Art Principles Part 4

Art is not concerned with what are termed ideal physical qualities because beauty is its first consideration. A form with powerful limbs and muscles may be generally accepted as an ideal form of strength, but these very limbs and muscles would detract from the beauty of the figure, and so separately such a form would be inferior art.

An ideal can only be applied to excellence. In art, moral or physical deformity cannot be exaggerated for the purpose of emphasis or contrast without lessening the deformity or injuring the art. In the work of the greater artists the former result follows; in that of less skilful artists, the latter. Homer could not deal with evil characters without exciting a certain sympathy with them, thus diminishing the deformity in the minds of his readers. There is a measure of n.o.bility about Shakespeare's bad men, and Milton distinctly enn.o.bled Satan in portraying his evil powers and influence. In painting and sculpture there is no place for hideous forms of any description, for they either revolt the imagination and so neutralize the appreciation of the beautiful figures present in the composition, or they verge upon the ridiculous and disturb the mind with counteracting influences. With rare exceptions the greater artists have not failed to recognize this truth,[37] and in respect of the very greatest men, no really hideous figure is to be found in any of their works, if we except certain instances where the artist had to comply with fixed rules and conditions, as for example in Michelangelo's Last Judgment where evil beings had perforce to be presented, and could only be shown as deformities.

Attempts to emphasize ugliness by artists of inferior rank result in the fantastic or the ludicrous, as in the representation of evil spirits on the old Etruscan tombs, and the whimsical imps of the Breughels and the younger Teniers.

CHAPTER VII

EXPRESSION. PART II.--CHRISTIAN IDEALS

The Deity--Christ--The Madonna--The Madonna and Child.

In considering the scope for the exhibition of ideals in art, it should be remembered that ideal types of some of the princ.i.p.al personages in religious and mythological history have been already fixed by great artists, and it is impossible to depart from them without producing what would appear to be abnormal representations. Homer led the way with occasional hints of the presumed physical appearance of some of the leading deities of Greece, and except in the case of Aphrodite the later Grecian sculptors closely followed him. The Zeus of Homer as improved by Phidias has been the model of this deity in respect of form for nearly every succeeding sculptor to this day, while it was also the model which suggested the Christian Father as represented by the first artists of the Renaissance, though, as already indicated, the majestic dignity of the Phidian Zeus was partly sacrificed by the Christian artists. Phidias in fact created a type which, so far as human foresight can judge, must ever guide the artistic mind, whether portraying the mighty son of Kronos, or the G.o.d of the Christians. Only very rarely nowadays is the Christian Deity pictured in art, and as time goes on His introduction in human shape in a painting will become still more rare in conformity with changing religious ideas and practices; but now and hereafter any artist who contemplates the representation, must, voluntarily or involuntarily, turn to the frescoes of Raphael and Michelangelo for his guide.

There is no tradition upon which to base an actual portrait of Christ.

For the first four centuries A.D., when He was represented in art, it was usually by means of symbols, or as a young man without beard, but there are some Roman relics of the fifth century remaining in which He is depicted much in the later generally accepted type, with short beard and flowing hair. During the long centuries of the Dark Age, when religious art was practically confined to the Byzantine Greeks, Christ was almost invariably portrayed with a long face and emaciated features and limbs, as the epitome of sadness and sorrow. This expression was modified as the arts travelled to the north and west of Europe, and gradually His face began to a.s.sume more regularity and beauty. Then came Cimabue to sow the seed of the Renaissance, and with him the ideal of Christ was changed to a perfect man of flesh and blood. A century or more was occupied in establishing this ideal, but it was so established, and has maintained its position to this day.[38]

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE 9 (See page 138) Raphael's Virgin of the Rose with the Face of "Profane Love" in t.i.tian's Picture Subst.i.tuted for that of the Virgin]

This ideal represents the Saviour as a man of about thirty-three years--His age at the Crucifixion. He wears flowing hair with a short beard and usually a moustache. His face is rather long, often oval; the features have a perfect regularity, and the expression is commonly one of patient resignation. Naturally His body must appear well nourished, otherwise corporeal beauty cannot be expressed. This is the type which has been used since the height of the Renaissance, though there have been a few exceptional representations. Thus, the face of Christ in Lionardo's Last Supper at Milan is that of a beardless young man of some twenty-five years[a] and Raphael in an early picture shows Him beardless, but gives Him an age of about thirty.[b] Some early Flemish artists also rendered Him beardless at times, notably the Maitre de Flemalle, Van der Weyden, and Quentin Matsys. Michelangelo in his Last Judgment represents the Saviour sitting in judgment as a robust, stern, commanding figure, beardless, and with an expression and bearing apparently serving the idea of Justice.[c] Strange to say the artist gives a very similar face to St. Stephen in the same series of frescoes.

A still more unusual representation is that of Francisco di Giorgio, who gives Christ the appearance of an Apollo,[d] while Bramantino depicts His face worn with heavy lines.[e] In one picture Marco Basaiti shows Him as a young man with long hair but without beard, and in another with a thick beard without moustache.[f] There was considerable variation in the type among the Venetians of the sixteenth century, but not in important features, and since then very few artists indeed have ventured to depart from the ideal above described. The only notable exception in recent times is in a work by Burne-Jones who represents Christ as a beardless youth, though indicating the wound to St. Thomas.[g] It is supposed that the artist presumed that the Person of Christ underwent a complete change after the Resurrection.

[a] And in the drawing for the picture at the Brera.

[b] Christ Blessing at the Brescia Gallery.

[c] In the Sistine Chapel frescoes.

[d] Christ bereft of His clothes before the Crucifixion, Sienna Academy.

[e] Christ, Mayno Collection.

[f] The Dead Christ, and Calling of the Children of Zebedee, Academy, Venice.

[g] Dies Domini.

It is evident that the ideal Christ as established by the Italians can scarcely be improved upon in art within the prescribed limitations.

Christ having lived as an actual man, His representation must be within the bounds of possible experience; and since He died at the age of thirty-three, intellectual power cannot be suggested in His countenance, for this in life means an expression implying large experience warranted only by mature age. The representation is therefore confined to that of a man who, while exhibiting a healthy regularity of form and feature, has lost all sense of earthly pleasure. The beauty achieved by this type is negative, the only marked quality being a suggestion of sadness which, in painting, is necessarily present in all expression where an unconcern with human instincts and pa.s.sions is depicted. The Italians in their representation of Christ were thus unable to reach the height of the Greek divine portrayals. They were confined to earth, while the Greek figures were symbols of spiritual forms which were pure products of the imagination. Giotto and his successors sought a physically perfect man with all purely human features in expression eliminated. The Greeks, even when representing divinities below Zeus, generalized all human attributes, excluding nothing but the exceptional. They embodied in their forms, truths acknowledged by the whole world; summed up human life to the contentment of all men: there was nothing in their divinities which would prevent their acceptance as spiritual symbols in all religions of civilized peoples. To them human instincts were sacred: all human pa.s.sions could be enn.o.bled: everything in the natural progression of life came within the purview, and under the protection, of the G.o.ds. So the course of their art was definite: there was never a difference as to the goal, for it was universal.

From the point of view of the development of art the ideal Christ has been of little importance compared with the ideal Madonna, though here also the Italians aimed for a particular instead of a general type. They wanted a living woman with the form and features of a pulsating mother; a woman of ordinary life in fact, but infinitely superior in physical beauty, and endowed with the highest grace that their imaginations could conceive and their hands execute. This ideal seemed to germinate with Cimabue, but an immense advance upon him was made by Giotto who was unsurpa.s.sed in the representation of the Holy Mother for more than a century. But the ideal was yet purely formal and continued so till past the middle of the fifteenth century, both in Italy and Flanders. Giotto was then excelled by many artists, but the Madonnas they produced, though often very beautiful, are not humanly attractive. They are on the side of the Angels; have never been women evidently, and are far, far away from the human type with tingling veins and heaving breath. Filippo Lippi marked the border line between this type of Madonna, and the advanced pattern produced by the series of great artists of the latter part of the fifteenth century. But with Lionardo, Ghirlandaio, Botticelli, and the rest, the Madonna was scarcely an ideal woman.

Living persons were commonly taken as models, and although the portraits were no doubt "improved," they have little connection with the ideal which the artists evidently had in mind. The very life which the artist transfers to canvas in a portrait is destructive of the ideal, for it is a particular life with evidence of particular emotions and pa.s.sions from which the Madonna should be free.

A mighty barrier must be pa.s.sed before a woman is translated on canvas into the type of Madonna sought by the first Renaissance artists. She must be a woman of the earth; a woman who has grown up amidst human surroundings from infancy to girlhood, and from girlhood to womanhood; with human aspirations and sympathies, and experience of joys and trials: she must have all these, and as well have become a mother; and yet with human beauty, her countenance must be such that by no stretch of the imagination can the possibility of desire be suggested. This was the problem, and certainly only a genius of the highest order could arrive at a solution, for the task appears on the face of it to be almost superhuman. But Raphael succeeded in accomplishing it, and his achievement will stand for all time as one of the greatest epoch-making events in history. Even Michelangelo, who created so many superb forms, never succeeded with an ideal suitable for a Madonna.[39]

It is clear that in reaching for his ideal, Raphael did not strive for an expression relating to the spiritual. His purpose was to eliminate from the features anything which might possibly be construed as indicating earthly desires, and yet retain the highest conceivable human beauty. With this double object contentment is a quality in expression which is indispensable, and this Raphael was careful to give, sometimes emphasizing it with a suggestion of happiness. It is not possible to go further with an expression which is to generalize the highest human physical and abstract qualities, while keeping the figure within the range of apparent feasible realization in life. The result was ideal but not exclusive. It is a universal type, and is suited to the Madonna because there is nothing humanly higher within our comprehension; but it has a further general import which is dealt with elsewhere.

Although the aim achieved by Raphael must necessarily be the goal of all artists in the representation of the Madonna, it is of course not essential that he should be accepted as the only guide to her form. Her features may vary indefinitely so long as the ideal is maintained, and Raphael himself painted no two Madonnas with the same features. But certain traditions must be observed, however much one may depart from the actual circ.u.mstances of her life. The first is in respect of her presumed age. In pictures dealing with her life soon after marriage, as for instance, the Nativity and the Flight into Egypt, the Madonna is invariably represented as many years older than she appears in Annunciation subjects, though only a year or so actually pa.s.sed between the respective events. The reason for this is obvious. She must be shown with the bloom of a matured woman. The highest form of n.o.bility cannot be disa.s.sociated from wisdom and experience, which could not be indicated in the countenance of a girl in her teens. Innocence and purity may be present, and a certain majesty even, but our conception of the Madonna as a woman involves the triumph over known evils, the full knowledge of right and wrong, and the consciousness of a supreme position above the possibility of sin. Hence in all representations of the Madonna at the Nativity and afterwards, she must be shown at an age suggesting the fullest knowledge of good and evil.

While, between the Annunciation and incidents occurring during the infancy of Christ, many years must be presumed to have pa.s.sed, from this latter period on, the Madonna must be supposed to have aged very little, if at all, right up to the Crucifixion. It is not often that we find her included in a design ill.u.s.trating the life of Christ between His infancy and the Death Scene, a fact probably due to the age difficulty. In the exceptions her face is often partly or wholly hidden. But in scenes of the Crucifixion, where the Virgin is almost invariably introduced, artists of all periods, with few exceptions, have been careful to avoid suggesting the full presumed age. Commonly the age indicated is between twenty-five and thirty years, but as the face is always pale, and often somewhat drawn, her comparatively youthful appearance is not conspicuous. Obviously under no circ.u.mstances should lines be present in the features, for this would suggest a physical decay not in conformity with Christian ideas.[40] Even in pictures relating to her death, which is presumed to have occurred at an age between fifty and sixty years, her face is shown with perfectly regular and smooth features, though an extreme pallor may be painted. But from the point of view of art, the Virgin must be regarded as an accessory in works relating to the Crucifixion, for to throw her into prominence would result in dividing the attention of the observer of the picture on first inspection, and so lessening the art. In any case she must be painted with an expression of grief, and hence an unalloyed ideal of transcendent beauty is out of the question.

The custom of representing the Madonna in costume and surroundings indicating a higher social level than that in which she actually moved, is now firmly established, and cannot be departed from without lowering the ideal. A woman in a lowly position of life, who is compelled to bear all the responsibilities of a home, with the care of a husband and child, is seldom seen except in the performance of household duties. We cannot see her without a.s.sociating her in our minds with toil and possible privation, and we naturally expect that the effect of these will be indicated in her expression and general bearing. If away from her home her costume would usually declare her position, while habits of mind connected with her daily occupation commonly engender mannerisms in air and gait which support the inference drawn from the character of her attire. It would appear anomalous to paint a woman so situated with such beauty of form and expression that she appears to have never experienced earthly cares of any kind, much less the long repeated daily worries consequent upon the charge of a poor household. Perfect beauty of form being essential in the representation of the Madonna, she must be painted amidst surroundings conformable with the supposition that she is free from earthly responsibilities, and that her mind is entirely occupied with the boundless joy and happiness arising from the contemplation of the divine Mission of her Son.[41]

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE 10 (See Page 139) Raphael's Holy Family (Madrid), with the Face of Luini's Salome Subst.i.tuted for that of the Virgin]

The difficulty in painting the Madonna is complicated when the Infant Christ is introduced, because of the liability of the Child to interfere with a fine presentation of her figure. A similar problem was met with by the early Greeks, and doubtless they dealt with it in their paintings as in their sculptures, a few of which, showing an adult holding a child, have come down to us. These represent the child reduced in size as far as possible, and carried at the side of the adult figure.[a] A like system was followed by most of the Byzantine workers, and it is very noticeable in some of the fine French sculpture of the thirteenth century.[b] In the same period Giovanni Pisano in sculpture,[c] and Cimabue in painting,[d] maintained the tradition in Italy, and in the century following, Giotto,[e] Duccio,[f] Lorenzetto,[g] and others, often adopted the plan. Towards the middle of the fifteenth century, the relative importance attached to the Child in the group generally increased, and by the end of it, the old practice had been almost entirely abandoned. Meanwhile the artists had some hard problems to meet. The first was as to the size of the Child. It appeared to be generally agreed that an older Child should be represented than had been the custom, though a few artists held back, notably Fra Angelico, while in sculpture, Donatello maintained his habit of moulding the Child as only a few weeks old. With an increased age of the Child, the difficulty of securing repose for the group was enhanced, for it seemed to be proper with a child past its infancy, that it should be pictured as engaged in one of the charming simple actions common to childhood. These questions were settled in different ways according to the genius and temperament of the artists. A few of them, as Mantegna,[h] Lorenzo Costa,[i] and Montagna,[j] gave the Child an age of two years or more, and in some of their designs the figures seem to be of equal significance, Mantegna and Montagna in several examples actually standing the Child in the Virgin's lap with the heads touching each other.

[a] See the Olympian Hermes of Praxiteles, and Irene and Pluto after Cephisodostus at Munich.

[b] Groups in the Southern and Western porches of Amiens Cathedral.

[c] Madonna and Child, Arena Chapel, Padua.

[d] Groups at the Florence Academy and the Louvre.

[e] Florence Academy.

[f] National Gallery, London.

[g] San Francisco, a.s.sisi.

[h] Madonna and Angels, at Milan, and other works.

[i] Coronation of the Virgin, Bologna.

[j] Enthronement of the Virgin, Brera, Milan.

The plans usually adopted by the greatest masters, were, to present the maximum repose with the Child sitting in the lap of the Virgin; or to place Him apart from her, and engaged in some slight action; or to show Him in the arms of the Virgin, either held at the side, or in front, with the Virgin more or less in profile. In all of these schemes the serene contemplation of the Holy Mother is practically undisturbed. In his many groups of the Virgin and Child, and of the Holy Family, Raphael only varied twice from these plans,[a] and in both the exceptions the Child reclines across the lap of the Virgin, so that very little of her figure is hidden. t.i.tian has the Child standing by her side,[b] or held away from her, and in one example the Virgin is placing Him in the hands of St. Joseph.[c] Correggio, when away from the influence of Mantegna, usually showed the Child held apart from the Mother, or placed on the floor, or on a bench. It is a common device to show the Child on the lap of the Virgin, but leaning over to take a flower or other object offered Him,[d] and numerous artists allow Him to play around separately.[e] In Holbein's fine group at Augsburg, the Child stands between the Virgin and St. Anne, and another German painter shows Him held up by the same personages, but clear from both of them.[f] Murillo commonly stands the Child at the side of the Virgin, but in one picture adopts the novel method of placing Him in the arms of St. Joseph.[g]

[a] Madonna and Child, Bridgewater Coll., England; and same group with St. John, Berlin.

[b] Madonna of the Cherries, Imperial Gallery, Vienna.

[c] Meeting of Joachim and Anna, Bridgwater Coll., England.

[d] Filipino Lippi's Madonna and Angels, Corsini Palace, Florence.

[e] Luca Signorelli's group at Munich, and Bonfiglio's at Perugia.

[f] Hans Fries, National Museum, Nuremburg.

[g] Holy Family, Petrograd.

When the Child is shown distinctly apart from the Virgin, or leaning away from her lap, great care is necessary in avoiding strength in the action, otherwise it will draw attention away from the Virgin. A notable example of this defect is in a picture by Parmigiano, where the Child leans over and has his head brought close to that of a kneeling Saint who is caressing Him, the effect being most disturbing.[a] Bramantino shows the Child in an extraordinary att.i.tude, for He holds His head above His arms without any apparent reason, the action confusing the design.[b] Many artists represent Him in the act of reaching out his hand for flowers, without choosing for the moment of portrayal, an instant of transition from one part of the action to another,[c] a point rarely overlooked by the first masters.[d] Occasionally variety is given in the introduction of nursery duties, as for instance, washing the Child,[e] but these are inappropriate for reasons already indicated, apart from the over strong action necessarily exhibited in such designs.

Nor should the Child have an unusual expression, as this will immediately catch the eye of the observer. In one work Del Sarto actually makes Him laugh,[f] and a modern artist gives Him an expression of fear.[g] It is questionable whether Masaccio[h] and others (including A. della Robbia and Rossellino in sculpture) did not go too far in portraying the Child with a finger in its mouth, for although such an incident is common with children, in this case it seems opposed to propriety. Generally the first artists have striven to free the figure of the Virgin as far as possible, and this is in conformity with first principles, for it simplifies the view of the chief figure in the composition. In all cases repose should be the keynote of the design.

[a] Madonna and Child with Saints, Bologna Academy.