Thoughts on Art and Autobiographical Memoirs of Giovanni Dupre Part 30

In another place I have said that, in the enumeration of my works, I should not make mention of the portraits. I was obliged, however, to deviate from that promise to speak of one that had occasioned a great deal of talk and false reports about me. I must now speak of another that I was to have made, and did not--that is to say, the portrait of his Majesty King Victor Emmanuel. Why I never made it I cannot say myself, and perhaps the reader himself will not know after he has read the following account, unless he is satisfied with the explanation that I shall presently give.

The Superintendent of the Archives, Commendatore Frances...o...b..naini, after having put in order and nearly reconstructed the archives of Pisa, wished to put in the main hall a marble bust, of almost colossal size, of Victor Emmanuel; and in order to determine the size and study the light, I went with him to Pisa to see the place itself where the bust of the King was to stand. Having seen it and fixed upon the size of the bust, I made one condition, agreeing to all arrangements as to price and time for making it. The condition that I made--a most natural one--was that his Majesty should concede to me the sittings required, that I might model him from life and not from photograph. The syndic of the day (Cavaliere Senatore Ruschi, if my memory serves me) went to Florence, accompanied by some of the _a.s.sessori_, to ask the King, first for the permission of placing his portrait in the Great Hall of the Pisan Archives, and then to grant the necessary sittings to the artist, and settle the place, the time, and the length of the sittings, according to his Majesty's pleasure. Both the one request and the other were granted most graciously by the King with his usual affability, and he added that he knew the artist and was well satisfied, and that, in the meanwhile, they were to wait for notice to communicate to me that I might begin my work. Months pa.s.sed, and this notice never came; Bonaini was pressing me, being in a hurry to have the archives inaugurated, and I appealed to his Excellency Marchese di Breme, Minister of the Royal House, to beg the King to let me have the required sittings, but my request met with no good result. Later, after the death of Di Breme, I made the same appeal to the Marchese Filippo Gualterio, who succeeded him in that office; but this appeal not only had no good result, but did not even receive an answer. As the affair of the inauguration of the Pisan Archives had boiled over, Bonaini did not speak of it again, and naturally neither did I. Here there would be some observations to be made on this favour having been asked for and granted, and then given up. As for me, I resolve the question in a few simple words and say, that as it is a most boring thing to all to stand as model, for a king it must be excessively so and insufferable, and therefore the notice to begin this boring business never came from the person who was to undergo it; and it is reasonable enough, and even satisfies me, who have posed as model two or three times.

[Sidenote: JURY OF ARTISTS ON CAVOUR'S MONUMENT.]

About this time the Syndic of Turin invited me to form part of a commission of artists to pa.s.s judgment on the models sent up for Cavour's monument. I was then at Leghorn with my family, as my little girls were in need of sea-bathing. I had no need for it myself, and, in fact, I think that the damp salt air was not good for me, and I stayed there most unwillingly, so that when the invitation to go to Turin came I instantly accepted it with pleasure as a fortunate opportunity to change the air and have something to occupy my mind; and leaving my wife with the two youngest little girls, I took Amalia with me.

This compet.i.tion, of which we were to judge, was a second trial, as the first had failed; the compet.i.tors were many, and some of them praiseworthy. My colleagues in the jury were, if I remember right, the Professors Santo Varni of Genoa, Innocenzo Fraccaroli of Milan, Ceppi of Turin, and another whose name I cannot recall. The examination was a long one, and the discussion, although opinions differed, was a quiet one: the majority p.r.o.nounced itself favourable to a project of the architect Cipolla, which was in drawing; my vote had been for one of the two designs in relief by Vela. The reporter of our decision was Professor Ceppi. I returned to Leghorn to my family, and from there to Florence, where I again took up my work.

Signor Ferdinando Filippi di Buti, whom I had met at Leghorn, showed himself desirous of having a statue of mine to put in the mortuary chapel that he had built from its very foundation close to one of his villas on the pleasant hill that rises above the town. The subject was a beautiful one, and, after the "Dead Christ," I could not have desired anything better to make than "Christ after the Resurrection," and this was the very subject that Signor Filippi wanted of me.

[Sidenote: IMPORTANCE OF RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT.]

The "Triumph of the Cross," the "Madonna Addolorata" that I spoke of further back, the "Pieta," and this "Christ after the Resurrection," are the strictly religious subjects that I have made--rather, that I have had the good fortune to make, because I believe that such subjects, always beautiful in themselves, when they find the soul of the artist disposed to feel them and comprehend them, are also capable of high serene inspiration, and secret efficacy to the soul of those who behold them, be they in spirit even thousands of miles distant from the number of believers.

Let the truth prevail. Religious sentiment has its root in the heart, in the intellect, in the imagination, and, in a word, in all the impulses of the soul. A heart without G.o.d is a heart without love, and will not love woman but for the brutal pleasure she procures, and, in consequence, not even the children that are the fruit of, and also a burden upon, his selfishness. He will not love his country except for the honours and the gain that can be got out of it, and will sacrifice it carelessly for a single moment of pleasure or interest, because a heart without G.o.d is a heart without love. An intelligence without the knowledge of G.o.d is wanting in a basis as starting-point for all its reasoning--it is without the light that should illumine the objects it takes hold of to examine. Such an intellect is circ.u.mscribed within the narrow circle of things perceptible to the senses, where, finding nothing but aridness wherein to quench its burning thirst, which is always insatiate for goodness and truth, it ends either in a fierce desire of suicide, or as a vengeance of nature's own in that saddest of nights, madness. An imagination deprived of the splendid visions of the supersensible, loses even its true functions, because, not seeing or divining through time and s.p.a.ce, through life and death, in the stars and in the atoms, anything but a casual mechanism, it is cruelly condemned to inertia, and with clipped wings can no longer sustain its flight--those wings which so potently upheld Dante as he pa.s.sed from planet to planet, leaving the earth down in depths far beneath him. The eye accustomed to matter is besmeared with mud, and can no longer bear the bright light of the sun and the planets, which seem as if they were the eyes of G.o.d.

[Sidenote: RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT.]

Religious sentiment has existed in all times, amongst all people, and it exists in the conscience of man independent of all education and example. The immense vault of the heavens; the innumerable planets resplendent in light; the sun that illuminates, warms, and fertilises the earth; the expanse of the waters of the sea; the prodigious variety and beauty of animals, plants, and fruits; the loveliness of colours, harmony of sounds from everywhere, and for all our senses,--come to us as the proof of G.o.d. But more even than from exterior things we feel it within ourselves. The blood shed by the martyrs fighting for the faith; life given in large profusion for the defence of country, liberty, and honour, or our women and children; active indignation against tyranny, cowardliness, and injustice; the tender charm we feel for innocence, admiration for virtue, and charity towards the poor, orphans, and those in trouble,--all these are signs that G.o.d has placed within us a part of His very nature. We feel within us the impulses of charity, and in prayer we feel our heart expand with hope; out of frailty we fall, and faith renews in us the strength to rise again. Religious sentiment makes the heart glow, illuminates the intellect, fertilises the imagination, and creates not only the good citizen and good father, but also the artist.

[Sidenote: VISIT OF MANZONI.]

Our hundred basilicas, the paintings and statues of our Christian artists that Italy and the world is so rich in, bear witness to this tribunal of truth to which anxious humanity, even from its earliest days, appeals. Phidias, Homer, Dante and Michael Angelo, Brunellesco and Orgagna, Raphael and Leonardo, Donatello and Ghiberti, and a hundred others, prove that religious inspiration is of so large a source that one can always draw from it; and although in the application of it the form may in a measure vary, yet it will always be great and admirable, because the mind that lifts itself up, though it may deviate more or less salient in curves, will always remain elevated. Correggio and Bernini, Guido Reni and the Caracci, were under the bad influence of their time as to method, but the intention was always good. And coming down to our recent fathers, and speaking always of artists, were Canova, Rossini, and Manzoni not great, for the very reason that they took their inspiration from religious subjects?

As the venerated name of Manzoni has fallen from my pen, I shall describe the visit that he made to my studio. When his visit was announced to me, I had but just finished the bas-relief for Santa Croce and the "Pieta." He was in company with the Marchese Gino Capponi, Aleardi, and Professor Giovan Battista Giorgini. After having seen several of my works, he stopped before the model in plaster of the bas-relief for Santa Croce, and said--

[Sidenote: THE POWER OF FAITH.]

"I see here a vast subject that speaks to me of lofty things; it seems to me that in parts I can divine its meaning, but I should wish to hear the artist himself speak and explain his entire intention."

It is always unwillingly that I act as cicerone to my very poor works--and to say the truth, I only do so most rarely with my intimate friends in order to ask some advice; but the abrupt request made by such a man as he was did not displease me, and I began my explanation. But after I had been talking a few minutes, Marchese Gino Capponi began to stammer out something full of emotion in his sorrow not to be able to see the things I was explaining, and had to go out accompanied by Giorgini, if I mistake not. And here was another of those great souls that warmed itself in the rays of that faith which broke asunder the chains of the slave--opened the mind and softened the heart of the savage--restrained the flights of fancy within the beaten road of truth and good--willed that power, justice, and charity should be friends with each other, and made one taste of peace and happiness in poverty--and that enlarged and extended the confines of the intellect, of morality, and of civilisation.

I beg pardon if I have enlarged too much on this subject, but I do not think it can be superfluous to endeavour to correct the tendency of the day, when from every side one hears repeated that, for the future, in art the study of religious subjects is at an end, as if society of to-day was entirely composed of unbelievers or free-thinkers, who, by way of parenthesis, amongst other fine things have never thought that thought itself is not at all free. It seems to me that thought is an attribute of the soul that is moved with marvellous rapidity by means of a strength and impulse superior to itself, which depend upon physical const.i.tution, education, and example. Thought, with all its freedom, all its flights, is subject, dependent, and, as one might say, formed by those forces and those impulses.

[Sidenote: GUARDIAN ANGEL FOR THE GRAND DUKE.]

In the infinite scale of human thoughts there are some good, but a great many more are bad. In the moral order of things, those contrary to good are evil; as in the intellectual, those contrary to truth--and in the ideal, those contrary to the beautiful.

Now thought moves inconstantly from the beautiful to the ugly, from the true to the false, from good to evil, until our will, which is really free, either repulses it or takes possession of it according to the power, more or less, that reason has over the will. It is clear, therefore, that thought is not free, but, on the contrary, is subservient to laws independent of and superior to itself. How this happens is quite another pair of sleeves; but the fact is this, our thought is moved, and so to speak, subject to this power. Will comes and accepts it, weds it and makes it its own, good or bad though it be, with or without register of baptism, and snaps its fingers at the syndic or the priest. Once stirred, thought moves the will, and the will a.s.senting, commands it as with a rod. And now, for the second time, let me really beg pardon.

After my "Christ," his Imperial Highness the Grand Duke Constantine of Russia gave me an order for an angel that he wanted as a present for a German prince, whose name I do not remember. This angel was to be the Guardian Angel; the subject was determined upon, and I don't know if, in the mind of the giver, it was to guard the prince or the princ.i.p.ality.

If it was the prince, I hope my poor angel will have done the best he could; if the princ.i.p.ality, I am afraid that he has been overcome by cunning and force. His head is crowned with olives, and his lifted right hand points to heaven. Will the prince feel any consolation looking at the statue? I hope so; and in any way, he will be persuaded that true peace is not of this world.

[Sidenote: CIPOLLA AND THE MONUMENT TO CAVOUR.]

It is now the time and place to speak of Cavour's monument. As I before mentioned, I was one of the judges on that committee. My vote had been for Professor Vela's design, but the prize was obtained by the architect Professor Cipolla; and as he was an architect, he naturally could not carry his work into execution: he therefore went the rounds, and it was not difficult for him to find several sculptors who a.s.sumed, each and all of them, certain parts, either a statue or bas-relief. For the princ.i.p.al statue of Cavour, it was the intention, I know not whether of Cipolla or the Giunta Comunale, that I should make it, but their reiterated request I did not think well to accept.

In the meantime, in Turin there began to be a sort of persistent, dull warfare against Cipolla's design. All sorts of possible and imaginable doubts were raised as to its general character, meaning, proportions, and effect. That excellent artist, Professor Cipolla, proposed to put an end to all this talk by setting up in relief, in largish proportions, a model of his so-much-contested design. Would that he had never done so!

The aversion to it grew beyond bounds, and p.r.o.nounced itself by means of the press to such a degree, that the Giunta thought it best no longer to intrust him with the commission for the work; for, by virtue of an article in the programme for this compet.i.tion, the committee were not in the least tied down to commit the execution of the monument to the gainer of the prize at the compet.i.tion, having left itself full and entire liberty of action. From this began a sequel of remonstrances and appeals on the part of the artist, and answers backed by law on the part of the commission, which was then broken up and another formed, for the purpose of studying anew the whole affair.

[Sidenote: THE CAVOUR MONUMENT GIVEN TO ME.]

I hurry over these things quickly as they come to me and as my memory has retained them after many years, without searching amongst letters, newspapers, or elsewhere, wishing, as I have done until now, to make use only of my memory.

The new Giunta, presided over by my ill.u.s.trious and lamented friend Count Federigo Sclopis, took up this tangled affair, discussed in so many ways, and came to the determination of not having any more compet.i.tion. They decided that the best thing to be done was to choose an artist, and order the work directly from him, leaving him free to determine the rendering of the subject, the size of the monument, the materials to be employed, and choice of the site, and all other matters, except, naturally, as to price and time,--which latter could be but short, owing to the two years that had pa.s.sed in compet.i.tions! The choice fell on me, who was a thousand miles away from thinking of such a thing. However, before saying a word to me, and much less, writing to me, I was interrogated by a most estimable person if I would accept that work, and I answered at once that I would not: in the first place, because the subject was a difficult one, on account of its purely political significance,--so extraneous, not to say tiresome, to my nature and studies; in the second place, because, having been one of the judges on that commission, it did not seem delicate to accept it; and finally, because I thought Vela's design most praiseworthy. But neither my refusal nor the reasons I put forth availed to alter the resolution they had now taken to make me accept the work, which, for the matter of that, if it presented great difficulties, and even rather rough ones, in the rendering of its great conception, yet offered a most rare opportunity, that would have flattered many other artists of more ambitious hope than I, who have always been temperate. With all this, however, I should always have replied in the negative, had not a gentle and most n.o.ble lady begged me to accept, touching on certain family affections that have always found in me an echo of a.s.sent.

[Sidenote: I ACCEPT THE COMMISSION.]

I accepted this commission, therefore, not blinding myself to the great difficulties that I was going to encounter, or the many little annoyances that I should undergo on account of the disappointed hopes of those who had competed for the work. I saw and felt all the seriousness of my undertaking, and thought of nothing else but carrying it out most conscientiously. I asked for eight years' time, which will not appear much, to execute the work; but I was begged to be satisfied with six, and I wrote my adhesion, still declaring in the contract that it would be impossible for me to complete it in that short time. Although I worked with all possible energy, and provided myself with additional workmen besides my own usual ones, yet the monument could not be finished and put in its place until after the eight years that I had asked for.

[Sidenote: DESCRIPTION OF MY DESIGN.]

My composition of the architectural part of the monument was a quadrangular base, with two spherical bodies on each side, whereon reposed another base, with the corners cut off, that sustained the princ.i.p.al group of Italy and Cavour. In front, on the lower base, is the half-reclining figure representing Right in the act of rising, who leans with the right hand on a broken yoke, and clenches the left on his breast in a menacing att.i.tude. His head and back are covered by a lion's skin, signifying that right is strength. Opposite is Duty, in a quiet att.i.tude of repose. His head is crowned by a wreath of olives, signifying that in the fulfilment of duty peace is to be found; his right elbow rests on a block, where, on the two sides exposed to view, are sculptured in bas-relief the two extremes of human activity. On one of these there is a king distributing a crown and prizes to a virtuous man, whilst behind him there is a chained delinquent undergoing his penalty; and on the other there is a husbandman ploughing the ground. On the two lateral sides there are two groups. That on the right is of Politics, with two little genii, Revolution and Diplomacy. Politics is seated, but alert, and almost in the act of rising: her head is turned to the little genius of Diplomacy, who has unfolded the treaties of 1815, and is gravely showing it to her with his right hand, whilst with his left he hides behind him a sword and olive-branch, demonstrating that he brings with him either war or peace. The other little genius of Revolution, in the act of wishing to dash forward, is held back by Politics, who keeps her eyes on him, and, with a caressing expression, tries to temper his ardour; one of his feet rests on a fragment of medieval architecture, and he holds in his right hand a brand, the symbol of destruction. The group on the left is of Independence, tightly clasping in her embrace the little genius of the Provinces, at whose feet still lies a link of his chain of captivity. Independence has Roman sandals on her feet, and a warrior's helmet on her head; her right arm is uplifted, and she holds a broken chain in her hand, in the act of dashing it from her. The other genius is that of Unity, crowned by an oak-wreath; he holds the fasces, to show that union is strength. The princ.i.p.al group stands up on the top, and represents Cavour, wrapped in his funereal mantle. Italy, at his side, in the act of rising from her prostration, is offering him the civic crown, with expressions of grat.i.tude, more decidedly expressed by her left arm, by which she holds her great politician tenderly around the waist; whilst he, with kindly act, shows the people a chart, on which is written his famous formula, "_Libera Chiesa in libero Stato_," or free Church in free State. On the two facades of the great base are two bas-reliefs in bronze. In one of these is portrayed the return from the Crimea of the Sardinian troops, who, by Cavour's advice, took part, in union with France and England, in the war against Russia, to put a check to the ambitious designs of that Power in the East. The other bas-relief represents the Congress of Paris, where for the first time, on account of Cavour, Italy's voice was listened to.

[Sidenote: DESCRIPTION OF THIS MONUMENT.]

The architectural part is made in rose granite of Baveno; the ornaments--that is to say, the arms, cornices, and trophies--and the statues are in clear white marble of Ca.n.a.l Grande, which withstands all attacks of weather. The entire monument is elevated on three steps, and surrounded by a garden enclosed by railing.

The inscriptions are: On the front, "To Cammillo Cavour, born in Turin the 10th of August 1810, died the 6th of June 1861." On the side over the Politics, "_Audace prudente_;" over the Independence, "_L'Italia libero_;" and behind, "_Gli Italiani, auspice Torino_." These inscriptions are by Professor Michele Coppino.

CHAPTER XX.

ALLEGORIES IN ART--THE MONGA MONUMENT AT VERONA--OF MY LATE DAUGHTER LUISINA--HER DEATH--HOW I WAS ROBBED--MONSIGNORE ARCHBISHOP LIMBERTI'S CHARITABLE PROJECT--ONE OF MY COLLEAGUES--NICOLo PUCCINI AND THE STATUE OF CARDINAL FORTEGUERRI--CESARE SIGHINOLFI--CARDINAL CORSI, ARCHBISHOP OF PISA.

I should now feel inclined to speak at length of the troubles, the thoughts, and of the opposition that I had to encounter during eight years, the grimaces and the miserable enmities of fickle, unstable friends and ungenerous enemies; but I must keep silent, as I have been thus far on all such matters, because my intentions and my works being known to all, others may judge them. Then I also remember a wise warning that was given me when I was quite little, which is never to satisfy any desire or impulse to give vent to personal resentment, and I have always found myself the better for it. In such cases, silence has two advantages,--that of leaving one's own soul at peace, and of not satisfying those who would take pleasure in hearing us complain.

Only on one thing I will not be silent, because this does not concern me, but is a principle in art. I was reproved for having used allegorical figures in Cavour's monument, it being a.s.serted that as the subject was entirely a modern one, and could not bear allegory, it was inopportune and improper. To which I answered, that when the subject permitted, it was well not to think even of allegories. If they had said to me, "A memorial of Count Cavour is wanted, make us a statue," nothing would have been easier. A portrait-statue dressed in the clothes he wore, one or two bas-reliefs on the base, and a brief inscription, would have been enough; and, I repeat, nothing would have been easier. It was not this, however, that the commission required for Cavour's monument.

The commission desired that the whole of his character and intentions, the tenacity of his will, the greatness of his propositions, and the benefits obtained therefrom, should be portrayed. Now, how to explain this with real historical figures, or, as they say, in living art? As if a complex idea expressed by one or more figures, as is the case with allegory, is dead art! Oh, do me the famous pleasure, you irritating aesthetics, to go and prattle to babes! But don't speak to them of Phidias, Zeuxis, Alcamenes, and others, of that dead art that is now more alive than it ever was; nor of Giotto, nor of Giovanni and Andrea Pisani, nor of Raphael, nor of Michael Angelo, and many more, for they might find you out in your error. I repeat, this does not concern me or my work in the least, but it bears on a principle, and is a question that has been many times ventilated and resolved by the best thinkers in the way of argument, and by artists, who were not blockheads, in their works.

[Sidenote: HISTORICAL FIGURES AND ALLEGORIES.]

From the n.o.ble Signora Augusta Albertini of Verona, through my friend Aleardo Aleardi, I had an order for a monument to her family, an extremely painful subject. The Signora Albertini had lost, one by one, all her family--father, mother, brothers, sisters, all--and she had alone survived; alone, but with the bitterly sweet memory of those she had loved so much, and the desire to erect a monument to them. Some time before, she had given the commission to a young Veronese sculptor of great promise, Torquato della Torre, and they tell me that he had already made a sketch; but shortly after, the young sculptor died, and after a long time had gone by I undertook to make this monument. Here is the description of it. On a quadrangular conical base there is placed a group consisting of the Angel of Death seated, and prostrated at his feet the only survivor of the family, waiting, as it were, after the havoc made by that angel in her family, for her turn to fall a victim.

The angel, seated on a fragment of an antique frieze, to denote that he is superior to time and the pomps of humanity, is crowned with cypress, and has a pained expression, as if he deplored the office that Divine Justice had ordered him to fulfil; the exterminating sword is still in his hand, but the point is lowered. On the base is a bas-relief representing the dead members of that family; and as they died at brief intervals the one from the other, as if Death had blown them down with her breath as the wind overthrows the trees in the country, so they are laid out, shoulder to shoulder, by each other. A little angel hovers in the air near them with hands clasped in prayer, and in the background, on the horizon line, one perceives Verona. The bas-relief is in bronze, and its colours add seriousness and sadness to the scene. On the sides, and again in bronze, are sculptured two wreaths of cypress, so that this first base on the plinth seems as if it were entirely made of bronze; the upper part, on which the inscription is engraved and the group stands, is in granite. This monument is at the end of the first nave on the right in the cemetery at Verona.

[Sidenote: MONUMENT TO THE FAMILY ALBERTINI.]

I said in the beginning of these memoirs, that I wrote not only for young artists desirous of knowing something of my life, my works, and the principles that have been my guide in art and my intercourse with my fellow-beings, but also to leave to my family a remembrance of my feeling and affection for them. And now that it behoves me to speak of one of our greatest sorrows--that is, of the loss of my most beloved daughter Luisina--I know that I am doing what my dear ones desire, however sad it may be; therefore I warn those not caring for this theme to pa.s.s on.

[Sidenote: DEATH OF MY DAUGHTER LUISINA.]

I would that I could divest myself of all my defects to speak of Gigina.

I would that this page which I consecrate to her memory breathed a little of the sweetly chaste love that showed itself in every act, every word, and every look of hers. I would that I could simplify my style, temper and purify my words, that they might sound sadly sweet, pure, and serene, as were her words, her looks, and her mind. But I greatly fear that I shall not succeed in giving even a feeble idea of that dear child; I fear, because purity and chast.i.ty of imagery and simplicity of words have in some measure vanished with my youth and ambition--the pa.s.sion and love for renown have perhaps clouded the clearness of mind wherein was reflected the true and the good. I shall also not succeed, because the innate beauty of that sweet creature was not fully revealed to me, for the confidence existing between a daughter and her father is always modified by respect; and so it is bereft of those intimate and delicate traits which are its sweetest perfume. My family will read these words on our beloved Luisina, and supply with their loving memory where I fail in my littleness. My son-in-law, Antonino, wrote of her with the intelligence of love; and several of my friends in condoling with me rendered her image more beautiful and more amiable. Yet notwithstanding all this, I feel a desire to return to that dear little angel, were it for nothing else but to rejuvenate and sanctify that sorrow.