Mornings in Florence Part 5

The Soldan, with an ordinary opera-gla.s.s, you may see clearly enough; and I think it will be first well to notice some technical points in it.

If the little virgin on the stairs of the temple reminded you of one composition of t.i.tian's, this Soldan should, I think, remind you of all that is greatest in t.i.tian; so forcibly, indeed, that for my own part, if I had been told that a careful early fres...o...b.. t.i.tian had been recovered in Santa Croce, I could have believed both report and my own eyes, more quickly than I have been able to admit that this is indeed by Giotto. It is so great that--had its principles been understood-there was in reality nothing more to be taught of art in Italy; nothing to be invented afterwards, except Dutch effects of light.

That there is no 'effect of light' here arrived at, I beg you at once to observe as a most important lesson. The subject is St. Francis challenging the Soldan's Magi,--fire-worshippers--to pa.s.s with him through the fire, which is blazing red at his feet. It is so hot that the two Magi on the other side of the throne shield their faces. But it is represented simply as a red ma.s.s of writhing forms of flame; and casts no firelight whatever. There is no ruby colour on anybody's nose: there are no black shadows under anybody's chin; there are no Rembrandtesque gradations of gloom, or glitterings of sword-hilt and armour.

Is this ignorance, think you, in Giotto, and pure artlessness? He was now a man in middle life, having pa.s.sed all his days in painting, and professedly, and almost contentiously, painting things as he saw them.

Do you suppose he never saw fire cast firelight?--and he the friend of Dante! who of all poets is the most subtle in his sense of every kind of effect of light--though he has been thought by the public to know that of fire only. Again and again, his ghosts wonder that there is no shadow cast by Dante's body; and is the poet's friend, _because_ a painter, likely, therefore, not to have known that mortal substance casts shadow, and terrestrial flame, light? Nay, the pa.s.sage in the 'Purgatorio' where the shadows from the morning sunshine make the flames redder, reaches the accuracy of Newtonian science; and does Giotto, think you, all the while, see nothing of the sort?

The fact was, he saw light so intensely that he never for an instant thought of painting it. He knew that to paint the sun was as impossible as to stop it; and he was no trickster, trying to find out ways of seeming to do what he did not. I can paint a rose,--yes; and I will. I can't paint a red-hot coal; and I won't try to, nor seem to. This was just as natural and certain a process of thinking with _him_, as the honesty of it, and true science, were impossible to the false painters of the sixteenth century.

Nevertheless, what his art can honestly do to make you feel as much as he wants you to feel, about this fire, he will do; and that studiously.

That the fire be _luminous_ or not, is no matter just now. But that the fire is _hot_, he would have you to know. Now, will you notice what colours he has used in the whole picture. First, the blue background, necessary to unite it with the other three subjects, is reduced to the smallest possible s.p.a.ce. St. Francis must be in grey, for that is his dress; also the attendant of one of the Magi is in grey; but so warm, that, if you saw it by itself, you would call it brown. The shadow behind the throne, which Giotto knows he _can_ paint, and therefore does, is grey also. The rest of the picture [Footnote: The floor has been repainted; but though its grey is now heavy and cold, it cannot kill the splendour of the rest.] in at least six-sevenths of its area--is either crimson, gold, orange, purple, or white, all as warm as Giotto could paint them; and set off by minute s.p.a.ces only of intense black,--the Soldan's fillet at the shoulders, his eyes, beard, and the points necessary in the golden pattern behind. And the whole picture is one glow.

A single glance round at the other subjects will convince you of the special character in this; but you will recognize also that the four upper subjects, in which St. Francis's life and zeal are shown, are all in comparatively warm colours, while the two lower ones--of the death, and the visions after it--have been kept as definitely sad and cold.

Necessarily, you might think, being full of monks' dresses. Not so. Was there any need for Giotto to have put the priest at the foot of the dead body, with the black banner stooped over it in the shape of a grave?

Might he not, had he chosen, in either fresco, have made the celestial visions brighter? Might not St. Francis have appeared in the centre of a celestial glory to the dreaming Pope, or his soul been seen of the poor monk, rising through more radiant clouds? Look, however, how radiant, in the small s.p.a.ce allowed out of the blue, they are in reality. You cannot anywhere see a lovelier piece of Giottesque colour, though here, you have to mourn over the smallness of the piece, and its isolation. For the face of St. Francis himself is repainted, and all the blue sky; but the clouds and four sustaining angels are hardly retouched at all, and their iridescent and exquisitely graceful wings are left with really very tender and delicate care by the restorer of the sky. And no one but Giotto or Turner could have painted them.

For in all his use of opalescent and warm colour, Giotto is exactly like Turner, as, in his swift expressional power, he is like Gainsborough.

All the other Italian religious painters work out their expression with toil; he only can give it with a touch. All the other great Italian colourists see only the beauty of colour, but Giotto also its brightness. And none of the others, except Tintoret, understood to the full its symbolic power; but with those--Giotto and Tintoret--there is always, not only a colour harmony, but a colour secret. It is not merely to make the picture glow, but to remind you that St. Francis preaches to a fire-worshipping king, that Giotto covers the wall with purple and scarlet;--and above, in the dispute at a.s.sisi, the angry father is dressed in red, varying like pa.s.sion; and the robe with which his protector embraces St. Francis, blue, symbolizing the peace of Heaven, Of course certain conventional colours were traditionally employed by all painters; but only Giotto and Tintoret invent a symbolism of their own for every picture. Thus in Tintoret's picture of the fall of the manna, the figure of G.o.d the Father is entirely robed in white, contrary to all received custom: in that of Moses striking the rock, it is surrounded by a rainbow. Of Giotto's symbolism in colour at a.s.sisi, I have given account elsewhere. [Footnote: 'Fors Clavigera' for September, 1874.]

You are not to think, therefore, the difference between the colour of the upper and lower frescos unintentional. The life of St. Francis was always full of joy and triumph. His death, in great suffering, weariness, and extreme humility. The tradition of him reverses that of Elijah; living, he is seen in the chariot of fire; dying, he submits to more than the common sorrow of death.

There is, however, much more than a difference in colour between the upper and lower frescos. There is a difference in manner which I cannot account for; and above all, a very singular difference in skill,--indicating, it seems to me, that the two lower were done long before the others, and afterwards united and harmonized with them. It is of no interest to the general reader to pursue this question; but one point he can notice quickly, that the lower frescos depend much on a mere black or brown outline of the features, while the faces above are evenly and completely painted in the most accomplished Venetian manner:--and another, respecting the management of the draperies, contains much interest for us.

Giotto never succeeded, to the very end of his days, in representing a figure lying down, and at ease. It is one of the most curious points in all his character. Just the thing which he could study from nature without the smallest hindrance, is the thing he never can paint; while subtleties of form and gesture, which depend absolutely on their momentariness, and actions in which no model can stay for an instant, he seizes with infallible accuracy.

Not only has the sleeping Pope, in the right hand lower fresco, his head laid uncomfortably on his pillow, but all the clothes on him are in awkward angles, even Giotto's instinct for lines of drapery failing him altogether when he has to lay it on a reposing figure. But look at the folds of the Soldan's robe over his knees. None could be more beautiful or right; and it is to me wholly inconceivable that the two paintings should be within even twenty years of each other in date--the skill in the upper one is so supremely greater. We shall find, however, more than mere truth in its casts of drapery, if we examine them.

They are so simply right, in the figure of the Soldan, that we do not think of them;--we see him only, not his dress But we see dress first, in the figures of the discomfited Magi. Very fully draped personages these, indeed,--with trains, it appears, four yards long, and bearers of them.

The one nearest the Soldan has done his devoir as bravely as he could; would fain go up to the fire, but cannot; is forced to shield his face, though he has not turned back. Giotto gives him full sweeping breadth of fold; what dignity he can;--a man faithful to his profession, at all events.

The next one has no such courage. Collapsed altogether, he has nothing more to say for himself or his creed. Giotto hangs the cloak upon him, in Ghirlandajo's fashion, as from a peg, but with ludicrous narrowness of fold. Literally, he is a 'shut-up' Magus--closed like a fan. He turns his head away, hopelessly. And the last Magus shows nothing but his back, disappearing through the door.

Opposed to them, in a modern work, you would have had a St. Francis standing as high as he could in his sandals, contemptuous, denunciatory; magnificently showing the Magi the door. No such thing, says Giotto. A somewhat mean man; disappointing enough in presence-even in feature; I do not understand his gesture, pointing to his forehead--perhaps meaning, 'my life, or my head, upon the truth of this.' The attendant monk behind him is terror-struck; but will follow his master. The dark Moorish servants of the Magi show no emotion--will arrange their masters' trains as usual, and decorously sustain their retreat.

Lastly, for the Soldan himself. In a modern work, you would a.s.suredly have had him staring at St. Francis with his eyebrows up, or frowning thunderously at his Magi, with them bent as far down as they would go.

Neither of these aspects does he bear, according to Giotto. A perfect gentleman and king, he looks on his Magi with quiet eyes of decision; he is much the n.o.blest person in the room--though an infidel, the true hero of the scene, far more than St. Francis. It is evidently the Soldan whom Giotto wants you to think of mainly, in this picture of Christian missionary work.

He does not altogether take the view of the Heathen which you would get in an Exeter Hall meeting. Does not expatiate on their ignorance, their blackness, or their nakedness. Does not at all think of the Florentine Islington and Pentonville, as inhabited by persons in every respect superior to the kings of the East; nor does he imagine every other religion but his own to be log-worship. Probably the people who really worship logs--whether in Persia or Pentonville--will be left to worship logs to their hearts' content, thinks Giotto. But to those who worship _G.o.d_, and who have obeyed the laws of heaven written in their hearts, and numbered the stars of it visible to them,--to these, a nearer star may rise; and a higher G.o.d be revealed.

You are to note, therefore, that Giotto's Soldan is the type of all n.o.blest religion and law, in countries where the name of Christ has not been preached. There was no doubt what king or people should be chosen: the country of the three Magi had already been indicated by the miracle of Bethlehem; and the religion and morality of Zoroaster were the purest, and in spirit the oldest, in the heathen world. Therefore, when Dante, in the nineteenth and twentieth books of the Paradise, gives his final interpretation of the law of human and divine justice in relation to the gospel of Christ--the lower and enslaved body of the heathen being represented by St. Philip's convert, ("Christians like these the Ethiop shall condemn")--the n.o.blest state of heathenism is at once chosen, as by Giotto: "What may the _Persians_ say unto _your_ kings?"

Compare also Milton,--

"At the Soldan's chair, Defied the best of Paynim chivalry."

And now, the time is come for you to look at Giotto's St. Louis, who is the type of a Christian king.

You would, I suppose, never have seen it at all, unless I had dragged you here on purpose. It was enough in the dark originally--is trebly darkened by the modern painted gla.s.s--and dismissed to its oblivion contentedly by Mr. Murray's "Four saints, all much restored and repainted," and Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcasella's serene "The St. Louis is quite new."

Now, I am the last person to call any restoration whatever, judicious.

Of all destructive manias, that of restoration is the frightfullest and foolishest. Nevertheless, what good, in its miserable way, it can bring, the poor art scholar must now apply his common sense to take; there is no use, because a great work has been restored, in now pa.s.sing it by altogether, not even looking for what instruction we still may find in its design, which will be more intelligible, if the restorer has had any conscience at all, to the ordinary spectator, than it would have been in the faded work. When, indeed, Mr. Murray's Guide tells you that a _building_ has been 'magnificently restored,' you may pa.s.s the building by in resigned despair; for _that_ means that every bit of the old sculpture has been destroyed, and modern vulgar copies put up in its place. But a restored picture or fresco will often be, to _you_, more useful than a pure one; and in all probability--if an important piece of art--it will have been spared in many places, cautiously completed in others, and still a.s.sert itself in a mysterious way--as Leonardo's Cenacolo does--through every phase of reproduction. [Footnote: For a test of your feeling in the matter, having looked well at these two lower frescos in this chapel, walk round into the next, and examine the lower one on your left hand as you enter that. You will find in your Murray that the frescos in this chapel "were also till lately, (1862) covered with whitewash"; but I happen to have a long critique of this particular picture written in the year 1845, and I see no change in it since then. Mr. Murray's critic also tells you to observe in it that "the daughter of Herodias playing on a violin is not unlike Perugino's treatment of similar subjects." By which Mr. Murray's critic means that the male musician playing on a violin, whom, without looking either at his dress, or at the rest of the fresco, he took for the daughter of Herodias, has a broad face. Allowing you the full benefit of this criticism--there is still a point or two more to be observed. This is the only fresco near the ground in which Giotto's work is untouched, at least, by the modern restorer. So felicitously safe it is, that you may learn from it at once and for ever, what good fresco painting is--how quiet--how delicately clear--how little coa.r.s.ely or vulgarly attractive--how capable of the most tender light and shade, and of the most exquisite and enduring colour.

In this latter respect, this fresco stands almost alone among the works of Giotto; the striped curtain behind the table being wrought with a variety and fantasy of playing colour which Paul Veronese could not better at his best.

You will find, without difficulty, in spite of the faint tints, the daughter of Herodias in the middle of the picture---slowly _moving_, not dancing, to the violin music--she herself playing on a lyre. In the farther corner of the picture, she gives St. John's head to her mother; the face of Herodias is almost entirely faded, which may be a farther guarantee to you of the safety of the rest. The subject of the Apocalypse, highest on the right, is one of the most interesting mythic pictures in Florence; nor do I know any other so completely rendering the meaning of the scene between the woman in the wilderness, and the Dragon enemy. But it cannot be seen from the floor level: and I have no power of showing its beauty in words.]

But I can a.s.sure you, in the first place, that St. Louis is by no means altogether new. I have been up at it, and found most lovely and true colour left in many parts: the crown, which you will find, after our mornings at the Spanish chapel, is of importance, nearly untouched; the lines of the features and hair, though all more or less reproduced, still of definite and notable character; and the junction throughout of added colour so careful, that the harmony of the whole, if not delicate with its old tenderness, is at least, in its coa.r.s.er way, solemn and unbroken. Such as the figure remains, it still possesses extreme beauty--profoundest interest. And, as you can see it from below with your gla.s.s, it leaves little to be desired, and may be dwelt upon with more profit than nine out of ten of the renowned pictures of the Tribune or the Pitti. You will enter into the spirit of it better if I first translate for you a little piece from the Fioretti di San Francesco.

_"How St. Louis, King of France, went personally in the guise of a pilgrim, to Perugia, to visit the holy Brother Giles._--St. Louis, King of France, went on pilgrimage to visit the sanctuaries of the world; and hearing the most great fame of the holiness of Brother Giles, who had been among the first companions of St. Francis, put it in his heart, and determined a.s.suredly that he would visit him personally; wherefore he came to Perugia, where was then staying the said brother. And coming to the gate of the place of the Brothers, with few companions, and being unknown, he asked with great earnestness for Brother Giles, telling nothing to the porter who he was that asked. The porter, therefore, goes to Brother Giles, and says that there is a pilgrim asking for him at the gate. And by G.o.d it was inspired in him and revealed that it was the King of France; whereupon quickly with great fervour he left his cell and ran to the gate, and without any question asked, or ever having seen each other before, kneeling down together with greatest devotion, they embraced and kissed each other with as much familiarity as if for a long time they had held great friendship; but all the while neither the one nor the other spoke, but stayed, so embraced, with such signs of charitable love, in silence. And so having remained for a great while, they parted from one another, and St. Louis went on his way, and Brother Giles returned to his cell. And the King being gone, one of the brethren asked of his companion who he was, who answered that he was the King of France. Of which the other brothers being told, were in the greatest melancholy because Brother Giles had never said a word to him; and murmuring at it, they said, 'Oh, Brother Giles, wherefore hadst thou so country manners that to so holy a king, who had come from France to see thee and hear from thee some good word, thou hast spoken nothing?'

"Answered Brother Giles: 'Dearest brothers, wonder not ye at this, that neither I to him, nor he to me, could speak a word; for so soon as we had embraced, the light of the divine wisdom revealed and manifested, to me, his heart, and to him, mine; and so by divine operation we looked each in the other's heart on what we would have said to one another, and knew it better far than if we had spoken with the mouth, and with more consolation, because of the defect of the human tongue, which cannot clearly express the secrets of G.o.d, and would have been for discomfort rather than comfort. And know, therefore, that the King parted from me marvellously content, and comforted in his mind.'"

Of all which story, not a word, of course, is credible by any rational person.

Certainly not: the spirit, nevertheless, which created the story, is an entirely indisputable fact in the history of Italy and of mankind.

Whether St. Louis and Brother Giles ever knelt together in the street of Perugia matters not a whit. That a king and a poor monk could be conceived to have thoughts of each other which no words could speak; and that indeed the King's tenderness and humility made such a tale credible to the people,--this is what you have to meditate on here.

Nor is there any better spot in the world,--whencesoever your pilgrim feet may have journeyed to it, wherein to make up so much mind as you have in you for the making, concerning the nature of Kinghood and Princedom generally; and of the forgeries and mockeries of both which are too often manifested in their room. For it happens that this Christian and this Persian King are better painted here by Giotto than elsewhere by any one, so as to give you the best attainable conception of the Christian and Heathen powers which have both received, in the book which Christians profess to reverence, the same epithet as the King of the Jews Himself; anointed, or Christos:--and as the most perfect Christian Kinghood was exhibited in the life, partly real, partly traditional, of St. Louis, so the most perfect Heathen Kinghood was exemplified in the life, partly real, partly traditional, of Cyrus of Persia, and in the laws for human government and education which had chief force in his dynasty. And before the images of these two Kings I think therefore it will be well that you should read the charge to Cyrus, written by Isaiah. The second clause of it, if not all, will here become memorable to you--literally ill.u.s.trating, as it does, the very manner of the defeat of the Zoroastrian Magi, on which Giotto founds his Triumph of Faith. I write the leading sentences continuously; what I omit is only their amplification, which you can easily refer to at home.

(Isaiah xliv. 24, to xlv. 13.)

"Thus saith the Lord, thy Redeemer, and he that formed thee from the womb. I the Lord that maketh all; that stretcheth forth the heavens, alone; that spreadeth abroad the earth, alone; _that turneth wise men backward, and maketh their knowledge, foolish; that confirmeth the word of his Servant, and fulfilleth the counsel of his messengers_: that saith of Cyrus, He is my Shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure, even saying to Jerusalem, 'thou shalt be built,' and to the temple, 'thy foundations shall be laid."

"Thus saith the Lord to his Christ;--to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him, and I will loose the loins of Kings.

"I will go before thee, and make the crooked places straight; I will break in pieces the gates of bra.s.s, and cut in sunder the bars of iron; and I will give _thee_ the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, that thou mayest know that I the Lord, which call thee by thy name, am the G.o.d of Israel.

"For Jacob my servant's sake, and Israel mine elect, I have even called thee by thy name; I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known me.

"I am the Lord, and there is none else; there is no G.o.d beside me. I girded thee, though thou hast not known me. That they may know, from the _rising of the sun_, and from the west, that there is none beside me; I am the Lord and there is none else. _I form the light_, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil. I the Lord do all these things.

"I have raised him up in Righteousness, and will direct all his ways; he shall build my city, and let go my captives, not for price nor reward, saith the Lord of Nations."

To this last verse, add the ordinance of Cyrus in fulfilling it, that you may understand what is meant by a King's being "raised up in Righteousness," and notice, with respect to the picture under which you stand, the Persian King's thought of the Jewish temple.

"In the first year of the reign of Cyrus, [Footnote: 1st Esdras vi. 24.]

King Cyrus commanded that the house of the Lord at Jerusalem should be built again, _where they do service with perpetual fire_; (the italicized sentence is Darius's, quoting Cyrus's decree--the decree itself worded thus), Thus saith Cyrus, King of Persia: [Footnote: Ezra i. 3, and 2nd Esdras ii. 3.] The Lord G.o.d of heaven hath given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he hath charged me to build him an house at Jerusalem.

"Who is there among you of all his people?--his G.o.d be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem which is in Judah, and let the men of his place help him with silver and with gold, and with goods and with beasts."

Between which "bringing the prisoners out of captivity" and modern liberty, free trade, and anti-slavery eloquence, there is no small interval.

To these two ideals of Kinghood, then, the boy has reached, since the day he was drawing the lamb on the stone, as Cimabue pa.s.sed by. You will not find two other such, that I know of, in the west of Europe; and yet there has been many a try at the painting of crowned heads,--and King George III and Queen Charlotte, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, are very fine, no doubt. Also your black-muzzled kings of Velasquez, and Vand.y.k.e's long-haired and white-handed ones; and Rubens' riders--in those handsome boots. Pa.s.s such shadows of them as you can summon, rapidly before your memory--then look at this St. Louis.

His face--gentle, resolute, glacial-pure, thin-cheeked; so sharp at the chin that the entire head is almost of the form of a knight's shield--the hair short on the forehead, falling on each side in the old Greek-Etruscan curves of simplest line, to the neck; I don't know if you can see without being nearer, the difference in the arrangement of it on the two sides-the ma.s.s of it on the right shoulder bending inwards, while that on the left falls straight. It is one of the pretty changes which a modern workman would never dream of--and which a.s.sures me the restorer has followed the old lines rightly.

He wears a crown formed by an hexagonal pyramid, beaded with pearls on the edges: and walled round, above the brow, with a vertical fortress-parapet, as it were, rising into sharp pointed spines at the angles: it is chasing of gold with pearl--beautiful in the remaining work of it; the Soldan wears a crown of the same general form; the hexagonal outline signifying all order, strength, and royal economy. We shall see farther symbolism of this kind, soon, by Simon Memmi, in the Spanish chapel.