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JOHN RUSKIN
MORNINGS IN FLORENCE II
THE SECOND MORNING
THE GOLDEN GATE
[Santa
Maria Novella, Ghirlandaio, Botticelli, 'Cimabue']
O-DAY, as early
as you please, and at all events before doing anything else,
let us go to Giotto's own parish-church, Santa Maria Novella.
If, walking from the Strozzi Palace, you look on your right
for the "Way of the Beautiful Ladies," it will take you
quickly there.
Do not let anything in
the way of acquaintance, sacristan, or chance sight, stop you
in doing what I tell you. Walk straight up to the church, into
the apse of it;—(you may let your eyes rest, as you walk, on
the glow of its glass, only mind the step, half way;)—and lift
the curtain; and go in behind the grand marble altar, giving
anybody who follows you anything they want, to hold their
tongues, or go away.
2772a. Firenze.
Chiesa di S. Maria Novella. Interno del Coro con gli
affreschi di Domenico Ghirlandaio
For larger image, click
here
You know, most probably,
already, that the frescos on each side of you are
Ghirlandajo's. You have been told they are very fine, and if
you know anything of painting, you know the portraits in them
are so. Nevertheless, somehow, you don't really enjoy these
frescos, nor come often here, do you?
The reason of which is,
that if you are a nice person, they are not nice enough for
you; and if a vulgar person, not vulgar enough. But if you are
a nice person, I want you to look carefully, to-day, at the
two lowest, next the windows, for a few minutes, that you may
better feel the art you are really to study, by its contrast
with these.
On your left hand is
represented the birth of the Virgin, On your right, her
meeting with Elizabeth.
18. You can't easily see
better pieces—(nowhere more pompous pieces)—of flat
goldsmiths' work. Ghirlandajo was to the end of his life a
mere goldsmith, with a gift of portraiture. And here he has
done his best, and has put a long wall in wonderful
perspective, and the whole city of Florence behind Elizabeth's
house in the hill country; and a splendid bas-relief, in the
style of Luca della Robbia, in St. Anne's bedroom; and he has
carved all the pilasters, and embroidered all the dresses, and
flourished and trumpeted into every corner; and it is all
done, within just a point, as well as it can be done; and
quite as well as Ghirlandajo could do it. But the point in
which it just misses being as well as it can be done,
is the vital point. And it is all simply—good for nothing.
Extricate yourself from
the goldsmith's rubbish of it, and look full at the
Salutation. You will say, perhaps, at first, "What grand and
graceful figures!" Are you sure they are graceful? Look again
and you will see their draperies hang from them exactly as
they would from two clothes-pegs. Now, fine drapery, really
well drawn, as it hangs from a clothes-peg, is always rather
impressive, especially if it be disposed in large breadths and
deep folds; but that is the only grace of their figures.
Secondly. Look at the
Madonna, carefully. You will find she is not the least
meek—only stupid,—as all the other women in the picture are.
"St. Elizabeth, you
think, is nice"? Yes; "and she says, 'Whence is this to me,
that the mother of my Lord should come to me?' really with a
great deal of serious feeling?" Yes, with a great deal. Well,
you have looked enough at those two. Now—just for another
minute—look at the birth of the Virgin. "A most graceful
group, (your Murray's Guide tells you,) in the attendant
servants." Extremely so. Also, the one holding the child is
rather pretty. Also, the servant pouring out the water does it
from a great height, without splashing, most cleverly. Also,
the lady coming to ask for St. Anne, and see the baby, walks
majestically and is very finely dressed. And as for that
bas-relief in the style of Luca della Robbia, you might really
almost think it was Luca! The very best plated goods,
Master Ghirlandajo, no doubt—always on hand at your shop.
19. Well, now you must
ask for the Sacristan, who is civil and nice enough, and get
him to let you into the green cloister, and then go into the
less cloister opening out of it on the right, as you go down
the steps; and you must ask for the tomb of the Marchese
Stiozzi Ridolfi; and in the recess behind the Marchese's
tomb—very close to the ground, and in excellent light, if the
day is fine—you will see two small frescos, only about four
feet wide each, in odd-shaped bits of wall—quarters of
circles; representing—that on the left, the Meeting of Joachim
and Anna at the Golden Gate; and that on the right, the Birth
of the Virgin.
No flourish of trumpets
here, at any rate, you think! No gold on the gate; and, for
the birth of the Virgin—is this all! Goodness!—nothing to be
seen, whatever, of bas-reliefs, nor fine dresses, nor graceful
pourings out of water, nor processions of visitors?
No. There's but one
thing you can see, here, which you didn't in Ghirlandajo's
fresco, unless you were very clever and looked hard for it—the
Baby! And you are never likely to see a more true piece of
Giotto's work in this world.
A round-faced,
small-eyed little thing, tied up in a bundle!
Yes, Giotto was of
opinion she must have appeared really not much else than that.
But look at the servant who has just finished dressing
her;—awe-struck, full of love and wonder, putting her hand
softly on the child's head, who has never cried. The nurse,
who has just taken her, is—the nurse, and no more: tidy in the
extreme, and greatly proud and pleased: but would be as much
so with any other child.
Ghirlandajo's St. Anne
(I ought to have told you to notice that,—you can afterwards)
is sitting strongly up in bed, watching, if not directing, all
that is going on. Giotto's lying down on the pillow, leans her
face on her hand; partly exhausted, partly in deep thought.
She knows that all will be well done for the child, either by
the servants, or God; she need not look after anything.
At the foot of the bed
is the midwife, and a servant who has brought drink for St.
Anne. The servant stops, seeing her so quiet; asking the
midwife, Shall I give it her now? The midwife, her hands
lifted under her robe, in the attitude of thanksgiving, (with
Giotto distinguishable always, though one doesn't know how,
from that of prayer,) answers, with her look, "Let be—she does
not want anything."
At the door a single
acquaintance is coming in, to see the child. Of ornament,
there is only the entirely simple outline of the vase which
the servant carries; of colour, two or three masses of sober
red, and pure white, with brown and gray.
That is all. And if you
can be pleased with this, you can see Florence. But if not, by
all means amuse yourself there, if you find it amusing, as
long as you like; you can never see it.
20. But if indeed you
are pleased, ever so little, with this fresco, think what that
pleasure means. I brought you, on purpose, round, through the
richest overture, and farrago of tweedledum and tweedledee, I
could find in Florence; and here is a tune of four notes, on a
shepherd's pipe, played by the picture of nobody; and yet you
like it! You know what music is, then. Here is another little
tune, by the same player, and sweeter. I let you hear the
simplest first.
The fresco on the left
hand, with the bright blue sky, and the rosy figures! Why,
anybody might like that!
Yes; but, alas, all the
blue sky is repainted. It was blue always, however,
and bright too; and I dare say, when the fresco was first
done, anybody did like it.
You know the story of
Joachim and Anna, I hope? Not that I do, myself, quite in the
ins and outs; and if you don't I'm not going to keep you
waiting while I tell it. All you need know, and you scarcely,
before this fresco, need know so much, is, that here are an
old husband and old wife, meeting again by surprise, after
losing each other, and being each in great fear;—meeting at
the place where they were told by God each to go, without
knowing what was to happen there.
"So they rushed into one
another's arms, and kissed each other."
No, says Giotto,—not
that.
"They advanced to meet,
in a manner conformable to the strictest laws of composition;
and with their draperies cast into folds which no one until
Raphael could have arranged better."
No, says Giotto,—not
that.
St. Anne has moved
quickest; her dress just falls into folds sloping backwards
enough to tell you so much. She has caught St. Joachim by his
mantle, and draws him to her, softly, by that. St. Joachim
lays his hand under her arm, seeing she is like to faint, and
holds her up. They do not kiss each other—only look into each
other's eyes. And God's angel lays his hand on their heads.
21. Behind them, there
are two rough figures, busied with their own affairs,—two of
Joachim's shepherds; one, bare headed, the other wearing the
wide Florentine cap with the falling point behind, which is
exactly like the tube of a larkspur or violet; both carrying
game, and talking to each other about—Greasy Joan and her pot,
or the like. Not at all the sort of persons whom you would
have thought in harmony with the scene;—by the laws of the
drama, according to Racine or Voltaire.
No, but according to
Shakespeare, or Giotto, these are just the kind of persons
likely to be there: as much as the angel is likely to be there
also, though you will be told nowadays that Giotto was absurd
for putting him into the sky, of which an apothecary
can always produce the similar blue, in a bottle. And now that
you have had Shakespeare, and sundry other men of head and
heart, following the track of this shepherd lad, you
can forgive him his grotesques in the corner. But that he
should have forgiven them to himself, after the training he
had, this is the wonder! We have seen simple pictures
enough in our day; and therefore we think that of course
shepherd boys will sketch shepherds: what wonder is there in
that?
22, I can show you how
in this shepherd boy it was very wonderful indeed, if
you will walk for five minutes back into the church with me,
and up into the chapel at the end of the south transept,—at
least if the day is bright, and you get the Sacristan to
undraw the window-curtain in the transept itself. For then the
light of it will be enough to show you the entirely authentic
and most renowned work of Giotto's master; and you will see
through what schooling the lad had gone.
A good and brave master
he was, if ever boy had one; and, as you will find when you
know really who the great men are, the master is half their
life; and well they know it—always naming themselves from
their master, rather than their families. See then what kind
of work Giotto had been first put to. There is, literally, not
a square inch of all that panel—some ten feet high by six or
seven wide—which is not wrought in gold and colour with the
fineness of a Greek manuscript. There is not such an elaborate
piece of ornamentation in the first page of any Gothic king's
missal, as you will find in that Madonna's throne;—the Madonna
herself is meant to be grave and noble only; and to be
attended only by angels.
And here is this saucy
imp of a lad declares his people must do without gold, and
without thrones; nay, that the Golden Gate itself shall have
no gilding that St. Joachim and St. Anne shall have only one
angel between them: and their servants shall have their joke,
and nobody say them nay!
23. It is most
wonderful; and would have been impossible, had Cimabue been a
common man, though ever so great in his own way. Nor could I
in any of my former thinking understand how it was, till I saw
Cimabue's own work at Assisi; in which he shows himself, at
heart, as independent of his gold as Giotto,—even more
intense, capable of higher things than Giotto, though of none,
perhaps, so keen or sweet. But to this day, among all the
Mater Dolorosas of Christianity, Cimabue's at Assisi is the
noblest; nor did any painter after him add one link to the
chain of thought with which he summed the creation of the
earth, and preached its redemption.
He evidently never
checked the boy, from the first day he found him. Showed him
all he knew: talked with him of many things he felt himself
unable to paint: made him a workman and a gentleman,—above
all, a Christian,—yet left him—a shepherd. And Heaven had made
him such a painter, that, at his height, the words of his
epitaph are in nowise overwrought: "Ille ego sum, per quem
pictura extincta revixit."
24. A word or two, now,
about the repainting by which this pictura extincta
has been revived to meet existing taste. The sky is entirely
daubed over with fresh blue; yet it leaves with unusual care
the original outline of the descending angel, and of the white
clouds about his body. This idea of the angel laying his hands
on the two heads—(as a bishop at Confirmation does, in a
hurry; and I've seen one sweep four together, like Arnold de
Winkelied),—partly in blessing, partly as a symbol of their
being brought together to the same place by God,—was
afterwards repeated again and again: there is one beautiful
little echo of it among the old pictures in the schools of
Oxford. This is the first occurrence of it that I know in pure
Italian painting; but the idea is Etruscan-Greek, and is used
by the Etruscan sculptors of the door of the Baptistery of
Pisa, of the evil angel, who "lays the heads together"
of two very different persons from these—Herodias and her
daughter.
Joachim, and the
shepherd with the larkspur cap, are both quite safe; the other
shepherd a little reinforced; the black bunches of grass,
hanging about are retouches. They were once bunches of plants
drawn with perfect delicacy and care; you may see one left,
faint, with heart-shaped leaves, on the highest ridge of rock
above the shepherds. The whole landscape is, however, quite
undecipherably changed and spoiled.
25. You will be apt to
think at first, that if anything has been restored, surely the
ugly shepherd's uglier feet have. No, not at all. Restored
feet are always drawn with entirely orthodox and academical
toes, like the Apollo Belvidere's. You would have admired them
very much. These are Giotto's own doing, every bit; and a
precious business he has had of it, trying again and again—in
vain. Even hands were difficult enough to him, at this time;
but feet, and bare legs! Well, he'll have a try, he thinks,
and gets really a fair line at last, when you are close to it;
but, laying the light on the ground afterwards, he dare not
touch this precious and dear-bought outline. Stops all round
it, a quarter of an inch off,[1] with such effect as you
see. But if you want to know what sort of legs and feet he can
draw, look at our lambs, in the corner of the fresco
under the arch on your left!
And there is one on your
right, though more repainted—the little Virgin presenting
herself at the Temple,—about which I could also say much. The
stooping figure, kissing the hem of her robe without her
knowing, is, as far as I remember, first in this fresco; the
origin, itself, of the main design in all the others you know
so well; (and with its steps, by the way, in better
perspective already than most of them).
"This the
original one!" you will be inclined to exclaim, if you have
any general knowledge of the subsequent art. "This
Giotto! why it's a cheap rechauffé of Titian!" No, my friend.
The boy who tried so hard to draw those steps in perspective
had been carried down others, to his grave, two hundred years
before Titian ran alone at Cadore. But, as surely as Venice
looks on the sea, Titian looked upon this, and caught the
reflected light of it forever.
26. What kind of boy is
this, think you, who can make Titian his copyist,—Dante his
friend? What new power is here which is to change the heart of
Italy?—can you see it, feel it, writing before you these words
on the faded wall?
"You shall see things—as
they Are."
"And the least with the
greatest, because God made them."
"And the greatest with
the least, because God made you, and gave you eyes and
a heart."
I. You shall see
things—as they are. So easy a matter that, you think? So much
more difficult and sublime to paint grand processions and
golden thrones, than St. Anne faint on her pillow, and her
servant at pause?
Easy or not, it is all
the sight that is required of you in this world,—to see
things, and men, and yourself,—as they are.
II. And the least with
the greatest, because God made them,—shepherd, and flock, and
grass of the field, no less than the Golden Gate.
III. But also the golden
gate of Heaven itself, open, and the angels of God coming down
from it.
These three things
Giotto taught, and men believed, in his day. Of which Faith
you shall next see brighter work; only before we leave the
cloister, I want to sum for you one or two of the instant and
evident technical changes produced in the school of Florence
by this teaching.
27. One of quite the
first results of Giotto's simply looking at things as they
were, was his finding out that a red thing was red, and a
brown thing brown, and a white thing white—all over.
The Greeks had painted
anything anyhow,—gods black, horses red, lips and cheeks
white; and when the Etruscan vase expanded into a Cimabue
picture, or a Tafi mosaic, still,—except that the Madonna was
to have a blue dress, and everything else as much gold on it
as could be managed,—there was very little advance in notions
of colour. Suddenly, Giotto threw aside all the glitter, and
all the conventionalism; and declared that he saw the sky
blue, the tablecloth white, and angels, when he dreamed of
them, rosy. And he simply founded the schools of colour in
Italy—Venetian and all, as I will show you to-morrow morning,
if it is fine. And what is more, nobody discovered much about
colour after him.
But a deeper result of
his resolve to look at things as they were, was his getting so
heartily interested in them that he couldn't miss their
decisive moment. There is a decisive instant in all
matters; and if you look languidly, you are sure to miss it.
Nature seems always, somehow, trying to make you miss it. "I
will see that through," you must say, "with out turning my
head"; or you won't see the trick of it at all. And the most
significant thing in all his work, you will find hereafter, is
his choice of moments. I will give you at once two instances
in a picture which, for other reasons, you should quickly
compare with these frescos. Return by the Via delle Belle
Donne; keep the Casa Strozzi on your right; and go straight
on, through the market. The Florentines think themselves so
civilized, forsooth, for building a nuovo Lung-Arno, and three
manufactory chimneys opposite it: and yet sell butchers' meat,
dripping red, peaches, and anchovies, side by side: it is a
sight to be seen. Much more, Luca della Robbia's Madonna in
the circle above the chapel door. Never pass near the market
without looking at it; and glance from the vegetables
underneath to Luca's leaves and lilies, that you may see how
honestly he was trying to make his clay like the garden-stuff.
But to-day, you may pass quickly on to the Uffizi, which will
be just open; and when you enter the great gallery, turn to
the right, and there, the first picture you come at will be
No. 6, Giotto's "Agony in the garden."
28. I used to think it
so dull that I could not believe it was Giotto's. That is
partly from its dead colour, which is the boy's way of telling
you it is night:—more from the subject being one quite beyond
his age, and which he felt no pleasure in trying at. You may
see he was still a boy, for he not only cannot draw feet yet,
in the least, and scrupulously hides them therefore; but is
very hard put to it for the hands, being obliged to draw them
mostly in the same position,—all the four fingers together.
But in the careful bunches of grass and weeds you will see
what the fresco foregrounds were before they got spoiled; and
there are some things he can understand already, even about
that Agony, thinking of it in his own fixed way. Some
things,—not altogether to be explained by the old symbol of
the angel with the cup. He will try if he cannot explain them
better in those two little pictures below; which nobody ever
looks at; the great Roman sarcophagus being put in front of
them, and the light glancing on the new varnish so that you
must twist about like a lizard to see anything. Nevertheless,
you may make out what Giotto meant.
"The cup which my Father
hath given me, shall I not drink it?" In what was its
bitterness?—thought the boy. "Crucifixion?—Well, it hurts,
doubtless; but the thieves had to bear it too, and many poor
human wretches have to bear worse on our battlefields.
But"—and he thinks, and thinks, and then he paints his two
little pictures for the predella.
29. They represent, of
course, the sequence of the time in Gethsemane; but see what
choice the youth made of his moments, having two panels to
fill. Plenty of choice for him—in pain. The Flagellation—the
Mocking—the Bearing of the Cross;—all habitually given by the
Margheritones, and their school, as extremes of pain.
"No," thinks Giotto.
"There was worse than all that. Many a good man has been
mocked, spitefully entreated, spitted on, slain. But who was
ever so betrayed? Who ever saw such a sword thrust in his
mother's heart?"
He paints, first, the
laying hands on Him in the garden, but with only two principal
figures,—Judas and Peter, of course; Judas and Peter were
always principal in the old Byzantine composition,—Judas
giving the kiss—Peter cutting off the servant's ear. But the
two are here, not merely principal, but almost alone in sight,
all the other figures thrown back; and Peter is not at all
concerned about the servant, or his struggle with him. He has
got him down,—but looks back suddenly at Judas giving the
kiss. What!—you are the traitor, then—you!
"Yes," says Giotto; "and
you, also, in an hour more."
The other picture is
more deeply felt, still. It is of Christ brought to the foot
of the cross. There is no wringing of hands or lamenting
crowd—no haggard signs of fainting or pain in His body.
Scourging or fainting, feeble knee and torn wound,—he thinks
scorn of all that, this shepherd-boy. One executioner is
hammering the wedges of the cross harder down. The other—not
ungently—is taking Christ's red robe off His shoulders. And
St. John, a few yards off, is keeping his mother from coming
nearer. She looks down, not at Christ; but tries to
come.
30. And now you may go
on for your day's seeings through the rest of the gallery, if
you will—Fornarina, and the wonderful cobbler, and all the
rest of it. I don't want you any more till to-morrow morning.
611 Firenze. R. Galleria Uffizi. La Fortezza
(Botticelli)
For larger image, click here
But if, meantime, you
will sit down,—say, before Sandro Botticelli's "Fortitude,"
which I shall want you to look at, one of these days; (No.
1299, innermost room from the Tribune,) and there read this
following piece of one of my Oxford lectures on the relation
of Cimabue to Giotto, you will be better prepared for our work
to-morrow morning in Santa Croce; and may find something to
consider of, in the room you are in. Where, by the way,
observe that No. 1288 is a most true early Lionardo, of
extreme interest: and the savants who doubt it are—never mind
what; but sit down at present at the feet of Fortitude, and
read.
41. Those of my readers
who have been unfortunate enough to interest themselves in
that most profitless of studies—the philosophy of art—have
been at various times teased or amused by disputes respecting
the relative dignity of the contemplative and dramatic
schools.
Contemplative, of
course, being the term attached to the system of painting
things only for the sake of their own niceness—a lady because
she is pretty, or a lion because he is strong: and the
dramatic school being that which cannot be satisfied unless it
sees something going on: which can't paint a pretty lady
unless she is being made love to, or being murdered; and can't
paint a stag or a lion unless they are being hunted, or shot,
or the one eating the other.
You have always heard
me—or, if not, will expect by the very tone of this sentence
to hear me, now, on the whole recommend you to prefer the
Contemplative school. But the comparison is always an
imperfect and unjust one, unless quite other terms are
introduced.
The real greatness or
smallness of schools is not in their preference of inactivity
to action, nor of action to inactivity. It is in their
preference of worthy things to unworthy, in rest; and of kind
action to unkind, in business.
A Dutchman can be just
as solemnly and entirely contemplative of a lemon pip and a
cheese paring, as an Italian of the Virgin in Glory. An
English squire has pictures, purely contemplative, of his
favorite horse—and a Parisian lady, pictures, purely
contemplative, of the back and front of the last dress
proposed to her in La Mode Artistique. All these works belong
to the same school of silent admiration;—the vital question
concerning them is, "What do you admire?"
32. Now therefore, when
you hear me so often saying that the Northern races—Norman and
Lombard,—are active, or dramatic, in their art; and that the
Southern races—Greek and Arabian,—are contemplative, you ought
instantly to ask farther, Active in what? Contemplative of
what? And the answer is, The active art—Lombardic,—rejoices in
hunting and fighting; the contemplative
art—Byzantine,—contemplates the mysteries of the Christian
faith.
And at first, on such
answer, one would be apt at once to conclude—All grossness
must be in the Lombard; all good in the Byzantine. But again
we should be wrong,—and extremely wrong. For the hunting and
fighting did practically produce strong, and often virtuous,
men; while the perpetual and inactive contemplation of what it
was impossible to understand, did not on the whole render the
contemplative persons, stronger, wiser, or even more amiable.
So that, in the twelfth century, while the Northern art was
only in need of direction, the Southern was in need of life.
The North was indeed spending its valour and virtue on ignoble
objects; but the South disgracing the noblest objects by its
want of valour and virtue.
Central stood Etruscan
Florence—her root in the earth, bound with iron and brass—wet
with the dew of heaven. Agriculture in occupation, religious
in thought, she accepted, like good ground, the good; refused,
like the Rock of Fiesole, the evil; directed the industry of
the Northman into the arts of peace; kindled the dreams of the
Byzantine with the fire of charity. Child of her peace, and
exponent of her passion, her Cimabue became the interpreter to
mankind of the meaning of the Birth of Christ.
33. We hear constantly,
and think naturally, of him as of a man whose peculiar genius
in painting suddenly reformed its principles; who suddenly
painted, out of his own gifted imagination, beautiful instead
of rude pictures; and taught his scholar Giotto to carry on
the impulse; which we suppose thenceforward to have enlarged
the resources and bettered the achievements of painting
continually, up to our own time,—when the triumphs of art
having been completed, and its uses ended, something higher is
offered to the ambition of mankind; and Watt and Faraday
initiate the Age of Manufacture and Science, as Cimabue and
Giotto instituted that of Art and Imagination.
In this conception of
the History of Mental and Physical culture, we much overrate
the influence, though we cannot overrate the power, of the men
by whom the change seems to have been effected. We cannot
overrate their power,—for the greatest men of any age, those
who become its leaders when there is a great march to be
begun, are indeed separated from the average intellects of
their day by a distance which is immeasurable in any ordinary
terms of wonder.
But we far overrate
their influence; because the apparently sudden result of their
labour or invention is only the manifested fruit of the toil
and thought of many who preceded them, and of whose names we
have never heard. The skill of Cimabue cannot be extolled too
highly; but no Madonna by his hand could ever have rejoiced
the soul of Italy, unless for a thousand years before, many a
nameless Greek and nameless Goth had adorned the traditions,
and lived in the love, of the Virgin.
34. In like manner, it
is impossible to overrate the sagacity, patience, or
precision, of the masters in modern mechanical and scientific
discovery. But their sudden triumph, and the unbalancing of
all the world by their words, may not in any wise be
attributed to their own power, or even to that of the facts
they have ascertained. They owe their habits and methods of
industry to the paternal example, no less than the inherited
energy, of men who long ago prosecuted the truths of nature,
through the rage of war, and the adversity of superstition;
and the universal and overwhelming consequences of the facts
which their followers have now proclaimed, indicate only the
crisis of a rapture produced by the offering of new objects of
curiosity to nations who had nothing to look at; and of the
amusement of novel motion and action to nations who had
nothing to do.
Nothing to look at! That
is indeed—you will find, if you consider of it—our sorrowful
case. The vast extent of the advertising frescos of London,
daily refreshed into brighter and larger frescos by its
billstickers, cannot somehow sufficiently entertain the
popular eyes. The great Mrs. Allen, with her flowing hair, and
equally flowing promises, palls upon repetition, and that
Madonna of the nineteenth century smiles in vain above many a
borgo unrejoiced; even the excitement of the shop-window, with
its unattainable splendours, or too easily attainable
impostures, cannot maintain itself in the wearying mind of the
populace, and I find my charitable friends inviting the
children, whom the streets educate only into vicious misery,
to entertainments of scientific vision, in microscope or magic
lantern; thus giving them something to look at, such as it
is;—fleas mostly; and the stomachs of various vermin; and
people with their heads cut off and set on again;—still something,
to look at.
The fame of Cimabue
rests, and justly, on a similar charity. He gave the populace
of his day something to look at; and satisfied their curiosity
with science of something they had long desired to know. We
have continually imagined in our carelessness, that his
triumph consisted only in a new pictorial skill; recent
critical writers, unable to comprehend how any street populace
could take pleasure in painting, have ended by denying his
triumph altogether, and insisted that he gave no joy to
Florence; and that the "Joyful quarter" was accidentally so
named—or at least from no other festivity than that of the
procession attending Charles of Anjou. I proved to you, in a
former lecture, that the old tradition was true, and the
delight of the people unquestionable. But that delight was not
merely in the revelation of an art they had not known how to
practise; it was delight in the revelation of a Madonna whom
they had not known how to love.
35. Again; what was
revelation to them—we suppose farther and as unwisely,
to have been only art in him; that in better laying of
colours,—in better tracing of perspectives—in recovery of
principles, of classic composition—he had manufactured, as our
Gothic Firms now manufacture to order, a Madonna—in whom he
believed no more than they.
Not so. First of the
Florentines, first of European men—he attained in thought, and
saw with spiritual eyes, exercised to discern good from
evil,—the face of her who was blessed among women; and with
his following hand, made visible the Magnificat of his heart.
He magnified the Maid;
and Florence rejoiced in her Queen. But it was left for Giotto
to make the queenship better beloved, in its sweet
humiliation.
You had the Etruscan
stock in Florence—Christian, or at least semi- Christian; the
statue of Mars still in its streets, but with its central
temple built for Baptism in the name of Christ. It was a race
living by agriculture; gentle, thoughtful, and exquisitely
fine in handiwork. The straw bonnet of Tuscany—the Leghorn—is
pure Etruscan art, young ladies:—only plaited gold of God's
harvest, instead of the plaited gold of His earth.
You had then the Norman
and Lombard races coming down on this: kings, and
hunters—splendid in war—insatiable of action. You had the
Greek and Arabian races flowing from the east, bringing with
them the law of the City, and the dream of the Desert.
Cimabue—Etruscan born,
gave, we saw, the life of the Norman to the tradition of the
Greek: eager action to holy contemplation. And what more is
left for his favourite shepherd boy Giotto to do, than this,
except to paint with ever-increasing skill? We fancy he only
surpassed Cimabue—eclipsed by greater brightness.
36. Not so. The sudden
and new applause of Italy would never have been won by mere
increase of the already-kindled light. Giotto had wholly
another work to do. The meeting of the Norman race with the
Byzantine is not merely that of action with repose—not merely
that of war with religion,—it is the meeting of domestic
life with monastic, and of practical household sense
with unpractical Desert insanity.
I have no other word to
use than this last. I use it reverently, meaning a very noble
thing; I do not know how far I ought to say—even a divine
thing. Decide that for yourselves. Compare the Northern farmer
with St. Francis; the palm hardened by stubbing Thornaby
waste, with the palm softened by the imagination of the wounds
of Christ. To my own thoughts, both are divine; decide that
for yourselves; but assuredly, and without possibility of
other decision, one is, humanly speaking, healthy; the other unhealthy;
one sane, the other—insane.
To reconcile Drama with
Dream, Cimabue's task was comparatively an easy one. But to
reconcile Sense with—I still use even this following word
reverently—Nonsense, is not so easy; and he who did it
first,—no wonder he has a name in the world.
I must lean, however,
still more distinctly on the word "domestic." For it is not
Rationalism and commercial competition—Mr. Stuart Mill's"
other career for woman than that of wife and mother "—which
are reconcilable, by Giotto, or by anybody else, with divine
vision. But household wisdom, labour of love, toil upon earth
according to the law of Heaven—these are reconcilable, in one
code of glory, with revelation in cave or island, with the
endurance of desolate and loveless days, with the repose of
folded hands that wait Heaven's time.
Domestic and monastic.
He was the first of Italians—the first of Christians—who equally
knew the virtue of both lives; and who was able to show it in
the sight of men of all ranks,—from the prince to the
shepherd; and of all powers,—from the wisest philosopher to
the simplest child.
37. For, note the way in
which the new gift of painting, bequeathed to him by his great
master, strengthened his hands. Before Cimabue, no beautiful
rendering of human form was possible; and the rude or formal
types of the Lombard and Byzantine, though they would serve in
the tumult of the chase, or as the recognized symbols of
creed, could not represent personal and domestic character.
Faces with goggling eyes and rigid lips might be endured with
ready help of imagination, for gods, angels, saints, or
hunters—or for anybody else in scenes of recognized legend,
but would not serve for pleasant portraiture of one's own
self—or of the incidents of gentle, actual life. And even
Cimabue did not venture to leave the sphere of conventionally
reverenced dignity. He still painted—though beautifully—only
the Madonna, and the St. Joseph, and the Christ. These he made
living,—Florence asked no more: and "Credette Cimabue nella
pintura tener lo campo."
But Giotto came from the
field, and saw with his simple eyes a lowlier worth. And he
painted—the Madonna, and St. Joseph, and the Christ,—yes, by
all means if you choose to call them so, but
essentially,—Mamma, Papa, and the Baby. And all Italy threw up
its cap,—"Ora ha Giotto il grido."
For he defines,
explains, and exalts, every sweet incident of human nature;
and makes dear to daily life every mystic imagination of
natures greater than our own. He reconciles, while he
intensifies, every virtue of domestic and monastic thought. He
makes the simplest household duties sacred, and the highest
religious passions serviceable and just.
Notes
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