Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

83. If the painter ever increased in power after this period (he was then forty-three), we have been unable to systematize the improvement. We much doubt whether, in his modes of execution, advance were possible. Men whose merit lies in record of natural facts, increase in knowledge; and men whose merit is in dexterity of hand increase in facility; but we much doubt whether the faculty of design, or force of feeling, increase after the age of twenty-five. By Fra Angelico, who drew always in fear and trembling, dexterous execution had been from the first repudiated; he neither needed nor sought technical knowledge of the form, and the inspiration, to which his power was owing, was not less glowing in youth than in age. The inferiority traceable (we grant) in this Madonna results not from its early date, but from Fra Angelico's incapability, always visible, of drawing the head of life size. He is, in this respect, the exact reverse of Giotto; he was essentially a miniature painter, and never attained the mastery of muscular play in the features necessary in a full-sized drawing. His habit, almost constant, of surrounding the iris of the eye by a sharp black line, is, in small figures, perfectly successful, giving a transparency and tenderness not otherwise expressible. But on a larger scale it gives a stony stare to the eyeball, which not all the tenderness of the brow and mouth can conquer or redeem.

84. Further, in this particular instance, the ear has by accident been set too far back--(Fra Angelico, drawing only from feeling, was liable to gross errors of this kind,--often, however, more beautiful than other men's truths)--and the hair removed in consequence too far off the brow; in other respects the face is very noble--still more so that of the Christ. The child _stands_ upon the Virgin's knees,[9] one hand raised in the usual attitude of benediction, the other holding a globe. The face looks straightforward, quiet, Jupiter-like, and very sublime, owing to the smallness of the features in proportion to the head, the eyes being placed at about three-sevenths of the whole height, leaving four-sevenths for the brow, and themselves only in length about one-sixth of the breadth of the face, half closed, giving a peculiar appearance of repose. The hair is short, golden, symmetrically curled, statuesque in its contour; the mouth tender and full of life: the red cross of the glory about the head of an intense ruby enamel, almost fire color; the dress brown, with golden girdle. In all the treatment Fra Angelico maintains his assertion of the authority of abstract imagination, which, depriving his subject of all material or actual being, contemplates it as retaining qualities eternal only--adorned by incorporeal splendor. The eyes of the beholder are supernaturally unsealed: and to this miraculous vision whatever is of the earth vanishes, and all things are seen endowed with an harmonious glory--the garments falling with strange, visionary grace, glowing with indefinite gold--the walls of the chamber dazzling as of a heavenly city--the mortal forms themselves impressed with divine changelessness--no domesticity--no jest--no anxiety--no expectation--no variety of action or of thought. Love, all fulfilling, and various modes of power, are alone expressed; the Virgin never shows the complacency or petty watchfulness of maternity; she sits serene, supporting the child whom she ever looks upon, as a stranger among strangers; "Behold the handmaid of the Lord" forever written upon her brow.

85. An approach to an exception in treatment is found in the Annunciation of the upper corridor of St. Mark's, most unkindly treated by our author:--

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"Probably the earliest of the series--full of faults, but imbued with the sweetest feeling; there is a look of naive curiosity, mingling with the modest and meek humility of the Virgin, which almost provokes a smile."--iii., 176.

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Many a Sabbath evening of bright summer have we passed in that lonely corridor--but not to the finding of faults, nor the provoking of smiles. The angel is perhaps something less majestic than is usual with the painter; but the Virgin is only the more to be worshiped, because here, for once, set before us in the verity of life. No gorgeous robe is upon her; no lifted throne set for her; the golden border gleams faintly on the dark blue dress; the seat is drawn into the shadow of a lowly loggia. The face is of no strange, far-sought loveliness; the features might even be thought hard, and they are worn with watching, and severe, though innocent. She stoops forward with her arms folded on her bosom: no casting down of eye nor shrinking of the frame in fear; she is too earnest, too self-forgetful for either: wonder and inquiry are there, but chastened and free from doubt; meekness, yet mingled with a patient majesty; peace, yet sorrowfully sealed, as if the promise of the Angel were already underwritten by the prophecy of Simeon. They who pass and repass in the twilight of that solemn corridor, need not the adjuration inscribed beneath:--

"Virginis intactae cum veneris ante figuram
Praetereundo cave ne sileatur Ave."[10]

We in general allow the inferiority of Angelico's fresco to his tempera works; yet even that which of all these latter we think the most radiant, the Annunciation on the reliquary of Santa Maria Novella, would, we believe, if repeatedly compared with this of St. Mark's, in the end have the disadvantage. The eminent value of the tempera paintings results partly from their delicacy of line, and partly from the purity of color and force of decoration of which the material is capable.

86. The passage, to which we have before alluded, respecting Fra Angelico's color in general, is one of the most curious and fanciful in the work:--

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"His coloring, on the other hand, is far more beautiful, although of questionable brilliancy. This will be found invariably the case in minds constituted like his. Spirit and Sense act on each other with livelier reciprocity the closer their approximation, the less intervention there is of Intellect. Hence the most religious and the most sensual painters have always loved the brightest colors--Spiritual Expression and a clearly defined (however inaccurate) outline forming the distinction of the former class; Animal Expression and a confused and uncertain outline (reflecting that lax morality which confounds the limits of light and darkness, right and wrong) of the latter. On the other hand, the more that Intellect, or the spirit of Form, intervenes in its severe precision, the less pure, the paler grow the colors, the nearer they tend to the hue of marble, of the bas-relief. We thus find the purest and brightest colors only in Fra Angelico's pictures, with a general predominance of blue, which we have observed to prevail more or less in so many of the Semi-Byzantine painters, and which, fanciful as it may appear, I cannot but attribute, independently of mere tradition, to an inherent, instinctive sympathy between their mental constitution and the color in question; as that of red, or of blood, may be observed to prevail among painters in whom Sense or Nature predominates over Spirit--for in this, as in all things else, the moral and the material world respond to each other as closely as shadow and substance. But, in Painting as in Morals, perfection implies the due intervention of Intellect between Spirit and Sense--of Form between Expression and Coloring--as a power at once controlling and controlled--and therefore, although acknowledging its fascination, I cannot unreservedly praise the Coloring of Fra Angelico."--Vol. iii., pp. 193, 194.

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87. There is much ingenuity, and some truth, here, but the reader, as in other of Lord Lindsay's speculations, must receive his conclusions with qualification. It is the natural character of strong effects of color, as of high light, to confuse outlines; and it is a necessity in all fine harmonies of color that many tints should merge imperceptibly into their following or succeeding ones:--we believe Lord Lindsay himself would hardly wish to mark the hues of the rainbow into divided zones, or to show its edge, as of an iron arch, against the sky, in order that it might no longer reflect (a reflection of which we profess ourselves up to this moment altogether unconscious) "that lax morality which confounds the limits of right and wrong." Again, there is a character of energy in all warm colors, as of repose in cold, which necessarily causes the former to be preferred by painters of savage subject--that is to say, commonly by the coarsest and most degraded;--but when sensuality is free from ferocity, it leans to blue more than to red (as especially in the flesh tints of Guido), and when intellect prevails over this sensuality, its first step is invariably to put more red into every color, and so "rubor est virtutis color." We hardly think Lord Lindsay would willingly include Luca Giordano among his spiritual painters, though that artist's servant was materially enriched by washing the ultramarine from the brushes with which he painted the Ricardi palace; nor would he, we believe, degrade Ghirlandajo to fellowship with the herd of the sensual, though in the fresco of the vision of Zacharias there are seventeen different reds in large masses, and not a shade of blue. The fact is, there is no color of the spectrum, as there is no note of music, whose key and prevalence may not be made pure in expression, and elevating in influence, by a great and good painter, or degraded to unhallowed purpose by a base one.

88. We are sorry that our author "cannot unreservedly praise the coloring of Angelico;" but he is again curbed by his unhappy system of balanced perfectibility, and must quarrel with the gentle monk because he finds not in him the flames of Giorgione, nor the tempering of Titian, nor the melody of Cagliari. This curb of perfection we took between our teeth from the first, and we will give up our hearts to Angelico without drawback or reservation. His color is, in its sphere and to its purpose, as perfect as human work may be: wrought to radiance beyond that of the ruby and opal, its inartificialness prevents it from arresting the attention it is intended only to direct; were it composed with more science it would become vulgar from the loss of its unconsciousness; if richer, it must have parted with its purity, if deeper, with its joyfulness, if more subdued, with its sincerity. Passages are, indeed, sometimes unsuccessful; but it is to be judged in its rapture, and forgiven in its fall: he who works by law and system may be blamed when he sinks below the line above which he proposes no elevation, but to him whose eyes are on a mark far off, and whose efforts are impulsive, and to the utmost of his strength, we may not unkindly count the slips of his sometime descent into the valley of humiliation.

89. The concluding notice of Angelico is true and interesting, though rendered obscure by useless recurrence to the favorite theory.

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"Such are the surviving works of a painter, who has recently been as unduly extolled as he had for three centuries past been unduly depreciated,--depreciated, through the amalgamation during those centuries of the principle of which he was the representative with baser, or at least less precious matter--extolled, through the recurrence to that principle, in its pure, unsophisticated essence, in the present --in a word, to the simple Imaginative Christianity of the middle ages, as opposed to the complex Reasoning Christianity of recent times. Creeds therefore are at issue, and no exclusive partisan, neither Catholic nor Protestant in the absolute sense of the terms, can fairly appreciate Fra Angelico. Nevertheless, to those who regard society as progressive through the gradual development of the component elements of human nature, and who believe that Providence has accommodated the mind of man, individually, to the perception of half-truths only, in order to create that antagonism from which Truth is generated in the abstract, and by which the progression is effected, his rank and position in art are clear and definite. All that Spirit could achieve by herself, anterior to that struggle with Intellect and Sense which she must in all cases pass through in order to work out her destiny, was accomplished by him. Last and most gifted of a long and imaginative race--the heir of their experience, with collateral advantages which they possessed not--and flourishing at the moment when the transition was actually taking place from the youth to the early manhood of Europe; he gave full, unreserved, and enthusiastic expression to that Love and Hope which had winged the Faith of Christendom in her flight towards heaven for fourteen centuries,--to those yearnings of the Heart and the Imagination which ever precede, in Universal as well as Individual development, the severer and more chastened intelligence of Reason."--Vol. iii., pp. 188-190.

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90. We must again repeat that if our author wishes to be truly serviceable to the schools of England, he must express himself in terms requiring less laborious translation. Clearing the above statement of its mysticism and metaphor, it amounts only to this,--that Fra Angelico was a man of (humanly speaking) _perfect_ piety--humility, charity, and faith--that he never employed his art but as a means of expressing his love to God and man, and with the view, single, simple, and straightforward, of glory to the Creator, and good to the Creature. Every quality or subject of art by which these ends were not to be attained, or to be attained secondarily only, he rejected; from all study of art, as such, he withdrew; whatever might merely please the eye, or interest the intellect, he despised, and refused; he used his colors and lines, as David his harp, after a kingly fashion, for purposes of praise and not of science. To this grace and gift of holiness were added, those of a fervent imagination, vivid invention, keen sense of loveliness in lines and colors, unwearied energy, and to all these gifts the crowning one of quietness of life and mind, while yet his convent-cell was at first within view, and afterwards in the center, of a city which had lead of all the world in Intellect, and in whose streets he might see daily and hourly the noblest setting of manly features. It would perhaps be well to wait until we find another man thus actuated, thus endowed, and thus circumstanced, before we speak of "unduly extolling" the works of Fra Angelico.

91. His artistical attainments, as might be conjectured, are nothing more than the development, through practice, of his natural powers in accordance with his sacred instincts. His power of expression by bodily gesture is greater even than Giotto's, wherever he could feel or comprehend the passion to be expressed; but so inherent in him was his holy tranquillity of mind, that he could not by any exertion, even for a moment, conceive either agitation, doubt, or fear--and all the actions proceeding from such passions, or, _a fortiori_, from any yet more criminal, are absurdly and powerlessly portrayed by him; while contrariwise, every gesture, consistent with emotion pure and saintly, is rendered with an intensity of truth to which there is no existing parallel; the expression being carried out into every bend of the hand, every undulation of the arm, shoulder, and neck, every fold of the dress and every wave of the hair. His drawing of movement is subject to the same influence; vulgar or vicious motion he cannot represent; his running, falling, or struggling figures are drawn with childish incapability; but give him for his scene the pavement of heaven, or pastures of Paradise, and for his subject the "inoffensive pace" of glorified souls, or the spiritual speed of Angels, and Michael Angelo alone can contend with him in majesty,--in grace and musical continuousness of motion, no one. The inspiration was in some degree caught by his pupil Benozzo, but thenceforward forever lost. The angels of Perugino appear to be let down by cords and moved by wires; that of Titian, in the sacrifice of Isaac, kicks like an awkward swimmer; Raphael's Moses and Elias of the Transfiguration are cramped at the knees; and the flight of Domenichino's angels is a sprawl paralyzed. The authority of Tintoret over movement is, on the other hand, too unlimited; the descent of his angels is the swoop of a whirlwind or the fall of a thunderbolt; his mortal impulses are oftener impetuous than pathetic, and majestic more than melodious.

92. But it is difficult by words to convey to the reader unacquainted with Angelico's works, any idea of the thoughtful variety of his rendering of movement--Earnest haste of girded faith in the Flight into Egypt, the haste of obedience, not of fear; and unweariedness, but through spiritual support, and not in human strength--Swift obedience of passive earth to the call of its Creator, in the Resurrection of Lazarus--March of meditative gladness in the following of the Apostles down the Mount of Olives--Rush of adoration breaking through the chains and shadows of death, in the Spirits in Prison. Pacing of mighty angels above the Firmament, poised on their upright wings, half opened, broad, bright, quiet, like eastern clouds before the sun is up;--or going forth, with timbrels and with dances, of souls more than conquerors, beside the shore of the last great Red Sea, the sea of glass mingled with fire, hand knit with hand, and voice with voice, the joyful winds of heaven following the measure of their motion, and the flowers of the new earth looking on, like stars pausing in their courses.

93. And yet all this is but the lowest part and narrowest reach of Angelico's conceptions. Joy and gentleness, patience and power, he could indicate by gesture--but Devotion could be told by the countenance only. There seems to have been always a stern limit by which the thoughts of other men were stayed; the religion that was painted even by Perugino, Francia, and Bellini, was finite in its spirit--the religion of earthly beings, checked, not indeed by the corruption, but by the veil and the sorrow of clay. But with Fra Angelico the glory of the countenance reaches to actual transfiguration; eyes that see no more darkly, incapable of all tears, foreheads flaming, like Belshazzar's marble wall, with the writing of the Father's name upon them, lips tremulous with love, and crimson with the light of the coals of the altar--and all this loveliness, thus enthusiastic and ineffable, yet sealed with the stability which the coming and going of ages as countless as sea-sand cannot dim nor weary, and bathed by an ever flowing river of holy thought, with God for its source, God for its shore, and God for its ocean.

94. We speak in no inconsiderate enthusiasm. We feel assured that to any person of just feeling who devotes sufficient time to the examination of these works, all terms of description must seem derogatory. Where such ends as these have been reached, it ill becomes us to speak of minor deficiencies as either to be blamed or regretted: it cannot be determined how far even what we deprecate may be accessory to our delight, nor by what intricate involution what we deplore may be connected with what we love. Every good that nature herself bestows, or accomplishes, is given with a counterpoise, or gained at a sacrifice; nor is it to be expected of Man that he should win the hardest battles and tread the narrowest paths, without the betrayal of a weakness, or the acknowledgment of an error.

95. With this final warning against our author's hesitating approbation of what is greatest and best, we must close our specific examination of the mode in which his design has been worked out. We have done enough to set the reader upon his guard against whatever appears slight or inconsiderate in his theory or statements, and with the more severity, because this was alone wanting to render the book one of the most valuable gifts which Art has ever received. Of the translations from the lives of the saints we have hardly spoken; they are gracefully rendered, and all of them highly interesting--but we could wish to see these, and the enumerations of fresco subjects[11] with which the other volumes are in great part occupied, published separately for the convenience of travelers in Italy. They are something out of place in a work like that before us. For the rest, we might have more interested the reader, and gratified ourselves, by setting before him some of the many passages of tender feeling and earnest eloquence with which the volumes are replete--but we felt it necessary rather to anticipate the hesitation with which they were liable to be received, and set limits to the halo of fancy by which their light is obscured--though enlarged. One or two paragraphs, however, of the closing chapter must be given before we part:--

* * *

96. "What a scene of beauty, what a flower-garden of art--how bright and how varied--must Italy have presented at the commencement of the sixteenth century, at the death of Raphael! The sacrileges we lament took place for the most part after that period; hundreds of frescoes, not merely of Giotto and those other elders of Christian Art, but of Gentile da Fabriano, Pietro della Francesca, Perugino and their compeers, were still existing, charming the eye, elevating the mind, and warming the heart. Now alas! few comparatively and fading are the relics of those great and good men. While Dante's voice rings as clear as ever, communing with us as friend with friend, theirs is dying gradually away, fainter and fainter, like the farewell of a spirit. Flaking off the walls, uncared for and neglected save in a few rare instances, scarce one of their frescoes will survive the century, and the labors of the next may not improbably be directed to the recovery and restoration of such as may still slumber beneath the whitewash and the daubs with which the Bronzinos and Zuccheros 'et id genus omne' have unconsciously sealed them up for posterity--their best title to our gratitude.--But why not begin at once? at all events in the instances numberless, where merely whitewash interposes between us and them.

"It is easy to reply--what need of this? They--the artists--have Moses and the prophets, the frescoes of Raphael and Michael Angelo--let them study them. Doubtless,--but we still reply, and with no impiety--they will not repent, they will not forsake their idols and their evil ways--they will not abandon Sense for Spirit, oils for fresco--unless these great ones of the past, these Sleepers of Ephesus, arise from the dead.... It is not by studying art in its perfection--by worshiping Raphael and Michael Angelo exclusively of all other excellence--that we can expect to rival them, but by re-ascending to the fountain-head--by planting ourselves as acorns in the ground those oaks are rooted in, and growing up to their level--in a word, by studying Duccio and Giotto that we may paint like Taddeo di Bartolo and Masaccio, Taddeo di Bartolo and Masaccio that we may paint like Perugino and Luca Signorelli, Perugino and Luca Signorelli that we may paint like Raphael and Michael Angelo. And why despair of this, or even of shaming the Vatican? For with genius and God's blessing nothing is impossible.

"I would not be a blind partisan, but, with all their faults, the old masters I plead for knew how to touch the heart. It may be difficult at first to believe this; like children, they are shy with us--like strangers, they bear an uncouth mien and aspect--like ghosts from the other world, they have an awkward habit of shocking our conventionalities with home truths. But with the dead as with the living all depends on the frankness with which we greet them, the sincerity with which we credit their kindly qualities; sympathy is the key to truth--we must love, in order to appreciate."--iii., p. 418.

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97. These are beautiful sentences; yet this let the young painter of these days remember always, that whomsoever he may love, or from whomsoever learn, he can now no more go back to those hours of infancy and be born again.[12] About the faith, the questioning and the teaching of childhood there is a joy and grace, which we may often envy, but can no more assume:--the voice and the gesture must not be imitated when the innocence is lost. Incapability and ignorance in the act of being struggled against and cast away are often endowed with a peculiar charm--but both are only contemptible when they are pretended. Whatever we have now to do, we may be sure, first, that its strength and life must be drawn from the real nature with us and about us always, and secondly, that, if worth doing, it will be something altogether different from what has ever been done before. The visions of the cloister must depart with its superstitious peace--the quick, apprehensive symbolism of early Faith must yield to the abstract teaching of disciplined Reason. Whatever else we may deem of the Progress of Nations, one character of that progress is determined and discernible. As in the encroaching of the land upon the sea, the strength of the sandy bastions is raised out of the sifted ruin of ancient inland hills--for every tongue of level land that stretches into the deep, the fall of Alps has been heard among the clouds, and as the fields of industry enlarge, the intercourse with Heaven is shortened. Let it not be doubted that as this change is inevitable, so it is expedient, though the form of teaching adopted and of duty prescribed be less mythic and contemplative, more active and unassisted: for the light of Transfiguration on the Mountain is substituted the Fire of Coals upon the Shore, and on the charge to hear the Shepherd, follows that to feed the Sheep. Doubtful we may be for a time, and apparently deserted; but if, as we wait, we still look forward with steadfast will and humble heart, so that our Hope for the Future may be fed, not dulled or diverted by our Love for the Past, we shall not long be left without a Guide:--the way will be opened, the Precursor appointed--the Hour will come, and the Man.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] This essay is a review of two books by Lord Lindsay, viz., "Progression by Antagonism," published in 1846, and the "Sketches of the History of Christian Art," which appeared in the following year. It is, with the paper on Sir C. Eastlake's "History of Oil Painting," one of the very few anonymous writings of its author. "I never felt at ease" (says Mr. Ruskin, in speaking of anonymous criticism) "in my graduate incognito, and although I consented, some nine years ago, to review Lord Lindsay's 'Christian Art,' and Sir Charles Eastlake's 'Essay on Oil Painting,' in the _Quarterly_, I have ever since steadily refused to write even for that once respectable periodical" ("Academy Notes," No. II., 1856). For Mr. Ruskin's estimate of Lord Lindsay's work, see the "Eagle's Nest," Sec. 46, and "Val d'Arno," Sec. 264, where he speaks of him as his "first master in Italian art."--[ED.]

[5] With one exception (see p. 25) the quotations from Lord Lindsay are always from the "Christian Art."--ED.

[6] The reader must remember that this arcade was originally quite open, the inner wall having been built after the fire, in 1574.

[7] "An Historical Essay on Architecture" by the late Thomas Hope. (Murray, 1835) chap, iv., pp. 23-31.

[8] At the feet of his Madonna, in the Gallery of Bologna.

[9] In many pictures of Angelico, the Infant Christ appears self-supported--the Virgin not touching the child.

[10] The upper inscription Lord Lindsay has misquoted--it runs thus:--

"Salve Mater Pietatis Et Totius Trinitatis Nobile Triclinium."

[11] We have been much surprised by the author's frequent reference to Lasinio's engravings of various frescoes, unaccompanied by any warning of their inaccuracy. No work of Lasinio's can be trusted for _anything_ except the number and relative position of the figures. All masters are by him translated into one monotony of commonplace:--he dilutes eloquence, educates naivete, prompts ignorance, stultifies intelligence, and paralyzes power; takes the chill off horror, the edge off wit, and the bloom off beauty. In all artistical points he is utterly valueless, neither drawing nor expression being ever preserved by him. Giotto, Benozzo, or Ghirlandajo are all alike to him; and we hardly know whether he injures most when he robs or when he redresses.

[12] We do not perhaps enough estimate the assistance which was once given both to purpose and perception, by the feeling of wonder which with us is destroyed partly by the ceaseless calls upon it, partly by our habit of either discovering or anticipating a reason for everything. Of the simplicity and ready surprise of heart which supported the spirit of the older painters, an interesting example is seen in the diary of Albert Duerer, lately published in a work every way valuable, but especially so in the carefulness and richness of its illustrations, "Divers Works of Early Masters in Christian Decoration," edited by John Weale, London, 2 vols. folio, 1846.

EASTLAKE'S HISTORY OF OIL-PAINTING.[13]

98. The stranger in Florence who for the first time passes through the iron gate which opens from the Green Cloister of Santa Maria Novella into the Spezieria, can hardly fail of being surprised, and that perhaps painfully, by the suddenness of the transition from the silence and gloom of the monastic inclosure, its pavement rough with epitaphs, and its walls retaining, still legible, though crumbling and mildewed, their imaged records of Scripture History, to the activity of a traffic not less frivolous than flourishing, concerned almost exclusively with the appliances of bodily adornment or luxury. Yet perhaps, on a moment's reflection, the rose-leaves scattered on the floor, and the air filled with odor of myrtle and myrrh, aloes and cassia, may arouse associations of a different and more elevated character; the preparation of these precious perfumes may seem not altogether unfitting the hands of a religious brotherhood--or if this should not be conceded, at all events it must be matter of rejoicing to observe the evidence of intelligence and energy interrupting the apathy and languor of the cloister; nor will the institution be regarded with other than respect, as well as gratitude, when it is remembered that, as to the convent library we owe the preservation of ancient literature, to the convent laboratory we owe the duration of mediaeval art.

99. It is at first with surprise not altogether dissimilar, that we find a painter of refined feeling and deep thoughtfulness, after manifesting in his works the most sincere affection for what is highest in the reach of his art, devoting himself for years (there is proof of this in the work before us) to the study of the mechanical preparation of its appliances, and whatever documentary evidence exists respecting their ancient use. But it is with a revulsion of feeling more entire, that we perceive the value of the results obtained--the accuracy of the varied knowledge by which their sequence has been established--and above all, their immediate bearing upon the practice and promise of the schools of our own day.

Opposite errors, we know not which the least pardonable, but both certainly productive of great harm, have from time to time possessed the masters of modern art. It has been held by some that the great early painters owed the larger measure of their power to secrets of material and method, and that the discovery of a lost vehicle or forgotten process might at any time accomplish the regeneration of a fallen school. By others it has been asserted that all questions respecting materials or manipulation are idle and impertinent; that the methods of the older masters were either of no peculiar value, or are still in our power; that a great painter is independent of all but the simplest mechanical aids, and demonstrates his greatness by scorn of system and carelessness of means.

100. It is evident that so long as incapability could shield itself under the first of these creeds, or presumption vindicate itself by the second; so long as the feeble painter could lay his faults on his palette and his panel; and the self-conceited painter, from the assumed identity of materials proceed to infer equality of power--(for we believe that in most instances those who deny the evil of our present methods will deny also the weakness of our present works)--little good could be expected from the teaching of the abstract principles of the art; and less, if possible, from the example of any mechanical qualities, however admirable, whose means might be supposed irrecoverable on the one hand, or indeterminate on the other, or of any excellence conceived to have been either summoned by an incantation, or struck out by an accident. And of late, among our leading masters, the loss has not been merely of the system of the ancients, but of all system whatsoever: the greater number paint as if the virtue of oil pigment were its opacity, or as if its power depended on its polish; of the rest, no two agree in use or choice of materials; not many are consistent even in their own practice; and the most zealous and earnest, therefore the most discontented, reaching impatiently and desperately after better things, purchase the momentary satisfaction of their feelings by the sacrifice of security of surface and durability of hue. The walls of our galleries are for the most part divided between pictures whose dead coating of consistent paint, laid on with a heavy hand and a cold heart, secures for them the stability of dullness and the safety of mediocrity; and pictures whose reckless and experimental brilliancy, unequal in its result as lawless in its means, is as evanescent as the dust of an insect's wing, and presents in its chief perfections so many subjects of future regret.

101. But if these evils now continue, it can only be through rashness which no example can warn, or through apathy which no hope can stimulate, for Mr. Eastlake has alike withdrawn license from experimentalism and apology from indolence. He has done away with all legends of forgotten secrets; he has shown that the masters of the great Flemish and early Venetian schools possessed no means, followed no methods, but such as we may still obtain and pursue; but he has shown also, among all these masters, the most admirable care in the preparation of materials and the most simple consistency in their use; he has shown that their excellence was reached, and could only have been reached, by stern and exact science, condescending to the observance, care, and conquest of the most minute physical particulars and hindrances; that the greatest of them never despised an aid nor avoided a difficulty. The loss of imaginative liberty sometimes involved in a too scrupulous attention to methods of execution is trivial compared to the evils resulting from a careless or inefficient practice. The modes in which, with every great painter, realization falls short of conception are necessarily so many and so grievous, that he can ill afford to undergo the additional discouragement caused by uncertain methods and bad materials. Not only so, but even the choice of subjects, the amount of completion attempted, nay, even the modes of conception and measure of truth are in no small degree involved in the great question of materials. On the habitual use of a light or dark ground may depend the painter's preference of a broad and faithful, or partial and scenic chiaroscuro; correspondent with the facility or fatality of alterations, may be the exercise of indolent fancy, or disciplined invention; and to the complexities of a system requiring time, patience, and succession of process, may be owing the conversion of the ready draughtsman into the resolute painter. Farther than this, who shall say how unconquerable a barrier to all self-denying effort may exist in the consciousness that the best that is accomplished can last but a few years, and that the painter's travail must perish with his life?

102. It cannot have been without strong sense of this, the true dignity and relation of his subject, that Mr. Eastlake has gone through a toil far more irksome, far less selfish than any he could have undergone in the practice of his art. The value which we attach to the volume depends, however, rather on its preceptive than its antiquarian character. As objects of historical inquiry merely, we cannot conceive any questions less interesting than those relating to mechanical operations generally, nor any honors less worthy of prolonged dispute than those which are grounded merely on the invention or amelioration of processes and pigments. The subject can only become historically interesting when the means ascertained to have been employed at any period are considered in their operation upon or procession from the artistical aim of such period, the character of its chosen subjects, and the effects proposed in their treatment upon the national mind. Mr. Eastlake has as yet refused himself the indulgence of such speculation; his book is no more than its modest title expresses. For ourselves, however, without venturing in the slightest degree to anticipate the expression of his ulterior views--though we believe that we can trace their extent and direction in a few suggestive sentences, as pregnant as they are unobtrusive--we must yet, in giving a rapid sketch of the facts established, assume the privilege of directing the reader to one or two of their most obvious consequences, and, like honest 'prentices, not suffer the abstracted retirement of our master in the back parlor to diminish the just recommendation of his wares to the passers-by.

103. Eminently deficient in works representative of the earliest and purest tendencies of art, our National Gallery nevertheless affords a characteristic and sufficient series of examples of the practice of the various schools of painting, after oil had been finally substituted for the less manageable glutinous vehicles which, under the general name of tempera, were principally employed in the production of easel pictures up to the middle of the fifteenth century. If the reader were to make the circuit of this collection for the purpose of determining which picture represented with least disputable fidelity the first intention of its painter, and united in its modes of execution the highest reach of achievement with the strongest assurance of durability, we believe that--after hesitating long over hypothetical degrees of blackened shadow and yellowed light, of lost outline and buried detail, of chilled luster, dimmed transparency, altered color, and weakened force--he would finally pause before a small picture on panel, representing two quaintly dressed figures in a dimly lighted room--dependent for its interest little on expression, and less on treatment--but eminently remarkable for reality of substance, vacuity of space, and vigor of quiet color; nor less for an elaborate finish, united with energetic freshness, which seem to show that time has been much concerned in its production, and has had no power over its fate.

104. We do not say that the total force of the material is exhibited in this picture, or even that it in any degree possesses the lusciousness and fullness which are among the chief charms of oil-painting; but that upon the whole it would be selected as uniting imperishable firmness with exquisite delicacy; as approaching more unaffectedly and more closely than any other work to the simple truths of natural color and space; and as exhibiting, even in its quaint and minute treatment, conquest over many of the difficulties which the boldest practice of art involves.

This picture, bearing the inscription "Johannes Van Eyck (fuit?) hic, 1434," is probably the portrait, certainly the work, of one of those brothers to whose ingenuity the first invention of the art of oil-painting has been long ascribed. The volume before us is occupied chiefly in determining the real extent of the improvements they introduced, in examining the processes they employed, and in tracing the modifications of those processes adopted by later Flemings, especially Rubens, Rembrandt, and Vandyck. Incidental notices of the Italian system occur, so far as, in its earlier stages, it corresponded with that of the north; but the consideration of its separate character is reserved for a following volume, and though we shall expect with interest this concluding portion of the treatise, we believe that, in the present condition of the English school, the choice of the methods of Van Eyck, Bellini, or Rubens, is as much as we could modestly ask or prudently desire.

105. It would have been strange indeed if a technical perfection like that of the picture above described (equally characteristic of all the works of those brothers), had been at once reached by the first inventors of the art. So far was this from being the case, and so distinct is the evidence of the practice of oil-painting in antecedent periods, that of late years the discoveries of the Van Eycks have not unfrequently been treated as entirely fabulous; and Raspe, in particular, rests their claims to gratitude on the contingent introduction of amber-varnish and poppy-oil:--"Such _perhaps_," he says, "might have been the misrepresented discovery of the Van Eycks." That tradition, however, for which the great painters of Italy, and their sufficiently vain historian, had so much respect as never to put forward any claim in opposition to it, is not to be clouded by incautious suspicion. Mr. Eastlake has approached it with more reverence, stripped it of its exaggeration, and shown the foundations for it in the fact that the Van Eycks, though they did not create the art, yet were the first to enable it for its function; that having found it in servile office and with dormant power--laid like the dead Adonis on his lettuce-bed--they gave it vitality and dominion. And fortunate it is for those who look for another such reanimation, that the method of the Van Eycks was not altogether their own discovery. Had it been so, that method might still have remained a subject of conjecture; but after being put in possession of the principles commonly acknowledged before their time, it is comparatively easy to trace the direction of their inquiry and the nature of their improvements.

106. With respect to remote periods of antiquity, we believe that the use of a hydrofuge oil-varnish for the protection of works in tempera, the only fact insisted upon by Mr. Eastlake, is also the only one which the labor of innumerable ingenious writers has established: nor up to the beginning of the twelfth century is there proof of any practice of painting except in tempera, encaustic (wax applied by the aid of heat), and fresco. Subsequent to that period, notices of works executed in solid color mixed with oil are frequent, but all that can be proved respecting earlier times is a gradually increasing acquaintance with the different kinds of oil and the modes of their adaptation to artistical uses.

Several drying oils are mentioned by the writers of the first three centuries of the Christian era--walnut by Pliny and Galen, walnut, poppy, and castor-oil (afterwards used by the painters of the twelfth century as a varnish) by Dioscorides--yet these notices occur only with reference to medicinal or culinary purposes. But at length a drying oil is mentioned in connection with works of art by Aetius, a medical writer of the fifth century. His words are:--

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"Walnut oil is prepared like that of almonds, either by pounding or pressing the nuts, or by throwing them, after they have been bruised, into boiling water. The (medicinal) uses are the same: but it has a use besides these, being employed by gilders or encaustic painters; for it dries, and preserves gildings and encaustic paintings for a long time."

"It is therefore clear," says Mr. Eastlake, "that an oil varnish, composed either of inspissated nut oil, or of nut oil combined with a dissolved resin, was employed on gilt surfaces and pictures, with a view to preserve them, at least as early as the fifth century. It may be added that a writer who could then state, as if from his own experience, that such varnishes had the effect of preserving works 'for a long time,' can hardly be understood to speak of a new invention."--P. 22.

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Linseed-oil is also mentioned by Aetius, though still for medicinal uses only; but a varnish, composed of linseed-oil mixed with a variety of resins, is described in a manuscript at Lucca, belonging probably to the eighth century:--

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"The age of Charlemagne was an era in the arts; and the addition of linseed-oil to the materials of the varnisher and decorator may on the above evidence be assigned to it. From this time, and during many ages, the linseed-oil varnish, though composed of simpler materials (such as sandarac and mastic resin boiled in the oil), alone appears in the recipes hitherto brought to light."--_Ib._, p. 24.

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107. The modes of bleaching and thickening oil in the sun, as well as the siccative power of metallic oxides, were known to the classical writers, and evidence exists of the careful study of Galen, Dioscorides, and others by the painters of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries: the loss (recorded by Vasari) of Antonio Veneziano to the arts, "per che studio in Dioscoride le cose dell'erbe," is a remarkable instance of its less fortunate results. Still, the immixture of solid color with the oil, which had been commonly used as a varnish for tempera paintings and gilt surfaces, was hitherto unsuggested; and no distinct notice seems to occur of the first occasion of this important step, though in the twelfth century, as above stated, the process is described as frequent both in Italy and England. Mr. Eastlake's instances have been selected, for the most part, from four treatises, two of which, though in an imperfect form, have long been known to the public; the third, translated by Mrs. Merrifield, is in course of publication; the fourth, "Tractatus de Coloribus illuminatorum," is of less importance.

Respecting the dates of the first two, those of Eraclius and Theophilus, some difference of opinion exists between Mr. Eastlake and their respective editors. The former MS. was published by Raspe,[14] who inclines to the opinion of its having been written soon after the time of St. Isidore of Seville, probably therefore in the eighth century, but insists only on its being prior to the thirteenth. That of Theophilus, published first by M. Charles de l'Escalopier, and lately from a more perfect MS. by Mr. Hendrie, is ascribed by its English editor (who places Eraclius in the tenth) to the early half of the eleventh century. Mr. Hendrie maintains his opinion with much analytical ingenuity, and we are disposed to think that Mr. Eastlake attaches too much importance to the absence of reference to oil-painting in the Mappae Clavicula (a MS. of the twelfth century), in placing Theophilus a century and a half later on that ground alone. The question is one of some importance in an antiquarian point of view, but the general reader will perhaps be satisfied with the conclusion that in MSS. which cannot possibly be later than the close of the twelfth century, references to oil-painting are clear and frequent.

108. Nothing is known of the personality of either Eraclius or Theophilus, but what may be collected from their works; amounting, in the first case, to the facts of the author's "language being barbarous, his credulity exceptionable, and his knowledge superficial," together with his written description as "vir sapientissimus;" while all that is positively known of Theophilus is that he was a monk, and that Theophilus was not his real name. The character, however, of which the assumed name is truly expressive, deserves from us no unrespectful attention; we shall best possess our readers of it by laying before them one or two passages from the preface. We shall make some use of Mr. Hendrie's translation; it is evidently the work of a tasteful man, and in most cases renders the feeling of the original faithfully; but the Latin, monkish though it be, deserved a more accurate following, and many of Mr. Hendrie's deviations bear traces of unsound scholarship. An awkward instance occurs in the first paragraph:--

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"Theophilus, humilis presbyter, servus servorum Dei, indignus nomine et professione monachi, omnibus mentis desidiam animique vagationem utili manuum occupatione, et delectabili novitatum meditatione declinare et calcare volentibus, retributionem coelestis praemii!"

"I, Theophilus, an humble priest, servant of the servants of God, unworthy of the name and profession of a monk, to all wishing to overcome and avoid sloth of the mind or wandering of the soul, by useful manual occupation and the delightful contemplation of novelties, send a recompense of heavenly price."--_Theophilus_, p. 1.

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_Proemium_ is not "price," nor is the verb understood before _retributionem_ "send." Mr. Hendrie seems even less familiar with Scriptural than with monkish language, or in this and several other cases he would have recognized the adoption of apostolic formulae. The whole paragraph is such a greeting and prayer as stands at the head of the sacred epistles:--"Theophilus, to all who desire to overcome wandering of the soul, etc., etc. (wishes) recompense of heavenly reward." Thus also the dedication of the Byzantine manuscript, lately translated by M. Didron, commences "A tous les peintres, et a tous ceux qui, aimant l'instruction, etudieront ce livre, salut dans le Seigneur." So, presently afterwards, in the sentence, "divina dignatio quae dat omnibus affluenter et non improperat" (translated, "divine _authority_ which affluently and not precipitately gives to all"), though Mr. Hendrie might have perhaps been excused for not perceiving the transitive sense of _dignatio_ after _indignus_ in the previous text, which indeed, even when felt, is sufficiently difficult to render in English; and might not have been aware that the word _impropero_ frequently bears the sense of _opprobo_; he ought still to have recognized the Scriptural "who giveth to all men liberally and _upbraideth_ not." "Qui," in the first page, translated "wherefore," mystifies a whole sentence; "ut mereretur," rendered with a schoolboy's carelessness "as he merited," reverses the meaning of another; "jactantia," in the following page, is less harmfully but not less singularly translated "jealousy." We have been obliged to alter several expressions in the following passages, in order to bring them near enough to the original for our immediate purpose:

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"Which knowledge, when he has obtained, let no one magnify himself in his own eyes, as if it had been received from himself, and not from elsewhere; but let him rejoice humbly in the Lord, from whom and by whom are all things, and without whom is nothing; nor let him wrap his gifts in the folds of envy, nor hide them in the closet of an avaricious heart; but all pride of heart being repelled, let him with a cheerful mind give with simplicity to all who ask of him, and let him fear the judgment of the Gospel upon that merchant, who, failing to return to his lord a talent with accumulated interest, deprived of all reward, merited the censure from the mouth of his judge of 'wicked servant.'

"Fearing to incur which sentence, I, a man unworthy and almost without name, offer gratuitously to all desirous with humility to learn, that which the divine condescension, which giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not, gratuitously conceded to me: and I admonish them that in me they acknowledge the goodness, and admire the generosity of God; and I would persuade them to believe that if they also add their labor, the same gifts are within their reach.

"Wherefore, gentle son, whom God has rendered perfectly happy in this respect, that those things are offered to thee gratis, which many, plowing the sea waves with the greatest danger to life, consumed by the hardship of hunger and cold, or subjected to the weary servitude of teachers, and altogether worn out by the desire of learning, yet acquire with intolerable labor, covet with greedy looks this 'BOOK OF VARIOUS ARTS,' read it through with a tenacious memory, embrace it with an ardent love.

"Should you carefully peruse this, you will there find out whatever Greece possesses in kinds and mixtures of various colors; whatever Tuscany knows of in mosaic-work, or in variety of enamel; whatever Arabia shows forth in work of fusion, ductility, or chasing; whatever Italy ornaments with gold, in diversity of vases and sculpture of gems or ivory; whatever France loves in a costly variety of windows; whatever industrious Germany approves in work of gold, silver, copper, and iron, of woods and of stones.

"When you shall have re-read this often, and have committed it to your tenacious memory, you shall thus recompense me for this care of instruction, that as often as you shall have successfully made use of my work, you pray for me for the pity of Omnipotent God, who knows that I have written these things, which are here arranged, neither through love of human approbation, nor through desire of temporal reward, nor have I stolen anything precious or rare through envious jealousy, nor have I kept back anything reserved served for myself alone; but in augmentation of the honor and glory of His name, I have consulted the progress and hastened to aid the necessities of many men."--_Ib._ pp. xlvii.-li.

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