Mornings in Florence Part 12

3. _Original labour._

Much poorer, and intentionally so. For the myth of the creation of humanity, the sculptor uses his best strength, and shows supremely the grace of womanhood; but in representing the first peasant state of life, makes the grace of woman by no means her conspicuous quality. She even walks awkwardly; some feebleness in foreshortening the foot also embarra.s.sing the sculptor. He knows its form perfectly--but its perspective, not quite yet.

The trees stiff and stunted--they also needing culture. Their fruit dropping at present only into beasts' mouths.

4. _Jabal._

If you have looked long enough, and carefully enough, at the three previous sculptures, you cannot but feel that the hand here is utterly changed. The drapery sweeps in broader, softer, but less true folds; the handling is far more delicate; exquisitely sensitive to gradation over broad surfaces--scarcely using an incision of any depth but in outline; studiously reserved in appliance of shadow, as a thing precious and local--look at it above the puppy's head, and under the tent.

This is a.s.suredly painter's work, not mere sculptor's. I have no doubt whatever it is by the own hand of the shepherd-boy of Fesole. Cimabue had found him drawing, (more probably _scratching_ with Etrurian point,) one of his sheep upon a stone. These, on the central foundation-stone of his tower he engraves, looking back on the fields of life: the time soon near for him to draw the curtains of his tent.

I know no dog like this in method of drawing, and in skill of giving the living form without one touch of chisel for hair, or incision for eye, except the dog barking at Poverty in the great fresco of a.s.sisi.

Take the lens and look at every piece of the work from corner to corner--note especially as a thing which would only have been enjoyed by a painter, and which all great painters do intensely enjoy--the _fringe_ of the tent, [Footnote: "I think Jabal's tent is made of leather; the relaxed intervals between the tent-pegs show a curved ragged edge like leather near the ground" (Mr. Caird). The edge of the opening is still more characteristic, I think.] and precise insertion of its point in the angle of the hexagon, prepared for by the archaic masonry indicated in the oblique joint above; [Footnote: Prints of these photographs which do not show the masonry all round the hexagon are quite valueless for study.] architect and painter thinking at once, and _doing_ as they thought.

I gave a lecture to the Eton boys a year or two ago, on little more than the shepherd's dog, which is yet more wonderful in magnified scale of photograph. The lecture is partly published--somewhere, but I can't refer to it.

5. _Jubal_.

Still Giotto's, though a little less delighted in; but with exquisite introduction of the Gothic of his own tower. See the light surface sculpture of a mosaic design in the horizontal moulding.

Note also the painter's freehand working of the complex mouldings of the table--also resolvedly oblong, not square; see central flower.

6. _Tubal Cain_.

Still Giotto's, and entirely exquisite; finished with no less care than the shepherd, to mark the vitality of this art to humanity; the spade and hoe--its heraldic bearing--hung on the hinged door. [Footnote: Pointed out to me by Mr. Caird, who adds farther, "I saw a forge identical with this one at Pelago the other day,--the anvil resting on a tree-stump: the same fire, bellows, and implements; the door in two parts, the upper part like a shutter, and used for the exposition of finished work as a sign of the craft; and I saw upon it the same finished work of the same shape as in the bas-relief--a spade and a hoe."] For subtlety of execution, note the texture of wooden block under anvil, and of its iron hoop.

The workman's face is the best sermon on the dignity of labour yet spoken by thoughtful man. Liberal Parliaments and fraternal Reformers have nothing essential to say more.

7. _Noah_.

Andrea Pisano's again, more or less imitative of Giotto's work.

8. _Astronomy_.

We have a new hand here altogether. The hair and drapery bad; the face expressive, but blunt in cutting; the small upper heads, necessarily little more than blocked out, on the small scale; but not suggestive of grace in completion: the minor detail worked with great mechanical precision, but little feeling; the lion's head, with leaves in its ears, is quite ugly; and by comparing the work of the small cusped arch at the bottom with Giotto's soft handling of the mouldings of his, in 5, you may for ever know common mason's work from fine Gothic. The zodiacal signs are quite hard and common in the method of bas-relief, but quaint enough in design: Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces, on the broad heavenly belt; Taurus upside down, Gemini, and Cancer, on the small globe.

I think the whole a restoration of the original panel, or else an inferior workman's rendering of Giotto's design, which the next piece is, with less question.

9. _Building_.

The larger figure, I am disposed finally to think, represents civic power, as in Lorenzetti's fresco at Siena. The extreme rudeness of the minor figures may be guarantee of their originality; it is the smoothness of ma.s.s and hard edge work that make me suspect the 8th for a restoration.

10. _Pottery_.

Very grand; with much painter's feeling, and fine mouldings again.

The _tiled_ roof projecting in the shadow above, protects the first Ceramicus-home. I think the women are meant to be carrying some kind of wicker or reed-bound water-vessel. The Potter's servant explains to them the extreme advantages of the new invention. I can't make any conjecture about the author of this piece.

11. _Riding_.

Again Andrea Pisano's, it seems to me. Compare the tossing up of the dress behind the shoulders, in 3 and 2. The head is grand, having nearly an Athenian profile: the loss of the horse's fore-leg prevents me from rightly judging of the entire action. I must leave riders to say.

12. _Weaving_.

Andrea's again, and of extreme loveliness; the stooping face of the woman at the loom is more like a Leonardo drawing than sculpture. The action of throwing the large shuttle, and all the structure of the loom and its threads, distinguishing rude or smooth surface, are quite wonderful. The figure on the right shows the use and grace of finely woven tissue, under and upper--that over the bosom so delicate that the line of separation from the flesh of the neck is unseen.

If you hide with your hand the carved masonry at the bottom, the composition separates itself into two pieces, one disagreeably rectangular. The still more severely rectangular masonry throws out by contrast all that is curved and rounded in the loom, and unites the whole composition; that is its aesthetic function; its historical one is to show that weaving is queen's work, not peasant's; for this is palace masonry.

13. _The Giving of Law_.

More strictly, of _the_ Book of G.o.d's Law: the only one which _can_ ultimately be obeyed. [Footnote: Mr. Caird convinced me of the real meaning of this sculpture. I had taken it for the giving of a book, writing further of it as follows:--

All books, rightly so called, are Books of Law, and all Scripture is given by inspiration of G.o.d. (What _we_ now mostly call a book, the infinite reduplication and vibratory echo of a lie, is not given but belched up out of volcanic clay by the inspiration of the devil.) On the Book-giver's right hand the students in cell, restrained by the lifted right hand:

"Silent, you, till you know"; then, perhaps, you also.

On the left, the men of the world, kneeling, receive the gift.

Recommendable seal, this, for Mr. Mudie!

Mr. Caird says: "The book is written law, which is given by Justice to the inferiors, that they may know the laws regulating their relations to their superiors--who are also under the hand of law. The va.s.sal is protected by the accessibility of formularized law. The superior is restrained by the right hand of power." ]

The authorship of this is very embarra.s.sing to me. The face of the central figure is most n.o.ble, and all the work good, but not delicate; it is like original work of the master whose design No. 8 might be a restoration.

14 _Daedalus_.

Andrea Pisano again; the head superb, founded on Greek models, feathers of wings wrought with extreme care; but with no precision of arrangement or feeling. How far intentional in awkwardness, I cannot say; but note the good mechanism of the whole plan, with strong standing board for the feet.

15. _Navigation_.

An intensely puzzling one; coa.r.s.e (perhaps unfinished) in work, and done by a man who could not row; the plaited bands used for rowlocks being pulled the wrong way. Right, had the rowers been rowing Englishwise: but the water at the boat's head shows its motion forwards, the way the oarsmen look. I cannot make out the action of the figure at the stern; it ought to be steering with the stern oar.

The water seems quite unfinished. Meant, I suppose, for surface and section of sea, with slimy rock at the bottom; but all stupid and inefficient.

16. _Hercules and Antaeus._

The Earth power, half hidden by the earth, its hair and hand becoming roots, the strength of its life pa.s.sing through the ground into the oak tree. With Cercyon, but first named, (Plato, _Laws_, book VII., 796), Antaeus is the master of contest without use;--[GREEK: philoneikias achrestou]--and is generally the power of pure selfishness and its various inflation to insolence and degradation to cowardice;--finding its strength only in fall back to its Earth,--he is the master, in a word, of all such kind of persons as have been writing lately about the "interests of England." He is, therefore, the Power invoked by Dante to place Virgil and him in the lowest circle of h.e.l.l;--"Alcides whilom felt,--that grapple, straitened sore," etc. The Antaeus in the sculpture is very grand; but the authorship puzzles me, as of the next piece, by the same hand. I believe both Giotto's design.

17. _Ploughing._

The sword in its Christian form. Magnificent: the grandest expression of the power of man over the earth and its strongest creatures that I remember in early sculpture,--(or for that matter, in late). It is the subduing of the bull which the sculptor thinks most of; the plough, though large, is of wood, and the handle slight. But the pawing and bellowing labourer he has bound to it!--here is victory.

18. _The Chariot._

The horse also subdued to draught--Achilles' chariot in its first, and to be its last, simplicity. The face has probably been grand--the figure is so still. Andrea's, I think by the flying drapery.

19. _The Lamb, with the symbol of Resurrection._