Val d'Arno Part 13

277. II. The failures of Edward, or of twenty Edwards, would have done Florence no harm, had she remained true to herself, and to her neighbouring states. Her merchants only fall by their own increasing avarice; and above all by the mercantile form of pillage, usury. The idea that money could beget money, though more absurd than alchemy, had yet an apparently practical and irresistibly tempting confirmation in the wealth of villains, and the success of fools. Alchemy, in its day, led to pure chemistry; and calmly yielded to the science it had fostered. But all wholesome indignation against usurers was prevented, in the Christian mind, by wicked and cruel religious hatred of the race of Christ. In the end, Shakspeare himself, in his fierce effort against the madness, suffered himself to miss his mark by making his usurer a Jew: the Franciscan inst.i.tution of the Mount of Pity failed before the l.u.s.t of Lombardy, and the logic of Augsburg; and, to this day, the worship of the Immaculate Virginity of Money, mother of the Omnipotence of Money, is the Protestant form of Madonna worship.

278. III. The usurer's fang, and the debtor's shame, might both have been trodden down under the feet of Italy, had her knights and her workmen remained true to each other. But the brotherhoods of Italy were not of Cain to Abel--but of Cain to Cain. Every man's sword was against his fellow. Pisa sank before Genoa at Meloria, the Italian aegos-Potamos; Genoa before Venice in the war of Chiozza, the Italian siege of Syracuse. Florence sent her Brunelleschi to divert the waves of Serchio against the walls of Lucca; Lucca her Castruccio, to hold mock tournaments before the gates of vanquished Florence. The weak modern Italian reviles or bewails the acts of foreign races, as if his destiny had depended upon these; let him at least a.s.sume the pride, and bear the grief, of remembering that, among all the virgin cities of his country, there has not been one which would not ally herself with a stranger, to effect a sister's ruin.

279. Lastly. The impartiality with which I have stated the acts, so far as known to me, and impulses, so far as discernible by me, of the contending Church and Empire, cannot but give offence, or provoke suspicion, in the minds of those among you who are accustomed to hear the cause of Religion supported by eager disciples, or attacked by confessed enemies. My confession of hostility would be open, if I were an enemy indeed; but I have never possessed the knowledge, and have long ago been cured of the pride, which makes men fervent in witness for the Church's virtue, or insolent in declamation against her errors. The will of Heaven, which grants the grace and ordains the diversities of Religion, needs no defence, and sustains no defeat, by the humours of men; and our first business in relation to it is to silence our wishes, and to calm our fears. If, in such modest and disciplined temper, you arrange your increasing knowledge of the history of mankind, you will have no final difficulty in distinguishing the operation of the Master's law from the consequences of the disobedience to it which He permits; nor will you respect the law less, because, accepting only the obedience of love, it neither hastily punishes, nor pompously rewards, with what men think reward or chastis.e.m.e.nt. Not always under the feet of Korah the earth is rent; not always at the call of Elijah the clouds gather; but the guarding mountains for ever stand round about Jerusalem; and the rain, miraculous evermore, makes green the fields for the evil and the good.

280. And if you will fix your minds only on the conditions of human life which the Giver of it demands, "He hath shown thee, oh man, what is good, and what doth thy Lord require of thee, but to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy G.o.d," you will find that such obedience is always acknowledged by temporal blessing. If, turning from the manifest miseries of cruel ambition, and manifest wanderings of insolent belief, you summon to your thoughts rather the state of unrecorded mult.i.tudes, who laboured in silence, and adored in humility, widely as the snows of Christendom brought memory of the Birth of Christ, or her spring sunshine, of His Resurrection, you may know that the promise of the Bethlehem angels has been literally fulfilled; and will pray that your English fields, joyfully as the banks of Arno, may still dedicate their pure lilies to St. Mary of the Flower.

APPENDIX.

(NOTES ON THE PLATES ILl.u.s.tRATING THIS VOLUME.)

In the delivery of the preceding Lectures, some account was given of the theologic design of the sculptures by Giovanni Pisano at Orvieto, which I intended to have printed separately, and in more complete form, in this Appendix. But my strength does not now admit of my fulfilling the half of my intentions, and I find myself, at present, tired, and so dead in feeling, that I have no quickness in interpretation, or skill in description of emotional work. I must content myself, therefore, for the time, with a short statement of the points which I wish the reader to observe in the Plates, and which were left unnoticed in the text.

The frontispiece is the best copy I can get, in permanent materials, of a photograph of the course of the Arno, through Pisa, before the old banks were destroyed. Two arches of the Ponte-a-Mare which was carried away in the inundation of 1870, are seen in the distance; the church of La Spina, in its original position overhanging the river; and the b.u.t.tressed and rugged walls of the mediaeval sh.o.r.e. Never more, any of these, to be seen in reality, by living eyes.

PLATE I.--A small portion of a photograph of Nicolo Pisano's Adoration of the Magi, on the pulpit of the Pisan Baptistery. The intensely Greek character of the heads, and the severely impetuous chiselling (learned from Late Roman rapid work), which drives the lines of the drapery nearly straight, may be seen better in a fragment of this limited measure than in the crowded ma.s.sing of the entire subject. But it may be observed also that there is both a thoughtfulness and a tenderness in the features, whether of the Virgin or the attendant angel, which already indicate an aim beyond that of Greek art.

PLATE II--The Pulpit of the Baptistery (of which the preceding plate represents a portion). I have only given this general view for convenience of reference. Beautiful photographs of the subject on a large scale are easily attainable.

PLATE III.--The Fountain of Perugia. Executed from a sketch by Mr.

Arthur Severn. The perspective of the steps is not quite true; we both tried to get it right, but found that it would be a day or two's work, to little purpose, and so let them go at hazard. The inlaid pattern behind is part of the older wall of the cathedral; the late door is of course inserted.

PLATE IV., LETTER E.--From Norman Bible in the British Museum; showing the moral temper which regulated common ornamentation in the twelfth century.

PLATE V.--Door of the Baptistery at Pisa. The reader must note that, although these plates are necessarily, in fineness of detail, inferior to the photographs from which they are taken, they have the inestimable advantage of permanence, and will not fade away into spectres when the book is old. I am greatly puzzled by the richness of the current ornamentation on the main pillars, as opposed to the general severity of design. I never can understand how the men who indulged in this flowing luxury of foliage were so stern in their masonry and figure-draperies.

PLATE VI.--Part of the lintel of the door represented on Plate V., enlarged. I intended, in the Lecture on Marble Couchant, to have insisted, at some length, on the decoration of the lintel and side-posts, as one of the most important phases of mystic ecclesiastical sculpture. But I find the materials furnished by Lucca, Pisa, and Florence, for such an essay are far too rich to be examined cursorily; the treatment even of this single lintel could scarcely be enough explained in the close of the Lecture. I must dwell on some points of it now.

Look back to Section 175 in "Aratra Pentelici," giving statement of the four kinds of relief in sculpture. The uppermost of these plinths is of the kind I have called 'round relief'; you might strike it out on a coin. The lower is 'foliate relief'; it looks almost as if the figures had been cut out of one layer of marble, and laid against another behind it.

The uppermost, at the distance of my diagram, or in nature itself, would scarcely be distinguished at a careless glance from an egg-and-arrow moulding. You could not have a more simple or forcible ill.u.s.tration of my statement in the first chapter of "Aratra," that the essential business of sculpture is to produce a series of agreeable bosses or rounded surfaces; to which, if possible, some meaning may afterwards be attached. In the present instance, every egg becomes an angel, or evangelist, and every arrow a lily, or a wing. [1] The whole is in the most exquisitely finished Byzantine style.

[Footnote: In the contemporary south door of the Duomo of Genoa, the Greek moulding is used without any such transformation.]

I am not sure of being right in my interpretation of the meaning of these figures; but I think there can be little question about it. There are eleven altogether; the three central, Christ with His mother and St.

Joseph; then, two evangelists, with two alternate angels, on each side.

Each of these angels carries a rod, with a fleur-de-lys termination; their wings decorate the intermediate ridges (formed, in a pure Greek moulding, by the arrows); and, behind the heads of all the figures, there is now a circular recess; once filled, I doubt not, by a plate of gold. The Christ, and the Evangelists, all carry books, of which each has a mosaic, or intaglio ornament, in the shape of a cross. I could not show you a more severe or perfectly representative piece of _architectural_ sculpture.

The heads of the eleven figures are as simply decorative as the ball flowers are in our English Gothic tracery; the slight irregularity produced by different gesture and character giving precisely the sort of change which a good designer wishes to see in the parts of a consecutive ornament.

The moulding closes at each extremity with a palm-tree, correspondent in execution with those on coins of Syracuse; for the rest, the interest of it consists only in these slight variations of att.i.tude by which the figures express wonder or concern at some event going on in their presence. They are looking down; and I do not doubt, are intended to be the heavenly witnesses of the story engraved on the stone below,--The Life and Death of the Baptist.

The lower stone on which this is related, is a model of skill in Fiction, properly so called. In Fictile art, in Fictile history, it is equally exemplary. 'Feigning' or 'affecting' in the most exquisite way by fastening intensely on the princ.i.p.al points.

Ask yourselves what are the princ.i.p.al points to be insisted on, in the story of the Baptist.

He came, "preaching the Baptism of Repentance for the remission of sins." That is his Advice, or Order-preaching.

And he came, "to bear witness of the Light." "Behold the Lamb of G.o.d, which taketh away the sins of the world." That is his declaration, or revelation-preaching.

And the end of his own life is in the practice of this preaching--if you will think of it--under curious difficulties in both kinds. Difficulties in putting away sin--difficulties in obtaining sight. The first half of the stone begins with the apocalyptic preaching. Christ, represented as in youth, is set under two trees, in the wilderness. St. John is scarcely at first seen; he is only the guide, scarcely the teacher, of the crowd of peoples, nations, and languages, whom he leads, pointing them to the Christ. Without doubt, all these figures have separate meaning. I am too ignorant to interpret it; but observe generally, they are the thoughtful and wise of the earth, not its ruffians or rogues.

This is not, by any means, a general amnesty to blackguards, and an apocalypse to brutes, which St. John is preaching. These are quite the best people he can find to call, or advise. You see many of them carry rolls of paper in their hands, as he does himself. In comparison with the books of the upper cornice, these have special meaning, as throughout Byzantine design.

"Adverte quod patriarchae et prophetse pinguntur c.u.m rotulis in manibus; quidam vero apostoli c.u.m libris, et quidam c.u.m rotulis. Nempe quia ante Christi adventum fides figurative ostendebatur, et quoad multa, in se implicita erat. Ad quod ostendendum patriarchse et prophetae pinguntur c.u.m rotulis, per quos quasi qusedam imperfecta cognitio design atur; quia vero apostoli a Christo perfecte edocti suut, ideo libris, per quos designatur perfecta cognitio, uti possunt."

WILLIAM DURANDUS, quoted by Didron, p. 305.

PLATE VII.--Next to this subject of the preaching comes the Baptism: and then, the circ.u.mstances of St. John's death. First, his declaration to Herod, "It is not lawful for thee to have thy brother's wife:" on which he is seized and carried to prison:--next, Herod's feast,--the consultation between daughter and mother, "What shall I ask?"--the martyrdom, and burial by the disciples. The notable point in the treatment of all these subjects is the quiet and mystic Byzantine dwelling on thought rather than action. In a northern sculpture of this subject, the daughter of Herodias would have been a.s.suredly dancing; and most probably, casting a somersault. With the Byzantine, the debate in her mind is the only subject of interest, and he carves above, the evil angels, laying their hands on the heads, first of Herod and Herodias, and then of Herodias and her daughter.

PLATE VIII.--The issuing of commandment not to eat of the tree of knowledge. (Orvieto Cathedral.)

This, with Plates X. and XII., will give a sufficiently clear conception to any reader who has a knowledge of sculpture, of the principles of Giovanni Pisano's design. I have thought it well worth while to publish opposite two of them, facsimiles of the engravings which profess to represent them in Gruiier's monograph [1] of the Orvieto sculptures; for these outlines will, once for all, and better than any words, show my pupils what is the real virue of mediaeval work,--the power which we medievalists rejoice in it for. Precisely the qualities which are _not_ in the modern drawings, are the essential virtues of the early sculpture. If you like the Gruner outlines best, you need not trouble yourself to go to Orvieto, or anywhere else in Italy. Sculpture, such as those outlines represent, can be supplied to you by the acre, to order, in any modern academician's atelier. But if you like the strange, rude, quaint, Gothic realities (for these photographs are, up to a certain point, a vision of the reality) best; then, don't study mediaeval art under the direction of modern ill.u.s.trators. Look at it--for however short a time, where you can find it--veritable and untouched, however mouldered or shattered. And abhor, as you would the mimicry of your best friend's manners by a fool, all restorations and improving copies. For remember, none but fools think they can restore--none, but worse fools, that they can improve.

[Footnote: The drawings are by some Italian draughtsman, whose name it is no business of mine to notice.]

Examine these outlines, then, with extreme care, and point by point. The things which they have refused or lost, are the things you have to love, in Giovanni Pisano.

I will merely begin the task of examination, to show you how to set about it. Take the head of the commanding Christ. Although inclined forward from the shoulders in the advancing motion of the whole body, the head itself is not stooped; but held entirely upright, the line of forehead sloping backwards. The command is given in calm authority; not in mean anxiety. But this was not expressive enough for the copyist,--"How much better _I_ can show what is meant!" thinks he. So he puts the line of forehead and nose upright; projects the brow out of its straight line; and the expression then becomes,--"Now, be very careful, and mind what I say." Perhaps you like this 'improved' action better?

Be it so; only, it is not Giovanni Pisano's design; but the modern Italian's.

Next, take the head of Eve. It is much missed in the photograph--nearly all the finest lines lost--but enough is got to show Giovanni's mind.

It appears, he liked long-headed people, with sharp chins and straight noses. It might be very wrong of him; but that was his taste. So much so, indeed, that Adam and Eve have,

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE XI.--THE NATIVITY. MODERN ITALIAN.]

both of them, heads not much shorter than one-sixth of their entire height.

Your modern Academy pupil, of course, cannot tolerate this monstrosity.

He indulgently corrects Giovanni, and Adam and Eve have entirely orthodox one-eighth heads, by rule of schools.

But how of Eve's sharp-cut nose and pointed chin, thin lips, and look of quiet but rather surprised attention--not specially reverent, but looking keenly out from under her eyelids, like a careful servant receiving an order?

Well--those are all Giovanni's own notions;--not the least cla.s.sical, nor scientific, nor even like a pretty, sentimental modern woman. Like a Florentine woman--in Giovanni's time--it may be; at all events, very certainly, what Giovanni thought proper to carve.

Now examine your modern edition. An entirely proper Greco-Roman academy plaster bust, with a proper nose, and proper mouth, and a round chin, and an expression of the most solemn reverence; always, of course, of a cla.s.sical description. Very fine, perhaps. But not Giovanni.

After Eve's head, let us look at her feet. Giovanni has his own positive notions about those also. Thin and bony, to excess, the right, undercut all along, so that the profile looks as thin as the mere elongated line on an Etruscan vase; and the right showing the five toes all well separate, nearly straight, and the larger ones almost as long as fingers! the shin bone above carried up in as severe and sharp a curve as the edge of a sword.

Now examine the modern copy. Beautiful little fleshy, Venus-de'-Medici feet and toes--no undercutting to the right foot,--the left having the great-toe properly laid over the second, according to the ordinances of schools and shoes, and a well-developed academic and operatic calf and leg. Again charming, of course. But only according to Mr. Gibson or Mr.

Power--not according to Giovanni.

Farther, and finally, note the delight with which Giovanni has dwelt, though without exaggeration, on the muscles of the breast and ribs in the Adam; while he has subdued all away into virginal severity in Eve.