Modern Painters Volume III Part 15

-- 2. That testimony, taken in its breadth, is very curiously conclusive. It marks the mediaeval mind as agreeing altogether with the ancients, in holding that flat land, brooks, and groves of aspens, compose the pleasant places of the earth, and that rocks and mountains are, for inhabitation, altogether to be reprobated and detested; but as disagreeing with the cla.s.sical mind totally in this other most important respect, that the pleasant flat land is never a ploughed field, nor a rich lotus meadow good for pasture, but _garden_ ground covered with flowers, and divided by fragrant hedges, with a castle in the middle of it. The aspens are delighted in, not because they are good for "coach-making men" to make cart-wheels of, but because they are shady and graceful; and the fruit-trees, covered with delicious fruit, especially apple and orange, occupy still more important positions in the scenery.

Singing-birds--not "sea-crows," but nightingales[71]--perch on every bough; and the ideal occupation of mankind is not to cultivate either the garden or the meadow, but to gather roses and eat oranges in the one, and ride out hawking over the other.

Finally, mountain scenery, though considered as disagreeable for general inhabitation, is always introduced as being proper to meditate in, or to encourage communion with higher beings; and in the ideal landscape of daily life, mountains are considered agreeable things enough, so that they be far enough away.

In this great change there are three vital points to be noticed.

[Sidenote: -- 3. Three essential characters: 1. Pride in idleness.]

The first, the disdain of agricultural pursuits by the n.o.bility; a fatal change, and one gradually bringing about the ruin of that n.o.bility. It is expressed in the mediaeval landscape by the eminently pleasurable and horticultural character of everything; by the fences, hedges, castle walls, and ma.s.ses of useless, but lovely flowers, especially roses. The knights and ladies are represented always as singing, or making love, in these pleasant places. The idea of setting an old knight, like Laertes (whatever his state of fallen fortune), "with thick gloves on to keep his hands from the thorns," to prune a row of vines, would have been regarded as the most monstrous violation of the decencies of life; and a senator, once detected in the home employments of Cincinnatus, could, I suppose, thenceforward hardly have appeared in society.

[Sidenote: -- 4. 2. Poetical observance of nature.]

The second vital point is the evidence of a more sentimental enjoyment of external nature. A Greek, wishing really to enjoy himself, shut himself into a beautiful atrium, with an excellent dinner, and a society of philosophical or musical friends. But a mediaeval knight went into his pleasance, to gather roses and hear the birds sing; or rode out hunting or hawking. His evening feast, though riotous enough sometimes, was not the height of his day's enjoyment; and if the attractions of the world are to be shown typically to him, as opposed to the horrors of death, they are never represented by a full feast in a chamber, but by a delicate dessert in an orange grove, with musicians under the trees; or a ride on a May morning, hawk on fist.

This change is evidently a healthy, and a very interesting one.

[Sidenote: -- 5. 3. Disturbed conscience.]

The third vital point is the marked sense that this hawking and apple-eating are not altogether right; that there is something else to be done in the world than that; and that the mountains, as opposed to the pleasant garden-ground, are places where that other something may best be learned;--which is evidently a piece of infinite and new respect for the mountains, and another healthy change in the tone of the human heart.

Let us glance at the signs and various results of these changes, one by one.

[Sidenote: -- 6. Derivative characters: 1. Love of flowers.]

The two first named, evil and good as they are, are very closely connected. The more poetical delight in external nature proceeds just from the fact that it is no longer looked upon with the eye of the farmer; and in proportion as the herbs and flowers cease to be regarded as useful, they are felt to be charming. Leeks are not now the most important objects in the garden, but lilies and roses; the herbage which a Greek would have looked at only with a view to the number of horses it would feed, is regarded by the mediaeval knight as a green carpet for fair feet to dance upon, and the beauty of its softness and color is proportionally felt by him; while the brook, which the Greek rejoiced to dismiss into a reservoir under the palace threshold, would be, by the mediaeval, distributed into pleasant pools, or forced into fountains; and regarded alternately as a mirror for fair faces, and a witchery to ensnare the sunbeams and the rainbow.

[Sidenote: -- 7. 2. Less definite grat.i.tude to G.o.d.]

And this change of feeling involves two others, very important. When the flowers and gra.s.s were regarded as means of life, and therefore (as the thoughtful laborer of the soil must always regard them) with the reverence due to those gifts of G.o.d which were most necessary to his existence; although their own beauty was less felt, their proceeding from the Divine hand was more seriously acknowledged, and the herb yielding seed, and fruit-tree yielding fruit, though in themselves less admired, were yet solemnly connected in the heart with the reverence of Ceres, Pomona, or Pan. But when the sense of these necessary uses was more or less lost, among the upper cla.s.ses, by the delegation of the art of husbandry to the hands of the peasant, the flower and fruit, whose bloom or richness thus became a mere source of pleasure, were regarded with less solemn sense of the Divine gift in them; and were converted rather into toys than treasures, chance gifts for gaiety, rather than promised rewards of labor; so that while the Greek could hardly have trodden the formal furrow, or plucked the cl.u.s.ters from the trellised vine, without reverent thoughts of the deities of field and leaf, who gave the seed to fructify, and the bloom to darken, the mediaeval knight plucked the violet to wreathe in his lady's hair, or strewed the idle rose on the turf at her feet, with little sense of anything in the nature that gave them, but a frail, accidental, involuntary exuberance; while also the Jewish sacrificial system being now done away, as well as the Pagan mythology, and, with it, the whole conception of meat offering or firstfruits offering, the chiefest seriousness of all the thoughts connected with the gifts of nature faded from the minds of the cla.s.ses of men concerned with art and literature; while the peasant, reduced to serf level, was incapable of imaginative thought, owing to his want of general cultivation.

But on the other hand, exactly in proportion as the idea of definite spiritual presence in material nature was lost, the mysterious sense of _unaccountable_ life in the things themselves would be increased, and the mind would instantly be laid open to all those currents of fallacious, but pensive and pathetic sympathy, which we have seen to be characteristic of modern times.

[Sidenote: -- 3. Gloom caused by enforced solitude.]

Farther: a singular difference would necessarily result from the far greater loneliness of baronial life, deprived as it was of all interest in agricultural pursuits. The palace of a Greek leader in early times might have gardens, fields, and farms around it, but was sure to be near some busy city or sea-port: in later times, the city itself became the princ.i.p.al dwelling-place, and the country was visited only to see how the farm went on, or traversed in a line of march. Far other was the life of the mediaeval baron, nested on his solitary jut of crag; entering into cities only occasionally for some grave political or warrior's purpose, and, for the most part, pa.s.sing the years of his life in lion-like isolation; the village inhabited by his retainers straggling indeed about the slopes of the rocks at his feet, but his own dwelling standing gloomily apart, between them and the uncompanionable clouds, commanding, from sunset to sunrise, the flowing flame of some calm unvoyaged river, and the endless undulation of the untraversable hills. How different must the thoughts about nature have been, of the n.o.ble who lived among the bright marble porticos of the Greek groups of temple or palace,--in the midst of a plain covered with corn and olives, and by the sh.o.r.e of a sparkling and freighted sea,--from those of the master of some mountain promontory in the green recesses of Northern Europe, watching night by night, from amongst his heaps of storm-broken stone, rounded into towers, the lightning of the lonely sea flash round the sands of Harlech, or the mists changing their shapes forever, among the changeless pines, that fringe the crests of Jura.

[Sidenote: -- 9. And frequent pilgrimage.]

Nor was it without similar effect on the minds of men that their journeyings and pilgrimages became more frequent than those of the Greek, the extent of ground traversed in the course of them larger, and the mode of travel more companionless. To the Greek, a voyage to Egypt, or the h.e.l.lespont, was the subject of lasting fame and fable, and the forests of the Danube and the rocks of Sicily closed for him the gates of the intelligible world. What parts of that narrow world he crossed were crossed with fleets or armies; the camp always populous on the plain, and the ships drawn in cautious symmetry around the sh.o.r.e. But to the mediaeval knight, from Scottish moor to Syrian sand, the world was one great exercise ground, or field of adventure; the staunch pacing of his charger penetrated the pathlessness of outmost forest, and sustained the sultriness of the most secret desert. Frequently alone,--or, if accompanied, for the most part only by retainers of lower rank, incapable of entering into complete sympathy with any of his thoughts,--he must have been compelled often to enter into dim companionship with the silent nature around him, and must a.s.suredly sometimes have talked to the wayside flowers of his love, and to the fading clouds of his ambition.

[Sidenote: 4. Dread of mountains.]

-- 10. But, on the other hand, the idea of retirement from the world for the sake of self-mortification, of combat with demons, or communion with angels, and with their King,--authoritatively commended as it was to all men by the continual practice of Christ Himself,--gave to all mountain solitude at once a sanct.i.ty and a terror, in the mediaeval mind, which were altogether different from anything that it had possessed in the un-Christian periods. On the one side, there was an idea of sanct.i.ty attached to rocky wilderness, because it had always been among hills that the Deity had manifested himself most intimately to men, and to the hills that His saints had nearly always retired for meditation, for especial communion with Him, and to prepare for death. Men acquainted with the history of Moses, alone at h.o.r.eb, or with Israel at Sinai,--of Elijah by the brook Cherith, and in the h.o.r.eb cave; of the deaths of Moses and Aaron on Hor and Nebo; of the preparation of Jephthah's daughter for her death among the Judea Mountains; of the continual retirement of Christ Himself to the mountains for prayer, His temptation in the desert of the Dead Sea, His sermon on the hills of Capernaum, His transfiguration on the crest of Tabor, and his evening and morning walks over Olivet for the four or five days preceding His crucifixion,--were not likely to look with irreverent or unloving eyes upon the blue hills that girded their golden horizon, or drew upon them the mysterious clouds out of the height of the darker heaven. But with this impression of their greater sanct.i.ty was involved also that of a peculiar terror. In all this,--their haunting by the memories of prophets, the presences of angels, and the everlasting thoughts and words of the Redeemer,--the mountain ranges seemed separated from the active world, and only to be fitly approached by hearts which were condemnatory of it. Just in so much as it appeared necessary for the n.o.blest men to retire to the hill-recesses before their missions could be accomplished or their spirits perfected, in so far did the daily world seem by comparison to be p.r.o.nounced profane and dangerous; and to those who loved that world, and its work, the mountains were thus voiceful with perpetual rebuke, and necessarily contemplated with a kind of pain and fear, such as a man engrossed by vanity feels at being by some accident forced to hear a startling sermon, or to a.s.sist at a funeral service. Every a.s.sociation of this kind was deepened by the practice and the precept of the time; and thousands of hearts, which might otherwise have felt that there was loveliness in the wild landscape, shrank from it in dread, because they knew that the monk retired to it for penance, and the hermit for contemplation.

The horror which the Greek had felt for hills only when they were uninhabitable and barren, attached itself now to many of the sweetest spots of earth; the feeling was conquered by political interests, but never by admiration; military ambition seized the frontier rock, or maintained itself in the una.s.sailable pa.s.s; but it was only for their punishment, or in their despair, that men consented to tread the crocused slopes of the Chartreuse, or the soft glades and dewy pastures of Vallombrosa.

-- 11. In all these modifications of temper and principle there appears much which tends to pa.s.sionate, affectionate, or awe-struck observance of the features of natural scenery, closely resembling, in all but this superst.i.tious dread of mountains, our feelings at the present day. But _one_ character which the mediaevals had in common with the ancients, and that exactly the most eminent character in both, opposed itself steadily to all the feelings we have hitherto been examining,--the admiration, namely, and constant watchfulness, of human beauty. Exercised in nearly the same manner as the Greeks, from their youth upwards, their countenances were cast even in a higher mould; for, although somewhat less regular in feature, and affected by minglings of Northern bluntness and stolidity of general expression, together with greater thinness of lip and s.h.a.ggy formlessness of brow, these less sculpturesque features were, nevertheless, touched with a seriousness and refinement proceeding first from the modes of thought inculcated by the Christian religion, and secondly from their more romantic and various life. Hence a degree of personal beauty, both male and female, was attained in the Middle Ages, with which cla.s.sical periods could show nothing for a moment comparable; and this beauty was set forth by the most perfect splendor, united with grace, in dress, which the human race have hitherto invented. The strength of their art-genius was directed in great part to this object; and their best workmen and most brilliant fanciers were employed in wreathing the mail or embroidering the robe. The exquisite arts of enamelling and chasing metal enabled them to make the armor as radiant and delicate as the plumage of a tropical bird; and the most various and vivid imaginations were displayed in the alternations of color, and fiery freaks of form, on shield and crest; so that of all the beautiful things which the eyes of men could fall upon, in the world about them, the most beautiful must have been a young knight riding out in morning sunshine, and in faithful hope.

"His broad, clear brow in sunlight glowed; On burnished hooves his war-horse trode; From underneath his helmet flowed His coal-black curls, as on he rode.

All in the blue, unclouded weather, Thick jewelled shone the saddle leather; The helmet and the helmet feather Burned like one burning flame together; And the gemmy bridle glittered free, Like to some branch of stars we see Hung in the golden galaxy."

[Sidenote: -- 12. 5. care for human beauty.]

Now, the effect of this superb presence of human beauty on men in general was, exactly as it had been in Greek times, first, to turn their thoughts and glances in great part away from all other beauty but that, and to make the gra.s.s of the field take to them always more or less the aspect of a carpet to dance upon, a lawn to tilt upon, or a serviceable crop of hay; and, secondly, in what attention they paid to this lower nature, to make them dwell exclusively on what was graceful, symmetrical, and bright in color. All that was rugged, rough, dark, wild, unterminated, they rejected at once, as the domain of "salvage men" and monstrous giants: all that they admired was tender, bright, balanced, enclosed, symmetrical--only symmetrical in the n.o.ble and free sense: for what we moderns call "symmetry," or "balance," differs as much from mediaeval symmetry as the poise of a grocer's scales, or the balance of an Egyptian mummy with its hands tied to its sides, does from the balance of a knight on his horse, striking with the battle-axe, at the gallop; the mummy's balance looking wonderfully perfect, and yet sure to be one-sided if you weigh the dust of it,--the knight's balance swaying and changing like the wind, and yet as true and accurate as the laws of life.

[Sidenote: -- 13. 6. Symmetrical government of design.]

And this love of symmetry was still farther enhanced by the peculiar duties required of art at the time; for, in order to fit a flower or leaf for inlaying in armor, or showing clearly in gla.s.s, it was absolutely necessary to take away its complexity, and reduce it to the condition of a disciplined and orderly pattern; and this the more, because, for all military purposes, the device, whatever it was, had to be distinctly intelligible at extreme distance. That it should be a good imitation of nature, when seen near, was of no moment; but it was of highest moment that when first the knight's banner flashed in the sun at the turn of the mountain road, or rose, torn and b.l.o.o.d.y, through the drift of the battle dust, it should still be discernible what the bearing was.

"At length, the freshening western blast Aside the shroud of battle cast; And first the ridge of mingled spears Above the brightening cloud appears; And in the smoke the pennons flew, As in the storm the white sea-mew; Then marked they, dashing broad and far The broken billows of the war.

Wide raged the battle on the plain; Spears shook, and falchions flashed amain, Fell England's arrow-flight like rain; Crests rose, and stooped, and rose again, Wild and disorderly.

Amidst the scene of tumult, high, _They saw Lord Marmion's falcon fly, And stainless Tunstall's banner white, And Edmund Howard's lion bright._"

It was needed, not merely that they should see it was a falcon, but Lord Marmion's falcon; not only a lion, but the Howard's lion.

Hence, to the one imperative end of _intelligibility_, every minor resemblance to nature was sacrificed, and above all, the _curved_, which are chiefly the confusing lines; so that the straight, elongated back, doubly elongated tail, projected and separate claws, and other rectilinear unnaturalnesses of form, became the means by which the leopard was, in midst of the mist and storm of battle, distinguished from the dog, or the lion from the wolf; the most admirable fierceness and vitality being, in spite of these necessary changes (so often shallowly sneered at by the modern workman), obtained by the old designer.

Farther, it was necessary to the brilliant harmony of color, and clear setting forth of everything, that all confusing shadows, all dim and doubtful lines should be rejected: hence at once an utter denial of natural appearances by the great body of workmen; and a calm rest in a practice of representation which would make either boar or lion blue, scarlet, or golden, according to the device of the knight, or the need of such and such a color in that place of the pattern; and which wholly denied that any substance ever cast a shadow, or was affected by any kind of obscurity.

[Sidenote: -- 14. 7. Therefore, inaccurate rendering of nature.]

All this was in its way, and for its end, absolutely right, admirable, and delightful; and those who despise it, laugh at it, or derive no pleasure from it, are utterly ignorant of the highest principles of art, and are mere tyros and beginners in the practice of color. But, admirable though it might be, one necessary result of it was a farther withdrawal of the observation of men from the refined and subtle beauty of nature; so that the workman who first was led to think _lightly_ of natural beauty, as being subservient to human, was next led to think _inaccurately_ of natural beauty, because he had continually to alter and simplify it for his practical purposes.

-- 15. Now, a.s.sembling all these different sources of the peculiar mediaeval feeling towards nature in one view, we have:

1st. Love of the garden instead of love of the farm, leading to a sentimental contemplation of nature, instead of a practical and agricultural one. (---- 3. 4. 6.)

2nd. Loss of sense of actual Divine presence, leading to fancies of fallacious animation, in herbs, flowers, clouds, &c. (-- 7.)

3rd. Perpetual, and more or less undisturbed, companionship with wild nature. (---- 8. 9.)

4th. Apprehension of demoniacal and angelic presence among mountains, leading to a reverent dread of them. (-- 10.)

5th. Princ.i.p.alness of delight in human beauty, leading to comparative contempt of natural objects. (-- 11.)

6th. Consequent love of order, light, intelligibility, and symmetry, leading to dislike of the wildness, darkness, and mystery of nature. (-- 12.)

7th. Inaccuracy of observance of nature, induced by the habitual practice of change on its forms. (-- 13.)

From these mingled elements, we should necessarily expect to find resulting, as the characteristic of mediaeval landscape art, compared with Greek, a far higher sentiment about it, and affection for it, more or less subdued by still greater respect for the loveliness of man, and therefore subordinated entirely to human interests; mingled with curious traces of terror, piety, or superst.i.tion, and cramped by various formalisms,--some wise and necessary, some feeble, and some exhibiting needless ignorance and inaccuracy.

Under these lights, let us examine the facts.

-- 16. The landscape of the Middle Ages is represented in a central manner by the illuminations of the MSS. of Romances, executed about the middle of the fifteenth century. On one side of these stands the earlier landscape work, more or less treated as simple decoration; on the other, the later landscape work, becoming more or less affected with modern ideas and modes of imitation.

These central fifteenth century landscapes are almost invariably composed of a grove or two of tall trees, a winding river, and a castle, or a garden: the peculiar feature of both these last being _trimness_; the artist always dwelling especially on the fences; wreathing the espaliers indeed prettily with sweet-briar, and putting pots of orange-trees on the tops of the walls, but taking great care that there shall be no loose bricks in the one, nor broken stakes in the other,--the trouble and ceaseless warfare of the times having rendered security one of the first elements of pleasantness, and making it impossible for any artist to conceive Paradise but as surrounded by a moat, or to distinguish the road to it better than by its narrow wicket gate, and watchful porter.

-- 17. One of these landscapes is thus described by Macaulay: "We have an exact square, enclosed by the rivers Pison, Gihon, Hiddekel, and Euphrates, each with a convenient bridge in the centre; rectangular beds of flowers; a long ca.n.a.l neatly bricked and railed in; the tree of knowledge, clipped like one of the limes behind the Tuileries, standing in the centre of the grand alley; the snake turned round it, the man on the right hand, the woman on the left, and the beasts drawn up in an exact circle round them."

All this is perfectly true; and seems in the description very curiously foolish. The only curious folly, however, in the matter is the exquisite _navete_ of the historian, in supposing that the quaint landscape indicates in the understanding of the painter so marvellous an inferiority to his own; whereas, it is altogether his own wit that is at fault, in not comprehending that nations, whose youth had been decimated among the sands and serpents of Syria, knew probably nearly as much about Eastern scenery as youths trained in the schools of the modern Royal Academy; and that this curious symmetry was entirely symbolic, only more or less modified by the various instincts which I have traced above. Mr. Macaulay is evidently quite unaware that the serpent with the human head, and body twisted round the tree, was the universally accepted symbol of the evil angel, from the dawn of art up to Michael Angelo; that the greatest sacred artists invariably place the man on the one side of the tree, the woman on the other, in order to denote the enthroned and balanced dominion about to fall by temptation; that the beasts are ranged (when they _are_ so, though this is much more seldom the case,) in a circle round them, expressly to mark that they were then not wild, but obedient, intelligent, and orderly beasts; and that the four rivers are trenched and enclosed on the four sides, to mark that the waters which now wander in waste, and destroy in fury, had then for their princ.i.p.al office to "water the garden" of G.o.d. The description is, however, sufficiently apposite and interesting, as bearing upon what I have noted respecting the eminent _fence_-loving spirit of the mediaevals.

-- 18. Together with this peculiar formality, we find an infinite delight in drawing pleasant flowers, always articulating and outlining them completely; the sky is always blue, having only a few delicate white clouds in it, and in the distance are blue mountains, very far away, if the landscape is to be simply delightful; but brought near, and divided into quaint overhanging rocks, if it is intended to be meditative, or a place of saintly seclusion. But the whole of it always,--flowers, castles, brooks, clouds, and rocks,--subordinate to the human figures in the foreground, and painted for no other end than that of explaining their adventures and occupations.