Modern Painters Volume III Part 19

-- 20. There is only one more point to be noticed in the Dantesque landscape; namely, the feeling entertained by the poet towards the sky. And the love of mountains is so closely connected with the love of clouds, the sublimity of both depending much on their a.s.sociation, that having found Dante regardless of the Carrara mountains as seen from San Miniato, we may well expect to find him equally regardless of the clouds in which the sun sank behind them.

Accordingly, we find that his only pleasure in the sky depends on its "white clearness,"--that turning into "bianca aspette di celestro" which is so peculiarly characteristic of fine days in Italy. His pieces of pure pale light are always exquisite. In the dawn on the purgatorial mountain, first, in its pale white, he sees the "tremola della marina"--trembling of the sea; then it becomes vermilion; and at last, near sunrise, orange. These are precisely the changes of a calm and perfect dawn. The scenery of Paradise begins with "Day added to day," the light of the sun so flooding the heavens, that "never rain nor river made lake so wide;" and throughout the Paradise all the beauty depends on spheres of light, or stars, never on clouds. But the pit of the Inferno is at first sight obscure, deep, and so _cloudy_ that at its bottom nothing could be seen. When Dante and Virgil reach the marsh in which the souls of those who have been angry and sad in their lives are for ever plunged, they find it covered with thick fog; and the condemned souls say to them,--

"We once were sad, In the _sweet air, made gladsome by the sun_.

Now in these murky settlings are we sad."

Even the angel crossing the marsh to help them is annoyed by this bitter marsh smoke, "fummo acerbo," and continually sweeps it with his hand from before his face.

Anger, on the purgatorial mountain, is in like manner imaged, because of its blindness and wildness, by the Alpine clouds. As they emerge from its mist they see the white light radiated through the fading folds of it; and, except this appointed cloud, no other can touch the mountain of purification.

"Tempest none, shower, hail, or snow, h.o.a.r-frost, or dewy moistness, higher falls, Than that brief scale of threefold steps. Thick clouds, Nor scudding rack, are ever seen, swift glance Ne'er lightens, nor Thaumantian iris gleams."

Dwell for a little while on this intense love of Dante for light,--taught, as he is at last by Beatrice, to gaze on the sun itself like an eagle,--and endeavor to enter into his equally intense detestation of all mist, rack of cloud, or dimness of rain; and then consider with what kind of temper he would have regarded a landscape of Copley Fielding's or pa.s.sed a day in the Highlands. He has, in fact, a.s.signed to the souls of the gluttonous no other punishment in the Inferno than perpetuity of Highland weather:

"Showers Ceaseless, accursed, heavy and cold, unchanged For ever, both in kind and in degree,-- Large hail, discolored water, sleety flaw, Through the dim midnight air streamed down amain."

-- 21. However, in this immitigable dislike of clouds, Dante goes somewhat beyond the general temper of his age. For although the calm sky was alone loved, and storm and rain were dreaded by all men, yet the white horizontal clouds of serene summer were regarded with great affection by all early painters, and considered as one of the accompaniments of the manifestation of spiritual power; sometimes, for theological reasons which we shall soon have to examine, being received, even without any other sign, as the types of blessing or Divine acceptance: and in almost every representation of the heavenly paradise, these level clouds are set by the early painters for its floor, or for thrones of its angels; whereas Dante retains steadily, through circle after circle, his cloudless thought, and concludes his painting of heaven, as he began it upon the purgatorial mountain, with the image of shadowless morning:

"I raised my eyes, and as at morn is seen The horizon's eastern quarter to excel, So likewise, that pacific Oriflamb Glowed in the midmost, and toward every part, With like gradation paled away its flame."

But the best way of regarding this feeling of Dante's is as the ultimate and most intense expression of the love of light, color, and clearness, which, as we saw above, distinguished the mediaeval from the Greek on one side, and, as we shall presently see, distinguished him from the modern on the other. For it is evident that precisely in the degree in which the Greek was agriculturally inclined, in that degree the sight of clouds would become to him more acceptable than to the mediaeval knight, who only looked for the fine afternoons in which he might gather the flowers in his garden, and in no wise shared or imagined the previous anxieties of his gardener. Thus, when we find Ulysses comforted about Ithaca, by being told it had "plenty of rain," and the maids of Colonos boasting of their country for the same reason, we may be sure that they had some regard for clouds; and accordingly, except Aristophanes, of whom more presently, all the Greek poets speak fondly of the clouds, and consider them the fitting resting-places of the G.o.ds; including in their idea of clouds not merely the thin clear cirrus, but the rolling and changing volume of the thundercloud; nor even these only, but also the dusty whirlwind cloud of the earth, as in that n.o.ble chapter of Herodotus which tells us of the cloud, full of mystic voices, that rose out of the dust of Eleusis, and went down to Salamis. Clouds and rain were of course regarded with a like grat.i.tude by the eastern and southern nations--Jews and Egyptians; and it is only among the northern mediaevals, with whom fine weather was rarely so prolonged as to occasion painful drought, or dangerous famine, and over whom the clouds broke coldly and fiercely when they came, that the love of serene light a.s.sumes its intense character, and the fear of tempest is gloomiest; so that the powers of the clouds which to the Greek foretold his conquest at Salamis, and with whom he fought in alliance, side by side with their lightnings, under the crest of Parna.s.sus, seemed, in the heart of the Middle Ages, to be only under the dominion of the spirit of evil. I have reserved, for our last example of the landscape of Dante, the pa.s.sage in which this conviction is expressed; a pa.s.sage not less notable for its close description of what the writer feared and disliked, than for the ineffable tenderness, in which Dante is always raised as much above all other poets, as in softness the rose above all other flowers. It is the spirit of Buonconte da Montefeltro who speaks:

"Then said another: 'Ah, so may thy wish, That takes thee o'er the mountain, be fulfilled, As thou shalt graciously give aid to mine!

Of Montefeltro I; Buonconte I: Giovanna, nor none else, have care for me; Sorrowing with these I therefore go.' I thus: From Campaldino's field what force or chance Drew thee, that ne'er thy sepulchre was known?'

'Oh!' answered he, 'at Casentino's foot A stream there courseth, named Archiano, sprung In Apennine, above the hermit's seat.

E'en where its name is cancelled, there came I, Pierced in the throat, fleeing away on foot, And b.l.o.o.d.ying the plain. Here sight and speech failed me; and finishing with Mary's name, I fell, and tenantless my flesh remained.

_That evil will, which in his intellect Still follows evil, came;_ ... the valley, soon As day was spent, _he covered o'er with cloud_.

From Pratomagno to the mountain range, And stretched the sky above; so that the air, Impregnate, changed to water. Fell the rain; And to the fosses came all that the land Contained not; and as mightiest streams are wont.

To the great river, with such headlong sweep, Rushed, that nought stayed its course. My stiffened frame, Laid at his mouth, the fell Archiano found, And dashed it into Arno; from my breast Loosening the cross, that of myself I made When overcome with pain. He hurled me on, Along the banks and bottom of his course; Then in his muddy spoils encircling wrapt.'"

Observe, Buonconte, as he dies, crosses his arms over his breast, pressing them together, partly in his pain, partly in prayer. His body thus lies by the river sh.o.r.e, as on a sepulchral monument, the arms folded into a cross. The rage of the river, under the influence of the evil demon, _unlooses this cross_, dashing the body supinely away, and rolling it over and over by bank and bottom. Nothing can be truer to the action of a stream in fury than these lines. And how desolate is it all! The lonely flight,--the grisly wound, "pierced in the throat,"--the death, without help or pity,--only the name of Mary on the lips,-and the cross folded over the heart. Then the rage of the demon and the river,--the noteless grave,--and, at last, even she who had been most trusted forgetting him,--

"Giovanna, none else have care for me."

There is, I feel a.s.sured, nothing else like it in all the range of poetry; a faint and harsh echo of it, only, exists in one Scottish ballad, "The Twa Corbies."

Here, then, I think, we may close our inquiry into the nature of the mediaeval landscape; not but that many details yet require to be worked out; but these will be best observed by recurrence to them, for comparison with similar details in modern landscape,--our princ.i.p.al purpose, the getting at the governing tones and temper of conception, being, I believe, now sufficiently accomplished. And I think that our subject may be best pursued by immediately turning from the mediaeval to the perfectly modern landscape; for although I have much to say respecting the transitional state of mind exhibited in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, I believe the transitions may be more easily explained after we have got clear sight of the extremes; and that by getting perfect and separate hold of the three great phases of art,--Greek, mediaeval, and modern,--we shall be enabled to trace, with least chance of error, those curious vacillations which brought us to the modern temper while vainly endeavoring to resuscitate the Greek. I propose, therefore, in the next chapter, to examine the spirit of modern landscape, as seen generally in modern painting, and especially in the poetry of Scott.

[79] It is an unpublished plate. I know only two impressions of it.

[80] (Cayley.) "Tutto di pietra, e di color ferrigno"--Inf. xviii. 2.

[81] "Maligne piagge grige."--Inf. vii. 108.

[82] It is in these subtle purples that even the more elaborate pa.s.sages of the earlier drawings are worked; as, for instance, the Highland streams, spoken of in Pre-Raphaelitism. Also, Turner could, by opposition, get what color he liked out of a brown. I have seen cases in which he had made it stand for the purest _rose_ light.

[83] The references are in Appendix I.

CHAPTER XVI.

OF MODERN LANDSCAPE.

-- 1. We turn our eyes, therefore, as boldly and as quickly as may be, from these serene fields and skies of mediaeval art, to the most characteristic examples of modern landscape. And, I believe, the first thing that will strike us, or that ought to strike us, is their _cloudiness_.

Out of perfect light and motionless air, we find ourselves on a sudden brought under sombre skies, and into drifting wind; and, with fickle sunbeams flashing in our face, or utterly drenched with sweep of rain, we are reduced to track the changes of the shadows on the gra.s.s, or watch the rents of twilight through angry cloud. And we find that whereas all the pleasure of the mediaeval was in _stability_, _definiteness_, and _luminousness_, we are expected to rejoice in darkness, and triumph in mutability; to lay the foundation of happiness in things which momentarily change or fade; and to expect the utmost satisfaction and instruction from what is impossible to arrest, and difficult to comprehend.

-- 2. We find, however, together with this general delight in breeze and darkness, much attention to the real form of clouds, and careful drawing of effects of mist: so that the appearance of objects, as seen through it, becomes a subject of science with us: and the faithful representation of that appearance is made of primal importance, under the name of aerial perspective. The aspects of sunset and sunrise, with all their attendant phenomena of cloud and mist, are watchfully delineated; and in ordinary daylight landscape, the sky is considered of so much importance, that a princ.i.p.al ma.s.s of foliage, or a whole foreground, is unhesitatingly thrown into shade merely to bring out the form of a white cloud. So that, if a general and characteristic name were needed for modern landscape art, none better could be invented than "the service of clouds."

-- 3. And this name would, unfortunately, be characteristic of our art in more ways than one. In the last chapter, I said that all the Greeks spoke kindly about the clouds, except Aristophanes; and he, I am sorry to say (since his report is so unfavorable), is the only Greek who had studied them attentively. He tells us, first, that they are "great G.o.ddesses to idle men;" then, that they are "mistresses of disputings, and logic, and monstrosities, and noisy chattering;" declares that whoso believes in their divinity must first disbelieve in Jupiter, and place supreme power in the hands of an unknown G.o.d "Whirlwind;" and, finally, he displays their influence over the mind of one of their disciples, in his sudden desire "to speak ingeniously concerning smoke."

There is, I fear, an infinite truth in this Aristophanic judgment applied to our modern cloud-worship. a.s.suredly, much of the love of mystery in our romances, our poetry, our art, and, above all, in our metaphysics, must come under that definition so long ago given by the great Greek, "speaking ingeniously concerning smoke." And much of the instinct, which, partially developed in painting, may be now seen throughout every mode of exertion of mind,--the easily encouraged doubt, easily excited curiosity, habitual agitation, and delight in the changing and the marvellous, as opposed to the old quiet serenity of social custom and religious faith,--is again deeply defined in those few words, the "dethroning of Jupiter," the "coronation of the whirlwind."

-- 4. Nor of whirlwind merely, but also of darkness or ignorance respecting all stable facts. That darkening of the foreground to bring out the white cloud, is, in one aspect of it, a type of the subjection of all plain and positive fact, to what is uncertain and unintelligible. And as we examine farther into the matter, we shall be struck by another great difference between the old and modern landscape, namely, that in the old no one ever thought of drawing anything but as well _as he could_. That might not be _well_, as we have seen in the case of rocks; but it was as well as he _could_, and always distinctly. Leaf, or stone, or animal, or man, it was equally drawn with care and clearness, and its essential characters shown. If it was an oak tree, the acorns were drawn; if a flint pebble, its veins were drawn; if an arm of the sea, its fish were drawn; if a group of figures, their faces and dresses were drawn--to the very last subtlety of expression and end of thread that could be got into the s.p.a.ce, far off or near. But now our ingenuity is all "concerning smoke." Nothing is truly drawn but that; all else is vague, slight, imperfect; got with as little pains as possible. You examine your closest foreground, and find no leaves; your largest oak, and find no acorns; your human figure, and find a spot of red paint instead of a face; and in all this, again and again, the Aristophanic words come true, and the clouds seem to be "great G.o.ddesses to idle men."

-- 5. The next thing that will strike us, after this love of clouds, is the love of liberty. Whereas the mediaeval was always shutting himself into castles, and behind fosses, and drawing brickwork neatly, and beds of flowers primly, our painters delight in getting to the open fields and moors; abhor all hedges and moats; never paint anything but free-growing trees, and rivers gliding "at their own sweet will;"

eschew formality down to the smallest detail; break and displace the brickwork which the mediaeval would have carefully cemented; leave unpruned the thickets he would have delicately trimmed; and, carrying the love of liberty even to license, and the love of wildness even to ruin, take pleasure at last in every aspect of age and desolation which emanc.i.p.ates the objects of nature from the government of men;--on the castle wall displacing its tapestry with ivy, and spreading, through the garden, the bramble for the rose.

-- 6. Connected with this love of liberty we find a singular manifestation of love of mountains, and see our painters traversing the wildest places of the globe in order to obtain subjects with craggy foregrounds and purple distances. Some few of them remain content with pollards and flat land; but these are always men of third-rate order; and the leading masters, while they do not reject the beauty of the low grounds, reserve their highest powers to paint Alpine peaks or Italian promontories. And it is eminently noticeable, also, that this pleasure in the mountains is never mingled with fear, or tempered by a spirit of meditation, as with the mediaeval; but it is always free and fearless, brightly exhilarating, and wholly unreflective; so that the painter feels that his mountain foreground may be more consistently animated by a sportsman than a hermit; and our modern society in general goes to the mountains, not to fast, but to feast, and leaves their glaciers covered with chicken-bones and egg-sh.e.l.ls.

-- 7. Connected with this want of any sense of solemnity in mountain scenery, is a general profanity of temper in regarding all the rest of nature; that is to say, a total absence of faith in the presence of any deity therein. Whereas the mediaeval never painted a cloud, but with the purpose of placing an angel in it; and a Greek never entered a wood without expecting to meet a G.o.d in it; _we_ should think the appearance of an angel in the cloud wholly unnatural, and should be seriously surprised by meeting a G.o.d anywhere. Our chief ideas about the wood are connected with poaching. We have no belief that the clouds contain more than so many inches of rain or hail, and from our ponds and ditches expect nothing more divine than ducks and watercresses.

-- 8. Finally: connected with this profanity of temper is a strong tendency to deny the sacred element of color, and make our boast in blackness. For though occasionally glaring, or violent, modern color is on the whole eminently sombre, tending continually to grey or brown, and by many of our best painters consistently falsified, with a confessed pride in what they call chaste or subdued tints; so that, whereas a mediaeval paints his sky bright blue, and his foreground bright green, gilds the towers of his castles, and clothes his figures with purple and white, we paint our sky grey, our foreground black, and our foliage brown, and think that enough is sacrificed to the sun in admitting the dangerous brightness of a scarlet cloak or a blue jacket.

-- 9. These, I believe, are the princ.i.p.al points which would strike us instantly, if we were to be brought suddenly into an exhibition of modern landscapes out of a room filled with mediaeval work. It is evident that there are both evil and good in this change; but how much evil, or how much good, we can only estimate by considering, as in the former divisions of our inquiry, what are the real roots of the habits of mind which have caused them.

[Sidenote: Distinctive characters of the modern mind:]

And first, it is evident that the t.i.tle "Dark Ages," given to the mediaeval centuries, is, respecting art, wholly inapplicable. They were, on the contrary, the bright ages; ours are the dark ones. I do not mean metaphysically, but literally. They were the ages of gold: ours are the ages of umber.

[Sidenote: 1. Despondency arising from faithlessness.]

This is partly mere mistake in us; we build brown brick walls, and wear brown coats, because we have been blunderingly taught to do so, and go on doing so mechanically. There is, however, also some cause for the change in our own tempers. On the whole, these are much _sadder_ ages than the early ones; not sadder in a n.o.ble and deep way, but in a dim, wearied way,--the way of ennui, and jaded intellect, and uncomfortableness of soul and body. The Middle Ages had their wars and agonies, but also intense delights. Their gold was dashed with blood; but ours is sprinkled with dust. Their life was interwoven with white and purple; ours is one seamless stuff of brown. Not that we are without apparent festivity, but festivity more or less forced, mistaken, embittered, incomplete--not of the heart. How wonderfully, since Shakspere's time, have we lost the power of laughing at bad jests! The very finish of our wit belies our gaiety.

-- 10. The profoundest reason of this darkness of heart is, I believe, our want of faith. There never yet was a generation of men (savage or civilized) who, taken as a body, so wofully fulfilled the words, "having no hope, and without G.o.d in the world," as the present civilized European race. A Red Indian or Otaheitan savage has more sense of a Divine existence round him, or government over him, than the plurality of refined Londoners and Parisians; and those among us who may in some sense be said to believe, are divided almost without exception into two broad cla.s.ses, Romanist and Puritan; who, but for the interference of the unbelieving portions of society, would, either of them, reduce the other sect as speedily as possible to ashes; the Romanist having always done so whenever he could, from the beginning of their separation, and the Puritan at this time holding himself in complacent expectation of the destruction of Rome by volcanic fire.

Such division as this between persons nominally of one religion, that is to say, believing in the same G.o.d, and the same Revelation, cannot but become a stumbling-block of the gravest kind to all thoughtful and far-sighted men,--a stumbling-block which they can only surmount under the most favorable circ.u.mstances of early education. Hence, nearly all our powerful men in this age of the world are unbelievers; the best of them in doubt and misery; the worst in reckless defiance; the plurality in plodding hesitation, doing, as well as they can, what practical work lies ready to their hands. Most of our scientific men are in this last cla.s.s; our popular authors either set themselves definitely against all religious form, pleading for simple truth and benevolence (Thackeray, d.i.c.kens), or give themselves up to bitter and fruitless statement of facts (De Balzac), or surface-painting (Scott), or careless blasphemy, sad or smiling (Byron, Beranger). Our earnest poets, and deepest thinkers, are doubtful and indignant (Tennyson, Carlyle); one or two, anch.o.r.ed, indeed, but anxious, or weeping (Wordsworth, Mrs. Browning); and of these two, the first is not so sure of his anchor, but that now and then it drags with him, even to make him cry out,--

"Great G.o.d, I had rather be A Pagan suckled in some creed outworn: So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn."

In politics, religion is now a name; in art, a hypocrisy or affectation. Over German religious pictures the inscription, "See how Pious I am," can be read at a glance by any clear-sighted person. Over French and English religious pictures, the inscription, "See how Impious I am," is equally legible. All sincere and modest art is, among us, profane.[84]

[Sidenote: -- 11. 2. Levity from the same cause.]

This faithlessness operates among us according to our tempers, producing either sadness or levity, and being the ultimate root alike of our discontents and of our wantonnesses. It is marvellous how full of contradiction it makes us; we are first dull, and seek for wild and lonely places because we have no heart for the garden; presently we recover our spirits, and build an a.s.sembly room among the mountains, because we have no reverence for the desert. I do not know if there be game on Sinai, but I am always expecting to hear of some one's shooting over it.

-- 12. There is, however, another, and a more innocent root of our delight in wild scenery.