Val d'Arno Part 3

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE IV.--NORMAN IMAGERY.]

summer dawn. Here, clearly, is quite a new state of things for the Holy Father of Christendom to consider, during such wholesome horse-exercise.

59. Again; the refinements of new art are represented by France--centrally by St. Louis with his Sainte Chapelle. Happily, I am able to lay on your table to-day--having placed it three years ago in your educational series--a leaf of a Psalter, executed for St. Louis himself. He and his artists are scarcely out of their savage life yet, and have no notion of adorning the Psalms better than by pictures of long-necked cranes, long-eared rabbits, long-tailed lions, and red and white goblins putting their tongues out. [1] But in refinement of touch, in beauty of colour, in the human faculties of order and grace, they are long since, evidently, past the flint and bone stage,--refined enough, now,--subtle enough, now, to learn anything that is pretty and fine, whether in theology or any other matter.

[Footnote 1: I cannot go to the expense of engraving this most subtle example; but Plate IV. shows the average conditions of temper and imagination in religious ornamental work of the time.]

60. Lastly, the new principle of Exchange is represented by Lombardy and Venice, to such purpose that your Merchant and Jew of Venice, and your Lombard of Lombard Street, retain some considerable influence on your minds, even to this day.

And in the exact midst of all such transition, behold, Etruria with her Pisans--her Florentines,--receiving, resisting, and reigning over all: pillaging the Saracens of their marbles--binding the French bishops in silver chains;--shattering the towers of German tyranny into small pieces,--building with strange jewellery the belfry tower for newly-conceived Christianity;--and, in sacred picture, and sacred song, reaching the height, among nations, most pa.s.sionate, and most pure.

I must close my lecture without indulging myself yet, by addition of detail; requesting you, before we next meet, to fix these general outlines in your minds, so that, without disturbing their distinctness, I may trace in the sequel the relations of Italian Art to these political and religious powers; and determine with what force of pa.s.sionate sympathy, or fidelity of resigned obedience, the Pisan artists, father and son, executed the indignation of Florence and fulfilled the piety of Orvieto.

LECTURE III.

SHIELD AND Ap.r.o.n.

61. I laid before you, in my last lecture, first lines of the chart of Italian history in the thirteenth century, which I hope gradually to fill with colour, and enrich, to such degree as may be sufficient for all comfortable use. But I indicated, as the more special subject of our immediate study, the nascent power of liberal thought, and liberal art, over dead tradition and rude workmanship.

To-day I must ask you to examine in greater detail the exact relation of this liberal art to the illiberal elements which surrounded it.

62. You do not often hear me use that word "Liberal" in any favourable sense. I do so now, because I use it also in a very narrow and exact sense. I mean that the thirteenth century is, in Italy's year of life, her 17th of March. In the light of it, she a.s.sumes her toga virilis; and it is sacred to her G.o.d Liber.

63. To her G.o.d _Liber_,--observe: not Dionusos, still less Bacchus, but her own ancient and simple deity. And if you have read with some care the statement I gave you, with Carlyle's help, of the moment and manner of her change from savageness to dexterity, and from rudeness to refinement of life, you will hear, familiar as the lines are to you, the invocation in the first Georgic with a new sense of its meaning:--

"Vos, O clarissima mundi Lumina, labentem coelo quae ducitis annum, Liber, et alma Ceres; vestro si munere tellus Chaoniam pingui glandem mutavit arista, Poculaqu' inventis Acheloia miscuit uvis, Munera vestra cano."

These gifts, innocent, rich, full of life, exquisitely beautiful in order and grace of growth, I have thought best to symbolize to you, in the series of types of the power of the Greek G.o.ds, placed in your educational series, by the blossom of the wild strawberry; which in rising from its trine cl.u.s.ter of trine leaves,--itself as beautiful as a white rose, and always single on its stalk, like an ear of corn, yet with a succeeding blossom at its side, and bearing a fruit which is as distinctly a group of seeds as an ear of corn itself, and yet is the pleasantest to taste of all the pleasant things prepared by nature for the food of men, [1]--may accurately symbolize, and help you to remember, the conditions of this liberal and delightful, yet entirely modest and orderly, art, and thought.

[Footnote 1: I am sorry to pack my sentences together in this confused way. But I have much to say; and cannot always stop to polish or adjust it as I used to do.]

64. You will find in the fourth of my inaugural lectures, at the 98th paragraph, this statement,--much denied by modern artists and authors, but nevertheless quite unexceptionally true,--that the entire vitality of art depends upon its having for object either to _state a true thing_, or _adorn a serviceable one_. The two functions of art in Italy, in this entirely liberal and virescent phase of it,--virgin art, we may call it, retaining the most literal sense of the words virga and virgo,--are to manifest the doctrines of a religion which now, for the first time, men had soul enough to understand; and to adorn edifices or dress, with which the completed politeness of daily life might be invested, its convenience completed, and its decorous and honourable pride satisfied.

65. That pride was, among the men who gave its character to the century, in honourableness of private conduct, and useful magnificence of public art. Not of private or domestic art: observe this very particularly.

"Such was the simplicity of private manners,"--(I am now quoting Sismondi, but with the fullest ratification that my knowledge enables me to give,)--"and the economy of the richest citizens, that if a city enjoyed repose only for a few years, it doubled its revenues, and found itself, in a sort, enc.u.mbered with its riches. The Pisans knew neither of the luxury of the table, nor that of furniture, nor that of a number of servants; yet they were sovereigns of the whole of Sardinia, Corsica, and Elba, had colonies at St. Jean d'Acre and Constantinople, and their merchants in those cities carried on the most extended commerce with the Saracens and Greeks." [1]

[Footnote 1: Sismondi; French translation, Brussels, 1838; vol. ii., p.

275.]

66. "And in that time," (I now give you my own translation of Giovanni Villani,) "the citizens of Florence lived sober, and on coa.r.s.e meats, and at little cost; and had many customs and playfulnesses which were blunt and rude; and they dressed themselves and their wives with coa.r.s.e cloth; many wore merely skins, with no lining, and _all_ had only leathern buskins; [1] and the Florentine ladies, plain shoes and stockings with no ornaments; and the best of them were content with a close gown of coa.r.s.e scarlet of Cyprus, or camlet girded with an old-fashioned clasp-girdle; and a mantle over all, lined with vaire, with a hood above; and that, they threw over their heads. The women of lower rank were dressed in the same manner, with coa.r.s.e green Cambray cloth; fifty pounds was the ordinary bride's dowry, and a hundred or a hundred and fifty would in those times have been held brilliant, ('isfolgorata,' dazzling, with sense of dissipation or extravagance;) and most maidens were twenty or more before they married. Of such gross customs were then the Florentines; but of good faith, and loyal among themselves and in their state; and in their coa.r.s.e life, and poverty, did more and braver things than are done in our days with more refinement and riches."

[Footnote 1: I find this note for expansion on the margin of my lecture, but had no time to work it out:--'This lower cla.s.s should be either barefoot, or have strong shoes--wooden clogs good. Pretty Boulogne sabot with purple stockings. Waterloo Road--little girl with her hair in curlpapers,--a coral necklace round her neck--the neck bare--and her boots of thin stuff, worn out, with her toes coming through, and rags hanging from her heels,--a profoundly accurate type of English national and political life. Your hair in curlpapers--borrowing tongs from every foreign nation, to pinch you into manners. The rich ostentatiously wearing coral about the bare neck; and the poor--cold as the stones and indecent.']

67. I detain you a moment at the words "scarlet of Cyprus, or camlet."

Observe that camelot (camelet) from _kamaelotae_, camel's skin, is a stuff made of silk and camel's hair originally, afterwards of silk and wool. At Florence, the camel's hair would always have reference to the Baptist, who, as you know, in Lippi's picture, wears the camel's skin itself, made into a Florentine dress, such as Villani has just described, "col ta.s.sello sopra," with the hood above. Do you see how important the word "Capulet" is becoming to us, in its main idea?

68. Not in private nor domestic art, therefore, I repeat to you, but in useful magnificence of public art, these citizens expressed their pride:--and that public art divided itself into two branches--civil, occupied upon ethic subjects of sculpture and painting; and religious, occupied upon scriptural or traditional histories, in treatment of which, nevertheless, the nascent power and liberality of thought were apparent, not only in continual amplification and ill.u.s.tration of scriptural story by the artist's own invention, but in the acceptance of profane mythology, as part of the Scripture, or tradition, given by Divine inspiration.

69. Nevertheless, for the provision of things necessary in domestic life, there developed itself, together with the group of inventive artists exercising these n.o.bler functions, a vast body of craftsmen, and, literally, _man_ufacturers, workers by hand, who a.s.sociated themselves, as chance, tradition, or the accessibility of material directed, in towns which thenceforward occupied a leading position in commerce, as producers of a staple of excellent, or perhaps inimitable, quality; and the linen or cambric of Cambray, the lace of Mechlin, the wool of Worstead, and the steel of Milan, implied the tranquil and hereditary skill of mult.i.tudes, living in wealthy industry, and humble honour.

70. Among these artisans, the weaver, the ironsmith, the goldsmith, the carpenter, and the mason necessarily took the princ.i.p.al rank, and on their occupations the more refined arts were wholesomely based, so that the five businesses may be more completely expressed thus:

The weaver and embroiderer, The ironsmith and armourer, The goldsmith and jeweller, The carpenter and engineer, The stonecutter and painter.

You have only once to turn over the leaves of Lionardo's sketch book, in the Ambrosian Library, to see how carpentry is connected with engineering,--the architect was always a stonecutter, and the stonecutter not often practically separate, as yet, from the painter, and never so in general conception of function. You recollect, at a much later period, Kent's description of Cornwall's steward:

"KENT. You cowardly rascal!--nature disclaims in thee, a tailor made thee!

CORNWALL. Thou art a strange fellow--a tailor make a man?

KENT. Ay, sir; a stonecutter, or a painter, could not have made him so ill; though they had been but two hours at the trade."

71. You may consider then this group of artizans with the merchants, as now forming in each town an important Tiers Etat, or Third State of the people, occupied in service, first, of the ecclesiastics, who in monastic bodies inhabited the cloisters round each church; and, secondly, of the knights, who, with their retainers, occupied, each family their own fort, in allied defence of their appertaining streets.

72. A Third Estate, indeed; but adverse alike to both the others, to Montague as to Capulet, when they become disturbers of the public peace; and having a pride of its own,--hereditary still, but consisting in the inheritance of skill and knowledge rather than of blood,--which expressed the sense of such inheritance by taking its name habitually from the master rather than the sire; and which, in its natural antagonism to dignities won only by violence, or recorded only by heraldry, you may think of generally as the race whose bearing is the Ap.r.o.n, instead of the shield.

73. When, however, these two, or in perfect subdivision three, bodies of men, lived in harmony,--the knights remaining true to the State, the clergy to their faith, and the workmen to their craft,--conditions of national force were arrived at, under which all the great art of the middle ages was accomplished. The pride of the knights, the avarice of the priests, and the gradual abas.e.m.e.nt of character in the craftsman, changing him from a citizen able to wield either tools in peace or weapons in war, to a dull tradesman, forced to pay mercenary troops to defend his shop door, are the direct causes of common ruin towards the close of the sixteenth century.

74. But the deep underlying cause of the decline in national character itself, was the exhaustion of the Christian faith. None of its practical claims were avouched either by reason or experience; and the imagination grew weary of sustaining them in despite of both. Men could not, as their powers of reflection became developed, steadily conceive that the sins of a life might be done away with, by finishing it with Mary's name on the lips; nor could tradition of miracle for ever resist the personal discovery, made by each rude disciple by himself, that he might pray to all the saints for a twelvemonth together, and yet not get what he asked for.

75. The Reformation succeeded in proclaiming that existing Christianity was a lie; but subst.i.tuted no theory of it which could be more rationally or credibly sustained; and ever since, the religion of educated persons throughout Europe has been dishonest or ineffectual; it is only among the labouring peasantry that the grace of a pure Catholicism, and the patient simplicities of the Puritan, maintain their imaginative dignity, or a.s.sert their practical use.

76. The existence of the n.o.bler arts, however, involves the harmonious life and vital faith of the three cla.s.ses whom we have just distinguished; and that condition exists, more or less disturbed, indeed, by the vices inherent in each cla.s.s, yet, on the whole, energetically and productively, during the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. But our present subject being Architecture only, I will limit your attention altogether to the state of society in the great age of architecture, the thirteenth century.

A great age in all ways; but most notably so in the correspondence it presented, up to a just and honourable point, with the utilitarian energy of our own days.

77. The increase of wealth, the safety of industry, and the conception of more convenient furniture of life, to which we must attribute the rise of the entire artist cla.s.s, were accompanied, in that century, by much enlargement in the conception of useful public works: and--not by _private_ enterprise,--that idle persons might get dividends out of the public pocket,--but by _public_ enterprise,--each citizen paying down at once his share of what was necessary to accomplish the benefit to the State,--great architectural and engineering efforts were made for the common service. Common, observe; but not, in our present sense, republican. One of the most ludicrous sentences ever written in the blindness of party spirit is that of Sismondi, in which he declares, thinking of these public works only, that 'the architecture of the thirteenth century is entirely republican.' The architecture of the thirteenth century is, in the ma.s.s of it, simply baronial or ecclesiastical; it is of castles, palaces, or churches; but it is true that splendid civic works were also accomplished by the vigour of the newly risen popular power.

"The ca.n.a.l named Naviglio Graude, which brings the waters of the Ticino to Milan, traversing a distance of thirty miles, was undertaken in 1179, recommended in 1257, and, soon after, happily terminated; in it still consists the wealth of a vast extent of Lombardy. At the same time the town of Milan rebuilt its walls, which were three miles round, and had sixteen marble gates, of magnificence which might have graced the capital of all Italy. The Genovese, in 1276 and 1283, built their two splendid docks, and the great wall of their quay; and in 1295 finished the n.o.ble aqueduct which brings pure and abundant waters to their city from a great distance among their mountains. There is not a single town in Italy which at the same time did not undertake works of this kind; and while these larger undertakings were in progress, stone bridges were built across the rivers, the streets and piazzas were paved with large slabs of stone, and every free government recognized the duty of providing for the convenience of the citizens." [1]

[Footnote 1: Simondi, vol ii. chap. 10.]

78. The necessary consequence of this enthusiasm in useful building, was the formation of a vast body of craftsmen and architects; corresponding in importance to that which the railway, with its a.s.sociated industry, has developed in modern times, but entirely different in personal character, and relation to the body politic.

Their personal character was founded on the accurate knowledge of their business in all respects; the ease and pleasure of unaffected invention; and the true sense of power to do everything better than it had ever been yet done, coupled with general contentment in life, and in its vigour and skill.

It is impossible to overrate the difference between such a condition of mind, and that of the modern artist, who either does not know his business at all, or knows it only to recognize his own inferiority to every former workman of distinction.

79. Again: the political relation of these artificers to the State was that of a caste entirely separate from the n.o.blesse; [1] paid for their daily work what was just, and competing with each other to supply the best article they could for the money. And it is, again, impossible to overrate the difference between such a social condition, and that of the artists of to-day, struggling to occupy a position of equality in wealth with the n.o.blesse,--paid irregular and monstrous prices by an entirely ignorant and selfish public; and competing with each other to supply the worst article they can for the money.

[Footnote 1: The giving of knighthood to Jacopo della Quercia for his lifelong service to Siena was not the elevation of a dexterous workman, but grace to a faithful citizen.]