Thoughts on Art and Autobiographical Memoirs of Giovanni Dupre Part 17

Now this finger, bent back and dislocated, looked very badly, when compared with the model in plaster, where the fingers were all extended, and pressed upon the serpent's neck admirably. I therefore accepted both these commissions,--the one because it had never been touched by Bartolini's own hand, and the other because I was willing and able to put it straight. However, before touching the statue, I made the Marchese Ala acquainted with the serious defects there were in it, which Bartolini would certainly have remedied had he had the time to finish it; and I asked for his permission (and on this condition alone accepted the work) to cut off all the top of the head with the locks of hair where it had been injured, in order to replace it exactly in the way that Bartolini had first imagined and modelled it, and to add a piece of marble to the hand to remake the forefinger. He consented to these conditions. In order to make sure myself that I was right, before cutting away the defective parts, I had a mould and cast taken from them, that any one might see how they stood before I touched them, and how by taking the original model for my guide, I had replaced them: and I then said (as I now write), that all who were sensible and reasonable understood and were satisfied; as to the others, I do not know what they thought, nor did I care for them then, nor do now. I finished the two statues, copying the original models where these were carefully finished, and interpreting them where they were barely indicated, selecting suitable models from life; and so I satisfied those who trusted in me, and my own conscience.

[Sidenote: STATUE OF INNOCENCE.]

Some time previous to this the Marchese Ala had given me an order for the "Sleep of Innocence"--a statue of a child sleeping--which I had already executed a long time before for my excellent friend the Marchese Alessandro Bichi-Ruspoli of Siena. I therefore repeated this child in marble by commission of the aforesaid Marchese Ala; but being rather changeable, he afterwards declared to me that this work did not entirely satisfy him, although it was conscientiously done, and that he should take it only because he had engaged to do so. I answered that I wished my works to be taken because they were liked, not because they were ordered, and begged that he would not speak of it again. He thanked me, and promised to give me another order for portraits of his three pretty little children; but subsequently I heard nothing more about it. One day, being in Turin, and finding myself at Vela's studio, where I had gone to pay him a visit, I saw a very graceful little portrait-group, full length, such as that able artist knew how to make and is in the habit of making. I asked, "Who are these pretty children?"

[Sidenote: THE MARCHESE ALA.]

"They are the children of Marchese Ala," replied Vela. "It is already some time since he ordered this work, but he has not yet put in an appearance. I have written him so many letters, to which I have received no answer, that I don't know what to think."

I then recounted to him what took place about my little Putto, and the promise he had made of giving me an order for the little group. Vela answered that he was astonished and annoyed; but as the commission had been given to him, and the model was in plaster, he begged me to speak to the Marchese in order that he might be able to finish the work. I do not know whether Vela ever did put the group into marble.

As regards myself and compensation for the affair of the Putto, which had been left hanging for so many years, he took my Bacco della Crittogama; but as the Marchese was subject to very long periods of melancholy that prevented his thinking about anything for a good while, I heard nothing more on the subject, until one day Count Arese, to whom I began to speak about this affair, said to me--

"Leave the matter to me. Write me a letter giving me an account of this affair, and I will send you the money. I have business relations with the Marchese Ala, and will send him your receipt, and there will be an end to it."

[Sidenote: STATUETTES OF PETRARCH AND LAURA.]

I did as he said, and was satisfied. What a pity it is that that most n.o.ble gentleman was so often afflicted by such a malady! He was and is one of the most intelligent and generous patrons of art. The first Italian and foreign painters and sculptors had co-operated to make his house splendid and enviable for its works of art.

As I have already said, Demidoff kept these statues just as Bartolini had left them, and placed them in his villa of San Donato. One evening after dinner, as we were walking together through its magnificent apartments, he stopped in one of the little sitting-rooms and said to me--

"Your little statuettes of Dante and Beatrice would look well here on small pedestals in the corners; but there ought to be four. And you may complete the number, by making a Petrarch and Madonna Laura, if you like."

"I should like to do so."

And I made these other two statuettes. At present I do not know who has them; they were sold at Paris a few years ago, together with a great many other works of art belonging to the Prince.

The dinners that the Prince gave in that magnificent and enchanting house were most splendid. I met there, besides strangers that I do not speak of, Matas, the Prince's architect, Baron Gariod, my good friend Professor Zannetti, Prince Andrea Corsini, and that dear son of his, young Amerigo. One evening we were playing billiards together, and having finished our game of _carolina_, he said to me--

"Come away; let us take a turn through the rooms;" and looking at and talking about his statues of Pradier, Bartolini, and Powers, the stupendous Fiamminghi, the Ca.n.a.lettis, t.i.tian, Greuze, the arrases in the large hall, the columns of malachite, remarkable both for their size and finish, and a thousand other objects of exquisite taste and great cost, the young man's eyes sparkled with joy and enthusiasm, and looking me steadily in the face, he said--

[Sidenote: DEATH OF DON AMERIGO.]

"I am going away soon, you know, to Spain. On my return, I want to do great things, and you must help me. I want a house that shall not be inferior to this."

I replied, "If you desire, you can have one even more beautiful. I know the suite of rooms in your palace, and the masterpieces of art in your gallery. With the riches you possess, and the will that is not wanting, you might, as I have said, surpa.s.s even this enchanting abode."

A short time after this, he came to my studio to say good-bye to me.

Dear young man! with a pure heart and open mind, an enthusiast for the beautiful, and beloved by all, he went away, and not one of us saw him again. He died in a foreign land, where he had gone to bring away his bride.

Bartolini's statues being finished, I made a bas-relief of Adam and Eve by commission of Cavaliere Giulio Bianchi of Siena; after which I retouched in wax the pedestal of the Table for its casting in bronze, and in the meantime prepared to model the statue of Sant'Antonino for the Loggie of the Uffizi. From this time forth things began to go more evenly and liberally with me, and fears of falling back into poverty disappeared by slow degrees. Already the rent of my studio, which was not small, was no longer a weight to me, as by sovereign decree the studio which had been left by Professor Costoli on his promotion to the presidency of the Academy after Bartolini's death was given to me. The statuettes of Beatrice and Dante of themselves alone almost supplied enough for the daily wants of the family, as I always had one or two of them to make at a time. I think I have made about forty of them, and one of them deserves comment.

[Sidenote: THE COUNT OF SYRACUSE.]

Before the Princess Matilde, who was married to Demidoff, left for Paris and was separated from her husband, the Grand d.u.c.h.ess of Tuscany ordered my Beatrice, with the intention of presenting it to that lady. The divorce having ensued, she did not give it to her, and the little statue remained for some time at her Highness's, and afterwards she gave it to her brother, the Count of Syracuse, who used to amuse himself by working in sculpture. This sculptor-Prince, without the slightest improper intention, but rather from a sort of good-natured, easy-going way, used to keep this statuette of mine alongside of his own, and it sometimes happened that persons praised him for it; and he must have felt not a little embarra.s.sed to clear up this _quid pro quo_.

It appears that sometimes, perhaps because this annoyed him, he made matters so far from clear that the statuette pa.s.sed off as his own work.

One day a Neapolitan lady came to my studio, a Princess Caraffa or Coscia (I cannot say which with certainty, but it is a matter that can be verified, for she told me that she was a descendant of the family of Pope John XXIII., who is buried in our San Giovanni, where one sees his fine monument between the two columns on the right-hand side). This lady, when she saw the Beatrice among my other works, exclaimed--

"Oh! the graceful Portinari by the Count of Syracuse! Is it not true that it is charming?"

"Princess," I answered, "I do not know if that little figure is pretty or not, but I am glad that you think so, for it is mine, one of my very first works. I modelled it in 1843, inspired by that sublime sonnet of Dante which begins--

'Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare,' &c.

I made the first copy of this statuette for Signor Sansone Uzielli of Leghorn; the second for the Grand Duke, which, with the young Dante, he gave to the Princess Isabella his daughter, who married the Prince Luitpoldo of Bavaria; and the one that you saw was presented to the Count of Syracuse by the Grand d.u.c.h.ess."

[Sidenote: SANT'ANTONINO.]

The n.o.ble lady smiled, and said, "I must have been mistaken."

The Count of Syracuse was a great lover of sculpture, and occupied himself with it as much as was consistent with the position he occupied.

Several of his works are most praiseworthy, and I keep some of the photographs of them that he was so kind as to send me.

To return to my Sant'Antonino that I left unfinished. This model cost me an immense deal of work. The subject required character, bearing, and att.i.tude of an absolutely simple and natural treatment, such as I gave the Giotto; but fearing to meet with censure from the lovers of the cla.s.sic, I kept doing and undoing my work in my sketches, as well as in my large model. It is useless! One must be decided, and sure of the side one wishes to take. This see-sawing between ideal beauty and truth to nature in portraiture will not do, just as it would be absurd and bad to adhere entirely to nature in other subjects, especially sacred ones.

[Sidenote: THE NATURAL AND IDEAL.]

And although imitation of beautiful nature is the foundation and substance of any work, yet the mode of seeing it and reproducing it const.i.tutes the style that every artist, who is elevated, great, and pure, draws from within himself, according to his subject and the measure meted out to him by nature and education. In portrait statues one must abandon the ideal, even as regards the ordinary rules of the just proportions of the body. Sant'Antonino was named thus because he was small of stature. I was tempted several times to make him faithfully just as he was, small and crooked; and I made a sketch of him thus, which I still preserve, and it is precious on account of the little stick on which he leans, for this stick was no other than Giuseppe Verdi's pen. But I did nothing more with it, as I was vacillating between the rules of art and the close imitation of nature; and it is just this close imitation of the details of nature that const.i.tutes the character of a portrait statue--a sound canon put wisely in practice by the ancients, as can easily be seen from their statues of the philosophers in the Vatican, such as the Zeno, and more particularly in that of Diogenes; and in the bas-relief of aesop, where one sees even the absolute hump on his back. But the copying in detail from nature does not mean a too close imitation of every little thing, of every wrinkle; these are the mechanical nothings that are, as it were, the battle-horse to those who make a trade of art, and should be left to them.

CHAPTER XI.

CLOSE IMITATION FROM LIFE--MY ILLNESS--I AM IN DANGER OF LOSING MY LIFE--LUIGI DEL PUNTA, HEAD PHYSICIAN AT COURT--THE GRAND DUKE FURNISHES ME WITH THE MEANS FOR GOING TO NAPLES--I LEAVE FOR NAPLES--A BEGGAR IMPOSTOR--ANOTHER AND MY BOOTS--SORRENTO--MY NEAPOLITAN FRIENDS--PROFESSOR TARTAGLIA AND THE HYDROPATHIC CURE--THE MUSEUM AT NAPLES--LET US STUDY THE GOOD WHEREVER IT IS TO BE FOUND--A STRANGE PRESENTATION.

That my words may not be obscure, and that one may see with sufficient clearness the difference that exists between the details that const.i.tute different types and the minutiae that must be left out, I will mention where this sound principle of art is to be found. For greater brevity and clearness I will speak of busts. The bust in bronze of Seneca in the museum at Naples, the bust of Scipio Africa.n.u.s in the statue-gallery at Florence, the Vitellius, Julia and Lucius Verus, the Cicero of the British Museum, and another Seneca at the Capitol, each has a distinct character of its own. So firm and decided are the details of those different faces, the planes are so clear and certain, the life so shines in the eyes, the breath so seems to come from the lips, that they have been for centuries the study and stumbling-block of all artists; for after that period you do not find anything, unless it be some _terre cotte_ of Luca della Robbia, and a bust of a bishop by Mino da Fiesole, in which you do not find every hair, and, in fact, every possible minutia.

[Sidenote: TRUTH OF DETAIL.]

The error into which these two schools run--that is to say, the Academic and Naturalistic--is this, that the one, exaggerating its general rules, neglects detail, and so becomes hard and cold; whilst the other, multiplying them _ad infinitum_, falls into minutiae which make art vulgar. These are both errors, both ugly, both false.

Does this brief tirade, half dictatorial and half careless, bore you, gentle reader? If so, skip it, for I cannot let go the opportunity, from time to time, of making a good critical observation when it occurs to me, and I think it well not to omit doing so. Young artists will, I am sure, be grateful to me; and besides, though these few words may have bored you, they serve as a warning to them on the importance of different characteristics, and are also of use to me, I do not say as an excuse, but as a frank statement of opinion, for in my Sant'Antonino this rule is not clearly carried into practice. The importance of speaking the truth and loving it is clearly given by Dante when he says:--

"Che s'io al vero son timido amico Temo di perder vita tra coloro, Che questo tempo chiameranno antico."[7]

[7] "And if I am a timid friend to truth, I fear that I may lose my life with those Who will hereafter call this time the olden."

--DANTE: _Paradiso_, Canto xvii.

As I am an ardent lover of truth, I wish to speak it now. With regard to this statue, if I had not the strength of mind to reproduce the saint just as he was, with all his peculiarities, in other statues it has been my study to do so, and I believe not without success.

But in the meanwhile--I do not know for what reason--a general feeling of uneasiness took possession of me, and a prostration of strength, that prevented me from thinking or working. Added to this, I had attacks of giddiness, and was obliged to spend entire days sitting down without being able to do anything, and feeling sad and melancholy. My medical friends--Alberti and Barzellotti--recommended exercise, meat diet, and a little good wine, which in those days (1852) could scarcely be found genuine. They ordered me to take preparations of iron and zinc, but my health grew worse every day. It was now three months since I had gone to the studio. I went out sometimes in the carriage with my poor wife, and we used to go into the country, or on the hills of San Domenico, Settignano, or Pian di Giullari. Sometimes I went out on foot, but accompanied by and leaning on the arm of Enrico Pazzi, Luigi Majoli, or Ciseri, who one day took me by the railway to Prato, where we remained until evening. After that I began to feel a want of appet.i.te, nausea, and sleeplessness, and then my friends really became alarmed about my health.

[Sidenote: ILLNESS.]