clumsy.
But though a man’s defeats show, of course, the principles for which he
stood, his victories are more worth considering and are the fairest test
of him. A very false estimate of Michael Angelo would result if one
considered the Rondanini Pietà, the David, or the Christ in Santa Maria
sopra Minerva as of equal importance with his other works.
It was not only in works in marble that Bernini showed his power as a
sculptor. He handled dark, impressive bronze with the same complete
understanding of its qualities and possibilities that he showed in
carving the gleaming Carrara marble. Such a work as the _Baldacchino_ in
St. Peter’s is beyond any words to praise. It is enormous, but not
clumsy, and sumptuous without being ornate. The most stupendous of his
bronze works is not, however, the _Baldacchino_, but the Throne, the
_Cattedra_ in the apse of St. Peter’s. It was in 1657, during the
pontificate of Alexander VII, that Bernini was ordered to carry out his
design for this work, and eight years later it was finished and
uncovered to the admiration of all Rome.
This monument is too well known to need detailed description here, but
it is well here to recall its purpose, which was not for actual
ceremonial use by the Popes, but to serve as a frame, or strong-box, for
the ancient chair of carved ivory on which tradition said, and the whole
Catholic world then believed, St. Peter had himself sat. There in the
heart of the greatest Christian Church, raised above the soiling earth,
high in air for the thronging worshippers to behold, was to be the
visible and material sign of infallibility. Bernini alone had the
feeling that made him capable of such a task. Four magnificent figures
of Doctors of the Church support the chair—two of the Western church,
Saint Augustine and Saint Ambrose, and two of the Eastern, Saint
Chrysostom and Saint Athanasius. Stately great figures; on their
outstretched hands they hold the Throne with the ease that comes of
perfect faith, raising it up even as sixteen hundred years before the
Apostles had raised up this earth for the glory of God.
In all these religious works by Bernini there is beside the expression
of the faith that begot them the expression of a decorative sense,
something dramatic. He delighted in movement and expression for the mere
sake of beauty of active form, and this feeling of joy in life, in the
spirit of movement, whether in Nature or in Man, Bernini reproduced in a
series of works which by themselves would make him unique among all
sculptors and which give Rome a distinction and character far more
decisive than her ruins or palaces and set her alone and apart from all
other cities. These are the fountains.
The list of fountains is of amazing length. The Barcaccia in the Piazza
di Spagna, one in the Villa Mattei, one in the Vatican Gardens, another
in the Barberini Gardens, the Triton in the Piazza Barberini; the lovely
shell which used to be on the corner of the Via Sistina, but has been
destroyed to make way for modern improvements so called; in the
courtyard of the Palazzo Antamoro, in the Piazza Navona, and the broad
pool of the Fountain of Trevi. They have the infinite variety and
infinite pleasantness of Nature herself. By the side of the placid pool
whence the _ciociaras_ draw the water for their flowers, or where the
sparkling stream of the Triton shoots heavenward from the gray pavements
like a white crocus from the frosty ground in Spring; where the Nile,
the Ganges, the Plata and the Danube pour forth their incessant floods,
or where Neptune shepherds his foaming steeds over the rocks as they
dash down into the pool that if we once drink from our hearts evermore
yearn for the Eternal City—by each and all of his fountains our ears are
filled with the pleasant voices of the waters and our eyes with the
sight of the nymphs and nereids who gambolled among the watercourses
when the world was young.
What the secret of their charm? No one ever understood the artistic
value of water as Bernini did. No one else ever held in check the full
stream and gave it back again the ripples, and spurts and sudden rushes
of its upper course and of its source. The angels must have washed his
spirit in the fountain of eternal youth to enable him to express the joy
which flowed through his veins in the undying music of the waves,
moulding and combining them to his intention as a musician makes the
rough strings of his instrument sing of the life that lies hidden in
them till his knowing touch gives them voice.[14]
I have spoken of the groups representing classic myths, of the
innumerable statues motived by religion and of the fountains, but even
this huge mass of work does not come near completing the list of
Bernini’s output. The numerous portraits remain to be considered. Some,
such as the Constantine in St. Peter’s, were ideal, but most were of his
patrons and friends and were of very varied types. There were colossal
equestrian statues, ordinary busts, full-length figures and groups for
tombs, and they show that he possessed just as great skill in direct
portraiture as in more purely imaginative work.
To carve or paint a successful portrait, two powers are absolutely
essential to the artist. On the one hand he must have the sympathy that
will enable him to comprehend the sitter’s character, and to see what
lines and expressions of the face express that character most clearly;
on the other he must have the power of suppressing his own individuality
and of lending his hand and eye, as it were, to the sitter to make the
portrait himself. If the artist lacks sympathy, he will produce a work
which may be correct in all detail of colour, line and modelling, but it
will only be a sort of mask; if he lacks the power of self-suppression,
the work will be unlike the sitter, even though true in detail, because
it will show not his character, but that of the artist. Bernini
illustrates these points with perfect precision, and as a result his
portraits are unsurpassed by those of any other artist of the
Renaissance and are far finer than the quaint efforts of the earlier
sculptors which many students of art admire with the enthusiasm of
decadence and a fatuous misunderstanding of both the value of art and
the aim of the artist.
Just as it was fortunate for Turner that in his early years he was
forced to draw with painstaking accuracy, so was Fate kind to the young
Bernini in giving him to do, when he was but fourteen or fifteen years
old, the portraits of two well-known Prelates. Success in these meant
fame and an assured future for the boy. Like every genius he must have
felt, with perfect simplicity, with no conceit, his power; but what must
have been his feelings of tremulous satisfaction when, the busts
unveiled, the crowd of Cardinals and Prelates who were gathered to see
his work, broke into enthusiastic applause? The cheering words of those
long since silent voices echo again in our hearts as we look at these
busts of the Bishop Santoni and of Monsignor Montoya, for two more
perfect portraits can hardly be found.
A mere child made them; a boy whom one could more easily think of
playing at marbles in the sunlit street; but instead his playground is
the Temple of the Lord and his toys the souls of men. The mere knowledge
of anatomy and the technical skill they show is most unusual for one so
young, but what shall be said of the spiritual insight of the artist who
carved these two bowed heads with their sweet, strong, grave faces? The
excellence of the ancient Greek, in certain forms of sculpture, has
given us his name as an adjective to express one kind of superlative
merit and these two busts can, with perfect accuracy, be called Greek.
They are as like as can be to the bronze bust by some unknown Grecian
sculptor which in the Museo dei Conservatori bears the name of Brutus.
As in his other work, so in the making of portraits Bernini soon broke
away from traditional methods and gave his own spirit full sway. This is
evident in the bust of Costanza Buonavelli, his mistress, which is one
of the treasures of the National Museum in Florence. It is not only the
technical skill with which he gave the different qualities of the
pleated dress, the round soft neck and cheeks and the blown tresses of
waving hair that make this portrait so remarkable, but beyond this one
sees in it the artist’s own human love for the actual woman and his
delight in her as a suggestion of a beautiful work of art. This bust is
unique among his works, for the woman who inspired it then, with
thoughtless animal selfishness, killed the inspiration she had begotten.
The bust is the tombstone for the most sensitive part of Bernini’s
heart.
Among the other busts of his early years are one of his great patron
Paul V (Borghese) and two of his steadfast friend Cardinal Scipio
Borghese.[15] They are all of them noteworthy, but the finest is the
first one he made of the Cardinal. In this the growth of Bernini’s
dramatic feeling is very plain and is shown in a technical way which he
repeated many times thereafter. It is this. He carves not alone the head
and a small portion of the breast, but he gives the whole upper part of
the torso and arms and skilfully suggests by the turn and position of
this part the action of the whole body, so that as one looks at this
bust of Scipio Borghese, one has the feeling of seeing not his head
alone but his whole figure. The wonderful realism with which Bernini has
rendered the crinkly silk cape and the rolling flesh of the fat face
with the lips just parted as though the burly Cardinal were whistling
for breath is obvious to the most casual observation; but realistic
though the bust is, Bernini was skilful enough to give chief emphasis to
the character of the sitter so that the impression that one takes away
with one is not of the external appearance of the figure so much as of
his nature and quality as a man. In many ways it closely resembles the
portrait of Pope Innocent by Velasquez.
[Illustration: PLATE X.]
Other portraits are to be seen not only in Rome, but in Modena, at
Versailles and even at Windsor; for, as Bernini’s fame spread, the great
people all sought him and even Louis XIV and Charles I were delighted to
have the artist give them that immortality which neither their deeds nor
position could assure them. One of the quieter and less dramatic works
is the beautiful bust of Monsignor Francesco Barberini. It is realistic
like the Cardinal Borghese, but the realism is made subordinate to a
higher aim and only used to emphasise the ideal character of the work.
Numerous as are these effigies by Bernini of Popes and lesser men, there
are two which stand out above all the rest as unsurpassed in art and as
combining and illustrating more fully than any others the character of
the time, of the sitter and of the artist which, all together, made them
possible. They are of Francis I of Este, now in Modena, and of Louis XIV
(Plate X), at Versailles. The first was made in 1651, the second during
Bernini’s visit to Paris in 1665. Only Bernini was capable of
representing these two proud princes in all their splendour of
ornamental wig, and lace and armour. It demanded technique such as his
to make anything but a great lump of complex and ugly form out of such
settings for the head as these; and he succeeded, to the unquestioned
admiration of all time.
That was an epoch when men liked theatrical display of all sorts, when
what in these colder days seems exaggerated expression was natural and
pleasing to people. Bernini knew and understood this, had often himself
been employed in writing plays or arranging stage scenery, and has
represented the two rulers just as they delighted to show and think of
themselves, adorned with all that was rich and splendid, haughty and
disdainful as was the nature of those endowed with the divine right of
Kings. Even more than in the case of the portrait of Cardinal Borghese
do these two busts seem to make us see the whole figure and yet they
have an appearance of lightness that is most surprising. Not to be made
again such busts—nor such men. Democracy, and a belief in equality as
absurd as that in Kingship was overweening, have snuffed out all such
pretensions, and have snuffed out the art too. But thanks to Bernini we
have the record of them. We see them in their moment of splendid
satisfaction and self-confidence, and made beautiful through mere
enjoyment of their bubble reputation.
The final value of portraiture is that it should be characteristic of
the person depicted. No matter how great the skill shown in giving
Napoleon the appearance of a Greek athlete or Washington that of
Olympian Zeus, such works are only folly and waste. Bernini made no such
mistake, but with deep insight and unrivalled skill proved himself one
of the greatest portraitists of all time.
I have spoken of Bernini’s versatility. I have considered in some detail
the sculpture by which he is best remembered. Of his painting not much
is left, and what remains is naturally not of any great value as art.
Still less is left of his work as an organiser of plays and arranger of
processions or carnival displays. A few drawings and engravings and some
slight accounts by contemporaries give us an idea of this work of his,
but it was the occupation of his more idle hours and is of little
moment. Of his architectural work a good deal is still to be seen,
though in many instances later workmen have added to or altered the
original structure, which was almost always skilful and big in
conception, though occasionally he made a mistake, as when he put the
towers—asses’ ears his contemporaries called them—on the Pantheon.
The structure by which Bernini is best known is the double colonnade of
the Piazza of St. Peter’s. Of this his original sketch book still
exists.[16] It is an intensely interesting record of the different
schemes and plans which Bernini worked at till in the end he produced
the splendid simple and grand design which gives Rome the finest public
square in the world.
There are several sheets of drawings in the book, some showing
Leonardesque studies of the relations between the proportions of the
human figure and those of architecture, others show views down the Borgo
from the church or looking up towards St. Peter’s with plans for the
rearrangement of the district, and some are views and designs of various
types of colonnade showing deep study of their perspective appearance.
But of all these sketches, there is one of far greater interest than all
the others, for it shows that insight into the deeper meaning of things
which made Bernini the supreme genius he was (Plate XXX).
On this sheet are two similar drawings showing St. Peter’s and the
colonnade. Over these, as though they formed the head and arms of a
cross, is drawn a bearded figure, his head crowned by the dome of the
church, his arms outstretched on the colonnades and with his feet
crossed slightly one above the other and resting just where, at the
beginning of the Borgo, Bernini intended, as another of the sketches
makes plain, to put a building. There can be no doubt, after seeing this
drawing, that Bernini’s intention was to make the Piazza symbolic of
Christ and the Crucifixion. Evidently not a mere builder of houses this
man Gian Lorenzo Bernini, but somehow, and somewhence, he has got a
poet’s vision and he makes his mark in the world not merely by moulded
clay and shaped stones, but by shaping men’s hearts and moulding their
ideas.
Such was Bernini, one of the great artists of the world. It is true that
he was revolutionary, but he destroyed not through ignorance or envy. He
destroyed merely that he might then create. The arts in his day were
strangled by academic rules and had become cold and lifeless. The
intensity with which he felt things gave him strength to break these
bonds and to make sculpture once more a means of conveying living
thoughts and emotions. He was like the butterfly which tears away the
stiff-plated chrysalis before it can spread its wings in the free air.
It is useless to try to explain his technical skill; he was born with
it, just as others are born with a keen sense of colour or a musical
ear, but it is certain that without it he could never have carved such
figures as the Saint Theresa or the portrait of Fonseca[17] which show
intense emotion brought on by loss of all sense of self in the
contemplation of the mystical meaning of the Passion. Such feeling could
not be shown by restrained action and quiet faces. Much movement was
necessary and the works are successful and beautiful because the feeling
shown is perfectly simple and natural and not forced and put on for the
sake of effect.
Bernini’s technical power made him, however, a bad master for others to
imitate. Not that the work of his followers is any more inane than that
of the copiers of Michael Angelo or of those of any other great man, but
his peculiarities were such as are at least superficially easy to see.
Where he quite easily and simply distinguished between the appearance of
silk or flesh, his imitators wasted their energies on elaborate
arrangements, the only object of which was to show technical dexterity.
Where he carved figures that are racked and torn with feeling, the
imitators gave forms that are contorted and as unemotional as gymnasts.
But he is not to be blamed for their work. By no means was he one of the
blind leading the blind. He was the seer, the prophet, by odd chance
honoured in his own home, whose visions were so believed by his
followers that they vainly tried to see the like. What their eyes
strained towards and failed to see, his heart yearned for and gained. To
them praise was a prize to win, to him it was a spur to renewed effort
and further advance. He had faults, as who has not, but they were due to
his being a pathbreaker and having to find out for himself ways to carve
and show figures such as no sculptor before him had ever dreamed of;
they were not the faults of ignorance or stupidity. If it be well for us
that we judge not lest we be judged, so too is it well, should we judge
Bernini or other men, to judge not what there is in him of weakness or
failure, but what there may be of noble intention and high endeavour.
Doing this we shall see that Bernini, working always with bowed heart,
but with uplifted spirit, broke down the middle wall of partition
between art and life.
II. A COLLECTION OF SCULPTOR’S MODELS BY BERNINI
The clay models by Bernini, descriptions of which follow, form one of
the most interesting artistic records left us of the sculpture of the
Renaissance. Drawings made by the painters of that period to serve as
studies for their pictures are not uncommon, but the sketch-models made
by the sculptors are rare.
This is because sculptors carved the marble without any previous models,
as Michael Angelo frequently did, or else that the models, being
cumbrous and of material that was easily destroyed, have, in the course
of years, been got rid of either intentionally or by accident. It may
seem strange to suggest that the clay of which the sculptors may have
made their studies is more liable to destruction than the paper used by
the painters, but it must be remembered that while nothing is more
durable than baked clay, air-dried clay is extremely perishable. Wax was
also used by the sculptors for their preliminary sketches, but this,
owing to expense, could never have served for work of any great size or
quantity; and even if less apt to complete disintegration than unbaked
clay, it is very liable to injury.
[Illustration: PLATE XI.]
[Illustration: PLATE XII.]
[Illustration: PLATE XIII.]
What precisely was the origin of this collection of Bernini’s models we
cannot tell; but it is our great good fortune that when they were made
there was some one, perhaps one of Bernini’s pupils, who cared for them
and saw to their being properly dried or baked so that they have
preserved their pristine freshness. It is also extremely fortunate that
their present owner realized their great beauty and extreme interest and
added them to the artistic treasures stored in America, where they will
serve in the ages to come to show students and sculptors a clear
reflection of the mind of one of the world’s greatest artists.
In the Museum at Berlin are other models by Bernini, but there is, so
far as I know, no other collection, either public or private, that
approaches the Brandegee Collection in number, variety or excellence of
these works. In America I know of but one other model purporting to be
by Bernini. It is in the Morgan collection and represents Pope Urban
VIII, but it does not show a single touch by the master; it is an
imitation, copied from the statue in the Campidoglio at Rome. In the
collection of the late Mme. Edouard Aynard, sold in Paris, December 1–4,
1913, were two terra-cotta models of angels (lot 307) “attribuées au
chevalier Bernin, d’après les originaux du port Sant Ange, à Rome,” and
one equestrian statuette in the same material (lot 308), said to be the
“esquisse originale de la statue en marbre de Louis XIV, dans le parc de
Versailles, par le chevalier Bernin.” The two angels are certainly not
by Bernini; the portrait may be.
From the artistic point of view these models are of the highest
importance, for they show with startling clearness the great fertility
of invention which characterized Bernini and the vivid way in which he
visualized the creations of his brain. There is not a trace of effort in
them, there is not a sign of rubbing out or doing over, but each group
or figure was obviously seen by him with the sharpness of a dream and
reproduced by his skilful fingers in the fresh clay while the impulse
and uplift of the vision was still on him.
The knowledge of the purely technical side of the art of sculpture which
the models reveal is magnificent. The way, for instance, in which the
various planes are treated in the oval relief of the Virgin and Child
(Plate XXVI) is as subtle as, and very similar to, that of the reliefs
on the ancient vases from Arezzo, while the relation of draped portions
of the figures to the parts left nude, and the manner in which the body
beneath gives life and meaning to the covering drapery, is as fine as
any work by Pheidias.
But the most fascinating and interesting characteristic of these
terra-cotta figures is that one sees in every least portion of them how
Bernini’s fingers, trained by long years of hard practice, played over
the wet clay like wavering flame and moulded the dead material to
enduring forms of beauty. Once more the old mythology comes true, and
Pygmalion, taking the rough material offered him by Mother Earth,
fondled it, and, warming it with the fires of his brain, gave it back
the life that lies asleep till the lover’s kiss wakes it once again.
DESCRIPTION OF THE MODELS
No. 1.—PLATE XI
Seated female figure in high relief, wearing helmet, and heavily
draped; the left cheek rests on the back of the raised left hand. Feet
missing.
For the tablet in memory of Carlo Barberini in Santa Maria d’Aracoeli,
Rome.
Width 10 inches.
No. 2.—PLATE XII
Figure of Longinus, in St. Peter’s. In the round, and gilded.
Height 20¾ inches.
[Illustration: PLATE XIV.]
[Illustration: PLATE XV.]
[Illustration: PLATE XVI.]
[Illustration: PLATE XVII.]
[Illustration: PLATE XVIII.]
No. 3.—PLATE XIII, _a_
Two _putti_, for the decoration of the piers in St. Peter’s. High
relief. The scale of measurement is scratched on the right edge. The
wings are broken from the lower figure.
Height 11⅛ inches.
No. 4.—PLATE XIII, _b_
Another two _putti_, also for St. Peter’s. The scale of measurement is
scratched on the left edge. The wings are broken from the upper
figure.
Height 11⅜ inches.
Nos. 5, 6, 7, 8.—PLATES XIV, XV
Four heavily draped bearded male Saints, for the _Ciborio_ in the
_Cappella del Sacramento_ in St. Peter’s.
The figures stand on thin, square plinths, one of which (Height 10⅜
inches; PLATE XIV, _a_) is unmarked, but on the other three are the
names _Bartolomeo_ (Height 10¼ inches; PLATE XV, _b_), _Tomaso_
(Height 10⅜ inches; PLATE XIV, _b_), and _Filippo_ (Height 10 inches;
PLATE XV, _a_).
The heads of all four are turned to the left, and the figures rest
their weight on the right leg. The left arm of the Bartolomeo is gone,
but was outstretched; the others all stretch out their right arm.
No. 9.—PLATE XVI
Bas-relief with half-figures of four men, and traces of architectural
background.
For the side wall of the _Cappella Borghese_ in Santa Maria della
Vittoria, Rome.
Width 17¼ inches.
No. 10.—PLATE XVII
Half figure of a Triton holding a draped woman on his shoulders.
For a fountain. The head and arms of the woman are gone.
Height 19½ inches.
No. 11.—PLATE XVIII
Front part of the head of a bearded man.
For the Saint Jerome in the _Cappella Chigi_ in the Duomo of Siena.
Height 13½ inches.
No. 12.—PLATE XIX, _a_
Model (head missing) for the kneeling Angel on the left of the
_Ciborio_ in the _Cappella del Sacramento_, St. Peter’s.
Height 11 inches.
No. 13.—PLATE XX, _a_
Another model for the same figure. Tip of right wing missing.
Height 11¼ inches.
No. 14.—PLATE XX, _b_
Angel on the right of the _Ciborio_ in the _Cappella del Sacramento_.
Other models for these two Angels are mentioned by Fraschetti (p.
394), who also suggests that this angel on the right is not by
Bernini, but “perhaps by Paolo Bernini, touched up by his father.”
I do not feel tempted to agree with this idea of Signor Fraschetti;
there is no doubt whatever that this model of the right-hand angel is
by Gian Lorenzo himself. Height 13⅛ inches.
No. 15.—PLATE XXI
Nude figure of an Angel holding the Crown of Thorns. The head and feet
are gone. The weight rests on the right leg.
Sant’ Andrea delle Fratte, Rome.
Height 13¼ inches.
No. 16.—PLATE XXII
Angel holding the Crown of Thorns.
This is the final model of the figure in Sant’ Andrea delle Fratte.
The action of the legs is the reverse of that in 15. Height 17½
inches.
No. 17.—PLATE XXIII, _a_
Model for the Angel holding the Scroll. The tips of the wings are
missing.
In Sant’ Andrea delle Fratte.
Height 11¾ inches.
No. 18.—PLATE XIX, _b_
Another model for the same figure as No. 17; lacks the right leg, the
head and most of the wings.
Height 11⅛ inches.
No. 19.—PLATE XXIV, _a_
Angel, perhaps for the ecstasy of Saint Theresa in _Santa Maria della
Vittoria_, Rome. Right hand missing.
Height 11½ inches.
No. 20.—PLATE XXIII, _b_
Angel, draped, right leg bare, turning to the left. Part of right wing
missing.
Height 11½ inches.
[Illustration: PLATE XIX.]
[Illustration: PLATE XX.]
[Illustration: PLATE XXI.]
[Illustration: PLATE XXII.]
[Illustration: PLATE XXIII.]
[Illustration: PLATE XXIV.]
[Illustration: PLATE XXV.]
[Illustration: PLATE XXVI.]
[Illustration: PLATE XXVII.]
No. 21.—PLATE XXIV, _b_
Angel, draped, kneeling, head turned to right, right arm (hand
missing) raised, left arm with open hand stretching downwards and
outwards.
Height 11¾ inches.
No. 22.—PLATE XXV
Standing male figure, in high relief. Drapery hangs from the right
shoulder, leaving torso bare but covering the legs with heavy folds.
The left arm hangs down, and there was a palm branch in the now
missing hand. The right arm is bent up with the hand over the chin.
The head bends down and to the right. The figure rests its weight on
the left leg.
The right side of the plaque is curved; the left side is straight, and
on it is scratched a scale of measurements.
Height 16⅝ inches.
No. 23.—PLATE XXVI
Oval bas-relief of the Virgin seated and looking down to right while
holding the Child in her lap. High relief.
Very sketchy, but the most masterly of all these models.
Height 11 inches.
No. 24.—PLATE XXVII, _b_
Draped, standing female figure. She bends forward, turning to the left
with arms (right arm missing) raised to support a slab that rests
across her shoulders. The weight rests on the left leg. At her feet
suggestion of a cuirass.
Study for the base of some monument such as the obelisk in the Piazza
della Minerva. (Cf. Fraschetti, pp. 300–303.)
Height 8½ inches.
No. 25.—PLATE XXVII, _a_
Standing angel, heavily draped; the left knee is bent sharply
backwards. The right arm is bent across the breast, the left arm
(forearm missing) bent across the body lower down. The wings are
missing.
Height 8⅝ inches.
No. 26
The Magdalen kneeling, and grasping the foot of the Cross.
This figure is not by Bernini, and shows clearly the difference
between the work of a master and that of an imitator.
Height 10 inches.
No. 27
Study of a hand.
Length 8 inches.
III. BERNINI’S DESIGNS FOR THE PIAZZA OF ST. PETER’S
The pen and ink sketches by Bernini for the construction and adornment
of the piazza in front of the Vatican, together with the surrounding
buildings, deserve to be more widely known than they are at present.[18]
Any details regarding the history and growth of this part of Rome are of
the deepest interest to those who study the intellectual development of
mankind. Did we possess any record of the reasons why Pericles and his
advisers placed the temples and other buildings on the Acropolis of
Athens just as they did, we should have a clearer understanding of the
character and ideals of Athens than we now have. So a study of these
drawings by Bernini will show very distinctly that the present form of
the piazza is due to no mere thoughtless and haphazard erection of
colonnades and fountains, but is the result of a deeply considered plan
and illustrative of a very large idea.
The drawings are carefully done with pen and ink on fourteen sheets of
paper which were numbered by some old-time owner. These sheets have had
the edges trimmed. Ten are, with slight variations, 14 by 6¾ inches. The
others are, as will be noted later, of different sizes. All, however,
judging by the paper and method of drawing, belong unquestionably to the
same series. The drawings were mounted and bound together by the
previous owner.
[Illustration: PLATE XXVIII.]
[Illustration: PLATE XXIX.]
[Illustration: PLATE XXX.]
The history of the drawings can only be guessed at. In this connection
the following facts are to be noted. Bernini was officially appointed
architect of the _Fabbrica_ of St. Peter’s in 1680. After him Luigi
Vanvitelli was head architect. With Vanvitelli there worked Andrea-Vici.
In 1817 Vici left by his will to his friend the sculptor Canova drawings
by Bernini representing the burial of the Countess Matilda, and Louis
XIV on horseback. This legacy shows Vici to have owned original drawings
by Bernini, and it is not improbable they had been given him by
Vanvitelli. By the same will Vici left to his grandson Busiri his name
and his studio, with all the original drawings by various masters
therein contained. Consequently it is not a rash hypothesis that these
drawings of the piazza came from Vanvitelli to Vici, and so to
Busiri-Vici. Finally they were sold at auction in Rome in 1903. They are
now in the Brandegee Collection.
DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS
No. 1.—PLATE XXVIII
This drawing shows the Orb; the Christian symbol of the world,
surmounted by a cross.
The cross with the head and arms ending in curves like apses suggests
the plan of a church, and the following drawings show clearly that the
Orb and Cross were the fundamental idea in Bernini’s mind when he
planned the _piazza_.
No. 2.—PLATE XXVIII
This is on a square piece of paper, similar in size to No. 1, and at
present mounted on the same sheet at the left of No. 1. It shows the
figure of a bearded man with arms outstretched as though on a cross. A
curved dotted line stretches from hand to hand over the head and drops
about an inch perpendicularly below each hand. This dotted line is a
suggestion of the existing colonnades.
That the figure is thought of as being on a cross is borne out by
sketches that follow and also by the dot in the palm of the left hand
which possibly represents a nail.
The sharp, broken lines with which the figure is drawn are
characteristic of Bernini.
No. 3.—PLATE XXIX
An outline plan of the church with the colonnades in front. It is to
be noted the latter start at the corners of the façade of the church
and project a short distance parallel to the main axis before curving
to each side.
Size 6½ × 8¾ inches.
No. 4.—PLATE XXIX
Similar to No. 3, but in greater detail. The figure of a bearded man
represented within the plan of the church in the attitude of
crucifixion. In the left arm of the colonnade is drawn the sun and in
the right arm the moon and stars.
This is pasted in the book at the left of No. 3.
Size 6⅝ × 8¾ inches.
No. 5.—PLATE XXX
This shows the same crucified figure as before. Over the head and
below each hand is the dotted line seen in No. 2. Behind the head and
arms is drawn with dots the elevation of St. Peter’s, the Vatican and
the colonnades.
No. 6.—PLATE XXX
Similar figure to the preceding, but with the arms contorted so as to
follow the straight portion of the colonnade (shown in No. 3) before
following the curve. Behind the head the dotted outline of St. Peter’s
and behind the figure’s left arm the colonnade and Vatican buildings
laid in with dots and a few lines.
No. 5 is at the right of No. 6, and the size of the sheet is 14 × 6¾
inches.
It should be noted that the figure is so placed in these two drawings
that the dome of the church suggests a bishop’s mitre.
No. 7.—PLATE XXXI
Outline elevation of the north half of the façade of St. Peter’s and
the north colonnade, rising behind which is shown the Vatican Palace.
On the left half of the sheet are faint pencil lines showing the south
side of the colonnade and façade.
The sky is touched in with bluish white.
Size 14¼ × 6½ inches.
[Illustration: PLATE XXXI.]
[Illustration: PLATE XXXII.]
[Illustration: PLATE XXXIII.]
[Illustration: PLATE XXXIV.]
[Illustration: PLATE XXXV.]
No. 8.—PLATE XXXII
Two drawings of the north colonnade. These are similar to the
preceding, but more elaborate (with shadows washed in in gray), as
shown by dotted lines drawn to the eyes of outlined figures from
various points.
We find here the architect’s intention regarding the view from
different positions.
Size 14⅜ × 6¾ inches.
On the back of the sheet is a sketch of the door of St. Peter’s with
the balcony where the Pope used to appear. I do not feel sure that
this is by Bernini. There is also another sheet with a more detailed
drawing of this door.
No. 9.—PLATE XXXIII
Similar to No. 8, but still more elaborate and larger; there is only
one drawing on the sheet.
In this design Bernini has altered the line of the colonnade. Instead
of having, as in the preceding drawing, a straight portion projecting
from the church, he has here drawn the colonnade in one large curve
from the church outwards, putting an elaborate entrance to the Vatican
Palace near the church. This entrance would have led to the Cortile di
San Damaso.
Size 14 × 6⅝ inches.
No. 10.—PLATE XXXIV
Slight outline sketch of the outer end of the north arm of the
colonnade, which is here made two-storied.
Size 13⅝ × 6⅜ inches.
No. 11.—PLATE XXXV
Interior of inner end of north arm of colonnade, showing the stairway
as it exists at present. Size 14½ × 6⅜ inches.
No. 12.—PLATE XXXVI
Two sketches; one showing the plan, the other the elevation, of the
Cortile di San Damaso.
Size 13⅝ × 6⅝ inches.
No. 13.—PLATE XXXVII
View of the façade of St. Peter’s with both colonnades, which are
two-storied. The sky is touched in with bluish white.
The buildings of the Vatican are also shown,—those on the right exist,
those on the left are imaginary.
Size 14⅝ × 6¾ inches.
No. 14.—PLATE XXXVIII
View looking east from the front of St. Peter’s.
On each side are the ends of the colonnades; they are in two stories,
that on the right crowned with low clock-towers similar to the “asses’
ears” once placed by Bernini on the Pantheon.
Beyond the piazza is the _Borgo_ much reconstructed and made
symmetrical. In the distance the Castel Sant’ Angelo.
Size 14⅜ × 6⅝ inches.
No. 15.—PLATE XXXIX
Two sketches in pen, washed with sepia, of the Borgo, looking towards
St. Peter’s.
These show different methods of treating the north arm of the
colonnade. The one on the right shows the colonnade closing the view
up the Borgo, the other shows an opening carrying the eye beyond and
between St. Peter’s and the Vatican.
Size 14½ × 6½ inches.
The buildings shown exist in much the same form to-day. Even the
fountain still serves.
No. 16.—PLATE XL
Plan of the piazza showing how it was intended to symbolize the orb of
the world suggested on No. 1.
In this sketch we see the circle within which is a dotted square.
Within the square is a figure with arms and legs outstretched along
the diagonals. At the top is written over a faint pencil outline of
the church (perhaps not original) _San Pietro_. At the bottom is
written twice _Piazza Rusticucci_ and on a piece of paper pasted on is
the plan of a building shown in No. 14,—one of the buildings intended
for the reconstructed _Borgo_.
On the right and left of the figure are indicated the _Porta Angelica_
and the _Porta Cavalleggieri_.
The dotted square within the circle is divided into quarters in which
is written _Asia_, _Europa_, _America_, _Affrica_.
Size 7¾ × 8⅝ inches.
These are the plans showing Bernini’s ideas regarding the Piazza of
St. Peter’s. From a study of them we see how the circular piazza
itself was intended to represent the world at large, while the
colonnade symbolized the arms of the Cross. Crowning all was the great
Church, founded by Him whose arms could embrace the whole earth, and
from whose doors should stream to every quarter the promise of hope
and love for which He died.
[Illustration: PLATE XXXVI.]
[Illustration: PLATE XXXVII.]
[Illustration: PLATE XXXVIII.]
[Illustration: PLATE XXXIX.]
[Illustration: PLATE XL.]
ASPECTS OF THE ART OF SCULPTURE
I. THE ART OF PORTRAITURE
All students have noticed the similarity in style between certain
Egyptian portraits and other works by ancient Roman as well as
Florentine artists, and the resemblance in style that exists between
Greek and Venetian portraits. Also there is a marked dissimilarity
between the Egyptian-Roman-Florentine Group on the one hand and the
Greek-Venetian Group on the other; and these two facts suggest the
conclusion that the art of portraiture consists in something more than
the mere photographic imitation in stone, or with paint, of the human
face or figure. Were such imitation the essential factor in the art the
only differences in portraits of different epochs would be those of
ethnographic character. The special characteristics of portraiture as of
the other arts at any given period are the result of the intellectual
and material condition of the people to whom the artist belongs. Style,
that is the distinguishing quality of the work of art, the quality which
differentiates it from a work of another period or race, is the result,
largely unconscious, of the relation of the artist to life and its
effect upon him. The material, the means by which he gives expression to
his endeavour at creation or representation, is of minor importance.
The Sheik-el-Beled (Plates XLI, XLII) and the bust of Scipio so called
(Plate XLIII) might almost be portraits of brothers; and the family is
increased by a little Egyptian head in the museum in Venice, and by some
of the men immortalised by Donatello. So too Pericles as we see him in
the bust by Kresilas seems separated by but a narrow margin from
Giorgione’s Knight of Malta. And yet in blood, traditions, circumstances
and hopes these men were the poles asunder.
How then is this likeness of certain portraits to one another to be
explained unless by the existence of some connection dependent on the
temper of the artist?
There is still another curious likeness and another difference to be
noted among the carved and painted portraits of various epochs and
schools. While the head of Corbulo is unlike that of Pericles in the
æsthetic impression it gives, and that of Angelo Doni by Raphael also is
æsthetically unlike the Duke of Norfolk by Titian, still the carved
heads have a common bond as have also the painted ones.[19] They do not
make the two broad groups into which I have, for the sake of making
plain a general idea, divided portraits æsthetically similar, but they
make plain when understood that painted portraits are necessarily
different from carved ones—different in more than the mere fact that one
is round and the other flat. The difference springs deep down from what
is possible to attain by either art. The sculptor of the Pericles and
the painter of the Norfolk both set before us the grave, elegant and
stately face of a bearded man in middle life. Neither artist distracts
our attention by bravura or technique or by realistic emphasis of
detail. Though stylistically similar, these works still do not impress
our minds in the same way. The following pages will be clearer if I say
at once that this differing mental impression arises because in busts
our attention is drawn chiefly to the mouth while in painted portraits
it is turned on the eyes. This is due to the special laws of the
technique by which the works are produced; given a painter and sculptor
with the same point of view and the same mental tendencies, the
portraits produced by them, even of the same person, though evidently
expressing the same intellectual qualities both of artist and of sitter,
are in modes of expression and certain external aspects necessarily
unlike. In pursuing this investigation and in discussing the existence
and nature of the various laws the governance of which I have suggested,
the history of the rise and spread of portraiture must be kept in mind.
[Illustration: PLATE XLI.]
Before the intention of the maker of portraits can be comprehended the
motives that lead to the desire of the public or of private individuals
to possess such work must be understood. In the main they are two,—one
religious and one historic; to these may be added a third, that of
sentiment and friendship. The religious cause is best illustrated by
Egyptian statues, of which a large proportion were made to be placed in
tombs. These are the earliest portraits of western origin which exist in
sufficient numbers to afford a sound basis of criticism. The well-known
dependence, in that country, of these works on religious prescriptions
needs hardly more than passing mention. That the soul of dead mortals
might, returning to this earth and to the tomb, find its accustomed
corporeal dwelling place, portrait statues of the deceased were placed
in the sepulchral chamber.
Holding this belief, it was only natural that the sculptors often made
statues life-size, and as closely resembling the dead original as
possible, in order that the soul might find a shelter exactly similar to
its original living one. Had they not been so made, the soul would have
been troubled in its search. Work such as this was of course expensive
and the mass of the people had to content themselves with smaller and
less elaborate figures or with mere glazed figurines. But the more rare
elaborate works show the ideal and serve as a sure guide in studying the
conceptions and hopes of this or any people—just as the gold treasure
from Mycenæ is of much greater value than all the terra-cotta vases in
showing the life and thoughts of the time.
Other portraits of Pharaohs and their queens, of priests and generals,
were carved on temple walls or set up to commemorate striking events,
and these also were made realistic because of the egotistic idea that
called them into being. Unless the person portrayed was carved
realistically the commemorative value of the monument was lessened.
These religious and commemorative ideas influenced the sculptors in
their choice of material. Both the desire to make an enduring image of
the dead for the sake of the soul that might return and the wish to make
the memory of the person as enduring as possible led the sculptors to
make use of the hardest stones; stones such as do not lend themselves to
sculpture and such as are never used where the art develops in
accordance with cultivated taste rather than special demand.[20] But
though exactness of likeness was tirelessly sought for by the Egyptians
(I refer of course to the earlier epochs before the influx of Greek or
Roman ideas), it was not attained with the same success as in later days
by the Romans and Florentines.
[Illustration: PLATE XLII.]
This failure was in part due to the use of unyielding material, such as
granite and basalt. Successful representation, in such stone, of the
finer details of facial form, was practically impossible, and
furthermore, owing to the dark and variegated colour of these stones,
would have been scarcely noticeable could it have been attained. Hence
the sculptors were led to practise a certain broadness of treatment that
makes their work seem, to careless observation, like the Greek; but
though one of the chief charms of Greek work is broadness, it is the
outcome of very different causes and, if carefully studied, is seen to
produce a very different effect from that of Egyptian work.[21]
Any phenomenon is due to mixed causes, and it must not be supposed that
the use of hard materials alone led to breadth of treatment. The
conventional position of the figures in Egyptian art (due in large
measure to various non-æsthetic causes) was suited better by a broad and
conventionalised treatment of the face than by more particular niceness
in the rendering of its detail.[22] Religious feeling led to the placing
of quietly posed statues in the tombs, and as regards the figures of the
great rulers whose word was law, attitudes expressive of the calm that
results from absolute power were best fitted to express the current
beliefs. These attitudes were also restrained in consequence of the
refractory nature of the stones used.
It is interesting to consider what would have been the development of
sculpture in Egypt had the art been freed from the necessity of
conforming to the demands of religion and contemporary history. One
searches in vain among the masses of Egyptian sculpture for the
expression of the individual sculptor’s emotions. We do not even know
the names of the sculptors. They were not noted by their contemporaries
nor did interest in their work lead them to sign it. Sculpture in that
antique land was not a fine art in the sense of being chosen by men of
special tastes and feeling to express the enjoyment felt by them in
certain forms. It was a highly developed handicraft, a technique pursued
by rule. As illustrative of the character, the life and the thought of
the people portrayed it is allied to Roman work rather than to Greek.
Religion is seen to influence portraiture in another way. Many pictures,
the subjects of which are religious, by Botticelli, Ghirlandaio and
others, are filled with portraits, but these are essential to the
composition, and are thought of as figures first, as portraits
afterwards. But there are many sacred pictures of the Renaissance in
which, with varying degrees of simplicity and frankness, a portrait of
the donor of the painting is inserted not as an essential part of the
composition but because of the desire of the donor to secure lasting
recognition of the fact that he had fulfilled his religious vows and
duties. It was an accepted proof of respectability in this world and
might possibly help in the next. Neither in Egypt nor in this class of
pictures of the Renaissance are the works thought of primarily from the
point of view of being artistic reproductions of the human face, but
they are means to an end. They are in fact symbols. Work of this sort is
so rare in Greek or Roman art that it may be considered as practically
non-existent.[23]
The personal portrait, the portrait made for the sake of gratifying the
self-esteem of the person represented, is well exhibited in Egyptian
work in the bas-reliefs illustrating the conquests of the Pharaohs and
in the colossal statues erected in a spirit of pride and
self-glorification such as was exhibited again by the Romans. Such
portraits as these are a certain indication of the all but universal
desire for glory and fame. They are an expression of the same confident
spirit that leads the owners of great buildings to carve their names
over the entrance and are produced in large numbers only during periods
when individuals seek eagerly for personal recognition.
Such periods occur when large stores of money are possessed by private
persons; then religious beliefs grow faint, in men’s if not in
women’s[24] minds, and the quiet and enduring appreciation of a few
objects gives way to the excited pursuit of constant novelty in
enjoyment. Consequently instead of being content with philosophic
moderation men attribute an untrue value to mere possession, and, since
money can buy many material things, come to the false conclusion that he
who has the most is to be ranked among the world’s greatest sons.
But the qualities needful for amassing riches are by no means rare and
in the main are correlated with lack of interest in the Past and with
undeveloped imagination. Hence ignorant of, or at least not sympathetic
with, the more subtle but more effective types of men who work not with
money but with personal character, the wealthy naturally come to think
of themselves as individually interesting and important, and in
consequence their portraits are made in every shape and size. Such works
cannot, as regards the person portrayed, be of much interest, and are
usually ugly, because the lives and occupations of people invariably
affect the forms and expressions of their faces. The exceptions to this
rule are the portraits of such men as Lorenzo dei Medici, or others of
our own day who use their inherited or acquired wealth in the patronage
of the arts and sciences—who use their powers indirectly for the
cultivation of ideals.
Such portraits as these are of varying character. They may be public,
put up, that is, by a grateful and flattering people to commemorate a
ruler or chief citizen, as in the case of Gattamalata in Padua and
Colleone in Venice; or they may be of purely private interest and
intended only for the eyes of the successive generations of the family
to which the person depicted belongs. But public or private, in the one
case as in the other, the desire for them being due to personal regard
and love of fame, an accuracy in the reproduction of feature is sought
that distinguishes them clearly from portraits made with other less
worldly motives.
[Illustration: PLATE XLIII.]
It is known of course that this desire for fame stirred the hearts of
oriental potentates long centuries before the beginning of connected
history. But in that classic part of the ancient world with which we are
intimately related, it does not become specially noticeable till the
time of Alexander. It was an active factor in life during the existence
of the Roman world, and again in the Renaissance. One of the phenomena
most indicative of this aspiration is the character of the monuments
placed on graves, and particularly the inscriptions on such stones. On
the Greek grave stones we find often enough the name of the deceased but
rarely if ever any intimate notice of his life. On Roman and Renaissance
monuments, on the other hand, the length of life, and the honorific
offices held, are all given with wearisomely full detail.
Portraits made for friendship’s sake are uncommon and do not, I believe,
occur before the time of the Renaissance. Then one hears of friends
sending their portraits to one another. In Rome a somewhat similar
custom was practised to a certain extent, as is shown by the portraits
on rings and cameos. Such work, meant as it was for personal adornment,
must have been, at least in part, inspired by the tender regard of
friend for friend. But it seems not to have been a common custom in the
ancient world; just why it would be hard to tell, for no more inviolable
friendships have ever been known than those told of in ancient history
and drama, nor more tender feeling than is expressed in many of the
inscriptions on ancient tombstones. Perhaps it was that the house
architecture of those days was but little adapted to the displaying of
such objects, and the collection by private individuals of things was
but little practised except in Rome, and even there collectors were
comparatively few. However this may be, the fact remains that the
portraits of the ancient world were in the main religious or
commemorative, and the idea of friendship being maintained or
strengthened by the possession of the dumb semblance of absent dear ones
seems to have grown and spread with the Christian religion.
At first sight it appears as if there were three ways of making
portraits—the sculptor’s, the painter’s, and the writer’s. It is not
however in any true sense a portrait that a writer sets before us. This
is beyond his power to accomplish. He is unable, that is, to give
various readers such impression of the look and carriage of the person
described that they can inevitably recognise him in the passing crowd.
Continuous and sequent events may be described by words, but they cannot
show instantaneously isolated images. Masters of style can call up
visions to the mind by well-selected epithets, but such visions are
typical rather than actual; and they are of scenes of considerable
scope, or of actions of dramatic quality, rather than accurate images of
facial form and expression such as in the only true sense of the word,
can be called portraits.
So far as art in the sense of reproduction is concerned, it is evident
that language can be used for description, for suggestions of moods and
general conditions, but not for showing in a sharp and quickly defined
manner a given scene or object at a given moment. When Shelley speaks of
The obscene ravens, clamorous o’er the dead;
The vultures to the conqueror’s banner true
Who feed where Desolation first has fed,
And whose wings rain contagion,—
[Illustration: PLATE XLIV.]
he calls to mind most vividly conditions consequent on war, but before
no two readers of the lines will the same visions rise. To see such
horrors as Shelley writes of, presented so that all beholders will
regard them in the same way, we must turn to such a work as Turner’s
Rizpah.[25]
The Greeks, it is interesting to note in this connection, recognised
this limitation of the power of words and rarely tried to delineate the
actors in their poetry and drama by other means than the description of
traits of character. It may be said that the Greeks also did not attempt
landscape in their writing. True, but we have every reason to know that
the Greek mind was not interested seriously in beauties of landscape,
while we know that it was deeply concerned with the characters and
actions of individuals. Landscape was not studied by the Greeks as an
end in itself, whereas portraiture was. Hence the absence of an attempt
at portraiture in their literature by other means than description of
character is the natural result of their mental tendencies. Such
description can of course be accomplished by language with greater
certainty than by sculpture or painting. It can give such an impression
of the nature of a person that there is no more room for doubt
concerning the qualities that constitute that nature than there is
concerning the colour of eyes that have been put on canvas by some
painter. Take any example and it will appear that when an author tries
to stir the imagination to form an image of a character, he does it
mainly by describing carefully his nature rather than his personal
appearance, and when he attempts to do more than this, he suggests
inevitably a different vision to every reader. Shakespeare’s sonnets are
sufficient evidence of the truth of these statements.
I should not wish to imply that writers, even the greatest of them, do
not sometimes attempt to depict persons by elaborate descriptions, but a
comparison of any two illustrated editions of an author will show my
contention to be correct. The inefficiency of the means and the
inadequacy of the result has been recognised by the masters of
literature. And it needs but to compare a word portrait with a painted
one of the same person to be convinced of the painter’s greater power in
this work. Take Shelley’s lines describing the crazed musician:
There the poor wretch was sitting mournfully
Near a piano, his pale fingers twined
One with the other, and the ooze and wind
Rushed through an open casement, and did sway
His hair, and starred it with the brackish spray;
His head was leaning on a music book,
And he was muttering, and his lean limbs shook;
His lips were pressed against a folded leaf
In hue too beautiful for health, and grief
Smiled in their motions as they lay apart—
As one who wrought from his own fervid heart
The eloquence of passion, soon he raised
His sad meek face and eyes lustrous and glazed
And spoke—sometimes as one who wrote and thought
His words might move some heart that heeded not
If sent to distant lands.—
As a portrait the failure of these verses lies in the fact that the
attention of the reader is hurried on from point to point like a
storm-driven bird and never allowed to rest. Look, for half the time it
takes to read the lines, at Titian’s Concert, and you have a much more
definite image of a musician. It is just because of this unrest of the
attention, due to continued introduction of some new feature of
importance, that poets and writers of prose are much more successful
when they endeavour to reproduce a landscape, for it is a natural
tendency, as we look at any scene of nature, for the eyes to wander over
the hills and far away. They cannot seize the essential points
instantaneously and they cannot apprehend the interrelation of the
details as when they look at a person’s face and figure.
Sometimes the poet—it is generally a poet, for the epithets that poets
use are apt to be more carefully chosen and so have greater graphic
force than those of prose writers—seems to succeed in portraiture, but
if you will consider closely, it will be seen that the success is
fictitious. It is due to our having a ready-formed picture of the
character of the person described which is suited by the poet’s words,
as in Browning’s lines:
You know we French stormed Ratisbon,
A mile or so away
On a little mound Napoleon stood
On our storming day
With neck outthrust, you fancy how,
Legs wide, arms locked behind,
As if to balance the prone brow
Oppressive with its mind.
But to one who had never seen a picture of Napoleon what image would
these lines give? Or, take Lowell’s lines on Lincoln. Not a word in them
concerning the outward appearance of the Martyr Chief; but the attempt,
successful to the uttermost, is made to impress on the reader’s mind
what there was of him to think of, not to look at:
Wise, steadfast in the strength of God and true.
These epithets offer no suggestion that can be visualised, nor is there
when we note
... that sure mind’s unfaltering skill
And supple tempered will
That bent like perfect steel to spring again and thrust.
And then finally, to sum up:
Here was a type of the true elder race,
And one of Plutarch’s men talked with us face to face.
Vivid and eloquent as all this is, it offers no picture of the tall,
gaunt President. It is but a suggestion of mental conditions. It does
not show the deep-set eyes, sorrowful with the sorrows of two races, or
the firm mouth lined with the humour that helped him to bear his burden
of care. Plutarch himself does not show us Cæsar, or Pericles, or
Demosthenes or any other worthy, as the sculptors do.
Possibly it might be suggested that in such poems as those quoted the
writer had no intention of giving a suggestion of the outer husk that
hides the inner man; but there is one class of poems—the love lyrics—in
which the passion-driven bard would surely, could it be accomplished,
give the immortality of portraiture to the beloved. But those “dear dead
women,” the ever-renewing Spring brood of Sappho, Chloris, Lesbia,
Lalage and Doris, are but the vague dwellers of dreamland. Sometimes
they are dark and sometimes fair; they have cheeks that shame the rose,
and eyes whose glance overwhelms as does the bolt of Jove; their brows
are white as driven snow, and a nest for little loves is in their
bosom—but can we ever be sure that we recognise from such description
each particular Lesbia as, waiting and watching at the corner, we
hopefully murmur “She comes, she’s here, she’s past”? Such words as
these form a portrait only for that one love-stung heart that beats the
overtone to the note of Lesbia’s footfall.
No, the writer cannot, in any adequate sense, place before us portraits.
Literature being excluded as a means of portraiture, it remains to
consider sculpture and painting. In order to understand why painted and
carved portraits showing similar types with equal distinctness and
emphasis produce very different effects on the observer and hold his
attention in different ways, study must be made of the different results
possible to attain by these arts. If these general propositions in
regard to the two arts be true, the demands and characteristics of
portraiture will become plainer.
The fundamental distinction between sculpture and painting lies in the
fact that the former concerns itself not always, but primarily, with
light and shadow and fully modelled forms, while the latter deals
chiefly with colour. Furthermore, painting works in two dimensions,
while sculpture exercises herself with three. Hence, figures in
positions that are much contorted or groups that are complexly organised
in retreating planes are unsuitable subjects for a painter, inasmuch as
he cannot represent them clearly except at the expense of infinite
labour. If the sculptor, on the other hand, chooses such subjects, he is
not hampered by the difficulties that block the painter’s path. His
finished work can be looked at from all sides, and he is not liable to
the painter’s risk that his final effect may, perhaps, be ruined by a
misuse of light and shade or by faulty drawing and perspective.
The advantage, however, is not altogether on one side. The sculptor has
this other difficulty to contend with, that the appearance of his work
will change with every change of light. The painter can fix whatever
light he pleases on his canvas. As the appearance of the sculptured work
will vary with the light, the sculptor can attain but partial success in
the representation of figures or scenes in which much active emotion is
shown in the faces. But in such scenes as these a painter’s power can
well be shown, since, owing to his ability to paint any power of light
(except, of course, direct sunlight), and his power of placing the
various figures of a group in various lights, and by means of varied
tints and lights being able to bring sharply into notice any expression
of the face, he can well depict most violent emotion. It will be found,
I think, that the sculpture which is most successful deals with groups
or figures whose meaning is made clear by action and by the form of the
body as a whole, and the paintings that are most successful are those in
which effects of chiaroscuro, colour and facial expression are the most
satisfactory method for making the figure intelligible. Several facts
which will be readily acknowledged show the truth of this statement. For
instance, Veronese, Rubens, Tintoretto, Velasquez when painting scenes
the interest of which depends on the individual figures appearing in
them (not such scenes as Paradise, Hell or battles where the interest is
in the masses and spaces), compose them mainly in one plane. Also if
single heads be taken from pictures and from sculptured groups, it will
usually be found that the former give a fuller impression of the
artist’s intention than the latter.
[Illustration: PLATE XLV.]
Every rule has exceptions and among Michael Angelo’s sculptures are
works in which he sought to reproduce effects of light and shade and
expression that if given by painting would have been more successful
because the latter would have expressed the artist’s intention more
clearly; and in certain of his paintings he attempted effects of form
that could be given more satisfactorily by sculpture. Done by any less a
genius than Michael Angelo, such work would be either ineffective or
laboured. Done by him one can but marvel at his mastery over the sister
arts that enabled him to approach so closely to the effects proper to
the one while using the means offered by the other. But such success as
he attained does not prove soundness in the principles that led him to
make the attempt. A _tour de force_ is but the attempt to attain a
result by means other than the best. It may be successful, but it must
be unsatisfactory. It is unreal, impractical; it is a form of jugglery!
To see how similar scenes are treated in the two arts, compare the group
of Niobe and her Children with the Massacre of the Innocents as painted
by the Renaissance artists.[26] In such comparison trivial details must
not be too much regarded, for of the Niobe group there consists but one
incomplete set of copies of the original figures and of the Massacre of
the Innocents each one of us probably considers a different artist’s
conception of the scene most effective. But the general impression given
by Niobe and her children is that of bodies driven into violent motion
by fright, what might be called frightened motion; the figures are
rushing from one spot to another in search of safety; they bend and
cower in terror of the peril. They are the incarnation of dread of
physical suffering. The impression of the Massacre of the Innocents is
one of faces contorted by horror. The action of the bodies is of less
concern. The attention is drawn to the eyes, the mouths, the hands, the
three chief outlets of mental feeling. The sufferers in the scene are
moved by the horror of unjustifiable slaughter. They are the incarnation
of anger, revolt and despair induced by the sight of pitiless massacre.
In portraiture the painter and sculptor are drawn together because the
greatest interest of the work is centred in the face, which is the
clearest index of thoughts and emotions. Both sculptors and painters
even when making figures of life size are limited in portraiture to
seeking their chief effects in the treatment of the face. But though so
far working in common, the painter and sculptor still have different
aims; for that part of the head the expression of which can be more
strongly accented and more completely reproduced by the use of colour
and a chosen shade and light, is the eyes; while that part the
expression of which can be most adequately rendered by modelling is the
mouth. This is the reason why portraits similar in style, such as those
above mentioned, the bust of Pericles, and the painting of the Duke of
Norfolk, attract our attention in different ways. In the bust the most
noticeable feature is the firm but sensitive mouth, in the painting it
is the steady, but vivid, eye.
Mindful of these conditions that govern the art of portraiture we find
it easy to see how the artists of various epochs have conformed to them.
This may seem to be putting the cart before the horse; to be fitting the
facts to the theory. But it is not so,—it is merely searching for proof
of a working hypothesis. The theory was suggested by the phenomena and
it will be seen to explain these phenomena.
[Illustration: PLATE XLVI.]
The study of Greek sculpture is at present seriously hampered by
statements and beliefs concerning it which arose at a time when its
place in the history of art was very inaccurately understood. These have
been repeated so often that they are frequently accepted without being
critically weighed in the light of recent knowledge. It is a unique and
very perfect art, but the causes and qualities of its perfection are
sometimes misunderstood. Justifiable admiration has out-weighed the
critical faculties. It is generally thought to be more imaginative and
ideal than is in fact the case. The quality of realism is not usually
attributed to such a work as the portrait bust of Pericles. And yet this
bust is quite as realistic, though not so prosaic, as that of the Roman
general Corbulo. I mention these two because they are very generally
known; but many others such as the Demosthenes, Sophocles, Cæsar,
Caligula would do equally well. The word realism is reserved too much
for those works in which the artist has represented the forms that would
be first noticed by the casual observer and, in this limited sense, the
Corbulo is far more realistic than the Pericles; but realism is just as
truly displayed in works in which the forms, while reproducing those of
the model, may perhaps not be the most obvious ones and though the
juxtaposition of them be not their most common combination. In this
sense the Pericles is as realistic as the Corbulo. Greek realism in
portraits deals chiefly with faces and figures in repose; Roman realism
deals in the main with faces and figures in action.
It is noteworthy that portraiture was a late development of sculpture in
Greece. We know, for instance, of no contemporary portraits of Solon or
Peisistratus, and there exist in museums and private collections
extremely few busts or statues of the period preceding the middle of the
fifth century B.C., that have the character of portraits. One reason of
this doubtless was the feeling that the success which brought fame in
its train was due more to the Gods than to the individual. The
individual was an accident in the exhibition of beneficent power by the
Gods, and consequently, so far as form and feature are concerned, was of
no special interest. Furthermore, there was the feeling that the fame of
individuals was due to and a part of the fame of the whole state; hence
the individual was not apt to overestimate his own value nor to be
thought of by his neighbours with any such feeling of special respect as
is expected by, and often granted to, those who are “self-made.”
Over and above these causes was another which must have been largely
responsible for the late development of portraiture and for its
character when it began to be common. This was the Hellenic love of
beauty. Divided though the Greeks were into numerous states, they were
held together by bonds of language, tradition, religion and politics.
But the bond that united them more strongly than all others, even than
their hatred of barbarians, was their love of beauty. “Beauty the first
of all things” says Isocrates “in majesty and honour and divineness.
Nothing devoid of beauty is prized. The admiration of virtue itself
comes to this, that, of all manifestations of life, virtue is the most
beautiful.” The consequence of this feeling was to make the individual
and imperfect man uninteresting to the artist while the general and
typical figure became his supreme aim. When at last in the fifth century
B.C. portraiture became more frequent than it had previously been, the
perfect portrait was the one which gave most completely the impression
of the general character of the man and not the one which gave the most
vivid and striking representation of the separate features of his face.
Curiously enough the first portrait we hear of in Greece was a
caricature of the poet Hipponax by Bupalos and Athenis, artists of the
sixth century B.C. While caricature was attempted as early as this, as
is shown by the drama, by terra-cotta figurines and by vases such as
those from the sanctuary of the Kabeiroi in Bœotia, it may be questioned
whether such a portrait of Hipponax ever existed. The details of the
story, such as the suicide of the artists owing to the satirical attacks
of the poet, are scarcely credible, and if we remember the very strange
and unlifelike appearance of archaic art it seems not improbable that
the story arose in the attempt to explain some rude statue the true
intention of which had been long forgotten or had not been clearly
indicated. Even were it certain that such a caricature did once exist,
the knowledge would be of no great interest, because caricatures are but
a debased form of art. They are only the exaggeration of accidental
physical peculiarities. If the traces of a warped or ill-developed
character show in the face or figure, the representation of them may be
made a caricature, but almost all so-called caricatures show not
oddities of character but deformities of person. It is in literature, in
the works of Molière or Shakespeare, rather than in sculpture or
painting, that we find true caricatures. Not that they do not exist in
the plastic arts, but the literary art lends itself more readily than
the others to this mode of representation.
Whatever the actual facts regarding the reported portrait of Hipponax
may have been, it is not till about the first quarter of the fifth
century (circ. 500–475) that we have undoubted evidence of portraiture.
To that time belongs the bust of a bearded man wearing a helmet, in the
Glyptothek in Munich. A replica of this work exists in the collection of
Barrone Barracco in Rome. These two heads may well be copies of a statue
of some victor in the games. As is known, portrait statues were allowed
only to thrice victorious athletes, and they were erected not so much as
an honour to the victor as to keep fresh the memory of one who had
thrice been cherished by the Gods. But this rule governing the making of
statues of athletes clearly shows what deep significance a statue was
considered to express and the secondary importance to the Greek mind of
keeping a record of personal appearance. Whether of a victor or not, the
bust referred to belongs to the early period of development of the
technique of sculpture, before it had been perfectly mastered, when the
artist was able to represent not what he wanted to but what he was able
to. Hence it is conventional; so much so that were it not for the helmet
and the absence of any attribute of Divinity we could hardly be sure
that it was intended as a portrait.
[Illustration: PLATE XLVII.]
Probably the best known example of portraiture produced during the
period when the technique of sculpture was thoroughly understood and
mastered, is the head of Pericles by Kresilas to which I have already
made reference (Plate XLIV). It is a work of special importance owing to
the interest attaching to the character of Pericles, but more
particularly from the artistic point of view; and fortunately there
exist several careful copies of it. These make us sure what its artistic
character was,[27] and furthermore Pliny has handed down to us an
estimate of the original work by a critic of the ancient world. This
critic expressed concisely and epigrammatically the intention that is
manifest in all Greek work of the best time, in saying that the bust of
Pericles by Kresilas shows how art can make a noble man still
nobler.[28] Now this can only be said of the best Greek and Italian
work. And all work, no matter where or by whom produced, if wrought in
the spirit which was shown more by Greek sculptors and Venetian painters
than by other artists, may be described by such words. Such a criticism
could not be made of most Roman or Florentine work. It can only be said
of work in which the attempt is successfully made to suggest a perfected
type by the improvement of an individual example, not of work the
intention of which is to represent the individual example as the
embodiment of special peculiarities with indifference as to their
excellence or defects.
The method adopted by Kresilas is not difficult to analyse. The
character of Pericles was a rare and happy mixture of calmness,
foresight, perseverance and sensitiveness. His power of understanding
men and conditions, together with his quiet and steady pursuit of his
aims, is shown by the course of his political policy. His sensitiveness
is made clear by his unselfish ambitions, by his delight in works of the
fine arts and by his chivalrous conduct towards Aspasia, whom general
opinion, not confined to the ancient world, would have allowed him to
disregard and forget, when for the sake of giving offence to him the
populace attacked her character. Such was the man whom Kresilas had to
portray, and with high artistic perception he chose his means.
Kresilas, we can well understand, might have shown us Pericles the
warrior, or Pericles the orator, or Pericles the lover of philosophy and
the arts, and in doing so might have given a more striking impression of
one or more of the special qualities by which his contemporaries were
impressed. Instead of this he succeeded in setting before us the complex
of all these qualities, and many more, that formed Pericles the man. The
helmet lifted back from the face reminds us of his military career but
does not force this on our attention.[29] The expression of the face is
not in the least dreamy but is thoughtful and grave; an expression
which, considering his life and friends, must have been habitual when he
was in repose. It should not be forgotten that the attitudes assumed by
the body when at rest show the presence or lack of inborn grace and
dignity, and the expression of the face when in repose is an index to
the mental nature. The expression of the eyes is open; the gaze is
steady; the brow is undisturbed. The impression given by the eyes is of
clear, highly developed intelligence. In the mouth which, as pointed out
above, is the most indicative single feature in portrait sculpture, may
be seen even more markedly than in the eyes, the man’s character. It is
a very noticeable mouth, with full and softly modelled lips, lips such
as usually suggest a weak and sensuous character. But this mouth is
neither insignificant nor weak. Its great sensitiveness passes into
firmness in the closure of the lips and the strong jaw, and shows itself
not as that of an ungoverned and libitudinous nature, but of a reserved
and, in the best way, sensitive quality. It is a mouth that implies
vigour but not self-will; the mouth of a very sensitive and
appreciative, but not a sensual man.
Besides the character of eyes and mouth, the treatment of the whole head
must be studied in order to understand what the critic meant when he
wrote that this work made a noble man still nobler. The treatment is
broad. The minor and accidental details are disregarded that the general
effect may be clearer. The curling hair of head and beard, for instance,
is not tossed about in disordered masses, as so often in later works,
but is conventionalised. The artist realised that he could not imitate
hair, and consequently sought for the best graphic symbol by which to
suggest curls. In the modelling of the face he chose an expression of
quietness and not one of any fitful, momentary emotion; and by not
representing any slight irregularities of surface or structure, he
emphasised and made more inevitably noticeable that expression which was
most completely indicative of the man’s essential nature. He has given
us not alone Pericles the leader of the state, nor Pericles the patron
of the fine arts, nor Pericles the impassioned orator, but the Pericles
of history, the embodiment of all the best qualities bred in Athens.
It must not be thought that the Pericles head alone exhibits the
qualities of both artist and sitter which I have attempted to suggest.
In their various ways the portraits of Sophocles, Euripides,
Demosthenes, the so-called Menander (Plate XLV), Periander (Plate XLVI)
and many another famous Greek show similar æsthetic feeling.
It was but a short time after the death of Pericles that the
intellectual conditions of Greece underwent a great change. Beliefs
that, heretofore, had been universally held by the Greeks began to be
questioned, and the conditions of state-craft passed into a new phase.
The rise and fall of the Macedonian power was of lasting effect on the
Greek character. Alexander exhibits the type, which became common again
in the Renaissance, of the selfish despot who maintained his power by
having the money to maintain his personal influence. His thoughts were
set chiefly on his own personal glory as expressed in his empire. He
tried, but unsuccessfully, to make his court the centre of the artistic
life of the day. He was not a patron of the arts but of artists. To
Lysippus alone was granted the right to carve his portrait. No natural
development of the arts was possible under such conditions.
The granting of such a monopoly to Lysippus shows that Alexander was
merely interested in producing on posterity a good effect so far as his
portraits could help him to do so. Copies of some of these portraits
exist. They are fine in many ways and, to a high degree, lifelike, but
they and other similar works of the epoch lack the quietness and repose
of the works of earlier times. There is a melodramatic feeling in the
looser treatment of the hair, and, oftentimes, an attempt to give a
superhuman expression to the face.
These qualities, as critics have often noticed, are to be found in all
the forms of art of the time, so far as we now have the means of
judging. Even in architecture there is a noticeable change. Stone is not
laid so carefully, the cutting of details is coarser and mouldings are
heavier; masses are less finely proportioned and the effects of light
and shade are made more definite and striking. The miniature portraits
on gems and coins show the same characteristics as the large busts, and
the mere fact of putting portraits of contemporary rulers on the coinage
shows that the relation of the individual to the state had changed and
that, on the one hand, the desire for personal fame was spreading over
the world—a desire which became still more marked in the Roman and
Renaissance epochs; while on the other the worship of rulers, introduced
from the Orient, had firmly entrenched itself. In fact, these
Hellenistic portraits are not simple. While the technique is still
Greek, there is something else in them than the desire of the artist to
show the sitter as he appeared to his contemporaries, even in a rightly
idealised manner,—they manifest the desire of the sitter to be admired.
The tendencies of the time were all towards exactness of representation
of existing forms, and this was soon attained. Perhaps it would have
been reached even sooner had it not been for certain interests which
held the sculptors partially to the old-time aims. One such conservative
influence is shown in the work of Silanion, who became famous for his
portraits of persons dead long before his day. Such work, if it was to
satisfy a large public, and this was what it aimed at and succeeded in
doing, had to be of a broad, general and unemphasized character, for the
nature and appearance of persons known only by tradition is necessarily
more vaguely and variously observed, less easily and surely grasped,
than that of the living. Hence, if Silanion had made portraits that
suggested strongly what seemed to him the most vital characteristic of
the person represented, he would probably have found that many of his
contemporaries considered some very different characteristic the most
essential. To please the many it was needful for his work to embody only
those ideas that were generally accepted. Such work cannot be realistic
in the sense of attracting attention to detailed peculiarities.
Greek portraiture became rapidly more and more prosaically realistic.
But even in its last stages, when Greek artists were still employed by
Greek patrons, the realism is generally restrained. The old
conventionalism and typifying of the model is gone, and there is greater
frankness in the rendering of special peculiarities of hair or skin; but
the work is generally quiet and dignified, calm in expression and
reposeful in action. The artist puts before us not the type and idea
suggested by the man, nor, except in special cases, the man’s own desire
regarding his appearance, but the real daily aspect of the man, dressed
up not at all, treated in accordance with the essential rules of
sculpture as a fine art.
That there were, however, some artists who amused themselves
and a thoughtless public with portraits that were vulgarly
realistic—realistic, that is, in the representation of ugly and
unessential details—is shown by what we know of Demetrius of Alopeke. He
is noted solely for his successful rendering of ugliness. But there was
too much cultivated taste in what remained of the Greek world, and too
much vigour and good sense in the growing Roman world, for such work to
become popular. To see realism developing in a strong and healthy
manner, we must turn to Rome where, though the actual carving was done,
with few exceptions probably, by Greek workers, still the character of
the work itself was controlled by Roman ideas (Plate XLVII).
[Illustration: PLATE XLVIII.]
The dry, matter of fact quality of Roman portraiture as opposed to the
more imaginative work of the Greeks, has long been recognised. Its
direct and unadorned presentation of the human face is noted by the most
careless observer and is to most people pleasing. It makes them feel at
ease; they have the sensation of being with real people; it does not
demand of them a mental effort to analyse the appearance before them in
order to understand it. But notwithstanding the facility with which one
derives very definite, and it may be lasting, impressions from these
Roman busts, they are by no means as simple and artless as they seem at
first sight to be. They are the product of complex influences and a
highly developed art and are as difficult to understand and properly
appreciate as are the earlier Greek ones.
We may illustrate what has been said by glancing a moment at a portrait
of an unknown old man[30] (Plate XLVIII). This is a superb example of
Roman portraiture of the time of the Republic. It cannot lay claim to
any beauty of form or feature; it is uncompromisingly homely.
Nevertheless it has a certain fascination for the beholder. The sculptor
was a great master. The way in which he has rendered the signs of old
age in the withered neck, the irregular wrinkles of the brow, and the
uneven mouth is magnificent. It is realism of a perfect kind, for the
evidence of the wear and tear of life is subdued by and made minor to
the splendid and enduring vigour of the mind and character behind the
cheerful old face. What an old age! The sap may be running slow, the
body may show the blows dealt by life, but the stiff, short hair is
still thick, the head is still held upright and forward. It is a face of
a clean-living, plain-thinking man, one who had “held both hands before
the fires of life,” and seems to scarcely suppress a smile at the
thought that any one should want the portrait of his old face.
Roman art, as a whole, was practical and uninspired, and far from
imaginative. In large measure it served either to answer some definite
practical end or to satisfy (as in the decoration of palaces) the Roman
taste for grandeur and display. It shows the influence of a less
full-hearted and unquestioning religious inspiration than that which had
such marked effect on the early art of Greece and again in the
Renaissance. The work of all the various branches of art produced in the
Roman territory before the importation of Greek artists was of the
rudest. It was necessary to employ Etruscans to decorate the temple of
the Capitoline Jove and until the first century before Christ the
artistic product of Rome seems to have been scanty. The energies of the
people were expended in war and colonisation. They were essentially a
commercial race. The existence of their city was derived from and
depended on their control of foreign trade. The first necessity of such
a city was to master the business of political organisation and not to
cultivate the tastes that minister to affluence and ease. Pride of race
and the acquisition of great wealth were results of the transformation
of the small republic into the great empire, and with pride and money
came luxury, and the arts, with the desire for portraits.
[Illustration: PLATE XLIX.]
Pliny tells of portraits made of wax, owned by the various families,
which were carried in funeral processions,—how these were considered as
belonging to the house and in case of the sale of the latter passed with
it to the new owner; such portraits as these would, like the earlier
Egyptian ones, tend to the purest realism of external appearance. He
mentions also the muniment rooms filled with records of ancestors.
Stress was laid on the actions of the illustrious dead in order that the
ensuing generations might be stirred to ambitious effort. Very different
is this from the Grecian sinking of the individual in the state. Roman
tombstones exhibit the same pride in great deeds and the same interest
in details. They are entirely different from the Greek grave monuments.
The Greek gives the name of the deceased, and sometimes a greeting to
the living wayfarer who may pass by and note the tomb; or, sometimes he
inscribed a plaintive verse—the expression of a broken heart—but nothing
more. How old were the dead? What had they done? No one now can tell.
Their course was run and the restless curiosity of later ages must
remain unsatisfied. On Roman tombstones all this is very different. They
tell us the age and family of the deceased, their occupation, what
offices they had held and their age even to days. In the cases where a
portrait of the dead person is added, it is treated in no general and
typical way; but the individual is set before us with unsparing
accuracy.
This interest in the events of each individual life led to the chief
difference between Roman and Greek portrait busts. The Roman thought of
the great men of his country as the persons who had done such and such
things rather than as the leaders of such and such policies.
Consequently, the Roman portraits suggest activity and not
repose,—action and not thought. The idea embodied in the bust is not of
a placid and meditative but of a positive and active cast. The
portraitist seems almost always to represent his sitters at the moment
when they were accomplishing the great deed that brought them fame. The
eyes are made expressive by being distinctly focussed, and this
expression is emphasised by the treatment of the brow, which oftentimes
is more or less wrinkled or contracted in a way that suggests vigorous,
passing, mental action. In many cases the ball of the eye is cut so as
to produce a strong shadow and thus to suggest the pupil. This also
makes the fixed look more intense, but unless the light is exactly right
it is apt to produce an unpleasant appearance.
That an artist should do this shows the desire for dramatic, restless
effects. The treatment of the lips and the part of the face about the
mouth also suggests an expression not typical of any general trend of
thought so much as of some momentary and strong emotion. Then the way
the head is set on the neck and turns sharply to one side or the other
can be understood only by supposing that the artist represented the
sitter as he appeared when employed on some one active and
characteristic piece of work. There is, for instance, in Corbulo none of
the Greek treatment of the individual as a type, but everything is done
to make more prominent the individualities of the man. And just as the
Pericles is not alone in its class, so too the Corbulo is matched by
many others, such as the Julius Cæsar, the Augustus, Caracalla or
Antoninus Pius (Plate XLIX).
[Illustration: PLATE L.]
As one looks at these Roman portraits one frequently feels that the
persons are on the point of moving. But notwithstanding this quality of
life which has led to their being called realistic, the best of them are
no more merely superficial in their realism than the best Greek busts.
Neither class is vulgarly realistic and imitative solely in the
external, but both depend for their effect on the correct comprehension
and presentation of actual phenomena of form and facial expression. The
different effect they produce is due to the fact that the Greek desired
an expression of the inner man, the man as he was to himself, while the
Roman desired the expression of the man as he showed himself to others.
Putting the case concisely, and remembering that such conciseness does
not express the completest truth, we may say that one was the portrait
of man as a thinker, the other of man as a doer.
In the foregoing explanation of the nature of Roman portraits, no
account has been taken of the numerous beautiful busts of children and
women that were carved by the sculptors of the Eternal City. At first
sight these seem to contradict the contention that the almost universal
intention of the Roman sculptor was to make a portrait of a single
sharply defined phase of his sitter’s personality. They seem to be done
rather in accordance with Greek taste; but closer study will reveal that
they are not truly Greek,—that their real nature is Roman and their
seeming Grecian spirit is an illusion due to accident and not to
intention.
Busts of children or women made to show character in action could never
resemble the Roman busts of men. The qualities that make the character
of men are non-existent, or at least undeveloped, in the child, and in
the woman take another form. The Greek by his generalising and typifying
process which brought about the production of placid figures was led to
express chiefly those qualities which produce similar effects in all
faces. The Roman, though searching for active expression still noted in
the child as the most beautiful and characteristic qualities, softness,
roundness and breadth of modelling, and the dignity of infantine
demeanour. Hence the Roman heads of children have a somewhat Greek look,
but in every part, as for example the hair, where stress can be laid on
accidental and purely individual appearance, this is done (Plate L). The
Greek appearance was inherent in the object; the most suggestive symbol
to express curled or straight locks was sought, but to carve hair in all
its fairness of strand, in all its waving masses or its fantasticalities
of fashion, was not the aim of the sculptor. In Roman work the hair is
scarcely ever conventionalised in a Grecian manner but shows the fashion
of the day. Usually, the head is not symmetrically placed, but is turned
to one side or the other, implying that the child’s attention was
attracted to some special object.
The same points are to be noted in the portraits of women. In their
faces as in children’s the beauty and softness of feature led to
something like a Greek breadth of modelling, but the hair and the action
of the head are purely Roman (Plate LI).
[Illustration: PLATE LI.]
The Florentine portraits show these same characteristics. Among them
also the children and women seem at first glance to be Grecian or
Venetian in character, but, when looked at more closely, one sees that
those features which are not mere copies of nature but which show
artistic intention are not Venetian, nor Greek, in character, but Roman.
Yet another class of Florentine monuments which are at first sight
misleading in the same way are the recumbent statues on tombs. In these
the Greek quality of quietness and repose is very marked and is due to
the artist being called upon to represent faces modelled by the stilling
touch of death and no longer to be thought of as showing active forces.
But even in these figures the intense actuality of feature, the lack of
conventionalising and typifying, is noticeable. In fact there is little
doubt that oftentimes the artist did his work not from sketches of the
living model but from a death mask.
If now we consider from a more general point of view this art of
portraiture and its relationship to times and peoples, certain things
become clear. Portraiture may be due, as in Egypt, to some religious
motive, but this is uncommon. Where it develops as an art, simply for
its æsthetic value, we note that it becomes a general practice only as
ideal and imaginative work loses ground. While the Greeks never, in a
certain sense, showed much imagination in their sculpture, it is
unquestionable that towards the end of the fifth century B.C., when
portraiture becomes prominent, the idealising and religious works
decrease and deteriorate. The same truth holds good in Italy during the
Renaissance, when much more imagination was shown than in Greece.[31]
Portraiture is due to a family interest in its own members or to a
people’s interest in an individual. It is not practised (for artists
such as Silanion are not true _portraitists_) by the artist to please
himself.
But whatever may be the interests, private or public, that call for
portraiture, the art becomes common only in times of centralisation,
times when large fortunes, and hence great power, are possessed by
individuals. Furthermore, no matter who may be the persons represented
(setting aside women and children) it is not possible to carve or paint
them except in one of two ways, as an embodiment of thought, or as an
embodiment of action. The former method appealed to Greeks and
Venetians,—the latter better pleased the Romans and Florentines. Both
are realistic because both strive to show in one way or another actually
existent forms and expressions. It depends on each man’s natural
temperament which will give him most satisfaction. Other methods are
frequently adopted in the modern struggle for originality, but it is
safe to say that they will exert little influence on the development of
art, for, while they may be clever devices, while they make certain
effective features particularly prominent, they are still unsatisfactory
because they produce at best but a partial likeness. If it be granted
that there are but two great methods of portraiture, there is yet no
reason to fear that dulness will ensue. The interest excited by the
individual man comes from the character shown.
There are just double as many portraits, potentially, as there are
individuals, and the interest of portraiture lies in what the artist
makes us comprehend of the nature of the man. Too often the public is
deceived into thinking that the work of handicraftsmen, with little or
no power of reading and understanding character, is to be judged as true
portraiture. Such work may be decorative in chiaroscuro, it may be
pleasant as colour; but the mere drawing of a face, even if what is
called a good likeness is produced, is not portraiture. It is but the
outer husk and dead wrapping hiding the vital germ within.
II. PHEIDIAS AND MICHAEL ANGELO
Different as were the lives and works of the two sculptors whose names
are more familiar to us than those of any others, there were,
nevertheless, many circumstances of closely related character that
affected their careers. But apart from such circumstances the
consideration of even those influences which were absolutely different
in the one case and in the other, exhibits clearly some of the broader
laws of the art practised by them both. In truth, it is the art rather
than the individual style of the sculptors that is worth study, for the
art is a language, the works but the expression of single ideas; the one
is a perpetual and constantly varying power, the other but separate
thoughts expressed.
Naturally the two interests, one that of becoming more familiar with the
products of the “fine intelligence of noble minds,” the other the more
abstract one of a more intimate knowledge of the powers and
possibilities of one of the fine arts, are inextricably combined. The
study of the two sculptors mentioned is particularly interesting owing
to the ever-increasing production of sculpture in our own day; and owing
to various conditions in modern life, there is a close relationship in
many important matters between us and these two masters of days long
past. Therefore, whatever can be certainly learned about them will help
us to appreciate more truly the work and workers of to-day and
to-morrow. Nothing can help more to attain this appreciation and
sympathy than the study of the great workers of past ages, even when
they may to a casual glance seem to be of somewhat remote interest.
The work of men such as Pheidias and Michael Angelo cannot be considered
by any serious student as in fact remote from our time and interests.
The study of the Past, particularly that part filled by Greece, becomes
every day more and more general and the influence of the Renaissance in
Italy upon modern thought and work is seen on every hand; here we come
to the first noteworthy fact regarding these two sculptors. It is not
going too far to say that all the best Greek sculpture, that is to say,
what was produced during the latter half of the fifth century before
Christ and the fourth century, was strongly influenced by Pheidias and
that his influence shows itself intermittently until the end of the
ancient world.
It would of course be too much to claim Pheidias as the originator of
all the qualities in sculpture which are apt, nowadays, to be named
Pheidian, but as the master who most adequately expressed the ideals
held in his time so far as sculpture allowed of their expression, he may
be used as the type; and among the varied interests which Michael Angelo
and the other students of the Renaissance found in Greek work were
several that may properly be called Pheidian.
This influence of Greek work on the Renaissance can hardly be over
estimated. It shows itself in many ways and with varying
force,—sometimes producing direct imitation of ancient works, then again
becoming manifest in new work done with the intention of reviving the
spirit of the ancient world. Michael Angelo did not fall under the spell
as completely as many of his less vigorously original contemporaries,
but it was no more to be entirely avoided by him than one of the laws of
nature. Thus with the work of the Greeks directly affecting us to-day in
a very similar way to that in which it affected the Italians in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and with the work of the later
period, deeply tinctured with the Grecian dye, also influencing us, it
becomes deeply interesting to find in what the greatest artists of the
two periods were alike and wherein they differed one from the other.
The influence of Pheidias on the art of his race was not so much that of
the originator or inventor as it was that of the poet, who gathering the
various and unconnected beauties that are felt by all, though less
keenly than by him, binds them together by the indefinable power of his
genius and gives back to the admiring world not separate things of
beauty but a standard of the beautiful and perfect. And this power of
genius deals with such finenesses, is so subtle, that oftentimes it is
almost beyond the power of words to make clear the manner of its
working. As the sensitiveness of the photographic plate is greater than
that of the eye, so the trained and perceptive eye notes much that can
only with difficulty be expressed by words. The genius is felt, it
thrills and vivifies the observer, but it cannot be expounded like a
problem in mathematics.
For this reason, we must believe, the few great writers on these matters
are oftentimes scoffed at by persons whose eyes have not been trained to
see nor their hearts to understand. Not that the scoffers can be blamed
for this unhappy sterility of their powers, for in most cases the
circumstances of life have not been of that fortunate kind which would
enable them to acquire the finer faculties. They are only to be blamed
in so far as either through envy or stupidity they refuse to believe
that others may be endowed with power which is lacking to them—power
dependent upon long and arduous training. It is a curious but familiar
phenomenon that the person who will not hesitate an instant to admit
that the trained rider or sportsman or oarsman can ride, shoot or row
better than he can, will energetically claim for himself as fine-seeing
an eye, or a mind as keenly interpretative, as the practised artist or
the scholar. That is, he asserts that the exercises of the body need
training, but those of eye and brain do not, a theory manifestly absurd.
The genius of Pheidias is so ultimate in its fineness that it needs long
training before it can be properly appreciated. If this is doubted, one
has but to consider the fact, that among all the numerous references to
him and his work which are preserved for us in ancient writers, not one
mentions him, as his elder contemporaries Myron, Pythagoras, Kalamis or
many others are mentioned, as having been the first to institute any
particular detail of carving. No new treatment of the hair, no new way
of representing the body, no special scheme of proportion are attributed
to him, and yet the absolute consensus of opinion was that he was the
unrivalled master of them all. Fashions changed, and a new one, that of
making collections, arose, which demanded the satisfaction of individual
tastes, but Pheidias’s fame knew no eclipse.
[Illustration: PLATE LII.]
Besides this subtle quality in his genius, this weaving of the various
beautiful threads spun by others into one consummate stuff, there are
other qualities that render his work difficult to appreciate. One is
that the ideals both of religion and of life were very different from
those of to-day, so that we have to lay aside all preconceived notions
and at first regard him as children who wonder but do not understand.
This is the hardest task the student ever has to master, to free himself
from the bonds of the conventions, beliefs and circumstances common to
his own day and study the work of another time with (so far as he can
accomplish it) an understanding sympathy with the conventions, beliefs
and circumstances belonging to those other days. Still a further
difficulty lies in the fact that there does not exist in the world one
single work of which we can say: this is truly and completely by
Pheidias. The marble figures from the Parthenon show his quality in many
respects clearly but these we know were worked upon by assistants. Other
works by him exist in copies, but for the most part these copies can be
shown to be bad and should be used as evidence only with the utmost
care. Yet, notwithstanding these difficulties, the image that we have of
him is, it can scarcely be doubted, clearly defined in the main
outlines.
How different is all this in the case of Michael Angelo! Here our
embarrassment is of a character diametrically opposed and comes from the
fact that we are so burdened with details about his life and work that
the really important matters are partially obscured by trivialities.
Contemporaries and fellow-workmen wrote his life; his letters and poems
have been preserved; documents of all sorts regarding his works exist,
and the works themselves are where they can be easily seen.
Beyond all these aids to our knowledge of the man we have, again, the
more vital one that the age in which he lived is almost as well
understood as our own, and many of the greater currents of thought and
action were but little different to those of the present time. Unlike
the Pheidian time, but like to-day, his was not a period when
governments deeply believed in the protection of their Gods nor one in
which the individual was scarcely considered except as a detail of the
state, nor when portrait statues were almost unknown. Conquest for the
love of gain, and commonwealths subdued to one will, were the rule. The
truly Greek period in the development of Italy, the time of the
blossoming of Venice, of Siena, of Florence had given way to the
Alexandrian epoch. Though the idea that the will of the masses should
govern the state was fortunately not yet formulated, the development of
individualism was well under way, and instead of men governing their
lives by general ideals they all sought to raise themselves on the
shoulders of their less fortunate brothers to enjoy a little while the
glory of a special and peculiar fame. Hence called as he was to lend his
power to the satisfaction of such desires as these, Michael Angelo’s
work was in many cases, in those, that is, where he was working for a
master other than his own instinct, tinged with a character utterly out
of accord with that of Pheidias, and yet curiously enough even in these
works there are signs of a strong undercurrent of feeling which would
have bound him and Pheidias together as the most sympathetic friends,
thus showing that at bottom art is not governed by circumstance of time
or place.
There were however certain very important aspects in which life as
Michael Angelo saw it in Italy, and particularly in Florence, was
curiously similar to what it was in Athens in the fifth century B.C. The
climate and general appearance of the two countries is even now not
unlike, and it must have been much less so in the time when the hills of
Greece were so forest-grown that Pan and the nymphs could really live in
comfort there, and before modern improvements had eradicated many of the
individual peculiarities of Italy. Then too the habits of the cultivated
classes were similar. Under very different forms the principles of
education seem to have been the same. The schooling shown in
Castiglione’s Cortegiano is like that given the Grecian youth. It was an
education which comprised, both in Greece and in Italy, music, drawing,
a knowledge of the thought and actions of past generations and a mastery
of all those exercises that conduced to self-defence or to the more
perfect development of the body. Similar training naturally taught the
men of these two worlds to see life in very similar ways, and although
the teachings of the Catholic Church were very different from those of
the Greek religion in regard to the relations between men and women, yet
life and instinct were stronger than the holy teachings, and in this
point too the simplicity and naturalness of the Greek found its
counterpart in Italy.
It is easy to see that the power exerted by these various influences on
the art of sculpture was very great, more so even than on the sister art
of painting, for it is on the realisation of what constitutes a fine
body, on the equal simplicity of treatment of the woman’s form and the
man’s, and the knowledge of what ideas can be best interpreted in terms
of form, that the art of sculpture depends. Art is but the translation
of emotion, and each particular art has a particular way of
accomplishing the translation; and in this, painting and sculpture are
more closely connected than any two other arts, so much so that
sculptors in the two greatest periods—the Greek and the
Renaissance—rarely considered their work as finished until the power of
colour had been used to heighten the effect, and often practised the two
arts coincidently. But during these two periods the limits imposed by
the materials of the various arts were clearly recognised and closely
adhered to, and in the best sculpture of the Renaissance there is no
more attempt to represent landscape or other purely colour effects than
in the Parthenon. Sometimes, however, as in the drapery of the Moses or
the modelling of the Pietà in St. Peter’s, Michael Angelo does seem to
overstep the limits of sculpture and to seek for effects which could be
more simply and much more intelligibly given in painting than in stone;
effects that need the manifold devices of light and shade and colour
which are at the disposal of the painter rather than the sculptor.
This is, however, a rare weakness in the works of Michael Angelo, and
one that apparently never entered those of Pheidias. One reason for this
is that the art of painting was more completely comprehended in Italy
than in Greece, and the Italian artists, more commonly than the Grecian,
practised both arts. Hence, great painter as well as great sculptor,
endowed with a readiness of hand, such as scarcely any other artist ever
had, to reproduce whatever his mind imaged, it is no wonder that Michael
Angelo at times went beyond the bounds of one art and seemed magically
to interfuse the beauties of both of them. It would have been a greater
wonder had he not done so. It was not a sign of his weakness so much as
of his strength, of the inability of any one art to satisfy the artist’s
desire and ideal. In this greater complexity, which shows at times in
the detail of his work, Michael Angelo differed from Pheidias, but,
almost invariably, the two artists, while differing in their feeling for
line, or gesture, or substance, treat the human figure and its
accessories in the same way. In both one sees a distinct and necessary
dwelling on the nude.
[Illustration: PLATE LIII.]
Where the human figure is chosen as the object of a work of art, there
are but two chief means by which to represent the emotions it contains,
one the expression of the face, one the action of the body as a whole.
It is in the representation of the face, the most palpable index of the
emotions, that painting, with its power over almost infinitesimal lights
and shades, finds fullest scope for its power, while it is in the
greater lines of the frame and the larger gestures that sculpture
satisfies herself. So it is that in the sculptural work of both Michael
Angelo and Pheidias one finds drapery treated not, as was distinctly the
case in the statues of Praxiteles, for its own special beauty apart from
the whole work, but as a means of emphasising the beauty of the body
whose details it hid.
Look at the group of three women from the western pediment of the
Parthenon, or the Lemnian Athena, or the Caryatids of the Erechtheum
(Plate LII)—for these are utterly Pheidian in character even if not by
the master himself—or the figures on the frieze of the Parthenon (Plate
LVII) or the Hegeso relief. In all these the drapery ripples over the
shoulders and breasts, breaking in great falls around the waist and legs
to disappear and fade away in little curling waves around the feet, not
hiding the soft details of the figure underneath but serving rather as a
frame to emphasise the beauties and set them in true relation to the
surroundings. That there was any ethical need of hiding the figure would
have seemed the height of absurdity to the Greek or the Italian. Out of
the dark it comes and back to the dark it goes in this Adamite
condition, so why should the artist not use it so if it serves his
purpose?
Thus it has been used in all times when there was a vital art, and such
times have been distinguished for greater sanity of thought and health
of body than when art was governed by mediæval fanaticisms. Michael
Angelo’s figures are as distinguished for this quality as are those
shaped by the Grecian chisel. His feeling for the value of the nude is
so strong that he can hardly suffer the drapery at all. The Moses, the
Madonnas, the Medici Princes are to all intents in large measure
undraped. Considered as draped figures they distinctly lack the
temperance and quiet nobility of the Greek figures, for the reason that
although his feeling towards the relation of draped and nude parts is
the same, Michael Angelo does not attain his end in as consummate a way.
He makes too sharp a distinction between the parts that are really
draped, the parts that are but seem not to be, and the nude. But in one
point of this same nature the two artists are completely alike. They
both regarded the human figure from the purely artistic point of view as
a means to suggest certain ideas. The religious meaning, the question as
to its sanctity or unhallowedness, no more occurred to them than to
question the advisability of warming themselves before the fire when
they were cold because there were fires in Hell. They were completely
natural.
In regard to the lack of complexity and to the greater repose, it may be
admitted that Pheidias has the advantage over Michael Angelo whose
works, true index as they are of his character, suffered from the time
in which he lived—his character suffered and hence his work. His was a
time of scepticism and hence of worry. The tranquillity that marked the
Greek mind was rarely found in his day. Aretino was planting the
destructive roots of modern journalism, and except, in a way marked by
strong affectation, at certain courts, one would have had to go far to
find Platonic Symposia or Olympic gatherings. The cloudy brow of Michael
Angelo himself as well as of many of his figures is a sign how the
perplexity of the times preyed upon the sculptor and in turn affected
not only the chief motive of many of his works but also their very
details.
And, if we admit the truth, this worry and perturbation is more natural
to us than is the Greek grace and calm which, to those who do not
understand the time, seems unnatural and forced. It was not so, however.
The Greek was never forced, but though he felt intensely, he considered
that the possession and exercise of control over emotion was as much to
be desired as the power which found expression in beating back barbarian
hordes. The tenderness of Greek friendships is proverbial, but the whole
tone of Greek tragedy is of passion held in check,—carried in the heart
rather than worn on the face. Slaves and servants gave way to noisy
grief, but not their masters. A Greek of the Periclean age could
scarcely have understood the worn, wearied, soul-troubled look of the
Pensieroso. It was not that the Greek was unimpassioned, but he never
let his passions govern him. He guided them as a rider guides a restive
horse—as the youths on the Parthenon guide theirs—calming and soothing
them lest the animal become the master and break away from the chosen
path.
This difference in the character of the two races was due largely to
religion, which had the most marked effect on the work produced in the
two countries. One is apt to think, when one sees the limitless mass of
churches, decorated by painter and sculptor, in Italy, and the unending
array of lesser works of distinctly religious intent, that no art could
be more religious than that of Italy. But just as in the conduct of
individuals it is the spirit rather than the form of action that is the
true index to their character, so in art it is the feeling the work
shows, and not merely its outer form, which indicates its true nature
and value. Now not merely in the number of religious works was Greece in
the Periclean days as distinguished as ever Italy was, but she was far
more noteworthy, in that her religion was a much more vital impulse than
that of Italy. This is certainly true of the Periclean as opposed to the
Medicean age.
In the light of present knowledge the circumstances that led to these
conditions are discernible. Like every innocent race the Greeks had a
firm belief in the Gods, beings developed in their minds by very varied
influences, and for the most part not of a character to serve as guides
to ideal conduct after the race had once gained the capacity for using
its mind in a logical way. One or two of these beings were, however, as
noble as any such conceptions at any time. This power to use the mind
rationally was not yet a national possession when Pheidias grew up. It
was just becoming so. The development of the mind, the strength of it,
was there, but for a few decades circumstances turned the thoughts of
the people away from philosophic consideration to more ecstatic modes in
which old conceptions were clung to with passionate fondness and made
more beautiful, but a change of belief was the work of a following
generation.
These circumstances were chiefly a consequence of the Persian Wars.
Greece was threatened with destruction. Athens was harried, and the
glories of the Acropolis were razed to the ground. Phœnix-like they
disappeared in fire to have an image of themselves more splendid in its
youth and vigour rise as a light to all the world. But though the
barbarian had for a moment seemed master of the situation, the Greeks
had, with the active help of the Gods, been the final victors and it was
in the service of thanks to their divine helpers that Pheidias found his
chief employment. It was only in the very early years of the Renaissance
that the Italians experienced any such miracles as those which
Pheidias’s elder contemporaries had known—as, for instance, at the
battle of Ravenna—and the effect on them then was much the same as it
had been on the Greeks. It was the actual presence of the Gods at
critical moments that stirred the Greeks. In Athens Athena’s snake led
them to safety, at Salamis the Aiakidoi inspired the heroes with their
battlecry, and Pan himself urged the weary messenger over the mountain
passes. The Greeks no more doubted that their victory was due to
assistance lent them by the Gods than that there had been a war. One
event was as real to them as the other, so it was natural for them, as
soon as their hearths were once more lit, to render thanks to their
Divinities by raising images of them on all sides, that they might never
forget them, and by building for the houses of their Gods as beautiful
temples as could by any possible means be made.
We may frankly concede that the grandeur of this work, the generousness
of it, can only be understood when one fully grasps the fact that a
Greek temple was, what the Christian’s is not, the house of the Lord. In
it but few and most private services were performed,—no processions, no
crowds of more or less attentive worshippers, no expounding of the word,
nothing whatever of that sort. The temple was the sacred dwelling place
of the deity, and the curious no more thought of entering it than of
opening uninvited their fellow-citizen’s door. It was a free gift to the
God and not to be thought of as a source of satisfaction to the builders
except in the same way as it pleases a lover to have his mistress accept
some gift at his hands. This feeling is repeated frequently in Pindar
and in other poets inspired by the ‘golden muse.’ So it was that,
flushed with the excitement of a great cause nobly won, the Greeks
turned the full force of their keen, glad energy to works that showed
their own greatness by manifesting with the sharpness of full
understanding the form of their ideals.
In our day, animated by so different interests and ambitions, it is hard
to sympathise with this natural idealistic work done in Athens, and it
is perhaps even harder to understand why it was that Pheidias and the
other artists were not called on to erect portrait statues of the great
leaders of the war as were the artists of the Renaissance. There is
mention of a statue to Miltiades, and this is all. The reason becomes
clear immediately we consider well what were the fundamental principles
of conduct as taught by the poets, who were in those days in large
measure the formulators of public opinion. Pindar is as clear-spoken
about this as need be, and he but repeats what one finds in the
fragments that are preserved of Solon’s writings and of other earlier
writers. He tells us that what is natural is best and that the deed done
without the deity is best left unspoken (Olym. IX), and again (Nem. I)
that each of us has his special power and we must earnestly endeavour
according as Nature shows the way. This is to be the moral of our
action, while that of our thought is that man is as nothing (Nem. VI),
ephemeral creature naught knowing what he is or what he may be, nothing
but a mirage-dream (Pyth. VIII).
[Illustration: PLATE LIV.]
Under the spell of such stern teaching as this it is no wonder that
Pheidias was not employed, as was Michael Angelo, in depicting for an
inquiring posterity the outer husk of the protagonist of his day. Nor
was it merely when he was called on to decorate Athens with his
accomplished powers that Pheidias found guiding principles of this stern
sort, but even in his other great work, the Olympian Zeus, he was
governed in the same way. By the Greek, victory in the games was no more
to be aspired to without the help of the Gods than was victory in
battle, and it was not praise for the winner but gratitude to the Gods
that was mete when Nike laid the ‘golden crown’ upon the athlete’s brow.
For it is the Gods who, as Pindar sings, guard the deep-breasted plain
of Sparta and grant success in the great games. Fame is to be sought but
it is to be the fame of honourable deeds (Pyth. VIII), but even this is
of less value than happiness and only he who has won both has attained
the acme of bliss (Pyth. I). Such men are almost unknown, for the soul
of honour is tarnished by lust of gain (Nem. IX). Thus were the athletes
in that “age of heroic prize-men” taught that physical power was of
value, but only as it was a stepping-stone to moral purity. No portraits
of such youths as these unless the Gods marked them as their own with
the triple crown. The deep-delved researches of epigraphist and
excavator show us how rare was that event.
Called upon to embody for the chosen youth of Greece their idea and
image of the guardian deity who meted out unquestioned justice to their
strife, Pheidias had to depict as it were a masculine counterpart to the
Goddess who made Athens her own. That he was as successful in the one
task as in the other is instantly apparent to one who notes the quality
of the praise bestowed upon his work by the highly trained critics of
the classic period. None speak of his figures as they do of Myron’s, for
instance, as deceiving the beholder by their realism. There is no
question as to the mastery over the material as with Kalamis and
Pythagoras,—no suggestion of conventionalism as with Polykleitos, none
of overrefinement as with Praxiteles,—but all agree that his works were
such nobly adequate representations of the divine beings that they added
a new glory to the religion of which they were the perfected expression.
Still another noteworthy peculiarity of this religion in its effect on
his work remains to be mentioned. Both he and Michael Angelo had at
different times now mere mortals, now deities, to represent. In the case
of the Attic master this led to a greater unity of performance than was
possible with the Florentine. Between the dwellers on Olympus and those
on the broad-bosomed Earth there was to Pheidias’s mind only a
difference in degree, whereas to the believer in the Roman doctrines
there was no real similarity between the heavenly hosts and the
inhabitants of this vale of tears; and where such was suggested, it was
so as a symbol, not as a representation. To the Greek the Gods were
merely his grander, nobler, more powerful brethren, blessed with the
same virtues and troubled by similar faults, differing principally from
the dwellers on earth by usually escaping the results due to giving way
to passion. Even they were not blessed with absolute immunity and
freedom of action. Zeus himself was subject to Fate, but in the main the
Gods, at least in their outward form, were but more beautiful men and
women. Hence when called upon to carve the most noble being whom he
could imagine, and equally when carving ideal youths and maidens on the
Parthenon, he could only carve the same forms he saw about him every day
idealised by his imagination. Whichever branch of his art he followed
trained him for the other.
That such conditions and beliefs as these were very different from those
under which Michael Angelo had to work needs no elaborate exposition.
How different they were in their effect on the art of Pheidias and the
happiness of the period for such an artist becomes clearer the more one
studies. There is still another point to consider, however,—what might
be called a more practical one than the influences of religion, and in
this regard, too, Pheidias was the more favoured. I refer to the
political conditions of the time, and the relations of Pheidias to his
employers.
The lack of original documents makes it impossible for us to follow the
course led by Pheidias from its fortunate rise to its unhappy close, but
that in most ways he was much to be envied by Michael Angelo cannot be
questioned. Athens was at the height of her prosperity; freed from
foreign or internal foes, she was at liberty to pursue her ends as
occasion demanded or as consideration showed was best. It was a time of
thanksgiving and hope. No such condition of government as this was known
to Michael Angelo, nor did his country have the advantage of being led
by as high-minded a statesman, and probably as wise a one, as ever
lived. So long as Pericles was leader of the state, Pheidias was his
friend and helper. Here was no worry for the artist, no change of
master, no blighting of cherished hopes, all which ills were suffered by
Michael Angelo; on the contrary, existence in the midst of a most highly
cultivated community—a community moved by a common search after ideal
ends, a community which must have been a constant inspiration to the
sculptor to equal the expectations it had of him. With the rise of mob
rule brought on by the momentary successes won by certain demagogues
came the downfall of Pericles and in his train Pheidias. But his great
work was finished then. He had nothing to fear when he laid aside his
chisel, and fortunately he was not left long to mourn the fast vanishing
nobility of his city and race. The time of calm self-confidence had
passed and the time of trouble was threatening. Only a short time
elapsed before the tide of disaster engulfed the whole country, and if
we would seek a counterpart to the worn and restless spirit that
sometimes appears in Michael Angelo’s work, we can find it in the later
Greek masters—even Praxiteles shows traces of it. But it is not mere
likenesses we are in search of, so much as explanations and the
clarification of certain phenomena of art.
The effect of these conditions of life and thought on Pheidias was more
strong than on other sculptors of the time because the greater
sensitiveness and impressibility of his nature rendered him a more
encompassing recipient for ideas and feelings than most of his
contemporaries. But the qualities that show in his work with especial
sharpness are found diffused throughout all the work of the period, and
there is one very noticeable characteristic of this work which
distinguishes it markedly from the work produced by Michael Angelo’s
fellow-workmen. It is the emphasis laid on youth. Donatello, Verrocchio,
Desiderio and many others often represented youthful figures; but the
representation of youth and early manhood could scarcely be said to
distinguish the work of the Florentine from other epochs, yet this is
exactly what can be said of the product of the early Greek and
particularly the Attic School.
Look at the statues of youths and maidens, the never-fading ghosts of
past days, which the Attic chisel carved and the Attic soil has
preserved for us. Look at the young Apollos and their not less glorious
brethren, the athletes. Look at the guardians above the temple
porches—incarnations of youthful vigour even when the bearded head or
matronly form give sign of elder years. Look at the vases “with brede of
marble men and maidens overwrought.” Finally look well at the statues of
God and Goddess—even these have youth eternal moulded in their full,
strong figures.
And it is pleasant to reflect that it is not the sculptor’s art alone
which found satisfaction in thus dwelling on the most beautiful forms of
human life, but the painters and the poets too immortalise the
entrancing splendours of the youthful form. Greek art of this time
presents us with the indubitable evidence of a belief, rooted deep as
life itself, that the everlasting joy of completest beauty was to be
found in the well-conditioned body of youth or maiden. What a
degradation the ascetic interpretation of the Holy Writ brought in the
art of the Renaissance! Many youthful figures do we find there, but they
were chosen as much for the sake of the quaintness of extremely youthful
forms as for the beauty inherent in vigorous development. The place of
the fine-drawn, well-groomed figures of the Greek youths and maidens is
taken by jolly, pot-bellied babies. Over the altars and among the graves
they scramble, and up the marble columns, to launch themselves, heedless
as screaming swallows, over the groined ceiling. From North to South and
across Italy from Sea to Sea this breed of fascinating babies
spread—their father the Church, their mother the great human heart of
the Italian race. And then, dulling the pleasant impression that such
figures make upon the mind, we are met on all sides by haggard figures
of men and women expressive only of a bitter ardour to seek salvation by
pain.
The wanness of Botticelli, the pain and trouble of Michael Angelo, the
mere ordinarily healthy look of Ghirlandaio, these are what take the
place of the deep-breasted, broad-shouldered, strong-pulsed, magnificent
Greeks—some repetition among these latter, ’tis true, but marvellous in
their vigour and constancy and impulsiveness. Or what poets can the
Medicean time show who sing of ideals and principles in the same
full-throated, calm, incisive way as Pindar or Sophocles sang them? We
have instead a scornful wrath or playful fancy. The deity is no longer
friendly but terrible, and dainty mistresses usurp the place of the
God-compelling Aphrodite. The momentary, not the eternal, is the
interest of the day.
[Illustration: PLATE LV.]
Some there were, Greek in spirit and in deed: Dante in part of his later
work, so far as a Catholic could be. The Vita Nuova in its heart-broken
passion, the Convito in its complexity, are purely Italian, but passages
of the Divine Comedy and the Letters might be the work of one of the
Attic dramatists, so intense are they, so cool, so assertive of the
power of right over wrong. But an artist much more Greek than Dante and
one who is often, but very mistakenly, thought to resemble Michael
Angelo, was Tintoretto. His was a Greek sense of form, his was a Greek
sense of beauty, and his was a completely and absolutely Greek sense of
what constituted true portraiture. There were others too of this group,
but they are rare and far between; men who seem to have been born two
thousand years too late, or else just in time to save the world from a
worship of what was mentally warped and physically unsound.
When one considers that the art of sculpture has found its chief
employment in the service of religion, it becomes plain why living among
a people whose religion led to asceticism, even though the age was
largely sceptical, Michael Angelo should impress his work with a feeling
quite opposed to that found in the works of Pheidias. Scepticism there
was in ancient Greece too, but not strong enough to free Pheidias
entirely from the bonds of the religion to which he was from infancy
accustomed. Furthermore, a scepticism that found much fuel for its
flames in the misconduct of the Vicar of Christ and his less powerful
imitators would have a very dissimilar effect on the mind from that
which was based on true mental development. The one was the natural
sloughing of the skin, the other the amputation of a diseased member.
The conditions at Rome had more effect on the formation of character in
those days than anything else, and they cannot have seemed much less
rotten to Michael Angelo than to Hildebrand five hundred years earlier.
The feeling that Christ was essentially the man of sorrows, which
affected the early artists, had passed from men’s minds, and in regard
to his comeliness there was nothing to prevent an artist working in a
Greek spirit; but employed though Michael Angelo was by the Popes, they
used him by no means always on religious work.
And Michael Angelo also suffered, as Pheidias did not, from having many
masters. These were causes to destroy any Pheidian-like unity in Michael
Angelo’s work, but causes much more potent to work him injury were the
characters of the men for whom he worked, prince as well as Pope. It
was, doubtless, in many respects fortunate for a young artist to have
the freedom of the court of Lorenzo de’ Medici, but while Lorenzo might
help such a man as Michael Angelo at the beginning of his career, he was
hardly the man to inspire his more mature years. At any rate he died
while Michael Angelo was still young, and thenceforth the latter worked
for men with whom he can have had but little sympathy. Men of great
energy they were, but with the exception of Alexander VI, in the main
corrupt or stupid. To work for such men under any circumstances must
have been trying, but when one thinks of their refusal to allow Michael
Angelo to work as he saw fit, one does not wonder that at times he was
nervously irritable.
Obviously such a life would have been trying to a man of more ordinary
clay than Michael Angelo, but to him, endowed, as he was, with enormous
powers of mental application and sensitive as only poets are, it must at
times have been little less than torture. He knew that the golden age of
his country had passed. He saw Florence humbled and Rome sacked. The
statesmen were men of mean ambition and the clergy men of lax morals.
Nothing could stop the degeneration. Political reformers and saintly
enthusiasts had matched themselves against the ever-increasing
debasement of Italy, and one after another they had all been overcome.
From the days of the doubtful reforms of Crescentius or Cola da Rienzi
through the period of the passionate recalling of Christ by Francis of
Assisi to the time of bitter invective of Savonarola, reformers had
given their lives in the attempt to save their beloved Italy from the
error of her ways, and all had failed. It was not a time for hope but
for sorrow, and it needed a firm belief in the Divine Word to save one
from despair—or at least discontent.
It is from his sonnets and letters rather than from his sculpture that
we can obtain a view of Michael Angelo’s thoughts and feelings. Not that
the latter does not show certain moods of the artist very clearly, but,
as in the Pietà, it is more ideal than personal, more the expression of
dreams than of his actual experience. In the sonnets, on the other hand,
he gives vent to his own innermost feelings. In them we find frequent
expression of deep despair, but bitterly as he grieved for the death of
Savonarola, there is no evidence that he thereat lost faith in humanity.
It may well have been his admiration of Vittoria Colonna that saved him
from misanthropy. As his intercourse with her was undoubtedly the purest
joy and her death the keenest sorrow of his later years, so there may
have been some similarly sweetening influence during the summer of his
life. The knowledge of his career that we possess is great, but it does
not tell us this. It is for our purposes, perhaps for all, better that
this should be so. At least it makes it easier to compare him with
Pheidias, of whose life we have no such details whatever.
Such were some of the general conditions affecting the point of view of
these two men. The effect they had on particular work becomes evident
with the study of the separate monuments. One point is, to begin with,
very noticeable. It is that of the eight works by Pheidias mentioned
distinctly by ancient writers seven are representations of deities, and
the eighth of an ideal being. There can be no question that he made
other works, but that these alone were preserved by tradition certainly
affords safe grounds for the deduction that his genius was most
congenially employed and most fully displayed in such work. In the case
of Michael Angelo, while we know of work like the statue of Julius or
the Battle Cartoon (not to mention his youthful efforts) that have
nothing to do with religion, yet his mind also turned to religious
subjects and his greatest works are entirely of this character.
Curiously enough it is when employed on subjects drawn from the ancient
world that Michael Angelo is most unlike the great Greek. His Pietà, the
Madonna of Bruges (Plate LIII) and Victor (Plate LIV) are more Pheidian
than his Bacchus (National Museum, Florence; Plate LV) or his Eros
(South Kensington Museum; Plate LVI). These are Greek of a kind, but
they are Alexandrian rather than Pheidian. They are as foreign to any
conceptions of the fifth century as they are to those of the Catholic
Church. The drunken, tottering Bacchus is as different from the early
conception of the God, who was thought of almost more as the sunshine
that makes the grape than as the juice itself, as the shrinking and
self-conscious Venus of the Capitol is from the Venus of Cnidos. In his
sensuality the Bacchus is un-Pheidian and in the humour introduced in
the group by the presence of his companion he is equally so. Humour was
not lacking to the Athenian, as the drama shows, but the fields of
sculpture and painting were not considered the proper place for its
display.
In still another point is the statue of Bacchus comparable not to the
early but to the late Greek work, and that is in the realism of the
modelling and the action of the figure. Such modelling bears no relation
to the broad treatment of Pheidias. The latter shows no such
_morbidezza_, nor would he have dwelt on the repulsive unsteadiness of
the pose. Whoever it was that carved the famous Borghese Anacreon, and
it was some contemporary of Pheidias, shows us how the earlier Greek
artist felt towards drunkenness. The figure is under the influence of
his much-sung God Dionysos, but he is shown in attitude of mental
ecstasy not of physical uncontrol. What stamps the Bacchus and the Eros
(and much of his other work) as non-Greek is a lack not exactly of
beauty, but of delicacy and refinement, of charm. But each of these
characteristics that differentiates Michael Angelo’s work from that of
the Greek stamps it as a work of the Renaissance. The pleasure in
technical excellence, the realism and the representation of
unpleasantness are all qualities that recur over and over again in the
work of this vigorous, capable, unflinching, unbelieving period.
Similar un-Pheidian qualities show in the figure of Eros in London,
which if not by Michael Angelo, is at least made entirely in his spirit.
The same realism of modelling is seen in the treatment of the head and
face, the same choice of an action inexpressive of the deepest meaning
of the figure. It is still less Pheidian in the vividness and intentness
of the action and expression which are not explained by the figure
itself, but the meaning of which is left to the imagination of the
beholder to discover. Dramatic quality of this sort is rarely found in
Pheidian work. The statues carved in that time were self-explanatory.
Single figures were often represented as intent or as full of movement
as the Eros, but their action is not motived by something outside
themselves. Hence they do not puzzle the beholder. The Anacreon, the
Discobolus need no explanation, but Michael Angelo’s Eros needs to be
grouped (at least in imagination) with some other figure before it can
be understood. It is like Myron’s Marsyas, splendid and suggestive but
incomplete.[32] Separate figures of the Parthenon pediments are as
dramatic as the Eros, but then they form part of a group and as such
their meaning was perfectly clear.
An instance is found in one of the group of Gods on the eastern end of
the frieze of the Parthenon (Plate LVII). The figure is commonly called
Ares. He is seated forward on his throne, and holds one raised knee
between his clasped hands. Such an attitude, so lacking in grandeur, so
suggestive of restlessness, is well suited to the fiery God of Battles
and shows how free and ungoverned by conventions Pheidias could be. The
group as a whole is a perfect expression of the power of the master, to
be simple as a child in this treatment of the Olympians and yet never to
fail to produce work of supreme beauty.
[Illustration: PLATE LVI.]
This simplicity one notices in all Pheidian work, separating it sharply
from the later work in Greece and from most of the work in Italy,
particularly from that of Michael Angelo. Pheidias is not in the least
affected, but at the same time he is not actualistic. Of the hundreds of
figures in the full round and in relief that decorated the Parthenon
there is not one, nor even a group, that does not seem absolutely and
utterly simple and real. And yet there is not one of them which close
study does not reveal to be a marvellous composite of actions and forms
and draperies and expressions which all bear the stamp of idealisation
(Plate LVIII). The effect of perfection that the work conveys is due
perhaps to Pheidias not having tried to idealise in any vague or
artificial way, but to his combining an absolute dependence on Nature
for his models with a capacity of seeing, and solely representing, their
essential beauties. So while his figures are ideal in the sense that
they are more perfect than average mortals, yet they do not seem
unapproachable and unaccountable.
Now this, we may freely grant, cannot be said of Michael Angelo’s work.
His figures are simple, yet it is not the simplicity of Nature but of
Art. A passing glance may find them equal to the Pheidian works, but a
more careful study shows that though true to Nature and possible in
action, they are, in respect to both body and attitude, improbable. They
are composed, and hence in a way untrue. The Pheidian beings seem those
of the Golden Age—perfect and unconcerned; while the others oftentimes
seem interested in their own perfection and desirous that it should be
admired. One knows enough of Michael Angelo to know that though
self-conscious, such thoughts were far from his mind and if, as I think,
they are to be seen in his work, it only shows that the time was
stronger than the man, for he lived in a period when affectation was not
uncommon. The grandeur of the Greek figures, as manifest in figurines as
in colossal works, is due to the beauty dependent on a mental poise;
that of the Florentine figures is due to their size and suggestion of
physical strength and to their facial and bodily expression that imply
the capacity of untold depths of passion—quite as physical a
consideration as that of size.
Of course it may be said that the Eros is merely a study of the human
frame in a rather complicated position, but even so, my contention that
the figure is un-Pheidian still remains true.
The strength of the action exhibited by this figure of Eros, the
tremendous play of muscle while at the same time the figure is thought
of not as in motion but as at rest, is what one finds in very many
figures painted and carved by Michael Angelo and forms one of the most
distinctive characteristics of his work. It shows in the Slaves, in the
Medici figures, in some of the sacred groups, in lesser measure but yet
distinctly in the David and Moses, and as clearly as possible in the
paintings of the Sistine Chapel. It is due to this in large degree that
these works are so well known, for they strike the eye of the casual and
impatient sightseer and they are remembered with much greater vividness
than work of a quieter and less excited character. In the hands of a
genius like Michael Angelo such treatment of the human figure, and the
choice of such positions, seem natural and give no sense of exaggeration
or restlessness.
It is commonly held that genius is limited by no law, and in so far as
is meant thereby to imply that no bounds can be set to the concepts of
great minds, this is true; in the attempt to express such concepts to
others, however, the genius equally with less endowed mortals must be
limited by the laws that govern the material in which he seeks to find
expression. The penetration of a Sophocles or a Shakespeare into the
mysteries of life can have no measure set to it, but when they tell us
their thoughts, their words are bound by the laws of verse. No final
explanation can be given for the teeming imagination of Michael Angelo,
but some of his works may be criticised for not conforming to the laws
of space or material that govern the arts of painting and sculpture. He
sometimes shows a lack of _taste_.
Genius shows in every touch of Michael Angelo’s hand, whether with brush
or chisel, but at times his work is unsatisfactory owing to its
exaggeration. No admiration is too great for specific qualities in
everything he did, but it is clear that the conception of beauty was not
held by him as essential. To Pheidias, on the other hand, it was of
primal importance.
A comparison of the Parthenon pediments with the ceiling of the Sistine
Chapel may make clear my meaning. This is not the place for fine
analysis of either composition. Suffice it to say that in each case the
space has been filled by the decoration with a perfection and adequacy
that has never been again approached, but I think it will be generally
admitted that the chief impression of the pediments, shattered though
they are, is of beauty, while that of the ceiling is of power. Michael
Angelo tried at times to express in paint and stone what cannot be
clearly expressed in those substances. This was what I have referred to
as lack of taste. His Last Judgment is a striking case in point. He
attempted in that work to do what Milton or Dante succeeded in doing
better with more suitable means. Even the Chief Actor in the scene
lacked the quality of grandeur which Michael Angelo seems usually to
have found no difficulty in suggesting. It is perhaps because he felt
the inadequacy of stone or paint for the full expression of his ideas
that he left so many works uncompleted.
Michael Angelo’s figures of Night and Dawn and certain figures in the
Sistine Chapel may be criticised for the exaggeration of their pose,
though how extraordinarily successful they are can be seen by comparing
them with similar figures by Vasari or other imitators of the master,
which invariably appear to be insecure and in danger of falling. The
difference in the kind of imitators who followed Pheidias, and those who
succeeded Michael Angelo, shows well one difference in their genius and
the effect on art in general that the two men had.
Both men had numerous pupils and followers, but in the earlier time such
men served to keep Greek sculpture at its highest level, in the later
they brought on a rapid degradation of the art in Italy. The reason for
this different result is plain. Just as most people now see nothing in
Michael Angelo’s work but strongly modelled figures and vigorous poses,
not knowing enough of his life to comprehend what were the thoughts he
desired to express, so the artists in his own day thought the
magnificence of his work lay in its exterior form. Imitating this they
succeeded in producing only figures with unnaturally protuberant muscles
placed in uncomfortably contorted positions. Vasari and Bandinelli are
two instances in point. The painted figures of the former are as foolish
in their assertion of would-be grandeur as is possible to conceive, and
there are few things uglier or coarser than the group of Hercules and
Cacus by the latter.
In Michael Angelo this insistence on the muscular development of figures
is an accident perhaps due to his delight (a pure Greek delight) in mere
physical strength, such as he himself possessed, but it is not the most
telling characteristic of his work. The truly essential part of his work
is the thought which his figures embody. His followers, being men of
little originality, as is shown by their trying to assume his
peculiarities, naturally succeeded not in making work like his, but work
which in reality serves to show their dissimilarity to their master. It
was unfortunate, also, that the very qualities which attracted them were
of a nature that if misunderstood lead to a more rapid debasement of art
and life than almost any other, for a love of mere physical strength is
a love of what allies one to the beasts of the field. Their work unites
them not so much to Michael Angelo as to the maker of what (with the
exception of the Laocoon) is probably the ugliest and most brutal work
preserved to us from antiquity—the Farnese Hercules.
All this was very different in the case of Pheidias and his school. In
his work there was nothing superficial to catch the eye, no peculiarity
except the perfection and beauty that one feels instantly and yet
cannot, without much care, explain on what it depends. What was there
then for other artists to do if they felt his was perfect sculpture and
they desired to work towards it? His figures were calm and stately. His
greatness lay in his conception of the being he was called upon to
represent—in his point of view, that is. This showed itself not in a
technical skill superior to that of his fellow-workers, for the artists
then as in the Renaissance were in the main equally skilful, but in a
mass of infinitesimal details which not so much by themselves separately
as by their combination gave his work its everlasting charm. It would
not have taken a quick-witted Greek long to realise that to produce
Pheidian works he must look at life in a Pheidian way, and the more
successful his imitations the more calm, restrained and careful would
they be. This Pheidian point of view was such that his followers were
turned toward spiritual repose as the source of inspiration for their
works rather than toward restless activity.
The complexity of the attitudes of Michael Angelo’s figures is scarcely
more noticeable than the multiplicity of the subjects he was called upon
to produce. Life was more complicated in his day than in that of
Pheidias, and there were more varied demands made upon the artist than
in the ancient times. While Pheidias, so far as we know, had to make
works solely for the state or for some public purpose, Michael Angelo
was forced to gratify the whim of various powerful employers. Oftentimes
such work, as for instance the Sistine Chapel, was of public character,
but more often it was not, so that in place of striving to embody the
ideals of the state whose greatest artist he was, he had to bend and
mould his genius to satisfy the personal ambitions of his masters. The
story of the Julian tomb illustrates this sad and thwarted part of his
career. Not only was he prevented from carrying out work already
undertaken in the way which he considered best, but also he was forced
to do that for which he felt himself unprepared by previous training and
unfitted by lack of interest in the subject.
[Illustration: PLATE LVII.]
That this was his mood at the time when, notwithstanding his arguments,
Pope Julius II compelled him, in 1508, to begin the work in the Sistine
Chapel, is known. If, when working against his will, he produced the
most wonderful bit of decorative and architectural painting the world
knows, one can but wonder what limit his talent would have reached had
he ever carried to completion any of his great sculptural undertakings.
Just as his capacity for mingling in his figures deep thought and
powerful action shows not a greater but rather a more varied genius than
that of Pheidias, so his capacities as painter, as architect, as
engineer show that circumstances led him to much greater variety of
activity than probably any ancient artist ever experienced. Not that
this varied activity must needs imply the possession of greater powers.
It implies merely the capacity of using an intellect highly trained in
one way for the accomplishment of purposes of more than one kind. That
is, it implies the possession by the artist of adaptability and of
common sense in its finest form, and the possession of these qualities
was not a rare characteristic in the Renaissance. Men of all kinds
showed it, but it is most marked when it appears as part of the mental
outfit of painters and of sculptors, men who too often adopt a pose of
what they consider simplicity and lack of knowledge of the world, as
though ignorance were the stepping-stone to great art. This was not the
condition of things in the Renaissance, nor, so far as the little
evidence we have allows us to judge, in Greece. It created no surprise
when Van Eyck and Rubens were considered as proper persons to be
entrusted with affairs of state, nor when the military protection of his
city was put into the hands of Michael Angelo, nor when Leonardo laid
out the irrigation system of Lombardy. Life is more complicated now and
in many lines work has to be more specialised—but this is no reason why
artists should be stupid.
The fact that the talents required for painting and sculpture are not
incompatible is clearly shown by Michael Angelo’s works. The most common
criticism passed on them, and one that is in part true, is that his
sculptures are at times too pictorial while at others his paintings are
too sculptural. Certain it is that parts of the ceiling in the Sistine
Chapel look, at first sight, more like sculptured figures than like
painted decorations. Michael Angelo was unquestionably aware of this,
and the effect was intentionally sought by him. To state as a rule of
art that work on the flat should always look flat is a mistake. There is
no law of optics or of architecture which demands this.
The application of the laws of art must depend on the individual
practitioner.[33] In treating the figures in the Sistine Chapel in a
sculpturesque way Michael Angelo produced a work more like the Parthenon
in the perfection with which the decoration is adapted to its position
than is elsewhere to be seen. He has used painting, that is to say, in
much of his design to suggest sculpture, which is the richer and more
suitable adjunct to most parts of architecture,[34] and thereby produced
a complex architectural work instead of producing merely a painting
which, like many of those in Venice, might equally well be placed
anywhere else.
[Illustration: PLATE LVIII.]
A comparison will make the point plain. Take most modern decoration of a
similar sort and how infinitely feeble and accidental it seems! Look at
the decorations of the Pantheon in Paris, of the Boston Public Library,
and the difference may be seen. Great painting one may see there, but
not great decoration of architectural works; and ceiling or wall
paintings are nothing else. Any one of these paintings taken from its
present position would look equally well on any other wall large enough
to hold it, or in any gallery, and would also have equal meaning there.
Not so Michael Angelo’s work. As a whole it could be put nowhere except
where it is, and if cut in pieces each bit would cry out in its solitude
and demand the juxtaposition of the other parts. The work is as perfect
a finishing of the Chapel as though it were some natural growth. This is
equally true of the sculptures of the Parthenon. How inconsequent and
unmeaning they look when taken from their natural place is shown in the
British Museum by the Athenæum Club and Hyde Park Gate in London.
Michael Angelo’s other paintings also have a sculpturesque look. This is
partly due to the fact that the foreground, where atmosphere has little
effect, is more studied than the background. To him as to Pheidias the
human figure was of the deepest interest, but its natural surroundings
of little or none, so the figures are drawn with a distinctness and
illumined with an intensity of light which make them look more solid and
material than many a painter’s work. It does not mean that Michael
Angelo failed to understand the function of painting as a Fine Art. The
true function of art is the presentation of the ideal and this is done
by the translation of emotion. This translation of emotion, when
accomplished with the motive of giving pleasure by pleasing the senses
or elevating the mind, produces the noblest art, for this search for
pleasure is in healthy minds but the search for beauty, and beauty is
the suggestion of the ideal. This being the general function of Art each
one of the Fine Arts follows in ways individual to itself the search
after beauty in the translation of emotion. Music is the most subtle and
architecture is the most general of the arts, and poetry the most
commonly understood, while painting and sculpture, the terms of which
are hardest to define, are the most closely related. As an art
architecture is an expression of man as a social animal. Painting and
sculpture are its proper adjuncts. Painting ought to be merely the
representation by colour of three dimensional spaces in two dimensions,
while sculpture should attempt nothing but the rendering of forms in
full or partial relief. Each art _per se_ has special powers, but when
used as a detail of work of another kind, its peculiarities must then be
suppressed till it is in accord with the work of which it is a portion
or detail.
Now this is exactly what Michael Angelo accomplished. It is natural for
painting, since it cannot represent figures in the round, to lay most
emphasis on the face, but when it is used to ornament the separate parts
of an architectural work, it must generalise its own peculiarities and
use them to enrich the architectural scheme. For in so far as painting
thus used impresses the beholder with its excellence as painting, by
just so far has the architecture become a frame for the painting and the
painting failed to be a glory added to the architecture. Michael Angelo
was a great enough genius to be able to use painting perfectly as an
additional splendour to his architecture.
You do not think of the figures or pictures on the Sistine ceiling as
separate works—in large measure the composition is such that you
cannot—so much as the finishing ornament of the Chapel. This is because
the artist did not put the greatest amount of expression into the faces,
it permeates equally the whole body. Thus these grand creatures look
like sculpture, which is in fact, as more similar in its permanence to
architecture, the noblest means of decorating a building. Ceilings
cannot, it is true, be covered with carved figures, and great care
should be chosen in the scenes depicted on them, for they do not offer a
suitable position in which to hang pictures that are primarily conceived
as pictures. This was a common mistake of the Venetians, who covered the
ceilings of the Ducal Palace, Santa Maria del’ Orto and countless other
buildings with elaborate paintings of subjects that have no
architectural significance and cannot be thought of as scenes taking
place in the heavens. They are in fact large easel pictures and as such
would be better seen if hung upright on the wall than in their present
position.
In the Sistine Chapel Michael Angelo showed his complete understanding
of painting as an ornament and finish to architecture, and in his easel
paintings he manifests, if not as complex effects as some painters, at
least as full a knowledge of what constitutes painting, from its roots
of drawing and composition to the full blossom of colour and expression.
Perhaps the most marked peculiarity of his paintings is the lack of
complex backgrounds of any sort, whether of landscape, or drapery, or
architecture. This again allies him to the Greeks, not to those of any
one age in especial, but to all, for the most marked difference (leaving
the less important matters of medium and technique aside) between their
paintings and those of modern times is, that they did not consider
backgrounds as a part to be treated with much elaboration or care.
The Greek painter, we know, presented his scene with only enough
suggestion of the surroundings in which the figures stood for the
beholder to understand the general character of the spot where the
action was taking place. He lavished his care on the figures, and did
nothing to distract the full attention of the beholder from them.
Michael Angelo did the same. In so far as he rivets your whole attention
to the figures on the canvas, his painting is sculpturesque, but this
word cannot be applied to his work in the sense that he was ignorant of
the principles of painting as an art of expression. That in his painting
as in his sculpture he tended to overstep what are generally considered
the proper limits of the art is true, but this was due rather to great
knowledge than to any imperfect understanding. At such times he was
striking out into the unknown realms of discovery and searching for new
possibilities for the arts of which he was the most accomplished master
of the time.
[Illustration: PLATE LIX.]
I have tried to show how the general beliefs and ideals of the people
among whom they lived would have tended to differentiate these two
artists one from the other in certain ways and to ally them in certain
others. But different or similar, can it be said of either: this one is
the greater? I think not, even though one recognises that Michael Angelo
certainly gave more varied expression to his genius. Neither of them
shows a more complete understanding of the arts, or embodies a fuller
realisation of the ideal in his figures, than the other.
Take for example Pheidias’s statues of Athena and Michael Angelo’s of
the Madonna. No artist could express all each of these beings suggests
in one figure, but it would be a hard task to find anything that they
did not show in one or the other of their several presentations. We know
with considerable accuracy what was the grandeur of the Athena
Parthenos, the guardian of her chosen people, and we also know the
divine rage felt by Athena the warrior Goddess driving Poseidon from the
sacred citadel; and finally we know by literary and probably by ocular
evidence with what consummate grace Pheidias represented Athena the
ideal of Attic maidenhood. There are many other statues of the Goddess
by other artists and from other periods but none I believe that add to
the realisation these three give us of what Athena was to the Athenians.
In the same way Michael Angelo shows us the feeling of his time towards
the Virgin. In the figure at Bruges we see the youthful figure—the
Virgin of the Visitation. In the partially finished group in Florence
there is more trouble in the face, the feeling expressed in the words
“behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing” and “they
understood not the saying that he spake unto them” (Plate LIX). In the
Pietà in St. Peter’s her heart is numb with grief—the flood of sorrow
that has whelmed her is
“Such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound or foam,
When that which draws from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.”
Her figure as shown us by other lesser men seems trivial or incomplete
when these are remembered.
If one considers the larger undertakings of the two men, the Parthenon
and the Sistine Chapel, one cannot say that either surpasses the other,
though one can say with absolute security that neither has ever been
approached. In these works they show themselves the masters of all
craftsmen. Note the way in which the composition of the Parthenon groups
suits the long, low triangular space in which they are placed, each
group, taken as a whole, being made up of numerous lesser groups which
are quite perfect by themselves and so interwoven by means of upraised
arms or turned bodies or bits of floating drapery, that it is only after
careful observation that one sees how the artist made various parts
unite into one perfect whole. It is the acme of architectural sculpture.
It seems simple, but one searches in vain among the pediment groups that
have been made since for one that can approach it even distantly in
merit. It is this same intertwining of simple, unforced separate parts
into one grand, living completeness that marks out the ceiling of the
Sistine Chapel as a thing apart and unequalled.
To compare the more private, perhaps more personal works, of the two men
is impossible, for the reason that nothing of this sort made by Pheidias
has been preserved for us. There are a few such by Michael Angelo, some
from his earliest years, as the Battle of the Centaurs, others like the
David or perhaps the Eros. From these we get a suggestion regarding the
ideas which Michael Angelo thought were to be expressed by sculpture.
The bas-relief showing the Battle of the Centaurs can, however, scarcely
be taken into consideration, for it is a work of his mere boyhood and
shows little except unusual power for a youth and an interest, which
apparently did not last, in subjects drawn from ancient art. The man’s
unconventional and powerful nature is shown by the fact that in his
mature years he did not ever, as most contemporary painters and
sculptors did, try to copy the antique in any way. His own mind was too
active for him to adopt either the subjects or modes of other men’s
work. So, too, in the case of Pheidias, his work does not suggest that
of any predecessor, but in later periods of Greek sculpture the figures
which hark back in some way to Pheidian originals are innumerable.
In the David, in the figures in the Medici Chapel and those for the
Julian tomb one sees the same strained look: physical calm and great
strength combined with a marked expression of mental restlessness and
trouble, undoubtedly significant of Michael Angelo’s own feeling of
weariness and of the ‘powerful trouble’ that beset the world. Pheidias
came just at the acme of a great period. Michael Angelo, on the other
hand, felt that the light in the sky was that of the waning day, not of
the sunrise. His figures are sad; those by Pheidias are quiet and
peaceful. Society and the artist were in harmony in the case of the
Greek; they were not in accord in the case of the Florentine.
Every point we study brings us to the same conclusion, that while each
of these men was the supreme master of his time and of incomparable
capacity, Pheidias had less to struggle against than Michael Angelo; and
through being able to carry out his ideas unhampered, he had a better
effect on his followers than Michael Angelo, whose works are in the main
monuments of thwarted purpose. Each sought unceasingly to embody in his
work ideals of beauty beyond the influence of contemporary events. In
the one case this was possible, in the other not. To the Greek,
contemporaneity was nothing, to the Italian, it was all. Where Pheidias
was called on to decorate the chief public building of Athens with
scenes of war which were known only by popular tradition and which were
instinct with poetry, Michael Angelo had to depict a battle that was a
mere incident of border warfare. Each of these men, however, enriched
the world with works that are unsurpassed, and similar work will never
again be accomplished.
With the passing of the Greek world passed the ideals that inspired
Pheidias. Others came and faded away again with Michael Angelo. Their
works are immortal in the sense that in their kind they cannot be
superseded. But the arts themselves are not immortal, for this would
mean that they could not advance and develop. It is in this power of
growth and change and adaptation that art is allied to science, and we
turn to the most recent exponent of either with the incommensurable hope
that he may have found the master key to beautiful new worlds.
III. A HEAD OF ATHENA FROM CYRENE
In the first, and, as it was destined to be, the last report on the
excavations by the Archæological Institute of America at Cyrene,[35] I
published a marble head of Athena which we found a few inches below the
surface on the top of the Acropolis.
The spot where it was found afforded no clew to its origin. It came to
light in a small room constructed probably in the later Ptolemaic times,
and had obviously fallen and been lost to sight, by one of those
inexplicable accidents familiar to all excavators, on the spot where our
picks discovered it. No temple stood near; no trace of pedestal could be
found and no other fragment of marble came from the torn covering of
protecting earth to help answer the eager questioning the quiet face
aroused. Except for a flake off the hair, the tip of the helmet
projecting over the brow, the edge of one ear and the point of the nose,
the marble was as fresh as the day the figure was first unveiled to the
worshipping multitude. (Plates LX, LXI.)
The perfect head alone is left us to solve the riddles the archæologist
and artist may ask. Doubtless when in the oncoming years the Italians
have the satisfaction of finishing the work which we inaugurated and
made possible, further discoveries will dispel whatever doubts now
harass our minds, and students, forgetful of the time and circumstances
under which we wrought, will wonder why we hesitated, why we did not
see, why the closed lips did not speak to us with as clear a note as to
them. Doubtless, but still it seems likely that many years must elapse
before others will be able to finish our work, and in the meantime it is
well to bring this lovely bit of sculptor’s art more adequately to the
attention of students than seemed wise before the hope of continuing the
excavation was blighted by the careless hand of war.
Before studying the special characteristics of this head of Athena and
showing how, notwithstanding the very numerous representations of the
warrior Goddess which we possess, it is entirely individual and unlike
any other, we may do well to recall certain facts regarding Cyrene as a
centre of Greek life and thought, facts that are not open to question,
being proved by historical and other positive evidence. The accounts
given by the ancient historians and poets of the foundation and rapid
rise to wealth of Cyrene were sufficient to make us certain that the
archæologist’s spade would find in plenty those beautiful monuments of a
long-since vanished spirit which make the work of the excavator on Greek
soil so entrancing and satisfying.
Even at inaccessible Cyrene, however, we were not the first. In the
early sixties of the last century, Smith and Porcher, two fine examples
of men of English breadth of view combined with well-trained and
persistent capacity, had brought to light a considerable number of bits
of sculpture which showed clearly that Cyrene, like every other Greek
city, had once been a kindly nurse to artists. True though it be that
these broken fragments now sheltered in the British Museum were, with
the exception of a magnificent bronze head, of second-rate quality,
still they dispelled all doubt regarding one very important point; that
is, they showed that at Cyrene itself there were large numbers of
sculptors whose technical skill was of a high order. That there were
numerous sculptors was proved by the fact that the works found by Smith
and Porcher embraced a long stretch of years.
[Illustration: PLATE LX.]
At first sight this fact may appear little noteworthy, and its bearing
on our Athena head may not be perceived. It takes on a fresh aspect,
however, when we realise that there is no marble to be found within
hundreds of miles of Cyrene, and, in consequence, the stone must have
been imported to the city. It might be suggested that not the marble but
the finished carvings were imported, as we know from literary evidence
was sometimes done in other parts of the Greek world. Had the English
and ourselves found only one or two examples of supreme merit, this
theory might be tenable. No one, however, will attempt to uphold it in
the face of the numerous busts, statues, bas-reliefs, grave monuments
and inscriptions, many of which are of very little importance, which
were dug up by the Englishmen and ourselves. Portrait busts alone show
that Cyrene had her own sculptors who, even though they lacked the
advantage their _confrères_ of many Greek cities had in near-by
quarries, managed to overcome the difficulties Nature put in their way
and struggled to a mastery of their chosen art. The bearing of this on
the Athena will become manifest as we go further into the study of the
subject.
If only another Pausanias, one might suggest, had gone sightseeing and
note-taking along the surprising shores of Libya, our work of
interpretation had been far simpler. But though we are not helped by
such written evidence, we can still discover the essential qualities and
meanings of these sculptures, and the diggers who in years to come drive
our trenches deeper into the ground will find nothing more unexpected
than the Athena, for she is the drifted seaweed that proves the still
invisible land. In fact, I for one am glad we have no Pausanias to dull
the edge of our wits with his bald and often erroneous statements. He
has helped much in making it possible to draw up chronological tables
and schedules of all sorts regarding the development of Greek sculpture,
yet had he never written, the true understanding of the art, the
comprehension of the forces that moulded it from the days of its early
promising effort through its bloom of unchallenged perfection on to its
phosphorescent decay, would have been not less full and possibly even
more intelligent than it is to-day. Pausanias and others of his kind
have handed down many names which mean, in truth, no more to us than the
titles “master this” or “master that” of the mediæval German school of
painting. Such facts and data are of infinitely little importance. Even
without them the razor-sharp critical powers of a Heinrich Brunn or an
Adolf Furtwaengler (before he gave up his energy to acrimonious and
petty dispute) were not to be denied and without any fictitious aid of
names would have interpreted Greek art to us. That there are always
blind souls who, when they see the Hermes of Praxiteles, think it Roman,
and consider the Maiden of Anzio a work of the time of the Antonines,
and who find other blind souls to follow them, does not delay the Brunns
and Furtwaenglers when they make their rare appearance in the world of
scholarship.
Thus with no help or suggestion derived from information given us by
ancient travellers we start on our study of the Athena with the
knowledge that the technique of the art of sculpture was so well
understood, and the practice of it so common, at Cyrene, that we need
not, unless forced by internal evidence, look elsewhere for the nameless
sculptor who carved this masterpiece. The result will show that all the
internal evidence is in favour of its Cyrenean origin.
Since, then, sculpture was at Cyrene, as everywhere else in the Greek
world, one of the common modes of expression, it remains for us to study
the influences to which it was subjected. We meet here the strange
phenomenon that the millennial-old civilisation of Egypt exerted
apparently no influence whatever on the young Greek town to the west.
That towards the end of the latter’s career, when she had fallen under
Ptolemaic control, she should be unaffected by Egyptian thought is not
surprising, for Egypt herself had at that time submitted to the spell of
Greece, and the true Egyptian art must have seemed to the fellahin who
then cultivated the Nile valley almost as strange as it does to us. If,
however, the often-expressed theory, supposed to be borne out by certain
statues found on the Acropolis of Athens and elsewhere, that the archaic
sculptors of the Greek mainland were more or less governed by Egyptian
ideals, be true, then it is odd that even the most archaic art of
Cyrene, represented by statuettes of the sixth century B.C., does not
exhibit a similar tendency. But this belief in the Egyptian influence on
the artists of Greece is based, it seems to me, on unsound evidence.
There are obviously two, and only two, chief points to consider, if one
would fully understand a work of art. One is its outer form, the other
what it is trying to express; for even the childish and misdirected
efforts of the “Futurists” are an endeavour to express something—how
futile these efforts are is shown by the fact that were it not for the
titles given the works by the Futurists themselves no one, no matter how
capable an artist or how mystical a dreamer, could possibly guess what
they were intended to represent. The works show an even greater
confusion of mind than that of Father Castel who in the early part of
the eighteenth century attempted to make instruments which he called
_clavecin des couleurs_ and _clavecin des odeurs_, instruments intended
to produce by means of changing colours and perfumes the same effects as
music.
Now one thing in very truth Greek art never was, either in poetry,
sculpture, painting, or in any other form: it was never confused, but
had always perfect lucidity. In sculpture, for instance, the composition
of the groups and figures, though often displaying an intricacy almost
as great as that of a knot by Leonardo, is never anything but clear to
the trained eye. To understand the value of this quality one need only
look at the work of Rodin, which, no matter what elements of greatness
it may be thought to have, certainly has not one slightest atom of Greek
quality. Besides the evil of confusion another failure sculpture may
show is the stagnation of formalism. This is one of the most noticeable
features of Egyptian art. Notwithstanding the wonderful technical
dexterity of the workers in that land, hieratic influences were too
strong for them and their natural impulses were shackled by the bonds of
dogma. This blight, too, the Greeks avoided. What then is the ground for
maintaining that their early art was influenced by Egypt? That the early
sculptors may have learnt many technical processes from Egyptians I
would neither deny nor affirm. They may even have had Egyptian teachers,
just as later the Romans had Grecian ones, but that does not mean that
Greek art was of necessity moulded in accordance with Egyptian feelings
and ideals.
True it is that there are certain Greek statues which resemble in pose
and stiffness certain Egyptian statues, but there is a fundamental
difference between the two groups. The pose is an accident and can be
duplicated in work from other parts of the world. The fundamental
difference is that the stiffness of the Greek work does not represent
the formalism of Egypt, but it is due to the awkwardness of
inexperience. Take, for instance, the “Aunts” found on the Athenian
Acropolis. They are by an unpractised, stiff hand and in that sense they
are formal; but they are far more, delightfully spontaneous. Such work
would have been inconceivable to an Egyptian and would have seemed to
him irreligious and indecent. It is not to be thought that Greek art
even in its period of fullest bloom was not formal; it was. It was the
wonderful talent of the Greek clearly to understand the laws proper to
the various arts, but he was always spontaneous and original, and his
work exhibits formality but not formalism.
These qualities are seen in the earliest work found at Cyrene, the
terra-cottas already mentioned. That they should be so manifested is but
another proof of the amazing force and individuality of the Greek mind.
Any other race would almost surely have felt the influence of Egypt. Her
territory joined that of Cyrene on the eastern border and the land
between the city and the Nile offered no barriers of mountains or desert
to hinder easy and comparatively rapid communication, yet the outer form
and inner content of these early Cyrenean figures is completely and
unmistakably Greek. That traders passed back and forth from one region
to the other cannot be doubted. Caravans plodded their slow way from the
sacred fountain to the mysterious river, coastwise boats skirted the
inhospitable shore even as they do to-day. The Greek, then as now the
costermonger of the Mediterranean, made his money, but he kept his
individuality. Throughout the centuries, until at last spiritual
aloofness was trampled down by a ruder and more powerful race, at Cyrene
as completely as at Athens, the Greek maintained his own standards and
beliefs. As the clumsy terra-cottas, wrought not very long after the
first settlers were guided to the spring which made a great city
possible, show this, so also does the Athena. Individual she is, and
unique, but she is pure Greek. The reasons for some part of her
individuality will become clear as we study her still further.
We see, then, that the Athena is a work expressing with unveiled
distinctness the Greek spirit, and also that there is no reason to
suppose that the sculptor was other than Cyrenean; it remains to find
out at what date the figure was carved. Often a mere fragment like this
exhibits some detail that makes it easy to fix the date of its origin
with considerable accuracy. In this case the question is complicated by
both technical points and general considerations. Had this head been
found in Greece itself or in any part of the Greek portion of Asia
Minor, the history of which is well known and the art of which has been
laid bare by the archæologist, we should have various well-established
criteria by which to test and estimate the head. But the definite
historical records of Cyrene are very scanty, and though what is
probably in general a fairly accurate idea of the development of the
city can be built up from the verses of poets, the accounts of
historians and other sources of various kinds, still there is little to
help us date a single work of art. There is, however, no reason to
suppose that the deeper currents which gave the course to the life of
Cyrene were very different from those which guided the life of other
colonies. Pindar’s odes alone would serve to show that the African city
was in pretty constant relation with the mother country. Hence it is
safe to assume that the arts developed in Cyrene very much as they did
elsewhere in the Greek world.
At the present time surely enough is known of the various parts of that
world to make us realise that all advance did not spring from Greece
herself. Though the Greek spirit was bound to express itself in similar
forms wherever Greeks settled, still sometimes one region, sometimes
another, was in the lead. Hence any chronological scale as applied to
art must be elastic, and one must not give way to the temptation to
judge every new find by the standards set by the artists of Greece
herself. Provincialism and archaism often take similar external forms.
So, too, it is a general law that colonies develop more rapidly than the
country from which they spring. A rapid development may be brought about
also by geographical and climatic conditions in places which, at first
sight, do not appear to be conducive to the advancement of art.
In years to come it will be proved beyond a doubt, I believe, that
Cyrene was such a place. Her distance from the regions in which we are
accustomed to think of the Greeks as working out their destiny saved her
from the wastage of those wars which it is hard to regret because they
have given us immortal pictures of Greek courage and devotion. What her
relations with the native powers were we do not yet know, but had they
led to any such struggles as made the pride of Athens and the other
cities of the mother country, surely some echo would have reached our
ears. So we may think of Cyrene as waxing fat from the moment when the
first settlers, after their long wanderings to find a habitable spot,
climbed the rocky hillsides and quenched their thirst at the spring
which with its bright arms still holds a small settlement. It is for
these general considerations of easy colonial growth, and freedom from
external distractions, that I think the Athena can be safely dated
rather earlier than we should be tempted to date her had she been found,
let us say, in Athens or Sparta.
The technical point which I mentioned as making it difficult to date the
head, is the helmet. It is of the Corinthian type, but there is nothing
in its general shape or details of form by which a date can be fixed.
Furthermore, it covers the head so completely that only a few waving
locks of hair over each ear and the heavy braid resting on the nape of
the neck are visible. This concealment of the hair takes away in large
measure one of the most helpful methods of dating statuary.
[Illustration: PLATE LXI.]
In the case of female figures, nevertheless, the treatment of the hair
is less helpful, perhaps, than in statues of the rougher sex because in
the former the more severe and orderly dressing of the bound locks gave
less chance for individuality of treatment than did the crisp and
wind-tossed curls of youths and men; still, even in the women’s figures
the hair very often betrays the date of the sculptor. Few though the
tresses are which escape the stern covering of Athena’s helmet, they are
sufficient to help us in our elusive pursuit. The general method in
which the hair is arranged, parted over the brow and drawn closely back
above the ears to a knot or short doubled up braid at the back, is one
that suffered but little change during several centuries. In the archaic
time the locks fell more loosely behind, while in the fourth century
they were more knotted, but these slight variations occur now and again
throughout the whole period of great Greek art and were due more to
individual fancy of artist or model than to the stifling rules of
fashion.
But though we must finally conclude that the mode of wearing the hair
does not assist us, as the cut of the dress most certainly would have
done had we been fortunate enough to find the body of the statue, still
the tresses between the temple and the ear have a quality of their own
which points to a definite time. They suggest the loose waving form of
life with noteworthy success. The sculptor belonged to a period when the
special nature of marble was thoroughly understood. The period had
passed when bronze and marble were treated in almost identical fashion,
and the time had come when sculptors could manage various materials with
complete understanding and were enabled to reproduce surfaces or
substances in the way best suited to malleable metal or to friable
stone.
The most perfect example of this understanding of substance which we
possess, and one that has never been surpassed, is the head of Hermes by
Praxiteles made in the first half of the fourth century before Christ.
The hair of the Athena is handled in much the same way. The locks and
strands are not sharply outlined and separated one from another but flow
from brow to neck in subtly broken masses among which the light plays in
and out as softly as in nature. This naturalistic treatment became
common after it had once been arrived at, but the tendency after the end
of the fourth century was to try for purer realism. This could not be
attained by greater skill in modelling and carving but only by polishing
or engraving the surface. The Athena exhibits neither of these signs of
decadence but the surface still shows that lovely dusty softness which
is characteristic of the best work of the late fifth and early fourth
centuries, a softness which would not have been imperceptible and
lacking in effect even when the figure was tinted with colour, as,
probably, all Greek sculpture was.
It is not only the hair which suggests the date of the early fourth
century as the time when the Athena was made. The broad chin, projecting
well away from the neck, a chin that would be heavy, were it not for the
exquisiteness of its outline, which seems to have the living force of a
coiled steel spring, is such as was common in the fifth and early fourth
centuries. So, too, are the broad set, wide opened eyes overhung by the
long low curve of the brow. Not a sign in these of the sentimentally
dreaming eyes with their melting lower lids which we associate with the
work of the imitators and followers of Praxiteles; not a trace of the
furrowed brow and the eye gleaming, like a live coal, from the deep
shadowed socket such as we see in the work of Scopas and the superb
masters of Pergamon.
In discussing such a fragment as this Athena it cannot be too clearly
remembered that the sculptor, like the poet, does but express his own
day, and if Praxiteles was delicate and sentimental or Scopas forceful
and passionate, it was because these were characteristic qualities of
their periods. These are, furthermore, exactly the qualities one would
expect at a time when old standards were beginning to be doubted and the
future offered nothing so substantial to take their place.
The same phenomenon is seen in the seventeenth century of our era. In
both periods thoughtful people either clung to a sentimental repetition
of old ideas which no longer had life-giving and creative force, but
were loved and dwelt on for the sake of old association, or else they
were driven to a passionate striving after new and dimly seen hopes and
ideals. Sentimental dreaming took the place of good hope and assurance
while mystical passion took that of intelligent piety. In the face of
the Athena there is seen no sign of a troubled spirit, she is calm and
steadfast with the strength of perfect self-poise, which could hardly
be, were she sprung from a later time than the early fourth century.
It has been insisted that there is in this head no trace of
sentimentality, and it may be thought that I have failed to notice, or
to give due weight to, the curious pose, drooping over slightly to one
side. This is one of the most noticeable points about the head, but, to
my mind, it expresses a feeling common in the fifth and early fourth
centuries and is not motived in the slightest degree by the later
sentimentality. In the old man seated on the ground in the Olympia
pediment, in the Mourning Athena at Athens, in most of the grave steles
of the late fifth and early fourth centuries, in the portrait bust of
Pericles, is to be seen, in the pose and expression of the figures, the
expression of a deep sentiment of combined gravity and tenderness. Again
and again this sentiment is expressed by the great dramatists in words
that ring down the centuries like distant bells. It is the recognition
of suffering and sorrow but also of the self-control that meets them
undismayed. When the Greeks lost their faith, at the same time they lost
this control. In the Demeter of Cnidos and the portrait of Mausolus
there are unmistakable signs of lack of control,—in the former the
startled pose, and in the latter the look of distress plainly visible in
the fine and vigorous face. The Athena resembles the Pericles and the
grave steles in this respect. The head leans over as though bent by the
wind (a position which emphasises the exquisite shape of the neck), but
in the steady, quiet eyes and in the sensitive closed lips one sees
plainly that simple directness that distinguished the Greeks of the
period to which I attribute this head, from all the other peoples who
have inhabited this earth.
I have just mentioned the mouth of the figure, and this is the feature
to which I referred before as showing, possibly, the effect of local
circumstance on the sculptor. It is a very noticeable mouth; large with
unusually full and richly modelled lips—lips that could send the battle
cry echoing across the scarred and rock-strewn hills or could whisper
like the brook beneath the rosy-plumed oleanders. In shape it is by no
means a typical Greek mouth, but has a trace of the fuller form common
to the Libyans with whom the Cyreneans were in constant and close
intercourse. While it is true that history fails to note a single case
of an individual of pure black blood accomplishing anything of note
except in a military way, such do often possess great beauty of form and
feature, and this fact has been seized upon by the sculptor of the
Athena. With great skill he has softened the somewhat savage shape and
given it the lines that are consequent upon a higher civilization.
We have come now to the end of our study of this bit of sculpture. It
could be compared indefinitely with other heads, and the similarities or
differences could be pointed out. Little would result, however, from
such comparisons. What is needed is more sculpture from the same region
with which to study the Athena. But till this is forthcoming, we are
left to the general conclusions derived from this single example. These
conclusions are that the Athena was carved by some as yet unknown artist
at Cyrene in the first half of the fourth century B.C. and that the work
differs from the Greek work we are accustomed to in showing local
characteristics both in special features and in method. This may seem to
be of small importance and the head to be unworthy so elaborate a
discussion; such would be the case were we to think of it merely as an
archæological remnant of a forgotten city and time. But this head is
more than a mere bit of flotsam. It is not a dead and meaningless
fragment, but has still the suggestive and creative power of any true
work of art. This vitality and artistic veracity are shown by the
extreme clearness with which it illustrates two of the fundamental
characteristics of the Greek genius—humanism and directness.
The simplicity and directness of the Greek showed itself in all he did
or made. He never attributed human emotions to nature and never bound
himself with dogmatic conventions. For these reasons he was never
sentimental and never dry or false. He saw ugliness, moral as well as
material, in the world around him, but recognising that it in no way
added to happiness, he did not wallow in it and proclaim himself a
“realist.” When he came to consider religion he was straightforward in
his treatment of the Gods as he was with himself. They were but a
superior race born from the same great mother Earth (Pindar, Nem. VI.
1). Athena, the Goddess, is but a woman and nothing more. He saw
beautiful women in the cities where he dwelt and in form of their
physical perfection he represented the bright-eyed Goddess. He sought no
imaginary qualities, he attempted to express no hazy, mystical dreams
but finding beauty in mankind, he was satisfied to reproduce it so well
as might be.
Ordinary everyday life was the chief interest of the thoughtful Greek.
He had the same circumstances of existence around him as we have to-day,
and knew just as much of the origin or the end of it all. Life, death
and the passing show of time were his schoolmasters as they are ours,
and from them he learnt humanism. He thought of the world not as a blind
accident nor as a mystical promise but merely as the setting for man and
hence the conduct of life became his chief interest.
The Greek sought for all means whereby he might avoid the pitfalls of
youth, secure the comforts of well-rounded growth and minimise the
weaknesses and griefs of old age. To attain this ideal certain things
were seen to be necessary, and from Solon, who considered that the man
was happy who had health, good fortune, good looks and children, to
Aristotle, who (Rhet. 1360 b, 14) gave the same definition in a more
amplified form, the ideal did not alter. Even to-day there is but one
part of this that seems strange to us. That is the stress laid on
personal beauty. Good fortune, health, wisdom, children and particularly
wealth go to form the general ideal of the modern world, but there can
be only few who would admit that the desire for physical beauty was part
and parcel of their ideal. The Greek on the other hand frankly desired
it almost more than anything else and showed his perfectly simple and
entirely pleasant belief in its value by his games and by many a story
which he told as illustrative of enduring truths. One of these tales has
a bearing on the Athena of Cyrene. It is that of Peisistratus, who in
order to become ruler of Athens came there accompanied by a beautiful
woman in regard to whom he told the credulous citizens that she was the
Goddess Athena herself.
Thus we see that it is due to no mere partiality for the pleasing form
on the part of the unknown sculptor that this head from Cyrene is
beautiful, but because his brain and hand were guided by ideals that
were second nature to him. As we grow familiar with the head, the
loveliness of every feature, the sharp insistence on sweet feminine
beauty make one wish destruction might fall on the vague and dreamy and
contorted realisms with which many of the modern artists would attract
our attention. The calm and steadfast eyes look at us across the
centuries and question our mysticism. The straightforward, immediate,
perfect humanity gives us pause in our mad search for novelty, and
should we conclude that this is perfect art, though we may lose the
sympathy of our contemporaries, we shall win the companionship of those
whose laurels are immortal.
GIORGIONE
_Although in the following Study of Giorgione I express certain
conclusions which seem to me certain, it is nevertheless probable that
there will never be absolute agreement about his works. The indubitable
facts concerning him are so very few that no two critics can be expected
to see the matter eye to eye. I disagree in many points with the
pathbreakers Morelli and Berenson, but it should not be forgotten that
the knowledge of such men gives an added keenness to the innate powers
of perception of those who come after them. Their torch lights ours, and
so the path is pursued._
_The publication of Justi’s valuable work on Giorgione (Berlin, 1908),
in which all the pictures still in existence that have bearing on
Giorgione are reproduced, makes full illustration of this Study quite
unnecessary._
I. PAINTINGS ATTRIBUTED TO GIORGIONE
A great upheaval and destruction of old traditions has taken place of
late years in regard to paintings, and while much truth has been brought
to light, a great deal of fancy has been given the semblance of
veracity. The name of Morelli is familiar to all who take a serious
interest in the paintings of the Italian schools, and though he was not
the first to practise what not inaptly has been dubbed the ‘toe-nail’
method of criticism, yet his writings are more voluminous than those of
other authors, and exemplify this method of criticism more completely,
so that he may be taken as the protagonist of the school. It was the
development of photography, and the vast increase in the number of
pictures of which photographs could be procured, which gave rise to the
Morellian school. The writers of earlier days who could not have before
them on their tables, or carry with them to the galleries, a large
quantity of reproductions of the works of any one master, were in a
large measure prevented from studying the comparative likenesses or
dissimilarities of such pictures.
But, as was natural, with this intensive study of photographs has come
about a microscopic method of looking at pictures which often disregards
the larger and more unquestionable qualities, and satisfies itself with
tricks of drawing and the painting of details. It is as though instead
of considering the structure and content of a book, one should measure
the lines and number the punctuation points. It is within the realm of
possibility that the day has passed for treatises based on such thorough
study and acute perception of the qualities expressed by the Italian
painters as were written by Crowe and Cavalcaselle, or such
magnificently imaginative and poetic interpretations as the enduring
verities first enunciated by Ruskin.
Not that these men did not make mistakes. Had they never done so we
should not be able to give a true valuation to their work. Stupidity is
not demonstrated by the making of blunders but by the spirit that
animates the person at the moment of their commission. Ruskin, to
illustrate by means of the brightest example, realised that paintings
are expressions of thought just as much as are printed books, and that
they are to be read and understood not by adding the vowels together in
one heap and the consonants in another, but in their entirety.
Morelli and his followers, on the other hand, are obviously in large
measure satisfied by an analysis of external forms and if they discover
that each of two pictures presents the same number of curved and
straight lines, no further proof is needed to satisfy them that the same
author is responsible for both works. It is true that details of style
must be studied and were often neglected by the earlier critics, but the
famous proof of the identity of Moses and Melchisedek—“you take off the
-_oses_ and add the -_elchisedek_”—will never satisfy many people.
Morelli forgot that it requires no special perception to discover that
Botticelli gave his figures square nails on their toes and fingers, or
that the knuckles of Rosselli’s figures are apt to be swollen. But it is
exactly this kind of observation which copyists possess. By the
observation of such points one is able to say only that such and such a
work is externally like the works of this or that artist, but that it is
by him depends on quite other proofs.
One or two examples will show the fallacy of such a method of argument.
There is in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts a picture representing the
Virgin and Child with St. John. The name of Botticelli is on the frame.
So far as finger nails or shape of nostril or locks of hair or position
of fingers go (and all these details are peculiarly treated by
Botticelli), the work might be considered to be by him. It is, however,
certain that Botticelli was not the painter of the panel. Among several
circumstances that demonstrate this, such as the method of painting
employed by the artist, there is one that has to do with the spirit of
the work, and which in itself is sufficient proof: I refer to the figure
of St. John. We have enough works by Botticelli, the authenticity of
which is established beyond all question, to know that he could never at
any period of his career have represented this character with a simper
that reminds one of Francia’s sentimental figures.
The picture is by a feeble imitator of the master. The works of
Botticelli and his imitators offer, because of the very marked
peculiarities of the master, extremely good examples to show what
mistakes arise by relying too exclusively on the Morellian method, and
in both public and private collections are many pictures showing the
mannerisms of the Florentine but which are certainly not by him.[36]
Take another master, Leonardo. There has lately gone to America[37] a
panel representing the head of a woman. It was left by Morelli when he
died to Donna Laura Minghetti. To the followers of Morelli, the picture
seemed for a long time genuine enough, but when the style of the
headdress, the tone of the colour and character of the painting, and
lastly the position of the head on the panel itself, had been studied,
it became evident that the painting was a modern forgery, and this was
further proved when an attempt was made to clean the panel.
These illustrations are sufficient to show that the final judgment of a
picture should be based on more than its technical peculiarities. The
observation of these is good to begin with, but it does not suffice.
That even Morelli himself instinctively felt the weakness of his method
is shown in a most humorous way in his description of his “discovery” of
the author of a portrait of a woman in the Borghese Gallery.
He tells us how before he looked at this canvas with _kritischem Auge_
he had first thought it to be by Dosso Dossi and then by Sebastiano
Luciani. The rest is too naïve to translate, it must be given verbatim.
“Eines Tages jedoch, als ich wieder fragend und entzückt vor dem
mysteriösen Bilde stand, begegnete mein eigener Geist dem des Künstlers,
welcher aus diesen weiblichen Zügen heraussah und siehe da, in der
gegenseitigen Berührung zündete es plötzlich wie ein Funken und ich rief
in meiner Freude aus: Nur du, mein Freund, Giorgione kannst es sein, und
das Bild antwortete: Ja, ich bin’s”; and then follows analysis and
dissection of the portrait.
The still small voice of his soul having interpreted the riddle of the
picture he _then_ saw that the eye, the expression, the mouth were such
as only Giorgione could paint. In a critical case like this Morelli had
to look first to something other than anatomical or sartorial shapes.
Unfortunately, in this particular case, he has convinced but few
students by this sudden and mysterious interpretation of the picture,
and only his most ardent apostles see in the ill-drawn portrait anything
but a feeble imitation of certain of the less subtle qualities of the
great Venetian.
Morelli made, however, other discoveries in regard to Giorgione of
greater import than this; but before taking them up in detail it will be
worth while to fix clearly in our minds what we know about the
Venetian’s work from contemporary or approximately contemporary writers.
Vasari and Ridolfi do not, indeed, fail to give the name of Giorgione to
many a picture that had never felt the artist’s brush, but they saw many
a picture that has since disappeared and what they tell us is the basis
of all modern criticism of this most poetic of all the Venetians. I
believe it can be shown that much which the earlier writers said of him,
and which has since been forgotten or unwisely disregarded, is true.
I will say nothing of the life that Giorgio Barbarelli Giorgione,
Zorzone as his comrade Venetians called him, led. That has little to do
with us. I wish merely to show which pictures now labelled with his name
may in my opinion be confidently accepted as his, and which ones we are
justified in taking from him. In his early days he painted, says Vasari,
in the second edition of the “Lives”:
1. Many pictures of the Virgin.
2. David, armed and with long hair, holding the head of Goliath.
3. Warrior with a red cap, a fur cloak and a silk jacket.
4. Child. (2, 3, and 4 were owned by the Patriarch of Aquileia.)
5. Portrait of Giovanni Borgherini and his master.
6. Head of a warrior, owned by Anton de’ Nobili in Florence.
7. Portrait of Consalvo Ferrante.
8. Portrait of the Doge Leonardo Loredano.
9. Many other portraits.
10. Frescoes on the Ca Soranzo in Venice—one representing a figure
of Spring.
11. Frescoes on the front of the Fondaco de’ Tedeschi—the scenes
were apparently fantastical or allegorical.
12. Christ carrying the cross, in the church of San Rocco.
13. A nude figure to show that by means of reflections painting is
able to show all parts of a thing at once.
14. Portrait of Catharine, Queen of Cyprus.
15. Portrait of one of the Fugger family.
This list suffices to show that Vasari’s knowledge of Giorgione’s work
was slight—and we can prove furthermore it was also imperfect. This is
disheartening enough, but a still greater disappointment comes from the
fact that of this list of fifteen numbers (including of course many more
than fifteen pictures) there are but five of which either the originals
or copies are preserved to-day. These five are Nos. 2, 5 (?), 11, 12,
and 15. Numbers 5 and 15 are certainly not by Giorgione. The former is
not improbably the picture in Berlin (No. 152) of which a replica is in
the Louvre (No. 1156), both pictures attributed merely to the Venetian
school, and the latter hangs in the Munich Gallery (No. 1107) under the
name of Cariani.[38] No. 2 is usually thought to be the picture in
Vienna, but Justi (Georgione, p. 182) shows that it may be a picture in
Brunswick.[39]
Ridolfi gives a much longer list of Giorgione’s works:
16. Madonna enthroned, in the church of San Liberale in
Castelfranco. Portraits.
17. The dead Christ held by angels, at Treviso.
18. Frescoes on Giorgione’s own house in Venice. Figures and
fantasies.
Frescoes on the Ca Soranzo (same as No. 10). Destroyed all but a
woman with flowers in her hand and Vulcan who whips Cupid.
19. Fables from Ovid; among them Apollo and Daphne, and Zeus as a
bull with Europa on his back. These showed strong landscape
feeling. Gigantomachia. Deucalion and Pyrrha. Apollo and the
Python. Apollo and Daphne. Io. Phaethon. Pyrrhus and Phlegon.
Eos. Diana and Callisto. Mercury stealing Apollo’s herds. Jove
and Europa. Cadmus and serpents’ teeth. Actæon. Venus and Mars
caught by Vulcan. Niobe. Jove and Mercury at the house of Baucis.
Ariadne. Alcides. Achelous. Deianeira. Loves of Apollo and
Hyacinth. Venus and Adonis. Those owned by Sig. Vidman were:
birth of Adonis, Adonis and Venus, Adonis’s death.
Portraits (cf. No. 9): Agostino Barbarigo, Catharine Cornaro
(perhaps the same as No. 14), Consalvo Ferrante.
20. Frescoes on the Ca Grimani alla Servisa (Nude woman of
beautiful form); on a house on the Campo di Santo Stefano, near
S. M. Giubenico (Bacchus, Venus and Mars, half figures,
grotesques and _putti_); and on the Fondaco de’ Tedeschi (same as
No. 11), _trofei_, nudes, heads, allegorical figures measuring
the world. Man on horseback.
21. A concert (now in the Pitti).
22. Allegory of human life in Casa Cassinelli, Genoa (Nurse holding
crying child, and a knight; Youth disputing with Philosophers,
and an old man).
23. Celius Plotius attacked by Claudius.
24. Family group—un vecchio in atto di castrare un gatto.
25. Naked woman and shepherd. She smiles at him as he plays his
pipe.
26. David, a knight and a soldier, owned by And. Vendramin.
27. Naked Venus “ignuda dormiente,—è in Casa Marcella è a piedi è
Cupido con augellino in mano.”
28. Woman dressed as a gipsy, in house of Gio. Batt. Sanuto.
29. Saul holding by the hair the head of Goliath brought to him by
David. Owned by the Signori Leoni di San Lorenzo.
30. Judgment of Paris, owned by the Signori Leoni di San Lorenzo.
31. Judgment of Solomon, in Casa Grimana di Santo Ermacora; the
figure of the executioner unfinished. (Now at Kingston Lacy,
England.)
32. Virgin, St. Jerome and other figures, owned by Signor Gussoni.
33. Warrior, owned by Signor Ruzzini.
34. Knight with black armour, owned by Signori Contarini da S.
Samuello.
35. Half figure of St. Jerome reading, owned by Signori Malipieri.
36. Portraits of Luigi Crasso, seated, with spectacles in his hand.
Owned by Nicolo Crasso.
37. Story of Psyche. Twelve pictures.
38. St. Sebastian, in the Chiesa della Annunciata, Cremona.
39. St. Sebastian,—three-quarter length, owned by Prince
Aldobrandini.
40. David, owned by Prince Borghese.
41. A youth with a curious fur cloak, owned by Signori Muselli in
Verona.
42. Christ led to Calvary, with Mary and the virgin Veronica,
figures half life size.
43. Head of Polyphemus.
44. Portraits of women with strange ornaments and feathers in their
hair.
David with long hair, dressed in a corselet and with the left hand
in the hair of the head of Goliath (same as No. 2). This was a
portrait of himself.
45. A general.
46. Youth with soft hair and armed.
Portrait of one of the Fuggers (same as No. 15).
47. A nude figure with a green cloth over his knees and armour
beside him, owned by Van Veert in Antwerp.
48. ‘Some say that he began’ the picture of Pope Alexander III and
Frederick I in the Sala del Maggior Consiglio in Venice.
This list is disappointing in the same way as the previous one, but,
nevertheless, several of the numbers may be added to the list of
pictures which are preserved. Besides those already noted in Vasari’s
list Nos. 16, 17, 19 (?), 21, 23, 26, 27, 30, 31, 38, 40, exist in one
form or another, but Nos. 17, 21, 23, 38 and 40, though still preserved,
are not by Giorgione. No. 17 has nothing whatever to do with Giorgione,
and is attributed by Crowe and Cavalcaselle to Pordenone. Whether this
is by him is more than doubtful; I will speak of it in detail and also
of 21 later. No. 23, called The Bravo, is in Vienna and is perhaps by
Cariani; 30 is probably by Campagnola and is known by copies.[40] No. 38
is in the Brera and is by Dosso Dossi, who was also the painter of 40,
which is still in the Borghese Gallery. No. 48 was probably the same
picture as that mentioned in the Venetian archives under date of August
14, 1507, and was probably destroyed in the fire of 1575.[41]
[Illustration: PLATE LXII.]
Another author from whom we are able to gather more and important
information, is Marc Antonio Michiel, more commonly known as the Anonimo
Morelli. Among the pictures which he saw in Venice and neighbouring
towns were several attributed to Giorgione:
/# 49. Head of a boy holding an arrow. Owned by Ant. Pasqualino, who
obtained it from Zuanne Ram.
50. Head of San Giacomo holding a pilgrim’s staff. Owned by Ant.
Pasqualino.
The Anonimo states that this was either by Giorgione or by one of his
pupils and that it was copied from the Christ in the Church of San
Rocco.
51. St. Jerome, nude, seated in a desert place in the moonlight; “copied
from a work by Giorgione.” Owned by And. Odoni.
52. Three Philosophers. Owned by Taddeo Contarino.
53. Hell, with Æneas and Anchises. Owned by Taddeo Contarino.
54. Landscape with the birth of Paris. “One of his early works.”
55. Portrait of Geronimo Marcello, armed,—the body turned away from, and
the head towards, the spectator. Owned by Geronimo Marcello.
Nude Venus, sleeping in the open air. “The landscape and the Cupid
were finished by Titian.” Owned by Geronimo Marcello (same as No.
27).
58. St. Jerome reading. Half figure (same as No. 35?). Owned by Geronimo
Marcello.
59. Soldier armed, but without a helmet. Half figure. Owned by
Zuanantonio Venier.
60. Head of a shepherd. In his hand a fruit. Owned by Zuanne Ram.
Head of boy. In his hand an arrow. Owned by Zuanne Ram (same as No.
49).
61. Stormy landscape with a gipsy and a soldier. Owned by Gabriel
Vendramin.
62. Dead Christ and an angel holding him above the tomb. Finished by
Titian. Owned by Gabriel Vendramin.
63. Nude figure in a landscape. Pen drawing. Owned by Michiel Contarini.
64. Finished picture of No. 63. Owned by Michiel himself.
65. Portrait of Giorgione’s father. Owned by Piero Servio. #/
Of this list, the particular value of which lies in the fact that it was
made by one whose early years were probably contemporary with the close
of Giorgione’s life, Nos. 52, 54, 61 and perhaps 62[42] are still
(either the originals or copies) in existence. No. 59 suggests a picture
in the Colonna Gallery in Rome which has much Giorgionesque feeling, but
is in a ruined condition.
Still another writer who mentions several pictures by the master is
Giacomo Barri. I quote the passages from the English translation of his
book:[43]
Page 106. Castelfranco. “Here is an admirable Picture of the _Blessed
Virgin with her Son_, the work of _Giorgione_. There are likewise
divers Palaces near adjacent where you will find works of the same
_Giorgone_ as also of Paulo Veronese.” (Same as No. 16.)
Venice, page 52. “And upon a front of a House near the house of the
_Pisani_, and the Palace of the _Flangini_, in _S. Maria Gibenigo_,
there are painted by the hand of _Giogone_, many _Freezes_ in _Chiaro
Scuro_, in Yellow, Red, and Green, with rare fancies of _Boys_, in the
middle of which are four Half-figures, _viz._, A _Bacchus_, a _Venus_,
a _Mars_, and a _Mercury_, coloured after the usual manner of the
Author.” (There is a note added to the words “the usual manner” which
reads: “Which was not to paint in above two or three colours.”) (Cf.
No. 20.)
Page 56. The ‘Fontico de Todeseti’ is mentioned. (Same as No. 11.)
Page 56. “In the field or place before S. Pauls you plainly see upon
the Front of the House of _Soranzo_ several Figures of Giorgone, most
beautiful things.” (Same as No. 10.)
Page 67. “The _albergo_ of the said school [School of St. Marks]. As
you enter, the first square on your left hand is by _Giorgone_.”
Page 84. “_The Church of the_ Hospital _of the_ Incurabili.” “And over
a side Door of the Church you may observe a little Square of our
_Saviour carrying the Cross_ and an Executioner drawing him along, by
the hand of _Giorgone_.” (Same as No. 12.)
Treviso, page 97. “The Mountain of Piety _in the aforesaid_ City.”
“Here they preserve a _Christ_ with a little _Angel_, a most singular
work, by the hand of Giorgone.” (Same as No. 17.)
Cremona, page 114. “Here is a picture of S. _Sebastian_ and two
_Angels_ by the hand of Giorgone.” (Same as No. 38.)
67. Parma, page 126. In the Palace of the _Fontana_. “There is also
the picture of _Fra Sebastiano del Piombo_, a Painter, the work of
_Giorgone_.”
Only two pictures (66, 67) not mentioned by the other authors are given
in this list, and one of these, the portrait of Sebastiano del Piombo,
has, I believe, been lost sight of. The picture that was in the School
of St. Marks now hangs in the Academia in Venice. It represents the
story of the calming of a storm by the saints Nicholas, George and Mark.
Some students consider this picture to be a work by Giorgione much
repainted by Palma or Paris Bordone. Others, with whom I agree, fail to
see in this ugly work the slightest suggestion of Giorgione.
These then are the chief early sources for our knowledge of the subjects
painted by Giorgione. If the list of his works seems small, it must be
remembered that the painter was only some thirty-three years old when he
died. The inaccuracy of the attributions made by these writers shows how
careful one must be in dealing with the information they give us, and
suggests the reflection that probably they were as careless in failing
to speak of works that were certainly by the master as they were in
mentioning others which unquestionably were not by him. All new
attributions must, however, be based on a comparison with the few works
which unbroken tradition and common consent give to Giorgione, and not
with those about which trained opinion differs. Individual judgment as
to the likeness one picture bears to another is very different from
convincing proof. Before criticising individual works we must consider
the basis for discussion that the lists present.
Of the sixty-seven different items mentioned, the following are known to
us.[44] 1 (?), 2, 5 (?), 11, 12, 15, 16, 17, 19 (?), 21 (?), 23, 26 (?),
27, 29 (?), 30, 31, 38, 40 (?), 42 (?), 52, 54, 61, 62 (?), 66. Of these
only 2, 5 (?), 11, 12, 16, 21 (?), 22 (?), 26 (?), 27, 31, 52, 54, 61,
62 (?) need be considered as being related in any close way to
Giorgione. The claims of Cariani, Licinio, Della Vecchia, and the host
of other, generally feeble, imitators of Giorgione to the other pictures
may be studied in Crowe and Cavalcaselle, or later works. Even some of
the works included in the small list just given are not accepted as
genuine by all the critics, but a few there are the authenticity of
which could only be questioned by bringing much more serious evidence
against them than I have ever seen adduced. These rare, choice works
are:
2. David, armed, holding the head of Goliath. Now in Vienna. This
is not the original, but, as noted by Crowe and Cavalcaselle, a
late copy. I own another copy, on panel, which shows the lower
part of the picture better than the Vienna copy.
11. Frescoes on the Fondaco dei Tedeschi. Preserved, except a
fragment only, in Zanetti’s engravings.
12. Christ carrying the Cross, in the Church of San Rocco, Venice.
16. Madonna enthroned, in the Church of San Liberale in
Castelfranco.
27. Naked Venus, asleep, in Dresden. Some critics still hesitate to
accept Morelli’s attribution of this canvas to Giorgione, but the
greater number have, I believe, given a ready assent.
31. The Judgment of Solomon. Now at Kingston Lacy (Plate LXII).
This, the Castelfranco Madonna, and the Three Philosophers, are
in certain ways the most important works of the painter now
existing.
52. Three Philosophers. In Vienna (Plate LXVI).
54. Landscape with the Birth of Paris. A fragment of a poor copy of
this is preserved in Buda-Pesth. An engraving by T. van Kessel
from a copy of the picture by Teniers shows what the whole
composition was.
61. Stormy landscape, with a gypsy and a soldier. In the Palazzo
Giovanelli, Venice (Plate LXV).
To these nine unquestioned works by Giorgione are to be added others
that have no early literary evidence to bear out their claims to a
Giorgionesque origin, but which unbroken tradition resisting even the
assaults of modern criticism has assigned to this category. Such are:
The Judgment of Solomon, in the Uffizi.
The Fire-test of Moses, in the Uffizi.
Knight of Malta, in the Uffizi.
Head of Christ carrying the Cross, formerly in the Palazzo Loschi
Vicenza, and now in Mrs. Gardner’s Collection in Boston (Plate
LXVII).
Study for the figure of San Liberale, in the Castelfranco picture, in
the National Gallery, London.
So far as the giving of any certain knowledge of Giorgione’s technique
is concerned, the first three of these pictures are very disappointing,
for all of them have been so thoroughly repainted that the original work
is much injured. While most critics follow the tradition and believe
Giorgione to have been the painter of these pictures, there are those
who do not hold this opinion. For instance, Dr. Bode, one of the keenest
judges of pictures, does not think the Judgment of Solomon, and the
Trial of Moses, to be by him.[45] Others there are who think that the
judgment passed by Crowe and Cavalcaselle on the Knight of Malta is very
sound and satisfactory. They say: “Giorgione’s work was altered by later
retouching, or the painter is a skilful imitator of Giorgione’s manner.”
Personally, I believe all these to be by him.
Taking now these fragments of written evidence and of tradition, let us
see what the modern writers of most repute have considered to be
examples of Giorgione’s work. To begin with Crowe and Cavalcaselle, they
give as true Giorgiones the following:
The Fondaco de’ Tedeschi.
The Christ in San Rocco.
The Judgment of Solomon at Kingston Lacy.
The Chaldæan Sages (the Three Philosophers).
The Family of Giorgione (the picture in the Giovanelli Palace).
The Castelfranco Madonna.
The David in Vienna, of which they say “this is a late copy, perhaps
after the original noted by Vasari.”
Of the traditional pictures they consider as the master’s work:
The Judgment of Solomon, in the Uffizi.
The Trial of Moses, in the Uffizi.
The Knight of Malta (?), in the Uffizi.
They add:
The Shepherd’s Offering in the Beaumont (now Lord Allandale’s)
Collection, London.
The Adoration of the Magi, in the National Gallery, London; formerly
owned by Sir William Miles, of Leigh Court.
These last two pictures are much less well known than the others. I
shall endeavour to show that the later attributions of them to Catena or
others are based on a mistaken idea of Giorgione’s style (not to mention
Catena’s), and that Crowe and Cavalcaselle were perfectly right in their
estimate of them. Other pictures which are often thought of in
connection with Giorgione and which they, quite rightly I believe,
refused to acknowledge, are:
[Illustration: PLATE LXIII.]
The Concert, in the Pitti.
The Fête Champêtre, in the Louvre.
Madonna and Saints, in the Louvre.
Nymph and Satyr, in the Pitti.
The Head of a Boy, at Hampton Court.
The Madonna and Child with St. Brigida, in Madrid.
To take more modern writers, we find a very different list of works
attributed to Giorgione by Morelli.[46] It consists of the following:
The Trial of Moses.
The Judgment of Solomon.[47]
The Christ bearing the Cross.
The Madonna of Castelfranco.
The Gypsy and the Soldier (Giovanelli Palace).
* The Madonna and Child with Sts. Antony and Roch. (Madrid.)
The Knight of Malta.
† * Daphne and Apollo. This is in the Seminario of St^a Maria della
Salute in Venice. Crowe and Cavalcaselle (II. 165) attribute it to
Andrea Schiavone, and with their opinion I agree.
* The Three Ages of Man, in the Uffizi, ascribed usually to Lotto.
The Concert, in the Louvre. (Same as Crowe and Cavalcaselle’s Fête
Champêtre.)
The Fragment of the Birth of Paris, in the Esterhazy Gallery,
Buda-Pesth.
* Portrait of a Man, in the Esterhazy Gallery.
* Portrait of a Woman, in the Borghese Gallery, Rome.
† Nymph and Satyr, in the Pitti.
† Portrait of a Youth, in Berlin.
† Head of a Boy, in Hampton Court.
Three Philosophers, in Vienna.
* Venus in Dresden.
† Allegory, in Dresden. { These Morelli considers copies
† Judith, in St. Petersburg. { of Giorgione’s work.
The pictures I have marked with an asterisk are those which Morelli was
the first to claim with insistence for Giorgione, and with the exception
of the Venus not one of these attributions has been generally accepted.
Those marked with a dagger are attributions of older or younger date.
About all of them, certain doubts, and about most of them doubts of very
serious nature, must be dispelled, before the attribution can be
accepted.
The two points most noticeable in Morelli’s list are the differences in
the style of the pictures included and the absence of others. It would
be difficult to combine works more dissimilar than the Berlin portrait
of a youth and the portrait of a woman in the Borghese, and even if one
grants that an artist working at the time when Giorgione flourished was
subjected to influences so strong and varied that the character of his
work altered from time to time, it can only be explained by a miracle
that the same man painted the Castelfranco Madonna and the Daphne and
Apollo. Even the last dashing works of the century-old Titian differ
hardly more from his calmer earlier canvases than do these two pictures,
which Morelli would have us believe were painted by a man who died at
the age of thirty-two or thirty-three. This curious, one may not
unfairly say erratic, combination of Morelli may perhaps be explained by
supposing, as is true in other parts of his work, that he was so taken
up with the similarity of certain details that he forgot to study the
larger and more telling characteristics of the pictures. But what
explanation is there of his strange silence regarding the Benson[48] and
Beaumont pictures, the Judgment of Solomon at Kingston Lacy, the Vienna
David, and the Christ bearing the Cross in San Rocco?
A later and slightly different form of the Morelli list is given by
Berenson.[49] It is as follows:
Berlin, Portrait of a Man.
Buda-Pesth, Portrait of a Man.
Castelfranco, Duomo, Madonna with Sts. Francis and Liberale.
Dresden, Sleeping Venus.
Florence, Uffizi, Trial of Moses; Knight of Malta; Judgment of
Solomon.
Hampton Court, Shepherd with Pipe.
Madrid, Madonna with Sts. Roch and Antony of Padua.
Paris, Fête Champêtre.
Rome, Villa Borghese, Portrait of a Lady.
St. Petersburg, Judith (?).
Venice, Academy, Storm calmed by St. Mark. Finished in small part by
P. Bordone. (In the edition of 1894, Berenson attributed this to P.
Bordone, saying that perhaps it was begun by Giorgione.)
Venice, Seminario, Apollo and Daphne; Giovanelli, Gypsy and Soldier;
S. Rocco, Christ bearing Cross.
Vicenza, Casa Loschi, Christ bearing Cross. (Now in the Gardner
Collection, Boston.)
Vienna, Evander showing Æneas the Site of Rome. (Often called the
Three Philosophers.)
In an article[50] published since the appearance of his book, Berenson
has added to the above list several pictures which he considers to be
copies of Giorgiones. They are:
Bergamo, Orpheus and Eurydice. The copy made by Cariani.
Buda-Pesth, Two men walking. Fragment. (This is what Morelli calls the
Birth of Paris.)
Milan, Portrait of a lady, belonging to Signor Crespi.
St. Petersburg, Judith.
London, Portrait of a man formerly belonging to Mr. Doetsch; now owned
by Colonel Kemp.
II. THE TRUE GIORGIONE
A superficial study of the lists which have been given suffices to show
that the various critics have very different standards by which to judge
Giorgione and his works. I much doubt whether entire order can be
brought out of the chaos that now rules, but a sounder basis for future
study can be derived from a combination of the best points of the work
of these very differently endowed critics than any one of them by
himself offers.
So far as Crowe and Cavalcaselle go, they are, I believe, entirely
right. Among the twelve pictures which they unhesitatingly ascribe to
Giorgione, only three have been questioned by any one. These three are,
the Judgment of Solomon, at Kingston Lacy, the Epiphany, in the National
Gallery, and the Beaumont Shepherd’s Offering. The only possible
explanation of the fact that Morelli does not mention the picture at
Kingston Lacy is that he did not see it.[51] It is one of those works
that in every touch show the author. Even if we did not have Ridolfi’s
evidence for the existence of such a work, it is difficult to understand
how hesitation could arise in the mind of any one undisturbed by
theories as to the author of the picture. The figure of the executioner
is, as Ridolfi says, unfinished. So, too, is practically the whole
picture (Plate LXII).
What strikes one at first sight is the similarity to Bellini’s work at
the same time that one realises a development of dramatic power greater
than he ever attained. The fine restraint of composition is his, the
serious and painstaking technique is his, but the dramatic energy
displayed in the action of the several figures is a step beyond anything
which Bellini ever accomplished. And the few undoubted works show that
Giorgione was great enough to compose with the same grandeur, and work
with a similar perfection to Bellini, and yet give more dramatic
intensity to his figures. But if any one is blind to the spirit that
permeates this wonderful bit of poetry, let him study the details. The
head of the youth standing upright on Solomon’s right hand is most
closely allied to that of the seated figure in the Three Philosophers.
The old man on the left of Solomon is in his turn very similar to the
oldest of the Three Philosophers. Compare the hand of the second figure
from the right with the left hand of the last-mentioned Philosopher: it
is the same.
The tight drawn hair of the women is the same as that of the
Castelfranco Madonna and the Gypsy in the Giovanelli Palace picture. The
strong, broad, full-toed, carefully drawn feet are what we see in the
Three Philosophers, and the St. Francis of the Castelfranco picture. The
full-lipped, small, quietly closed but expressive mouths of the figures
are such as distinguish Giorgione’s other unquestioned works and show a
master’s touch. The draperies massed in grand, simple style, broken only
by folds that truly show the quality of the stuff or its
arrangement—that are not merely put in out of pure fancy—are like those
that characterise the Castelfranco Madonna and the Three Philosophers.
There is no refuting the judgment passed by Crowe and Cavalcaselle. This
is a true Giorgione and in certain ways the finest of them all.
I have refrained from comparing it with the Dresden Venus for the reason
that this discovery of Morelli’s has been, though I believe on
insufficient grounds, disputed, and some critics question whether the
Venus is not a work of Titian. The evidence with which Morelli
maintained the Giorgionesque origin of the work is very convincing, but
there is a quality of the work upon which he did not lay sufficient
stress. I refer to the lack of sensuousness in the figure. It is the
lack of this mundane quality, the abstractness of the figure, that
renders it ideal, which allies this work with the finest Greek
sculpture, with figures of the Periclean epoch. The nude female figure
is thought of not from a sexual standpoint, but from that of pure beauty
of form. To represent such feeling was unlike Titian even in the most
earnestly ideal of his youthful days. His work in almost every case has
a glow of passion; Giorgione’s, on the contrary, suggests loveliness
that deserves the deepest admiration, but does not suggest actual human
life and action. The two ideals are the poles asunder. Titian’s is that
of the man, Giorgione’s that of the woman. As Coleridge said, “Man loves
the woman, but woman loves the love of the man,” and when one looks at
Titian’s Venuses or his other female figures, one is inevitably more
vigorously self-conscious and one’s attention is more indissolubly bound
to the body than when one’s eyes rest on the statuesque beauties of the
Castelfranco painter’s imaginings.
[Illustration: PLATE LXIV.]
The method by which these effects are depicted is unmistakable and
clear. In Titian’s figures of nude women the glance of the eye is often
distinctly and sharply focussed in the eye of the beholder, and the
action of the figure is motived by the presence of the beholder. The
painted image is the corollary of the being that looks upon her. It is
not so in Giorgione’s work. His Venus is self-contained, self-centred
and thoughtless of the outer world. The eyes (cf. the Giovanelli
picture) do not strongly draw yours to themselves, and the action does
not imply a realisation of the presence of any interested gazer. For
exactly these reasons, plain simple reasons, but of deepest import, the
Venus of Praxiteles is of inestimably greater worth than that later
impersonation of female vigour and physical delight, the Venus de’
Medici. And in similar manner Giorgione proves himself a man and an
artist who attained to the adequate presentation of an ideal of beauty
of the female figure far more elevated and uplifting than that held by
his more famous contemporary Titian. The Venus may, as Morelli said, be
safely considered as a true Giorgione.
The case is not so clear, though I believe it is not less
unquestionable, when we consider the Epiphany[52] of the National
Gallery (Plate LXIII). The criticism passed by Crowe and Cavalcaselle on
this picture and the Shepherd’s Offering in the Beaumont Collection is,
so far as it goes, sound. They say of these pictures “that the style
coincides with that which historians attribute to Giorgione; that most
of the characteristics which predominate recur in canvases registered by
the oldest authorities as those of Barbarelli; and that the landscapes
in every case resemble each other and recall the country of
Castelfranco.” There is much more proof, however, that can be adduced to
show that only Giorgione could have painted these works. But first the
attribution of them both to Catena[53] must be shown to be groundless.
A word, however, in regard to logical reasoning about pictures, the lack
of which constitutes a great weakness in Morelli and some of his
followers, may perhaps be deemed not inappropriate here. Circumstantial
evidence is at best only partially conclusive. Morelli did some
brilliant work by its means in correcting the names under which many
pictures had masqueraded. Such work must, it is self-evident, be founded
on the signed works of the masters or on works whose authorship is
proved by literary evidence of the strongest character. But he and his
followers seem to forget that others may refuse adherence to the belief
in one or more of these attributions and yet not be utterly foolish.
Many minds are convinced by evidence which to other equally capable and
well-trained intelligences does not carry the force of conviction, or
may even seem to be based on a misapprehension of fundamental facts.
Grant, however, that a given attribution of an unsigned work seems
reasonable, still there are in most such cases parts of it that are to a
certain extent dissimilar to the certified works of the master to whom
it is attributed—otherwise it would never have been falsely named.
Were this not true, how had doubt ever arisen in men’s minds as to who
wrote the Rhesus, or when the Apollo Belvedere was made? Suppose now
that in studying a picture and attributing it to an artist one finds a
second or a third or a fourth picture that seems to be by the same
painter. One sees that each has certain points in common with the signed
works and others common only to the unsigned work which was the first of
our new attributions. To deduce from the similarity which any two of the
unsigned works bear to each other in their _differences_ from the signed
works of the author to whom it is desired to attribute them, that they
must be by this author, is an absolutely illogical and unreasonable
method of argument. One can ‘prove’ anything in this way, which could
without difficulty enable one to show that the Two Loves of the Borghese
Gallery was painted by Perugino. All that is needed is a sufficiently
large list of works each differing slightly from Perugino’s true
masterpieces. It is but another form of the old game of turning one word
into another by adding and subtracting syllables. Thus one turns _drama_
into _odious_: drama, melodrama, melodious, odious.
Unfortunately Morelli did not realise the weakness of this system. Had
he done so, he would never have attributed to Catena the Epiphany of the
National Gallery, and his followers would not consider the same artist
as the painter of the Benson Holy Family and the Beaumont Shepherd’s
Offering.[54] I do not mean to imply that he would have considered
Giorgione as their author, but, it is only by strained and extravagant
reasoning that they can be claimed for Catena. They bear no resemblance
in either composition, colour or idea to any of the unquestioned works
by this second-rate pupil of Bellini, the imitator, _par excellence_, of
the work of his greater contemporaries.
So far as a careful analysis enables one to make out from the context of
the whole passage in which Morelli speaks of these works,[55] he seems
to have convinced himself that Catena was the painter of the Epiphany
because of the similarities that exist between it and the Knight adoring
the Infant Christ and the St. Jerome in his Study in the same Gallery.
The first thing to notice is that the likeness which the Epiphany bears
to the St. Jerome is almost entirely imaginary. The chief difference
between the two works is that the Epiphany is not only painted in a very
different manner technically, but it is much less laboured. It shows
vastly greater facility of draughtsmanship; the execution is very much
more easy; the colour is fuller and purer; the chiaroscuro is more
varied, and, finally, it is much more imaginatively conceived. It gives
one, in fact, the impression of being by a master, whereas the St.
Jerome seems nothing more either in imagination or in technique than the
work of a careful, serious, arid-minded student.
The St. Jerome in fact may well be by Catena, for these are the
qualities with which we know he was endowed. The similarity between the
Epiphany and the Knight adoring the Infant Christ is greater, but still
not very great.[56] But here too we must remember that the attribution
of the Knight to Catena is based not so much even on good circumstantial
evidence as on the fairly unanimous belief among those capable of
judging what certain phases of Catena’s changing style probably
resembled. But the points wherein the Epiphany surpassed the St. Jerome
are just those in which it shows greater mastery than is exhibited in
the Knight. The same stiffness and awkwardness of drawing mark the
Knight as by an artist of much less capacity than him of the Epiphany.
So too does the clumsy, empty composition. The small-featured faces, the
lack of appearance of real substance in the bodies, the dull and
uninteresting chiaroscuro, the laboured technique are characteristic of
Catena, but not one of them shows in the Epiphany. Catena may well have
painted the beast like a hobby horse which the Knight’s page holds, but
it was an abler hand than his which drew the horses from which the Magi
have dismounted. The crinkly, crushed draperies in the Knight are
similar to Catena’s work, but there is nothing like them in the
Epiphany, where the glowing coloured garments are cast in simpler and
grander and at the same time more natural lines. Can any one really
imagine that the same man painted the dull, hard, conventional head of
St. Joseph in the Knight and the much more thoughtful and original face
of the same figure in the Epiphany? or how can any one believe that the
same artist designed heads of such different shape, eyes and noses and
mouths so unlike in the one and the other work; hands in the Knight so
like turtles’ feet, and so vigorous and human in the Epiphany? It is
surely improbable, and Crowe and Cavalcaselle were right when they
recognised a great difference between the two works and saw in the
smaller, richer one the hand of Giorgione. The reasoner who is calm and
unpolemically minded must agree with them.
The next picture for us to consider is the Beaumont Shepherd’s Offering
which Crowe and Cavalcaselle give to Giorgione, but which is by Berenson
and others considered a Catena.[57] If the Epiphany were a Catena, then
the Shepherd’s Offering would be also, for not only the treatment and
colour as a whole, but the details, more particularly the group of the
Holy Family, is distinctly alike in both. The same reasons that show
that it is impossible that Catena ever painted the Epiphany apply with
even greater force to the Shepherd’s Offering. Both pictures are utterly
unlike Catena’s work in all essential points, all those, that is to say,
which are the expression of character. Certain Giorgionesque qualities
show more strongly in the Shepherd’s Offering than in the smaller work.
I will not analyse the details of form, substantiality of masses and
richness of colour, for every unprejudiced eye will see that they are
the same in each of these two works as they are in the unquestioned
works by Giorgione. But there is a quality more difficult to analyse and
to express in fixed terms, that stamps the Shepherd’s Offering not only
as a work by Giorgione, but as a very characteristic expression of his
genius. I refer to the impression given by the quietness of the scene,
by the slight vagueness of it all, and to the colour and chiaroscuro
that remind one of an evening landscape (Plate LXIV). All these points
taken together make the scene seem mysterious and dreamlike.
[Illustration: PLATE LXV.]
Now, clearly enough, this romantic quality occurs to a greater or less
extent in all the unquestioned Giorgiones. It is the deep religious
ardour of Bellini turned to a broader field. It is the sharp focussed
passion of Titian transmuted into an abiding love for all things
beautiful. In the Giovanelli Landscape (Plate LXV) you see it in the
strange combination of soldier and nude woman under the lightning-riven
skies and the trees heavy and white with the storm. In the Three
Philosophers you see it in the contrast of the three men of different
ages and the quiet forest where they sit with the city in the distance
that seems to be asleep (Plate LXVI). In the Virgin of Castelfranco you
see it in the throne placed in the open meadows peopled by visionlike
figures, in the deeply impressive silence and contrast of the monk and
warrior, and in the still blue sea lapping the templed shores beyond.
You see it in the Venus,—not any one woman so much as the presentation
of everlasting feminine beauty—sleeping under the open sky across which
roll great summer clouds rising from the distant sea. It is present
almost invariably in his work and forms the chief richness of the
Beaumont picture, in which the strangely silent group under the trees,
the empty shepherd’s hut beyond and the deep distance of rolling,
castelled hills and meadows, golden in the light of the low sun, is like
a vision that one sees in those rare moments when one’s eyes pierce the
husk of this world and we seem for one treasured instant to have passed
the borders and be wandering in El Dorado.
In none of Catena’s authentic works does he attain to such a height of
imaginative presentation of daily phenomena. He could appreciate it, as
is shown by his attempt in the Knight to paint in the manner of
Giorgione, but that picture alone would be sufficient to show his
incapacity to attain the goal at which he aimed. Nor is this feeling
which we derive from Giorgione’s works imaginary and based on
preconceived ideas. It is distinctly due to certain indubitable facts.
No one questions the mystery and inexpressible beauty of the light of
early dawn or evening, and it is this rather than the full, hard,
mid-day glare that is the light of all Giorgione’s pictures. Nor is
there doubt of the impressiveness of gloom, be it of forest or of storm,
and such mystery as this was dear to the hill-born artist. Nor, further,
can one hesitate to admit the visionary, mirage-like appearance of
vigorous action that takes place in silence and of which the anatomical
details are suppressed. Such is the action of Giorgione’s figures. They
are plainly deeply interested in the scene of which they form part, but
their faces (even in the Judgment of Solomon at Kingston Lacy) show
their interest rather by the eyes than by the lips. They look, but do
not speak. Like Greek Gods they act, but with terrible great silence.
And so, too, though the bodies of his figures are full of life and
action, yet they rarely show the tense and emphasised muscles
appropriate to such action, but appear rather, having acted, to be now
at rest. A similar peculiarity is to be observed in the draperies which,
just as I have tried to show in regard to the figure of the Venus, are
of the same nature as the best Greek work. They are completely motived,
that is, by the bodies beneath them. They are a positive component part
of the figure, not merely an accidental addition, and they rest and move
with it. Thus, as the bodies seem to be resting after motion, so the
draperies seem to be also. They show none of the little, trifling,
momentary folds that express actual motion, but merely those larger,
more essential lines and masses that are truly expressive of the
vitality and movement of the figures, whose beauty they enhance, so far
as such life and activity can be expressed by woven stuffs.
Let us turn now to Catena, his Sta. Caterina, or his Virgin Enthroned,
in Venice, and we see draperies that are in large measure as merely
studio studies of cloth as any to which Albert Dürer ever attached hands
and feet and a head and called it a human being. The folds do not carry
out the action of the figure, but crinkle and ripple and break in
meaningless profusion from shoulder to ankle. Giorgione was a richly
imaginative, deeply thoughtful genius, and such a personality as this is
indelibly stamped in the Epiphany, the Shepherd’s Offering, and the
Benson Holy Family. Catena was a fashionable plagiarist and moderately
successful imitator of the manner of his master Bellini and of his great
contemporaries; such a character as his is completely foreign to the
spirit of these three pictures.
The Holy Family,[58] one of the many treasures of Mr. Benson’s
collection, is also given by Berenson, and by others, to Catena. The
Virgin and Joseph are, as one sees at first sight, the same figures as
in the two preceding works. I will not unfold the argument again. The
picture is to be attributed to Giorgione for the same reasons that show
the two other pictures to be his. One proof may be added to those
adduced before, and this is the pebbly surface of the ground. The same
treatment is to be seen in the Judgment of Solomon, and the Trial of
Moses, in the Uffizi, in the Three Philosophers, in the Giovanelli
Landscape; and in this last picture the painting of the brick work below
the column is the same as that of the building beside which the Holy
Family are seated in Mr. Benson’s picture. Catena could as easily have
painted Bellini’s Loredano as this head of St. Joseph, as fine a head in
its grandeur of mould and simple earnestness of expression as was ever
given to this too often maligned Saint. It is a Giorgione, and a fine
one.
The picture of Christ carrying the Cross in the Church of San Rocco in
Venice is by Morelli[59] said to be “gewiss ein ganz frühes Werk” of
Titian. Considering that he does not give a single proof of this
assertion, we may be forgiven if we fail to see the _Gewissheit_ of the
attribution. It is true that Vasari was not sure whether Giorgione or
Titian was the author, but tradition, as can be traced by guide books,
certainly leads us to consider the former as the author. The condition
of the picture is such that it gives one no help in solving the problem,
but so far as the drawing of details goes we meet no contradiction of
the traditional authorship. The shape of the head of the Christ and the
drawing of the eyes and brow are met with in the certain works. In
believing this ruined picture to be by our master, I am following the
opinion held by Crowe and Cavalcaselle, and in more recent days by
Berenson.
The difficulties that are met in trying to discover a decisive proof of
the origin of the Knight of Malta are similar to those which confuse the
argument about the ‘Christ’ of San Rocco. The picture has been so
maltreated that there is little left to study but the shadow of the
original. A magnificent original it must have been, one of those rare
works, commoner in Venice than elsewhere, that truly make the corporal
substance conform to the nature of the hidden soul, so that one thinks
not so much of the person shown to us as of his manner of thought and
life. There is much about the portrait that makes its attribution to any
one but Giorgione next to impossible, and nothing, I believe, that
throws any doubt in the way of our considering him the author. He was
capable of such a portrait, and in its earlier days it was
unquestionably worthy of him. This is, of course, the usual opinion,
though Crowe and Cavalcaselle felt that the repainting had so altered
the work as to destroy its character.
The Head of Christ bearing the Cross, formerly in Vicenza, and now,
fortunately for our country, in Boston, is another of the works the
authorship of which cannot be absolutely proved, but of which the
character is so marked that there is little or no diversity of opinion
about it.[60] It is one of the pictures that Crowe and Cavalcaselle
thought worthy of Giorgione, and which since their day Morelli and
others have not hesitated to regard as his. Still strongly tinged with
the influence of Bellini, it contains the promise of a freer, broader
treatment of religious subjects than even Bellini had attained, and
shows us unquestionably the young Giorgione. The hand and eye of Bellini
guide him as he works, but his own genius cannot be utterly suppressed,
and he adds to his master’s style something that marks the picture, when
it leaves his easel, as the true expression of a great genius and not as
that of a merely facile and unoriginal pupil (Plate LXVII).
Closely connected with the Madonna of Castelfranco is the study for the
figure of San Liberale in the National Gallery. It is true that such
studies by the fifteenth-century Italian masters are extremely uncommon,
but the differences between this study and the large picture are such as
we can hardly imagine being introduced by a copyist, and the painting,
considered solely from the technical point of view, is so masterly that
we are, I believe, justified in considering the figure as the product of
Giorgione’s brush.
Of the six pictures (Pitti, Concert, and Nymph with Satyr; Louvre, Fête
Champêtre, and Madonna and Saints; Hampton Court, Shepherd; Madrid,
Madonna with Sta. Brigida) which, though traditionally ascribed to
Giorgione, Crowe and Cavalcaselle refused to consider as his, the
Madonna and Sta. Brigida and the Madonna and Saints in the Louvre are
now less often thought of in connection with his name.[61]
[Illustration: PLATE LXVI.]
Of the Madonna and Saints in the Louvre it is interesting to note that
even a century ago there were those who judged the work at its true
value. It is of this work, I believe, that J. B. P. Lebrun[62] says: (p.
71) “Attribué au Giorgion. Un Concert de figures vues à mi-crops et de
grandeur naturelle, très-mauvais ouvrage dans le genre de cette école,
d’environ 4 pieds et demi de hauteur, sur 6 de largeur, sur toile. Je
tairai ce qu’en dit Lalande. Vient de Milan, bibliothèque Ambrosienne.”
Concerning the four other pictures there is considerable diversity of
opinion. The Head of a Boy at Hampton Court is thought by Morelli to be
an original Giorgione, but as the light was bad when he saw the work, he
is not sure. Berenson, however, does not doubt the genuineness of the
picture. Considering the fact that the head is a copy of the Vienna
David, we may very seriously question whether it is by Giorgione. One
can scarcely suppose that he would have repeated his pictures and made
the head of his David answer for a Shepherd. Morelli was right in
recognising the Giorgionesque spirit of the work, but it is only a copy
of the head of the original David, with certain details altered.
The Nymph and Satyr[63] in the Pitti, which used to be called a
Giorgione and which Crowe and Cavalcaselle thought to be by some
imitator of him and of Titian, bears now, I believe, the name of Dosso
Dossi. Morelli considered it a youthful work of Giorgione, though it
certainly shows few signs of youth, and the Giorgionesque details which
he enumerates are exactly those which an imitator would easily acquire.
The idea and the energetic freedom of composition are more like the work
of men who came after Giorgione, and the colouring is unlike his. We
have no reason to believe that he ever painted subjects embodying just
such trivially sensual and commonplace ideas, and as there is no marked
and characteristic likeness in the figures to any of his known works, it
is safer to consider it the product of a would-be imitator, such as we
know Dosso Dossi to have been.
To decide the question of the Concert in the Pitti is by no means easy.
Crowe and Cavalcaselle felt sure it could not be by Giorgione, or else
that “he did not execute what we are fond of attributing to him,” for it
seemed to them more advanced and to surpass his true works. Morelli,
too, did not regard Giorgione as the author, but the youthful
Titian,[64] and to this Berenson agrees. The interrelation of the
complex sensations expressed in the deeply moved but quiet faces is
certainly more like the work of the painter of the Two Loves than that
of him of the Three Philosophers. The likeness, too, of the middle
figure in the Concert to the Man with the Glove in the Louvre—a likeness
found not only in the expression of the two heads, but also in the
wonderfully wrought modelling of them—is most noticeable. How the same
artist can have accomplished so dull and stupid a face as the one to the
left is a question only to be answered by the vandals who have repainted
and thereby ruined this very splendid work. It certainly does remind one
of Giorgione, but so does the Two Loves. Titian we know well was, in his
early days, much influenced by his fellow-worker, but we know also that
he became the more accomplished artist of the two and attained a power
of technique and of representation of facial expression beyond that of
his too early dead contemporary. As just such an artist is shown us in
the Concert, one can but agree with Morelli in regarding it as the work
of Titian—as one of his finest, for he rarely reached such mastery of
subtle expression as shown in the central figure.
I come now to the discussion of a picture so well known that I feel
scarcely justified in doing more than simply express my opinion of it,
but the picture is so important that I must be excused for arguing about
it in close detail. It is the Fête Champêtre in the Louvre; a picture
which almost every one unhesitatingly attributes to Giorgione, but which
I cannot believe to be by him and think can have been painted only some
years after his death. As in regard to other true or false Giorgiones,
the opinion held by Crowe and Cavalcaselle is worthy of more attention
than later writers have seen fit to give it. What the former say about
the picture is this:
“We cannot say that Giorgione would not have painted such a scene; but,
as far as we know, he would have treated it with more nobleness of
sentiment, without defects of form or neglect of nature’s finenesses,
without the pasty surface and sombre glow of tone which here is all
pervading: he would have given more brightness and variety to his
landscape.”
They were surely not far wrong when they suggested some imitator of
Sebastiano del Piombo as the painter. There is certainly a Giorgionesque
quality in the scene, but that only means that the painter puts before
our eyes the varied and mingled charms of green fields enlivened with
the faint murmur of shepherds tending their distant flocks, of woods and
rivers, and of strong men and lovely women making music beside a
fountain overhung by trees. It used to be the fashion[65] to call every
portrait of a dark-eyed man with long abundant locks by Giorgione’s
name, and those who believed in such things also thought that he was the
only painter of Fêtes Champêtres.
We may freely concede that Giorgione did do much to introduce and
skilfully display a class of subjects that had been little cared for
until this day. But he was not the only artist to feel the charm of such
scenes. Sedate Bellini himself showed in such a picture as the Bacchanal
in Alnwick Castle that he too felt them, and rapidly they became more
and more common. But in the earlier years of this development such
scenes were generally given on a small scale or else were intended to
illustrate, even though in many cases the clue is lost to us, some more
distinct and concisely expressable idea than mere Arcadian life among
the trees. It is not alone the emptiness of thought that forces us to
decide upon some later author than Giorgione for this work. Forms of
details, manner of design and method of painting, all are different from
his certain works.
The first thing that strikes the attention is that the soft, dull
drawing of the figures, and the clumsy, baggy modelling of the women, is
unlike anything found in any of the undoubted Giorgiones.[66] Compare
the delicate shape and clear drawing of the figures in the Uffizi
panels, or the Venus or the Gypsy, with these heavy, ill-proportioned,
clumsily posed figures, and then say if you think Giorgione could have
sunk so low. Or, if you will seek proof in fingers and toes, hands and
feet, where in Giorgione’s work are such a shapeless leathery ear, so
thick-lipped a mouth, so short-toed and thick a foot, or such spidery
hands to be found? Nowhere. Look at the landscape. The trees are much
more massy and less flat and feathery, their surface is more broken by
flickering spots of light, they show, in fact, a more advanced stage in
the rendering of the appearance of Nature, than is shown in Giorgione’s
work.
It is instructive to notice, too, the way that the grass is painted in
the foreground, the thick mat of it, and the long bright blades and
tufts. Giorgione never reached such realism as that, as you can see by
the primitive way in which he seeks to render the effect in the picture
of the Gypsy. Consider further the treatment of the sunlight as it
floats over the hillsides and glows among the trees. In the Castelfranco
Madonna, in the Three Philosophers, in the Gypsy, in the Beaumont
Shepherd’s Offering, large, smooth, unbroken surfaces of light and
shade, seeming almost more like some woven stuff than rough earth, are
contrasted, but here all is broken, enriched perhaps, but less simple
and less telling.
In and out by the river and over the hill, Nature’s wrinkles are
embossed by the soft light, and nowhere is there restful certainty of
sun or shadow. In among the trees behind the shepherd, the hot, misty
light that one sees only in the forest is radiant with summer colour and
seems to murmur with the voice of the woods. Such effects were unknown
to Giorgione, but they were not unknown to Titian, for he was the first
great landscapist, and in the Vierge au Lapin and the other Virgin
seated under the trees, which used to hang opposite in the Long Gallery
of the Louvre, we see exactly these technical peculiarities and these
effects of nature done with the sure stroke of the master. Not only has
the author of the Fête Champêtre followed Titian in these ways, but his
thick pasty colour is taken from him. Not a stroke of this picture
displays original talent, there is not one that resembles Giorgione, not
one that does not betray the skilful imitator of ideas and manner of
other well-known men, chiefly of Titian.
But to make assurance doubly sure, something remains to be pointed out
that even if all the rest could be accommodated to what we know of
Giorgione, would render it incredible that he should be the author.
Morelli and others have noted the curious similarity between the two
musicians and certain figures in one of Titian’s frescoes in Padua. One
cannot say that Titian would not have taken hints from Giorgione, but he
was scarcely the man to need any one’s suggestions, especially if it was
in the shape of such commonplace figures as these. There are those,
however, who think he did. But now let me add that the two women bear
the most striking and unquestionable likeness to the two women in
Tintoretto’s (?) Rescue in Dresden, though they have lost the purity of
Tintoretto’s figures. Surely no one will maintain that this at best only
fanciful and pretty, but in no way striking, Fête Champêtre was the
source of inspiration to the two greatest Venetian painters in their
days of prime and finished power? It is impossible. The idea must be
given up, and though there is no denying the charm of the musicians
under the trees, let us cast the scales from our eyes and recognise its
complete dissimilarity to the work of the Master of Castelfranco, and
that it is merely a perfectly charming _pasticcio_.
I have now discussed the pictures spoken of by Crowe and Cavalcaselle,
and there are left for us to consider those to which Morelli first drew
marked attention. Such are the Madonna with Sts. Antony and Roch in
Madrid, Daphne and Apollo in Venice, Three Ages of Man in the Uffizi,
Birth of Paris and Portrait of a Man in Buda-Pesth, Portrait of a Woman
in the Borghese Gallery, Portrait of a Youth in Berlin, Allegory in
Dresden, and Judith in St. Petersburg. I have already spoken of the
Venus, Nymph and Satyr, and the Shepherd at Hampton Court.
The Madonna in Madrid has generally been called by the name of
Pordenone, while Crowe and Cavalcaselle thought it by Francesco Vecelli.
It is certainly not a Giorgione, but a mere _pasticcio_ like the Fête
Champêtre. We cannot be blamed for asking some more decisive evidence of
its Giorgionesque origin than Morelli gives before we agree with him. He
satisfies himself with saying[67] “Doch ich muss gestehen, dass es für
mich keine geringe Freude war, bei meinem Besuche von Madrid dieses
Wunderwerk venetianischer Malerkunst sogleich als Schöpfung unsers
Giorgione erkannt zu haben.”
This, on the surface, is too rapid and absolute a statement to be
admitted without question, and as there are excellent reasons why
Giorgione could not have painted the work, we may confidently strike it
from the list. The composition in the main is borrowed from the picture
at Castelfranco. Giorgione was hardly the man to repeat his own works.
The heavy, thick, coarse painting is absolutely different from
Giorgione’s work. The clumsy draperies show none of his fine feeling.
The thick-set figures of the Saints do not exhibit his elegance and
refinement of form. The infant, more like a Hercules than a Christ, is
quite unlike his poetic and dreamy-looking children. The manner in which
the foot of St. Roch is raised is awkward and unmeaning, while the fat
hands, thick ears and coarse features bear no resemblance to Giorgione’s
work. The work is not only crude, it is unintelligent. The wall behind
the Virgin cannot be explained, the chiaroscuro is harsh, the attitude
of St. Anthony, turning as he does from the main group, is senseless,
and the flowers are scattered about in a childish way. It is based on
Giorgione’s work, but must have been painted by an inferior artist many
years after his death.
The Daphne and Apollo in Venice has been injured by repainting and by
having lost the left-hand end, but one can easily see that it will take
much more than a mere assertion by Morelli[68] to convince anyone that
Giorgione painted it. Crowe and Cavalcaselle think the painter was
probably Andrea Schiavoni. If it was not Schiavoni, it was someone of an
almost precisely similar nature and talent. The generally loose drawing
and painting remind one of him. The bad drawing and perspective, the
proportions and shapes of the figures (note the chunky Apollo drawing
his bow and the head of the woman in the middle distance), the clawlike
hands and clumsy feet, and the stupid confusion of scale in which the
figures are drawn, all show without any possibility of question, that
neither Giorgione nor any other artist of the first rank painted the
picture.
[Illustration: PLATE LXVII.]
There are in Padua two other cassone pictures representing the fables of
Myrrha and of Erysichthon as told by Ovid in the “Metamorphoses” (VIII
fab. 7 and X fab. 9). They are Giorgionesque in feeling, but are plainly
derived from the woodcuts in the 1497 Venice edition of Ovid (Cf. Justi,
_Giorgione_ p. 191 f). It is possible that these are two of the pictures
referred to by Ridolfi (see above, No. 19).
Of the Three Ages it is perhaps sufficient to say that Morelli’s
attribution has not found general acceptance.
The Allegory in Dresden in times gone by has been and by some still is
considered, as Morelli thought, a copy of a work by Giorgione. There is,
I believe, no real evidence in favour of this theory, which seems to me
to depend solely on personal feeling.
The Judith in St. Petersburg, where it goes by the name of Moretto,
presents a more difficult problem. Morelli, though he seems to have had
no doubt that Giorgione was the painter, was not sure whether the
picture was a copy or not. That it is a copy is Berenson’s opinion.[69]
The lack of modelling and the bad drawing of parts are the reasons why
Berenson and others think it a copy, and Berenson finds a trace of
copyist’s work in the fact that the head is better done than the rest of
the figure. Personally, I do not recognise this superiority of the head,
and considering the numerous faults which he points out, I do not
understand his last sentence: “En somme, la _Judith_ de l’Ermitage me
parait une bonne copie, mais après tout, ce n’est qu’une copie.” If one
believes these numerous faults to be due to the copyist, I should say
that they proved it to be a pretty poor copy. Study of the work itself
will, however, convince anyone that it is not a copy, but the original
picture, and the artist can be no other than Giorgione. The panel on
which it was painted was originally broader on the right side.[70] The
uncertain drawing is what one would expect to find in an early work. The
drapery is not so simple as usual in its folds, and at first sight the
way it is drawn aside, leaving one leg bare, seems affected. But when
one thinks of the bleeding head on the ground, this action is seen to be
natural and the contrast of nude and draped parts is of the same
unexpected and original character as one sees in the woman of the
Giovanelli picture.
The fragment in Buda-Pesth which Morelli thought was part of the picture
representing the Birth of Paris is, as Berenson points out in the
article already referred to, only a copy, and a poor one at that. But
even poor copies of lost Giorgiones are works to be carefully cherished.
Morelli also thought he knew of three portraits by Giorgione. Of these
three (the Woman in the Borghese, the Man in the Buda-Pesth Gallery, and
the Youth in Berlin), the first two may be seriously questioned. To my
eye the Borghese portrait is by no means so strikingly Giorgionesque as
Morelli considered it. While it is true that a brow here and a mouth
there can be found scattered among the figures in the true Giorgiones
that resemble the features of this woman, the type of face shows little
likeness to Giorgione’s work. Nor does the muddy colour indicate the
palette of an artist of more than mediocre ability. Who will look at
Giorgione’s masterpieces and then say he thinks the same artist produced
two such shapeless hands holding such a formless swab of cloth? Have we
any reason to think Giorgione had so poor an understanding of
perspective as to be unable to draw correctly the line of the parting of
the hair? Such sloping shoulders were never natural and the fashion of
drawing them so is not characteristic of Giorgione’s work. Could not
Giorgione paint better drapery, or would he ever have been satisfied
with such a shoelace-like ribbon round the waist? Finally, were such
gauze caps known in Giorgione’s day? It is the purest fancy that
discovers a shadow of greatness in this dull work. Drawing, colour,
design, all proclaim it the product of a commonplace artist. The work is
unlike Giorgione’s in every particular except the shape of the brow.
Morelli’s judgment about the portrait in Buda-Pesth is a perfectly sound
one. It occurs only in the English translation and not in the original
German.[71] “The picture,” he says, “has suffered much, and the master
is not to be recognised in the technical qualities of the painting, but
the whole feeling ... and the conception seem to point to Giorgione. The
impression which it made upon me ten years ago was that of a thoroughly
Giorgionesque work, but one executed by a later hand rather than by the
master himself. Competent critics who have examined the picture in the
meantime insist, however, that it is a true original by Giorgione. I
must leave the final decision of the point to others.” Unfortunately it
is next to impossible to arrive at final decisions in such matters. For
one, I believe that Morelli’s idea, that the work was executed by a
follower of Giorgione, is borne out by its main characteristics,
particularly by the self-conscious pose of the head, and by the gesture
of the hand—both much like what is found in portraits by the men of the
generation after Giorgione.
Then, too, the cold ashen colour is very unlike Giorgione’s palette, but
I would not lay great weight on this fact as the picture has been much
repainted. The picture is of further interest because it shows the
fallacy of one of Morelli’s most firm statements. In the
Introduction[72] to his chapters on the Borghese Gallery he says: “Ich
erlaube mir bei dieser Gelegenheit sogar zu bemerken, dass die den
_grossen Meistern_ eigenthümliche _Grundform_ der Hand und des Ohres
nicht nur auf ihren Bildern, sondern selbst auf den von ihnen nach dem
Leben gemalten Porträts sich vorfindet.” With these words in one’s mind
one looks at the Buda-Pesth portrait and finds neither hand, ear, eye,
nose or mouth exhibiting the _Grundform_ shown in the unquestioned
pictures. Morelli was carried away by his theories in this point, for
while every one will readily admit that many cases, especially among the
works of the primitive and early masters, can be found to fit his rule,
yet the numberless exceptions to this rule, particularly among the fully
developed masters, make it quite plain that, at best, its application
requires to be strictly limited.[73]
The Portrait of a Youth at Berlin is the last of the Morellian
Giorgiones to be studied. As was too often the case, Morelli speaks
off-hand of this work as “ein glänzendes Porträt des Giorgione,” as
though it was so manifestly by him that he was absolved from the labour
of adducing proof; but the matter is not so simple. It is surely enough
Giorgionesque, but do the details bear out the general impression so
strongly as to make the attribution beyond all reasonable doubt? Not one
of the master’s certain works shows a head like this. It is sharper and
harder than anything of his except the Uffizi panels, but between these,
sharp and hard as they seem to have been, and the Berlin portrait, there
is an important and essential difference. The figures on the panels are
not only hard, they are stiff; that is, they show one of the chief
characteristics of youthful work.[74] If now the portrait be by
Giorgione, it is self-evidently an early work. That is, there are among
his undoubted works some that show vastly greater ease than this. But
this portrait does not show any stiffness.
The attitude is easy, and the painting, particularly of the drapery, is
distinctly free, one might even say sketchy. The work shows, perhaps,
not so much the characteristics of a young artist of great power as
those of one who has attained some facility but not the complete and
all-round ease of the greatest masters. Then what do the letters V. V.
mean, painted on the shelf behind which the figure stands? Is it not
possible they are the initial letters of the artist’s name? Can they
stand for an as yet unknown imitator, another _Vincentius Venezianus_?
As Morelli said of the Portrait in Buda-Pesth, “I must leave the final
decision of the point to others”—others better qualified than myself.
Whoever the artist, the picture is a splendid one, and may well be
regarded as showing the Giorgione point of view in portraiture, which,
however, is a very different matter from being a work by him.
I have already had occasion to refer to an article by Berenson in the
_Gazette des Beaux-Arts_ in which he speaks of pictures he considers as
copies of lost Giorgiones. These are:
The David in Vienna.
The Judith in St. Petersburg.
The Birth of Paris in Buda-Pesth.
Orpheus and Eurydice, a cassone at Bergamo.
Portrait of a Man, formerly in the Doetsch collection.
Portrait of a Lady, belonging to Signor Crespi at Milan.
Of the first three I have already spoken. To maintain his thesis about
the Orpheus and Eurydice, Berenson mentions only vague sentiments such
as “Qui donc, autre que lui, a su traduire, comme nous le voyons ici, un
mythe grec dans l’esprit de la Renaissance?” We might reply that
Bellini, Titian, Tintoret, to mention merely Venetians, all showed a
rather marked ability to do this very thing, so it was not a personal
peculiarity of Giorgione. “Qui donc, autre que lui, avait le don de
fondre le paysage et les figures dans une aussi charmante harmonie?”
Again the ability to do this was possessed by many artists, and so vague
a phrase as _aussi charmante_ proves nothing whatever. Continuing, he
finds many details which betray very certainly the work of Cariani (an
undoubted imitator of Giorgione), and decides that the work is a copy by
Cariani of a lost Giorgione. But when much is admittedly unlike
Giorgione and everything suits Cariani, why not consider Cariani the
artist? Apparently because “si nous étions nous-même des artistes très
doués, nous pourrions remplacer chaque détail _carianesque_ par un
détail _giorgionesque_, emprunté aux œuvres du maître les plus
voisines.” This has no force. We might as well “remplacer chaque détail
_carianesque_ par un détail _michelangelesque_,” and what would be shown
thereby? Nothing.
The reasons given for believing the Portrait from the Doetsch
collection[75] to be a copy of a Giorgione are quite as vague and
undefinable as those for the Orpheus and Eurydice. The consideration of
details is no more convincing than the sentiments and fanciful writing
that precede. “Si l’auteur de l’original en question n’était pas
Giorgione, ce devrait être quelque imitateur servile du maître, comme
Licinio ou Beccaruzzi. Mais ces peintres de second ordre ne pouvaient
qu’imiter et non créer, et le portrait de la collection Doetsch est bien
une création,” and yet he has just said that this portrait “est le même
type que celui du jeune homme de Buda-Pesth,”—the picture mentioned by
Morelli. Berenson’s definition of ‘création’ must differ from that
ordinarily employed; and Licinio at his best was not so uncreative as
Berenson would have us believe. He gives one, however, further surprises
in asserting that this portrait agrees in all details with the one in
Berlin! Not only the same head and brow, but “le même sentiment dans la
bouche!”
Even were this all so, and I cannot see that it is in the least, what
would be proved? To compare one doubtful work to another of a similar
nature does not, as I have said above, prove the authorship of either.
Furthermore, though one can find strong likenesses to the Berlin head in
the true works by Giorgione, in these same works one cannot find any
likeness whatever to the Doetsch portrait. To compare this
overemphasised portrait, this person who seems half brigand and half
Shylock, to the sad, poetical-looking man at Buda-Pesth, or to the
clean, vigorous, manly youth in Berlin, is going pretty far, and the
limit is plainly over-stepped in the endeavour to attach to the picture
a value it does not possess by giving to it the name of one of the
greatest artists.
For the painter of the Crespi Portrait of a Lady we shall do better to
look in the direction of Titian than Giorgione. The owner, Signor
Crespi, believes, according to Berenson, that Titian was the author, and
certainly the likeness which the figure bears to other women by Titian,
and the initials T. V. make it difficult to admit any other origin.
Neither ecstasies nor comparisons serve to show any likeness to
Giorgione’s work.
Of all the portraits attributed to Giorgione the finest by far is the
one owned by the Hon. Edward Wood of Temple Newsam. Attention was first
drawn to this by Cook and his attribution has been accepted by every
one. It is a masterpiece of the greatest beauty (Plate LXVIII).
We have now reviewed the most important criticisms that have been passed
on Giorgione’s work; and though it is only too evident that as yet there
is no really sound common standard by which to govern our judgments, we
can come very near to forming one if we accept the more sober part of
the work of these criticisms and disregard their more extravagant and
hypothetical attributions.[76] The following list, I venture to think,
embraces works differing much less among themselves in regard to style
than the lists of the critics that I have discussed.
[Illustration: PLATE LXVIII.]
1. Vienna—David (copy).
2. Venice—Fondaco dei Tedeschi (fragment still visible, but compare
Zanetti’s engraving).
3. Venice—Chiesa di San Rocco, Christ carrying the Cross (much
damaged).
4. Venice, Giovanelli Palace, Soldier and Woman, known as The
Tempest.
5. Castelfranco, Madonna Enthroned.
6. Dresden, Venus.
7. Kingston Lacy, Judgment of Solomon (unfinished).
8. Vienna, Three Philosophers.
9. Buda-Pesth, Birth of Paris (fragment of a copy).
10. Florence, Uffizi, Judgment of Solomon.
11. Florence, Uffizi, Fire-test of Moses.
12. Florence, Uffizi, Knight of Malta.
13. Boston, Mass., Mrs. Gardner’s Collection (formerly Vicenza),
Head of Christ.
14. London, National Gallery, Study for the San Liberale of the
Castelfranco picture.
15. London, National Gallery, Epiphany.
16. London, Mr. Benson, Holy Family.
17. London, Lord Allandale, Shepherd’s Offering.
18. Temple Newsam, Hon. Mr. Wood. Portrait of a Man.
19. St. Petersburg, Judith.
20. Berlin, Portrait of a Youth (?).
Excluding the last one as being open to doubt, nineteen pictures, two
probably copies, remain as our heritage of this most noble painter’s
work. With these nineteen in our mind, it becomes more evident than ever
why such works as the Louvre Concert, the Borghese Lady, or the Doetsch
Man are not to be thought of in connection with Giorgione’s name.
There yet remains something more to be said of Giorgione. I think that
there are still some pictures to be added to this list. The first to
which I desire to call attention is the so-called Gypsy Madonna in
Vienna. This picture is spoken of by every one as a Titian, but the
longer I study it the more strong becomes my conviction that Giorgione
was the artist; that it is one of his early works; that it is one of the
“many pictures of the Virgin” of which Vasari speaks. The Giorgione
spirit seems to me to underlie the whole feeling just as the Giorgione
technique underlies the completed performance, that is, wherever the
repainting allows it to be seen (Plate LXIX).
Evidently, from the lack of decision of the drawing, the coarse
modelling of the drapery, and the heavy, undetailed landscape the
picture is an early work of the master, be he Titian or Giorgione. To my
mind the likeness between this and unquestioned early Titians is a
superficial one. This picture shows none of the ease that is a
characteristic of even his early works, nor does it exhibit any of the
dramatic quality, expressed either by the actions or in the faces of the
figures, that is another most noticeable feature of his work. If, on the
other hand, one seeks for similarities to Giorgione’s work, they are
most readily found. Details and style coincide closely with his
pictures. The shape of the Virgin’s head and the manner in which the
hair is drawn over the brow are nearly identical with what one sees in
the Uffizi panels or the Castelfranco picture. The sharply marked
eyelids, the richly modelled mouth and long nose, are strongly
resemblant to the same features in the Castelfranco Madonna, the
Giovanelli Gypsy, the Uffizi panels, and the Knight of Malta.
[Illustration: PLATE LXIX.]
Notice, too, the large hand, the feet of the child with the strongly
developed toes which are just what one finds in Giorgione’s works. So,
also, the landscape with its plumelike trees, and the slim figure seated
on the grass is such as one finds in many of his works, but not so often
in those of Titian. Finally, and of more importance than separate
details, is the fact that the peaceful spirit of the group, the
undramatic, unTitianesque quality, is exactly what is most
characteristic of Giorgione. Titian, when he painted the Christ Child,
even in his earliest days, painted a figure more representing the infant
Hercules than the Salvator Mundi. Invariably, He leaps about in his
Mother’s arms, and though the small chubby face may be keenly
intelligent, there is hardly ever a suggestion of the imaginative powers
and prophetic instinct of the Reformer. It is here that Giorgione shows
his very exceptional genius, for he was able to depict a purely human
man child in such wise that were the figures cut from his canvases, no
one could mistake them for mere ordinary offspring.
Giorgione used none of the affected graces or sentimentalities of
Raphael, nor did he depend upon such weirdness as Leonardo chose; as a
result, his figures are as much more satisfying to the inquiring
intellect as a living fountain is compared with the mirage of the
desert. His means are simple. There is no exaggeration of action, as in
the Titian Child, but all is essentially delicate and infantine. There
is no exaggeration of expression, but a slightly dreamy, far-away look
as of powers still unwakened, and one feels, as before no other
representations of the Child, that such as He might attain to even
Calvary. Taken in connection with the agreement of the details, this
spiritual similarity of the work to others that we know are by Giorgione
must give him pause who should think to name Titian as the author.[77]
Another picture which, I believe, deserves more attention than has yet
been given it hangs, under the name of Giovanni Bellini, in the _Museo
Correr_ in Venice. The picture represents the dead Christ, seated on the
edge of the tomb, upheld by three angels. In the background is a
landscape, with a church on the right. It is painted on a panel about
four feet high. The Anonimo Morelli says that in the year 1530 in the
house of Gabriel Vendramin: “El Cristo morto sopra el sepolcro, con
l’Anzolo che el sostenta, fu de man de Zorzi da Castelfranco, reconzato
da Tiziano.” The picture in the Correr Museum represents this same
scene, but there are three angels instead of one. This difference
between the picture and the description need not make us hesitate to
consider the question whether Giorgione was the author of the work, if
there are other reasons to render such authorship possible.
Any one, however, who has used early books such as the Anonimo knows how
very inaccurate the authors often were and any one who has studied
Italian painting knows that to represent the dead Christ held by only
one angel is entirely contrary to precedent and practice. The present
condition of the work is such that it is impossible to say whether it
was ever _raconzato da Tiziano_ or not. It is a mere wreck. That there
are distinct resemblances to Bellini’s work is not to be denied, but, if
I mistake not, there exist even stronger ones to that of Giorgione. A
slight stiffness in drawing, a certain archaism in drapery, is just what
one would expect to find in the work of Bellini’s pupil. In the
modelling and action of the figures, however, there are evidences of an
attempt at freedom of design such as are rare in Bellini’s work. Four
works of Bellini occur at once as criteria for judging the quality of
the one under discussion—the Pietà in the Brera, one in the Mond
collection in London, one in Rimini, and one in the Berlin Gallery.[78]
None of these show the slender, rather unmodelled hands of the Correr
picture; none presents so vivid a picture of Death. In none except the
one at Rimini are the secondary figures really supporting the
Christ,—the body does not show, as in the Correr picture, the relaxation
of death, and in the Rimini picture the angels are much more playfully
treated than in the Correr panel. The Bellini pictures are deeply
touching, but to me there seems an even nobler and more moving sentiment
in the work which I fain would attribute to Giorgione, and it is just
such a sentiment as the painter of the Vicenza Christ might have
suggested.
The heads of the figures of the dead Christ in the works of Bellini are
without exception represented as _asleep_. In the Correr picture one
sees more than sleep in the closed eyes and drawn mouth of the Saviour.
There is death—but death, the tragedy, so combined with a yearning,
soul-compelling sadness, that the face can never be forgotten by whoso
once has seen it, and this is spiritual life. Scarcely any other artist
ever equalled Giorgione, and none certainly ever surpassed him, in the
power of representing the members of the Holy Family. There are many
fine presentations of Christ bearing the Cross, but none so imaginative
as the Vicenza picture. For there we see in the sensitive face, the
direct eye, and steady earnest mouth, the signs of completed power over
self, while in the tear drop that sparkles on the cheek is the sign of
suffering that broke the body, whose soul it could not quell—for neither
brow nor eye are those of one who weeps. The Correr painting contains a
similar double suggestion. Two details there are also which bear out the
idea that Giorgione is the author. One is the technique which so far as
can be seen is of the rich, smooth, carefully shaded kind, peculiar to
Giorgione’s work. The other is the landscape in which the low horizon
line and the plumy trees correspond closely to his certain works. Wreck
though it be, and possibly only a copy of the original, it is worth
study by students.[79]
A smaller, but fortunately much more perfectly preserved, work hangs in
the London Gallery under the name of School of Giorgione. It represents
a bearded man on a throne and other figures in an open landscape.
Whoever, unafraid of finding something unexpected, looks at this picture
with critical eye, will, I think, realise that it is not a school work,
but by the master himself. It is very carefully wrought in design and
execution, as a youthful work would be likely to be, and as the two
Florence panels are. The rich clear colours and the bright sunshine
spread over the scene, are such as are found in the Florence panels, the
Kingston Lacy picture, those in Vienna, and the Virgin of Castelfranco.
The landscape is typically Giorgionesque, closed in as it is in the
foreground, and opening into a middle distance of rich meadows,
enlivened here and there with tall steep-roofed houses. The rich detail
and broad chiaroscuro find their counterpart over and over again in
Giorgione’s work; and finally, who but Giorgione ever presented to our
delighted eyes a scene so simple, so dreamlike, so poetic, so defined,
and yet so difficult to understand? It is a dream picture, rendered with
the utmost clearness of vision. It is only the masters who can do
this—only Giorgione and Keats and such rare spirits who can put in terms
for the ordinary plodding mortal to grasp, the evanescent visions of the
mind.
Of very different character is the portrait of a youth in a large hat in
the Vienna Gallery. Crowe and Cavalcaselle attribute this to Morto da
Feltre. It was impossible for me to see the original when I was in
Vienna, but study of an excellent photograph makes me doubt this
attribution. If I mistake not, the picture might be a copy of a portrait
by Giorgione. The treatment of the landscape is sufficient to show that
Giorgione’s hand did not touch the work itself, but scarcely any other
than Giorgione can have originated this grave sweet face with the steady
eyes.
To close this necessarily unsatisfactory part of my subject, there is
the etching by H. van der Borcht which quite possibly is copied from a
lost Giorgione. It represents a woman seated upon a dead warrior, and
below the figures are the words _Giorgione inv_.[80] It seems not
unlikely that it preserves for us one of the frescoes long since faded
from some palace wall in Venice. It is but the echo of a voice that is
still, but even as such it means much.
If now my arguments, in the foregoing discussion, are based upon sound
reason rather than upon theory, it results that the following are the
works by which we must judge Giorgione’s genius, and that these must
serve as a standard for further study of his work:
1. Vienna, David (copy).
2. Vienna, Three Philosophers.
3. Vienna, Gypsy Madonna.
4. Vienna, Portrait of a Youth (copy?).
5. Venice, Fondaco dei Tedeschi. (The engravings can be used in
giving suggestions of Giorgione’s methods of composition.)
6. Venice, Chiesa di San Rocco, Christ carrying the Cross.
7. Venice, Giovanelli Palace, Soldier and Woman.
8. Venice, Correr Museum, Pietà (copy?).
9. Castelfranco, Madonna Enthroned.
10. Dresden, Venus.
11. Kingston Lacy, Judgment of Solomon.
12. Buda Pesth, Birth of Paris (copy).
13. Florence, Uffizi, Judgment of Solomon.
14. Florence, Uffizi, Fire-test of Moses.
15. Florence, Uffizi, Knight of Malta.
16. Boston, Mrs. Gardner, Head of Christ.
17. London, National Gallery, Study for figure of San Liberale.
18. London, National Gallery, Epiphany.
19. London, National Gallery, David and Solomon.
20. London, Mr. Beaumont (Lord Allandale), Shepherd’s Offering.
21. London, Mr. Benson, Holy Family.
22. St. Petersburg, Hermitage, Judith.
At first sight it may seem that there is more variety of style in these
pictures than the works of any one artist would show, especially one who
died young. There are, however, certain general considerations to be
clearly remembered. Giorgione was born and grew up in a time of great
discovery, when long-established thoughts and habits were rapidly
changing, so that we should commit a serious error were we to expect him
to paint the same subjects, or in the same manner, as his predecessors.
His works would necessarily be different from theirs. He would naturally
show greater variety and, owing to his youth, his style would not have
become fixed. What is certain is that his contemporaries regarded him
with the greatest admiration, so the best way to fit ourselves to judge
him is to study the life of Venice in his day.
It is not much that is left us of the great man’s life work, but it
suffices to show what he was, not only as a painter, but as a man; and
why his influence was so great on his contemporaries, and why so long as
the human heart stays young his spirit will continue to call loudly to
it. That he was a perfect colourist, that is to say, that he understood
how to juxtapose the rich oriental colours of the Venetian palette in
such wise that each tint emphasised the effect of all the others, or
that as a draughtsman he could adequately portray the images in his
brain, does not explain the effect he has on those who care for him.
These are merely technical qualities that are not difficult to acquire,
and that many a man has possessed.
It is the spirit of Giorgione’s work that makes him what he is. He spoke
in the simplest, broadest way to the deeper side of our nature. Not so
imbued with the ceremonies of religion as his master Bellini, nor so
given over to the full-blooded joy in the beauties of this world as his
comrade Titian, he recognised that fanaticism or sensuality are equally
spiritual death, and that the whole and perfect soul must be tempered in
the fires of the heart, and cooled in the breezes of Nature. No such
loveable Madonna had been painted as she of Castelfranco,—no purer
presentation exists of the compelling beauty of the human figure than
his Venus. Unabashed “he held both hands before the fire of life,” not
warming first one and then the other, but with true poetic feeling
combining every beauty that he perceived in one harmonious song.
Always steadily reaching for the same goal, this even-poised master did
not one day paint such exalted figures as Bellini’s Virgin and Companion
Saints in the Frari, and on another such heathen festivities as the same
master’s Bacchanal. But, as he loved music and pleasant company and such
pleasantnesses of life, so in his painting he shows us grace and harmony
and good breeding. And as these things are hard to find in our daily
course and harder still to fix long enough to paint their semblance, he
fashioned for himself a world, an Arcadia, where men and women,
surrounded by beautiful Nature, lived together, enjoying a life where
there was both work and play. In all temperate reason they employ their
energies now on problems of deep thought, and now in the satisfaction of
health and natural bodily enjoyment, and it is just because of the
reasonableness of this balance of mind and body that his pictures seem
poetic, dreamlike and difficult to explain. As Keats, more than any
scientist or idle dreamer, tells how the nightingale entrances the soul,
so Giorgione depicts the Virgin and her Child guarded by attendant
Saints, or adored by kings and slaves, with greater persuasiveness than
any theologian. But he does this neither as one diverted only by the
pageantry, nor as an historian. Endowed with a poet’s instinct, he saw
the deeper meaning of the scene and depicted those parts that truly
illustrate it.
Other artists there have been endowed with this same instinct, but their
works do not obtain from us of to-day as full response as from our
forefathers who lived when they were painted, and this because they do
not give visual form to matters of lasting import, but to those fleeting
affairs that constitute fashion. This is not so of Giorgione. The glory
of his work will never fade, for his appeal is to the spirit of
youth—that spirit which is compounded of a pure and natural love in all
things beautiful, be they physical or spiritual, natural or divine, and
with energy sufficient to urge it forward to the acquisition of, and the
becoming part of, each and all of these various perfections. Such was
Giorgione: neither utterly pagan, nor completely christian, but
absolutely human in the finest sense, in that his perceptions were clear
enough to see the special value of all things beautiful and his
technical powers adequate to give due expression to that which he
perceived.
INDEX
Alexander, portraits of, 82
allegory of Time and Truth, 13
archæological study of art, 3, 4
art as an index of life, 4, 57, 97, 133, 147
function of, 128
Athena, head of, from Cyrene, 135 f.
date of, 142
local work, 149
beauty, Greek love of, 76
Bellini and Giorgione, 173, 181
Bellini, Bacchanal, 190
Berenson, 154, 157, 171, 172
Bernini, an estimate of, 3 f.
architectural work, 40 f.
classes of his work, 14
clay models, 21, 44 f.
contemporary honour for, 6
designs for piazza of St. Peter’s, 50 f.
early life of, 15
estimate and characterization of, 42
expression of religion, 22
influence of, 23
multiplicity of sketches, 19
originality of, 20
portraits of, 10 f.
sculptor’s models, 21 f., 44 f.
list of, 46
technique of, 18 f.
versatility, 40
Bernini, works of,
Æneas and Anchises, 16
angels, used in architecture, 23 f.
Apollo and Daphne, 7, 17
Baldacchino in St. Peter’s, 33
Beata Albertona, 32
Cattedra in St. Peter’s, 33
Daniel in the lions’ den, 29
David, 16
fountains, 14, 34
Habakkuk, 26
Maria di Magdala, 32, 49
portraits, 14, 35
Bishop Santoni, 37
Costanza Buonavelli, 37
Francis I, 39
Louis XIV, 39
Mons. Francesco Barberini, 39
Mons. Montoya, 37
Paul V, 38
Proserpina, 17
saints, 25
Santa Bibiana, 26
St. Jerome, 27, 47
Saint Theresa, 30, 48
Truth, 13
Borghese pope, patronage of, 15
Borghese warrior, 17
Botticelli, 112, 156
Virgin and child in Boston, 157
Brandegee Collection, 21, 41, 45, 51, 85
Browning, 69
Brunn, H., 138
Bupalos and Athenis, 77
Carracci, 3
Cariani and Giorgione, 160, 166
Catena and Giorgione, 177
draperies of, 183
St. Jerome (National Gallery), 178
Knight adoring Infant Christ, 178, 182
Corbulo, portrait of, 57, 88
Cyrene, sculpture of, 136 f.
Dante, Greek spirit in, 113
Demetrius of Alopeke, 84
Egyptian portraiture, 60
sculpture, 61, 140
emotion controlled in Greece, 103
evolution of art, 4
Farnese Hercules, 123
Florentine portraits, 90
Furtwaengler, A., 138
Futurists, 140
Ghirlandaio, 112
Giorgione, 155 f.
draperies of, 183
life, 159
list of works, 203, 210
Anonimo Morelli, 163
Barri, 164
Berenson, 171
Crowe and Cavalcaselle, 168
Morelli, 169
Ridolfi, 161
Vasari, 159
paintings attributed to, 155 f.
romantic quality of, 181
spirit of his work, 211
the true Giorgione, 172 f.
treatment of landscape, 191
Giorgione, works of,
Birth of Paris (copy, Buda-Pesth), 196
Christ carrying the Cross (San Rocco, Vienna), 184
David and Solomon (National Gallery), 208
Epiphany (National Gallery), 175
Gypsy Madonna (Vienna), 204
Head of Christ (Gardner Collection, Boston), 185
Holy Family (Benson), 183 f.
Judgment of Solomon (Kingston Lacy), 172 f., 182
Knight of Malta (Uffizi), 58, 185
Madonna Enthroned (Castelfranco), 181
Pietà (Venice), 206
Portrait (Temple Newsam), 202
Portrait (Vienna), 209
San Liberale (National Gallery), 186
Shepherd’s Offering (Lord Allandale), 180 f.
The Tempest (Venice), 181
Three Philosophers (Vienna), 181
Venus (Dresden), 174, 181
Giorgione, works attributed to,
Allegory (Dresden), 195
Cassone pictures (Padua), 195
Concert (Pitti), 188
Daphne and Apollo (Venice), 194
Fête Champêtre (Louvre), 189
Head of Boy (Hampton Court), 187
Judith (St. Petersburg), 195
Madonna (Madrid), 193
Madonna and Saints (Louvre), 187
Nymph and Satyr (Pitti), 187
Orpheus and Eurydice (Bergamo), 200
Portrait (Berlin), 198
Portrait (Borghese), 196
Portrait (Buda-Pesth), 197
Portrait (from Crespi Collection), 202
Portrait (from Doetsch Collection), 201
Guido, 3
hair as a means of dating sculpture, 144
Hipponax, caricature of, 77
humanity of the Greek gods, 150
Kresilas, portrait of Pericles, 58, 75, 78 f.
Laocoon, 123
Laws of sculpture, 7
Leonardo, 140, 158
logical reasoning about pictures, 176
Longinus, 46
Lowell on Lincoln, 69
lucidity of Greek sculpture, 140
Lysippus, portraits of Alexander, 82
“Massacre of the Innocents,” 73
materials for sculpture, 145
Michael Angelo and Bernini, 16
Michael Angelo, 97 f.
affectation of the period, 119, 120
complexity of his work, 101, 103
feeling for the nude figure, 101
muscles emphasized, 120, 123
period of, 98, 103, 111
pupils of, 122
sonnets and letters, 115
Michael Angelo, works of,
Bacchus, 116 f.
Battle of the Centaurs, 133
David, 133
Eros, 116, 118, 120
Madonna of Bruges, 116, 131
Moses, 100, 102
Night and Dawn, 122
Pietà in St. Peter’s, 100
Sistine Chapel, 121, 125 f., 132
Victor, 116
Morelli on Giorgione, 155 f.
Mourning Athena, 148
Myron’s Discobolus, 17
mystical fervour in art, 3
Niobid group, 73
nude figure felt under drapery, 101 f.
Oberammergau, 31
origins of art, 3
Pausanias, 138
Pericles, portrait of, 58, 75, 78 f.
Pheidias and Michael Angelo, 93 f.
Pheidias, age of, 105, 109
and Pericles, 110
influence of, 94 f.
Pheidias, work of,
Athena Parthenos, 131
Lemnian Athena, 101, 131
Parthenon, 3, 132
frieze, 118
pediments, 101, 121
Zeus, 108
photography and art criticism, 155
physical beauty prized by Greeks, 151
portraits of women and children, 89
portraits made for friends, 65
portraiture, art of, 57 f.
commemorative, 60, 64
Egyptian, 60
Florentine, 90
Greek and Roman, 85
in language, 66
in large compositions, 62
in painting and sculpture, 59, 71, 74
motives for, 59
religious, 59
summary, 91
Raphael, Angelo Doni, 58
realism, in sculpture, 75
realism, Greek and Roman, 75
religion and art, 104, 106
Roselli, 156
Roman art, 4
Ruskin, 156
Scipio, so-called bust of, 57
Sheik-el-Beled, 57
Shelley, 66, 68
Silanion, 83
technical peculiarities in paintings, 157 f.
temple, significance of the Greek, 106
Tintoretto, Greek spirit of, 113
Titian, Duke of Norfolk, 58
Triton, 47
“Truth unveiled by Time,” 13
Turner’s Rizpah, 67
violence in art, 8
wealth and art, 64, 91
youth in Greek art, 111
-----
Footnote 1:
Filippo Baldinucci Fiorentino. _Vita del cavaliere Gio. Lorenzo
Bernini._ Firenze. 1682.
Domenico Bernino. _Vita del cavaliere Gio. Lorenzo Bernino._ Roma.
1713.
Stanislao Fraschetti. _Il Bernini._ Milan. 1900.
Footnote 2:
Fraschetti, _op. cit._, p. 47.
Footnote 3:
Fraschetti, _op. cit._, pp. 425, 426.
Footnote 4:
Fraschetti, _op. cit._, p. 428.
Footnote 5:
This portrait (Fraschetti, _op. cit._, p. 434) is probably a copy of
one owned by Baron Geymüller in London.
Footnote 6:
Fraschetti, _op. cit._, p. 429.
Footnote 7:
In the Museum at Weimar is a portrait on which is written that it was
done by Bernini himself, and as an _autoritratto_ it has been
published by Fraschetti (p. 433). It is a wretched performance, done
not by Bernini, but by someone who had neither an observant eye nor a
well-trained hand.
There is still another portrait which I think is very probably of him.
It hangs in the Capitoline Gallery in Rome (Plate II), where it is
called “Portrait of Velasquez, by himself,” an attribution which no
student of Velasquez would maintain to-day. The shape of the head and
face and the expression are extremely like Bernini. Even the different
shape and angle of the two eyebrows is the same as in his portraits.
The quality of the hair is the same, and the way it grows over the
temples. In the earlier portraits of him the hair is parted on the
right side as in the Capitoline picture. The nose is very nearly the
same as in the pencil portraits by himself in the National Gallery in
Rome and in the Chigi collection.
Footnote 8:
The Borghese Warrior was found at Anzio at the beginning of the
seventeenth century. See Friederichs-Wolters, _Gipsabgüsse_, 1885, p.
541 f; Vulpius, _Vetus Latium_, 1726, Vol. III, p. 28.
Footnote 9:
It is not improbable that the statue of St. Lawrence, in the Strozzi
palace in Florence, which Bernini made at this time, was influenced by
the Dying Gaul. The two statues resemble each other closely in many
ways. There is a tradition that Michael Angelo restored certain small
portions of the Gaul, but the character of the work of the
restorations suggests Bernini rather than Michael Angelo.
Footnote 10:
In Brookline, Mass.; see p. 44 and Plates XI-XXVII.
Footnote 11:
The head reminds one of the Capitoline Alexander, which Bernini may
have seen.
Footnote 12:
Balcarres, _The Evolution of Italian Sculpture_, p. 333–334.
Footnote 13:
Balcarres, _op. cit._, p. 334.
Footnote 14:
In relation to the influence of ancient work on Bernini, it is worth
note that the four great figures in the Piazza Navona are very
Hellenistic in character and would, if turned into reliefs with their
surrounding trees and animals, resemble closely the fountain-reliefs
of the Græco-Roman world.
Footnote 15:
The one of Paul V is in the Villa Borghese, Rome; the other two are in
the National Gallery, Venice.
Footnote 16:
In the Brandegee Collection. It was published by Signor Busiri-Vici in
his work _La Piazza Vaticana_, Rome, 1890, and by Fraschetti, _op.
cit._, p. 307. The latter gives reduced and poor reproductions of the
drawings. We have thought it worth while therefore to reproduce them
on a larger scale; see Part III of this Study.
Footnote 17:
In San Lorenzo in Lucina, Rome.
Footnote 18:
They were exhibited in Rome by the then owner Sig. Andrea Busiri-Vici
at the Bernini Exposition in 1879 and are spoken of and reproduced in
small form by Fraschetti in his book on Bernini.
Footnote 19:
And these bonds are dependent, I believe, on fundamental laws of
sculpture and painting.
Footnote 20:
It is true that wood was sometimes made use of, but for serious work
only in the early times before the art had been developed. Nor can it
be supposed that the lack of marble in Egypt was the effective cause
that led to the use of granites and basalts. The Egyptians were
energetic traders and might have obtained marble had they desired it,
but the fact is they preferred the harder sorts of stone, though
alabaster was sometimes used.
Footnote 21:
That there may be no misunderstanding of the terms employed, I will
say that by breadth of treatment I mean that the sculptor or painter
leaves the various surfaces of the object reproduced by him in large
measure unbroken by small lights and shades which, however true to
nature, are apt in art to distract the attention from the general
effect. Though small differences are disregarded there may be, as
Greek work shows, exquisite modulation of surface.
Footnote 22:
I refer of course to statues in the round. The bas-reliefs show much
free action due partly to the technique, partly to their being in
softer stone and partly to the fact that the figures in them are
illustrations to historic chronicles and not primarily portraits. So
too figures and groups in wood, faience or metal are freer.
Footnote 23:
The bas-relief of the potter in the Acropolis Museum in Athens belongs
to this class.
Footnote 24:
Though no woman has ever reached the highest rank in any art, her
influence has been enormous. It is a subject to be studied by itself,
but it must be constantly kept in mind that no people who have
regarded woman from any but the highest point of view has ever
produced the noblest art. It may be a fallacy to regard her so, but it
is the most powerful and helpful ideal the western mind has yet
conceived.
Footnote 25:
When kept to its true course, the magnificent effects attained by
language in perpetuating landscape are splendidly seen in Ruskin,
when, for example, he describes the Roman Campagna (Preface to 2d ed.,
_Modern Painters_) or Verona (_Joy Forever_, sec. 76 ff.).
Footnote 26:
In speaking of Niobe I refer naturally to the group in Florence and
not to the less well known and understood earlier groups at St.
Petersburg and elsewhere; typical examples of the massacre are those
by Matteo di Giovanni, in the church of the Servi at Siena, and by Fra
Angelico in the Academy at Florence.
Footnote 27:
The copies known to me are (1) in the British Museum, (2) in the
Vatican, (3) in the collection of Barrone Barracco, Rome, and (4) a
fragment in the collection of Alden Sampson, Esq., Haverford, Penn.
Footnote 28:
This is not the place to discuss the meaning of the Latin word
_nobilis_. Suffice to say that if it is translated in this passage by
its more commonplace equivalent of _famous_, the criticism has little
point, since it is self-evident that an enduring monument, whether a
statue or bust, adds to the fame of the individual in whose honour it
is erected.
Footnote 29:
It is a long-standing error to suppose that Pericles’s skull as shown
in these busts is peculiarly domed. The shape of the tilted helmet
makes it seem to be so, but comparison with other heads covered by the
Corinthian helmet shows that his is in no way abnormal when thus
represented, however it may have been when uncovered.
Footnote 30:
In the Brandegee Collection.
Footnote 31:
One instance will suffice to show what I mean by this. Far more pure
imagination is shown in the Italian representations of the Creation or
the Last Judgment than in the Greek scenes of the lives of their Gods
with which they decorated pediment and frieze.
Footnote 32:
The recent discovery of a life-size marble copy of the Athena of the
Marsyas group has made Myron’s character much clearer than before. See
Pollak in the _Jahresheften des Oesterreichischen Archaeologischen
Institutes_, 1909, p. 154.
Footnote 33:
The modern theory that wall paintings should be flat, that they should
not give the impression of an opening beyond the wall they are on, is
contradicted by all the practice of the Renaissance. Lippi, Gozzoli,
Leonardo, Raphael, Michael Angelo, Veronese, Correggio, to recall but
a few, all used wall painting as a means of suggesting larger
dimensions and more ample space than the rooms they decorated actually
afforded.
Footnote 34:
To illustrate by an example: the low relief work of the Tempietto at
Rimini is a more perfect form of decoration (partly because of its
permanency) than painting would have been.
Footnote 35:
In the _Bulletin of the Archæological Institute of America_, Vol. II
(1910–11), Plates 47 and 79, and p. 162.
Footnote 36:
Mr. Berenson has done much to correct the attributions in his studies
on the artist he calls, since his real name is unknown, the _Amico di
Sandro_. Berenson’s _amico_ was, I believe, several _amici_.
Footnote 37:
In the gallery of Mr. Davis, in Newport, R.I.
Footnote 38:
An inscription of the seventeenth century on the back of this picture
reads: _Giorgon De Castel Franco_, F. Maestro De Titiano. The picture
was engraved by Wenzel Hollar in 1650, as the portrait of Buffalmacco
by Giorgione.
Footnote 39:
The picture in Brunswick, a poor replica of which is in Buda-Pesth,
is, or is derived from, a picture engraved by Hollar in 1650 and
called by him a “portrait of Giorgione by himself.” This is possible,
but the picture is a mere wreck. See Justi, _loc. cit._
Footnote 40:
Larpent, “Le jugement de Paris attribué au Giorgione,” Christiania,
1885.
Footnote 41:
See Gronau, _Repertorium für Kunstwissenchaft_, 1908, p. 405. His
comment on p. 407 seems to me an error.
Footnote 42:
Cf. p. 52 f.
Footnote 43:
_The Painter’s Voyage of Italy._ Englished by W. Lodge. Written
originally in Italian by Giacomo Barri, 1679.
Footnote 44:
I put a question mark after those which by general consent are no
longer attributed to Giorgione, and those which I doubt and shall
discuss in the following pages.
Footnote 45:
It is noteworthy that the backs of these two panels have patterns
painted on them showing that the pictures once formed part of some
piece of furniture, and it was in decorating such objects that much of
Giorgione’s time, according to Ridolfi, was employed. For Bode’s
remarks cf. Burchardt’s _Cicerone_, Vol. II, 913.
Footnote 46:
_Die Galerien zu München und Dresden_ (Leipzig, 1891), p. 270 f.
Footnote 47:
Morelli adds the following note: “Weder die Herren Crowe und
Cavalcaselli, noch Herr Director W. Bode lassen diese zwei Bildchen
alz Werke des Giorgione gelten, sondern sehen dieselben als
Schülerarbeiten an.” So far as Crowe and Cavalcaselle are concerned,
this statement is an error, as one can easily see by reading what they
say on pp. 128–9 of the second volume of their _History of Painting in
North Italy_.
Footnote 48:
I have not yet mentioned this picture, but shall speak of it in detail
later.
Footnote 49:
_The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance_, p. 107.
Footnote 50:
_Gazette des Beaux Arts_, October, 1897.
Footnote 51:
Berenson in the first edition of his little book on Venetian Painting
did not mention it either, but in the third edition he passes it by
with these words: “The scarcely less famous picture belonging to Mr.
Banks is by the hand which painted the Christ and Adulteress, of the
Glasgow Corporation Gallery, and that hand is Giovanni Cariani’s. To
repeat, I would have preferred to publish opinions so divergent from
those usually received, in a form adequate to the importance of the
theme; but I console myself with the belief that the merest indication
suffices the competent. As for the others—Procul o procul este,
profani.”
Such statements can only be excused by supposing the writer to have
been pressed for time. Unless they are of sufficient importance for
the author to make them intelligible, they are not entitled to our
consideration. No critic is justified in making an arbitrary statement
which he will not take the pains to make clear.
Footnote 52:
This picture was formerly called a Bellini. It comes from the
collection of Sir William Miles of Leigh Court. See Redford, _Art
Sales_, I, pp. 364–5.
Footnote 53:
Berenson, _Venetian Painters of the Renaissance_.
Footnote 54:
See _Archivio Storico dell’ Arte_, 1895, I, p. 77. In this passage the
writer (Miss Ffoulkes) speaking of an exhibition in London mentions
the Benson picture and the Epiphany. She thinks them by neither
Giorgione, nor Catena, but offers no suggestion as to the painter
except that there is another picture by him in the Venice Accademia
attributed (wrongly) to Cordegliaghi.
Footnote 55:
_Die Galerie zu Dresden_, p. 266 f.
Footnote 56:
It is noteworthy that Morelli claimed (as is shown by the + with which
the attribution is marked) to be the first to show that this picture
of the Knight was by Catena. Crowe and Cavalcaselle had already
written of the picture as by Catena. Considerable care must be
exercised in the use of Morelli’s writings to distinguish between his
true discoveries (which were many) and his agreements with earlier
authorities. It may be that these agreements were based on his own
private study, but there is a great difference between the result of
one’s study leading to our giving assent to what others have perceived
before us and our discovery of what had never been imagined by our
predecessors. _Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerint_, but still
honesty and justice are of greater value than fame. Nor does a
pleasant temper show in the implied sarcasm of Morelli’s words about
this picture which he calls a “herrliches Werk des Catena, obwohl es
im Galeriekatalog noch immerfort blos der Schule des Giambellino
zugetheilt wird (+).” It is surely not so very inaccurate to describe
a work by Catena as of the ‘Schule des Giambellino.’
Footnote 57:
A copy of this picture hangs in the Vienna Gallery and I was told by
the Director in 1901 that he considered it the original; but this
seems to me impossible, for it is much less good in every way than the
Beaumont picture. A drawing of a portion of it is at Windsor.
Footnote 58:
Parts of Mr. Benson’s picture have suffered from repainting. This is
especially true of the landscape, which seems to have lost its
original form.
Footnote 59:
_Die Galerie zu Dresden_, p. 297, n.
Footnote 60:
The inaccurate copy in the Rovigo Gallery is a wretched daub that is
not worth preserving. There are other poor replicas of the picture;
one owned by Count Lanckoronski in Vienna is considered by Venturi to
be the original. The other picture in the Rovigo Gallery (No. 11),
sometimes spoken of in the same breath with Giorgione’s name, is
equally worthless. It is nothing but a wretched copy of the head of
the Vienna David.
Footnote 61:
The picture in Madrid is by Titian; the one in the Louvre is said by
Crowe and Cavalcaselle to be by Pellegrino da San Daniele, while
Berenson attributes it to Cariani.
Footnote 62:
Examen | Historique et Critique | Des Tableaux | Exposées
Provisoirement | Venant des premier et second envoies de Milan,
Crémone, Parme, Plaisance, Modène, Cento et Bologne, auquel on a joint
le detail de tous les Monumens des Arts qui sont arrivés d’Italie.—An
VI^e de la Republique.
Footnote 63:
A good replica is in the Corsini Gallery, Florence.
Footnote 64:
_Die Galerie zu Dresden_, p. 276.
Footnote 65:
And still is in some galleries, as Hampton Court.
Footnote 66:
The picture has been much restored, but the faults pointed out here
are not due to the restorer.
Footnote 67:
_Die Galerie zu Dresden_, p. 282. A copy of the picture is at Hampton
Court.
Footnote 68:
_Die Galerie zu Dresden_, p. 282.
Footnote 69:
_Gazette des Beaux Arts_, Oct. 1897, p. 270. Berenson in this
suggestive article has mixed ecstatic and girlish talk inextricably
with sound argument. In his criticism of the Judith he says: “Il
faudrait le talent d’un poète de premier ordre pour exprimer dans la
plénitude tout ce qu’on devine dans la _Judith_ de Saint Pétersbourg.”
True, but though such sentiments fill the page, they do not have the
same effect on our mind as the picture.
Footnote 70:
See the engraving published by Justi in his _Giorgione_.
Footnote 71:
_Italian Painters: Critical Studies of their Works._ By Giovanni
Morelli. _The Galleries of Munich and Dresden._ Translated by C. J.
Ffoulkes (London, 1893), p. 218.
Footnote 72:
_Die Galerien Borghese und Doria-Pamfili in Rom_ (Leipzig, 1890), p.
99, n. 1.
Footnote 73:
Not only did Morelli weaken his writings by exaggeration—which,
however, was quite natural—but in the less excusable way of giving
illustrations that are misleading. The woodcuts which serve to show
the _Grundform_ of hands and ears are only partially exact, and in one
case, the Bonifazio ear, a positive caricature. The process cuts of
the paintings are too miserable to consider. This is unfortunately as
true of the translations as of the original editions.
Footnote 74:
Nothing shows better the distinction between the work of the
Renaissance and that of to-day than the fact that the careful training
to which the earlier artists were accustomed led them to produce in
their youthful and undeveloped period finished works and sketches that
are stiff, whereas nowadays the majority of the works of young artists
show not so much stiffness as laxity. The one developed from hardness
to easy restraint, the other advances from looseness to a mastery
generally much less even.
Footnote 75:
Reproduced in the _Burlington Magazine_, 1895–6, p. 338.
Footnote 76:
The reason I have not discussed in detail the list given by Cook in
his book on Giorgione (London, 1904) and in various articles in the
_Burlington Magazine_ (1905–1906) and _Gazette des Beaux Arts_ (1902)
is due to no careless disregard of his work but to the fact that his
point of view in regard to Giorgione and the principles of criticism
are so utterly dissimilar to mine that no good would be gained from
pointing out in detail my disagreement with his judgment.
Footnote 77:
Since writing the above I have been pleased to have Signor Venturi
tell me that he, too, considered the work to be by Giorgione. He does
not agree with me about the Benson, Beaumont and National Gallery Holy
Families, but he does not share the Catena theory of their origin. His
full views will unquestionably be propounded in his forthcoming
edition of Vasari’s _Life of Giorgione_. Cook also thinks this Virgin
is by Giorgione. Venturi’s views on Giorgione are indicated in the
_Galleria Crespi_, p. 133 f.
Footnote 78:
I leave out the one with the forged monogram of Albert Dürer in the
Correr Museum, for it is, I believe, by no means sure that Bellini was
the painter.
Footnote 79:
Before the earthquake I saw in the Gallery at Messina a picture by
Antonello da Messina the composition of which is practically identical
with, and must be the origin of, the Correr panel. Whether the Messina
picture still exists or was destroyed I do not know.
Footnote 80:
Justi’s book contains a reproduction of the engraving. A copy of the
engraving is owned by Mr. C. F. Murray of London.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
● Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
● Used numbers for footnotes, placing them all at the end of the last
chapter.
● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
● Enclosed blackletter font in =equals=.
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