GREAT ARTISTS 
 
 AND THEIR WORKS 
 
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 / Cornell University 
 
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 BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE 
 
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GREAT ARTISTS 
 AND THEIR WORKS 
 
GREAT ARTISTS 
 AND THEIR WORKS 
 BY GREAT AUTHORS 
 
 BY 
 
 ALFRED MANSFIELD BROOKS 
 
 BOSTON 
 MARSHALL JONES COMPANY 
 
 MDCCCCXIX 
 L 
 
,1 
 
 1443 
 
 A ^t.34^7- 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 19I9> ^"^ 
 MARSHALL JONES COMPANY 
 
 IHK'FLIMPTON-VSESS 
 NOSWOOD'UAS S-TI-S-A 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 IN the course of long reading about art, artists 
 and works of art, the passages gathered into 
 this volume have, for the editor, come to stand 
 out with peculiar force and dir^dlness of meaning, 
 and to contain singularly enlightening comment. 
 It is hoped that students of art, as well as the 
 general reader, will find them equally inspirit- 
 ing and delightful. 
 
 The prime purpose of this book is to present, 
 in small compass, clearly reasoned opinions of 
 men who have treated the philosophy of art 
 not less with simplicity of language than depth 
 of understanding; — novelist and essayist not 
 less than professed critic. A further purpose is 
 to present a brief series of most brilliant descrip- 
 tions of specific and famous works of art, archi- 
 tecture, sculpture, and painting, by men whose 
 names are synonyms for all that is brilliant. - 
 
 Considered as a whole the coUedlion centres 
 upon a single point, namely, increase of appre- 
 ciation and love of art behind which, said 
 Rossetti, lies "passionate emotion," and the 
 condition of which is "fundamental brain work." 
 It is a book about men who live, eternal, in their 
 buildings, pictures, sculptures. It is a book by 
 men who have, for the most part, already eternal- 
 ized themselves in their writings. 
 
 The Editor 
 
Throughout the book the spellings of 
 first publication have been followed. 
 
Contents 
 
 SeSiion I 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 THE PURPOSE AND MEANING OF ART 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Art and the Beauty of Nature : by Frederic Lord 
 
 Leighton I 
 
 From an Address to Art Student^, 1881 
 
 Art and Science : by John Caird 3 
 
 From " The Study of Art" 
 
 Art and Genius : by William M. Thackeray 6 
 
 From " The Neaicomes," Chapter XI 
 
 The Purpose of Art: by John Robert Seeley 7 
 
 From "Elementary Principles in Art" 
 
 What is Art: by Tolstoi 10 
 
 From" What is Art," Chapter XIX 
 
 Great Art is Delicate: by John Ruskin 13 
 
 From " Modern PairOers" Volume III 
 
 Greatness in Art: by John Ruskin 14 
 
 From "Modern Painters," Volume I 
 
 Bad Art — if Powerful Only: by John Robert 
 
 Seeley 16 
 
 From "Elementary Principles in Art" 
 
 Relation of Art to Nature: by James McNeil 
 
 Whistler I7 
 
 From " Ten O'Clock Address" 
 
 The Study of Art: by John Caird 19 
 
 From " University Addresses — The Study of Art" . 
 vii 
 
I 
 viii CONTENTS 
 
 SeBion II 
 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 The Great Pyramid: by W. M. Flinders Petri 23 
 
 From " Ten Tears Digging in Egypt" 
 
 The Homeric Palace: hy Homer 27 
 
 From " The Odyssey," Book VII 
 
 The Acropolis: by Plutarch 29 
 
 From " The Life of Pericles" 
 
 The Acropolis: by W. R. Lethaby 32 
 
 From "Art and Life, and the Building and Decoration of Cities,'' 
 Chapter II 
 
 The Greek Temple: by Ernst Curtius 33 
 
 From "History of Greece, "Book II, Chapter IF 
 
 Art and Architecture: by Viollet-le-Duc 36 
 
 From "Le&ures on Architecture" Leilwre II 
 
 Architecture: by Reginald Blomfield 38 
 
 From " The Mistress Art," Chapter V 
 
 Origin of European Architecture: by John 
 
 Ruskin 43 
 
 From " The Storus 0/ Venice," Volume I, Chapter I 
 
 The Greek Temple: by Viollet4e-Duc 45 
 
 From "Lectures on Architecture," LeClure II 
 
 City Planning — The Roman Idea: by Reginald 
 
 Blomfield 47 
 
 From "Art and Life, and the Building and Decoration of Cities," 
 Chapter IV 
 
 Rome — Civic Works of Ornament and Use : by 
 
 Edward Gibbon 48 
 
 From " The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," Chapter II 
 
 Pont du Gard: by Rousseau 51 
 
 From " Confessions " 
 
 Forum of Trajan: by Edward Gibbon , 52 
 
 From" The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," Chapter I 
 
CONTENTS IX 
 
 The Colosseum: by Reginald Blomfield 54 
 
 From "The Mistress Art," Chapter VII 
 
 The Colosseum: by Edward Gibbon 56 
 
 From " The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," Chapter Xll 
 
 The Colosseum: by Goethe 57 
 
 Ffom " Letters from Ilaiy," 1787 
 
 The Palace of Diocletian : by Edward Gibbon ... 58 
 
 From " The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," Chapter XIII 
 
 Basilica of St. Peter (Old St. Peter's) : by Lord 
 
 Bryce 60 
 
 From " The Holy Roman Empire," Chapter IF 
 
 The French Cathedrals : by AugusU Rodin 61 
 
 A Gothic Cathedral: by Nathaniel Hawthorne 61 
 
 From "French and Italian Note Books" 
 
 The Medieval Cathedral: by Walter Thornbury. . 62 
 
 From "British Artists," Chapter XII, Gothic Art 
 
 Gothic Paris : by W. R. Lethaby 63 
 
 From "Art and Life, and the Building and Decoration of Cities," Chapter II 
 
 French Mediaeval Art Democratic: by Viollet- 
 
 le-Duc 66 
 
 From "LeMures on Archite3ure," LeClwre VII 
 
 Notre Dame: by Fiiior Hugo 68 
 
 From "Notre Dame" 
 
 The Cathedral of Chartres: by Walter Pater. ... 78 
 From "Gaston de Latour," Chapter II 
 
 Cathedral of Amiens: by William Morris 80 
 
 From "Shadows of Amiens" 
 
 Cathedral of Amiens : by Walter Pater 86 
 
 From "Miscellaneous Studies"; "Notre-Dame d' Amiens" 
 
 Greek and Gothic Ornament Compared: by 
 
 Walter Crane 92 
 
 From "Art and Life, and the Building and Decoration of Cities," 
 Chapter III 
 
 Orvieto Cathedral: by Charles Eliot Norton 93 
 
 From "Notes of Travel and Study in Italy; Orvieto" 
 
X CONTENTS 
 
 Giotto's Tower — The Campanile of Florence: 
 
 by Nathaniel Hawthorne I03 
 
 From " French and Italian Note Books,"liSs^ 
 
 Giotto's Tower — The Campanile of Florence: 
 
 by John Ruskin 104 
 
 From "The Seven Lamps of Arcbiteaure," Chapter IV 
 
 Pisa: by Charles Eliot Norton 106 
 
 From "Notes of Travel and Study in Italy" 
 
 St. Mark's : by John Ruskin 108 
 
 From " The Stones of Venice," Volume II, Chapter IV 
 
 Wells Cathedral: by Henry James no 
 
 From " Transatlantic Sketches"; 'Wells and Salisbury" 
 
 English Parish Churches — Wakefield Church: 
 
 by T. J. Micklethwaite 113 
 
 From "Ledures on Art," Society for the Protedion of Ancient Buildings, 
 Leiture IV 
 
 Westminster Abbey: by Walter Crane 117 
 
 From "Art and Life and the Building and Decoration of Cities" 
 Chapter III 
 
 Santa Maria degl' Angeli : by Nathaniel Hawthorne li 8 
 From "French and Italian Note Books," 1858 
 
 St. Peter's: by Goethe 120 
 
 From " Letters from Italy," 1786 
 
 Mass and Shade in Architecture: by John 
 
 Ruskin 121 
 
 From " The Seven Lamps of Architeeiure," Chapter III 
 
 The Test of Good Ornament: by John Ruskin. . . 125 
 From " The Seven Lamps of Architedure," Chapter V 
 
 Roofs: by John Ruskin 126 
 
 From "Ledures on ArchiUdure and Painting," Ledure I 
 
 Towers: by John Ruskin 128 
 
 From "The Stones of Venice," Volume I, Chapter XIX 
 
CONTENTS XI 
 
 SeSiion III 
 PAINTING 
 
 The Art of Pictures: by Charles Reade 131 
 
 From " The Cloister and the Hearth," Chapter XLIII 
 
 Pictures: by Nathaniel Hawthorne 131 
 
 From "The Marble Fawn," Chapter XXXVII 
 
 The Purpose of Art: by Sir W. Martin Conway . 132 
 From "Early Tuscan Art," Chapter IV 
 
 The Purpose of Art: by John Ruskin 133 
 
 From "Modern Painters" Volume I 
 
 Technique and Ideas; by George Clausen 135 
 
 From "Aimsjind Ideals in Art" Chapter I 
 
 Beauty, Ugliness, Truth: by John Ruskin 137 
 
 From "Modern Painters" Volume III 
 
 Breadth and Detail in Painting: by William 
 
 Hazlitt 141 
 
 From "On the Fine Arts" 
 
 Colouring the Test of a Painter: by John Ruskin 144 
 
 From " Modern Painters," Volume IV 
 
 The Nobleness and Loveliness of Colour: by 
 
 John Ruskin 14S 
 
 From " The Stones of Venice," Volume II 
 
 The Value of Delicacy: by William M. Thackeray 147 
 From "Henry Esmond," Chapter IX 
 
 Truth of Likeness in Portraiture: by John 
 
 Ruskin 148 
 
 From " Modern Painters," Volume I 
 
 The Purpose of Art: by Sir W. Martin Conway . 150 
 
 From "Early Tuscan Art," Chapter III 
 
 Giotto: by John Ruskin iji 
 
 From "Giotto and bis Works in Padua" 
 
XU CONTENTS 
 
 Giotto: by Samuel Butler IS4 
 
 From "A PairOer's Views of Painting" 
 
 *' Fra Angelico: by Sir W. Martin Conway 154 
 
 From "Early Tuscan Art," Chapter VI 
 
 f^ENOzzo Gozzou: by John Addington Symonds . . . 159 
 From "Renaissance in Italy," The Fine Arts, Chapter V 
 
 LucA SiGNORELLi: by John Addington Symonds. . . . 161 
 From "Renaissance in Italy," The Fine Arts, Chapter VI 
 
 Michel Angelo: by Nathaniel Hawthorne 164 
 
 From "French and Italian Note Books," Italy, 1858 
 
 Raphael: by Goethe 165 
 
 From "Letters jrom Italy" 1786J 
 
 Correggio: by William Hazlitt 166 
 
 From "On the Fine Arts" 
 
 ''Leonardo da Vinci: by Walur Pater 167 
 
 From "The Renaissance" 
 
 The Great Colourists: by John Ruskin 170 
 
 From "Lectures on Art," Oxford, 1870, Leilure VII, Colour 
 
 Giorgione: by Walter Pater 171 
 
 From "The Renaissance," The School of Giorgione 
 
 Titian: by Goethe 171 
 
 From " Travels in Italy'' 
 
 Titian: by William Hazlitt 173 
 
 From "On the Fine Arts" 
 
 Titian: by John Ruskin 175 
 
 From " The Two Paths," Ledure II 
 
 Veronese: by Goethe 176 
 
 From "Letters from Italy," 1786 
 
 Titian and Tintoret: by John Addington Symonds 178 
 From "Renaissance in Italy"; The Fine Arts, Chapter VII 
 
 Carlo Dolce: by Nathaniel Hawthorne i8o 
 
 From "French arid Italian Note Books," Italy, 1858 
 
COiSTTENTS XUl 
 
 Velasquez: by Frederic Lord Leighton i8i 
 
 From "Discourses on Art" 
 
 Velasquez: by John Hay 182 
 
 From "Castilian Days; An Hour with the Painters" 
 
 Velasquez: by Havelock Ellis 184 
 
 From " The Soul 0/ Spain," Chapter V 
 
 Sir Joshua Reynolds and Velasquez: by John 
 
 Ruskin , 185 
 
 From " The Two Paths" Leaure II, The Unity of Art 
 
 Holbein: by Henry James 188 
 
 From " Transatlantic Sketches," Darmstadt 
 
 Rembrandt: by William Hazlitt 189 
 
 From "On the Fine Arti' 
 
 Rembrandt: by Eugene Fromentin 190 
 
 From " The Old Masters of Belgium and Holland," Chapter XIV 
 
 Rubens: by Goethe 192 
 
 From "Conversations with Eckermann" 1827 
 
 Rubens: by Eugene Fromentin 194 
 
 From " The Old Masters of Belgium and Holland," Chapter VI 
 
 Ruysdael: by Eugene Fromentin 197 
 
 From " The Old Masters of Holland and Belgium" Chapter VII 
 
 Hogarth: by William M. Thackeray 199 
 
 From " The English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century " 
 
 Sir Joshua Reynolds : by John Ruskin 202 
 
 From "The Two Paths": The Unity of An 
 
 Corot: by Emile Michel 203 
 
 From "Great Masters of Landscape Painting," Chapter VIII 
 
 Turner and Titian: by John Ruskin 206 
 
 From "Modern Painters," Volume V 
 
 Sincerity: by Samuel Butler 212 
 
 From "A Painter's Views of Painting' 
 
XIV CONTENTS 
 
 SeBion IV 
 SCULPTURE 
 
 Repose : hy John Ruskin 215 
 
 From "Modern Painters," Volume II 
 
 The Sphynx: hy Alexander William Kinglake 217 
 
 From "Eotben," Chapter XX 
 
 The Shield of Achilles: by Homer 219 
 
 From T. J. Cobden-Sanderson "Of Art and Life," Chapter I: 
 Art and Life and the Building and Decoration of Cities 
 
 Sculpture and Painting: by G. Lowes Dickinson . 223 
 From " The Greek View of Life," Chapter IV 
 
 Repose in Greek Art: by T^illiam Haditt 227 
 
 From "On the Fine Arts" 
 
 Parthenon Sculptures: by A. S. Murray 229 
 
 From "The Sculptures of the Parthenon" 
 
 The Parthenon Marbles: by Benjamin Robert 
 
 Hay don 23 1 
 
 From "Autobiography," 1808 
 
 Gothic Sculpture at Amiens : by William Morris 234 
 From "Shadows of Amiens" 
 
 NiccoLA PiSANo: by Lord Lindsay 241 
 
 From "History of Christian Art," Letter III 
 
 t Andrea Pisano: by Sir W. Martin Conzoay 243 
 
 From "Early Tuscan Art," Chapter III 
 
 Bas-Reliefs of Giotto's Tower: by Sir W. Martin 
 
 Conway 245 
 
 From "Early Tuscan Art," Chapter III 
 
 Michelangelo: by John Addington Symonds 246 
 
 From " The Life of Michelangelo," Chapter X, The Medici Tombs 
 
 Michel Angelo: by Nathaniel Hawthorne 252 
 
 From "French and Italian Note Books," Italy, 1858 
 
 Glossary 255 
 
 Index 259 
 
GREAT ARTISTS 
 AND THEIR WORKS 
 
Se£lion I 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 THE PURPOSE AND MEANING 
 OF ART 
 
 ART AND THE BEAUTY OF NATURE 
 
 FREDERIC LORD LEIGHTON 
 
 Wl 
 
 E have no cause for misgivings in regard to 
 the continued vitaUty of the arts we follow, inas- 
 much as they have their roots in deep needs and un- 
 dying instindls in our common nature; and I exhorted 
 you to work on in unwavering faith that the day is 
 not at hand when the expression of aesthetic emotion 
 through the forms of art shall fail for lack of an an- 
 swering echo in the hearts of men. 
 
 Her duty is to awaken those sensations diredtly 
 emotional and indiredtly intelledlual which can be 
 communicated only through the sense of sight, to 
 the delight of which she has primarily to minister. 
 And the dignity of these sensations lies in this, that 
 they are inseparably connected by associations of 
 ideas with a range of perceptions and feelings of in- 
 finite variety and scope. They come fraught with 
 dim complex memories of all the ever-shifting 
 spedtacle of inanimate creation, and of the more 
 deeply stirring phenomena of darkness of the outer 
 world; of the storm and the lull, the splendour and 
 the darkness of the changeful and the transitory 
 
2 ART AND THE BEAUTY OF NATURE 
 
 lives of men. Nay, so closely overlaid is the simple 
 zesthetic sensation with elements of ethic or intel- 
 leAual emotion by these constant and manifold 
 accretions of associated ideas, that it is difficult to 
 conceive of it independently of this precious over- 
 growth. 
 
 The most sensitively religious mind may indeed 
 rest satisfied in the consciousness that it is not on 
 the wings of abstrad thought alone that we rise to 
 the highest moods of contemplation or to the most 
 chastened moral temper; and assuredly arts, which 
 have for their chief task to reveal the inmost springs 
 of beauty in the created world, to display all the pomp 
 of the teeming earth and all the pageant of those 
 heavens, of which we are told that they declare the 
 glory of God, are not the least eloquent witnesses to 
 the might and to the majesty of the mysterious and 
 eternal Fountain of all good things. 
 
 And once again, I say, I would fain stamp this 
 vital fadl deeply in your minds. Believe me, what- 
 ever of dignity, whatever of strength we have 
 within us, will dignify and will make strong the labour 
 of our hands; whatever littleness degrades our 
 spirit, will lessen them and drag them down. What- 
 ever noble fire is in our hearts will burn also in our 
 work; whatever purity is ours will chasten and ex- 
 alt it; for as we are, so our work is, and what we 
 sow in our lives, that, beyond a doubt, we shall 
 reap for good or for ill in the strengthening or de- 
 facing of whatever gifts have fallen to our lot. 
 
Wi 
 
 A RT AND SCIENCE 
 
 ART AND SCIENCE 
 
 JOHN CAIRD 
 
 HEN the sympathetic observer stands in 
 rapt admiration before some great masterpiece of 
 painting or sculpture, or when ear and soul yield 
 themselves up to the charm of the great composer's 
 art in song, cantata, opera, oratorio, and vague, 
 undefined emotions, passionate or pathetic, are 
 awakened within the breast, no thought of ulterior 
 use or profit crosses the mind. Its experience is 
 that of absorption in present, immediate enjoyment. 
 And, on the other hand, if we think of the attitude 
 of the artist's mind in producing, equally foreign 
 to it is the aim at anything beyond the work itself. 
 He paints or sings or writes simply because the 
 creative impulse is upon him, and he cannot choose 
 but give it vent; because a dream of beauty has 
 taken possession of his soul, and it is joy or rapture 
 to him to express it. 
 
 But whilst this view of the essentially non-utili- 
 tarian charaAer of art may be freely conceded, there 
 is nothing inconsistent with the concession in 
 claiming for works of art a higher fundlion than that 
 of recreation or amusement, or in the assertion that 
 they contribute in no slight or inappreciable measure 
 to the formation of charadter and the intelledlual 
 and moral education of the community. 
 
 Inmakingthis claim, however, it must be admitted 
 that, in one point of view, the principle of "art for 
 art's sake" is profoundly true. The educative 
 fundlion of art is, at best, an indiredt one. Whatever 
 intelledual enlightenment or moral elevation is to be 
 
4 ARTANDSCIENCE 
 
 gained from works of imagination, to communicate 
 such benefits cannot be the conscious aim of the 
 artist; nor is the merit of his work to be estimated 
 by its didadlic excellencies. Bad or indifferent 
 painting or poetry is no more redeemed from artistic 
 inferiority by the moral or religious aim of the 
 ' author than ill-dressed food or ill-made clothes by 
 the respedlability or piety of the cook or tailor. 
 And, on the other hand, a poem or pidlure may have 
 many of the highest qualities of art, though the 
 subjedt may be coarse or voluptuous, or the treat- 
 ment such as to offend our moral susceptibilities. 
 
 The poetry of Shelley and Byron contains much 
 which, from a religious or moral point of view, 
 cannot escape censure, whilst the literary form is 
 of the highest artistic merit. The works of Dr. 
 Watts and Mr. Tupper are full of pious teaching 
 and unexceptional moralizing, yet, regarded as 
 poetry, both are execrable. The deepest truth, in 
 short, the noblest moral lessons may be conveyed 
 in a form of art, but it is as unconsciously, with as 
 little of a didadlic aim, as are the lessons which 
 Nature herself i^ ever teaching. The teachings of 
 rock and stream and sea, the moralities addressed 
 to us by stars and flowers, by autumn woods and 
 mountain solitudes, do not reach us in the form of 
 argumentative disquisitions, but of feelings and 
 emanations which win their way insensibly into the 
 soul. There are better sermons in stones and books 
 and in the running brooks than human pen ever 
 endited, but the lessons which these unconsecrated 
 preachers address to us are innocent of logic or 
 formal admonition. 
 
ARTANDSCIENCE 5 
 
 " Oh, to what uses shall we -put 
 
 The wild-weed flower that simply blows 
 And is there any moral shut 
 
 Within the bosom of the rose? 
 But any man who walks the mead 
 
 In bud or blade or bloom may find, 
 According as his humqurs lead, 
 
 A meaning suited to his mind; 
 And liberal applications lie 
 
 In Art, like Nature, dearest friend. 
 So 'twere to cramp its use if I 
 
 Should hook it to some useful end." 
 
 And the reason for what has now been said is 
 obvious. It arises from the very nature of art as 
 distinguished from science. Works of imagination 
 and works of instruAion may treat of common 
 subjeAs. The painter may depidt, the poet sing, of 
 the same scenes, persons, events, objects, whereof 
 the naturalist, the historian, the philosopher dis- 
 courses. But the aspedts in which the two sorts of 
 observers contemplate the common objedls are es- 
 sentially different; nor is it possible to combine in 
 the same work an artistic and a scientific view of a 
 subjedl, without sacrificing the peculiar excellence 
 of both. In proportion to its merits as a work of 
 science it will be bad as a work of art, and the very 
 qualities which make it good art will make it bad 
 science. The same tradt of country, to take a 
 palpable illustration, may be represented in land- 
 scape painting and in a map. But the painter who 
 tried to embody in his work the precise and definite 
 information of the map, would make it a wretchedly 
 bad pidlure, and the geographer would spoil his 
 
6 ARTANDGENIUS 
 
 map, if he tried to introduce the artistic efFecfls of 
 light and shade into his delineation of the bound- 
 aries of countries and of mountains, rivers and 
 streams. An anatomical drawing or model and a 
 figure in sculpture deal both with the human frame; 
 but if the sculptor is moved by the desire to display 
 his anatomical knowledge, the ineffable grace and 
 beauty we demand in a work of art vanishes, and 
 what we get is neither science nor art, but only 
 artistic pedantry. 
 
 ART AND GENIUS 
 
 WILLIAM M. THACKERAY 
 
 IVllSS CANN painted flowers and card-screens 
 elegantly, and 'finished' pencil-drawings most 
 elaborately for her pupils. She could copy prints, 
 so that at a little distance you would scarcely know 
 that the copy in stumped chalk was not a bad 
 mezzotinto engraving. She even had a little old 
 paint-box, and showed you one or two ivory minia- 
 tures out of the drawers. She gave John James 
 what little knowledge of drawing she had, and 
 handed him over her invaluable recipes for mixing 
 water-colours — 'for trees in foregrounds, burnt 
 sienna and indigo' — 'for dark foliage, ivory 
 black and gamboge' — 'for flesh colour,' etc., 
 etc. John James went through her poor little 
 course, but not so brilliantly as she expeded. She 
 was forced to own that several of her pupils' 
 'Pieces' were executed much more dexterously 
 than Johnny Ridley's. Honeyman looked at the 
 boy's drawings from time to time, and said, 'Hm, 
 ha! . . . very clever — a great deal of fancy. 
 
THE PURPOSE OF ART f 
 
 really.' But Honeyman knew no more of the 
 subjedt than a deaf and dumb man knows of music. 
 He could talk the Art cant very glibly, and had a 
 set of Morghens and Madonnas as became a clergy- 
 man and a man of taste; but he saw not with eyes 
 such as those wherewith Heaven had endowed the 
 humble little butler's boy, to whom splendours of 
 Nature were revealed to vulgar sights invisible, 
 and beauties manifest in form colours, shadows of 
 common objedts, where most of the world saw only 
 what was dull, and gross, and familiar. One reads 
 in the magic story-books, of a charm or a flower 
 which the wizard gives, and which enables the 
 bearer to see the fairies. enchanting boon of 
 Nature, which reveals to the possessor the hidden 
 spirits of beauty round about him! spirits which 
 the strongest and most gifted masters compel into 
 painting or song. To others it is granted but to 
 have fleeting glimpses of that fair Art-world; and 
 tempted by ambition, or barred by faint-hearted- 
 ness, or driven by necessity, to turn away thence 
 to the vulgar life-track, and the light of common 
 day. 
 
 THE PURPOSE OF ART 
 
 JOHN ROBERT SEELEY 
 
 J_vET US begin by considering what we under- 
 stand by Art. The word is one which we use con- 
 stantly in speaking of painting, sculpture, and 
 architecture; less commonly, but still often, in 
 speaking of poetry and music. These are the dif- 
 ferent arts. Each of them differs in some respeA 
 from every other, but in some points all of them are 
 
8 THE PURPOSE OF ART 
 
 alike. Now that in which all the arts resemble 
 each other, what is common to all the arts, is 
 called Art. 
 
 What is that^one thing which shows itself in all 
 alike, whether we are dealing with stone, as in 
 sculpture, or with words, as in poetry; with canvas, 
 as in painting, or with sounds as in music? To 
 answer this question is to make a beginning in the 
 intelligent study of Art. 
 
 With every power that we have we can do 
 two things: we can work, we can play. Every 
 power that we have is at the same time useful 
 to us and delightful to us. Even when we are 
 applying them to the furtherance of our personal 
 objedls the adtivity of them gives us pleasure; 
 and when we have no useful end to which to 
 apply them, it is still pleasant to us to use them; 
 the adlivity of them gives us pleasure for its own 
 sake. There is no motion of our body or mind 
 which we use in work, which we do not also use in 
 play or amusement. If we walk in order to arrive 
 at the place where our interest requires us to be, 
 we also walk about the fields for enjoyment. If 
 we apply our combining and analyzing powers to 
 solve the problems of mathematics, we use them 
 sometimes also In solving double acrostics. 
 
 If this is clear, let me now go a step farther, and 
 say, that as all the serious adllvities of men fall 
 into certain large classes, and so each class of 
 adivities has Its own method and rules, so Is it 
 with what I may call his sportive adllvities. What 
 these large classes are in the former case we all 
 know. Men's serious adllvitles are war, manu- 
 fadlures, trade, science. But what are the classes 
 
THE PURPOSE OF ART 9 
 
 or kinds into which man's adlivitieis fall when he 
 sports with them? They are manifold, but among 
 them are painting, sculpture, poetry, music, or 
 what we call the arts. 
 
 This fundamental dodrine, that all art is play 
 or sport, and exists for pleasure, is easily miscon- 
 ceived, and therefore often denied. To see it 
 clearly we should consider the simplest cases of 
 Art, not the most famous or splendid examples. 
 If I Wanted to discover what is the objedl of dinner, 
 it would not be wise to tdke the case of a great 
 public banquet. If I did so, I should be in danger 
 of supposing that the objedl of dinner was the dis- 
 play of plate or the making of speeches, and that 
 eating and drinking were mere accidents of it. My 
 best plan would be to consider why the tired 
 pedestrian puts up at the wayside inn. In the 
 same way, in order to discover the objed: of music, 
 let us not consider Mendelssohn's "Elijah"; this 
 Wght lead us to suppose that the objedl of music 
 is the inculcation of religious truth; but let us 
 consider why the laborer whistles at his work. If 
 I took "Faust" or "Hamlet" as examples of the 
 drama, I might suppose the drama had a philo- 
 sophical objedt; I understand the drama better 
 when I consider a Christmas party making up a 
 charade. In these simple, natural adlions we see 
 the naked notion in which the arts begin. We are 
 present at the birth of the Muses, and we see that 
 they are not the daughters of Memory, but the 
 daughters of Joy. Such examples show us how, 
 with all our faculties, we naturally play as well 
 as work. They show that the voice is not only 
 useful to speak with, but also dehghtful to sing 
 
lO 
 
 WHAT IS ART? 
 
 with; the foot cannot only walk, but also dance; 
 the hand can paint, as well as work or write; and, 
 to take more complicated instances, the gift of 
 speech, the serious use of which is to communicate 
 thoughts and fadts is also used for delight and 
 satisfadlion in rhythmical forms, and thus becomes 
 poetry; finally, the whole variety of our serious 
 life is reproduced for delight in the drama. 
 
 WHAT IS ART? 
 
 TOLSTOI 
 
 o, 
 
 'NLY those produdlions will be considered art 
 which transmit feelings drawing men together in 
 brotherly union, or such universal feelings as can 
 unite all men. Only such art will be chosen, 
 tolerated, approved, and diffused. But art trans- 
 mitting feelings flowing from antiquated, worn-out 
 religious teaching, — Church art, patriotic art, 
 voluptuous art, transmitting feelings of super- 
 stitious fear, of pride, of vanity, of ecstatic ad- 
 miration of national heroes, — art exciting exclu- 
 sive love of one's own people, or sensuality, will be 
 considered bad, harmful art, and will be censured 
 and despised by public opinion. All the rest of 
 art, transmitting feelings accessible only to a sedtion 
 of people, will be considered unimportant, and 
 will be neither blamed nor praised. And the ap- 
 praisement of art in general will devolve, not, as is 
 now the case, on a separate class of rich people, 
 but on the whole people; so that for a work to be 
 esteemed good, and to be approved of and diffused, 
 it will have to satisfy the demands, not of a few 
 
WHATISART? II 
 
 people living in identical and often unnatural con- 
 ditions, but it will have to satisfy the demands of 
 all those great masses of people who are situated 
 in the natural conditions of laborious life. 
 
 And the artists producing art will also not be, 
 as now, merely a few people selected from a small 
 sedtion of the nation, members of the upper classes 
 or their hangers-on, but will consist of all those 
 gifted members of the whole people who prove 
 capable of, and are inclined toward, artistic adtivity. 
 
 Artistic aftivity will then be accessible to all 
 men. It will become accessible to the whole people, 
 because, in the first place, in the art of the future, 
 not only will that complex technique, which de- 
 forms the producftions of the art of today and re- 
 quires so great an effort and expenditure of time, 
 not be demanded, but, on the contrary, the demand 
 will be for clearness, simplicity, and brevity — 
 conditions mastered, not by mechanical exercises, 
 but by the education of taste. And secondly, 
 artistic adtivity will become accessible to all men 
 of the people because instead of the present pro- 
 fessional schools which only some can enter, all 
 will learn music and depidtive art (singing and 
 drawing) equally with letters in the elementary 
 schools, and in such a way that every man, having 
 received the first principles of drawing and music, 
 and feeling a capacity for, and a call to, one or 
 other of the arts, will be able to perfedl himself 
 in it. 
 
 People think that if there are no special art 
 schools the technique of art will deteriorate. Un- 
 doubtedly, if by technique we understand those 
 complications of art which are now considered an 
 
12 WHATISART 
 
 ? 
 
 excellence, it will deteriorate, but if by technique 
 is understood clearness, beauty, simplicity, and 
 compression in works of art, then, even if the 
 elements of drawing and music were not to be 
 taught in the national schools, the technique will 
 not only not deteriorate, but, as is shown by all 
 peasant art, will be a hundred times better. It will 
 be improved, because all the artists of genius now 
 hidden among the masses will become producers of 
 art and will give models of excellence, which (as 
 has always been the case) will be the best schools 
 of technique for their successors. For every true 
 artist, even now, learns his technique, chiefly, not 
 in the schools, but in life, from the examples of the 
 great masters : then — when the producers of art 
 will be the best artists of the whole nation, and 
 there will be more such examples, and they will be 
 more accessible — such part of the school training 
 as the future artist will lose will be a hundredfold 
 compensated for by the training he will receive 
 from the numerous examples of good art difi^used 
 in society. 
 
 Such will be one difference between present and 
 future art. Another difference will be that art will 
 not be produced by professional artists receiving 
 payment for their work and engaged in nothing 
 else besides their art. The art of the future will 
 be produced by all the members of the community 
 who feel the need of such adlivity, but they will 
 occupy themselves with art only when they feel 
 such need. 
 
Af 
 
 GREAT ART IS DELICATE I3 
 
 GREAT ART IS DELICATE 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 ^S its greatness depends on the sum of truth, 
 and this sum of truth can always be increased by 
 delicacy of handling, it follows that all great art 
 must have this delicacy to the utmost possible 
 degree. This rule is infallible and inflexible. All 
 coarse work is the sign of low art. Only, it is to 
 be remembered, that coarseness must be estimated 
 by the distance from the eye, it being necessary to 
 consult the distance, when great, by laying on 
 touches which appear coarse when seen near; but 
 which, so far from being coarse, are, in reality, 
 more delicate in a master's work than the finest 
 close handling, for they involve a calculation of 
 result, and are laid on with a subtlety of sense 
 precisely correspondent to that with which a good 
 archer draws his bow; the spedlator seeing in the 
 adlion nothing but the strain of the strong arm, 
 while there is, in reality, in the finger and eye, an 
 ineffably delicate estimate of distance, and touch 
 on the arrow plume. And, indeed, this delicacy 
 is generally quite perceptible to those who know 
 what the truth is, for strokes by Tintoret or Paul 
 Veronese, which were done in an instant, and look 
 to an ignorant spedlator merely like a violent dash 
 of loaded colour, (and are, as such, imitated by 
 blundering artists,) are, in fadt, modulated by the 
 brush and finger to that degree of delicacy that no 
 single grain of the colour could be taken from the 
 touch without injury; and little golden particles of 
 it, not the size of a gnat's head, have important 
 
14 GREATNESS IN ART 
 
 share and fundlion in the balances of light in a 
 pidlure perhaps fifty feet long. Nearly every other 
 rule applicable to art has some exception but this. 
 This has absolutely none. All great art is delicate 
 art, and all coarse art is bad art. Nay, even to a 
 certain extent, all bold art is bad art; for boldness 
 is not the proper word to apply to the courage and 
 swiftness of a great master, based on knowledge, 
 and coupled with fear and love. There is as much 
 difference between the boldness of the true and the 
 false masters, as there is between the courage of 
 a pure woman and the shamelessness of a lost one. 
 The last charadleristic of great art is that it 
 must be inventive, that is, be produced by the im- 
 agination. In this resped, it must precisely fulfil 
 the definition already given of poetry; and not 
 only present grounds for noble emotion, but furnish 
 these grounds by imaginative power. Hence there 
 is at once a great bar fixed between the two schools 
 of Lower and Higher Art. The lower merely 
 copies what is set before it, whether in portrait, 
 landscape, or still-life; the higher either entirely 
 imagines its subjedt, or arranges the materials 
 presented to it, so as to manifest the imaginative 
 power. 
 
 GREATNESS IN ART 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 IF I say that the greatest pidture is that which 
 conveys to the mind of the speAator the greatest 
 number of the greatest ideas, I have a definition 
 which will include as subjects of comparison every 
 pleasure which art is capable of conveying. If I 
 
GREATNESS IN ART 15 
 
 were to say, on the contrary, that the best pi<^ure 
 was that which most closely imitated nature, I 
 should assume that art could only please by im- 
 itating nature; and I should cast out of the pale 
 of criticism those parts of works of art which are 
 not imitative, that is to say, intrinsic beauties of 
 colour and form, and those works of art wholly, 
 which, like the Arabesques of Raphael in the 
 Loggias, are not imitative at all. Now I want a 
 definition of art wide enough to include all its 
 varieties of aim. I do not say therefore that the 
 art is greatest which gives most pleasure, because 
 perhaps there is some art whose end is to teach, 
 and not to please. I do not say that the art is 
 greatest which tekches us most, because perhaps 
 there is some art whose end is to please, and not 
 to teach. I do not say that the art is greatest 
 which imitates best, because perhaps there is some 
 art whose end is to create, and not to imitate. 
 But I say that the art is greatest which conveys to 
 the mind of the spedtator, by any means whatso- 
 ever, the greatest number of the greatest ideas; 
 and I call an idea great in proportion as it is re- 
 ceived by a higher faculty of the mind, and as it 
 more fully occupies, and in occupying, exercises 
 and exalts, the faculty by which it is received. 
 
 If this then be the definition of great art, that of a 
 great artist naturally follows. He is the greatest 
 artist who has embodied, in the sum of his works, 
 the greatest number of the greatest ideas. 
 
l6 BAD ART -IF POWERFUL ONLY 
 
 E. 
 
 BAD ART— IF POWERFUL ONLY 
 
 JOHN ROBERT SEELEY 
 
 /VERY work of Art is bad, however powerful, 
 which leaves on the mind a predominant feeling of 
 dissatisfadion, or disgust, or horror. And yet it 
 is very common to hear the works of Art judged 
 simply by their power, by the amount of effedl 
 they produce, without regard to the quality of the 
 eflFedl. At Bologna, for example, there is a very 
 powerful pidlure by Domenichino, of the Martyr- 
 dom of St. Agnes. Now to see a human being put 
 to a violent death is a dreadful thing, and, as a 
 general rule, I had rather not see any representation 
 of it. But when the death is martyrdom, when 
 faith and hope triumph over bodily torture, then 
 no doubt, instead of being merely painful, it be- 
 comes sublime. It then becomes a fair subjeA for 
 Art, because the contemplation of it produces on 
 the whole a predominant feeling of triumph and 
 satisfadtion. But the artist's special problem is to 
 convey the sense of this vidtory of faith over pain. 
 If he merely paints with great power the change 
 produced in the human body by the agonies of 
 death, he misses the mark altogether. And this 
 was the eflFeft produced on me by Domenichino's 
 pidlure. I felt as I should feel if I saw a woman 
 stabbed to the heart in the street. I thought I 
 had seldom seen anything so powerful, and I 
 wished I had never seen it at all. 
 
RELATION OF ART TO NATURE IJ 
 
 N. 
 
 RELATION OF ART TO NATURE 
 JAMES McNeil whistler 
 
 lATURE contains the elements, in colour and 
 form, of all pidlures, as the keyboard contains the 
 notes of all music. 
 
 But the artist is born to pick, and choose, and 
 group with science, these elements, that the re- 
 sult may be beautiful — as the musician gathers 
 his notes, and forms his chords, until he brings 
 forth from chaos glorious harmony. 
 
 To say to the painter, that Nature is to be taken 
 as she is, is to say to the player, that he may sit 
 on the piano. 
 
 That Nature is always right, is an assertion, 
 artistically, as untrue, as it is one whose truth is 
 universally taken for granted. Nature is very 
 rarely right, to such an extent even, that it might 
 almost be said that Nature is usually wrong; that 
 is to say, the condition of things that shall bring 
 about the perfedlion of harmony worthy a pidture 
 is rare, and not common at all. 
 
 This would seem, to even the most intelligent, a 
 dodlrine almost blasphemous. So incorporated 
 with our education has the supposed aphorism be- 
 come that its belief is held to be part of our moral 
 being, and the words themselves have, in our ear, 
 the ring of religion. Still, seldom does Nature 
 succeed in producing a pidture. 
 
 The sun blares, the wind blows from the east, 
 the sky is bereft of cloud, and without, all is of 
 iron. The windows of the Crystal Palace are seen 
 from all points of London. The holiday-maker re- 
 
l8 RELATION OF ART TO NATURE 
 
 joices in the glorious day, and the painter turns 
 aside to shut his eyes. 
 
 How little this is understood, and hbw dutifully 
 the casual in Nature is accepted as sublime, may 
 be gathered from the unlimited admiration daily 
 produced by a very foolish sunset. 
 
 The dignity of the snow-capped mountain is lost 
 in distindness, but the joy of the toiirist is to 
 recognize the traveller on the top. The desire to 
 see, for the sake of seeing, is, with the mass, alone 
 the one to be gratified, hence the delight in detail. 
 
 And when the evening mist clothes the riverside 
 with poetry, as with a veil, and the poor buildings 
 lose themselves in the dim sky, and the tall chim- 
 neys become campanili, and the warehouses are 
 palaces in the night, and the whole city hangs in 
 the heavens, and fairy-land is before us — then the 
 wayfarer hastens home; the working man and the 
 cultured one, the wise man and the one of pleasure, 
 cease to understand, as they have ceased to see, 
 and Nature, who, for once, has sung in tune, sings 
 her exquisite song to the artist alone, her son and 
 her master — her son in that he loves her, her 
 master in that he knows her. 
 
 To him her secrets are unfolded, to him her 
 lessons have become gradually clear. He looks at 
 her flower, not with the enlarging lens, that he may 
 gather fadls for the botanist, but with the light of 
 the one who sees in her choice seledtion of brilliant 
 tones and delicate tints, suggestiotis of future 
 harmonies. 
 
 He does not confine himself to purposeless copy- 
 ing, without thought, each blade of grass, as com- 
 mended by the inconsequent, but, in the long curve 
 
THE STUDYOFART 19 
 
 of the narrow leaf, correfted by the straight tall 
 stem, he learns how grace is wedded to dignity, 
 how strength enhances sweetness, that elegance 
 shall be the result. 
 
 In the citron wing of the pale butterfly, with its 
 dainty spots of orange he sees before him the 
 stately halls of fair gold, with their slender safi"ron 
 pillars, and is taught how the delicate drawing 
 high upon the walls shall be traced in tender tones 
 of orpiment, and repeated by the base in notes of 
 graver hue. 
 
 In all that is dainty and lovable he finds hints 
 for his own combinations and thus is Nature ever 
 his resource and always at his service, and to him 
 is naught refused. 
 
 Through his brain, as through the last alembic, 
 is distilled the refined essence of that thought which 
 began with the Gods, and which they left him to 
 carry out. 
 
 Set apart by them to complete their works, he 
 produces that wondrous thing called the master- 
 piece, which surpasses in perfedlion all that they 
 have contrived in what is called Nature; and the 
 Gods stand by and marvel, and perceive how far 
 away more beautiful is the Venus of Melos than 
 was their own Eve. 
 
 I 
 
 THE SrUDT OF ART 
 
 JOHN CAIRD 
 
 T is the office of art to idealize nature and life, 
 or to present their fa(fls and phenomena in their 
 ideal aspeA. 
 
 Does this mean that human art can improve on 
 
20 THE STUDY OFART 
 
 nature as God made it, or on human life as Provi- 
 dence has ordered it? Can the loftiest genius in- 
 vent a fairer world, can the most soaring imagination 
 conceive, or the resources of art depid:, forms more 
 lovely, lights more dazzling, harmonies of tone and 
 colour more subtle and various than those which 
 we have but to open our eyes to behold? Bring 
 before your minds, for example, any one of nature's 
 ever-changing aspedts, and say if the attempt faith- 
 fully to render it would not be employment suf- 
 ficient for the rarest skill of the most ambitious 
 limner who ever handled brush and palette. Light 
 softly tinting the mountain edge at morning, or 
 flooding meadow and woodland and stream with 
 the golden rain of noontide, or flinging abroad with 
 munificence of departing greatness its treasures of 
 purple and vermilion and gold, ere it passes away 
 with infinite gradations of fading splendour beneath 
 the western horizon: the sea rippling up with 
 gentle, scarce perceptible insinuation over the long 
 reaches of the pebbly shore, or rushing with wild 
 impetuosity and hoarse clang of assault on the 
 cliffs of an iron-bound coast; a mountain lake "in 
 the light of the rising moon and of the first stars 
 twinkling against the dusky silverness of twilight": 
 — what, it may be said, has human art to do with 
 its own inventions when, in myriads of such scenes 
 and aspedts, with inexhaustible wealth of loveliness, 
 nature awaits, yet baffles man's utmost skill to 
 copy her? Nay, before he presumes to draw on 
 the resources of his own imagination, let the artist 
 take the commonest natural objedts, the merest 
 patch of earth or sea or sky — a pool, a spray of 
 hawthorn, a clump of heather, a cloud floating on 
 
THE STUDY OF ART 21 
 
 the summer sky — and say, whether, after his most 
 patient and protraded toil, he has succeeded in 
 reproducing aft exhaustive representation of what 
 is before his eyes? 
 
 To this the answer is that, even if it were true 
 that the artist has no other fundion than to record 
 what he sees in nature, it is not every eye that can 
 see what he sees. Nature refledls herself in the 
 mirror of man's mind, but the mirror in most cases 
 is opaque or dim, sometimes distorted and fradlured, 
 and the refledlion takes its charadter from the 
 medium by which it is produced. For the scien- 
 tific man the outward fadts, confused, accidental, 
 Unordered, which are all that the ordinary observer 
 perceives, become luminous with the presence of 
 hidden laws and relations. For the artistic or 
 poetic observer, for the mind that is in sympathy 
 with the souls of things — sensuous forms, colours, 
 motions, are alive with the spirit of beauty, trans- 
 figured with the hidden glow and splendour of a 
 light that other eyes see not — a Ught that never 
 was on land or sea. And it is his high vocation, 
 not merely to copy, to tickle our imitative sus- 
 ceptibilities by a matter-of-fadt imitation of what 
 we saw before, but through the language of imagina- 
 tion to interpret nature, and make us look upon 
 her face "with larger, other eyes than ours." 
 
 But we may go further than this, and boldly 
 say that there is a sense in which art does "improve 
 on naturfe." All art that is \yorthy of the name is 
 creative, calls into existence something more than 
 the bare fadls which the outward world offers to 
 the senses. These are the materials on which it 
 works but it does not leave them unchanged. It 
 
22 THESTUDYOFART 
 
 takes them up, pours them, so to speak, into the 
 crucible of imagination, flings aside the inere dross 
 of accident, fuses them anew in the fire of thought 
 and feehng, shapes and moulds them into con- 
 formity with its own ideals, and, lo! from its 
 creative hand, forms which eye hath not seen, em- 
 bodied visions of a land that is very far off, and of 
 which only in our most exalted moments we catch 
 a glimpse, start into life and beauty. 
 
 That there is nothing presumptuous in thus 
 claiming for the imaginative arts the power to add 
 something to nature, we may see by refledling on 
 what takes place even in the domain of what are 
 called the industrial arts. Every piece of mechan- 
 ism has in it something more and higher than nature 
 contains. Watches, locomotives, power-looms, 
 steam engines, are not mere natural produdls. 
 They derive their materials from nature, they take 
 advantage of natural forces and laws, but in their 
 production a new, commanding, selecting, trans- 
 forming element comes into play, compelling na- 
 ture's raw materials into new combinations, itself 
 the supreme force amidst nature's forces, to wit, 
 the element of thought, the idea or conception of the 
 inventor. And in like manner in that which we 
 call by eminence the realm of art, i. e. everything is 
 based on nature and must, in a sense, be true to her; 
 but that which constitutes the most precious ele- 
 ment in the great work of art, that which arrests and 
 holds the appreciative mind, is not nature slavishly 
 copied, literally, mechanically, reproduced, but the 
 idea, the inspiring thought, the soul of the artist 
 speaking to our soul and causing nature to shine 
 for U5 with tL supernatural significance and glory. 
 
SeBion IT 
 
 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 THE GREAT PYRAMID 
 
 W. M. FLINDERS PETRI 
 
 T. 
 
 HE laying out of the base of the great pyramid 
 of Khufu is a triumph of skill; its errors, both in 
 length and in angles, were they assembled, could 
 be covered by placing one's thumb over them; and 
 to lay out a square of more than a furlong in the 
 side (and with rock in the midst of it, which pre- 
 vented any diagonal checks being measured) with 
 such accuracy shows surprising care. The work of 
 the casing stones which remains is of the same class; , 
 the faces are so straight and so truly square, that 
 when the stones were built together the film of 
 mortar left between them is on an average not 
 thicker than one's thumb nail, though the joint is 
 a couple of yards long; and the leveling of them over 
 long distances had not any larger errors. In the 
 inside of the pyramid the same fine work is seen; 
 the entrance passage joints are in many cases 
 barely visible when searched for; in the Queen's 
 chamber the joints are found with cement not 
 thicker than a sheet of paper; while in the King's 
 chamber the granite courses have been dressed to 
 a fine equahty, not vai^ying more than a straw's 
 
 breadth in a furlong length of blocks. 
 
 23 
 
24 THE GREAT PYRAMID 
 
 Side by side with this splendid work are the 
 strangest mistakes. After having levelled the cas- 
 ing so finely, the builders made a hundred times the 
 error in levelling the shorter length of the King's 
 chamber, so that they might have done it far 
 better by just looking at the horizon. Having 
 dressed the casing joints beautifully, they then left 
 the face of the wall in the grand gallery rough 
 chiselled. The design was changed and a rough 
 shaft was cut from the side of the gallery down 
 through the building and the rock, to the lower end 
 of the entrance passage. The granite in the ante- 
 chamber is left without its final dressing. And the 
 kernel of the whole, the sarcophagus has much 
 worse work in it than in the building, or than in 
 other sarcophagi of the same period. 
 
 The meaning of this curious discrepancy seems 
 to be that the original architedt, a master of ac- 
 curacy and fine methods, must have ceased to 
 superintend the work when it was but half done. 
 His personal influence gone, the training of his 
 school was not sufficient to carry out the remainder 
 of the building in the first style. Thus the base 
 and the casing around it, the building of the Queen's 
 chamber, and the preparation of the granite for the 
 King's chamber, must all have had the master's 
 eye; but the carelessness of the pupils appears so 
 soon as the control was removed. Mere haste will 
 not account for egregious mistakes, such as that of 
 the King's chamber level, which the skilful archi- 
 tedt would have remedied by five minutes' observa- 
 tion. This suggests that the exquisite workman- 
 ship often found in the early periods, did not 
 so much depend on a large school or widespread 
 
THE GREAT PYRAMID 25 
 
 ability as on a few men far above their fellows, 
 whose every touch was a triumph. In this way 
 we can reconcile it with the crude, and often clumsy, 
 work in building and sculpture found in the same 
 ages. There were no trades union rules against 
 'besting one's mates' in those days. 
 
 The pyramids are supposed to have been built 
 by continuous additions during a king's life, and 
 ended only by his death; whereas there is no evi- 
 dence of this in any of them, and it is clearly dis- 
 proved by the construdlion and arrangement of the 
 interiors; the plan was entire originally, and the 
 whole strudture began at once. The sarcophagi 
 are often supposed to have been put into the 
 pyramids at the King's burial, with his body in- 
 side; whereas in the great and second pyramids, 
 they will not pass through the passages and must 
 have been built in. The casing is supposed to have 
 been all built in the rough, and cut to its slope 
 afterwards; whereas the remaining blocks at the 
 base slightly differ in angle side by side, proving 
 that they were dressed before building in. 
 
 Besides examining the pyramids, the remains of 
 the temple of the great pyramid were cleared, and 
 the granite temple of Khafra was thoroughly 
 measured and planned. But perhaps the most in- 
 teresting part of the subjedl was tracing how the 
 work was done. The great barracks of the work- 
 men were found, behind the second pyramid, 
 capable of housing four thousand men; and such 
 was probably the size of the trained staff of skilled 
 masons employed on the pyramid building. Be- 
 sides these a large body of mere labourers were 
 needed to move the stones; and this was probably 
 
26 THE GREAT PYRAMID 
 
 done during the inundation, when water carriage is 
 easier, and the people have no work. Herodotus 
 gives the echo of this when he says that the relays 
 of labourers only worked for three months at a 
 time. It would be quite praAicable to build the 
 great pyramid in the time, and with the staff of 
 labourers assigned by Herodotus. 
 
 Tools are needed as well as labour; and the 
 question of what tools were used is now settled by 
 evidence, to which modern engineers cordially 
 agree. I found repeatedly that the hard stones, 
 basalt, granite, and diorite, were sawn; and- that 
 the saw was not a blade, or wire, used with a hard 
 powder, but was set with fixed cutting points, in 
 fad, a jewelled saw. These saws must have been 
 as much as nine feet in length, as the cuts run 
 lengthwise on the sarcophagi. One of the most 
 usual tools was the tubular drill, and this was also 
 set with fixed cutting points; I have a core from 
 inside a drill hole, broken away in the working, 
 which shows the spiral grooves produced by the 
 cutting points as they sunk down into the material; 
 this is of red granite, and there has been no flinch- 
 ing or jumping of the tool; every crystal quartz, or 
 felspar, has been cut through in the most equable 
 way, with a clean irresistible cut. An engineer, who 
 knows such work with diamond drills as well as 
 any one said to me, ' I should be proud to turn out 
 such a finely cut core now'; and truth to tell, 
 modern drill cores cannot hold a candle to the 
 Egyptians'; by the side of the ancient work they 
 look wretchedly scraped out and irregular. That 
 such hard cutting points were known and used is 
 proved by clean cut fine hieroglyphs on diorite, 
 
THE HOMERIC PALACE 27 
 
 engraved without a trace of scraping; and by the 
 lathe work, of which I found pieces of turned bowls 
 with the tool lines on them, and positive proof that 
 the surface had not been ground out. The lathe 
 tools were fixed as in modern times, to sweep regu- 
 lar arcs from a centre; and the work is fearless and 
 powerful, as in a flat diorite table with foot, turned 
 in one piece; and also surpassingly delicate, as in 
 a -bowl of diorite, which around the body is only 
 as thick as stout cord. The great granite sar- 
 cophagi were sawn outside, and hollowed by cutting 
 rows of tube drill holes, as may be seen in the great 
 pyramid. No doubt much hammer-dressing was 
 also used, as in all periods; but the fine work 
 shows the marks of just such tools as we have only 
 now re-invented. We can thus understand, far 
 more than before, how the marvellous works of the 
 Egyptians were executed; and further insight only 
 shows plainer the true skill and ability of which 
 they were masters in the earliest times that we can 
 trace. 
 
 THE HOMERIC PALACE 
 
 HOMER 
 
 Ml 
 
 .EANWHILE Odysseus went to the famous 
 palace of Alcinous, and his heart was full of many 
 thoughts as he stood there or ever he had reached 
 the threshold of bronze. For there was a gleam 
 as it were of sun or moon through the high-roofed 
 hall of great-hearted Alcinous. Brazen were the 
 walls which ran this way and that from the thresh- 
 old to the inmost chamber, and round them was a 
 frieze of blue, and golden were the doors that 
 
28 THE HOMERIC PALACE 
 
 closed in the good house. Silver were the door- 
 posts that were set on the brazen threshold, and 
 silver the lintel thereupon, and the hook of the 
 door was of gold. And on either side stood golden 
 hounds and silver, which Hephaestus wrought by 
 his cunning, to guard the palace of great-hearted 
 Alcinous, being free from death and age all their 
 days. And within were seats arrayed against the 
 wall this way and that, from the threshold even to 
 the inmost chamber, and thereon were spread light 
 coverings finely woven, the handiwork of women. 
 There the Phaeacian chieftains were wont to sit 
 eating and drinking for they had continual store. 
 Yea, and there were youths fashioned in gold, 
 standing on firm-set bases, with flaming torches in 
 their hands, giving light through the night to the 
 feasters in the palace. And he had fifty handmaids 
 in the house, and some grind the yellow grain on 
 the millstone, and others weave webs and turn the 
 yarn as they sit, restless as the leaves of the tall 
 poplar tree; and the soft olive oil drops off that 
 linen, so closely is it woven. For as the Phaeacian 
 men were skilled beyond all others in driving a 
 swift ship upon the deep, even so are the women 
 most cunning at the loom, for Athene hath given 
 them notable wisdom in all fair handiwork and 
 cunning wit. And without the courtyard hard by 
 the door is a great garden, of four ploughgates, 
 and a hedge runs round on either side. And there 
 grow tall trees blossoming, pear-trees and pome- 
 granates, and apple trees with bright fruit, and 
 sweet figs, and olives in their bloom. The fruit of 
 these trees never perisheth neither faileth, winter 
 nor summer, enduring through all the year. Ever- 
 
THE ACROPOLIS 29 
 
 more the West Wind blowing brings some fruits to 
 birth and ripens others. Pear upon pear waxes old, 
 and apple on apple, yea and cluster ripens upon 
 cluster of the grape, and fig upon fig. There too 
 hath he a fruitful vineyard planted, whereof the 
 one part is being dried by the heat, a sunny plot on 
 level ground while other grapes men are gathering, 
 and yet others they are treading in the wine-press. 
 In the foremost row are unripe grapes that cast 
 the blossom, and others there be that are growing 
 black to vintaging. There too, skirting the furthest 
 line, are all manner of garden beds, planted trimly, 
 that are perpetually fresh, and therein are two 
 fountains of water, whereof one scatters his streams 
 all about the garden, and the other runs over 
 against it beneath the threshold of the courtyard, 
 and issues by the lofty house, and thence did the 
 townsfolk draw water. These are the splendid 
 gifts of the gods in the palace of Alcinous. 
 
 THE ACROPOLIS 
 
 PLUTARCH 
 
 X HAT which was the chief delight of the Athe- 
 nians and the wonder of strangers, and which alone 
 serves for a proof that the boasted power and op- 
 ulence of ancient Greece is not an idle tale, was the 
 magnificence of the temples and pubUc edifices. 
 Yet no part of the condud of Pericles moved the 
 spleen of his enemies more than this. In their ac- 
 cusations of him to the people they insisted, "That 
 he had brought the greatest disgrace upon the 
 Athenians by removing the public treasures of 
 
30 THEACROPOLIS 
 
 Greece from Delos, and taking them into his own 
 custody: That he had not left himself even the 
 specious apology, of having caused the money to 
 be brought to Athens for its greater security, and 
 to keep it from being seized by the barbarians: 
 That Greece must needs consider it as the highest 
 insult, and an adl of open tyranny, when she saw 
 the money she had been obliged to contribute 
 towards the war, lavished by the Athenians in 
 gilding their city and ornamenting it with statues, 
 and temples that cost a thousand talents, as a 
 proud and vain woman decks herself out with 
 jewels." Pericles answered this charge by ob- 
 serving, "That they were not obliged to give the 
 allies any account of the sums they had received, 
 since they had kept the barbarians at a distance, 
 and effedtually defended the allies, who had not 
 furnished either horses, ships, or men, but only 
 contributed money, which is no longer the property 
 of the giver, but of the receiver, if he performs the 
 conditions on which it is received: That as the 
 state was provided with all the necessaries of war, 
 its superfluous wealth should be laid out on such 
 works, as when executed, would be eternal monu- 
 ments of its glory, and which, during their execu- 
 tion, would diffuse an universal plenty; for as so 
 many kinds of labor and such a variety of instru- 
 ments and materials were requisite to these un- 
 dertakings, every art would be exerted, every hand 
 employed, almost the whole city would be in pay, 
 and be at the same time both adorned and sup- 
 ported by itself." 
 
 Indeed, such as were of a proper age and strength, 
 were wanted for the wars, and well rewarded for 
 
THE ACROPOLIS 31 
 
 their services; and as for the mechanics and 
 meaner sort of people, they went not without 
 their share of the pubUc money nor yet had they 
 it to support them in idleness. By the constructing 
 of great edifices, which required many arts and a 
 long time to finish them, they had equal preten- 
 sions to be considered out of the treasury (though 
 they stirred not out of the city) with the mariners 
 and soldiers, guards and garrisons. For the dif- 
 ferent materials, such as stone, brass, ivory, gold, 
 ebony, and cypress, furnished employment to 
 carpenters, masons, brasiers, goldsmiths, painters, 
 turners, and other artificers; the conveyance of 
 them by sea employed merchants and sailors, and 
 by land, wheelrights, waggoners, carriers, rope- 
 makers, leathercutters, paviors, and ironfounders; 
 and every art had a number of the lower people 
 ranged in proper subordination to execute it like 
 soldiers under the command of a general. Thus 
 by the exercise of these different trades, plenty was 
 diffused among persons of every rank and condition. 
 Thus works were raised of an astonishing magni- 
 tude, and inimitable beauty and peffedlion, every 
 architect striving to surpass the magnificence of 
 the design with the elegance of the execution; yet 
 still the most wonderful circumstance was the ex- 
 pedition with which they were completed. Many 
 edifices, each of which seems to have required the 
 labor of several successive ages, were finished during 
 the administration of one prosperous man. 
 
32 THEACROPOLIS 
 
 THE ACROPOLIS 
 
 W. R. LETHABY 
 
 I ^EAVING the lower town for the acropolis, a 
 statue to Earth as Rearer of Children was passed. 
 'To the acropolis,' says Pausanias, 'there is only 
 one approach, and it allows of no other, being every- 
 where precipitous and walled.' The splendid gate- 
 way of the Holy City of Athens had a gallery of 
 pidtures on the left, and to the right the Temple of 
 Vidlory. Inside the entrance portico the whole 
 area appeared covered with temples, sacred ob- 
 jeAs and statues. Here was a bronze representa- 
 tion of the wooden horse of Troy. There was a 
 group of the Earth praying to Zeus for rain; and, 
 above all, the great bronze Athene rose so high 
 that her plumed helmet was seen from out at sea. 
 About half-way on the irregular enclosure (which 
 levelled up the crest of the rock) to the right, 
 stands the Parthenon, which contained the lovely 
 gold and ivory statue of Athene and a treasure of 
 beautiful objefts. Before the eastern front stood 
 the altar; the temple of Erechtheus, with its 
 sculptured porch, stands to the left. Looking over 
 the battlements of the enclosure on the south side, 
 two vast circular open-air theatres are seen, the 
 rising marble seats following spaces hollowed out 
 of the rocky sides of the hill. Farther away to the 
 west is Mars Hill, where the law pleadings were 
 made, and here, appropriately, was the temple to 
 the Fates. Outside the walls was the Street of the 
 Tombs. 
 
Ti 
 
 THE GREEK TEMPLE 33 
 
 THE GREEK TEMPLE 
 
 ERNST CURTIUS 
 
 HE Greek temple is no civic common hall, but 
 the house of a god. It was the veneration of sacred 
 symbols and figures which first awakened the de- 
 sire of founding a place worthy of them, i. e., a 
 holy place. The most obvious objedt offering it- 
 self for the purpose was the tree sacred to the divin- 
 ity, and forming the natural sanAuary of the latter. 
 Accordingly, we find in Greece tree-sandtuaries of^ 
 primitive antiquity — Apollo placed among laurel-' 
 bushes, and Artemis in the trunk of the cedar or 
 the elm. In the next place it became desirable to 
 provide a more lasting and fixed protecting roof 
 for the gods, in order to ensure their statues the 
 pledges of the public welfare, against robbery and 
 any offensive touch. While it is not improbable 
 that, for such a hedging-in of statues, the wood of 
 the sacred trees was originally employed, a fixed 
 style of architedlure, at all events, only developed 
 itself with the use of stone; and, after the Hellenes 
 had begun to avail themselves, for the purpose of 
 religious worship, of the inexhaustible stores of the 
 most precious material supplied by their hills, they 
 also arranged and formed the whole edifice ac- 
 cording to the natOre of their materials. It was a 
 free creation of the Hellenic mind; and whatever 
 incidental information, with reference to technical 
 points of architefture in stone, they may have de- 
 rived from nations which had been engaged in 
 architedture at an earlier period, according to its 
 
34 THE GREEK TEMPLE 
 
 spiritual essence the whole system was purely 
 Hellenic, and moreover, after its fashion new. 
 
 The idea which, in the first instance, lies at the 
 foundation of the Greek temple of stone, is the 
 same which was the standard in all the Hellenic 
 institutions of religious worship, viz., the stridt 
 separation of the sacred and the profane. For this 
 reason, the rocky soil of natural growth is levelled, 
 and on it a broad terrace raised out of hewn blocks 
 of stone, partly intended to give to the temple a 
 firm foundation and a secure connexion with the 
 earth and, on the other hand, to place it on its 
 own base as something peculiar and established 
 under festive circumstances, and to raise it above 
 the level on which men pursue their daily occupa- 
 tions. The purpose of this solemn foundation is 
 also served by the broad steps cut out around the 
 building, three in number, in order that for the 
 sake of a good omen the right foot may touch 
 both the first and the last of them. 
 
 The immediate position of the statue must, in 
 accordance with its purpose, be fixed, and enclosed 
 on all sides. Accordingly, strong walls, built up 
 out of blocks of stone, surround the quadrilateral 
 space of the cella of the temple, stretching towards 
 the east; like thick curtains, they hide the view of 
 the statue from every unconsecrated eye. But it 
 is at the same time to be accessible and visible. 
 For in the east court of the temple stands the altar 
 for burnt-offerings, and those who sacrifice on it 
 wish to sacrifice in the sight of the divinity. Ac- 
 cordingly, it becomes necessary to diminish and 
 reconcile the contrast between the dark space 
 withm and the surrounding localities without. 
 
THE GREEK TEMPLE 35 
 
 This is attained by leaving the east side open; the 
 walls here end in the form of columns, called 
 pilasters and, in the midst, between them rise two 
 columns indicating the front of the building, and 
 forming together with the projefting side-walls, a 
 space full of light, which is protedted from without 
 by nothing but grating. A corresponding space is 
 added to the heart of the building on the west. 
 
 The columns and pilasters are connedled with 
 one another by the architrave. On the architrave 
 arise anew vertical props; these are the triglyphs, 
 redlangular blocks, the intermediate spaces between 
 which (the metopes) remain open in order to give 
 light to the interior. Behind the triglyphs rest 
 the ends of the stone beams, with a slight bearing 
 on the architrave; which beams form the ceiling 
 with others crossing them; and the ceiling now 
 covers the whole interior of the sandluary like a 
 network of stone. At their upper end the triglyphs 
 are connedled with one another by a fresh system 
 of horizontal beams. As the columns support the 
 architrave, so the triglyphs support the cornice of 
 the roof of the temple, by throwing its weight on 
 the axes of the columns and the pilasters. The 
 roof extends longitudinally over the entire building 
 beneath, by forming a triangular gable, allowing 
 the rain-water to run off on an incline and to gather 
 in the gutter of the roof, whence it is afterwards 
 emitted through the open jaws of lions, without 
 touching the lower parts of the building. 
 
 Such is the skeleton of the Greek temple. Its 
 creation is the first great fadt of the development 
 of Hellenic culture; and in no creation has the 
 national charadter of the Greeks been expressed in 
 
36 ART AND ARCHITECTURE 
 
 SO real a manner. In so far as temple-architedlure 
 proceeded from Delphi, Delphi called into life, in 
 this regard as in others, that which most clearly dis- 
 tinguishes Hellenes from Barbarians. In external 
 magnificence the sacred edifices of Egypt could not 
 be surpassed; but the Egyptian temples are an 
 agglomeration of a mass of separate rooms of which 
 one was pushed out in advance of another, while 
 the temples of the Greeks, small or great, form an 
 organic whole in which nothing is superfluous or 
 arbitrary, and which allows of no capricious ex- 
 tension. Every part of it is a necessary member 
 of the whole, which in its place serves the common 
 end, without being anything as of itself. It is the 
 Kosmos of the Doric state brought before the senses 
 in stone. The whole is arranged according to the 
 simplest numerical proportions, and yet within this 
 whole there exists a great variety of efFedlive mutual 
 relations and uses, a living contrast between the 
 vertical and horizontal, the open and the closed, 
 the supporting and the supported; but all con- 
 trasts dissolve into a higher harmony, which arises 
 before the spedtator in a solemn and tranquillizing 
 calm, and embodies before his eyes the sacred 
 significance of Measure and Law. ' 
 
 ART AND ARCHITECTURE 
 
 VIOLLET-LE-DUC 
 
 ,/a.RT does not reside in this or that form, but 
 in a principle, — a logical method. Consequently 
 no reason can be alleged for maintaining that one 
 particular form of art is Art, and that apart from 
 
ART AND ARCHITECTURE 37 
 
 this form all is barbarism; and we are justified in 
 contending that the art of the Iroquois Indians or 
 that of the French in the Middle Ages may not 
 have been barbarous. What is desirable to as- 
 certain is, not whether the Indian or the Frenchman 
 has more or less nearly approached the forms of 
 Greek Art, but whether they have proceeded in the 
 same manner as the Greeks : — and whether, being 
 in a different climate, — having other wants and 
 other customs, — they have not necessarily, for 
 the very reason that they did proceed like the 
 Greeks, departed as far from the forms adopted by 
 the latter, as their climate, their requirements, and 
 their customs differed from the climate, require- 
 ments, and customs of the Greeks. No one in the 
 present day seriously recommends the imitation of 
 the forms of Greek art in the province of Archi- 
 tedure; — does it therefore follow that the study 
 of these forms is useless? Certainly not. To the 
 architect that study is indispensable; but indis- 
 pensable with the condition that it shall not con- 
 fine itself to the forms, but advance to the discovery 
 of the principle, — the principle common to all the 
 Arts. It is barbarism to reproduce the Greek 
 Temple in the streets of London or Paris, — for the 
 transplanted imitation of this building denotes an 
 ignorance of the principle which guided its eredlion, 
 and ignorance is Barbarism. It is barbarous to 
 negled: the thorough and careful study of Greek 
 art; for Greek art is that which most perfeAly 
 subordinated form to the modes of thought and 
 feelings recognized by the people among whom it 
 originated, — principles not invented by it, but 
 which it fully comprehended and unerringly pur- 
 
38 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 sued. It is also barbarous to ignore in modes of 
 art foreign to the Greek mode the true principles 
 which they exhibit. 
 
 The study of Greek antiquity is, and probably 
 ever will be, the surest means of initiating youth 
 into the knowledge of the arts, — the most solid 
 foundation of taste, and consequently of good sense, 
 for one cannot exist without the other; it teaches 
 how to distinguish truth from sophistry, — it en- 
 larges without confusing the mind. However poeti- 
 cal the imagination of the Greek, it never leads 
 him beyond the limits of the true; his objedl above 
 all is to be clear, to be understood, to be human; 
 for he lives among men, and to man he refers 
 everything. As for ourselves, in the present day, 
 we admire the various manifestations of art among 
 the Greeks; but the reprodudlion of these mani- 
 festations is beyond our power; — we live a dif- 
 ferent life. But their principles, embodying eternal 
 truth, we may appropriate to ourselves; we may, 
 in a word, reason as they did, though we do not 
 speak the same language. 
 
 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 REGINALD B L O M F I E L D 
 
 J.T has sometimes been suggested that whereas 
 the Semitic races show an instindtive and exclusive 
 sense for what is great, the Aryan races alone have 
 the sense of the beautiful. In regard to archi- 
 tecture at any rate the distindlion is misleading. 
 Great size, or I should say the power of producing 
 the efFedt of great size in orderly distribution, is 
 
ARCHITECTURE 39 
 
 one of the essential qualities of architedlure. Short 
 of that power I do not think any architedlure can 
 be called beautiful — at least it falls below the 
 highest excellence of the art. Nowhere is the maj- 
 esty of simple size more evident than in the monu- 
 ments of Egypt, and I call your attention to 
 this tremendous architedlure, in order that you 
 may learn the lessons it teaches of finely considered 
 mass, and of the effedl to be got by the simplest 
 forms of construdlion properly handled. Here 
 then, in this monumental simplicity, in this reliance 
 on great scale and cumulative effedl of a series of 
 buildings set out on an ordered plan, we find one 
 of the elements of the 'grand manner.' The central 
 idea is predominant everywhere, it is never sacri- 
 ficed to detail, but serenely maintains its sway, 
 undisputed and irresistible. 
 
 Amid much that is utterly different, this archi- 
 tedlonic quality, this perfedt instind: for organic 
 design, is found in a very noble form in Greek 
 architecture. In Greece it was realized under dif- 
 ferent conditions, both of ideals and of natural 
 resources. In Egyptian architedlure the prin- 
 ciple of symmetry finds its fullest expression. Their 
 cities were set in the valley of the Nile, and except 
 for the course of that river there were no physical 
 obstacles to a perfedlly regular plan, no rock or 
 citadel, no Acropolis, which dominated the laying 
 out of the city. Moreover, the power of the 
 Egyptian Pharaohs provided the only possible 
 machinery for the execution of their stupendous 
 architedlure. Neither of these conditions existed 
 in Greece, a rocky country divided among small 
 and relatively inconsiderable States; but among 
 
4© ARCHITECTURE 
 
 its peoples were to be found men of incomparable 
 individuality and genius. Perhaps, no example' 
 shows more clearly their versatility, than the lay- 
 ing out of the Acropolis in the time of Pericles. 
 The Acropolis is a long narrow rock in the centre 
 of the city, and here from time immemorial there 
 had existed temples to the tutelary gods of Athens, 
 shrines of unalterable sandlity, so that after the 
 rock had been swept by fire and sword, their sites 
 were religiously preserved, and the new temples, 
 with one notable exception, had to be built on the 
 original sites. Moreover, the area was bounded 
 by walls of great antiquity, and the levels varied 
 considerably, so that the task set by Pericles to 
 his architedls was one of extraordinary diflSculty, 
 for they had to deal with a number of hetero- 
 geneous buildings, at different levels, and with 
 different axis lines. Moreover, only one entrance 
 was possible, viz., by the narrow way at the west 
 end, and the rocks on either side of this were al- 
 ready occupied by older buildings — on the north 
 by that called the Pinakotheca, on the south by 
 the Temple of Nike Apteros. But in the cleft in 
 the rock between these two buildings, Mnesicles 
 saw his chance, and here he placed the Propylaea, 
 that superb entrance which crowned the ascent 
 of the Acropolis with its stately Doric order. Here, 
 for the first time appears a subtlety of design which 
 was a new thing in the architedure of the world. 
 The Propylaea had inevitably to be placed square 
 to the ascent, but the small Temple of Nike Ap- 
 teros was already there, standing in advance of the 
 Propylaea, and at an acute angle to its transverse 
 axis line. The problem was, to balance this on 
 
ARCHITECTURE 41 
 
 the northern side. The architedt solved it by 
 treating the Temple as an independent monument 
 standing clear against the "sky-Hne; and on the 
 opposite side of the ascent he formed a platform, 
 afterwards used by the Romans for a statue of 
 Agrippa, and probably from the first for sculpture; 
 — so that though there was no exadt symmetry, 
 there was a relative equivalence and balance of 
 sky-line, as between the two sides of the approach. 
 Inside the entrance, the ground rose along the 
 hill; at some distance along the south side was the 
 site of the older Parthenon, and nearly parallel to 
 the latter on its northern side was the site of the 
 old Erechtheion, almost on the longitudinal axis 
 line of the Propylaea as rebuilt by Mnesicles. 
 After the burning by the Persians, the Temple of 
 Erechtheus was not rebuilt on the original site, 
 a deviation from almost invariable custom for 
 which some extraordinary reasons must have ex- 
 isted. What they were is nowhere stated, and 
 we must look for them among the motives which 
 inspired the whole scheme of the new Acropolis. 
 That scheme was the glorification of the goddess 
 Athene; and the chief features of the Acropolis 
 were to be, the Parthenon rebuilt on a scale of 
 greatly increased magnificence, and the statue of 
 Athene Promachos. Had the Erechtheion been 
 placed on its old site it would either have competed 
 with the Parthenon or been dwarfed by it. More- 
 over, it would have been concealed by the Par- 
 thenon on the south side, and would have stood 
 too far back from the north edge of the rock to be 
 visible on the north side. Therefore, advantage 
 was taken of the sacred spot on which was shown 
 
42 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 the mark of the trident of the God, and here the 
 new Erechtheion was built, well, away from the 
 Parthenon, and so that it was visible from below 
 on the north side. For Pericles' architects had 
 before them a wider horizon than the parapets of 
 the AcropoHs. That rock symbolized all that the 
 Athenian held most sacred and the architedls so 
 placed their monuments that the white houses of 
 the gods were visible from below; — so that from 
 far away, on the plains of Attica or on the Aegean 
 sea, might be seen the glittering helm of the goddess 
 that watched over the city of the violet crown. 
 M. Choisy has pointed out the curiously skilful 
 placing of the statue on the AcropoHs itself. It 
 was the first objed; that met the eye of the visitor 
 after passing through the Propylaea, masking in a 
 manner the Erechtheion, leaving the Parthenon 
 freely in view on the right as the great predominant 
 building. This, no doubt, was contemplated by 
 the airchitedts, but I think their principal reason 
 for placing the figure where they did was that, 
 from either side of the Acropolis, and from far 
 away, this figure should be seen towering aloft 
 against the sky, midway between the Propylaea 
 and the Parthenon on the south, and the Propylaea 
 and the Erechtheion on the north; in other words, 
 in dealing with a peculiar problem, they realized 
 the possibilities and necessities of the site, not only 
 inside the Acropolis itself, but from beyond it, 
 and below. 
 
 So on the Acropolis, it was an essential part of 
 the policy of Pericles to keep ever present in the 
 imagination of the citizens the sense of the divine 
 importance of the State, and to this end he called 
 
EUROPEAN ARCHITECTURE 43 
 
 in the art of Pheidias, the skill of the architeds of 
 the Parthenon. Where his achievement was so 
 memorable was in its grasp of a large ulterior pur- 
 pose, namely, that the Acropolis, as a whole, should 
 present itself to every point of view, as the visible 
 symbol of the State. The problem of the Acropolis 
 lay outside its walls as well as within them, and it 
 was an eflFort of genius to rise to this great con- 
 ception. Symmetry in large planning had not yet 
 established itself as an important element of de- 
 sign, but the Greek had an extraordinary eye for 
 ground, for the placing of his buildings so that they 
 told their story seen from afar, and the lesson of 
 the Acropolis lies not only in the beauty of its 
 monuments, but in the flexibility of mind with 
 which the Greek architects adapted their design to 
 its conditions. 
 
 ORIGIN OF EUROPEAN ARCHITECTURE 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 Ai 
 
 lLL European architedure, bad and good, old 
 and new, is derived from Greece through Rome, 
 and coloured and perfedted from the East. The 
 history of architedture is nothing but the tracing of 
 the various modes and diredlions of this deriva- 
 tion. Understand this, once for all: if you hold 
 fast this great connedling clue, you may string all 
 the types of successive architedtural invention upon 
 it like so many beads. The Doric and Corinthian 
 orders are the roots, the one of all Romanesque, 
 massy-capitaled buildings — Norman, Lombard, 
 Byzantine, and what else you can name of the kind; 
 and. the Corinthian of all Gothic, Early English, 
 
44 EUROPEAN ARCHITECTURE 
 
 French, German, and Tuscan, Now observe: those 
 old Greeks gave the shaft; Rome gave the arch; 
 the Arabs pointed and foHated the arch. The 
 shaft and arch, the frame-work and strength of 
 architedture, are from the race of Japheth; the 
 spirituality and sandtity of it from Ishmael, Abra- 
 ham, and Shem. 
 
 There is high probability that the Greek received 
 his shaft system from Egypt; but I do not care to 
 keep this earlier derivation in the mind of the 
 reader. It is only necessary that he should be able 
 to refer to a fixed point of origin, when the form of 
 shaft was first perfected. But it may be inciden- 
 tally observed, that if the Greeks did indeed receive 
 their Doric from Egypt, then the three families 
 of the earth have each contributed their part to 
 its noblest architedture; and Ham, the servant of 
 the others, furnishes the sustaining or bearing 
 member, the shaft; Japheth the arch, Shem the 
 spiritualization of both. 
 
 I have said that the two orders, Doric and Cor- 
 inthian, are the roots of all European architedture. 
 You have, perhaps heard of five orders; but there 
 are only two real orders; and there never can be 
 any more until doomsday. On one of these orders 
 the ornament is convex; those are Doric, Norman, 
 and what else you recoUedl of the kind. On the 
 other the ornament is concave; those are Corin- 
 thian, Early English, Decorated, and what else 
 you recolledt of that kind. The transitional form, 
 in which the ornamental line is straight, is the 
 centre or root of both. All other orders are vari- 
 eties of these, or phantasms and grotesques, al- 
 together indefinite in number and species. 
 
THE GREEK TEMPLE 45 
 
 This Greek architedture, then, with its two orders, 
 was clumsily copied and varied by the Romans 
 with no particular result until they began to bring 
 the arch into extensive pradical service; except 
 only that the Doric capital was spoiled in endeavours 
 to mend it, and the Corinthian much varied and 
 enriched with fanciful, and oftelti very beautiful 
 imagery. And in this state of things came Christi- 
 anity: seized upon the arch as her own: decorated 
 it, and delighted in it: invented a new Doric 
 capital to replace the spoiled Roman one: and all 
 over the Roman empire set to work, with such 
 materials as were nearest at hand, to express and 
 adorn herself as best she could. This Roman 
 Christian architedure is the exacft expression of the 
 Christianity of the time, very fervid and beautiful 
 — but very imperfedl; in many respecfls ignorant, 
 and yet radiant with a strong, childlike light of 
 imagination, which flames up under Constantine, 
 illumines all the shores of the Bosphorus and the 
 Aegean and the Adriatic Sea, and then gradually, 
 as the people give themselves up to idolatry, be- 
 comes corpse-light. 
 
 THE GREEK TEMPLE 
 
 VIOLLET-LE-DUC 
 
 J_>ET us revert to the strudure of the Greek 
 temple. The Greek architedt recognizes the neces- 
 sity of symmetry: it is an instindt of the human 
 mind; but he does not allow that this instindt 
 should over-ride reason. In building his temple he 
 began with the cella, — the enclosure reserved for 
 
46 THE GREEK TEMPLE 
 
 the divinity, — making it an independent con- 
 strudlion, a walled enclosure of inconsiderable 
 dimensions, around which he placed the columns 
 of his portico, leaving between this enclosure and 
 the columns a space in proportion to the size of 
 the cella. His sole concern is so to arrange his 
 columns that the wooden ceiling may rest upon 
 the wall of the cella and the internal friezes of the 
 portico. This consideration is his only guide. His 
 reason leads him still further to disregard what are 
 called the rules of symmetry; the angles of his 
 portico engross his attention, he sees their isolated 
 columns, which have to support a heavier weight 
 than the rest, and he foresees that if one of the 
 architraves bearing on this angle should happen to 
 break it will have the efFedt of forcing the column 
 outwards. Reason suggests to him the prudence 
 of allowing a less space between the angle-column 
 and the two neighbouring ones than he has allowed 
 between the other columns of the portico, and of 
 increasing the diameter of this angle-column; and 
 wh^t his reason suggests, that he follows, despite 
 the rules of symmetry. 
 
 These difficulties in the general arrangement 
 being solved, the architedt proceeds to the con- 
 sideration of details: he has observed that when it 
 rains, the water trickles down the vertical face of 
 the external cornice, and mingling with the dust, 
 leaves brown stains which darken the crown of his 
 edifice, whose extreme verge he desires to see stand 
 out lustrous against the azure of the sky. He lays 
 on this cornice a gutter of marble or terra-cotta, 
 furnished at regular intervals with projedling gar- 
 goyles, — and thus succeeds in throwing the water 
 
THE ROMAN IDEA 47 
 
 off from the face of the cornice: but this gutter, 
 itself exposed to the rain, soon becomes weather 
 stained, and he overlays it with carving or painting 
 to render this defedl less apparent. The more the 
 born artist observes, the wider does the field of 
 observation extend itself before him. Now the ob- 
 servation of the artist and that of the savant differ 
 in their results. The savant observes in order to 
 compare, — to draw conclusions, — in a word to 
 know. The artist observes, but he does not stop 
 at conclusions: his conclusions lead him on to 
 augment, modify, or neutralize the efFedls produced 
 by physical laws, — to struggle in concert with or 
 in opposition to them. 
 
 Cirr PLANNING — THE ROMAN IDEA 
 
 REGINALD BLOMFIELD 
 
 T. 
 
 HE Rome of the Caesars shows how far we 
 have fallen behind in the handling of great cities. 
 We are proud of our engineering skill, yet there 
 are not many men who could dear with the con- 
 strudlive difficulties of the palace of Caligula. We 
 have absolutely nothing to compare with that 
 sumptuous area of Apollo which stood on the 
 Palatine Hill. It is worth dwelling on this for an 
 instant, if only to stimulate our imagination of 
 what a noble city should be. The area of Apollo 
 was an open court, entered by a lofty marble arch, 
 and surrounded by a peristyle of fifty-two columns 
 of giallo antico, set against walls of white marble 
 from Luna and Hymettus. Between each pair of 
 columns were statues of the Danaides, and opposite 
 
48 CIVIC WORKS OF ORNAMENT 
 
 each Danaid an equestrian figure of her murdered 
 bridegroom. In the centre of the court was the 
 Temple of Apollo Palatinus, and in the open space 
 before the temple, an altar surrounded by the four 
 statues of Myron's wondrous oxen. Now all the 
 details of this work were probably beautiful, but 
 the essential fadl about it, and the quality which 
 one has to realize, is that its architedlure and its 
 sculpture, and their aidjustment to the site, were 
 conceived of as a whole, and not piece by piece. 
 The Roman saw that isolated beauty merely makes 
 adjacent hideousness more hideous, that it was 
 folly to plump down a temple or a statue and leave 
 it to its fate. 
 
 ROME — CIVIC WORKS OF ORNAMENT ^ 
 AND USE 
 
 A. 
 
 EDWARD GIBBON 
 
 L.MONG the innumerable monuments of archi- 
 tefture construdted by the Romans, how many have 
 escaped the notice of history, how few have resisted 
 the ravages of time and barbarism! And yet, even 
 the majestic ruins that are still scattered over Italy 
 and the provinces, would be sufficient to prove that 
 those countries were once the sieat of a polite and 
 powerful empire. Their greatness alone, or their 
 beauty, might deserve our attention: but they are 
 rendered more interesting, by two important cir- 
 cumstances, which conneA the agreeable history of 
 the arts with the more useful history of human 
 manners. Many of those works were eredled at 
 private expense, and almost all were intended for 
 public benefit. 
 
CIVIC WORKS OF ORNAMENT 49 
 
 It is natural to suppose that the greatest number, 
 as well as the most considerable of the Roman 
 edifices, were raised by the emperors, who pos- 
 sessed so unbounded a command both of men and 
 money. Augustus was accustomed to boast that 
 he had found his capital of brick, and that he had 
 left it of marble. The stridl economy of Vespasian 
 was the source of his magnificence. The works 
 of Trajan bear the stamp of his genius. The public 
 monuments with which Hadrian adorned every 
 province of the empire, were executed not only 
 by his orders, but under his immediate inspedlion. 
 He was himself an artist; and he loved the arts, 
 as they conduced to the glory of the monarch. 
 They were encouraged by the Antonines, as they 
 contributed to the happiness of the people. But 
 if the emperors were the first, they were not the 
 only architedls of their domains. Their example 
 was universally imitated by their principal sub- 
 jedls, who were not afraid of declaring to the world 
 that they had spirit to conceive, and wealth to 
 accomplish, the noblest undertakings. Scarcely 
 had the proud strudlure of the Coliseum been dedi- 
 cated at Rome, before the edifices, of a smaller 
 scale indeed, but of the same design and materials, 
 were eredled for the use, and at the expense of the 
 cities of Capua and Verona. The inscription of 
 the stupendous bridge of Alcantara attests that it 
 was thrown over the Tagus by the contributions of 
 a few Lusitanian communities. When Pliny was 
 intrusted with the government of Bithynia and 
 Pontus, provinces by no means the richest or most 
 considerable of the empire, he found the cities 
 within his jurisdidtion striving with each other in 
 
5© CIVIC WORKS OF ORNAMENT 
 
 every useful and ornamental work, that might 
 deserve the curiosity of strangers, or the gratitude 
 of their citizens. It was the duty of the proconsul 
 to supply their deficiencies, to diredl their taste, 
 and sometimes to moderate their emulation. The 
 opulent senators of Rome and the provinces es- 
 teemed it an honor, and almost an obligation, to 
 adorn the splendor of their age and country; and 
 the influence of fashion very frequently supplied 
 the want of taste or generosity. Among a crowd 
 of these private benefactors, we may seledl Herodes 
 Atticus, an Athenian citizen, who lived in the age 
 of the Antonines. Whatever might be the motive 
 of his condudt, his magnificence would have been 
 worthy of the greatest kings. 
 
 Julius Atticus, his father, must have ended his 
 life in poverty and contempt, had he not dis- 
 covered an immense treasure buried under an old 
 house, the last remains of his patrimony. Ac- 
 cording to the rigor of the law, the emperor might 
 have asserted his claim, and the prudent Atticus 
 prevented, by a frank confession, the officiousness of 
 informers. But the equitable Nerva, who then 
 filled the throne, refused to accept any part of it, 
 and commanded him to use, without scruple, the 
 present of fortune. The cautious Athenian still in- 
 sisted, that the treasure was too considerable for a 
 subjed:, and that he knew not how to use it. Abuse 
 it then, replied the monarch, with good-natured 
 peevishness; for it is your own. Many will be of 
 opinion that Atticus literally obeyed the emperor's 
 last instrudlions; since he expended the greatest 
 part of his fortune, which was much increased by 
 an advantageous marriage, in the service of the 
 
PONTDUGARD 51 
 
 public. He had obtained for his son Herod the 
 prefecture of the free cities of Asia; and the young 
 magistrate, observing that the town of Troas was 
 indifferently supplied with water, obtained from 
 the munificence of Hadrian three hundred myriads 
 of drachms, (about a hundred thousand pounds,) 
 for the construdion of a new aquedudl. But in 
 the execution of the work, the charge amounted to 
 more than double the estimate, and the officers of 
 the revenue began to murmur, till the generous 
 Atticus silenced their complaints by requesting 
 that he might be permitted to take upon himself 
 the whole additional expense. 
 
 PONT DU CARD 
 
 ROUSSEAU 
 
 I 
 
 T was the first work of the Romans which I had 
 seen. I hoped to see a monument worthy of the 
 hands that had raised it; and for the first time in 
 my life my expedlations were surpassed by the 
 reality. It belonged only to the Romans to pro- 
 duce such an effed:. The asped of this sunple and 
 noble work struck me all the more that it was in 
 the midst of a desert where the silence and solitude 
 increased its effedl. ... I walked along the three 
 stages of this superb construAion, with a respecft 
 that made me almost shrink from treading on it. 
 The echo of my footsteps under the immense 
 arches made me think I could hear the strong 
 voices of the men who had built it. I felt lost like 
 an insedt in the immensity of the work. I felt, 
 along with the sense of my own littleness, something 
 
52 FORUM OF TRAJAN 
 
 nevertheless which seemed to elevate my soul; I 
 said to myself with a sigh — 'O that I had been 
 born a Roman!' I remained several hours in this 
 rapture of contemplation. I came away from it in 
 a kind of dream, and this reverie was not favour- 
 able to Mme. de Larnage [^the latest of the numer- 
 ous objedts of Rousseau's sentimental attachments]. 
 She had been very careful to warn me against the 
 attradlions of the young women of Montepellier, 
 but not against the Pont du Gard. One cannot 
 think of everything. 
 
 FORUM OF TRAJAN 
 
 EDWARD GIBBON 
 
 AN the commonwealths of Athens and Rome, the 
 modest simplicity of private houses announced the 
 equal condition of freedom; whilst the sovereignty 
 of the people was represented in the majestic 
 edifices designed to the public use; nor was this 
 republican spirit totally extinguished by the in- 
 trodudlion of wealth and monarchy. It was in 
 works of national honor and benefit, that the most 
 virtuous of the emperors afFedted to display their 
 magnificence. The golden palace of Nero excited 
 a just indignation, but the vast extent of ground 
 which had been usurped by his selfish luxury was 
 more nobly filled under the succeeding reigns by 
 the Colosseum, the baths of Titus, the Claudian 
 portico, and the temples dedicated to the goddess 
 of Peace, and to the genius of Rome. These 
 monuments of architefture, the property of the 
 Roman people, were adorned with the most beauti- 
 
FORUM OF TRAJAN 53 
 
 ful produdtions of Grecian painting and sculpture; 
 and in the temple of Peace, a very curious library 
 was open to the curiosity of the learned. At a 
 small distance from thence was situated the Forum 
 of Trajan. It was surrounded by a lofty portico, 
 in the form of a quadrangle, into which four tri- 
 umphal arches opened a noble and spacious en- 
 trance; in the centre arose a column of marble, 
 whose height, of one hundred and ten feet, denoted 
 the elevation of the hill that had been cut away. 
 This column, which still subsists in its ancient 
 beauty, exhibited an exadl representation of the 
 Dacian victories of its foiyider. The veteran 
 soldier contemplated the story of his own cam- 
 paigns, and by an easy illusion of national vanity, 
 the peaceful citizen associated himself to the honors 
 of the triumph. All the other quarters of the 
 capital, and all the provinces of the empire, were 
 embellished by the same Hberal spirit of public 
 magnificence, and were filled with amphitheatres, 
 theatres, temples, porticos, triumphal arches, baths, 
 and aquedudls, all variously conducive to the health, 
 the devotion, and the pleasures of the meanest 
 citizen. The last mentioned of those edifices de- 
 serve our peculiar attention. The boldness of the 
 enterprise, the solidity of the execution, and the 
 uses to which they were subservient, rank the 
 aquedudls among the noblest monuments of Roman 
 genius and power. The aquedudts of the capital 
 claim a just pre-eminence; but the curious traveller 
 who, without the light of history, should examine 
 those of Spoleto, of Metz, or of Segovia, would 
 very naturally conclude that those provincial towns 
 had formerly been the residence of some potent 
 
54 THE COLOSSEUM 
 
 monarch. The solitudes of Asia and Africa were 
 once covered with flourishing cities, whose popu- 
 lousness, and even whose existence, was derived 
 from such artificial supplies of a perennial stream 
 of fresh water. 
 
 I 
 
 THE COLOSSEUM 
 
 REGINALD BLOMFIELD 
 
 T is not only on account of their monumental 
 quality that Roman buildings offer such invaluable 
 lessons to the modern architedt. Scarcely less re- 
 markable is their exadl adaptation of means to 
 ends. The Imperial architects were not in the 
 least oppressed by the burden of styles. The forms 
 of architedture were so much clay in the hands of 
 the potter to be moulded to the conditions of each 
 new problem of building. The Colosseum is an 
 example. This vast amphitheatre, measuring 620 
 feet long by 513 feet wide, with external walls 
 rising 157 feet from the ground, was designed to 
 meet the most intricate requirements, not only in 
 regard to the housing of wild beasts, the storage of 
 scenery, and all the complicated appliances neces- 
 sary for the business of the arena. All these 
 problems were met with a confident mastery, which 
 can leave little doubt that the design of the ex- 
 terior was intentional and not, as has been asserted, 
 the result of decadent art. A good deal of false 
 criticism has been spent on the exterior of the 
 Colosseum. The mouldings are described as rudi- 
 mentary, the capitals as barbaric, the proportions 
 as bad and the design as wrong in principle. I con- 
 fess that, to me, this criticism is meaningless; all 
 
THE COLOSSEUM 55 
 
 that it amounts to is that the Colosseum does not 
 follow, in the details attacked, the mouldings, 
 ornaments, and proportions of buildings eredted 
 elsewhere, and for other purposes which the critic 
 seledls as absolute standards. But there is no such 
 thing as one absolute standard in archited:ure; no 
 bed of Procrustes to which every building has to be 
 strapped and strained. The enthusiasm of the 
 sixteenth century for such buildings as the Colos- 
 seum is a safer guide. The men of that time found, 
 as we may still find something admirable in the 
 orders of columns stiffening up the outer wall, in 
 the unbroken sweep of the entablature round the 
 building, in the constantly changing forms of 
 arcades and inter-columniations, as they vanish 
 round the ellipse, and not least of all in the fine 
 masonry and the austere restraint in ornament. 
 There is sudh a thing as deliberate ugliness; or, 
 rather, a great designer will deliberately forgo ac- 
 cepted forms of beauty in order to drive home other 
 effedts which are more important for his purpose. 
 It seems to me certain that the designer of the 
 Colosseum seledted his proportions, his details, and 
 his ornament, with the intention of giving full ex- 
 pression to the charadter and objedl of his building, 
 of leaving no doubt in the spedtator's mind of its 
 strength and fitness for its purpose. The Colbs- 
 seum shows the masculine intelligence of the 
 Roman architedture in its highest development. 
 
56 THE COLOSSEUM 
 
 Ti 
 
 THE COLOSSEUM 
 
 EDWARD GIBBON 
 
 HE hunting or exhibition of wild beasts was 
 conducted with a magnificence suitable to a people 
 who styled themselves the masters of the world; 
 nor was the edifice appropriated to that entertain- 
 ment less expressive of Roman greatness. Pos- 
 terity admires, and will long admire, the awful re- 
 mains of the amphitheatre of Titus, which so well 
 deserved the epithet of Colossal. It was a building 
 of an elliptic figure, five hundred and sixty-four 
 feet in length and four hundred and sixty-seven in 
 breadth, founded on fourscore arches, and rising, 
 with four successive orders of architedlure, to the 
 height of one hundred and forty feet. The outside 
 of the edifice was encrusted with marble and deco- 
 rated with statues. The slopes of the vast concave, 
 which formed the inside, were filled and surrounded 
 with sixty or eighty rows of seats of marble like- 
 wise, covered with cushions, and capable of re- 
 ceiving with ease about fourscore thousand spec- 
 tators. Sixty-four vomitories (for by that name 
 the doors were very aptly distinguished) poured 
 forth the immense multitude; and the entrances, 
 passages, and staircases were contrived with such 
 exquisite skill, that each person, whether of the 
 senatorial, the equestrian, or the plebeian order, 
 arrived at his destined place without trouble or 
 confusion. Nothing was omitted, which, in any 
 respeA, could be subservient to the convenience 
 and pleasure of the spedlators. They were pro- 
 te^ed from the sun and rain by an ample canopy, 
 
THE COLOSSEUM 57 
 
 occasionally drawn over their heads. The air 
 was continually refreshed by the playing of foun- 
 tains, and profusely impregnated by the grate- 
 ful scent of aromatics. In the centre of the edifice, 
 the arena, or stage, was strewn with the finest sand, 
 and successively assumed the most different forms. 
 At one moment it seemed to rise out of the earth, 
 like the garden of the Hesperides, and was after- 
 wards broken into the rocks and caverns of Thrace. 
 The subterraneous pipes conveyed an inexhaustible 
 supply of water; and what had just before ap- 
 peared a level plain might be suddenly converted 
 into a wide lake, covered with armed vessels, and 
 replenished with the monsters of the deep. In the 
 decoration of these scenes the Roman emperors dis- 
 played their wealth and liberality; and we read on 
 various occasions that the whole furniture of the 
 amphitheatre consisted either of silver, or of gold, 
 or of amber. 
 
 THE COLOSSEUM 
 
 GOETHE 
 
 Vy F the beauty of a walk through Rome by moon- 
 light it is impossible to form a conception, without 
 having seen it. All single objedls are swallowed up 
 by the great masses of Hght and shade, and nothing 
 but grand and general outlines present themselves 
 to the eye. For three days we have enjoyed to the 
 full the brightest and most glorious of nights. 
 Peculiarly beautiful at such a time is the Colosseum. 
 At night it is always closed; a hermit dwells in a 
 little shrine within its encircling walls, and beggars 
 of, all kinds nestle beneath its crumbHng arches; 
 
58 THE PALACE OF DIOCLETIAN 
 
 the latter had lit a fire on the arena, and a gentle 
 wind bore down the smoke to the ground, so that 
 the lower portion of the ruins was quite hid by it, 
 while above the vast walls stood out in deeper 
 darkness before the eye. As we stopped at the 
 gate to contemplate the scene through the iron 
 grill, the moon shone brightly in the heavens above. 
 Presently the smoke found its way up the sides, and 
 through every chink and opening, while the moon 
 lit it up like a cloud. The sight was exceedingly 
 glorious. In such a light one should also see the 
 Pantheon, the Capitol, the Portico of St. Peter's, 
 and the other grand streets and squares. 
 
 THE PALACE OF DIOCLETIAN 
 
 EDWARD GIBBON 
 
 T. 
 
 HE palace of Diocletian covered an extent of 
 ground consisting of between nine and ten English 
 acres. The form was quadrangular, flanked with 
 sixteen towers. Two of the sides were near six 
 hundred, and the other two near seven hundred 
 feet in length. The whole was construdled of a 
 beautiful freestone, extraAed from the neighboring 
 quarries of Trau, or Tragutium, and very little 
 inferior to marble itself. Four streets, intersedang 
 each other at right angles, divided the several parts 
 of this great edifice, and the approach to the prin- 
 cipal apartment was from a very stately entrance, 
 which is still denominated the Golden Gate. The 
 approach was terminated by a peristylium of 
 granite columns, on one side of which we discover 
 the square temple of Aesculapius, on the other the 
 
THE PALACE OF DIOCLETIAN 59 
 
 odlagon temple of Jupiter. The latter of those 
 deities Diocletian revered as the patron of his 
 fortunes, the former as the protedlor of his health. 
 By comparing the present remains with the pre- 
 cepts of Vitruvius, the several parts of the building, 
 the baths, bed-chamber, the atrium, the basilica, 
 and the Cyzicene, Corinthian, and Egyptian halls 
 have been described with some degree of precision, 
 or at least of probability. Their forms were 
 various, their proportions just; but they all were 
 attended with two imperfeAions, very repugnant to 
 our modern notions of taste and conveniency. 
 These stately rooms had neither windows nor chim- 
 neys. They were lighted from the top, (for the 
 building seems to have consisted of no more than 
 one story,) and they received their heat by the help 
 of pipes that were conveyed along the walls. The 
 range of principal apartments was proteded towards 
 the ^outh-west by a portico five hundred and seven- 
 teen feet long, which must have formed a very 
 noble and delightful walk, when the beauties of 
 painting and sculpture were added to those of the 
 prospedl. 
 
 Had this magnificent edifice remained in a soli- 
 tary country, it would have been exposed to the 
 ravages of time; but it might, perhaps, have es- 
 caped the rapacious industry of man. The village 
 of Aspalathus, and, long afterwards, the provincial 
 town of Spalatro, have grown out of its ruins. The 
 Golden Gate now opens into the market-place. 
 St. John the Baptist has usurped the honors of 
 Aesculapius; and the temple of Jupiter, under the 
 protedlion of the Virgin, is converted into the 
 cathedral church. 
 
6o BASILICA OF ST. PETER 
 
 BASILICA OF ST. PETER 
 OLD ST. PETER'S 
 
 LORD BRYCE 
 
 Oi 
 
 'N Christmas Day, a.d. 800, Charles the Great 
 heard mass in the Basilica of St. Peter. On the 
 spot where now the gigantic dome of Bramante 
 and Michael Angelo towers over the buildings of 
 the modern city, the spot which tradition had 
 hallowed as that of the Apostle's martyrdom, Con- 
 stantine the Great had eredted the oldest and state- 
 liest temple of Christian Rome. 
 
 Nothing could be less like than was this basilica 
 to those northern cathedrals, shadowy, fantastic, 
 irregular, crowded with pillars, fringed all round by 
 clustering shrines and chapels, which are to most 
 of us the types of mediaeval architedlure. In its 
 plan and decorations, the spacious sunny hall, the 
 roof plain as that of a Greek temple, the long row of 
 Corinthian columns, the vivid mosaics on its walls, 
 in its brightness, its sternness, its simplicity, it had 
 preserved every feature of Roman art, and had re- 
 mained a perfedt expression of Roman charadter. 
 Out of the transept, a flight of steps led up to the 
 high altar underneath and just beyond the great 
 arch, the arch of triumph as it was called : behind 
 in the semicircular apse sat the clergy, rising tier 
 above tier around its walls; in the midst, high 
 above the rest, and looking down past the altar 
 over the multitudes, was placed the bishop's throne. 
 
Ai 
 
 A GOTHIC CATHEDRAL 6l 
 
 THE FRENCH CATHEDRALS 
 
 AUGUSTS RODIN 
 
 lLL our France is in our cathedrals as all of 
 Greece Is in the Parthenon. Before I leave this 
 world I want at least to have told my admiration 
 for these marvels. I have been privileged to love 
 them and to have tasted the best pleasures of my 
 life in their presence. I want to celebrate these 
 stones so tenderly wrought to beauty by humble 
 and gifted artists; these mouldings modeled as 
 lovingly as the lips of women; these spaces of 
 beautiful shade, where gentleness sleeps in strength; 
 these fine, powerful ribs which run to the vaulted 
 roof and are bound into the intersection of a flower, 
 these rose windows inspired by the setting sun. 
 
 A 
 
 A GOTHIC CATHEDRAL 
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 GOTHIC cathedral is surely the most wonder- 
 ful work which mortal man has yet achieved, so 
 vast, so intricate, and so profoundly simple, with 
 such strange, delightful recesses in its grand figure, 
 so difficult to comprehend within one idea, and yet 
 all so consonant that it ultimately draws the be- 
 holder and his universe into its harmony. It is 
 the only thing in the world that is vast enough and 
 rich enough. 
 
62 THE MEDIEVAL CATHEDRAL 
 
 Ti 
 
 THE MEDIEVAL CATHEDRAL 
 
 WALTER THORNBURY 
 
 HIS monkish builder united under one roof his 
 palace, his home, his shrine, his guest-house, his 
 conclave, his lilfrary and his grave. The cathedral 
 was the great temple of a whole province. Its 
 painted windows were the poor man's illuminated 
 books, its tombs his sculptured chronicles; its 
 choral hymns were all that he knew of music, all 
 that he could imagine of the voices of angels; its 
 incense was that peasant's perfume, wafted to him 
 like the breath of saints; its grotesques were 
 almost all that he knew of mirth. Once a week, at 
 least, he might live as kings lived, and share the 
 pleasures of princes, and to his eyes its rich glass 
 was flushed with the perpetual sunset of a vision. 
 The sunbeams creeping over its wall were to him 
 the golden shadows of descending spirits; and when 
 the moon came, and silvered niche and pillar, it 
 must have seemed to that rude, but not insensible 
 churl like the glories of a good man's dream. The 
 cathedral was the vassal's concert-hall, his pidlure 
 gallery, his library, and his sculpture-room. It 
 taught him througli Art to love nature — and, 
 through nature, to love God. It gratified every 
 sense, and won each sense to religion, purifying 
 and heightening every power. The monk knew 
 that the boor was soonest taught through the 
 eye, so to the eye he first directed his appeal. 
 
Ai 
 
 GOTHICPARIS 63 
 
 GOTHIC PARIS 
 
 W. R. LETHABY 
 
 lBOUT the year 1000 the Eastern tradition, 
 under the influence of Western energy, began to 
 change into a new art which was to become the 
 glorious Gothic of the thirteenth and fourteenth 
 centuries. 
 
 In the Middle Ages the mere getting through of 
 Hfe appears to have been made romantic: the 
 people seem to have played at war romantically, 
 to have traded artistically, and to have built fairy 
 architedture. 
 
 There is indeed much in a habit of mind; it is 
 impossible to say how much of the present is shaped, 
 not by necessity, but by what Stevenson called 
 'commercial imagination,' the make-believing of 
 politicians. *Ah!' it is likely to be said, 'those of 
 the Middle Ages equally looked back to a Golden 
 Age long gone by'; but really it is hardly so. In- 
 deed, so far as the outer world goes, everything 
 written and wrought seems to show that these 
 people rather liked being alive. Eversrwhere it is 
 apparent that they knew they were having a good 
 time. 
 
 If any history of the thirteenth and fourteenth 
 centuries is ever attempted before the monuments 
 are all restored out of existence, it should appear 
 from the chronicles and romances that Art was not 
 then the result of a blind instindl and accident; 
 those people knew very well that they liked sun- 
 light on white-washed walls, blue sky seen through 
 traceried parapets, pinnacles appearing over trees. 
 
64 GOTHICPARIS 
 
 the twinkling of gilt vanes, sharp arches, long 
 aisles, bright windows, and stories which everywhere 
 
 ' In gold and azure over all 
 Depainted were upon the wall.' 
 
 If a romance writer or illuminator wanted to 
 describe or figure a castle of romance, he did not 
 recall some mouldering ruin, but went and looked 
 at the newest thing from which the scaffolding had 
 hardly been struck. Thus in one romance a 'huge 
 high' castle is said to have had so many towers, 
 pinnacles, and chimneys, 'all chalk white,' that it 
 seemed to be 'pared out of paper.' 
 
 Perhaps the most amusing city of English ro- 
 mance is that of Lydgate's War of Troy. Its 
 marble walls were 200 cubits high, and at each 
 corner a great crown of gold fretted with rich stones 
 shone bright in the sunshine. Six gates of brass, 
 in as many towers, and a vast number of turrets, 
 surrounded the walls. On the tops of the turrets « 
 were raised up brass figures of savage beasts — 
 bears, lions, tigers, boars, dragons, harts, elephants, 
 unicorns, bulls, and griffins. The houses were 
 ornamented by 'craft of masonry,' and covered 
 with lead. The streets were paved chequerwise, 
 white and red, and along them ran cloisters, 
 
 'For men to walk together twain and twain. 
 To keep them dry when it happed to rain.' 
 
 But how came this marvellous and universal 
 beauty in things made ? Is Art a wind that bloweth 
 where it listeth, or is it subjed to conditions? I 
 find the central principle of the Middle Ages not in 
 feudalism, not even in the Church, but in the 
 
GOTHICPARIS 65 
 
 guild system. The Church itself was a guild which 
 permitted no underselling or adulteration in its own 
 sphere. The feudal system was pradlically the 
 rule of the guild of land and war-lords, while the 
 universities as is well known, were guilds of scholars. 
 By means of their guilds the craftsmen, too, won a 
 place, and built up and governed the free cities. 
 So was good work understood. So the good work- 
 man was honoured. 
 
 The place taken by the craftsmen, and mediaeval 
 art, are complementary phenomena. The mis- 
 leading andj indeed, meaningless phrase, 'Gothic 
 architecture, ' should give way to some such term 
 as Mason-craft or Guild-work. 
 
 Paris was the great and typical Gothic city — 
 supreme in all, it was Canterbury, London, and 
 Oxford in one; a royal and ecclesiastical capital, 
 a university, and a great mart and city of craft. 
 It was the centre of the mediaeval movement, 
 which is best symbolized and summed up by the 
 Lady Church standing at the middle point of the 
 little island in the Seine, which was covered by the 
 original Roman town. 
 
 Paris was by acclamation the most beautiful 
 city of the Western World. A fourteenth century 
 English author says: "What a rush of pleasure re- 
 joiced our heart as often as we visited Paris, the 
 paradise of the world. On account of our love the 
 days appeared too few, and we ever longed to re- 
 main there." 
 
 Old Paris has been best understood in the chapters 
 inserted in Vidor Hugo's "Notre Dame" — chap- 
 ters written, as he says, to inspire the nation with 
 a love for their national architecture. Hugo is one 
 
66 FRENCH MEDIEVAL ART 
 
 of the dozen or two people who have ever really 
 seen Gothic art, and his description rises to almost 
 a shriek in its clear intensity of understanding. 
 
 FRENCH MEDIEVAL ART DEMOCRATIC 
 
 VIOLLET-LE-DUC 
 
 I 
 
 T is characteristic of periods favourable to the 
 arts, that these have been developed universally 
 during their continuance — dignifying the cottage 
 of the peasant as well as the palace, the humble 
 village church as well as the cathedral of the opu- 
 lent city. A perfume of art exhales from the least 
 pretentious Greek building as well as the most 
 magnificent temple, and the small houses of Pompeii, 
 built of tufa and brick, are as much works of art 
 as the public buildings of that city. An age which 
 considers art as only an affair of luxury — an ap- 
 panage of the higher classes, or an envelope suited 
 only to certain public edifices, — may be dis- 
 tinguished for good government, but it is certainly 
 not civilized ; and painful dissensions may be antic- 
 ipated for it. Intelledlual enjoyments, like ma- 
 terial enjoyments, when confined to a privileged 
 few, excite envy and anger. When but a few knew 
 how to read, the ignorant multitude, when they 
 succeeded in getting the upper hand, burned books 
 with as much rage as they burned sumptuous 
 chateaux in which the material luxuries of life were 
 coUedted. Let reading become a universal ac- 
 quirement, and books may be sure of remaining 
 uninjured on the Hbrary shelves. To make art a 
 thing of luxury, or to associate it exclusively with 
 
FRENCH MEDIEVAL ART 67 
 
 wealth, is therefore very dangerous to art and to 
 the few who enjoy it. It is then important to all 
 to concede to art the claims it makes to universal 
 predominance; to give it its place everywhere, to 
 instill into the minds of all — of artists especially, 
 — that in architedlure art does not consist in the 
 employment of costly marbles, or the accumulation 
 of ornaments, but in distindlion of form and the 
 truthful expression of the requirements; for it 
 costs no more to cut a moulding according to a 
 judicious principle and a good design than to work 
 it without regard to its position or the efFedt it 
 should produce. 
 
 In the thirteenth century the art invented by the 
 secular school was essentially democratic; it was 
 universally diffused, and the villager might be as 
 proud of his church, or the simple knight of his 
 manor-house, as the citizen of his cathedral or the 
 sovereign of his palace. It is not enough for the 
 artist to admire the arts of the past; while to copy 
 them is an admission of incapacity: he must com- 
 prehend and be penetrated by theiri, extradl from 
 them results applicable to the times in which he 
 lives, and regard form only as the expression of an 
 idea. Any form whose raison d'etre cannot be 
 explained, cannot be beautiful; and in architedlure 
 any form that is not suggested by the strudture 
 should be cast aside. 
 
 These principles, which I cannot regard as too 
 restridtive, were rigorously observed by the French 
 secular school, especially at- the time when it began 
 to be developed, — and their application is es- 
 pecially conspicuous in the simplest strudtures. 
 Let us take as an example one of those small Bur- 
 
68 NOTREDAME 
 
 gundian edifices, built of rubble-work, in which 
 dressed stone is employed very sparingly; let us 
 enter the church of Montreale, a village church. 
 Here we find nothing superfluous; the architedture 
 is simply the construdtion; the walls are of rubble- 
 work, pillars only of dressed stone, and yet we find 
 in this simple edifice an art full of elegance; the 
 few mouldings are of an incomparable beauty, and 
 executed with a perfedtion equal to that of Greek 
 mouldings of the finest period. The sculpture, 
 very scantily diffused, is boldly treated, and har- 
 monizes with the simplicity of the building. 
 
 NOTRE DAME 
 
 VICTOR HUGO 
 
 S 
 
 URELY the church of Our Lady at Paris is yet 
 a majestic and sublime edifice. But noble an 
 aspedl as it has preserved in growing old, it is dif- 
 ficult to suppress feelings of sorrow and indignation 
 at the numberless degradations and mutilations 
 which the hand of Time and of man have inflidl:ed 
 upon the venerable monument, regardless alike of 
 Charlemagne, who laid the first stone of it, and of 
 Philip-Augustus, who laid the last. 
 
 Upon the face of this old queen of the French 
 cathedrals, beside each wrinkle we always find a 
 scar. Tempus edax, homo edacior, we would 
 willingly render: Time is blind, but man is stupid. 
 
 If we had leisure to examine one by one, with the 
 reader, the marks of destrudlion on this ancient 
 church, the work of Time would be found to form 
 the lesser part — the worst destrudion has been 
 perpetrated by men — especially by men of art. 
 
NOTREDAME 69 
 
 And first of all — to cite only a few leading ex- 
 amples — there are, assuredly, few finer archi- 
 tedlural pages than the front of this cathedral, in 
 which, successively and together, the three reced- 
 ing pointed gateways; the decorated and indented 
 band of the twenty-eight royal niches; the vast 
 central circular window, flanked by the two lateral 
 ones, like the priest by the deacon and sub-deacon; 
 the lofty and slender gallery of trifoliated arcades, 
 supporting a heavy platform upon its light and 
 delicate columns; and the two dark and massive 
 towers, with their eaves of slate — harmonious parts 
 of one magnificent whole — rising one above an- 
 other in five gigantic stories — unfold themselves 
 to the eye, in combination unconfused — with 
 their innumerable details of statuary, sculpture, and 
 carving, in powerful alliance with the grandeur of 
 the whole — a vast symphony in stone, if we may 
 so express it — the colossal work of a man and of 
 a nation — combining unity with complexity, like 
 the Iliads and the Romanceros to which it is a 
 sister produdlion — the prodigious result of a draft 
 upon the whole resources of an era — in which, 
 upon every stone, is seen displayed, in a hundred 
 varieties, the fancy of the workman disciplined by 
 the genius of the artist, a sourpe of human creation, 
 in short, mighty and proUfic as the Divine Creation, 
 of which it seems to have caught the double char- 
 ader — variety and eternity. 
 
 And what is here said of the front must be said 
 of the whole church — and what we say of the 
 cathedral church of Paris must be said of all the 
 churches of Christendom in the Middle Ages. 
 Everything is in its place in that art, self-created, 
 
yO NOTREDAME 
 
 logical, and well-proportioned. By measuring the 
 toe we estimate the giant. 
 
 But to return to the front of Notre Dame, as it 
 still appears to us when we go to gaze in pious ad- 
 miration upon the solemn and mighty cathedral, 
 looking terrible, as its chroniclers express it — 
 quae mole sua terrorem incutit spectiinibus. 
 
 Three things of importance are now wanting to 
 this front: first, the flight of eleven steps by which 
 it formerly rose above the level of the ground round 
 about; then, the lower range of statues, which oc- 
 cupied the niches of the three portals; and lastly, 
 the upper series, of the twenty-eight more ancient 
 kings of France, which filled the gallery on the first 
 story, beginning with Childebert and ending with 
 Philip-Augustus, each holding in his hand the 
 imperial ball. 
 
 As for the flight of steps, it is Time that has made 
 it disappear, by raising, with slow but resistless ad- 
 vance the level of the ground in the City. But 
 while swallowing up, one after another the eleven 
 steps which added to the majestic height of the 
 struAure, Time has given to the church, perhaps, 
 even more than he has taken away; for it is he who 
 has spread over its face that dark gray tint of 
 centuries which makes the old age of architedtural 
 monuments a season of beauty. 
 
 But who has thrown down the two ranges of 
 statues? Who has left the niches empty? Who 
 has cut, in the middle of the central portal, that 
 new arch? The men, the architefts, the artists of 
 our times. 
 
 And — if we enter the interior of the edifice — • 
 who has overturned the colossal St. Christopher, 
 
NOTREDAME 71 
 
 proverbial for his magnitude among statues, as 
 the spire of Strasburg among steeples? And those 
 myriads of statues which thronged all the inter- 
 columniations of the nave and the choir — 
 kneeling, standing, equestrian, men, women, chil- 
 dren, kings, bishops, warriors, in stone, in marble, 
 in gold, in silver, in brass, and even in wax, who 
 has brutally swept them out? It is not Time that 
 has done it. 
 
 And who has substituted for the old Gothic 
 altar, splendidly loaded with shrines and reliquaries, 
 that heavy sarcophagus of marble, with angels' 
 heads and clouds? And who has put cold white 
 glass in place of those deep-tindlured panes which 
 made the wandering eyes of our forefathers hesitate 
 between the rose window above the west door and 
 the pointed ones of the chancel ? 
 
 And, then, if we climb to the roof of the cathedral 
 — not to mention a thousand other barbarisms of 
 every kind — what have they done with that 
 charming little spire which rose from the inter- 
 sediion of the cross, higher into the sky than the 
 towers — perforated, sharp, sonorous, airy? An 
 architedt de bon gout amputated it in 1787 and 
 thought it was sufficient to hide the wound with 
 that great plaster of lead which resembles the lid 
 of a porridge-pot. 
 
 Thus it is that the wondrous art of the Middle 
 Ages has been treated in almost every country, and 
 especially in France. In its ruin three sorts of in- 
 roads are distinguishable, and have made breaches 
 of different depths; first Time, which has gradually 
 made deficiencies here and there, and has gnawed 
 over its whole surface; then, reUgious and political 
 
72 NOTREDAME 
 
 revolutions, which, blind and angry in their nature, 
 have tumultuously wreaked their fury upon it, torn 
 its rich garment of sculpture and carving, burst 
 its rose-shaped windows, broken its bands of ara- 
 besques and miniature figures, torn down its statues, 
 here for their mitre, there for their crown; and 
 lastly, changes of fashion, growing more and more 
 grotesque and stupid, have succeeded one another 
 in the necessary decline of architedture. Fashion 
 has done more mischief than revolutions. It has 
 cut to the quick — it has attacked the very bone 
 and framework of the art. It has mangled, dis- 
 located, killed the edifice — in its form as well as 
 in its meaning — in its consistency as well as in 
 beauty. And then, it has remade — which at 
 least neither Time nor revolutions have pretended 
 to do. It has audaciously fitted into the wounds of 
 Gothic architedture its wretched gewgaws of a day, 
 its marble ribands, its metal pompons, a very 
 leprosy of draperies, garlands and fringes, of stone 
 flames, brazen clouds, fleshy Cupids, and fat 
 cherubim. 
 
 Thus, to sum up the points which we have here 
 laid down, three kinds of ravages now disfigure 
 Gothic architedture: wrinkles and knobs on the 
 surface — these are the work of Time : violence, 
 brutalities, contusions, fradtures, these are the 
 work of revolutions, from Luther to Mirabeau: 
 mutilations, amputations, dislocation of members, 
 restorations, these are the labors, Grecian, Roman 
 and barbaric, of the professors according to Vi- 
 truvius and Vignola. That magnificent art which 
 the Vandals had produced, the academies have 
 murdured. To the operations of ages and of revo- 
 
NOTREDAME 73 
 
 lutions, which, at all events, devastate with im- 
 partiality and grandeur, have been added those of 
 the school-trained architedls, Hcensed and privileged. 
 This is the kick of the ass at the expiring Hon. 
 'Tis the old oak which, in the last stage of decay- 
 is stung and gnawed by caterpillars. 
 
 How remote is all this from the time when 
 Robert CenaUs, comparing Notre Dame at Paris 
 to the famous temple of Diana at Ephesus, so 
 much vaunted by the ancient pagans, thought the 
 cathedral "more excellent in length, breadth, height 
 and strudlure." 
 
 Notre Dame, however, as an architeAural monu- 
 ment, is not one of those which can be called com- 
 plete, definite, belonging to a class. It is not a 
 Roman church, nor is it a Gothic church. It is 
 not a model of any individual style. It has not, 
 like the abbey of Tournus, the solemn and massive 
 squareness, the round broad vault, the icy bareness, 
 the majestic simplicity, of the edifices which have 
 the circular arch for their basis. Nor is it, like the 
 cathedral of Bourges, the magnificent, airy, multi- 
 form, pinnacled, florid production of the pointed 
 arch. It can not be ranked among that antique 
 family of churches, gloomy, mysterious, lowering, 
 crushed, as it were, by the weight of the circular 
 arch — almost Egyptian, even to their ceilings — 
 all sacerdotal, all symbolical — more abounding, 
 in their ornaments, with lozenges and zigzags than 
 with flowers — with flowers than with animals — 
 with animals than with human figures — the work 
 not so much of the archited: as of the bishop — the 
 first transformation of the art — all stamped with 
 theocratical and military disciphne — having its 
 
74 NOTREDAME 
 
 root in the Lower Empire, and stopping at the time 
 of William the Conqueror. Nor can this cathedral 
 be ranked in that other family of lofty, airy 
 churches, rich in sculpture and painted windows, 
 of pointed forms and bold dispositions — as politi- 
 cal symbols communal and citizen — as works of 
 art, free, capricious, licentious — the second trans- 
 formation of ecclesiastical architecture — no longer 
 immutable, and sacerdotal, but artistical, progres- 
 sive, and popular — beginning at the return from 
 the crusades, and ending with Louis XL Notre 
 Dame, then, is not of purely Roman race like the 
 former, nor of purely Arabic race like the latter. 
 
 It is an edifice of the transition period. The 
 Saxon architeA was just finishing off the first 
 pillars of the nave, when the pointed arch came 
 and seated itself as a conqueror upon the broad 
 Roman capitals which had been designed to sup- 
 port only circular arches. The pointed arch, 
 thenceforward master of the field, construdled the 
 remainder of the building. However, tentative 
 and timid at the beginning, we find it widening its 
 compass, and, as it were, restraining itself, not yet 
 daring to spring up into arrows and lancets as it 
 afterward did in so many wonderful cathedrals. 
 It may be said to have been sensible of the neighbor- 
 hood of the heavy Roman pillars. 
 
 However, these edifices of the transition from 
 the Roman to the Gothic express a gradation of 
 art which would be lost without them. It is the 
 pointed species engrafted upon the circular. 
 
 Notre Dame, in particular, is a curious specimen 
 of this variety. Each face, each stone, of this 
 venerable monument, is a page of history, not 
 
NOTREDAME 75 
 
 only of the country, but of science and art. Thus, 
 to point out a few of the principal details: while 
 the small Porte-Rouge attains almost to the limits 
 of the Gothic dehcacy of the fifteenth century, the 
 pillars of the nave, for their girth and severity go 
 back almost as far as the Carlovingian abbey of 
 St. Germain-des-Pres. This central mother church 
 is, among the other old churches of Paris, a sort of 
 chimera; she has the head of one, the limbs of 
 another, the back of a third — something of all. 
 
 We repeat, these compound fabrics are not the 
 least interesting to the artist, the antiquary, and 
 the historian. They make us feel in how great a 
 degree architedture is a primitive matter — dem- 
 onstrating (as the Cyclopean vestiges, the Egyptian 
 pyramids, and the gigantic Hindoo pagodas like- 
 wise demonstrate) that the greatest productions of 
 architedlure are not so much the work of individuals 
 as of society — the offspring rather of national 
 efforts than of the conceptions of particular minds 
 
 — a deposit left by a whole people — the accumu- 
 lation of ages — the residue of the successive evap- 
 orations of human society — in short, a sort of for- 
 mations. Each wave of time leaves its deposit 
 
 — each race deposits its strata upon the monu- 
 ment — each individual contributes his stone. So 
 do the beavers — so do the bees — so does man. 
 The great symbol of architedlure. Babel, is a hive. 
 
 Great edifices, hke great mountains, are the work 
 of ages. Often the art undergoes a transformation 
 while they are yet pending, pendent opera in- 
 terrupta, they go on again quietly, in accordance 
 with the change. The new art takes up the fabric, 
 incrusts it, assimilates it, developes it after its own 
 
76 NOTREDAME 
 
 fashion, and finishes it if it can. The thing is ac- 
 complished without disturbance, without effort, 
 without readion, according to a law natural and 
 tranquil. It is a graft that shoots out, a sap 
 that circulates, a vegetation that goes forward. 
 Certainly there is matter for very large volumes, 
 and often for the universal history of human nature, 
 in those successive engraftings of several species of 
 art at different elevations upon the same fabric. 
 The man, the artist, the individual, are lost and 
 disappear in those great masses, leaving no name 
 behind. Human intelligence is there to be traced 
 only in its aggregate. Time is the architedl, 
 the nation is the builder. 
 
 To consider in this place only the architedlure of 
 Christian Europe, the younger sister of the great 
 masonries of the East : it presents to us an immense 
 formation, divided into three superincumbent zones, 
 clearly defined; The Roman zone; the Gothic 
 zone; and the zone of the Revival, which we would 
 gladly call the Greco-Roman. The Roman stratum, 
 the most ancient and the deepest, is occupied by 
 the circular arch; which reappears rising from the 
 Grecian column, in the modern and upper stratum, 
 of the Revival. The pointed arch is found be- 
 tween the two. The edifices which belong to one 
 or other of these three strata exclusively, are per- 
 fectly distindt, uniform, and complete. Such is the 
 abbey of Jumieges; such is the cathedral of Rheims; 
 such is the church of Sainte-Croix at Orleans. But 
 the three zones mingle and combine at their bor- 
 ders, like the colors of the prism. And hence 
 the complex fabrics — the edifices of gradation and 
 transition. One is Roman in its feet, Gothic in the 
 
NOTREDAME 77 
 
 middle, and Greco-Roman in the head. This is 
 when it has taken six hundred years to build it. 
 This variety is rare. But the fabrics of two for- 
 mations are more frequent. Such is the Notre 
 Dame of Paris, an edifice of the pointed arch, 
 which, in its earliest pillars, dips into that Roman 
 zone in which the portal of Saint-Penis and the 
 nave of St. Germain-des-Pres are entirely immersed. 
 However, all these gradations, all these differences, 
 affedl only the surface of the structures. It is only 
 the art that has changed its coat — the conforma- 
 tion of the Christian temple itself has remained 
 untouched. It is ever the same internal framework, 
 the same logical disposition of parts. Whatever 
 be the sculptured and decorated envelope of a 
 cathedral, we constantly find underneath it at 
 least the germ and rudiment of the Roman basilica. 
 It eternally develops itself upon the ground ac- 
 cording to the same law. There are invariably two 
 naves crossing each other at right angles, the upper 
 extremity of which cross is rounded into a chancel; 
 there are constantly two low sides for the internal 
 processions and for the chapels — a sort of lateral 
 ambulatory communicating with the principal 
 nave by the intercolumniations. This being once 
 laid down, the number of the chapels, of the door- 
 ways, of the steeples, of the spires, is variable to in- 
 finity, according to the fancy of the age, of the na- 
 tion, of the art. The performance of the worship 
 being once provided for and ensured, architedure 
 is at liberty to do what she pleases. Statues, 
 painted glass, rose-shaped windows, arabesques, 
 indentations, capitals, and bas-reliefs — all these 
 objedts of imagination she combines in such ar- 
 
78 CATHEDRAL OF CHARTRES 
 
 rangement as best suits her. Hence the prodigious 
 external variety of these edifices, in the main 
 strudture of which dwells so much order and uni- 
 formity. The trunk of the tree is unchanging but 
 the foliage renews itself. 
 
 CATHEDRAL OF CHARTRES 
 
 WALTER PATER 
 
 X^IKE a ship forever asail in the distance, thought 
 the child, everywhere the great church of Chartres 
 was visible, with the passing light or shadow upon 
 its grey, weather-beaten surfaces. The people of 
 La Beauce were proud, and would talk often of its 
 rich store of sacred furniture. The busy fancy of 
 Gaston, multiplying this chance hearsay, had set 
 the whole interior in array — a dim, spacious, 
 fragrant place, afloat with golden lights. Lit up 
 over the autumn fields at evening, the distant spires 
 suggested the splendour within, with so strong an 
 imaginative efFedl, that he seemed scarcely to know 
 whether it was through the mental or bodily eye 
 that he beheld. When he came thither at last, 
 like many another well-born youth, to join the 
 episcopal household as a kind of half-clerical page, 
 he found (as happens in the adlual testing of our 
 ideals) at once more and less than he had supposed; 
 and his earlier vision was a thing he could never 
 precisely recover, or disentangle from the super- 
 vening reality. What he saw, certainly, was greater 
 far in mere physical proportion, and incommen- 
 surable at first by anything he knew, — the volume 
 
CATHEDRAL OF CHARTRES 79 
 
 of the wrought detail, the mass of the component 
 members, the bigness of the adtual stones of the 
 masonry, contrary to the usual Gothic manner, 
 and as if in reminiscence of those old Druidic piles 
 amid which the Virgin of Chartres had been adored, 
 long before the birth of Christ, by a mystic race, 
 possessed of some prophetic sense of the grace in 
 store for her. Through repeated dangers good 
 fortune has saved that unrivalled treasure of 
 stained glass; and then, as now, the word "awful," 
 so often applied to Gothic aisles, was for once 
 really applicable. You enter, looking perhaps for 
 a few minutes' cool shelter from the summer noon- 
 day; and the placid sunshine of La Beauce seems 
 to have been transformed in a moment into im- 
 perious, angry fire. 
 
 It was not in summer, however, that Gaston 
 first set foot there; he saw the beautiful city for 
 the first time as if sheathed austerely in repellent 
 armour. In his most genial subsequent impressions 
 of the place, there was always a Hngering trace of 
 that famous frost through which he made his way, 
 wary of petrifying contadt against things without, 
 to the great western portal, on Candelmas morning. 
 The sad, patient images by the doorways of the 
 crowded church seemed suffering now chiefly from 
 the cold. It was almost like a funeral — the peni- 
 tential violet, the wandering taper-Hght of this 
 half-lenten feast of Purification. His new com- 
 panions, at the head and in the rear of the long 
 procession, forced every one, even the Lord Bishop 
 himself, to move apace, bustUng along, cross- 
 bearer and acolyte, in their odd little copes, out of 
 the bitter air, which made the jolly Hfe Gaston now 
 
8o CATHEDRAL OF AMIENS 
 
 } 
 entered on, around the great fire of their hall in 
 
 the episcopal palace, seem all the more winsome. 
 
 Notre-Dame de Chartres! It was a world to 
 explore, as if one explored the entire Middle Age; 
 it was also one unending, elaborate, religious 
 funAion — a life, or a continuous drama, to take 
 one's part in. Dependent on its strudtural com- 
 pleteness, on its wealth of well-preserved ornament, 
 on its unity in variety, perhaps on some undefinable 
 operation of genius, beyond, but concurrently with, 
 all these, the church of Chartres has still the gift 
 of a unique power of impressing. In comparison, 
 the other famous churches of France, at Amiens 
 for instance, at Rheims or Beauvais, may seem but 
 formal, and to a large extent reproducible, efFefts of 
 mere architedlural rule on a gigantic scale. 
 
 CATHEDRAL OF AMIENS 
 
 WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 N( 
 
 |0T long ago I saw for the first time some of 
 the churches of North France; still more recently 
 I saw them for the second time; and, remembering 
 the love I have for them and the longing that was 
 in me to see them, during the time that came be- 
 tween the first and second visit, I thought I should 
 like to tell people of some of those things I felt 
 when I was there; — there among those mighty 
 tombs of the long-dead ages. 
 
 And I thought that even if I could say nothing 
 else about these grand churches, I could at least 
 tell men how much I loved them; so that, though 
 
CATHEDRAL OF AMIENS 8l 
 
 they might laugh at me for my foolish and confused 
 words, they might yet be moved to see what there 
 was that made me speak my love, though I could 
 give no reason for it. 
 
 For I will say here, that I think those same 
 churches of North France the grandest, the most 
 beautiful, the kindest and, most loving of all the 
 buildings that the earth has ever borne; and, 
 thinking of their passed-away builders, can I see 
 through them, very faintly, dimly, some little of 
 the mediaeval times, else dead, and gone for ever. 
 
 And those same builders, still surely Hving, still 
 real men and capable of receiving love, I love no 
 less than the great men, poets and painters and 
 such like, who are on earth now, no less than my 
 breathing friends whom I can see looking kindly 
 on me now. Ah! do I not love them with just 
 cause, who certainly loved me, thinking of me 
 sometimes between the strokes of their chisels; 
 and for this love of all men that they had, and 
 moreover, for the great love of God, which they 
 certainly had too; for this, and for this work of 
 theirs, the upraising of the great cathedral front 
 with its beating heart of the thoughts of men, 
 wrought into the leaves and flowers of the fair 
 earth; wrought into the faces of good men and true, 
 fighters against the wrong, of angels who upheld 
 them, of God who rules all things; wrought through 
 the lapse of years, and years, and years, by the 
 dint of chisel, and stroke of hammer, into stories of ^ 
 Hfe and death, the second life, the second death, 
 stories of God's dealing in love and wrath with 
 the nations of the earth, stories of the faith and love 
 of men that dies not; for their love, and the deeds 
 
82 CATHEDRAL OF AMIENS 
 
 through which it worked, I think they will not 
 lose their reward. 
 
 So I will say what I can of their works, and I 
 have to speak of Amiens first and how it seemed to 
 me in the hot August weather. 
 
 I know how wonderful it would look, if you were 
 to mount one of the steeples of the town, or were 
 even to mount to the roof of one of the houses 
 westward of the Cathedral; for it rises up from 
 the ground, grey from the paving of the street, 
 the cavernous porches of the west front opening 
 wide, and marvellous with the shadows of the 
 carving you can only guess at; and above stand 
 the kings, and above that you would see the twined 
 mystery of the great flamboyant rose window with 
 its thousand openings, and the shadows of the 
 flower-work carved round it, then the grey towers 
 and gable, grey against the blue of the August sky, 
 and behind them all, rising high into the quivering 
 air, the tall spire over the crossing. 
 
 But from the hot Place Royale here with its 
 stunted pollard acacias, and statue of some one, 
 I know not whom, but some citizen of Amiens I 
 suppose, you can see nothing of the graceful spire; 
 it is of wood covered with lead, and was built 
 quite at the end of the flamboyant times. Once it 
 was gilt all over, and used to shine out there, getting 
 duller and duller, as the bad years grew worse and 
 worse; but the gold is all gone now; when it 
 finally disappeared I know not, but perhaps it was 
 in 1 77 1, when the chapter got them the inside of 
 their cathedral whitewashed from vaulting to 
 pavement. 
 
 The spire was two octagonal stages above the 
 
CATHEDRAL OF AMIENS 83 
 
 roof, formed of trefoiled arches, and slim buttresses 
 capped by leaded figures; from these stages the 
 sloping spire springs with crocketted ribs at the 
 angles, the lead being arranged in a quaint herring- 
 bone pattern; at the base of the spire too is a 
 crown of open-work and figures, making a third 
 stage; finally, near the top of the spire the crockets 
 swell, till you come to the rose that holds the great 
 spire-cross of metal-work, such metal-work as the 
 French alone knew how to make; it is all beautiful, 
 though so late. 
 
 From one of the streets leading out of the Place 
 Royale you can see the cathedral, and as you come 
 nearer you see that it is clear enough of houses or 
 such like things; the great apse rises over you, 
 with its belt of eastern chapels; first the long slim 
 windows of these chapels, which are each of them 
 little apses, the Lady Chapel projedling a good way 
 beyond the rest, and then, running under the cornice 
 of the chapels and outer aisles all round the church, 
 a cornice of great noble leaves; then the parapets 
 in changing flamboyant patterns, then the conical 
 roofs of the chapels hiding the exterior tracery of 
 the triforium, then the great clerestory windows, 
 very long, of four lights, and stilted, the tracery 
 beginning a long way below the springing of their 
 arches; and the buttresses are so thick and their 
 arms spread so here, that each of the clerestory 
 windows looks down its own space between them, 
 as if between walls; above the windows rise their 
 canopies running through the parapet, and above 
 all the great mountainous roof, and all below it, 
 and around the windows and walls of the choir and 
 apse, stand the mighty army of the buttresses, 
 
84 CATHEDRAL OF AMIENS 
 
 holding up the weight of the stone roof within their 
 strong arms for ever. 
 
 We go round under their shadows, past the sac- 
 risties, past the southern transept, only glancing 
 just now at the sculpture there, past the chapels 
 of the nave, and enter the church by the small 
 door hard by the west front, with that figure of 
 huge St. Christopher quite close over our heads; 
 thereby we enter the church, as I said, and are in 
 its western bay. I think I felt inclined to shout 
 when I first entered Amiens cathedral; it is so free 
 and vast and noble, I did not feel in the least awe- 
 struck, or humbled by its size and grandeur. I 
 have not often felt thus when looking on archi- 
 teAure, but have felt, at all events, at first, intense 
 exultation at the beauty of it; that, and a certain 
 kind of satisfadlion in looking on the geometrical 
 tracery of the windows, on the sweeping of the 
 huge arches, were, I think, my first feelings in 
 Amiens cathedral. 
 
 We go down the nave, glancing the while at the 
 traceried windows of the chapels, which are later 
 than the windows above them; we come to the 
 transepts, and from either side the stained glass, 
 in their huge windows, burns out on us; and, then, 
 first we begin to appreciate somewhat the scale of 
 the church, by looking up, along the ropes hanging 
 from the vaulting to the pavement, for the tolling 
 of the bells in the spire. 
 
 Up into the triforium, and other galleries, some- 
 times in the church, sometimes in narrow passages 
 of close-fitting stone, sometimes out in the open 
 air; up into the forest of beams between the slates 
 and the real stone roof; one can look down through 
 
CATHEDRAL OF AMIENS 85 
 
 a hole in the vaulting and see the people walking 
 and praying on the pavement below, looking very 
 small from that height, and strangely foreshortened. 
 A strange sense of oppression came over me at the 
 time, when, as we were in one of the galleries of 
 the west front, we looked into the church, and found 
 the vaulting but a foot or two (or it seemed so) 
 above our heads; also, while I was in the galleries, 
 now out of the church, now in it, the canons had 
 begun to sing complines, and the sound of their 
 singing floated dimly up the winding staircases and 
 half-shut doors. 
 
 The sun was setting when Nve were in the roof, 
 and a beam of it, striking through the small window 
 up in the gable, fell in blood-red spots on the beams 
 of the great dim roof. We came out from the roof 
 on to the parapet in the blaze of the sun, and then 
 going to the crossing, mounted as high as we could 
 into the spire, and stood there a while looking down 
 on the beautiful country, with its many water- 
 meadows, and feathering trees. 
 
 And now, farewell to the church that I love, to 
 the carved temple-mountain that rises so high 
 above the water-meadows of the Soxnme, above 
 the grey roofs of the good town. Farewell to the 
 sweep of the arches, up from the bronze bishops 
 lying at the west end, up the belt of solemn windows, 
 where, through the painted glass, the light comes 
 solemnly. Fare\Vell to the cavernous porches of 
 the west front, so grey under the fading August 
 sun, grey with the wind-storms, grey with the rain- 
 storms, grey with the beat of many days' sun, 
 from sunlight to sunset; showing white sometimes, 
 too, when the sun strikes it strongly; snowy- 
 
86 CATHEDRAL OF AMIENS 
 
 white, sometimes, when the moon is on it, and the 
 shadows growing blacker; but grey now, fretted 
 into deeper grey, fretted into black by the mitres 
 of the bishops, by the solemn covered heads of the 
 prophets, by the company of the risen, and the 
 long robes of the judgment-angels, by hell-mouth 
 and its flames gaping there, and the devils that 
 feed it; by the saved souls and the crowning 
 angels; by the presence of the Judge, and by the 
 roses growing above them all forever. 
 
 Farewell to the spire, gilt all over with gold once, 
 and shining out there, very gloriously; dull and 
 grey now, alas; but still it catches, through its 
 interlacement of arches, the intensest blue of the 
 blue summer sky; and, sometimes at night you 
 may see the stars shining through it. 
 
 It is fair still, though the gold is gone, the spire 
 that seems to rock, when across it, in the wild 
 February nights, the clouds go westward. 
 
 T. 
 
 CATHEDRAL OF AMIENS 
 
 WALTER PATER 
 
 HE greatest and purest of Gothic churches, 
 Notre-Dame d'Amiens, illustrates, by its fine 
 qualities, a charadleristic secular movement of the 
 beginning of the thirteenth century. Philosophic 
 writers of French history have explained how, in 
 that and in the two preceding centuries, a great 
 number of the more important towns in eastern 
 and northern France rose against the feudal es- 
 tablishment, and developed severally the local and 
 municipal life of the commune. To guarantee their 
 independence therein they obtained charters from 
 
CATHEDRAL OF AMIENS 87 
 
 their formal superiors. The Charter of Amiens 
 served as the model for many other communes. 
 Notre-Dame d'Amiens is the church of a commune. 
 In that century of Saint Francis, of Saint Louis, 
 they were still religious. But over against monas- 
 tic interests, as identified with a central authority 
 — king, emperor, or pope — they pushed forward 
 the local, and, so to call it, secular authority of 
 their bishops, the flower of the "secular clergy" 
 in all its mundane astuteness, ready enough to 
 make their way as the natural protestors of such 
 townships. The people of Amiens for instance, 
 under a powerful episcopal patron, invested their 
 civic pride in a vast cathedral, outrivalling neigh- 
 bours, as being in efFedl their parochial church, 
 and promoted there the flew, revolutionary, Gothic 
 manner, at the expense of the derivative and tradi- 
 tional, Roman or Romanesque, style, the imperial 
 style, of the great monastic churches. 
 
 Hence the splendour, the space, the novelty, 
 of the great French cathedrals in the first Pointed 
 style, monuments for the most part of the artistic 
 genius of laymen, significant pre-eminently of that 
 Queen of Gothic churches at Amiens. In most 
 cases those early Pointed churches are entangled, 
 here or there, by the construdions of the old round- 
 arched style, the heavy Norman or other, Roman- 
 esque chapel or aisle, side by side, though in strong 
 contrast with, the soaring new Gothic of nave or 
 transept. But of that older manner of the round 
 arch Amiens has nowhere, or almost nowhere, a 
 trace. The Pointed style, fully pronounced, but 
 in all the purity of its first period, found here its 
 completest expression. And while those venerable. 
 
88 CATHEDRAL OF AMIENS 
 
 Romanesque, profoundly charaderistic, monastic 
 churches, the gregarious produdl of long centuries, 
 are for the most part anonymous, as if to illustrate 
 from the first a certain personal tendency which 
 came in with the Gothic manner, we know the 
 name of the architecfl under whom, in the year 
 A.D. 1 220, the building of the church of Amiens 
 began — a layman, Robert de Luzarches. 
 
 Light and space — floods of light, space for a 
 vast congregation, for all the people of Amiens, 
 for their movements, with something like the 
 height and width of heaven itself enclosed above 
 them to breathe in; — you see at a glance that 
 this is what the ingenuity of the Pointed method 
 of building has here secured. For breadth, for 
 the easy flow of processional torrent, there is 
 nothing like the "ambulatory," the aisle of the 
 choir and transepts. And the entire area is on 
 one level. There are here no flights of steps up- 
 ward, as at Canterbury, no descending to dark 
 crypts, as in so many Italian churches, — a few 
 low, broad steps to gain the choir, two or three to 
 the high altar. To a large extent the old pavement 
 remains, though almost worn out by the footsteps 
 of centuries. Priceless, though not composed of 
 precious material, it gains its effedl by ingenuity 
 and variety in the patterning, zig-zags, chequers, 
 mazes, revealing respedtively, in white and grey, 
 in great square, alternate spaces — the original 
 floor of a mediaeval church for once untouched. 
 
 Strange as it may seem, in this "queen" of 
 Gothic churches, there is nothing of mystery in 
 the vision, which yet surprises, over and over again 
 the eye of the visitor who enters at the western 
 
CATHEDRAL OF AMIENS 89 
 
 doorway. From the flagstone at one's foot to the 
 distant keystone of the chevet, noblest of its 
 species — reminding you of how many largely 
 graceful things, sails of a ship in the wind, and the 
 like! — at one view the whole is visible, intelligible; 
 — the integrity of the first design; how later ad- 
 ditions affixed themselves thereto; how the rich 
 ornament gathered upon it; the increasing rich- 
 ness of the choir; the realms of light which expand 
 in the chapels beyond; the astonishing boldness of 
 the vault, the astonishing hghtness of what keeps 
 it above one; the unity, yet the variety of per- 
 spedlive. There is no mystery here, and indeed no 
 repose. Like the age which projedled it, like the 
 impulsive communal movement which was here 
 its motive, the Pointed style at Amiens is full of 
 excitement. Go, for repose, to classic work, with 
 the simple vertical law of pressure downwards. 
 Here, rather, you are conscious restlessly of that 
 sustained eq^jilibrium of oblique pressure on all 
 sides, which is the essence of the hazardous Gothic 
 construdlion, a construAion of which the "flying 
 buttress" is the most significant feature. Across 
 the clear glass of great windows of the triforium 
 you see it, feel it, at its Atlas-work audaciously. "A 
 pleasant thing it is to behold the sun" those first 
 Gothic builders would seem to have said to them- 
 selves; and at Amiens, for instance, the walls have 
 disappeared; the entire building is composed of its 
 windows. Those who built it might have had for 
 their one and only purpose to enclose as large a 
 space as possible with the given material. 
 
 No; the peculiar Gothic buttress, with its double, 
 triple, fourfqld flights, while it makes such marvels 
 
90 CATHEDRAL OF AMIENS 
 
 possible, securing light and space and graceful effedl, 
 relieving the pillars within of their massiveness, is 
 not a restful architectural feature. Consolidation 
 of matter naturally on the move, security for settle- 
 ment in a very complex system of construdtion — 
 that is avowedly a part of the Gothic situation, 
 the Gothic problem. For the mere melody of Greek 
 architecture, for the sense as it were of music in the 
 opposition of successive sounds, you got harmony, 
 the richer music generated by opposition of sounds 
 in one and the same moment; and were gainers. 
 And then in contrast with the classic manner, the 
 vast complexity of the Gothic style seemed, as if 
 consciously, to correspond to the richness, the 
 expressiveness the thousandfold influence of the 
 Catholic religion, in the thirteenth century still in 
 natural movement in every diredlion. The later 
 Gothic of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries 
 tended to conceal, as it now took for granted, the 
 structural use of the buttress, for example; seemed 
 to turn it into a mere occasion for ornament, not 
 always pleasantly: — while the ornament was out 
 of place, the struAure failed. Such falsity is far 
 enough away from what at Amiens is really of the 
 thirteenth century. In this pre-eminently " secular " 
 church, the execution, in all the defiance of its 
 method, is diredt, frank, clearly apparent, with the 
 result not only of reassuring the intelligence, but 
 of keeping one's curiosity also continually on the 
 alert, as we linger in these restless aisles. 
 
 The best stained glass is often that stained by 
 weather,, by centuries of weather, and we may well 
 be grateful for the amazing cheerfulness of the in- 
 terior of Amiens, as we aAually find it. Windows 
 
CATHEDRAL OP AMIENS 9I 
 
 of the richest remain, indeed, in the apsidal chapels; 
 and the rose-windows of the transept are known, 
 from the prevailing tones of their stained glass, as 
 Fire and Water, the western rose symbolizing in 
 like manner Earth and Air, as respectively green 
 and blue. But there is no reason to suppose that 
 the interior was ever so darkened as to prevent one's 
 seeing, reajly and clearly, the dainty ornament, 
 which from the first abounded here; the floriated 
 architedural detail; the broad band of flowers and 
 foHage, thick and deep and purely sculptured, 
 above the arches of nave and choir and transepts. 
 The builders of the church seem to have pro- 
 jedled no very noticeable towers; though it is con- 
 ventional to regret their absence, especially with 
 visitors from England, where indeed cathedral and 
 other towers are apt to be good, and really make 
 their mark. Robert de Luzarches and his suc- 
 cessors aimed rather at the domical outline, with 
 its central point at the centre of the church, the 
 spire. The existing spire is a wonderful mass of 
 carpentry of the beginning of the sixteenth century, 
 at which time the lead that carefully wraps every 
 part of it was heavily gilt. The great western 
 towers are lost in the west front, the grandest, 
 perhaps the earliest, examples of its species — three 
 profound, sculptured portals; a double gallery 
 above, the upper gallery carrying colossal images of 
 twenty-two kings of the House of Judah; then the 
 great rose; above it the ringers' gallery, half mask- 
 ing the gable of the nave, and uniting at their top- 
 most storeys the twin, but not exadlly equal or 
 similar, towers, oddly oblong in plan, as if never 
 intended to carry pyramids or spires. 
 
92 GREEK AND GOTHIC ORNAMENT 
 
 GREEK AND GOTHIC ORNAMENT 
 COMPARED 
 
 WALTER CRANE 
 
 T. 
 
 HERE are, apparently, two theories of decora- 
 tion in buildings; one might be termed the organic 
 theory, in which the decoration is an essential and 
 integral part of the strudure, to which it gives final 
 expression; and the other, the inorganic theory, in 
 which decoration is considered merely as so much 
 superadded or surface ornament, and often not so 
 much to emphasize as to conceal strudure, or to 
 furnish a mask for it. 
 
 In the Greek (Doric) temple, perhaps the proto- 
 type of the Greek house, following in stone the tra- 
 dition of primitive wooden strudlure, certain spaces 
 naturally occurred — such as the spaces between 
 the angle of the pediment and the horizontal 
 lintel, and between the triglyphs or beam ends, 
 and these spaces were appropriately filled with 
 sculptured slabs which served at once the structu- 
 ral function of closing the apertures and enrich- 
 ing and relieving the building with expressive 
 sculpture. 
 
 With the development of Gothic architedlure, 
 sculptured decoration (as indeed decoration of all 
 kinds) became more and more important, while 
 still stridtly organic, being used to emphasize 
 structural necessities such as the ribs and fundlions 
 of interior vaults, the caps of the clustered shafts, 
 the tracery of windows, as well as the spandrils of 
 arches, corbels, arcades, canopies, pinnacles, para- 
 pets, stringcourses, gargoyles and recessed and 
 
ORVIETO CATHEDRAL 93 
 
 canopied tombs built into the interior walls of 
 churches. 
 
 One cannot separate the decorative features of 
 a Gothic building from its structure. It is an or- 
 ganic part of it, as the leaves and flowers are of a 
 tree. 
 
 The sculpture of a Doric temple is also organic, 
 as we have seen, though on a difi^erent principle, 
 the ornamental emphasis being on the interstices 
 of the strudlure rather than on the construdtive 
 features themselves, as in the Gothic. 
 
 ORVIETO CATHEDRAL 
 
 CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 
 
 I 
 
 N the very heart of Italy, midway between Rome 
 and Florence, in the recesses of the Apennines, lies 
 Orvieto, a city of the Middle Ages, — though its 
 name, said to be a corruption of Urhs Fetus, tells 
 of an ancient and forgotten origin. It was never 
 very large, never held great power, never played an 
 important part in the drama of Italian politics, — 
 but the arts of two centuries concentrated them- 
 selves within its walls to produce a single splendid 
 and complete work, and its Cathedral has long 
 given glory to Orvieto and still renders it one of 
 the chief cities of pilgrimage in Italy. 
 
 Leaving the main road between Rome and Siena 
 the way turns north-eastward through the low and 
 desolate hills that He above the gloomy lake of 
 Bolsena. A slow ascent leads up to a high and 
 bare table-land, over which the March winds, 
 coming out from the hollows of the mountains, 
 
94 ORVIETO CATHEDRAL 
 
 sweep fiercely. The plateau suddenly breaks upon 
 a precipitous declivity, and Orvieto, till that mo- 
 ment unseen, appears crowning a rocky height 
 which rises solitary and abrupt from a deep valley. 
 So narrow is the valley, that, from the point where 
 the plateau breaks, the city seems almost within 
 musket-shot. But the perfedt isolation of the 
 mountain upon which it stands, no spur or ridge 
 connecting it with those that lie nearest to it, 
 makes the approach to the city slow and difficult, 
 and gives to it a peculiar and striking charadter 
 of inaccessibility. The truncated oval cone of an 
 extindl volcano, the height lifts itself with almost 
 perpendicular sides for more than seven hundred 
 feet, rising from the valley like a solitary islet of 
 rock. Storms have washed bare its upper steeps, 
 and have heaped up their crumbling debris upon 
 the plain below, forming a broad buttress and em- 
 bankment of stone and earth around its base. The 
 city with its gray walls set upon the topmost edge 
 of the scarped reddish cliff, with the towers of its 
 churches and the gables and pinnacles of its Cathe- 
 dral showing clear against the sky, and shining 
 with various color in the sunlight, looks like a 
 bas-relief cut on the smooth face of the rock. 
 Near behind it, half encircling it, lies an uneven 
 range of brown and purple mountains, as if to shut 
 it out from the world in a seclusion of its own. The 
 lower slopes of the height are rich with vineyards, 
 farms, and wide-spread convents set deep in trees. 
 The little Paglia winds through the green valley 
 on its way to the Tiber, and vanishes among the 
 hills. Before the invention of artillery, a city set 
 on such a hill was impregnable by assault, and for 
 
ORVIETO CATHEDRAL 95 
 
 many centuries Orvieto was a city of refuge for 
 Popes driven out from Rome by its turbulent 
 citizens, or flying at the approach of some foreign 
 enemy. 
 
 No city in Italy boasts a more perfedl monu- 
 ment of the past munificence and spirit of its 
 people. The seclusion and the decay of Orvieto 
 have been the protedtion of its Duomo, — they 
 have preserved it from the rifling of invaders, and 
 from the defacing processes of restorers. Few 
 buildings of the Middle Ages retain so completely 
 the character of their original design, few afford so 
 full a record of the lives and works of their early 
 builders. 
 
 With the exception of the Cathedral of Siena, 
 there is no church in Italy in which the Italian 
 Gothic appears in freer development of beauty 
 than in this. Architedlure, sculpture and painting, 
 as represented by mosaic combined their powers and 
 lavished their wealth in the construdtion of its three- 
 gabled front. The main lines of construdlion are, 
 indeed, somewhat meagre, and the flat surfaces of 
 the front fail to produce those grand effedls of deep 
 shadow which belong to the carved recesses and 
 deep-sunk portals of Northern cathedrals; but these 
 defeAs are compensated by the rich sculpture of its 
 marble piers, by the gold and azure of its pidlured 
 gables, and by the host of guardian busts and statues 
 around its central rose-window. It seems like the 
 illuminated page of a marble missal, — the adorned 
 initial letter set at the entrance of the great volume 
 written in stone. As the sunlight falls on the 
 gleaming front, — its glowing colors harmonized 
 by the slow artistic processes of time, — it presents 
 
g6 ORVIETO CATHEDRAL 
 
 a charader of beauty unknown to the more sombre 
 Gothic of the North. Nor is the interior of the 
 church unsuitable to its external richness, though 
 the splendour of the outside is tempered within to 
 an impressive solemnity. The tall, banded marble 
 columns of the nave, the long procession of statues 
 of apostles at their feet, the frescoes on the walls of 
 choir and chapels, the elaborate carvings of wood 
 and gratings of iron, the mingling of patience, 
 labor, and art in every portion of the work, not 
 oqly give proof of the fervent spirit of the builders 
 of the Cathedral, but suggest many a devout 
 memory and sacred association. 
 
 The erediion of such a building is no solitary and 
 exceptional fadl in the history of the community 
 by whom it was accomplished. It is an illustration 
 of the general spirit of their life, of its strongest 
 faith, its deepest emotions, its most persistent im- 
 pulses. The building of cathedrals is, in truth, 
 one of the main features of the social history of 
 Europe during the Middle Ages. In England, in 
 Spain, in France, in the Low Countries, in Germany, 
 in Italy, in Sicily, these magnificent monuments of 
 genius and devotion rose in rapid succession during 
 the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. By a great 
 impulse of popular energy, by a long combination 
 of popular effort with trained skill, cathedrals, 
 each requiring almost the revenues of a kingdom 
 for its construction, sprang up from the soil in the 
 hearts of scores of rival cities. There have been 
 no works of architecture in later times comparable 
 with them in grandeur of design, in elaborateness 
 of detail, in that broad unity of conception which, 
 while leaving the largest scope for the play of fancy 
 
ORVIETO CATHEDRAL 97 
 
 and the exercise of special ability by every work- 
 man, subordinated the multifarious differences of 
 parts into one harmonious whole. The true cathe- 
 dral architeAure partook of the qualities which 
 Nature displays in her noblest works, — out of in- 
 finite varieties of generally resembling, but in- 
 trinsically differing parts, creating a perfedt and 
 concordant result. 
 
 But the period during which the great cathedrals 
 were built was comparatively short. After the 
 fourteenth century, the pracflice of cathedral archi- 
 tedlure of the old kind fell into desuetude. The 
 rules of Vitruvius were studied as the only rules of 
 desirable and excellent building. The original 
 works of the time between the fall of the Roman 
 Empire and the irruption of Roman literature were 
 esteemed barbarous and unworthy of admiration. 
 Architedture was henceforth to be imitative. It 
 is a curious fadl, that at Rome itself there is not 
 one truly Gothic church. Whatever may be the 
 architedlural merit of St. Peter's, it is not to be 
 compared, in originality of conception or in thought- 
 fulness of detail, with any of the great Gothic 
 buildings. It belongs to the architedture of the 
 intelledt, — not to that of the imagination. 
 
 The best Gothic architedture, indeed, wherever 
 it may be found, affords evidence that the men 
 who executed it were moved by a true fervor of 
 religious faith. In building a church, they did not 
 forget that it was to be the house of God. No 
 portion of their building was too minute, no por- 
 tion too obscure, to be perfedled with thorough 
 and careful labor. The work was not let out by 
 contradt, or taken up as a profitable job. The 
 
98 ORVIETO CATHEDRAL 
 
 architedl of a cathedral might live all his life within 
 the shadow of its rising walls and die no richer 
 than when he gave the sketch; but he was well 
 repaid by the delight of seeing his design grow from 
 an imagination to a reality, and by spending his 
 days in the accepted service of the Lord. 
 
 For the building of a cathedral, however, there 
 needs not only a spirit of rehgious zeal among the 
 workmen, but a faith no less ardent among the 
 people for whom the church is designed. The 
 enormous expense of construdtion, an expense which 
 for generations must be continued without inter- 
 mission, is not to be met except by liberal and will- 
 ing general contributions. 
 
 ' Cathedrals were essentially expressions of the 
 popular will and the popular faith. They were 
 the work neither of ecclesiastics nor of- feudal 
 barons. They represent, in a measure the decline 
 of feudalism, and the prevalence of the democratic 
 element in society. No sooner did a city achieve 
 its freedom than its people began to take thought 
 for a cathedral. Of all the arts, architecture is 
 the most quickly responsive to the instindls and the 
 desires of a people. And in the cathedrals, the 
 popular beliefs, hopes, fears, fancies, and aspira- 
 tions found expression, and were perpetuated in a 
 language inteUigible to all. The life of the Middle 
 Ages is recorded on their walls. When the demo- 
 cratic element was subdued, as in Cologne by a 
 Prince Bishop, or in Milan by a succession of 
 tyrants, the cathedral was left unfinished. When, 
 in the fifteenth century, all over Europe, the tur- 
 bulent, but energetic Hberties of the people were 
 suppressed, the building of cathedrals ceased. 
 
ORVIETO CATHEDRAL 99 
 
 The first document that has been found relating 
 to the proposed building of Orvieto bears date the 
 22nd day of June, 1284, and in this the projedt "of 
 erecting a new and honorable church in honor of 
 God and the Blessed Virgin Mary" is spoken of as 
 one that has been for a long time entertained. 
 
 Lorenzo Maita.ni of Siena had given the design 
 for the church, and had been appointed the chief 
 architect. 
 
 The list of contributions to the building during 
 the first year gives a curious glimpse of the char- 
 adter of the times, and of the means used for the 
 execution of such a work. It begins thus : — 
 
 "Orvieto paid fifteen pounds of wax, two (silver) 
 marks, and cloth of the value of eight gold pieces." 
 The town of Clusium, more liberal than Orvieto 
 itself, sent thirty pounds of wax, two marks, four 
 horses, and five hundred loads of grain. Little 
 Montepulciano even, from the small resources of 
 her vinegrowing hill, sent fifteen pounds of wax, 
 two marks, and two horses. The abbey Sandli 
 Salvatoris made a liberal ofi^ering. Aquapendente, 
 San Lorenzo, Bolsena, which appears on the list 
 as Volsinium, recalling its ancient fame, Radicofani, 
 and many other towns near and far, gave contribu- 
 tions according to their zeal or means. The Lord 
 of Farnese, Count Guido of Santa Flora, the Lord 
 of the Sons of the Bear (Orsini) of Mugnano, and 
 numerous feudal barons beside, gave horses, wax, 
 and grain to the new church. Altogether, the con- 
 tributions recorded for this year from towns and 
 barons amount to 731 pounds of wax, 24 marks, 
 29 horses, 3,858 loads of grain, and bravia worth 
 84 gold pieces. Nor does this list include the 
 
lOO ORVIETO CATHEDRAL 
 
 numerous minor offerings of pilgrims and citij^ens 
 to the treasury of the works. The gifts of horses 
 must have been of especial value, from the fadl 
 that the materials for building were all to be brought 
 from a distance, and to be carried up the difficult 
 ascent to the very crest of the mountain of Orvieto. 
 The labor of transportation added vastly to the 
 costhness of the edifice, but the spirit in which it 
 was undertaken was sufficient to overcome what- 
 ever obstacles opposed themselves to its progress. 
 
 Besides the masters and men at work at Orvieto, 
 many others were distributed in various parts of 
 Italy, employed in obtaining materials, and es- 
 pecially in quarrying and cutting marble for the 
 Cathedral. Black marble was got from the quarries 
 near Siena, alabaster from Sant'Antimo, near 
 Radicofani and white marble from the mountains 
 of Carrara. But the supply of the richest and 
 rarest marbles came from Rome, the ruins of whose 
 ancient magnificence afforded ample stores of 
 costliest material to the builders not only of the 
 Papal city itself, but of Naples, of Orvieto, and 
 many another Italian town. The Greek statuary 
 marble, which had once formed part of some ancient 
 temple, was transferred to the hands of the new 
 sculptors, to be worked into forms far different in 
 character and in execution from those of Grecian 
 Art. The accumulated riches of Pagan Rome were 
 distributed for the adornment of Christian churches. 
 To destroy the remains of Paganism was regarded 
 as a scarcely less acceptable service than to eredl 
 new buildings for Christian worship. 
 
 Trains of wagons, loaded with material for the 
 Cathedral, made their slow progress toward the 
 
ORVIETO CATHEDRAL lOI 
 
 city from the north and the south, from the shores 
 of the Adriatic and of the Mediterranean. The 
 heavy carts which had creaked under their burdens 
 along the soHtudes of the Campagna or the Mar- 
 emma, which had toiled up the forest-covered 
 heights that overhang Viterbo, through the wild 
 passes of Monte Cimino, or whose shouting team- 
 sters had held back their straining buffaloes down 
 the bare sides of the mountains of Radicofani, ar- 
 rived in unending succession in the valley of the 
 Paglia. The worst part of the way, however, still 
 lay before them in the steep ascent to the uplifted 
 city. But here the zeal of voluntary labor came 
 in to lighten the work of the tugging buffaloes. 
 Bands of citizens enrolled themselves to drag carts 
 up the rise of the mountain, — and on feast days 
 the people of the neighboring towns flocked in to 
 take their share in the work, and to gain the in- 
 dulgence offered to those who should give a helping 
 hand. We may imagine these processions of 
 laborers in the service of the house of the Lord ad- 
 vancing to the sound of the singing of hymns or 
 the chanting of penitential psalms; but of these 
 scenes no formal description has been left. The 
 enthusiasm which was displayed was of the same 
 order as that which, a century before, had been 
 shown at the building of the magnificent Cathedral 
 of Chartres, but probably less intense in its expres- 
 sion, owing to the change in the spirit of the times. 
 Then men and women, sometimes to the number of 
 a thousand, of all ranks and conditions harnessed 
 themselves to the wagons loaded with materials 
 for building, or with supplies for the workmen. 
 No one was admitted into the company who did 
 
I02 ORVIETO CATHEDRAL 
 
 not first make confession of his sins, " and lay down 
 at the foot of the altar all hatred and anger." As 
 cart after cart was dragged in by its band of dev- 
 otees, it was set in its place in a circle of wagons 
 around the church. Candles were lighted upon 
 them all, as upon so many altars. At night the 
 people watched, singing hymns and songs of praise, 
 or inflidling discipline upon themselves, with 
 prayers for the forgiveness of their sins. 
 
 The genius and comprehensive ability of Maitani 
 had been displayed, not only in the original plan 
 of the building and in a general oversight of its 
 construdlion, but also in his practical acquaintance 
 with the processes of various subsidiary arts, and 
 in the superintendence and combination of the labor 
 of the parties of workmen scattered over the coun- 
 try. The Cathedral was moulded in all its por- 
 tions by his hands, and upon him, in great measure, 
 its steady progress had depended. In the year 
 1330, after forty years devoted to its service, he 
 died. He had lived long enough to see his great 
 design complete in all its main features, and rivalling 
 in its splendid adornments the finest churches of 
 Italy. Rare fortune for an artist, to embody his 
 life and imagination in one work, and to live to see 
 his work accomplished. 
 
GIOTTOS TOWER IO3 
 
 GIOTTO'S TOWER — THE CAMPANILE 
 OF FLORENCE 
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 T. 
 
 HE campanile, or bell-tower, stands within a 
 few paces of the Cathedral, but entirely discon- 
 nedled from it, rising to a height of nearly three 
 hundred feet, a square tower of light marbles, now 
 discolored by time. It is impossible to give an 
 idea of the richness of efFedl produced by its elabo- 
 rate finish; the whole surface of the four sides, 
 from top to bottom, being decorated with all manner 
 of statuesque and architedlural sculpture. It is 
 like a toy of ivory, which some ingenious and 
 pious monk might have spent his lifetime in adorn- 
 ing with scriptural designs and figures of saints; 
 and when it was finished, seeing it so beautiful, he 
 prayed that it might be miraculously magnified 
 from the size of one foot to that of three hundred. 
 This idea somewhat satisfies me, as conveying 
 an impression how gigantesque the campanile is 
 in its mass and height, and how minute and varied 
 in its detail. Surely these mediaeval works have 
 an advantage over the classic. They combine the 
 telescope and the microscope. 
 
104 GIOTTOS TOWER 
 
 GIOTTO'S TOWER — THE CAMPANILE 
 OF FLORENCE 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 ^CONSIDERABLE size, exhibited by simple ter- 
 minal lines. Projedlion towards the top. Breadth 
 of flat surface. Square compartments of that 
 surface. Varied and visible masonry. Vigorous 
 depth of shadow exhibited especially by pierced 
 traceries. Varied proportion in ascent. Lateral 
 symmetry. Sculpture most delicate at the base. 
 Enriched quantity of ornament at the top. Sculp- 
 ture abstradl in inferior ornaments and mouldings, 
 complete in animal forms. Both to be executed in 
 white marble. Vivid colour introduced in flat 
 geometrical patterns and obtained by the use of 
 naturally colored stone. 
 
 These charadleristics occur more or less in dif- 
 ferent buildings, some in one and some in another. 
 But all together, and all in their highest possible 
 relative degrees, they exist, as far as I know, only 
 in one building in the world, the Campanile of 
 Giotto at Florence. The drawing of the tracery of 
 its upper story, which heads this chapter, rude as 
 it is, will nevertheless give the reader some better 
 conception of that tower's magnificence than the 
 thin outlines in which it is usually portrayed. In 
 its first appeal to the stranger's eye there is some- 
 thing unpleasing; a mingling, as it seems to him, 
 of over severity with over minuteness. But let 
 him give it time, as he should to all consummate 
 art. I remember well how, when a boy, I used to 
 despise that Campanile, and think it meanly smooth 
 
GIOTTOS TOWER 105 
 
 and finished. But I have since lived beside it 
 many a day, and looked out upon it from my 
 windows by sunlight and moonlight, and I shall 
 not soon forget how profound and gloomy appeared 
 to me the savageness of the Northern Gothic, 
 when I afterwards stood, for the first time, beneath 
 the front of Salisbury. The contrast is indeed 
 strange, if it could be quickly felt, between the 
 rising of those grey walls out of their quiet swarded 
 space, like dark and barren rocks out of a green 
 lake, with their rude, mouldering, rough-grained 
 shafts, and triple lights, without tracery or other 
 ornament than the martins' nest in the height of 
 them, and that bright, smooth, sunny surface of 
 glowing jasper, those spiral shafts and fairy traceries, 
 so white, so faint, so crystalline, that their slight 
 shapes are hardly traced in darkness on the pallor 
 of the Eastern sky, that serene height of mountain 
 alabaster, coloured like a morning cloud, and chased 
 like a sea shell. And if this be, as I believe it, the 
 model and mirror of perfeA architedlure, is there 
 not something to be learned by looking back to the 
 early life of him who raised it? I said that the 
 Power of human mind had its growth in the Wilder- 
 ness; much more must the love and the concep- 
 tion of that beauty, whose every line and hue we 
 have seen to be, at the best, a faded image of God's 
 daily work, and an arrested ray of some star of 
 creation, be given chiefly in the place which he 
 has gladdened by planting there the fir tree and the 
 pine. Not within the walls of Florence but among 
 the far away fields of her Hlies, was the child trained 
 who was to raise that headstone of Beauty above 
 the towers of watch and war. Remember all that 
 
I06 PISA 
 
 he became; count the sacred thoughts with which 
 he filled the heart of Italy; ask those who followed 
 him what they learned at his feet; and when you 
 have numbered his labors, and received their 
 testimony, if it seem to you that God had verily 
 poured out upon this His servant no common nor 
 restrained portion of His Spirit, and that he was 
 indeed a king among the children of men, remember 
 also that the legend upon his crown was that of 
 David's: "I took thee from the sheepcote, and 
 from following the sheep." 
 
 PISA 
 
 CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 
 
 T. 
 
 HERE are few buildings in the world so com- 
 plete in their efFedt, so impressive at first sight, and 
 of such increasing interest upon longer acquaint- 
 ance, as the Duomo group at Pisa. Forsyth has 
 expressed a portion of their peculiar charm, when 
 he speaks of them as "fortunate alike in their 
 society and their solitude." Pisa has an air of 
 repose but not the air of decay which is usually as- 
 sociated with it in Italian cities. It is at once quiet 
 and cheerful, and in its most retired part, close to 
 the battlemented wall, remote from bustle, but 
 not secluded from approach, stand the Cathedral, 
 the Baptistry, the Campo Santo, and the Leaning 
 Tower. To their original beauties time has added 
 those which come only with age, softening and 
 harmonizing all that was rough and incongruous, 
 and giving to their white marble a hue which can 
 be described only as that of marble interfused with 
 
PISA 107 
 
 the yellow rays of sunshine, and, while adding these 
 beauties, has accumulated with them all the charms 
 of Art and of association. The contrast between 
 the color of the buildings and the blue sky is beau- 
 tiful; and the slanting shadows, thrown by a clear 
 afternoon sun from the seven circles of the pillars 
 of the Tower, from the pillared stories of the front 
 of the Duomo, and from the exquisite tracery of 
 the arches of the Campo Santo, produce efFedls 
 which show how Nature delights to adorn and ern- 
 bellish the well-executed works of man. 
 
 There is one other scene in Pisa of such great 
 beauty that it deserves to be remembered even 
 with the cathedral buildings. It is the Lung' 
 Arno at sunset. The sun goes down behind the 
 Ponte a Mare and the Torre Guelfa. The heavy, 
 irregular arches of the bridge, and the tall, square 
 mass of the tower, stand out against the red sky, 
 and are refledted in the rapid water. On the 
 southern bank stands the little gem-like chapel of 
 Spina, — its white marble pinnacles, crockets, and 
 finials catching something of the sunset glow. On 
 the other bank is the line of houses and palaces. 
 To the north and east, miles away, the mountains 
 rise blue above the city, their snow-tipped summits 
 tinged with a golden rose-color. And 
 
 "On the surface of the fleeting river 
 The wrinkled image of the city lay. 
 
 Immovably unquiet, and forever ' 
 It trembles, and it does not pass away." 
 
I08 ST. M A R k's 
 
 Wi 
 
 ST. MARK'S 
 
 JOHN KUSKIN 
 
 E find ourselves in a paved alley, some seven 
 feet wide, where it is widest — full of people and 
 resonant with cries of itinerant salesmen. Over- 
 head an inextricable confusion of rugged shutters 
 and iron balconies, and chimney flues pushed out 
 on brackets to save room, and arched windows 
 with projecting sills of Istrian stone, and gleams of 
 green leaves here and there where a fig-tree branch 
 escapes over a lower wall, from some inner cortile, 
 leading the eye up to the narrow stream of blue 
 sky high over all. On each side a row of shops, as 
 densely set as may be, occupying, in fadl intervals 
 between the square stone shafts, about eight feet 
 high, which carry the first floors — intervals of 
 which one is narrow and serves as a door, the other 
 is, in the more respedtable shops, wainscotted to 
 the height of the counter and glazed above, but in 
 those of the poorer tradesmen, left open to the 
 ground, and the wares laid on benches and tables 
 in the open air. The light, in all cases, entering 
 at the front only, and fading away in a few feet 
 from the threshold into a gloom which the eye 
 from without cannot penetrate, but which is gen- 
 erally broken by a ray or two from a feeble lamp 
 at the back of the shop, suspended before a print 
 of the Virgin. We will push through into the 
 shadow of the pillars at the end of the Bocca di 
 Piazza, and then we forget them all; for between 
 these pillars there opens a great light, and in the 
 midst of it, as we advance slowly, the vast tower 
 
ST. M A R k's 109 
 
 of St. Mark seems to lift itself visibly forth from 
 the level field of checquered stones, and on each 
 side the countless arches prolong themselves into 
 ranged symmetry, as if the rugged and irregular 
 houses that pressed together above us, fn the dark 
 alley, had been struck back into sudden obedience 
 and lovely order, and all their rude casements and 
 broken walls had been transformed into arches 
 charged with goodly sculpture and fiuted shafts of 
 delicate stone. 
 
 And well may they fall back, for beyond those 
 troops of ordered arches there rises a vision out of 
 the earth, and all the great square seems to have 
 opened from it in a kind of awe, that we may see 
 it far away — a multitude of pillars and white 
 domes clustered into a long, low pyramid of col- 
 oured light; a treasure heap it seems, partly of 
 gold and partly of opal and mother of pearl, hol- 
 lowed beneath into five great vaulted porches, 
 ceiled with fair mosaic and beset with sculpture of 
 alabaster, clear as amber and delicate as ivory — 
 sculpture fantastic and involved of palm-leaves 
 and of lilies and grapes and pomegranates, and 
 birds clinging and fluttering among the branches, 
 all twined together into an endless network of buds 
 and plumes; and in the midst of it the solemn 
 form of angels, sceptered, and robed to the feet, 
 and leaning to each other across the gates, their 
 figures indistindt among the gleaming of the golden 
 ground through the leaves beside them, interrupted 
 and dim, like the morning light as it faded back 
 among the branches of Eden, when first its gates 
 were angel-guarded long ago. And round the walls 
 of the porches there are set pillars of variegated 
 
no WELLS CATHEDRAL 
 
 Stones, jasper and porphyry, and deep green ser- 
 pentine spotted with flakes of snow, and marbles, 
 that half refuse and half yield to the sunshine, 
 Cleopatra-like, "their bluest veins to kiss" — the 
 shadow, as it steals back from them, revealing line 
 after line of azure undulation, as a receding tide 
 leaves the waved sand; their capitals rich with 
 interwoven tracery, rooted knots of herbage, and 
 drifting leaves of acanthus and vine, and mystical 
 signs, all beginning and ending in the Cross; and, 
 above them, in the broad archivolts, a continuous 
 chain of language and of life — angels, and the 
 signs of heaven, and the labours of men, each in 
 its appointed season upon the earth; and above 
 these, another range of glittering pinnacles, mixed 
 with white arches edged with scarlet flowers — a 
 confusion of delight, amidst which the breasts of 
 the Greek horses are seen blazing in their breadth 
 of golden strength, and the St. Mark's lion, lifted 
 on a blue field covered with stars, until at last, as 
 if in ecstasy, the crests of the arches break into a 
 marble foam and toss themselves far into the blue 
 sky in flashes and wreaths of sculptured spray, as 
 if the breakers on the Lido shore had been frost- 
 bound before they fell, and the sea nymphs had 
 inlaid them with coral and amethyst. 
 
 T. 
 
 WELLS CATHEDRAL 
 
 HENRY JAMES 
 
 HE pleasantest things in life, and perhaps the 
 rarest, are its agreeable surprises. Things are 
 often worse than we expedl to find them; and 
 
WELLS CATHEDRAL III 
 
 when they are better, we may mark the day with 
 a white stone. These refledlions are as pertinent 
 to man as a tourist as to any other phase of his 
 destiny, and I recently had occasion to make them 
 in the ancient city of Wells. I knew in a general 
 way that it had a great cathedral to show, but I 
 was far from suspedling the precious pidturesque- 
 ness of the little town. The immense predom- 
 inance of the Minster towers, as you see them from 
 the approaching train over the clustered houses 
 at their feet, give you indeed an intimation of it, 
 and suggests that the city is nothing if not ec- 
 clesiastical; but I can wish the traveller no better 
 fortune than to stroll forth in the early evening 
 with as large a reserve of ignorance as my own, 
 and treat himself to an hour of discoveries. I was 
 lodged on the edge of Cathedral Green, and I had 
 only to pass beneath one of the three crumbling 
 Priory gates which enclose it, and cross the vast 
 grassy oval, to stand before a minster-front which 
 ranks among the first three or four in England. 
 Wells Cathedral is extremely fortunate in being 
 approached by this wide green level, on which the 
 spedlator may loiter and stroll to and fro, and shift 
 his stand-point to his heart's content. The spec- 
 tator who does not hesitate to avail himself of his 
 privilege of unlimited fastidiousness might indeed 
 pronounce it too isolated for perfedl picturesque- 
 ness, — too uncontrasted with the profane archi- 
 tecture of the human homes for which it pleads 
 to the skies. But, in fadt. Wells is not a city with 
 a cathedral for a central feature; Jjut a cathedral 
 with a little city gathered at its base, and forming 
 hardly more than an extension of its spacious close. 
 
112 WELLS CATHEDRAL 
 
 You feel ever3rwhere the presence of the beautiful 
 church; the place seems always to savor of a 
 Sunday afternoon; and you fancy that every house 
 is tenanted by a canon, a prebendary, or a pre- 
 centor. 
 
 The great facade is remarkable not so much for 
 its expanse as for its elaborate elegance. It con- 
 sists of two great truncated towers, divided by a 
 broad centre, bearing beside its rich fretwork of 
 statues three narrow lancet windows. The statues 
 of this vast front are the great boast of the cathe- 
 dral. They number, with the lateral figures of 
 the towers, no less than three hundred; it seems 
 densely embroidered by the chisel. They are dis- 
 posed in successive niches, along six main vertical 
 shafts; the central windows are framed and di- 
 vided by narrower shafts, and the wall above them 
 rises into a pinnacled screen, traversed by two 
 superb horizontal rows. Add to these a close- 
 running cornice of images along the line correspond- 
 ing with the summit of the aisles, and the tiers 
 which complete the decoration of the towers on 
 either side, and you have an immense system of 
 images, governed by a quaint theological order and 
 most impressive in its completeness. Many of the 
 little high-lodged effigies are mutilated, and not a 
 few of the niches are empty, but the injury of time 
 is not sufficient to diminish the noble serenity of 
 the building. The main beauty of Wells Cathe- 
 dral, to my mind, is not its more or less visible 
 wealth of detail, but its singular charming tone of 
 color. And even, sober, mouse-colored gray, covers 
 it from summit to base, deepening nowhere to the 
 melancholy black of your truly romantic Gothic, 
 
WAKEFIELD CHURCH II3 
 
 but showing, as yet, none of the spotty brightness 
 of "restoration." It was a wonderful fad, that 
 the great towers, from their lofty outlook, see 
 never a fadory chimney, — those cloud compelling 
 spires which so often break the charm of the 
 softest English horizons; and the general atmos- 
 phere of Wells seemed to me, for some reason, 
 peculiarly luminous and sweet. The cathedral 
 has never been discolored by the moral malaria of 
 a city with an independent secular life. As you 
 turn your back from its portal and glance at the 
 open lawn before it, edged by the mild gray Eliza- 
 bethan deanery, and the other dwellings, hardly 
 less stately, which seem to refleA in their comfort- 
 able fronts the rich respedtability of the church, 
 and then up again at the beautiful clear-hued pile, 
 you may fancy it less a temple for man's needs 
 than a monument of his pride, — less a fold for the 
 flock than for the shepherds, — a visible sign that, 
 besides the adlual assortment of heavenly thrones, 
 there is constantly on hand a choice lot of cushioned 
 cathedral stalls. 
 
 ENGLISH PARISH CHURCHES- 
 WAKEFIELD CHURCH 
 
 I 
 
 T. J. MICKLETHWAITE 
 
 WILL now, by way of illustration, trace the 
 history of one church from the twelfth century to 
 the sixteenth; and I seledt that of Wakefield, my 
 native town, not because it has changed more than 
 others, — for its growth has been exadtly the normal 
 one, — but because I have had the opportunity to 
 
114 WAKEFIELD CHURCH 
 
 Study it closely, when it was dissedled in the process 
 of "restoration," and have proofs of each successive 
 change. ' 
 
 A church probably stood on this site from the 
 earliest times, but we cannot trace it in the fabric 
 earlier than the twelfth century. At that time 
 there was an aisleless cross church, which, if it had 
 not a central tower, was at least intended to have 
 one; but it probably had it. As nearly always 
 happened to important churches, very soon after 
 it was built it received the addition of a north aisle 
 to the nave. This aisle was added for the sake of 
 the additional accommodation it gave, and was 
 put on the north side rather than the south, be- 
 cause the cemetery was on the south, and our an- 
 cestors were unwilling to encroach upon it, except 
 in what they considered a case of necessity. In 
 due time the necessity generally came, as it did 
 here in the thirteenth century, when a south aisle 
 was added to the nave. And I may here remark 
 in passing that those large colledtions of bones 
 which we have seen stowed away at Ripon and 
 Hythe and elsewhere, and of which the guides de- 
 light to tell such strange tales, are simply what 
 have been coUedted when the grave yards have 
 been dug up at the time of the extension of the 
 churches over them. At both the places named 
 there have been large additions of this sort, and 
 in the accounts of the rebuilding of the nave of 
 Ripon there is a regular item, pro carriando les 
 bones. 
 
 The next change at Wakefield was a considerable 
 one, little less than a complete rebuilding of the 
 church, and enough to call for its reconsecration. 
 
WAKEFIELD CHURCH II5 
 
 which took place in 1329. The central tower was 
 now gone; probably it either fell or had to be 
 taken down on account of its insecurity. Twelfth 
 century towers were often badly built, and this 
 one would have had its supports much weakened by 
 the addition of the aisles. In its place was built 
 a chancel, with a span roof, to which the transepts 
 became side chapels. A wide and lofty thancel 
 arch was built, and the pillars on both sides of the 
 nave were raised considerably, and new arches put 
 above them. The aisles were also rebuilt, prob- 
 ably taking in more ground than they had done 
 before, and the church was entirely transformed 
 into one of the "decorated" period. 
 
 After this there came a pause, during which, 
 perhaps, men employed themselves in furnishing 
 their new church. But early in. the fifteenth 
 century they began to think of adding a tower to it; 
 and as nearly everybody else did in like case, they 
 chose to put it at the west end. These western 
 towers are, I believe, always additions, however 
 early they may be. We find them of all dates, 
 although it was not the rule for parish churches to 
 be provided with steeples before the fifteenth 
 century. A steeple was an expensive addition to 
 a church, and the old men often spread the cost of 
 it over a great number of years, — not by borrow- 
 ing money and paying it off by degrees as might 
 be done now, but . by building slowly,, as they col- 
 ledted funds to do it, with. This went on some- 
 times for the greater part of a century; and as 
 people wanted to use the church meanwhile, they 
 took care so to arrange the work that it should not 
 be necessary to interfere with the main building 
 
Il6 WAKEFIELD CHURCH 
 
 until it was nearly finished. This they generally 
 managed by building the tower on new ground, 
 outside the existing church, at the west end; and 
 then, when all was ready, and it could be^ done 
 without any delay, they lengthened the nave till 
 it joined on to the new tower. This process has 
 been applied to by far the greater number of our 
 old parish churches, and it may generally be traced 
 in them. We find it not only in churches which 
 had befoi'e been without towers, but in a great 
 many which, like this at Wakefield, had once had 
 them in the middle. If, for any reason, a central 
 tower had to come down, it would be most in- 
 convenient to block up the middle of the church 
 for years whilst it was being rebuilt, and so men 
 generally preferred to build a new one at the west 
 end. And most central towers did have to come 
 down, either from their own weakness or because, 
 after the addition of the aisles to the church, the 
 great piers of the towers were found to be too much 
 in the way. 
 
 The tower was sometimes built close to the 
 church, so that very little lengthening was neces- 
 sary to join them; but sometimes it was some dis- 
 tance away, and a bay or more was added to the 
 nave. This was the case at Wakefield. 
 
 When the tower was added, men seem to have 
 thought the nave rather dark; for here, and in a 
 great number of other places, the next work was 
 the addition of a clerestory to the naive. We find 
 clerestories of all dates; but as they generally 
 come after the towefs, they are not common in 
 parish churches before the fifteenth century. 
 ^ The addition of the clerestory was, at Wakefield, 
 
WESTMINSTER ABBEY II7 
 
 the beginning of a series of works quite as extensive 
 as those which had taken place in the fourteenth 
 century. The chancel was rebuilt from the ground, 
 with aisles to its whole length. These aisles were 
 the full width of the projedlion of the original 
 transepts, which thus disappear from the plan, 
 although a tradition of them remained in the ar- 
 rangement of the windows, until the aisle walls 
 were again rebuilt in the eighteenth century, and 
 the bays spaced equally. 
 
 After the chancel, the aisles of the nave were 
 rebuilt, their walls being also brought out to the 
 face of the transept's; and this completed a trans- 
 formation of the church as complete as that which 
 had preceded the reconsecration in 1329. And 
 from the aisleless, cross church, with a central 
 tower, which it was in the twelfth century, it had 
 changed, step by step, until at the end of the fif- 
 teenth century it had become a large, broad church, 
 with aisles along its whole length, a tower and spire 
 at the west end, and not a trace of the cross form 
 remaining. 
 
 WESTMINSTER ABBEY 
 
 WALTER CRANE 
 
 I 
 
 N the stillness and solemn light and mystery of 
 the great Abbey we may recover that sense of unity 
 and repose too often disturbed in modern build- 
 ings. It is there, if anywhere, we may — 
 
 'Forget six counties overhung with smoke. 
 Forget the snorting steam and piston stroke,' 
 
Il8 SANTA MARIA DEGL' ANGELI 
 
 even as our lost poet and craftsman, William 
 Morris, bade us in the introdudtion to The Earthl^ 
 Paradise. It is there, under the vaulting that hzk 
 covered so many generations, that enshrines so 
 much of our history, the resting place of so many 
 great Englishmen, we feel the colleAive impersonal 
 spirit, as well as the pride of race and love of 
 country, as we feel and see the work of many 
 minds and many hands, the skill and imagination 
 of many generations of artist craftsmen speaking 
 to us from the carved stone and wood, when archi- 
 tedlure and decoration were one. And then we 
 may refledt that this splendour and dignity was 
 the growth of an age when England was a com- 
 paratively small and poor country. 
 
 Unity of sentiment, solemnity, splendour, — 
 these should be the dominant qualities in the 
 artistic expression of great public buildings. 
 
 SANTA MARIA DEGL' ANGELI 
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 w. 
 
 E found our way to the portal of Santa 
 Maria degl' Angeli. The exterior of this church 
 has no pretensic^ns to beauty or majesty, or, in- 
 deed, to architedtural merit of any kind, or to any 
 architedlure whatever; for it looks like a confused 
 pile of ruined brickwork, with a fa9ade resembling 
 half the inner curve of a large oven. No one would 
 imagine that there was a church under that 
 enormous heap of ancient rubbish. But the door 
 admits you into a circular vestibule, once an apart- 
 ment of Diocletian's Baths, but now a portion of 
 
SANTA MARIA DEGL' ANGELI II9 
 
 the nave of the church, and surrounded with monu- 
 mental busts; and thence you pass into what was 
 the central hall; now, with little change, except 
 of detail and ornament, transformed into the body 
 of the church. This space is so lofty, broad, and 
 airy, that the soul forthwith swells out and magnifies 
 itself, for the sake of filling it. It was Michel- 
 angelo who contrived this miracle; and I feel even 
 more grateful to him for rescuing such a noble 
 interior from destrudtion, than if he had originally 
 built it himself. In the ceiling above, you see 
 the metal fixtures whereon the old Romans hung 
 their lamps; and there are eight gigantic pillars of 
 Egyptian granite, standing as they stood of yore. 
 There is a grand simplicity about the church more 
 satisfactory than elaborate ornament; but the 
 present pope has paved and adorned one of the 
 large chapels of the transept in very beautiful 
 style, and the pavement of the central part is like- 
 wise laid in rich marbles. In the choir there are 
 several pictures; one of which was veiled, as cele- 
 brated pidures frequently are in churches. A 
 person who seemed to be at his devotions, with- 
 drew the veil for us, and we saw a Martyrdom of 
 St. Sebastian, by Domenichino, originally, I beheve, 
 painted in fresco in St. Peter s, but since trans- 
 ferred to canvas, and removed hither. Its place 
 at St. Peter's is supplied by a mosaic copy. I was 
 a good deal impressed by this pidlure — the dying 
 saint, amid the sorrow of those who loved him, and 
 the fury of his enemies, looking upward, where a 
 company of angels, and Jesus with them, are wait- 
 ing to welcome him and crown him; and I felt 
 ■yvhat an influence pidlures might have upon the 
 
I20 ST. PETER'S 
 
 devotional part of our nature. The nail-marks in 
 the hands and feet of Jesus, ineffaceable, even after 
 he had passed into bliss and glory, touched my 
 heart with a sense of his love for us. I think this 
 really a great pidlure. 
 
 ST. PETER'S 
 
 GOETHE 
 
 A< 
 
 lCCOMPANIED by Tischbein, I set off for 
 the Piazza of St. Peter's, where we went about first 
 of all from one part to another; when it became 
 too hot for that, walked up and down in the shade 
 of the great obelisk, which is full wide enough for 
 two abreast, and eating grapes which we purchased 
 in the neighborhood. Then we entered the Sistine 
 Chapel, which we found bright and cheerful, and 
 with a good light for the pidlures'. "The Last 
 Judgment" divided our admiration with the paint- 
 ings on the roof by Michelangelo. I could only 
 see and wonder. The mental confidence and bold- 
 ness of the master, and his grandeur of conception, 
 are beyond all expression. After we had looked at 
 all of them over and over again, we left this sacred 
 building, and went to St. Peter's which received 
 from the bright heavens the loveliest light possible, 
 and every part of it was clearly lit up. As men 
 willing to be pleased, we were delighted with its 
 vastness and splendour, and did not allow an over- 
 nice or hypercritical taste to mar our pleasure. 
 We suppressed every harsher judgment; we en- 
 joyed the enjoyable. 
 Lastly we ascended the roof of the church, where 
 
MASS AND SHADE 121 
 
 one finds in little the plan of a well-built city- 
 Houses and magazines, springs (in appearance at 
 least), churches, and a great temple all in the air, 
 and beautiful walks between. We mounted the 
 dome, and saw glistening before us the regions of 
 the Apennines, Soracte, and towards Tivoli the 
 volcanic hills. Frascati, Castelgandolfo, and the 
 plains, and beyond all the sea. Close at our feet 
 lay the whole city of Rome in its length and breadth, 
 with its mountain palaces, domes, etc. Not a 
 breath of air was moving, and in the upper dome 
 it was (as they say) like being in a hot-house. 
 When we had looked enough at these things, we 
 went down, and they opened for us the doors in 
 the cornices of the dome, the tympanum, and the 
 nave. There is a passage all round, and from 
 above you can take a view of the whole church, 
 and of its several parts. As we stood on the 
 cornices of the tympanum, we saw beneath us the 
 pope passing to his midday devotions. Nothing, 
 therefore, was wanting to make our view of St. 
 Peter's perfedt. 
 
 MJSS AND SHADE IN ARCHITECTURE 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 X OSITIVE shade is a more necessary and more 
 sublime thing in an architedl's hands than in a 
 painter's. For the latter beingTable to temper his 
 light with an undertone throughout^ and to make 
 it delightful with sweet colour, or awful with lurid 
 colour, and to represent distance, and air, and sun, 
 by the depth of it, and fill its whole space with 
 
122 MASS AND SHADE 
 
 expression, can deal with an enormous, nay almost 
 with an universal, extent of it, and the best painters 
 most delight in such extent; but as light, with the 
 archited:, is nearly always liable to become full 
 and untempered sunshine seen upon solid surface, 
 his only rests, and his chief means of sublimity, 
 are definite shades. So that, after size and weight, 
 the Power of architedture may be said to depend 
 on the quantity (whether measured in space or in- 
 tenseness) of its shadow; and it seems to me, that 
 the reality of its works, and the use and influence 
 they have in the daily life of men, (as opposed to 
 those works of art with which we have nothing to 
 do but in times of rest or pleasure,) require of it 
 that it should express a kind of human sympathy, 
 by a measure of darkness as great as there is in 
 human life: and that as the great poem and great 
 fidtion generally afFedl us most by the majesty of 
 their masses of shade, and cannot take hold upon 
 us if they aff"edl a continuance of lyric sprightliness, 
 but must be serious often, and sometimes mel- 
 ancholy, else they do not express the truth of this 
 wild world of ours; so there must be, in this mag- 
 nificently human art of architedlure, some equiva- 
 lent expression for the trouble and wrath of life, 
 for its sorrow and its mystery; and this it can only 
 give by depth or diffusion of gloom, by the frown 
 upon its front, and the shadow of its recess. So 
 that Rembrandtism is a noble manner in archi- 
 tecture, though a false one in painting; and I do 
 not believe that fever any building was truly great, 
 unless it had mighty masses, vigorous and deep, 
 of shadow mingled with its surface. And among 
 the first habits that a young architedt should learn, 
 
MASS AND SHADE I23 
 
 is that of thinking in shadow, not looking at a 
 design in its miserable liny skeleton; but con- 
 ceiving it as it will be when the dawn lights it, 
 and the dusk leaves it; when its stones will be hot, 
 and its crannies cool; when the lizards will bask 
 on the one, and the birds build in the other. Let 
 him design with the sense of cold and heat upon 
 him; let him cut out the shadows, as men did wells 
 in unwatered plains; and lead along the lights, as a 
 founder does his hot metal; let him keep the full 
 command of both and see that he knows how they 
 fall, and where they fade. His paper lines and 
 proportions are of no value: all that he has to do 
 must be done by spaces of light and darkness; and 
 his business is to see that the one is broad and bold 
 enough not to be swallowed up by twilight, and the 
 other deep enough not to be dried like a shallow 
 pool by a noon-day sun. 
 
 And, that this may be, the first necessity is that 
 the quantities of shade or light, whatever they may 
 be, shall be thrown into masses, either of something 
 like equal weight, or else large masses of the one 
 relieved with small of the other; but masses of 
 one or other kind there must be. No design that 
 is divided at all, and is not divided into masses, 
 can ever be of the smallest value; this great law 
 respedling breadth, precisely the same in archi- 
 tedlure and painting, is so important, that the ex- 
 amination of its two principal applications will in- 
 clude most of the conditions of majestic design on 
 which I would at present insist. 
 
 The relative majesty of buildings depends more 
 on the weight and vigor of their masses, than on 
 any other attribute of their design : mass of every- 
 
124 MASS AND SHADE 
 
 thing, of bulk, of light, of darkness, of colour, not 
 mere sum of any of these, but breadth of them; 
 not broken Hght, nor scattered darkness, nor 
 divided weight, but soHd stone, broad sunshine, 
 starless shade. Time would fail me altogether, if 
 I attempted to follow out the range of the principle; 
 there is not a feature, however apparently trifling, 
 to which it cannot give power. The wooden 
 fillings of belfry lights, necessary to protedt their 
 interiors from rain, are in England usually divided 
 into a number of neatly-executed crossbars, like 
 those of Venetian bHnds, which, of course, become 
 as conspicuous in their sharpness as they are unin- 
 teresting in their precise carpentry, multiplying, 
 moreover, the horizontal lines which diredlly con- 
 tradidl those of the architedlure. Abroad, such 
 necessities are met by three or four downright 
 penthouse roofs, reaching each from within the 
 window to the outside shafts of its mouldings; 
 instead of the horrible row of ruled lines, the space 
 is thus divided into four or five grand masses of 
 shadow, with grey slopes of roof above, bent or 
 yielding into all kinds of delicious swells and curves, 
 and coyered with warm tones of moss and lichen. 
 Very often the thing is more delightful than the 
 stone-work itself, and all because it is broad, dark, 
 and simple. It matters not how clumsy, how 
 common, the means are, that get weight and shadow 
 — sloping roof, jutting porch, projedting balcony, 
 hollow niche, massy gargoyle, frowning parapet; 
 get but gloom and simplicity, and all good things 
 will follow in their place and time; do but design 
 with the owl's eyes first, and you will gain the fal- 
 con's afterwards. 
 
THE TEST OF GOOD ORNAMENT I25 
 
 I 
 
 THE TEST OF GOOD ORNAMENT 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 BELIEVE the right question to ask, respedling 
 all ornament, is simply this: Was it done with en- 
 joyment — was the carver happy while he was about 
 it? It may be the hardest work possible, and the 
 harder because so much pleasure was taken in it; 
 but it must have been happy too, or it will not be 
 living. How much of the stone-mason's toil this 
 condition would exclude I hardly venture to con- 
 sider, but the condition is absolute. There is a 
 Gothic church lately built near Rouen, vile enough, 
 indeed, in its general composition, but excessively 
 rich in detail; many of the details are designed with 
 taste, and all evidently by a man who has studied old 
 work closely. But it is all as dead as leaves in 
 December; there is not one tender touch, not one 
 warm stroke, on the whole fa9ade. The men who 
 did it hated it, and were thankful when it was done. 
 And so long as they do so they are merely loading 
 your walls with shapes of clay: the garlands of 
 everlastings in Pere la Chaise are more cheerful 
 ornaments. You cannot get the feeling by paying 
 for it — money will not buy life. I am not sure 
 even that you can get it by watching or waiting 
 for it. 
 
126 ROOFS 
 
 ROOFS 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 X AM sure that all of you must readily acknowl- 
 edge the charm which is imparted to any landscape 
 by the presence of cottages; and you must over and 
 over 'again have paused at the wicket gate of some 
 cottage garden, dehghted by the simple beauty of 
 the honeysuckle porch and latticed window. Has 
 it ever occurred to you to ask the question, what 
 efFed: the cottage would have upon your feelings if 
 it had no roof? no visible roof, I mean; — if, in- 
 stead of the thatched slope, in which the httle 
 upper windows are buried deep, as in a nest of 
 straw — or the rough shelter of its mountain shales 
 
 — or warm colouring of russet tiles — there were 
 nothing but a flat leaden top to it, making it look 
 like a large packing-case with windows in it? I 
 don't think the rarity of such a sight would make 
 you feel it to be beautiful; on the contrary, if you 
 think over the matter you will find that you actu- 
 ally do owe, and ought to owe, a great part of your 
 pleasure in all cottage scenery, and in all the in- 
 exhaustible imagery of literature which is founded 
 upon it, to the conspicuousness of the cottage roof 
 
 — to the subordination of the cottagei itself to its 
 covering, which leaves, in nine cases out of ten, 
 really more roof than anything else. It is, indeed, 
 not so much the whitewashed walls — nor the 
 flowery garden — nor the rude fragments of stones 
 set for steps at the door — nor any other pic- 
 turesqueness of the building, which interest you, 
 so much as the grey bank of its heavy eaves, deep- 
 
ROOFS 127 
 
 cushioned with green moss and golden stonecrop. 
 And there is a profound, yet evident, reason for 
 this feehng. The very soul of the cottage — the 
 essence and meaning of it — are in its roof; it is 
 that, mainly, wherein consists its shelter; that, 
 wherein it differs most completely from a cleft in 
 rocks or bower in woods. It is in its thick im- 
 penetrable coverlid of close thatch that its whole 
 heart and hospitality are concentrated. Consider 
 the difference, in sound, of the expression "beneath 
 my roof" and "within my walls" — consider 
 whether you would be best sheltered, in a shed, 
 with a stout roof sustained on corner posts, or in 
 an inclosure of four walls without a roof at all, — 
 and you will quickly see how important a part of 
 the cottage the roof must always be to the mind as 
 well as to the eye, and how, from seeing it, the 
 greatest part of our pleasure must continually 
 arise. 
 
 Now, do you suppose that which is so all-im- 
 portant in a cottage, can be of small importance in 
 your own dwelling-house? Do you think that by 
 any splendour of architedture — any height of 
 stories — you can atone to the mind for the loss 
 of the asped: of the roof. It is yain to say you take 
 the roof for granted. You may as well say you take 
 a man's kindness for granted, though he neither 
 looks nor speaks kindly. You may know him to 
 be kind in reality, but you will not Hke him so well 
 as if he spoke and looked kindly also. And what- 
 ever external splendour you may give your houses, 
 you will always feel there is something wanting, 
 unless you see their roofs plainly. And this es- 
 pecially in the north. In southern architedure the 
 
128 TOWERS 
 
 roof is of far less importance; but here the soul 
 of domestic building is in the largeness and con- 
 spicuousness of the protedlion against the ponderous 
 snow and driving sleet. You may make the 
 facade of the square pile, if the roof be not seen, 
 as handsome as you please, — you may cover it 
 with decoration, — but there will always be a 
 heartlessness about it, which you will not know 
 how to conquer; above all, a perpetual difficulty 
 in finishing the wall at top, which will require all 
 kinds of strange inventions in parapets and pin- 
 nacles for its decoration, and yet will never look 
 right. 
 
 Now, I need not tell you that, as it is desirable, 
 for the sake of the effed: upon the mind, that the 
 roof should be visible, so the best and most natural 
 form of roof in the north is that which will render 
 it most visible, namely, the steep gable; the best 
 and most natural, I say, because this form not 
 only throws off snow and rain most completely, 
 and dries fastest, but obtains the greatest interior 
 space within walls of a given height, removes the 
 heat of the sun most efFedtually from the upper 
 rooms, and aiFords the most space for ventilation. 
 
 T. 
 
 TOWERS 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 HE subjeA of spire and tower architedlure, 
 however, is so interesting and extensive, that I 
 have thoughts of writing a detached essay upon it, 
 and at all events, cannot enter upon it here: but 
 this much is enough for the reader to note for our 
 present purpose, that, although many towers do in 
 
TOWERS 129 
 
 reality stand on piers or shafts, as the central towers 
 of cathedrals, yet the expression of all of them, and 
 the real strudlure of the best and strongest, are 
 the elevation of gradually diminishing weight on 
 massy or even solid foundation. Nevertheless, 
 since the tower is in its origin a building for strength 
 of defense, and faithfulness of watch, rather than 
 splendour of aspedt, its true expression is of just 
 so much diminution of weight upwards as may be 
 necessary to its fully balanced strength, not a jot 
 more. There must be no light-headedness in your 
 noble tower: impregnable foundation, wrathful 
 crest, with the vizor down, and the dark vigilance 
 seen through the clefts of it; not the filigree crown 
 or embroidered cap. No towers are so grand as 
 the square browed ones, with massy cornices and 
 rent battlements; next to these come the fantastic 
 towers, with their various forms of steep roof; the 
 best, not the cone, but the plain gable thrown very 
 high; last of all in my mind (of good towers) those 
 with spires or crowns, though these, of course, are 
 fittest for ecclesiastical purposes, and capable of 
 the richest ornament. 
 
 But, in all of them, this I believe to be a point 
 of chief necessity, — that they shall seem' to stand, 
 and shall verily stand, in their own strength; not 
 by help of buttresses nor artful balancings on this 
 side and on that. Your noble tower must need no 
 help, must be sustained by no crutches, must give 
 place to no suspicion of decrepitude. Its office 
 may be to withstand war, look forth for tidings, 
 or to point to heaven: but it must have in its own 
 walls the strength to do this; it is to be itself a 
 bulwark, not to be sustained by other bulwarks; 
 
130 TOWERS 
 
 to rise and look forth, "the tower of Lebanon that 
 looketh toward Damascus," like a stern sentinel, 
 not like a child held up in its nurse's arms. A 
 tower may, indeed, have a kind of buttress, a 
 projedion, or subordinate tower at each of its 
 angles; but these are to its main body like the 
 satellites to a shaft, joined with its strength, and 
 associated in its uprightness, part of the tower 
 itself: exactly in the proportion in which they lose 
 their massive unity with its body, and assume the 
 form of true buttress walls set on its angles, the 
 tower loses its dignity. 
 
 These two charadlers, then, are common to all 
 noble towers, however otherwise diflFerent in pur- 
 pose or feature, — the first, that they rise from 
 massive foundation to lighter summits, frowning 
 with battlements perhaps, but yet evidently more 
 pierced and thinner in wall than beneath, and, in 
 most ecclesiastical examples, divided into rich open 
 work: the second, that whatever the form of the 
 tower, it shall not appear to stand by help of but- 
 tresses. It follows from the first condition, as 
 indeed it would have followed from ordinary 
 aesthetic requirements, that we shall have con- 
 tinual variation in the arrangement of the stories, 
 and the larger number of apertures towards the 
 top, — a condition exquisitely carried out in the 
 old Lombardic towers, in which, however small 
 they may be, the number of apertures is always 
 regularly increased towards the summit; generally 
 one window in the lowest stories, two in the second, 
 then three, five, and six; often, also one, two, four, 
 and six, with beautiful symmetries of placing, not 
 at present to our purpose. 
 
SeElion III 
 
 PAINTING 
 
 THE ART OF PICTURES 
 
 CHARLES READE 
 
 X)UT although the words were to them what 
 hieroglyphics are to us, there was something in 
 the letter they could read. There is an art can 
 speak without words; unfettered by the penman's 
 limits, it can steal through the eye into the heart 
 and brain, ahke of the learned and the unlearned; 
 and it can cross a frontier or a sea, yet lose nothing. 
 It is at the mercy of no translator; for it writes an 
 universal language. 
 
 PICTURES 
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 A 
 
 PICTURE, however admirable the painter's 
 art, and wonderful his power, requires of the 
 spedlator a surrender of himself, in due proportion 
 with the miracle which has been wrought. Let 
 the canvas glow as it may, you must look with the 
 eye of faith, or its highest excellence' escapes you. 
 There is always the necessity of helping out the 
 painter's art with your own resources of sensibility 
 and imagination. Not that these qualities shall 
 
 '131 
 
132 THE PURPOSE OF ART 
 
 really add anything to what the master has effefted; 
 but they must be put so entirely under his control, 
 and work along with him to such an extent, that, 
 in a different mood, when you are cold and critical, 
 instead of sympathetic, you will be apt to fancy 
 that the loftier merits of the pidture were of your 
 own dreaming, not of his creating. 
 
 THE PURPOSE OF ART 
 
 SIR W. MARTIN CONWAY 
 
 X HE fadl is that a pidlure one can describe is 
 not likely to be a good pidture. If the adlual 
 description of a pidture makes interesting reading, 
 the pidture itself is not likely to please. Take any 
 of the beautiful pidtures of the world and try to 
 describe it, you will find that your description, 
 however well expressed, may contain everything 
 except the very qualities whereby the pidture 
 pleases. If you are a poet you may write a poem 
 on a kindred subjedt to that treated by the painter, 
 but you cannot write it on the painter's subjedt, and 
 even if you could your poem would please, not as 
 describing the pidture, but by its own separate 
 artistic qualities. Whatever parts of pidtures can 
 be thus diredtly translated into words are no part 
 of their pidtorial quality, of what makes them or 
 should make them works of Art. 
 
 Granted that the pidtures are fine as pidtures, 
 they are none the worse for carrying any charge of 
 symbolism they can be made to carry; but if 
 they are bad as pidtures they are not redeemed by 
 being laden with a ponderous moral, however ad- 
 
THE PURPOSE OF ART I33 
 
 mirable. The quality fundamentally necessary to 
 a pidlure is that it be beautifully painted, lovely to 
 look upon, and that whatever message it has to 
 bear it shall carry it piAorially. The sight of 
 beauty is itself enough for a painter to behold and 
 transmit. Who that has gazed at a sunset can 
 deny it? The sunset behind Turner's "Fighting 
 Temeraire Towed to Her Last Moorings" is proof 
 enough. It may be symbolically introduced, but 
 that does not make it good. It is the beauty of the 
 sunset and its harmony with the other parts of the 
 picfture that is its glory. The symbolism is well 
 enough in addition, but only in addition. The 
 beauty, not the symbolism, is the painter's subjedl. 
 
 THE PURPOSE OF ART 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 Jr AINTING, or art generally, as such, with all 
 its technicalities, difficulties, and particular ends, 
 is nothing but a noble and expressive language, in- 
 valuable as the vehicle of thought, but by itself 
 nothing. He who has learned what is commonly 
 considered the whole art of painting, that is, the 
 art of representing any natural objedl faithfully, 
 has as yet only learned the language by which his 
 thoughts are to be expressed. He has done just 
 as much towards being that which we ought to 
 respedt as a great painter, as a man who has learned 
 how to express himself grammatically and melodi- 
 ously has towards being a great poet. The language 
 is, indeed, more difficult of acquirement in the one 
 case than in the other, and possesses more power of 
 
134 THE PURPOSE OF ART 
 
 delighting the sense, while it speaks to the intel- 
 led; but it is, nevertheless, nothing more than 
 language, and all those excellences which are 
 peculiar to the painter as such, are merely what 
 rhythm, melody, precision, and force are in the 
 words of the orator and the poet, necessary to their 
 greatness, but not the tests of their greatness. It 
 is not by the mode of representing and saying, 
 but by what is represented and said, that the 
 respecftive greatness either of the painter or the 
 writer is to be finally determined. 
 
 Speaking with stricfl propriety, therefore, we 
 should call a man a great painter only as he excelled 
 in precision and force in the language of lines, and 
 a great versifier, as he excelled in precision or force 
 in the language of words. A great poet would then 
 be a term stridlly, and in precisely the same sense 
 applicable to both, if warranted by the character 
 of the images or thoughts which each in their re- 
 spective languages conveyed. 
 
 Take, for instance, one of the most perfedl poems 
 or pidtures (I use the words as synonymous) which 
 modern times have seen: — the "Old Shepherd's 
 Chief-mourner." Here the exquisite execution of 
 the glossy and crisp hair of the dog, the bright 
 sharp touching of the green bough beside it, the 
 clear painting of the wood of the coffin and the 
 folds of the blanket, are language — language clear 
 and expressive in the highest degree. But the 
 close pressure of the dog's breast against the wood, 
 the convulsive clinging of the paws, which has 
 dragged the blanket off the trestle, the total power- 
 lessness of the head laid, close and motionless, 
 upon its folds, the fixed and tearful fall of the eye 
 
TECHNIQUE AND IDEAS I35 
 
 in its Utter hopelessness, the rigidity of repose which 
 marks that there has been no motion nor change 
 in the trance of agony since the last blow was 
 struck on the coffin-lid, the quietness and gloom 
 of the chamber, the spedlacles marking the place 
 where the Bible was last closed, indicating how 
 lonely has been the life, -^ how unwatched the de- 
 parture, of him who Is now laid solitary in his sleep; 
 — these are all thoughts — thoughts by which 
 the pifture is separated at once from hundreds of 
 equal merit, as far as mere painting goes, by which 
 it ranks as a work of high art, and stamps its author 
 not as the neat imitator of the texture of a skin, or 
 the fold of a drapery, but as the man of Mind. 
 
 Ri 
 
 TECHNIQUE AND IDEAS 
 
 GEORGE CLAUSEN 
 
 .EYNOLDS says that "the service of nature, 
 when properly understood, is perfedl freedom." 
 This we may see in all the greatest artists, and I 
 think it is this that gives to a masterpiece one of 
 its greatest charms; the sense of being natural and 
 easily done. As nature does not suggest effort, 
 neither does the masterpiece, so that it is as true 
 to nature in its method of execution as in its con- 
 ception; we do not feel the effort, it exists, like 
 nature. Someone has remarked that the effedl of 
 fine painting is to make you feel that you could do 
 it too; and this is something of the feeling one gets 
 before work executed with facility, such as that of 
 Velasquez, of Rubens, or of Veronese; it looks as 
 easy as possible. 
 
 Methods may change, but the ideals and aims 
 
136 TECHNIQUE AND IDEAS 
 
 of the artist remain as they have always been, and 
 are unafFeded by time or place; we, when our 
 turn comes, only go over the old well-trodden 
 ground. I came across some rules on painting the 
 other day, from a Chinese book called The Mustard- 
 seed Garden, which was pubUshed in the year 1680; 
 and these rules are quoted as being given by an 
 ancient Chinese artist of unknown date, though 
 they might have been written yesterday. Some ex- 
 tradts may be of interest: — 
 
 "Excellence does not consist in multiplicity of 
 detail, nor in bare simplicity; difficulty is not art, 
 nor is ease: non-accordance with rules does not 
 ensure an artistic style, and with overmuch method 
 the result may be highly inartistic. First give rigid 
 attention to all rules, then follow your genius and 
 break away from them." "If you want to 
 work without rules, first follow every rule; if to 
 paint with ease, first take pains: if you would have 
 a slight and simple style, first study all the multi- 
 tudinous details." 
 
 Another ancient artist says, "When a pidlure 
 seems to be alive with motion and breath, as 
 though of heavenly creation, it may be called a 
 work of genius. When the touches are something 
 above the ordinary, and the washes are in accord 
 with good taste, a fertility of motive controlling 
 the whole, it may be called a work of excellence. 
 When there is corredlness of form, and a general 
 observance of rules, the result may be called a work 
 of ability" — and he sums up as follows: "With 
 the breath of the four seasons in one's breast, one 
 will be able to create on paper. The five colours 
 well applied enlighten the world." 
 
BEAUTY, UGLINESS, TRUTH I37 
 
 BEAUTY, UGLINESS, TRUTH 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 rREAT art dwells on all that is beautiful; 
 but false art omits or changes all that is ugly. 
 Great art accepts Nature as she is, but diredls the 
 eyes and thoughts to what is most perfedl in her; 
 false art saves itself the trouble of diredlion by 
 removing or altering whatever it thinks objedlion- 
 able. The evil results of which proceeding are two- 
 fold. 
 
 First. That beauty deprived of its proper foils 
 and adjundts ceases to be enjoyed as beauty, just 
 as light deprived of all shadow ceases to be en- 
 joyed as light. A white canvas cannot produce an 
 efFedt of sunshine; the painter must darken it in 
 some places before he can make it look luminous 
 in others; nor can an uninterrupted succession of 
 beauty produce the true efFedt ofi beauty; it must 
 be foiled by inferiority before its own power can 
 be developed. Nature has for the most part 
 mingled her inferior and noble elements as she 
 mingles sunshine with shade, giving due use and 
 influence to both, and the painter who chooses to 
 remove the shadow, perishes in the burning desert 
 he has created. The truly high and beautiful art 
 of Angelico is continually refreshed and strength- 
 ened by his frank portraiture of the most ordinary 
 features of his brother monks, and of the recorded 
 peculiarities of ungainly sandtity; but the modern 
 German and Raphaelesque schools lose all honour 
 and nobleness in barber-like admiration of hand- 
 some faces, and have, in fadt, no real faith except 
 
138 BEAUTY, UGLINESS, TRUTH 
 
 in Straight noses, and curled hair. Paul Veronese 
 opposes the dwarf to the soldier, and the negress 
 to the queen; Shakespeare places Caliban be- 
 side Miranda, and Autolycus beside Perdita; but 
 the vulgar ideahst withdraws his beauty to the 
 safety of the saloon, and his innocence to the se- 
 clusion of the cloister; he pretends that he does 
 this in delicacy of choice and purity of sentiment, 
 while in truth he has neither courage to front the 
 monster, nor wit enough to furnish the knave. 
 
 It is only by the habit of representing faithfully 
 all things that we can truly learn what is beautiful, 
 and what is not. The ugliest objedls contain some 
 element of beauty; and in all it is an element 
 peculiar to themselves, which cannot be separated 
 from their ugliness, but must either be enjoyed 
 together with it, or not at all. The more a painter 
 accepts nature as he finds it, the more unexpedled 
 beauty he discovers in what he at first despised; 
 but once let him arrogate the right of rejedtion, and 
 he will gradually contrad: his circle of enjoyment, 
 until what he supposed to be nobleness of seledlion 
 ends in narrowness of perception. Dwelling per- 
 petually upon one class of ideas, his art becomes at 
 once monstrous and morbid; until at last he cannot 
 faithfully represent even what he chooses to re- 
 tain; his discrimination contracts into darkness, 
 and his fastidiousness fades into fatuity. 
 
 High art, therefore, consists neither in altering, 
 nor in improving nature, but in seeking throughout 
 nature for "whatsoever things are lovely, and what- 
 soever things are pure"; in loving these, in dis- 
 playing to the utmost the painter's power such 
 loveliness as is in them, and diredling the thoughts 
 
BEAUTY, UGLINESS, TRUTH I39 
 
 of Others to them by winning art, or gentle emphasis. 
 Art (caeteris paribus) is great in exadl proportion 
 to the love of beauty shown by the painter, pro- 
 vided that love of beauty forfeit no atom of truth. 
 The next characteristic of great art is that it 
 includes the largest possible quantity of Truth in 
 the most perfedl possible harmony. If it were pos- 
 sible for art to give all the truths of nature, it 
 ' ought to do it. But this is not possible. Choice 
 must always be made of some fadls which can be 
 represented, from among others which must be 
 passed by in silence, or even, in some respedls, 
 misrepresented. The inferior artist chooses un- 
 important and scattered truths; the great artist 
 chooses the most necessary first, and afterwards 
 the most consistent with these, so as to obtain the 
 greatest possible and most harmonious sum. For 
 instance, Rembrandt always chooses to represent 
 the exadt force with which the light on the most 
 illumined part of an objedl is opposed to its ob- 
 scurer portions. In order to obtain this, in most 
 cases, not very important truth, he sacrifices the 
 Ught and colour of five-sixths of his pidlure; and 
 the expression of every character of objedls which 
 depends on tenderness of shape or tint. But he 
 obtains his single truth, and what pidluresque and 
 forcible expression is dependent upon it, with 
 magnificent skill and subtlety. Veronese, on the 
 contrary, chooses to represent the great relations 
 of visible things to each other, to the heaven above, 
 to the earth beneath them. He holds it more im- 
 portant to show how a figure stands relieved from 
 deHcate air, or marble wall; how as a red, or purple, 
 or white figure it separates itself, in clear discerni- 
 
140 BEAUTY, UGLINESS, TRUTH 
 
 bility, from things not red, nor purple, nor white; 
 how infinite dayhght shines round it; how in- 
 numerable veils of faint shadow invest it; how its 
 blackness and darkness are, in the excess of their 
 nature, just as Hmited and local as its intensity of 
 Hght; all this, I say, he feels to be more important 
 than showing merely the exadl measure of the spark 
 of sunshine that gleams on a da.gger-hilt, or glows 
 on a jewel. All this, moreover, he feels to be 
 harmonious, — capable of being joined in one great 
 system of spacious truth. And with inevitable 
 watchfulness, inestimable subtlety, he unites all 
 this in tenderest balance, noting in each hairls 
 breadth of colour, not merely what its tightness or 
 wrongness is in itself, but what its relation is to 
 every other on his canvas; restraining for truth's 
 sake, his exhaustless energy, reining back, for 
 truth's sake, his fiery strength, veiling, before 
 truth, the vanity of brightness, penetrating, for 
 truth, the discouragement of gloom; ruling his 
 restless invention with a rod of iron; pardoning 
 no error, no thoughtlessness, no fotgetfulness; and 
 subduing all his powers, impulses, and imagina- 
 tions, to the arbitrament of a merciless justice, and 
 the obedience of an incorruptible verity. 
 
 I give this instance with respedl to colour and 
 shade; but, in the whole field of art, the difference 
 between the great and inferior artists is of the same 
 kind, and may be determined at once by the ques- 
 tion, which of them conveys the largest sum of 
 truth.? 
 
I 
 
 BREADTHAND DETAIL I4I 
 
 BREADTH AND DETAIL IN PAINTING 
 
 WILLIAM HAZLITT 
 
 T is said that the great style in painting, as it 
 relates to the immediate imitation of external 
 nature, consists in avoiding the details of par- 
 ticular objedts. It consists neither in giving nor 
 avoiding them, but in something quite different 
 from both. Any one may avoid the details. So 
 far there is no difference between the Cartoons and 
 a common sign-painting. Greatness consists in 
 giving the larger masses and proportions with 
 truth, — this does not prevent giving the smaller 
 ones too. The utmost grandeur of outline, and the 
 broadest masses of light and shade, are perfeAly 
 compatible with the utmost minuteness and deli- 
 cacy of detail, as may be seen in nature. It is not, 
 indeed, common to see both qualities combined in 
 the imitations of nature, any more than the com- 
 binations of other excellences; nor am I here say- 
 ing to which the principal attention of the artist 
 should be directed; but I deny that, considered 
 in themselves, the absence of the one quality is 
 necessary or sufficient to the production of the 
 other. 
 
 If, for example, the form of the eye-brow is 
 corredlly given, it will be perfeAly indifferent to 
 the truth or grandeur of the design whether it 
 consists of one broad mark, or is composed of a 
 number of hair-lines arranged in the same order. 
 So, if the lights and shades are disposed in fine and 
 large masses, the breadth of the pidture, as it is 
 called, cannot possibly be afFedted by the filling up 
 
142 BREADTH AND DETAIL 
 
 of these masses with the details; that is, with the 
 subordinate distindions which appear in nature. 
 The anatomical details in Michel Angelo, the 
 ever-varying outline of Raphael, the perfed ex- 
 ecution of the Greek statues do not destroy their 
 symmetry nor dignity of forin; and in the finest 
 specimens of the composition of colour we may ob- 
 serve the largest masses combined with the greatest 
 variety in the parts of which these masses are 
 composed. 
 
 The gross style consists in giving no detail, the 
 finical in giving nothing else. Nature contains 
 both large and small parts, both masses and de- 
 tails; and the same may be said of the most per- 
 fecft works of art. The union of both kinds of 
 excellence, of strength with delicacy, as far as the 
 limits of human capacity and the shortness of human 
 life would permit, is that which has established the 
 reputation of the most successful imitators of 
 nature. Farther, their most finished works are 
 their best. The predominance, indeed of either 
 excellence in the best masters has varied accord- 
 ing to their opinion of the relative values of these 
 qualities, — the labour they had the time or the 
 patience to bestow on their works, — the skill of 
 the artist, — of the nature and extent of his sub- 
 jedl. But if the rule here objedled to, that the 
 careful imitation of the parts injures the effect of 
 the whole, be once admitted, slovenliness would 
 become another name for genius, and the most 
 unfinished performances be the best. That such 
 has been the confused impression left on the mind 
 by the perusal of Sir Joshua Reynolds' "Dis- 
 courses," is evident from the pradlice as well as 
 
BREADTH AND DETAIL I43 
 
 conversation of many (even eminent) artists. The 
 late Mr. Opie proceeded entirely on this principle. 
 He left many admirable studies of portraits, par- 
 ticularly in what relates to the disposition and effedt 
 of light and shade; but he never finished any of 
 the parts, thitiking them beneath the attention of 
 a great artist. He went over the whole head the 
 second day as he had done the first, and therefore 
 made no progress. The pidtures, at last, having 
 neither the lightness of a sketch, nor the accuracy 
 of a finished work, looked coarse, laboured, and 
 heavy. Titian is the most perfedl example of 
 high finishing. In him the details are engrafted 
 on the most profound knowledge of effedl, and at- 
 tention to the character of what he represented. 
 His piAures have the exadl look of nature, the 
 very tone and texture of flesh. The variety of his 
 tints is blended into the greatest simplicity. There 
 is a proper degree both of solidity and transparency. 
 All the parts hang together; every stroke tells and 
 adds to the eflFedl of the rest. Sir Joshua seems to 
 deny that Titian finished much, and says that he 
 produced by two or three strokes of his pencil 
 efFecfts which the most laborious copyist would in 
 vain attempt to equal. It is true, he availed him- 
 self in some degree of what is called execution, to 
 facilitate his imitation of the details and peculiari- 
 ties of nature; but it was to facilitate, not super- 
 sede. There can be nothing more distindi than 
 execution and daubing. Titian, however, made a 
 very moderate, though a very admirable use of 
 his power; and those who copy his pidtures will 
 find that the simplicity is in the results, not in the 
 details. 
 
144 THE TEST OF A PAINTER 
 
 COLOURING THE TEST OF A PAINTER 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 As 
 
 lS I have said, , the business of a painter is to 
 paint. If he can colour he is a painter, though he 
 can do nothing else; if he cannot colour, he is 
 no painter, though he may do everything else. 
 But it is, in fadt, impossible if he can colour, but 
 that he should be able to do more; for a faithful 
 study of colour will always give power over form, 
 though the most intense study of form will give no 
 power over colour. The man who can see all the 
 greys, and reds, and purples in a peach, will paint 
 the peach rightly round, and rightly altogether; 
 but the man who has only studied its roundness, 
 may not see its purples and greys, and if he does 
 not, will never get it to look like a peach; so that 
 great power over colour is always a sign of large 
 and general art-intelled:. Expression of the most 
 subtle kind can be often reached by the slight 
 studies of caricaturists; sometimes elaborated by 
 the toil of the dull, and sometimes by the sentiment 
 of the feeble; but to colour well requires real 
 talent and earnest study, and to colour perfectly is 
 the rarest and most precious power an artist can 
 possess. Every other gift may be erroneously 
 cultivated, but this will guide to all healthy, natural, 
 and forcible truth; the student may be led into 
 folly by philosophers, and into falsehood by purists; 
 but he is always safe, if he holds the hand of a 
 colourist. 
 
LOVELINESS OF COLOR I45 
 
 THE NOBLENESS AND LOVELINESS 
 OF COLOUR 
 
 O. 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 'F all God's gifts to the sight of man, colour is 
 the holiest, the most divine, the most solemn. 
 We speak rashly of gay colour and sad colour, for 
 colour cannot at once be good and gay. All good 
 colour is in some degree pensive; the loveliest is 
 melancholy, and the purest and most thoughtful 
 minds are those which love colour the most. 
 
 I know that this will sound strange in many ears, 
 and will be especially startling to those who have 
 considered the subjedt chiefly with reference to 
 painting; for the great Venetian schools of colour 
 are not usually understood to be either pure or 
 pensive, and the idea of its pre-eminence is as- 
 sociated in nearly every mind with the coarseness 
 of Rubens, and the sensualities of Correggio and 
 Titian. But a more comprehensive view of art 
 will soon corredt this impression. It will be dis- 
 covered, in the first place, that the more faithful 
 and earnest the religion of the painter, the more 
 pure and prevalent is the system of his colour. It 
 will be found, in the second jjlace, that where 
 colour becomes a primal intention with a painter 
 otherwise mean or sensual, it instantly elevates 
 him, and becomes the one sacred and saving ele- 
 ment of his work. The very depth of the stoop 
 to which the Venetian painters and Rubens some- 
 times condescend, is a consequence of their feeling 
 confidence in the power of their colour to keep 
 them from falling. They hold on by it, as by a 
 
146 LOVELINESS OF COLOR 
 
 chain let down from heaven, with one hand, though 
 they may sometimes seem to gather dust and ashes 
 with the other. And, in the last place, it will be 
 found that so surely as a painter is irreligious, 
 thoughtless, or obscene in disposition, so surely is 
 his colouring cold, gloomy, and valueless. The 
 opposite poles of art in this respedt are Fra Angelico 
 and Salvator Rosa; of whom the one was a man 
 who smiled seldom, wept often, prayed constantly, 
 and never harboured an impure thought. His 
 piftures are simply so many pieces of jewellery, 
 the colours of the draperies being perfedlly pure, 
 as various as those of a painted window, chastened 
 only by paleness, and relieved upon a gold ground. 
 Salvator was a dissipated jester and satirist, a 
 man who spent his life in masquing and revelry. 
 But his pidtures are full of horror, and their colour 
 for the most part gloomy grey. Truly it would seem 
 as if art had so much of eternity in it, that it must 
 take its dye from the close rather than the course 
 of life: — "In such laughter the heart of man is 
 sorrowful, and the end of that mirth is heaviness." 
 These are no singular instances. I know of no 
 law more severely without exception than this of 
 the connection of pure colour with profound and 
 noble thought. The late Flemish pidlures, shallow 
 in conception and obscene in subject, are always 
 sober in colour. But the early religious painting 
 of the Flemings is as brilliant in hue as it is holy in 
 thought. The Bellinis, Francias, Peruginos painted 
 in crimson, and blue, and gold. 
 
THE VALUE OF DELICACY I47 
 
 THE VALUE OF DELICACY 
 
 WILLIAM M. THACKERAY 
 
 Wl 
 
 HEN Harry Esmond passed through the 
 crisis of that malady, and returned to health 
 again, he found that little Frank Esmond had also 
 suffered and rallied after the disease, and the lady 
 his mother was down with it, with a couple more 
 of the household. "It was a Providence, for which 
 we all ought to be thankful," Dr. Tusher said, 
 "that my lady and her son were spared, while 
 Death carried off the poor domestics of the house"; 
 and rebuked Harry for asking, in his simple way, 
 for which we ought to be thankful — that the 
 servants were killed, or the gentlefolks were saved ? 
 Nor could young Esmond agree in the Dodtor's 
 vehement protestations to my lady, when he visited 
 her during her convalescence, that the malady had 
 not in the least impaired her charms, and had not 
 been churl enough to injure the fair features of the 
 Viscountess of Castlewood; whereas, in spite of 
 these fine speeches, Harry thought that her lady- 
 ship's beauty was very much injured by the small- 
 pox. When the marks of the disease cleared away, 
 they did not, it is true, leave furrows or scars on 
 her face, (except one, perhaps, on her forehead over 
 her left eyebrow) but the delicacy of her rosy 
 colour and complexion was gone, her eyes had lost 
 their brilliancy, her hair fell, and her face looked 
 older. It was as if a coarse hand had rubbed off 
 the delicate tints of that sweet pidure, and brought 
 it, as one has seen unskilful painting-cleaners do, 
 to the dead colour. 
 
148 LIKENESS IN PORTRAITURE 
 
 TRUTH OF LIKENESS IN PORTRAITURE 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 Wl 
 
 E constantly recognize things by their least 
 important attributes, and by help of a very few 
 of those: and if these attributes exist not in the 
 imitation, though there may be thousands of others 
 far higher and more valuable, yet if those be want- 
 ing, or imperfeftly rendered, by which we are ac- 
 customed to recognize the objedt, we deny the 
 likeness; while, if these be given, though all the 
 great and valuable and important attributes may 
 be wanting, we affirm the likeness. Recognition 
 is no proof of real and intrinsic resemblance. We 
 recognize our books by their bindings, though the 
 true and essential characteristics lie inside. A man 
 is known to his dog by the smell, to his tailor by 
 the coat, to his friend by the smile : each of these 
 knows him, but how little, or how much, depends 
 on the dignity of the intelligence. That which is 
 truly and indeed charadteristic of the man, is known 
 only to God. One portrait of a man may possess 
 exadt accuracy of feature, and no atom of expres- 
 sion; it may be, to use the ordinary terms of ad- 
 miration bestowed on such portraits by those whom 
 they please, "as like as it can stare." Everybody, 
 down to his cat, would know this. Another por- 
 trait may have negledted or misrepresented the 
 features, but may have given the flash of the eye, 
 and the pecuHar radiance of the Hp, seen on him 
 only in his hours of highest mental excitement. 
 None but his friends would know this. Another 
 may have given none of his ordinary expressions, 
 
LIKENESS IN PORTRAITURE I49 
 
 but one which he wore in the most excited instant 
 of his life, when all his secret passions and all his 
 highest powers were brought into play at once. 
 None but those who had then seen him might 
 recognize this as like. But which would be the 
 most truthful portrait of the man? The first gives 
 the accidents of body — the sport of cHmate, 
 and food, and time — which corruption inhabits, 
 and the worm waits for. The second gives the 
 stamp of the soul upon the flesh; but it is the soul 
 seen in the emotions which it shares with many, 
 which may be not charadleristic of its essence — 
 the results of habit, and education, and accident — 
 a gloze, which purposely worn or unconsciously 
 assumed, perhaps totally contrary to all that is 
 rooted and real in the mind which it conceals. 
 The third has caught the trace of all that was most 
 hidden and most mighty, when all hypocrisy, and 
 all habit, and all petty and passing emotion — the 
 ice, and the bank and the foam of the .immortal 
 river — were shivered, and broken, and swallowed 
 up in the awakening of its inward strength; when 
 the call and claim of some divine motive had brought 
 into visible being those latent forces and feelings 
 which the spirit's own volition could not summon, 
 nor its consciousness comprehend, which God only 
 knew, and God only could awaken — the depth 
 and the mystery of its peculiar and separating at- 
 tributes. And so it is with external nature: she 
 has a body and a soul like man; but her soul is the 
 Deity. It is possible to represent the body with- 
 out the spirit; and this shall be like, to those whose 
 senses are only cognizant of body. It is possible 
 to represent the spirit in its ordinary and inferior 
 
150 THE PURPOSE OF ART 
 
 manifestations; and this shall be like, only to those 
 who have not watched for its moments of power. 
 It is possible to represent the spirit in its secret and 
 high operations : and this to whose watching they 
 have been revealed. All these are truth; but ac- 
 cording to the dignity of the truths he can repre- 
 sent or feel, is the power of the painter — the 
 justice of the judge. 
 
 THE PURPOSE OF ARI 
 
 SIR W. MARTIN CONWAY 
 
 A 
 
 SCHOOL of Art that does not make beauty 
 its aim does not attain beauty. A tale may be 
 most edifying, but it does not follow that a truth- 
 ful telling of it in paint will be beautiful. The Seven 
 Virtues were fine intelledtual conceptions, and some 
 artists made beautiful paintings and sculptures of 
 figures emblematic of them; others made bad 
 pictures, though equally lucid as emblems. The 
 confusion between good Art and good sermons is 
 no modern invention. It was, in fadl, never made 
 on so colossal a scale as by artists in Franciscan 
 employ during the fourteenth century. An equally 
 common modern mistake is to read some moral or 
 religious sentiment into a beautiful work of Art, 
 merely because of its beauty. When we come to 
 consider the work of Fra Angelico we shall see how 
 a truly religious mind manifests itself in painting. 
 That is quite a different matter. The charadler of 
 a sincere artist always shows itself in his work. 
 Giotto's praAical good sense is as manifest in his 
 pidlures as Fra Angelico's sweet aspiring nature is 
 
GIOTTO 151 
 
 in his. It would have been so whatever subjects 
 they had chosen for their piAures. Both attained 
 beauty in their work, just as Rembrandt did in 
 painting the carcass of an ox, because their hearts 
 loved beauty. They looked out upon the world 
 and saw beauty where others beheld only the sordid 
 fadt; they looked for beauty and found it every- 
 where; they conceived it in the silence of their 
 own hearts. The day was to come when the search 
 for beauty was to be the quest of the whole school 
 of Florentine painters and sculptors. 
 
 I 
 
 GIOTTO 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 T is especially to be noticed that these works of 
 Giotto, in common with all others of the period, 
 are independent of all the inferior sources of pidlo- 
 rial interest. They never show the sHghtest at- 
 tempt at imitative realization: they are simple 
 suggestions of ideas, claiming no regard except for 
 the inherent value of the thoughts. There is no 
 filling of the landscape with variety of scenery, 
 architedture, or incident, as in the works of Be- 
 nozzo Gozzoli or Perugino; no wealth of jewelery 
 and gold spent on the dresses of the figures, as in 
 the delicate labours of Angelico or Gentile da 
 Fabriano. The background is never more than a 
 few gloomy masses of rock, with a tree or two, and 
 perhaps a fountain; the architedlure is merely 
 what is necessary to explain the scene; the dresses 
 are painted sternly on the "heroic" principle of 
 3ir Joshua Reynolds — that drapery is to be 
 
IS2 GIOTTO 
 
 "drapery, and nothing more," — there is no silk, 
 nor velvet, nor distinguishable material of any kind; 
 the whole power of the pidlure is rested on the three 
 simple essentials of painting — pure Colour, noble 
 Form, noble Thought. 
 
 We moderns, educated in reality far more under 
 the influence of the Dutch masters than the ItaHan, 
 and taught to look for realization in all things, 
 have been in the habit of casting scorn on these 
 early Italian works, as if their simplicity were the 
 result of ignorance merely. When we know a little 
 more of art in general, we shall begin to suspedt that 
 a man of Giotto's power of mind did not altogether 
 suppose his clusters of formal trees, or dimunitive 
 masses of architediure, to be perfeft representations 
 of the woods of Judea, or of the streets of Jerusalem; 
 we shall begin to understand that there is a sym- 
 bolical art which addresses the imagination, as 
 well as a realist art which supersedes it; and that 
 the powers of contemplation and conception which 
 could be satisfied or excited by these simple types of 
 natural things, were infinitely more majestic than 
 those which are so dependent on the completeness 
 of what is presented to them as to be paralyzed by 
 an error in perspedtive, or stifled by the absence 
 of atmosphere. 
 
 Nor is the healthy simplicity of the period less 
 marked in the seledlion than in the treatment of 
 subjedts. It has in these days become necessary 
 for the painter who desires popularity to accumulate 
 on his canvas whatever is startling in aspeA or 
 emotion, and to drain, even to exhaustion, the 
 vulgar sources of the pathetic. Modern sentiment, 
 at once feverish and feeble, remains unawakened 
 
GIOTTO 153 
 
 except by the violences of gaiety or gloom; and the 
 eye refuses to pause, except when it is tempted by 
 the luxury of beauty, or fascinated by the excite- 
 ment of terror. It ought not, therefore, to be 
 without a respedlful admiration that we find the 
 masters of the fourteenth century dwelling on 
 moments of the most subdued and tender feeling, 
 and leaving the spedlator to trace the undercurrents 
 of thought which link them with future events of 
 mightier interest and fill with a prophetic power 
 and mystery scenes in themselves so simple as the 
 meeting of a master with his herdsmen among the 
 hills, or the return of a betrothed virgin to her 
 house. 
 
 It is, however, to be remembered that this 
 quietness in charadler of subjedl was much more 
 possible to an early painter, owing to the connection 
 in which his works were to be seen. A modern 
 pidlure, isolated and portable, must rest all its 
 claims to attention on its own adlual subjedt: but 
 the pictures of the early masters were nearly al- 
 ways parts of a consecutive and stable series, in 
 which many were subdued, hke the connedting 
 passages of a prolonged poem, in order to enhance 
 the value or meaning of others. 
 
 "And Joachim went down with the shepherds, 
 and Anna stood by the gate, and saw Joachim 
 coming with the shepherds. And she ran, and 
 hanging about his neck, said 'Now, I know that 
 the Lord hath greatly blessed me.'" (Protevenge- 
 Hon, iv. 8, 9.) 
 
 This is one of the most celebrated of Giotto's 
 compositions, and deservedly so, being full of the 
 most solemn grace and tenderness. The face of 
 
154 FRA ANGELICO 
 
 St. Anna, half seen, is most touching in its depth 
 of expression; and it is very interesting to observe 
 how Giotto has enhanced its sweetness, by giving 
 a harder and grosser charadter than is usual with 
 him to the heads of the other two principal female 
 figures (not but that this cast of feature is found 
 frequently in the figures of somewhat earlier art), 
 and by the rough and weather-beaten countenance 
 of the entering shepherd. In Uke manner, the 
 falling lines of the draperies owe a great part of 
 their value to the abrupt and ugly oblongs of the 
 horizontal masonry which adjoins them. 
 
 Te 
 
 GIOTTO 
 
 SAMUEL BUTLER 
 
 HERE are few modern painters who are not 
 technically greater than Giotto, but I cannot call 
 to mind a single one whose work impresses me as 
 profoundly as his does. How is it that our so 
 greatly better should be so greatly worse — that 
 the farther we go beyond him the higher he stands 
 above us? Time no doubt has much to do with 
 it, for, great as Giotto was, there are painters of 
 today not less so, if they only dared express them- 
 selves as frankly and unaffedledly as he did. 
 
 FRA ANGELICO 
 
 SIR W. MARTIN CONWAY 
 
 In Savonarola's cell there hangs a relic of no 
 small interest — the handiwork of Fra Angelico 
 himself. It is stowed away in so dark a corner 
 
FRAANGEHCO 155 
 
 that one can hardly see it. Eyes accustomed to 
 the gloom discover a small pifture of the Crucified 
 Christ, painted on a simple piece of white stuff. 
 When the great preacher mounted the pulpit, this 
 banner was borne before him. In those impassioned 
 appeals of his, that eledlrified for a time the people 
 of Florence, coUedted in crowded silence within the 
 vast area of the newly finished Cathedral, it was to 
 this very symbol of his faith that he was wont to 
 point, whereon are written the now faded words, 
 Nos predicamus Christum crucifixum. 
 
 Such a pidlure, let me even once again impress 
 upon you, was not intended nor thought of as 
 representing an historical event. It was a symbol 
 of Faith — the friars' cells contain many frescoes 
 of this type, painted by our artist or his assistants 
 under his diredlion, and therefore to be reckoned 
 as his work. The best fresco of the kind, painted 
 by the master's own hand, is in the cloister facing 
 the entrance. There are only two figures — Christ 
 hanging dead upon the Cross, and Dominic kneel- 
 ing in tears at its foot. The depth of feeling ex- 
 pressed in them is beyond translation into words. 
 I do not mean that words cannot convey an equal 
 depth of feeling. Doubtless all the Arts may be 
 regarded as equally expressive, each in its own 
 fashion. What I would say is that the feeling 
 expressed in this pidture is pidtorially conceived and 
 pidlorially expressed. An equal depth of feeHng 
 might be conceived and expressed poetically, but 
 it would not be the same in all respedts. Life is 
 bigger than any Art. All that a work of Art can 
 do is to image forth one aspedl of the beauty of 
 life. The aspedls suited to different Arts are dif- 
 
IS6 FRA ANGELICO 
 
 ferent. Love is a passion that all men know. It 
 is expressed in Shakespeare in the language of 
 Romeo and Juliet, by Wagner in the music of 
 Tristan and Isolde. Both are expressions of the 
 same emotion; but you cannot translate the 
 literary expression into music, though you may 
 set it to music, you cannot translate the musical 
 expression into words, though you may accompany 
 it by words. The emotion itself transcends all 
 the expressions it has ever found. 
 
 All the work in Fra Angelico's pidture is visible 
 from seven or eight yards away. It was intended 
 to produce its effedls at a distance. Fra Angelico 
 did not labour after detailed minuteness of finish 
 in fresco. The ideas he wished to embody were 
 simple; when they were expressed he was satisfied. 
 Here he drew the outline of Christ's figure with 
 great care against the dark blue of the sky. A line 
 more expressively contrived and more subtly drawn 
 you will not easily discover. He tenderly, but 
 simply, modelled the form of the body, not desiring 
 to attradl attention to the form for its own sake, 
 but anxious to make visible the weariness that led 
 to death. " Was ever sorrow like unto my sorrow .? " 
 The lifeless head droops over towards the right 
 arm, beneath which Dominic kneels. In the bend- 
 ing of the neck, though dead, there is suggested 
 somewhat of benignity towards the sorrowing sup- 
 pliant. The body preserves no sign of agony, nor 
 the face of pain. Weariness, sadness, and now 
 rest — that is all. It is not the face of an ascetic. 
 The features are well-formed, the brow fairly 
 arched and finely modelled; the mouth small, the 
 thin lips gently closed. A white cloth, girt about 
 
FRA ANGELICO 157 
 
 the loins, floats in the breeze; by his pidlorial 
 magic the artist has invested the curves of it with 
 the dreamy sadness that pervades the pidture. In 
 the grief of the kneeling Dominic there is no vio- 
 lence, but the more sincerity for that reserve. His 
 moistened eyes are fastened upon Christ; his fore- 
 head is wrinkled with care; his brows are drawn 
 up at the corner; yet about the mouth there seems 
 to linger the faint trace of an habitual smile. 
 
 We have already noticed one of the frescoes 
 painted by Fra Angelico and his assistants in the 
 cells upstairs. All are worthy of study, but time 
 only permits us to consider one more. Let it be 
 the Transfiguration, in one respedt the most note- 
 worthy of all, as manifesting qualities we should 
 hardly look for in the work of so mild an artist. 
 Reverence, humility, love — we look for the ex- 
 pression of them in Fra Angelico's piAures, rather 
 than for dignity and majesty. Yet in this Trans- 
 figuration we shall discover a grandeur beyond that 
 attained by Raphael in his last pidlure. Size is 
 not indispensable for majesty; there exist gems 
 engraved by Greek artists with the likeqess of 
 Zeus far more majestic than the colossal Sphinx. 
 Strength of body is not essential, nor the aspedt of 
 commanding intelligence. The clearest vision of 
 Divine Glory may be granted to the simple soul. 
 "Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see 
 God." 
 
 The figure of Christ in this fresco is less than 
 life-size. It is lightly, almost sketchily, painted 
 in. It is drawn with no "boldness." It is not the 
 figure of a strong or highly intelledtual man. Not 
 a muscle of the body is visible. The pose, pro- 
 
158 F RA AN G E L I C O 
 
 phetic of the Crucifixion to come, is altogether 
 simple. Yet with such economy of means, how 
 grand a result is obtained! Michel Angelo's 
 Christ the Judge, with bared muscular chest and 
 strong arms darting thunderbolts upon the damned, 
 is a vulgar piece of bombast compared with this 
 transfigured Christ, in which every line is laid in 
 gentleness and every gesture posed in peace. 
 Nothing is introduced that is superfluous to the 
 idea. There is no elaboration of landscape, nothing 
 to materialize the dream or bring it down into the 
 solid world of every day. The hill is a mere sym- 
 bolic mound, with neither flower nor pebble upon 
 it. In the sky is never a useless cloud, nor in the 
 garments a needless fold. It is the rendering in 
 paint of a mystic subject, done by a mystic painter 
 in an atmosphere of mysticism — a picture that 
 could only be produced just when, where, and by 
 whom it was produced; one that we can still enjoy, 
 but which today we could neither make nor imitate. 
 This, as I have before stated, is the value of old 
 works of Art to later generations. Enshrining, as 
 they do, bygone ideals they are unique. They 
 could only be made when they were made. No 
 one can imitate their spirit now, or ever hereafter. 
 Fra Angelico could not exist in the twentieth 
 century. He was possible only when he lived. 
 His pidlures then only could be produced. Their 
 defedls are conditions of their merits. Both were 
 consequences of their time, produdls of the same 
 conditions as the ideals of that time. But if we 
 cannot hope, and indeed do not desire, to imitate 
 such works of the past, we can still enjoy them with 
 a keen delight. Their very naivete is a part of 
 
BENOZZO GOZZOLI 159 
 
 their enchantment. They transport our hearts to 
 a younger day; they give us back the childhood 
 of our faith. Beside me, as I write, is a child's 
 painting of her doll "Juliet!" No one would 
 recommend grown artists to try and paint Hke 
 that — they could not, however much they might 
 try. Yet the rude drawing has an unmistakable 
 childish charm. It takes the spedlator back to 
 his own early days and bathes him for a moment 
 in the fountain of infancy. Somewhat similar is 
 the delightful effedl: that works of developing, but 
 still undeveloped. Art-schools of the past produce 
 upon modern spedlators who regard them sym- 
 pathetically. 
 
 Bi 
 
 BENOZZO GOZZOLI 
 
 JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS 
 
 ►ENOZZO GOZZOLI, the pupil of Fra Angelico, 
 but in no sense the continuator of his tradition, ex- 
 hibits the blending of several styles by a genius of 
 less creative than assimilative force. 
 
 His compositions are rich in architectural de- 
 tails, not always chosen with pure taste, but painted 
 with an almost infantine delight in the magnificence 
 of buildings. Quaint birds and beasts and reptiles 
 crowd his landscapes; while his imagination runs 
 riot in rocks and rivers, trees of all variety, and 
 rustic incidents adopted from real life. 
 
 And no Florentine of the fifteenth century was 
 more fond of assembling the personages of con- 
 temporary history in groups. Thus he showed 
 himself sensitive to the chief influences of the 
 earlier Renaissance, and combined the scientific 
 
l6o BENOZZO GOZZOLI 
 
 and naturalistic tendencies of his age in a manner 
 not devoid of native poetry. 
 
 This painter's marvelous rapidity of execution 
 enabled him to produce an almost countless series 
 of decorative works. The best of these are the 
 frescoes on the Pisan Campo Santo, of the Riccardi 
 Palace at Florence, of San Gemignano, and of 
 Montefalco. 
 
 Within the range of his own powers there are 
 few more fascinating painters. His feeling for 
 fresh nature — for hunters in the woods at night 
 or dawn, for vintage-gatherers among their grapes, 
 for festival troops of cavaliers and pages, and for 
 the marriage-dances of young men and maidens 
 — yields a delightful gladness to compositions 
 lacking the simplicity of Giotto. 
 
 No one knew better how to sketch the quarrels 
 of little boys in their nursery, or the laughter of 
 serving-women, or children carrying their books to 
 school; and when the idyllic genius of the man was 
 applied to graver themes, his fancy supplied him 
 with multitudes of angels waving rainbow-colored 
 wings above fair mortal faces. Bevies of them 
 nestle like pigeons on the penthouse of the hut of 
 Bethlehem, or crowd together round the infant 
 Christ. 
 
 From these observations on the style of Benozzo 
 Gozzoli it will be seen that in the evolution of 
 Renaissance culture he may be compared with the 
 romantic poets for whom the cheerfulness of nature 
 and the joy that comes to men from living in a 
 many-colored world of inexhaustible delight were 
 sufficient sources of inspiration. 
 
LUCA SIGNORELLI l6l 
 
 LUC A SIGNORELLI 
 
 JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS 
 
 OIGNORELLI made his mark by boldness, 
 pushing experiment almost beyond the verge of 
 truth, and approaching Michel Angelo in the 
 hardihood of his endeavor to outdo nature. Vasari 
 says of him that "even Michel Angelo imitated 
 the manner of Luca, as every one can see"; and 
 indeed Signorelli anticipated the greatest master of 
 the sixteenth century not only in his profound study 
 of human anatomy, but also in his resolution to 
 express high thought and tragic passion by pure 
 form, discarding all the minor charms of painting. 
 Trained in the severe school of Piero della Francesca, 
 he early learned to draw from the nude with bold- 
 ness and accuracy; and to this point, too much 
 negledled by his predecessors, he devoted the full 
 powers of his maturity. Anatomy he pradticed, 
 according to the custom of those days, in the grave- 
 yard or beneath the gibbet. There is a drawing by 
 him in the Louvre of a stalwart man carrying upon 
 his back the corpse of a youth. Both are naked. 
 The motive seems to have been taken from some 
 lazar-house. Life-long study of perspedtive in its 
 application to the drawing of the figure made the 
 difficulties of foreshortening and delineation of 
 brusque attitude mere child's play to this audacious 
 genius. The most rapid movement, the most 
 perilous contortion of bodies falling through the 
 air or flying, he depided with hard, firmly-traced 
 unerring outline. If we dare to criticise the pro- 
 dudtions of a master so original and so accomplished, 
 
l62 LUCA SIGNORELLI 
 
 all we can say is that SignorelH reveled almost too 
 wantonly in the display of hazardous posture, and 
 that he sacrificed the passion of his theme to the 
 display of science. Yet his genius comprehended 
 great and tragic subjedls, and to him belongs the 
 credit in an age of ornament and pedantry of hav- 
 ing made the human body a language for the ut- 
 terance of all that is most weighty in the thought 
 of man. 
 
 A story is told by Vasari which brings Signorelli 
 very close to our sympathy, and enables us to 
 understand the fascination of pure form he felt 
 so deeply. "It is related of Luca that he had a 
 son killed at Cortona, a youth of singular beauty 
 in face and person, whom he had tenderly loved. 
 In his grief the father caused the boy to be stripped 
 naked, and with extraordinary constancy of soul, 
 uttering no complaint and shedding no tear, he 
 painted the, portrait of his dead son, to the end 
 that he might still be able, through the work of 
 his own hand, to contemplate that which nature 
 had given him, but which an adverse fortune had 
 taken away." So passionate and ardent, so con- 
 vinced of the indissoluble bond between the soul 
 he loved in life and its dead tenement of clay, and 
 withal so iron-nerved and stout of will, it behooved 
 that man to be who undertook in the plentitude 
 of his power, at the age of sixty, to paint upon the 
 walls of the chapel of S. Brizio at Orvieto the 
 images of Doomsday, Resurreftion, Heaven and 
 Hell. 
 
 It is a gloomy chapel in the Gothic cathedral of 
 that forlorn Papal city — gloomy by reason of bad 
 lighting, but more so because of the terrible shapes 
 
LUCA SIGNORELLI 163 
 
 with which Signorelli has filled it. In no other 
 work of the Italian Renaissance, except in the 
 Sistine Chapel, has so much thought, engaged upon 
 the most momentous subjed:s, been expressed with 
 greater force by means more simple and with efFeA 
 more overwhelming. Architedlure, landscape, and 
 decorative accessories of every kind, the usual 
 padding of quattrocento pidtures, have been dis- 
 carded from the main compositions. The painter 
 has relied solely upon his power of imagining and 
 delineating the human form in every attitude, and 
 under the most various conditions. Darting like 
 hawks or swallows through the air, huddling, to- 
 gether to shun the outpoured vials of the wrath of 
 God, writhing with demons on the floor of Hell, 
 struggling into new life from the clinging clay, 
 standing, beneath the footstool of the Judge, float- 
 ing with lute and viol on the winds of Paradise, 
 kneeling in prayer, or clasping "inseparable hands 
 with joy and bliss in over-measure forever" — these 
 multitudes of Hving beings, angelic, diabolic, bestial, 
 human, crowd the huge spaces of the chapel walls. 
 What makes the impression of controlling doom 
 the more appalling is that we comprehend the drama 
 in its several scenes, while the chief aftor, the 
 divine Judge, at whose bidding the cherubs sound 
 their clarions, and the dead arise, and weal and 
 woe are portioned to the saved and damned, is 
 Himself unrepresented. We breathe in the pres- 
 ence of embodied consciences, submitting like our 
 own, to an unseen inevitable will. 
 
164 MICHELANGELO 
 
 M 
 
 MICHELANGELO 
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 ^Y wife and I went yesterday to the Sistine 
 Chapel, it being my first visit. It is a room of 
 noble proportions, lofty and long, though divided 
 in the midst by a screen or partition of white 
 marble, which rises high enough to break the effed 
 of spacious unity. There are six arched windows on 
 each side of the chapel, throwing down their light 
 from the height of the walls, with as much as 
 twenty feet of space (more I should think) between 
 them and the floor. The entire walls and ceilings 
 of this stately chapel are covered with paintings 
 in fresco, except the space about ten feet in height 
 from the floor, and that portion was intended to 
 be adorned by tapestries from pidlures by Raphael, 
 but, the design being prevented by his immature 
 death, the projedled tapestries have no better sub- 
 stitute than paper-hangings. The roof, which is 
 flat at top, and coved or vaulted at the sides, is 
 painted in compartments by Michel Angelo, with 
 frescoes representing the whole progress of the 
 world, and of mankind, from its first formation by 
 the Almighty . . . till after the flood. On one of the 
 sides of the chapel are pidlures by Perugino, and 
 other old masters, of subsequent events in sacred 
 history; and the entire wall behind the altar, a 
 vast expanse from the ceiling to the floor, is taken 
 up with Michel Angelo's summing up of the world's 
 history and destinies in his Last Judgment. 
 
 There can be no doubt that while these frescos 
 continued in their perfedlion, there was nothing else 
 
RAPHAEL 165 
 
 to be compared with the magnificent and solemn 
 beauty of this chapel. Enough of ruined splendor 
 still remains to convince the spedtator of all that 
 has departed; but methinks I have seen hardly 
 anything else so forlorn and depressing as it is 
 now, all dusky and dim, even the very lights hav- 
 ing passed into shadows, and the shadows into 
 utter blackness; so that it needs a sunshiny day, 
 under the bright Italian heavens, to make the de- 
 signs perceptible at all. As we sat in the chapel 
 there were clouds flitting across the sky; when the 
 clouds came, the. pictures vanished; when the sun- 
 shine broke forth, the figures sadly glimmered into 
 something like visibility, — the Almighty moving 
 in chaos, — the noble shape of Adam, the beautiful 
 Eve; and, beneath where the roof curves, the 
 mighty figures of sibyls and prophets, looking as if 
 they were necessarily so gigantic because the 
 thought within them was so massive. 
 
 RAPHAEL 
 
 GOETHE 
 
 X^ IRST of all the Cecilia of Raphael! It was 
 exadlly what I had been told of it; but now I saw 
 it with my own eyes. He has invariably accom- 
 pHshed that which others wished in vain to ac- 
 complish, and I would at present say no more of it 
 than that it is by him. Five saints, side by side, 
 not one of them has anything in common with us; 
 however their existence stands so perfedlly real 
 that one would wish for the pidlure to last through 
 eternity, even though for himself he could be con- 
 
l66 CORREGGIO , 
 
 tent to be annihilated. But in order to under- 
 stand Raphael aright, and to form a just appre- 
 ciation of him, and not to praise him as a god or 
 as Melchisedec "without descent" or pedigree, it 
 is necessary to study his masters and his prede- 
 cessors. These, too, had a standing on the firm 
 soil of truth; diligently, not to say anxiously, they 
 had laid the foundation, and vied with each other 
 in raising, step by step, the pyramid aloft, until, 
 at last, profiting by all their labors, and enlightened 
 by a heavenly genius, Raphael set the last stone on 
 the summit, above which, or even at which, no one 
 else can ever stand. 
 
 CORREGGIO 
 
 WILLIAM HAZLITT 
 
 Hi 
 
 lE blends purity with voluptousness; and the 
 expression of his women is equally charadleristic 
 of "the mistress or the saint." His pidtures are 
 worked up to the height of the idea he had con- 
 ceived, with an elaborate felicity; but this idea 
 was evidently first suggested, and afterwards re- 
 ligiously compared with nature. 
 
 As to the colouring of Correggio, it is nature it- 
 self. Not only is the general tone perfedlly true, 
 but every speck and particle is varied in colour, 
 in relief, in texture, with a care, a felicity, and an 
 efFedl which are almost magical. His light and 
 shade are equally admirable. No one else, per- 
 haps, ever gave the same harmony and roundness 
 to his compositions. So true are his shadows, 
 equally free from coldness, opacity, or false glare; 
 
LEONARDO DA VINCI 167 
 
 — SO clear, so broken, so airy, and yet so deep, that 
 if you hold your hand so as to cast a shadow on 
 any part of the flesh which is in the light, this 
 part, so shaded, will present exadily the same ap- 
 pearance which the painter has given to the 
 shadowed part of the pidlure. Correggio indeed 
 possessed a greater variety of excellences in the 
 different departments of his art than any other 
 painter; and yet it is remarkable that the impres- 
 sion which his pidlures leave upon the mind of the 
 common spedtator is monotonous and compara- 
 tively feeble. His style is in some degree mannered 
 and confined. For instance, he is without the 
 force, passion and grandeur of Raphael, who, how- 
 ever, possessed his softness of expression, but of 
 expression only; and in colour, in light and shade, 
 and other qualities, was quite inferior to Correggio. 
 We may, perhaps, solve this apparent contradiction 
 by saying that he applied the power of his mind to 
 a greater variety of objects than others; but that 
 this power was still of the same charadter, con- 
 sisting in a certain exquisite sense of the harmoni- 
 ous, the soft and graceful in form, colour, and senti- 
 ment, but with a deficiency of strength, and a 
 tendence to effeminacy in all these. 
 
 LEONARDO DA VINCI 
 
 WALTER PATER 
 
 JL*A GIOCONDA is, in the truest sense, Leo- 
 nardo's masterpiece, the revealing instance of his 
 mode of thought and work. In suggestiveness, 
 only the Melancholia of Diirer is comparable to it; 
 
l68 LEONARDO DA VINCI 
 
 and no crude symbolism disturbs the efFedl of its 
 subdued and graceful mystery. We all know the 
 face and hands of the figure, set in its marble chair, 
 in that cirque of fantastic rocks, as in some faint 
 light under sea. Perhaps of all ancient pidlures 
 time has chilled it least. As often happens with 
 works in which invention seems to reach its limit, 
 there is an element in it given to, not invented by, 
 the master. In that inestimable folio of draw- 
 ings, once in the possession of Vasari, were certain 
 designs by Verrocchio, faces of such impressive 
 beauty that Leonardo in his boyhood copied them 
 many times. It is hard not to conned: with these 
 designs of the elder, by-past master, as with its 
 germinal principle, the unfathomable smile, al- 
 ways with a touch of something sinister in it, which 
 plays over all Leonardo's work. Besides the pidture 
 is a portrait. From childhood we see this image de- 
 fining itself on the fabric of his dreams; and but 
 for express historical testimony, we might fancy 
 that this was but his ideal lady, embodied and be- 
 held at last. What was the relationship of a living 
 Florentine to this creature of his thought? By 
 means of what strange affinities had the person 
 and the dream grown up thus apart, and yet so 
 closely together? Present from the first incor- 
 poreally in Leonardo's thought, dimly traced in 
 the designs of Verrocchio, she is found present at 
 last in // Giocondo's house. That there is much of 
 mere portraiture in the pidlure is attested by the 
 legend that by artificial means, the presence of 
 mimes and flute players, that subtle expression 
 was protradted on the face. Again, was it in four 
 years and by renewed labour never really com- 
 
LEONARDO DA VINCI 169 
 
 pleted, or in four months and as by stroke of 
 magic, that the image was projeded? 
 
 The presence that thus rose so strangely beside 
 the waters, is expressive of what in the ways of a 
 thousand years men had come to desire. Here is 
 the head upon which all " the ends of the world are 
 come," and the eyelids are a little weary. It is a 
 beauty wrought out from within upon the flesh, 
 the deposit, little cell by cell, of strange thoughts 
 and fantastic reveries and exquisite passions. Set 
 it for a moment beside one of those white Greek 
 goddesses or beautiful women of antiquity, and 
 how would they be troubled by this beauty, into 
 which the soul with all its mdadies has passed! 
 All the thoughts and experience of the world have 
 etched and moulded there, in that which they have 
 of power to refine and make expressive the out- 
 ward form, the animalism of Greece, the lust of 
 Rome, the reverie of the middle age with its spirit- 
 ual ambition and imaginative loves, the return of 
 the Pagan world, the sins of the Borgias. She is 
 older than the rocks among which she sits; like 
 the vampire, she has been dead many times, and 
 learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a 
 diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about 
 her; and trafficked for strange webs with Eastern 
 merchants; and, as Leda, was the mother of Helen 
 of Troy, and, as Saint Anne, the mother of Mary; 
 and all this has been to her but as the sound of 
 lyres and flutes, and lives only in the delicacy 
 with which it has moulded the changing lineaments, 
 and tinged the eyelids and the hands. The fancy 
 of a perpetual life, sweeping together ten thousand 
 experiences, is an old one; and modern thought 
 
lyO HE GREAT COLOURISTS 
 
 has conceived the idea of humanity as wrought 
 upon by, and summing up in itself, all modes of 
 thought and life. Certainly Lady Lisa might stand 
 as the embodiment of the old fancy, the symbol of 
 the modern idea. 
 
 Ti 
 
 THE GREAT COLOURISTS 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 ITIAN deepens the hues of his Assumption, 
 as of his Entombment, into a solemn twilight; 
 Tintoret involves his earth in coils of volcanic 
 cloud, and withdraws, through circle flaming above 
 circle, the distant light of Paradise. Both of them, 
 becoming naturalist and human, add the veracity 
 of Holbein's intense portraiture to the glow and 
 dignity they had themselves inherited from the 
 Masters of Peace : at the same moment another, as 
 strong as they, and in pure felicity of art-faculty, 
 even greater than they, but trained in a lower school, 
 — Velasquez, — produced the miracles, of colour 
 and shadow-painting, which made Reynolds say 
 of him, "What we all do with labour, he does with 
 ease"; and one more, Correggio, uniting the sensual 
 element of the Greek schools with their gloom, and 
 their light and their beauty, and all these with the 
 Lombardic colour, became, as since I think it has 
 been admitted without question, the captain of the 
 painter's art as such. Other men have nobler or 
 more numerous gifts, but as a painter, master of 
 the art of laying colour so as to be lovely, Cor- 
 reggio is alone. 
 
TITIAN 171 
 
 GIORGIONE 
 
 WALTER PATER 
 
 ET enough remains to explain why the legend 
 grew up, above the name, why the name attached 
 itself, in many instances, to the bravest work of 
 other men. The Concert in the Pitti Palace, in 
 which a monk, with cowl and tonsure, touches the 
 keys of a harpischord, while a clerk, placed behind 
 him, grasps the handle of a viol, and a third, with 
 cap and plume, seems to wait upon the true in- 
 terval for beginning to sing, is undoubtedly Gior- 
 gione's. The outline of the lifted finger, the trace 
 of the plume, the very threads of the fine linen, 
 which fasten themselves on the memory, in the 
 moment before they are lost altogether in that 
 calm unearthly glow, the skill which has caught 
 the waves of wandering sound, and fixed them 
 forever on the lips and hands — these are indeed 
 the master's own; and the criticism which, while 
 dismissing so much hitherto believed to be Gior- 
 gione's, has established the claims of this one pidlure, 
 has left it among the most precious things in the 
 world of art. 
 
 TITIAN 
 
 GOETHE 
 
 JLN the year 1520, Titian, then in his fortieth 
 year, produced his celebrated pidture of the martyr- 
 dom of the Dominican Peter, the background of 
 which, although not the model, may be considered 
 
172 TITIAN 
 
 as the foundation of all the styles of landscape in 
 every school of Europe in the following century. 
 In this admirable union of history and landscape, 
 the scene is on the skirts of a forest, and the time 
 verging towards the close of day, as we may judge 
 /rom the level and placid movement of the clouds 
 on the deep blue sky, seen under the pendent foliage 
 of the trees which overhang the road. The choice ' 
 of a low horizon greatly aids the grandeur of the 
 composition; and magnificent as the larger ob- 
 jeAs and masses of the pidlure are, the minute 
 plants in the foreground are finished with an ex- 
 quisite but not obtrusive touch, and even a bird's 
 nest with its callow brood may be discovered among 
 the branches of one of the trees. Amid this scene 
 of amenity and repose, we are startled by the rush 
 of an assassin on two helpless travellers, monks, 
 one of whom is struck down, and the other wounded 
 and flying in the utmost terror. At the top of the 
 pidlure, through the loftiest branches of the trees, 
 a bright and supernatural light strikes down on the 
 dying man, who sees in the glory a vision of angels 
 bearing the emblems of martyrdom; and illuminat- 
 ing in its descent the stems and foliage, contrasts 
 with the shadowy gloom of the wood. The elder 
 bush, with its pale funereal flowers, introduced 
 over the head of the saint, and the village spire in 
 the distance, the objedl of his journey, increase the 
 interest and add to the richness of the composition. 
 Admirable also is the contrivance of the tight- 
 drawn drapery, part of the garment of the martyr, 
 which, pressed by the foot of the assassin, pins his 
 vidtim to the earth. — The noble conception of this 
 great work is equalled, I am told, by its breadth 
 
TITIAN 173 
 
 and its tone, while the extreme minuteness and 
 variety of its details no way impair the unity of 
 its impression. 
 
 TITIAN 
 
 WILLIAM HAZLITT 
 
 X ITIAN is at the head of the Venetian school; 
 he is the first of all colourists. In delicacy and 
 purity Correggio is equal to him, but his colouring 
 has not the same warmth and gusto in it. Titian's 
 flesh-colour partakes of the glowing nature of the 
 climate, and of the luxuriousness of the manners of 
 his country. He represents objedls not through a 
 merely lucid medium, but as if tinged with a golden 
 light. Yet it is wonderful in how low a tone of 
 local colouring his pidlures are painted, — how 
 rigidly his means are husbanded. His most gor- 
 geous efFedls are produced, not less by keeping 
 down than heightening his colours; the fineness of 
 his gradations adds to their variety and force; 
 and, with him, truth is the same thing as splendour. 
 Everything is done by the severity of his eye, by 
 the patience of his touch. He is enabled to keep 
 pace with nature by never hurrying on before her; 
 and as he forms the broadest masses out of in- 
 numerable varying j)arts and minute touches of 
 the pencil, so he unites and harmonizes the strong- 
 est contrasts by the most imperceptible transitions. 
 Every distinftion is relieved and broken by some 
 other intermediate distindlion, like half-notes in 
 music; and yet all this accumulation of endless 
 variety is so managed as only to produce the 
 majestic simplicity of nature, so that to a common 
 
174 TITIAN 
 
 eye there is nothing extraordinary in his piAures, 
 any more than in nature itself. It is, I believe, 
 owing to what has been here stated, that Titian is, 
 of all painters, at once the easiest and the most dif- 
 ficult to copy. He is the most difficult to copy 
 perfedlly, for the artifice of his colouring and ex- 
 ecution is hid in its apparent simplicity; and yet 
 the knowledge of nature, and the arrangement of 
 the forms and masses in his piAures, are so masterly 
 that any copy made from them, even the rudest 
 outline or sketch, can hardly fail to have a look of 
 high art. Because he was the greatest colourist in 
 the world, this, which was his most prominent, has, 
 for shortness, been considered as his only, excel- 
 lence; and he has been said to have been ignorant of 
 drawing. What he was, generally speaking, de- 
 ficient in, was invention or composition, though 
 even this appears to have been more from habit 
 than want of power; but his drawing of adtual 
 forms, where they were not to be put into momen- 
 tary adtion, or adapted to a particular expression, 
 was as fine as possible. His drawing of the forms 
 of inanimate objeAs is unrivalled. His trees have 
 a marked charaAer and physiognomy of their own, 
 and exhibit an appearance of strength or flexibility, 
 solidity or lightness, as if they were endued with 
 conscious power and purposes. 
 
T. 
 
 TITIAN 175 
 
 TTTIAN 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 HERE is only one way of seeing things rightly, 
 and that is, seeing the whole of them, without any 
 choice, or more intense perception of one point 
 than another, owing to our special idiosyncrasies. 
 Thus, when Titian or Tintoret look at a human 
 being, they see at a glance the whole of its nature, 
 outside and in; all that it has of form, of colour, of 
 passion, or of thought; saintliness, and loveliness; 
 fleshly body, and spiritual power; grace, or strength, 
 or softness, or whatsoever other quality, those men 
 will see to the full, and so paint, that, when nar- 
 rower people come to look at what they have done, 
 every one may, if he chooses, find his own special 
 pleasure in the work. The sensualist will find 
 sensuality in Titian; the thinker will find thought; 
 the saint, sandlity; the colourist, colour; the anat- 
 omist, form; and yet the pidture will never be a 
 popular one in the full sense, for none of these 
 narrower people will find their special taste so alone 
 consulted, as that the qualities which would ensure 
 their gratification shall be sifted or separated from 
 others; they are checked by the presence of the 
 other qualities which ensure the gratification of 
 other men. Thus, Titian is not soft enough for 
 the sensualist, — Correggio suits him better; Ti- 
 tian is not defined enough for the formalist, — 
 Leonardo suits him better; Titian is not pure 
 enough for the religionist, — Raphael suits him 
 better; Titian is not polite enough for the man of 
 the world, — Vandyke suits him better; Titian 
 
176 VERONESE 
 
 is not forcible enough for the lover of the pidturesque 
 — Rembrandt suits him better. So Correggio is 
 popular with a certain set, and Vandyke with a 
 certain set, and Rembrandt with a certain set. All 
 are great men, but of inferior stamp, and therefore 
 Vandyke is popular, and Rembrandt is popular, 
 (and Murillo, of all true painters the narrowest, 
 feeblest and most superficial, for those reasons the 
 most popular) but nobody cares much at heart 
 about Titian; only there is a strange undercurrent 
 of everlasting murmur about his name, which 
 means the deep consent of all great men that he is 
 greater than they — the consent of those who, 
 having sat long at his feet, have found in that re- 
 strained harmony of his strength there are indeed 
 depths of each balanced power more wonderful 
 than all those separate manifestations in inferior 
 painters: that there is a softness more exquisite 
 than Correggio's, a purity loftier than Leonardo's, 
 a force mightier than Rembrandt's, a sandtity more 
 solemn even than Raphael's. 
 
 VERONESE 
 
 GOETHE 
 
 I 
 
 PAID a visit to the palace Pisani Moretta, for 
 the sake of a charming pi(5ture by Paul Veronese. 
 The females of the family of Darius are represented 
 kneeling before Alexander and Hephaestion; his 
 mother, who is in the foreground, mistakes He- 
 phaestion for the king; — turning away from her 
 he points to Alexander. A strange story is told 
 about this painting; the artist had been well re- 
 
VERONESE 177 
 
 ceived and for a long time honorably entertained in 
 the palace; in return he secretly painted the picture 
 and left it behind him as a present, rolled up under 
 his bed. Certainly it well deserves to have had a 
 singular origin, for it gives an idea of all the peculiar 
 merits of this master. The great art with which he 
 manages by a skilful distribution of light and shade, 
 and by an equally clever contrast of the local 
 colors, to produce a most delightful harmony with- 
 out throwing any sameness of tone over the whole 
 pidlure, is here most strikingly visible. For the 
 pidlure is in excellent preservation, and stands be- 
 fore us almost with the freshness of yesterday. 
 Indeed, whenever a painting of this order has 
 suffered from negledt, our enjoyment of it is marred 
 on the spot, even before we are conscious what the 
 cause may be. 
 
 Whoever feels disposed to quarrel with the artist 
 on the score of costume has only to say he ought to 
 have painted a scene of the sixteenth century; and 
 the matter is at an end. The gradation in the ex- 
 pression from the mother through the wife to the 
 daughters, is in the highest degree true and happy. 
 The youngest princess, who kneels behind all the 
 rest, is a beautiful girl, and has a very pretty, but 
 somewhat independent and haughty countenance. 
 Her position does not at all seem to please her. 
 
178 TITIAN AND TINTORET 
 
 T. 
 
 TITIAN AND TINTORET 
 
 JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS 
 
 HE greatest difficulty meets the critic who at- 
 tempts to speak of Titian. To seize the salient 
 charadteristics of an artist whose glory is to offer 
 nothing over-prominent, and who keeps the middle 
 path of perfedlion, is impossible. As complete 
 health may be termed the absence of obtrusive 
 sensation, as virtue has been called the just pro- 
 portion between two opposite extravagances, so is 
 Titian's art a golden mean of joy unbroken by 
 brusque movements of the passions — a well-tem- 
 pered harmony in which no thrilling note suggests 
 the possibility of discord. In his work the world 
 and men cease to be merely what they are; he 
 makes them what they ought to be: and this he 
 does by separating what is beautiful in sensuous 
 life from its alloy of painful meditation and of 
 burdensome endeavor. The disease of thought is 
 unknown in his kingdom; no divisions exist be- 
 tween the spirit and the flesh; the will is thwarted 
 by no obstacles. When we think of Titian, we 
 are irresistibly led to think of music. His As- 
 sumption of Madonna (the greatest single oil- 
 painting in the world, if we except Raphael's 
 Madonna di San Sisto) can best be described as 
 a symphony — a symphony of color, where every 
 hue is brought into harmonious combination — 
 a symphony of movement, where every line con- 
 tributes to tnelodious rhythm — a symphony of 
 light without a cloud — a symphony of joy in 
 which the heavens and earth sing Hallelujah. 
 
TITIAN AND TINTORET 179 
 
 Tintoretto, in the Scuola di San Rocco, painted an 
 Assumption of the Virgin with charadleristic energy 
 and impulsiveness. A group of agitated men 
 around an open tomb, a rush of air and clash of 
 seraph wings above, a blaze of glory,- a woman 
 borne with sidewise swaying figure from darkness 
 into light — that is his pidlure, all brio, excitement, 
 speed. Quickly conceived, hastily executed, this 
 painting bears the impress of its author's impetuous 
 genius. But Titian worked by a different method. 
 On the earth, among the apostles, there is a(flion 
 enough and passion; ardent faces straining up- 
 ward, impatient men raising impotent arms and 
 vainly divesting themselves of their mantles, as 
 though they too might follow her they love. In 
 heaven is radiance, half eclipsing the archangel who 
 holds the crown, and revealing the father of spirits 
 in an aureole of golden fire. Between earth and 
 heaven, amid choirs of angelic children, rises the 
 mighty mother of the faith of Christ, who was 
 Mary and is now a goddess, ecstastic yet tranquil, 
 not yet accustomed to the skies, but far above the 
 grossness and the incapacities of earth. Her 
 womanhood is so complete that those for whom the 
 meaning of her Catholic legend is lost may hail in 
 her humanity personified. 
 
 The grand manner can reach no further than in 
 this piAure — serene, composed, meditated, en- 
 during, yet full of dramatic force and of profound 
 feeling. Whatever Titian chose to touch, whether 
 it was classical mythology or portrait, history or 
 sacred subjedt, he treated in this large and health- 
 ful style. Titian, like nature, waits not for moods 
 or humors in the spedtator. He gives to the mind 
 
l8o CARLO DOLCE 
 
 joy of which it can never weary, pleasures that 
 cannot satiate, a satisfaAion not to be repented of, 
 a sweetness that will not pall. The least in- 
 strudted and the simple feel his influence as strongly 
 as the wise or learned. 
 
 CARLO DOLCE 
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 Ai 
 
 .FTER Perugino the pidtures cease to be in- 
 teresting; the art came forward with rapid strides, 
 but the painters and their produ(5lions do not take 
 nearly so much hold of the speAator as before. 
 They all paint better then Giotto and Cimabue, — 
 in some respeds better than Perugino; but they 
 paint in vain, probably because they were not 
 nearly so much in earnest, and meant far less, 
 though possessing the dexterity to express far 
 more. Andrea del Sarto appears to have been a 
 good painter, yet I always turn away readily from 
 his pidtures. I looked again, and for a good while, 
 at Carlo Dolce's portrait of the Eternal Father, for 
 it is a miracle and masterpiece of absurdity, and 
 almost equally a miracle of pidlorial art. It is the 
 All-powerless, a fair-haired, soft, consumptive deity, 
 with a mouth that has fallen open through very 
 weakness. He holds one hand on his stomach, as 
 if the wickedness ^nd wretchedness of mankind 
 made him qualmish; and he is looking down out 
 of heaven with an expression of pitiable appeal, 
 or as if seeking somewhere for assistance in his 
 heavy task of ruling the Universe. You might 
 fancy such a being falling on his knees before a 
 
VELASQUEZ l8l 
 
 Strong-willed man, and beseeching him to take the 
 reins of omnipotence out of his hands. No 
 wonder that wrong gets the better of right, and 
 that good and ill are confounded, if the Supreme 
 Head were as here depidled; for I never saw, and 
 nobody else ever was, so perfedl a representation, 
 of a person burdened with a task infinitely above 
 his strength. If Carlo Dolce had been wicked 
 enough to know what he was doing, the pidlure 
 would have been most blasphemous, — a satire, in 
 the very person of the Almighty, against all in- 
 competent rulers, and against the rickety machine 
 and crazy action of the Universe. Heaven forgive 
 me for such thoughts as this pidlure has suggested ! 
 It must be added that the great original defedl in 
 the character as here represented is an easy good- 
 nature. I wonder what Michelangelo would have 
 said to this painting. 
 
 Ti 
 
 VELASiiUEZ 
 
 FREDERIC LORD LEIGHTON 
 
 HE Art of Spain was, at the outset, wholly 
 borrowed, and from various sources; we shall see 
 heterogeneous, imported elements, assimilated 
 sometimes in a greater or less degree, frequently 
 flung together in illogical confusion, seldom, if ever, 
 fused into a new, harmonious whole by that inner 
 welding fire which is genius; and we shall see in 
 the sixteenth century a foreign influence received 
 and borne as a yoke — (that of the Italian Renais- 
 sance) because no living generative force was there 
 to throw it off" — with results too often dreary 
 
l82 VELASQUEZ 
 
 beyond measure; and, finally, we shall meet this 
 strange freak of nature, a soil without artistic in- 
 itiative bringing forth the initiator — observe, I 
 do not say the greatest artist — the greatest in- 
 itiator perhaps since Lionardo in modern art — 
 except it be his contemporary Rembrandt — Diego 
 Velasquez. 
 
 VELASQUEZ 
 
 JOHN HAY 
 
 Wl 
 
 HEN Luca Giordano came from Italy he in- 
 quired for this piAure, Las Meninas, and said on 
 seeing it, "This is the theology of painting." If 
 our theology were what it should be, and cannot 
 be, absolute and unquestionable truth, Luca the 
 Quickworker would have been right. Velasquez 
 was painting the portrait of a stupid little Infanta 
 when the idea came to him of perpetuating the 
 scene just as it was. We know how we have 
 wished to be sure of the exadl accessories of past 
 events. The modern rage for theatrical local color 
 is an illustration of this desire. The great artist, 
 who must have honored his art, determined to give 
 to future ages an exadl picture of one instant of his 
 glorious life. It is not too much to say he has done 
 this. He stands before his easel, his pencils in 
 hand. The little princess is stiffly posing in the 
 centre. Her little maids are grouped about her. 
 Two hideous dwarfs on the right are teasing a 
 noble dog who is too drowsy and magnanimous to 
 growl. In the background at the end of a long 
 gallery a gentleman is opening a door to the garden. 
 The presence of royalty is indicated by the refleAion 
 
VELASQUEZ 183 
 
 of the faces of the king and queen in a small mirror, 
 where you would expedl to see your own. The 
 longer you look upon this marvellous painting, the 
 less possible does it seem that it is merely the plac- 
 ing of color on canvas which causes this perfedt il- 
 lusion. It does not seem possible that you are 
 looking at a plane surface. There is a stratum of 
 air before, behind, and beside these figures. You 
 could walk on that floor and see how the artist is 
 getting on with the portrait. There is space and 
 light in this pidture, as in any room. Every ob- 
 jed: is detached, as in the common miracle of the 
 stereoscope. If art consists in making a fleeting 
 moment immortal, if the True is a higher ideal 
 than the Beautiful, then it will be hard to find a 
 greater painting than this. It is utterly without 
 beauty; its tone is a cold olive green-gray; there 
 is not one redeeming grace or charm about it ex- 
 cept the noble figure of Velasquez himself — yet in 
 its austere fidelity to truth it stands incomparable 
 in the world. It gained Velasquez his greatest 
 triumph. You see on his breast a sprawling red 
 cross, painted evidently by an unskilful hand. 
 This was the gracious answer made by Philip IV 
 when the artist asked him if anything was wanting 
 to the picture. This decoration, daubed by the 
 royal hand, was the accolade of the knighthood of 
 Santiago, — an honor beyond the dreams of an 
 artist of that day. It may be considered the high- 
 est compliment ever paid to a painter, except the 
 one paid by Courbet to himself, when he refused 
 to be decorated by the man of December. 
 
184 VELASQUEZ 
 
 VELASiiUEZ 
 
 HAVELOCK ELLIS 
 
 I 
 
 N a little room of the Prado Museum, specially 
 construdled for this end, stands the large pidlure of 
 Velasquez' last period which has long been known 
 as "The Maids of Honour," Las Meninas. It is a 
 simple scene in the artist's studio, viewed as the 
 King and Queen, who stood at the same point as 
 the spedtator now stands — we see them refledled 
 in the mirror in the background — once viewed it 
 during a moment of rest in the course of a royal 
 sitting. There in the center is the little princess 
 about to accept the refreshment offered by one 
 of the charming maids of honour; there are the 
 two court dwarfs with the big dog who is stolidly 
 reposing; and there, on the left, is the painter him- 
 self, eredt, with his large canvas, facing us and the 
 royal couple. A typically Spanish pidlure, indeed 
 the most instruAive representation we possess (rf 
 the life led by Philip IV, it is a natural, unstudied 
 scene, painted in a natural, unstudied way, with large, 
 light, seemingly careless strokes, yet with no parade 
 of assertive brush-work, so that at a little distance 
 the pidture presents a smooth surface. Gently, 
 calmly, neither as master nor as slave, but court- 
 eously in the Spanish manner, as an equal, the 
 painter seems to stand face to face with Nature. 
 We feel that this is less a pidure that has been 
 painted by a brilliant and deliberate expenditure 
 of pigments than a vision that has been mysteri- 
 ously evoked and that floats before us in its own 
 atmosphere. If by a "miracle" we mean an event 
 
REYNOLDS AND VELASQUEZ 185 
 
 in which the efFedl is beyond measure out of pro- 
 portion with the seeming simplicity of the cause, 
 then we may say that of all the great pidlures 
 of the world this may most precisely be called 
 miraculous. 
 
 N( 
 
 SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS AND 
 VELASQUEZ 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 OW, do you recoiled: the evidence respedling 
 the charadter of this man (Sir Joshua Reynolds), 
 the two points of bright peculiar evidence given by 
 the sayings of the two greatest literary men of his 
 day, Johnson and Goldsmith? Johnson, who, as 
 you know, was always Reynolds' attached friend, 
 had but one complaint to make against him, that 
 he hated nobody: — "Reynolds," he said, "you 
 hate no one living; I like a good hater!" Still 
 more significant is the little touch in Goldsmith's 
 "Retaliation." You recoUedt how in that poem 
 he describes the various persons who met at one of 
 their dinners at St. James's CoflFiee-house, each 
 person being described under the name of some ap- 
 propriate dish. You will often hear the conclud- 
 ing lines about Reynolds quoted — 
 
 "He shifted his trumpet," etc.; — 
 
 less often, or at least attentively, the preceding 
 ones, far more important — 
 
 "Still born to improve us in every part — 
 His pencil our faces, his manners our heart;" 
 
1 86 REYNOLDS AND VELASQUEZ 
 
 and never, the most characteristic touch of all, near 
 the beginning: — 
 
 "Our Dean shall be venison, just fresh from the 
 
 plains; 
 Our Burke shall be tongue, with a garnish of 
 
 brains; 
 To make out the dinner, full certain I am. 
 That Rich is anchovy, and Reynolds is lamb." 
 
 The other painter whom I would give you as an 
 instance of this gentleness is a man of another 
 nation, on the whole I suppose one of the most 
 cruel civilized nations in the world, — the Spaniards. 
 They produced but one great painter, only one; 
 but he among the very greatest of painters, Ve- 
 lasquez. You would not suppose, from looking at 
 Velasquez' portraits generally, that he was an es- 
 pecially kind or good man; you perceive a peculiar 
 sternness about them; for they were as true as 
 steel, and the persons whom he had to paint being 
 not generally kind or good people, they were stern 
 in expression, and Velasquez gave the sternness; 
 but he had precisely the same intense perception of 
 truth, the same marvellous instindl for the render- 
 ing of all natural soul and all natural form that our 
 Reynolds had. Let me, then, read you his char- 
 adler as it is given by Mr. Stirling, of Keir: — 
 
 "Certain charges, of what nature we are not in- 
 formed, brought against him after his death, made 
 it necessary for his executor, Fuensalida, to refute 
 them at a private audience granted to him by the 
 king for that purpose. After listening to the de- 
 fence of his friend, Philip immediately made an- 
 swer: *I can believe all that you say of the excellent 
 
REYNOLDS AND VELASQUEZ I87 
 
 disposition of Diego Velasquez.' Having lived for 
 half his life in courts, he was yet capable both of 
 gratitude and generosity, and in the misfortunes, 
 he could remember the early kindness of Olivares. 
 . . . No mean jealousy ever influenced his conduA to 
 his brother artists; he could aflFord not only to ac- 
 knowledge the merits, but to forgive the malice, of 
 his rivals. His charadler was of that rare and happy 
 kind, in which high intelleilual power is combined 
 with indomitable strength of will, and a winning 
 sweetness of temper and which seldom fails to raise 
 the possessor above his fellow-men, making his 
 life a 
 
 'laurelled victory, and smooth success 
 Bestrewed before his feet.' " 
 
 I am sometimes accused of trying to make art 
 too moral; yet, observe, I do not say in the least 
 that in order to be a good painter you must be a 
 good man; but I do say that in order to be a good 
 natural painter there must be strong elements of 
 good in the mind, however warped by other parts 
 of the charadler. There are hundreds of other 
 gifts of painting which are not at all involved with 
 moral conditions, but this one, the perception of 
 nature, is never given but under certain moral 
 conditions. Therefore, now you have it in your 
 choice; here are your two paths for you: it is re- 
 quired of you to produce conventional ornament, 
 and you may approach the task as the Hindoo does, 
 and as the Arab did, without nature at all, with a 
 chance of approxiinating your disposition somewhat 
 to that of the Hindoos and Arabs; or as Sir Joshua 
 and Velasquez did, with, not the chance, but the 
 certainty of approximating your disposition, ac- 
 
l88 HOLBEIN 
 
 cording to the sincerity of your effort — to the 
 disposition of those great and good men. 
 
 I 
 
 HOLBEIN 
 
 HENRY JAMES 
 
 WAS admitted unconditionally, ushered into 
 the little drawing-room, and allowed half an hour's 
 undisturbed contemplation of the beautiful Hol- 
 bein — the famous pidture of the Meyer family. The 
 reader interested in such matters may remember 
 the discussion maintained two years since, at the 
 time of the general exhibition of the younger 
 Holbein's works in Dresden, as to the respeftive 
 merits — and I believe the presumptive priority in 
 date — of this Darmstadt piAure and presentation 
 of the same theme which adorns the Dresden Gal- 
 lery. I forget how the question was settled — 
 whether, indeed, it was settled at all, and I have 
 never seen the Dresden pidture, but it seems to me 
 that if I were to choose a Holbein, this one would 
 content mg. It represents a sort of plainly lovely 
 Virgin holding her child, crowned with a kind of 
 gorgeous episcopal crown, and worshipped by six 
 kneeling figures — the worthy Goodman Meyer, 
 his wife and their progeniture. It is a wonderfully 
 solid masterpiece, and so full of wholesome human 
 substance that I should think its owner could go 
 about his daily work the better — eat and drink 
 and sleep and perform the various fundtions of life 
 more largely and smoothly — for having it con- 
 stantly before his eyes. 
 
REMBRANDT 189 
 
 I 
 
 REMBRANDT 
 
 WILLIAM HAZLITT 
 
 F ever there was a man of genius in the art, it 
 was Rembrandt. He might be said to have created 
 a medium of his own, through which he saw all 
 objedls. He was the grossest and least vulgar, 
 that is to say, the least commonplace in his gross- 
 ness, of all men. He was the most downright, the 
 least fastidious of the imitators of nature. He took 
 any objedt, he cared not what, how mean soever in 
 form, colour, and expression; and from the light 
 and shade which he threw upon it, it came out 
 gorgeous from his hands. As Vandyke made use 
 of the smallest contrasts of light and shade, and 
 paitxted as if in the open air, Rembrandt used the 
 most violent and abrupt contrasts in this respedt, 
 and painted his objedts as if in a dungeon. His 
 pidlures may be said to be "bright with excessive 
 darkness." His vision had acquired a lynx-eyed 
 sharpness from the artificial obscurity to which he 
 had accustomed himself. "Mystery and silence 
 hung upon his pencil." Yet he could pass rapidly 
 from one extreme to another, and dip his colours 
 with equal success in the gloom of night or in the 
 blaze of the noon-day sun. In surrounding dif- 
 ferent objedls with a medium of imagination, solemn 
 or dazzling, he was a true poet; in all the rest he 
 was a mere painter, but a painter of no common 
 stamp. The powers of his hand were equal to 
 those of his eye; and, indeed, he could not have 
 attempted the subjedls he did, without an execu- 
 tion as masterly as his knowledge was profound. 
 
190 REMBRANDT 
 
 His colours are sometimes dropped in lumps on the 
 canvas; at other times they are laid on as smooth 
 as glass; and he not unfrequently painted with the 
 handle of his brush. He had an eye for all objeds 
 as far as he had seen them. His history and 
 landscapes are equally fine in their way. His 
 landscapes one could look at forever, though there 
 is nothing in them. But "they are of the earth, 
 earthy." It seems as if he had dug them out of 
 nature. Everything is so true, so real, so full of 
 all the feelings and associations which the eye can 
 suggest to the other senses, that we immediately 
 take as strong an afFedlion to them as if they were 
 our home — the very place where we were brought 
 up. No length of time could add to the intensity 
 of the impressions they convey. Rembrandt is the 
 least classical and the most romantic of all painters. 
 
 REMBRANDT 
 
 EUGENE FROMENTIN 
 
 D. 
 
 'ISCIPLES at Emmaus, — a marvel, which 
 can be counted among the masterpieces of the 
 painter. This little pidture, of poor appearance, 
 of insigniiicent arrangement, of tarnished colour, 
 of reserved and almost awkward execution, would 
 alone suffice to establish the greatness of a man. 
 Without speaking of the disciple who understands 
 and folds his hands, or of him who is astounded, and, 
 placing his napkin on the table, looks straight at 
 the head of Christ, and says clearly what in ordinary 
 language could be translated by the exclamation 
 of a man in amazement; without speaking of the 
 
REMBRANDT IQI 
 
 young servant with black eyes, who is bringing a 
 dish and sees but one thing, a man who was going 
 to eat but does not eat, and crosses himself with 
 contrition; — one might retain in this unique work 
 only the Christ, and that would be enough. What 
 painter has not made a Christ, at Rome, Florence, 
 Sienna, Milan, Venice, Basle, Bruges or Antwerp? 
 From Leonardo, Raphael, and Titian, to Van Eyck, 
 Holbein, Rubens, and Van Dyck, how has he not 
 been deified, humanized, transfigured, shown in his 
 history, his passion, and his death? How have 
 been recited the adventures of his terrestrial life, 
 how have been conceived the glories of his apotheo- 
 sis! Has he ever been imagined thus? Pale, ema- 
 ciated, sitting facing us, breaking the bread as on 
 the evening of the Last Supper, in his pilgrim's 
 robe, with his blackened lips on which the torture 
 has left its traces, his great brown eyes, soft, widely 
 opened, and raised towards heaven, with his cold 
 nimbus, a sort of phosphorescence around him 
 which envelops him in an indefinable glory, and 
 that inexplicable look of a living, breathing human 
 being who certainly has passed through death. 
 The attitude of this divine shade, that gesture im- 
 possible to describe, surely impossible to copy, the 
 intense ardor of his countenance, whose type is ex- 
 pressed without features, and whose physiognomy 
 depends upon the movement of his lips and glance, 
 — these things, inspired no one knows where, and 
 produced no one knows how, are all priceless. No 
 art recalls them; no one before Rembrandt, no one 
 after him, has expressed them. 
 
192 RUBENS 
 
 RUBENS 
 
 Goethe's conversations with 
 e ckerman 
 
 rOETHE placed before me a landscape by 
 Rubens. 
 
 "You have," said he, "already seen this pidlure; 
 but one cannot look often enough at anything really 
 excellent; — besides, there is something very par- 
 ticular attached to this. Will you tell me what 
 you see?" 
 
 "I begin from the distance," said I. "I see in 
 the remotest background a very clear sky, as if 
 after sunset. Then, still in the extreme distance, 
 a village and a town, in the light of evening. In 
 the middle of the pidlure there is a road, along 
 which a flock of sheep is hastening to the village. 
 At the right hand of the pidure are several hay- 
 stacks, and a wagon which appears well laden. 
 Unharnessed horses are grazing near. On one side, 
 among the bushes, are several mares with their 
 foals, which appear as if they were going to remain 
 out of doors all night. Then, nearer to the fore- 
 ground, there is a group of large trees; and lastly, 
 quite in the foreground to the left, there are various 
 labourers returning homewards." 
 
 "Good," said Goethe, "that is apparently all. 
 But the principal point is still wanting. All these 
 things, which we see represented, the flock of sheep, 
 the wagon with hay, the horses, the returning 
 labourers, — on which side are they lighted?" 
 
 "They receive the light," said I, "from the side 
 turned to us, and the shadow is thrown into the 
 
RUBENS 193 
 
 pidlure. The returning labourers in the foreground 
 are especially in the light, which produces an ex- 
 cellent efFedt." 
 
 "But how has Rubens produced this beautiful 
 efFedl?" ! 
 
 " By making these light figures appear on a dark 
 ground," said I. 
 
 "But this dark ground," said Goethe, "whence 
 does it arise?" 
 
 "It is the powerful shadow," said I, "thrown by 
 the group of trees towards the figures. But how?" 
 continued I, with surprise, "the figures cast their 
 shadows into the pidlure; the group of trees, on 
 the contrary, cast theirs towards the spectator. 
 We have, thus, light from two different sides, which 
 is quite contrary to Nature." 
 
 "That is the point," returned Goethe, with a 
 smile. "It is by this that Rubens proves himself 
 great, and shows to the world that he, with a free 
 spirit, stands above Nature, and treats her con- 
 formably to his high purposes. The double light 
 is certainly a violent expedient, and you certainly 
 say that it is contrary to nature. But if it is con- 
 trary to nature, I still say it is higher than nature; 
 I say it is the bold stroke of the master, by which 
 he, in a genial manner, proclaims to the world that 
 art is not entirely subject to natural necessities, 
 but has laws of its own. 
 
 "The artist," continued Goethe, "must, indeed, 
 in his details faithfully and reverently copy nature; 
 he must not, arbitrarily, change the strudlure of 
 the bones, or the position of the muscles and sinews 
 of an animal, so that the peculiar charadter is 
 destroyed. This would be annihilating nature. 
 
194 RUBENS 
 
 But in the higher regions of artistical production, 
 by which a pidture really becomes a pidlure, he 
 has freer play and here he may have recourse to 
 fidlions, as Rubens has done with the double light 
 in this landscape. 
 
 "The artist has a twofold relation to nature; he 
 is at once her master and her slave. He is her 
 slave, inasmuch as he must work with earthly 
 things, in order to be understood; but he is her 
 master, inasmuch as he subjedls these earthly 
 means to his higher intentions, and renders them 
 subservient. 
 
 "The artist would speak to the world through an 
 entirety; however, he does not find this entirety 
 in nature; but it is the fruit of his own mind, or, 
 if you like it, of the aspiration of a frudlifying divine 
 breath. 
 
 "If we observe this landscape by Rubens only 
 slightly, everything appears as natural to us as if 
 it had been copied exaAly from nature. But this 
 is not the case. So beautiful a pidlure has never 
 been seen in nature." 
 
 RUBENS 
 
 EUGENE FROMENTIN 
 
 X SPEAK of the Communion of St. Francis of 
 Assisi. The scene represents a dying man, a 
 priest offering him the Host, and monks who sur- 
 round him, aiding, sustaining, and mourning over 
 him. The saint is naked, the priest in a golden 
 chasuble, faintly tinted with carmine, the two 
 acolytes of the priest in white stoles, the monks in 
 
RUBENS 195 
 
 robes of cloth, dark brown or gray. Surrounding 
 them is a strait and sombre architecflure, a reddish 
 dais, a bit of blue sky; and in that azure gap, just 
 above the saint, three rosy angels, flying like 
 heavenly birds, form a soft and radiant crown. 
 The asped^ is composed of the most simple ele- 
 ments, the gravest colors, and a most severe har- 
 mony. To sum up the pidture in a rapid glance, 
 you perceive but a vast bituminous canvas of 
 austere style, where everything is in low tone, and 
 where three accidents alone are perfedlly evident 
 from afar: the saint in his livid meagreness; the 
 Host toward which he leans; and above, at the 
 summit of that triangle so tenderly expressive, a 
 vista of rose and silver into a happy eternity, — 
 a smile of the half-opened heaven of which we as- 
 suredly have need. 
 
 Here is no pomp, no ornament, no turbulence, 
 nor violent gestures, nor grace, nor fine clothing, 
 not one lovely or useless incident, nothing which 
 does not appertain to a cloistral life at its most 
 solemn moment. A dying man, worn with age and 
 a life of sandlity, has left his bed of ashes to be 
 borne to the altar; he longs to die there while he 
 receives the sacred elements, but fears to fail be- 
 fore the Host has touched his lips. He makes an 
 effort to kneel, but cannot. All his movements are 
 over, the chill of the last moments has seized his 
 limbs, his arms make that inward gesture which is 
 the certain sign of approaching death; he is dis- 
 torted, out of his axis, and would break at all his 
 joints were he not supported by the armpits. 
 The only thing living about him is his small and 
 humid eye, clear, blue, fevered, glassy, with red 
 
196 RUB EN S 
 
 lids, dilated by the ecstasy of the last vision, and 
 upon his lips, livid with his agony, the wonderful 
 smile of the dying, and the yet more wonderful 
 smile of the righteous believer, who, filled with hope, 
 awaits his end, hastens to meet his salvation, and 
 looks upon the Host as upon his present Lord. 
 
 Around the dying man there is weeping, and 
 those who weep are grave, men, robust, tried, and 
 resigned. Never was grief more sincere or more 
 sympathetic than this virile tenderness of men of 
 warm blood and great faith. Some restrain them- 
 selves, others give way to grief. Some are young, 
 stout, ruddy, and healthy, who strike their breasts 
 with their clenched fists, and whose grief would be 
 noisy if it could be heard. There is one grizzled 
 and bald monk, with a Spanish head, hollow cheeks, 
 thin beard, and pointed mustache, who is sobbing 
 gently within himself, with that tension of feature 
 of a man who restrains himself until his teeth 
 chatter. All these magnificent heads are por- 
 traits. The type is admirable in its truthfulness; 
 the design simple, learned, and powerful; the 
 coloring incomparably rich in its shaded, delicate, 
 and beautiful sobriety. Here are clustered heads, 
 joined hands clasped fervently and convulsively, 
 bared foreheads, intense glances, — some reddened 
 by emotion, and others, on the centrary, pale and 
 cold as old ivory; the two acolytes, one of whom 
 holds the censer, and wipes his eyes with the back 
 of his sleeve; — all this group of men, differently 
 moved, sobbing, or masters of themselves, forms a 
 circle around the unique head of the saint, and the 
 little white crescent held hke a lunar disk in the 
 pale hand of the priest. It is all inexpressibly fine. 
 
RUYSDAEL I97 
 
 Such is the moral value of this exceptional page 
 of Rubens at Antwerp, and — who knows, — per- 
 haps of all the work of Rubens, that I should al- 
 most fear to profane it in speaking of its exterior 
 merits, which are not less eminent. I will only 
 say that this great man has never been more master 
 of his thought, his sentiment, and his hand; his 
 conception has never been more serene or of wider 
 range; his notion of the human soul has never 
 seemed more profound; he was never been more 
 noble or more healthful, richer in colour without 
 extravagance, more scrupulous in the drawing of 
 the parts, or more surprising in his execution. This 
 marvel is dated 1619. What noble years! The 
 time in which he painted it is not given, perhaps a 
 few days only. What days! When this unequalled 
 work, in which Rubens is transfigured, has been 
 long examined, it is impossible to look at anything 
 or anybody, — neither others, nor Rubens himself, 
 — we must for today leave the museum. 
 
 RUYSDAEL 
 
 EUGENE FROMENTIN 
 
 Oi 
 
 'F all the Dutch painters, Ruysdael is the one 
 who most nobly resembles his country. He has 
 its breadth, its sadness, its rather dreary placidity, 
 and its monotonous and tranquil charm. 
 
 Ruysdael paints as he thinks, healthily, strongly, 
 largely. The exterior quality of the labor indicates 
 quite plainly the ordinary condition of his mind. 
 There is in this sober, careful, rather proud paint- 
 ing an inexpressible, sad haughtiness, which is 
 
198 RUYSDAEL 
 
 recognized from far, and at hand captivates by a 
 charm of natural simplicity and noble familiarity 
 wholly his own. A canvas by Ruysdael is a whole, 
 wherein are felt an arrangement, a comprehensive 
 view, and a master-intention, — the determina- 
 tion to paint once for all one of the features of his 
 country, perhaps also the desire to fix the memory 
 of a moment of his life. A solid foundation; a 
 need of constructing and organizing, of subordinat- 
 ing details to the whole, colour to efFedt, interest in 
 objedts to the plane that they occupy; a perfedl 
 knowledge of natural and technical laws, and with 
 all that a certain disdain for the useless, the too 
 agreeable, or the superfluous; a great taste com- 
 bined with great good sense; a strong hand calm 
 with the calmly beating heart, — such is nearly 
 what one discovers in analyzing a pidture by 
 Ruysdael. 
 
 A pidture by Ruysdael, whatever it may be, — 
 the finest are, of course, the most significant, — is 
 an entire painting, full and strong, in its principle 
 grayish above, brown or greenish below, which 
 rests solidly with its four corners upon the shining 
 flutings of the frame; it seems dark at a distance, 
 but is penetrated with light when approached; it 
 is beautiful in itself, with no vacancy, with few 
 digressions, like a lofty and sustained thought which 
 Las for language a tongue of the most powerful 
 kind. 
 
 Elegiac or not, but surely a poet, if Ruysdael 
 had written instead of painted, I think he would 
 have written in prose instead of verse. Verse ad- 
 mits of too much fancy and stratagem, prose com- 
 pels too great sincerity, for this clear mind not to 
 
HOGARTH 199 
 
 have preferred its language to the other. As to 
 the depths of his nature, he was a dreamer, — one 
 of those men of whom there are many in our time, 
 though they were rare at the epoch in which Ruys- 
 dael was born, — one of those soHtary ramblers 
 who fly from towns, frequent the suburbs, sincerely 
 love the country, feel it without emphasis, relate 
 it without phrasing, who are made restless by far- 
 off horizons, charmed by level expanses, afFeAed by 
 a shadow, and enchanted by a gleam of sunshine. 
 
 T. 
 
 HOGARTH 
 
 WILLIAM M. THACKERAY 
 
 HE famous set of pidlures called "Marriage a 
 la Mode" and which are now exhibited in the 
 National Gallery in London, contains the most im- 
 portant and highly wrought of the Hogarth com- 
 edies. The care and method with which the moral 
 grounds of these pidlures are laid is as remarkable 
 as the wit and skill of the observing and dexterous 
 artist. He has to describe the negotiations for 
 a marriage pending between the daughter of a 
 rich citizen Alderman and young Lord Viscount 
 SquanderHeld, the dissipated son of a gouty old 
 Earl. Pride and pomposity appear in every ac- 
 cessory surrounding the Earl. He sits in gold lace 
 and velvet — as how should such an Earl wear 
 anything but velvet and gold lace? His coronet 
 is everywhere; on his footstool, on which reposes 
 one gouty toe turned out; on the sconces and look- 
 ing glasses; on the dogs; on his lordship's very 
 crutches; on his great chair of state and the great 
 
200 HOGARTH 
 
 baldaquin behind him; under which he sits point- 
 ing majestically to his pedigree, which shows that 
 his race is sprung from the loins of William the 
 Conqueror, and confronting the old Alderman from 
 the City, who has mounted his sword for the oc- 
 casion, and wears his Alderman's chain, and has 
 brought a bag full of money, mortgage-deeds, 
 and thousand-pound notes, for the arrangement 
 of the transaftion pending between them. Whilst 
 the steward (a Methodist — therefore a hypocrite 
 and cheat: for Hogarth scorned a Papist and a 
 Dissenter) is negotiating between the old couple, 
 their children sit together, united but apart. My 
 lord is admiring his countenance in the glass, while 
 his bride is twiddling her marriage-ring on her 
 pocket-handkerchief, and listening with rueful 
 countenance to Counsellor Silvertongue who has 
 been drawing the settlements. The girl is pretty, 
 but the painter, with a curious watchfulness, has 
 taken care to give her a likeness to her father; as 
 in the young Viscount's face you see a resemblance 
 to the Earl, his noble sire. The sense of the 
 coronet pervades the pidlure, as it is supposed to 
 do the mind of its wearer. The pidlures round the 
 room are sly hints indicating the situation of the 
 parties about to marry. A martyr is led to the 
 fire; Andromeda is offered to sacrifice; Judith is 
 going to slay Holofernes. There is the ancestor of 
 the house (in the pidlure it is the Earl himself as 
 a young man) with a comet over his head indicat- 
 ing that the career of the family is to be brilliant 
 and brief. In the second pidlure, the old lord must 
 be dead, for Madam has now the Countess's coro- 
 net over her bed and toilet-glass, and sits listening 
 
H O G A K T H 20I 
 
 to that dangerous Counsellor Silvertongue, whose 
 portrait now adlually hangs up in her room, whilst 
 the counsellor takes his ease on the sofa by her side, 
 evidently the familiar of the house, and the con- 
 fidant of the mistress. My lord takes his pleasure 
 elsewhere than at home, whither he returns jaded 
 and tipsy from the "Rose," to find his wife yawn- 
 ing in her drawing-room, her whist party over and 
 the daylight streaming in; or he amuses himself 
 with the very worst company abroad, whilst his 
 wife sits at home listening to foreign singers, or 
 wastes her money at audtions, or, worse still, seeks 
 amusement at masquerades. The dismal end is 
 known. My lord draws upon the counsellor, who 
 kills him, and is apprehended whilst endeavoring 
 to escape. My lady goes back, perforce to the 
 Alderman in the city, and faints upon reading 
 Counsellor Silvertongue's dying speech at Tyburn, 
 where the counsellor has been executed for send- 
 ing his lordship out of the world. Moral : — Don't 
 listen to evil silver-tongued counsellors; don't 
 marry a man for his rank, or a woman for her 
 money; don't frequent foolish auctions and mas- 
 querade balls unknown to your husband; don't 
 have wicked companions abroad and negledl your 
 wife, otherwise you will be run through the body, 
 and ruin will ensue, and disgrace and Tyburn. 
 The people are all naughty and Bogy carries them 
 all off. 
 
 What manner of man was he who executed 
 these portraits — so various, so faithful, and so ad- 
 mirable? In the National CoUedlion of PiAures 
 most of us have seen the best and most carefully 
 
202 SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS 
 
 finished series of his comic paintings, and the por- 
 trait of his own honest face, of which the bright 
 blue eyes shine out from the canvas, and give you 
 an idea of that keen and brave look with which 
 William Hogarth regarded the world. No man 
 was ever less of a hero; you see him before you, 
 and can fancy what he was — a jovial, honest 
 London citizen, stout and sturdy; a hearty, plain- 
 spoken man, loving his laugh, his friend, his glass, 
 his roast-beef of Old England. 
 
 I 
 
 SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 AM inclined to think that, considering all the 
 disadvantages of circumstances and education under 
 which his genius was developed, there was perhaps 
 hardly ever born a man with a more intense and 
 innate gift of insight into nature than our own Sir 
 Joshua Reynolds. Considered as a painter of in- 
 dividuality in the human form and mind, I think 
 him, even as it is, the prince of portrait painters. 
 Titian paints nobler pidlures, and Vandyke had 
 nobler subjedls, but neither of them entered so 
 subtly as Sir Joshua did into the minor varieties 
 of human heart and temper; and when you con- 
 sider that, with a frightful conventionality of social 
 habitude all around him, he yet conceived the 
 simplest types of all feminine and childish loveli- 
 ness; — that in a northern climate, and with gray, 
 and white, and black, as the principal colours 
 around him, he yet became a colourist who can be 
 crushed by none, even of the Venetians; — and 
 
C O R O T 203 
 
 that with Dutch painting and Dresden china for 
 the prevailing types of art in the saloons of his 
 day, he threw himself at once at the feet of the 
 great masters of Italy, and arose from their feet 
 to share their throne — I know not that in the 
 whole history of art you can produce another in- 
 stance of so strong, so unaided, so unerring an in- 
 stindt for all that was true, pure, and noble. 
 
 Ti 
 
 COROT 
 
 £mILE MICHEL 
 
 HE passing of years failed to impair Gorot's 
 invincible youthfulness. In 1873, he painted the 
 admirable landscape now in the Thomy-Thiery 
 colledion, known as the Jrras Road. In reality, 
 this is the village of Sin-le-Noble, near Douai. 
 Corot was 77 years of age at the time, but he rose 
 at five in the morning and devoted five sittings to 
 this work. His animation and enthusiasm can be 
 seen in the execution. He was as happy as a child 
 during the pleasant hours spent face to face with 
 nature. Never in his life had he been more in- 
 spired, and the joy he felt in painting this delight- 
 ful work is communicated to those who look at it. 
 It attradls one's attention from afar by its perfecft 
 harmony, by the pureness of the morning light and 
 the exquisite softness of the slightly misty day. 
 It is a delight to gaze for a long time at this pidture, 
 gradually discovering all its grace and poetry. 
 
 Corot brings to our notice little unknown spots, 
 which we should otherwise have passed indif- 
 ferently, and he makes us look at them with his 
 
204 C O R O T 
 
 eyes and feel the charm that he discovered and 
 which he communicated to all that he touched. 
 Every year, at the beginning of Spring, he was in 
 a hurry to leave Paris, and to go to the fields. 
 Fascinated and deeply touched by the mysterious 
 awakening of all vegetation, he liked to be near 
 enough to watch its daily progress, while after 
 being shut up the whole winter in his studio, he 
 loved to feel himself gradually growing young 
 again by inhaling the fresh, vivifying air and by 
 refreshing his eyesight with all the delicate and 
 fleeting harmonies of spring. To the venerable 
 artist these were privileged moments, and one feels, 
 in the more delicate technique of his later studies 
 and in their more exquisite gradations of colour, a 
 sort of emotion mingled with the joy of painting. 
 When, towards the end of his life, Corot was obliged 
 to economize his strength and could not allow him- 
 self these long intervals of pure enjoyment, he 
 never could look without deep emotion at the 
 studies which recalled them to his mind. 
 
 "Behind the trunk of that white poplar," he 
 said to me, one day, pointing to a certain pidure, 
 "a blackbird sang the whole of one afternoon. 
 I can hear its sonourous little voice now, and I 
 tried to make others hear it, but that season which 
 is so delightful to watch is terrible to depidt. The 
 painter can neither give an idea of all the delicious 
 odours nor yet of all the songs in the air announc- 
 ing the near approach of spring." 
 
 Corot continued tranquilly along his own path, 
 never deviating in any way, and in the end, the 
 originality of his style won for him the fervent 
 admiration of many of his brother artists. He was 
 
C O R O T 205 
 
 able to enjoy the pleasure of being comprehended 
 and was greatly touched by the tokens of sympathy 
 he received. A landscape painter, who was very 
 much in love with his work, was somewhat re- 
 served in expressing his admiration. 
 
 "Go on," said Corot, "don't hesitate. I have 
 not been spoiled by praise, and if I get a little extra 
 today it will only make up for the past." 
 
 " Corot is a true artist," wrote Delacroix, after 
 paying him a visit on the 14th of March, 1847. 
 "One must see a painter in his own home in order 
 to have an idea of his merit. I saw there, and ap- 
 preciated in quite a diflFerent way, pidtures that I 
 had already seen in the Salon and which had not 
 then struck me particularly. He told me to go 
 straight ahead always and to take what came in 
 my way. He does this himself generally and he 
 does not believe that one can ever make a pidture 
 beautiful merely by taking infinite pains." 
 
 Yet Corot never spared himself any trouble. 
 When comparing him with his contemporaries, 
 tormented as they were by continual anxiety and 
 hesitation, it is evident that at an early age he had 
 known what his own aspirations really were. He 
 was very kindly disposed towards young artists 
 and liked giving them advice, based on his own ex- 
 perience. He recommended them first to establish 
 and then work up the form, as that was absolutely 
 essential. Above everything else, he advised them 
 to obey their instindl conscientiously and sincerely, 
 and their own way of seeing, and not to trouble 
 about anything else. These were rules which he had 
 followed himself, in spite of the fun some of his 
 comrades made of him. They had not approved 
 
206 TURNER AND TITIAN 
 
 of his works, and yet, later, these very works had 
 been greatly in demand. "Nature," he went on 
 to say, "is never two minutes alike, it changes con- 
 stantly, according to the season, according to the 
 weather, the hour, the light, the cold or the heat. 
 All this constitutes its expression and it is just this 
 which one must translate well. One day it is this, 
 another day that, and when once the artist has 
 taken in all its different aspedts he must make a 
 whole of it and this whole will be like nature if the 
 artist has seen properly." These ideas were also 
 shared by Constable. 
 
 TURNER AND TITIAN 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 X30RN half-way between the mountains and the 
 sea — that young George of Castelfranco — of the 
 Brave Castel: — Stout George they called him, 
 George of Georges, so goodly a boy he was — 
 Giorgione. 
 
 Have you ever thought what world his eyes 
 opened on — fair, searching eyes of youth ? What 
 a world of mighty life, from those mountain roots 
 to the shore; of loveliest life, when he went down, 
 yet so young, to the marble city — and became him- 
 self as a fiery heart to it? 
 
 A city of marble, did I say ? Nay, rather a golden 
 city, paved with emerald. For truly, every pin- 
 nacle and turret glanced or glowed, overlaid with 
 gold, or bossed with jasper. Beneath, the unsullied 
 sea drew in deep breathing, to and fro, its eddies 
 of green wave. Deep-hearted, majestic, terrible 
 
TURNER AND TITIAN 20/ 
 
 as the sea — the men of Venice moved in sway of 
 power and war; pure as her pillars of alabaster, 
 stood her mothers and maidens; from foot to brow, 
 all noble, walked her knights; the low bronzed 
 gleaming of sea-rusted armour shot angrily under 
 their blood-red mantel-folds. Fearless, faithful, 
 patient, impenetrable, implacable — every word a 
 fate, sate her senate. In hope and honour, lulled 
 by flowing of wave around their isles of sacred 
 sand, each with his name written and the cross 
 graved at his side, lay her dead. A wonderful piece 
 of world. Rather, itself a world. It lay along the 
 face of the waters, no larger, as its captains saw it 
 from their masts at evening, than a bar of sunset 
 that could not pass away; but for its power, it 
 must have seemed to them as if they were sailing 
 in the expanse of heaven, and this a great planet, 
 whose orient edge widened through ether. A 
 world from which all ignoble care and petty thoughts 
 were banished, with all the common and poor ele- 
 ments of life. No foulness, nor tumult, in those 
 tremulous streets, that filled, or fell, beneath the 
 moon; but rippled music of majestic change, or 
 thrilling silence. No weak walls could rise above 
 them; no low-roofed cottages, nor straw built shed. 
 Only the strength as of rock, and the finished setting 
 of stones most precious. And around them, far 
 as the eye could reach, still the soft moving of 
 stainless waters, proudly pure; as not the flower, 
 so neither the thorn nor the thistle, could grow in 
 the glancing fields. Ethereal strength of Alps, 
 dream-like, vanishing in high procession beyond 
 the Torcellan shore; blue islands of Paduan hills, 
 poised in the golden west. Above, free winds and 
 
208 TURNER AND TITIAN 
 
 fiery clouds ranging at their will; — brightness out 
 of the north, and balm from the south, and the 
 stars of the evening and morning clear in the 
 limitless light of arched heaven and circHng sea. 
 
 Such was Giorgione's school — such Titian's 
 home. 
 
 Near the south-west corner of Covent Garden, a 
 square brick pit or well is forme4 by a close-set 
 block of houses, to the back windows of which it ad- 
 mits a few rays of light. Access to the bottom of 
 it is obtained out of Maiden Lane, through a low 
 archway and an iron gate; and if you stand long 
 enough under the archway to accustom your eyes 
 to the darkness, you may see on the left hand a 
 narrow door, which formerly gave quiet access to 
 a respedlable barber's shop, of which the front 
 window, looking into Maiden Lane, is still extant, 
 filled, in this year (i860) with a row of bottles, 
 connedled in some defundl manner with a brewer's 
 business. A more fashionable neighbourhood, it 
 is said, eighty years ago than now — never certainly 
 a cheerful one — wherein a boy being born on 
 St. George's day, 1775, began soon after to take 
 interest in the world of Covent Garden, and put 
 to service such spectacles of life as it afforded. 
 
 No knights to be seen there, nor, I imagine, 
 many beautiful ladies; their costume at least dis- 
 advantageous, depending much on incumbency of 
 hat and feather, and short waists; the majesty of 
 men founded similarly on shoebuckles and wigs: 
 — impressive enough when Reynolds will do his 
 best for it; but not suggestive of much ideal de- 
 light to a boy. 
 
 "Bello ovile dov'io dormii agnello": of things 
 
TURNER AND TITIAN 209 
 
 beautiful, besides men and women, dusty sunbeams 
 up or down the street on summer mornings; deep 
 furrowed cabbage leaves at the greengrocer's; 
 magnificence of oranges in wheelbarrows round the 
 corner; and Thames' shore within three minutes' 
 race. 
 
 None of these things very glorious; the best, 
 however, that England, it seems, was then able to 
 provide for a boy of gift: who, such 'as they are, 
 loves them — never, indeed, forgets them. The 
 short waists modify to the last his visions of Greek 
 ideal. His foregrounds had always a succulent 
 cluster or two of greengrocery at the corners. 
 Enchanted oranges gleam in Covent Gardens of 
 the Hesperides; and great ships go to pieces in 
 order to scatter chests of them on the waves. 
 That mist of early sunbeams in the London dawn 
 crosses, many and many a time, the clearness of 
 Italian air; and by Thames' shore, with its stranded 
 barges and glidings of red sail, dearer to us than 
 Lucerne Lake or Venetian lagoon — by Thames' 
 shore we will die. 
 
 With such circumstances round him in youth, let 
 us note what necessary efFedls followed upon the 
 boy. I assume him to have had Giorgione's sensi- 
 bihty (and more than Giorgione's, if that is pos- 
 sible) to colour and form. I tell you farther, and 
 this fadt you may receive trustfully, that his 
 sensibility to human affedtion and distress was no 
 less keen than even his sense for natural beauty — 
 heart-sight deep as eyesight. 
 
 Consequently, he attaches himself with the 
 faithfullest child-love to everything that bears an 
 image of the place he was born in. No matter 
 
2IO TURNER AND TITIAN 
 
 how Ugly it is — has it anything about it like 
 Maiden Lane, or like Thames' shore? If so, it 
 shall be painted for their sake. Hence, to the very 
 close of life. Turner could endure ugliness which 
 no one else, of the same sensibility, would have 
 borne with for an instant. Dead brick walls, 
 blank square windows, old clothes, market-womanly 
 types of humanity — anything fishy and muddy, 
 like Billingsgate or Hungerford Market, had great 
 attradlion for him; black barges, patched sails, 
 and every possible condition of fog. 
 
 You will find these tolerations and affedions 
 guiding or sustaining him to the last hour of his 
 life; the notablest of all such endurances being 
 that of dirt. No Venetian ever draws anything 
 foul; but Turner devoted pidture after pidlure to 
 the illustration of efFedls of dinginess, smoke, soot, 
 dust, and dusty texture; old sides of boats, weedy 
 roadside vegetables, dung-hills, straw-yards, and 
 all the soilings and strains of every common labour. 
 
 And more than this, he not only could endure, 
 but enjoyed and looked for litter, like Covent 
 Garden wreck after the market. His pidlures are 
 often full of it, from side to side; their foregrounds 
 differ from all other in the natural way that things 
 have of lying about in them. Even his richest vege- 
 tation, in ideal work, is confused; and he delights 
 in shi,ngle, debris, and heaps pf fallen stones. The 
 last words he ever spoke to me about a pidture were 
 in gentle exultation about his St. Gothard: "that 
 litter of stones which I endeavored to represent." 
 
 The second great result of this Covent Garden 
 training was, understanding of and regard for the 
 poor, whom the Venetians, we saw, despised; 
 
TURNER AND TITIAN 211 
 
 whom, contrarily, Turner loved, and more than 
 loved — understood. He got no romantic sight of 
 them, but an infaUible one, as he prowled about 
 the end of his lane, watching night efFedts in the 
 wintry streets; nor sight of the poor alone, but of 
 the poor in diredt relations with the rich. He knew, 
 in good and evij, what both .classes thought of, 
 and how they dealt with, each other. 
 
 Reynolds and Gainsborough, bred in country 
 villages, learned there the country boy's reverential 
 theory of "the squire" and kept it. They painted 
 the squire and the squire's lady as centres of the 
 movements of the universe, to the end of their lives. 
 But Turner perceived the younger squire in other 
 aspedts about his lane, occurring prominently in 
 its night scenery, as a dark figure, or one of two, 
 against the moonlight. He saw also the working 
 of city commerce, from endless warehouse, tower- 
 ing over Thames, to the back shop in the lane, with 
 its stale herrings — highly interesting these last; 
 one of his father's best friends, whom he often 
 afterwards visited afFecflionately at Bristol, being a 
 fishmonger, and glue-boiler; which gives us a 
 friendly turn of mind towards herring-fishing, 
 whaling, Calais possardes, and many other of our 
 choicest subjects in after life; all this being con- 
 neAed with that mysterious forest below London 
 Bridge on one side; — and on the other, with these 
 masses of human power and national wealth which 
 weigh upon us, at Covent Garden here, with 
 strange compression, and crush us into narrow 
 Hand Court. 
 
 "That mysterious forest below London Bridge" 
 — better for the boy than wood of pine, or grove 
 
212 SINCERITY 
 
 of myrtle. How he must have tormented the 
 watermen, beseeching them to let him crouch any- 
 where in the bows, quiet as a log, so only that he 
 might get floated down there among the ships, 
 and round and round the ships, and with the ships, 
 and by the ships, and under the ships, staring and 
 clambering; — these the only quite beautiful things 
 he can see in all the world, except the sky; but these, 
 when the sun is on their sails, filling or falling, end- 
 lessly disordered by sway of tide and stress of an- 
 chorage, beautiful unspeakably; which ships also 
 are inhabited by glorious creatures — red-faced 
 sailors, with pipes, appearing over the gunwales, 
 true knights, over their castle parapets — the most 
 angelic beings in the whole compass of London 
 world. And Trafalgar happening long before we 
 can draw ships, we, nevertheless, coax all current 
 stories out of the wounded sailors, do our best at 
 present to show Nelson's funeral streaming up the 
 Thames; and vow that Trafalgar shall have its 
 tribute of memory some day. Which, accordingly, 
 is accomplished — once, with all our might, for its 
 death; twice, with all our might, for its viftory; 
 thrice, in pensive farewell to the old Temeraire, 
 and, with it, to that order of things. 
 
 I 
 
 SINCERITY 
 
 SAMUEL BUTLER 
 
 T is not enough that the painter should make the 
 spedlator feel what he meant him to feel; he must 
 also make him feel that this feehng was shared by 
 the painter himself bona fide and without afFeda- 
 
SINCE RITY 213 
 
 tion. Of all the lies a painter can tell the worst 
 is saying that he likes what he does not like. But 
 the poor wretch seldom knows himself; for the 
 art of knowing what gives him pleasure has been 
 so neglefted that it has been lost to all but a very 
 few. The old Italians knew well enough what they 
 liked and were as children in saying it. 
 
Hi 
 
 Semon IV 
 
 SCULPTURE 
 
 REPOSE 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 ^ENCE I think that there is no desire more in- 
 tense or more exalted than that which exists in all 
 rightly disciplined minds for the evidences of re- 
 pose in external signs, and what I cautiously said 
 respedling infinity, I say fearlessly respefting re- 
 pose, that no work of art can be great without it, 
 and that all art is great in proportion to the ap- 
 pearance of it. It is the most unfailing test of 
 beauty, whether of matter or of motion, nothing 
 can be ignoble that possesses it, nothing right that 
 has it not, and in stridl proportion to its appear- 
 ance in the work is the majesty of mind to be 
 inferred in the artificer. Without regard to other 
 qualities, we may look to this for our evidence, 
 and by the search for this alone we may be led 
 to the rejedlion of all that is base, and the ac- 
 cepting of all tljat is good and great, for the 
 paths of wisdom are all peace. We shall see by 
 this light three colossal images standing up side by 
 side, looming in their great rest of spirituality 
 above the whole world horizon, Phidias, Michael 
 Angelo, and Dante; and then, separated from their 
 great religious thrones only by less fullness and 
 
2l6 REPOSE 
 
 earnestness of Faith, Homer, and Shakespeare; 
 and from these we may go down step by step among 
 the mighty men of every age, securely and cer- 
 tainly observant of diminished lustre in every ap- 
 pearance of restlessness and effort, until the last 
 trace of true inspiration vanishes in the tottering 
 affedlions of the tortured insanities of modern times. 
 There is no art, no pursuit, whatsoever, but its 
 results may be classed by this test alone; every- 
 thing of evil is betrayed and winnowed away by it, 
 glitter and confusion and glare of color, incon- 
 sistency or absence of thought, forced expression, 
 evil choice of subjedl, over accumulation of 
 materials, whether in painting or literature; pre- 
 tence, over decoration, over division of parts in 
 architedlure, and again in music, in adling, in 
 dancing, in whatsoever art, great or mean, there 
 are yet degrees of greatness or meanness entirely 
 dependent on this single quality of repose. 
 
 I believe that by comparing the disgusting con- 
 vulsions of the Laocoon, with the Elgin Theseus, 
 we may obtain a general idea of the effeA of the 
 influence, as shown by its absence in one, and 
 presence in the other, of two works which, as far 
 as artistical merit is concerned, are in some measure 
 parallel, not that I believe, even in this respedt, the 
 Laocoon justifiably comparable with the Theseus. 
 
 In the Cathedral of Lucca, near the entrance 
 door of the north transept, there is a monument of 
 Jacopo della Quercia's to Illaria di Caretto, the 
 wife of Paolo Guinigi. I name it not as more 
 beautiful or perfedl than other examples of the same 
 period, but as furnishing an instance of the exaft 
 and right mean between the rigidity and rudeness 
 
THE SPHYNX 217 
 
 r 
 
 of the earlier monumental effigies, and the morbid 
 imitation of life, sleep, or death, of which the 
 fashion has taken place in modern times. She is 
 lying on a simple couch, with a hound at her feet, 
 not on the side, but with the head laid straight 
 and simply on the hard pillow, in which, let it be 
 observed, there is no effort at deceptive imitation 
 of pressure. It is understood as a pillow, but not 
 mistaken for one. The hair is bound in a flat 
 braid over the fair brow, the sweet and arched eyes 
 are closed, the tenderness of the loving lips is set 
 and quiet, there is that about them which forbids 
 breath, something which is not death nor sleep, 
 but the pure image of both. The hands are not 
 lifted in prayer, neither folded, but the arms are 
 laid at length upon the body, and the hands cross 
 as they fall. The feet are hidden by the drapery, 
 and the forms of the limbs concealed, but not their 
 tenderness. 
 
 If any of us, after staying for a time beside this 
 tomb, could see through his tears, one of the vain 
 and unkind encumbrances of the grave, which, in 
 these hollow and heartless days, feigned sorrow 
 builds to foolish pride, he would, I believe, receive 
 such a lesson of love as no coldness could refuse, 
 no fatuity forget, and no insolence disobey. 
 
 THE SPHYNX 
 
 ALEXANDER WILLIAM KINGLAKE 
 
 N, 
 
 EAR the Pyramidsj more wondrous and more 
 awful than all else in the land of Egypt, there sits 
 the lonely Sphynx. Comely the creature is, but 
 
2l8 THE SPHYNX 
 
 the comeliness is not of this world: the once wor- 
 shipped beast is a deformity and a monster to this 
 generation; and yet you can see that those lips, 
 so thick and heavy, were fashioned according to 
 some ancient mould of beauty — some mould of 
 beauty now forgotten — forgotten because that 
 Greece drew forth Cytherea from the flashing foam 
 of the Aegean, and in her image created new forms 
 of beauty, and made it a law among men that the 
 short and proudly-wreathed lip should stand for 
 the sign and the mam condition of loveliness through 
 all generations to come. Yet still there lives on 
 the race of those who were beautiful in the fashion 
 of the elder world; and Christian girls of Coptic 
 blood will look on you with the sad, serious gaze, 
 and kiss you your charitable hand with the big 
 pouting lips of the very Sphynx. 
 
 Laugh and mock if you will at the worship of 
 stone idols; but mark ye this, ye breakers of im- 
 ages, that in one regard, the stone idol bears awful 
 semblance of Deity — unchangefulness in the midst 
 of change — the same seeming will and intent for- 
 ever and ever inexorable! Upon ancient dynasties 
 of Ethiopian and Egyptian kings — upon Greek 
 and Roman, upon Arab and Ottoman conquerors 
 
 — upon Napoleon dreaming of an Eastern empire 
 
 — upon battle and pestilence — upon the ceaseless 
 misery of the Egyptian race — upon keen-eyed 
 traveller's — Herodotus yesterday, and Warburton 
 today — upon all and more this unworldly Sphynx 
 has watched, and watched like a Providence with 
 the same earnest eyes, and the same sad, tranquil 
 mien. And we, we shall die, and Islam will wither 
 away; and the Englishman, straining far over to 
 
THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES 219 
 
 hold his loved India, will plant a firm foot on the 
 banks of the Nile and sit in the seats of the Faith- 
 ful, and still that sleepless rock will lie watching 
 and watching the works of the new busy race, with 
 those same sad earnest eyes, and the same tranquil 
 mien everlasting. You dare not mock at the 
 Sphynx. 
 
 Fi 
 
 THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES 
 
 T. J. COBDEN-SANDERSON 
 
 IRST fashioned he a shield great and strong, 
 adorning it all over, and set thereto a shining rim, 
 triple, bright glancing, and therefrom a silver 
 baldrick. Five were the folds of the shield itself, 
 we are told, and therein fashioned he much cun- 
 ning work from his wise h'eart. There wrought he 
 the earth and the heavens, and the sea, and the 
 unwearying sun, and the moon waxing to the full, 
 and the signs every one wherewith the heavens are 
 crowned, Pleiads and Hyads and Orion's might, 
 and the Bear that men call also the Wain, her that 
 turneth in her place and watcheth Orion, and alone 
 hath no part in the baths of Ocean." 
 
 Therein too he set all the charadteristic scenes of 
 human life, and among them the scene of a field 
 a-ploughing, and one or two other scenes of a like 
 kind, of outdoor life, which I will now go back to, 
 to illustrate my theme of the nobility and beauty 
 of labour artistically conceived : — 
 
 "Furthermore he set in the shield a soft fresh- 
 ploughed field, rich tilth and wide, the third time 
 ploughed: and many ploughers therein drave their 
 
220 THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES 
 
 yokes to and fro as they wheeled about. Whenso- 
 ever they came to the boundary of the field and 
 turned, then would a man come to each and give 
 into his hands a goblet of sweet wine; while others 
 would be turning back along the furrows, fain to 
 reach the boundary of the deep tilth. And the 
 field grew black behind and seemed as it were a- 
 ploughing, albeit of gold, for this was the great 
 marvel of the work. 
 
 "Furthermore he set therein a demesne land deep 
 in corn, where hinds were reaping with sharp sickles 
 in their hands. Some armfuls along the swaths 
 were falling in rows to the earth, while others the 
 sheaf binders were binding in twisted bands of 
 straw. Three sheaf binders stood over them, 
 while, behind, boys gathering corn and bearing it 
 in their arms, gave it constantly to the binders; 
 and among them the lord in silence was standing 
 at the swath with his staff, rejoicing in his heart. 
 And henchmen apart, beneath an oak, were making 
 ready a feast, and preparing a great ox they had 
 sacrificed: while the women were stewing much 
 white barley to be a supper for the hinds." 
 
 So much for ploughing and sowing and reaping 
 and harvests. 
 
 Here is another pidlure of a like kind too beauti- 
 ful to be omitted : — 
 
 "Also he set therein a vineyard, teeming plente- 
 ously with clusters, wrought fair in gold, black 
 were the grapes, but the vine hung throughout on 
 silver poles. And around he ran a ditch of Cyanus, 
 and round that a fence of tin; and one single path- 
 way led to it, whereby the vintagers might go, when 
 they should gather the vintage. And maidens 
 
THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES 221 
 
 and striplings, in childish glee bare the sweet fruit 
 in plaited baskets. And in the midst of them a 
 boy made pleasant music on a clear-toned viol, 
 and sang thereto a sweet Linus-song with delicate 
 voice: while the rest, with feet falling together, 
 kept time with the music and the song." 
 
 My objedt only is to show what an industry may 
 be, how beautiful in itself and in its implements and 
 in the piAure which it yields to the imagination, 
 when it is dwelt upon for its own sake as well as for 
 its results : when, in short, it is treated in the spirit 
 of a noble art. 
 
 I would have you to mark, beyond the sub- 
 stantive beauty of the description, that in execut- 
 ing on the shield of Achilles his great conception of 
 all the deeds of mankind, the Artist took care to 
 set them amid the wide heavens, and to^diredt the 
 attention of the onlooker to the superb enrolling 
 and unfolding of that silent universe which is still 
 our own home today, to the sea, to the unwearying 
 sun, and the moon waxing to the full, and to the 
 signs every one wherewith the heavens are crowned 
 — Pleiads and Hyads, and Orion's might, and the 
 Bear that men call the Wain, her that turneth in 
 her place and watcheth Orion, and alone hath no 
 place in the bath of Ocean. This I take to be the 
 universal note of all high Art, this recognition of 
 the eternal in the heavens, and this setting of the 
 deeds of mankind into harmony with it. 
 
 Art 'implies a certain lofty environment, and is 
 itself an adjustment to that environment, of all 
 that can be done by mankind within it. Art as a 
 great function of human imagination is not the 
 creation of isolated objeds of beauty, though 
 
222 THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES 
 
 isolated objeAs of beauty may indeed be created 
 by Art, and in themselves resume all that is beauti- 
 ful, orderly, restful, and stable in the artist's con- 
 ception of that environment. Still less is it, what 
 some may seem to imagine, the objefts of beauty 
 themselves. It is something — it is much — more. 
 Art is, or should be, alive, alive and an universal 
 stimulus. It is that spirit of order and seemliness, 
 of dignity and sublimity which, adling in unison 
 with the great procession of natural forces in their 
 own orderly evolution, tends to make out of a 
 chaos of egotistic passions a great power of disin- 
 terested social adlion: which tends to make out of 
 the seemingly meaningless satisfadlion of our daily 
 and annual needs a beautiful exercise of our in- 
 numerable gifts of fancy and invention, an ex- 
 ercise ,which may be its own exceeding great re- 
 ward, and come to seem to be indeed the end for 
 which the needs were made. 
 
 The shield of Achilles depidled the life of man as 
 a whole, artistically conceived. It set it amid the 
 heavens in unison therewith, and around the ut- 
 termost rim of the shield the artist set the all- 
 embracing River of Ocean. That river of ocean 
 may stand for the limit of man's knowledge of the 
 universe at that time. The Homeric Greek imaged 
 the world to himself as flat, flowed round by the 
 River of Ocean. And yet even at that time, we 
 may suppose, the world was round and immersed 
 in illimitable aether. The mind of the Greek, then, 
 was not in faA, however it might be in spirit, in 
 conscious unison with the world without him. 
 Since that day the horizon of man's knowledge has 
 been pushed indefinitely beyond the limitation set 
 
SCULPTURE AND PAINTING 223 
 
 by the imaginary River of Ocean. The content of 
 man's mind has been immensely changed. It is 
 this new content which awaits the hand of the 
 artist. It is dead as yet, a dead world. It waits 
 the touch of art to make it live, to kindle it into 
 life. 
 
 I have defined the fundion of Art: it is the setting 
 in order the house of mankind. I now define the 
 future of art : it is the setting in order the house of 
 mankind in exalted consciousness of the environ- 
 ment amid which it is placed. 
 
 SCULPTURE AND PAINTING 
 
 G. LOWES DICKINSON 
 
 •Sculpture and painting, in facfl, to the Greeks, 
 were not merely a medium of aesthetic pleasure; 
 they were ways of expressing and interpreting 
 national life. ' As such they were subordinated to 
 religion. The primary end of sculpture was to 
 make statues of the gods and heroes; the primary 
 end of painting was to represent mythological 
 scenes; and in either case the purely aesthetic 
 pleasure was also a means to a religious experience. 
 Let us take, for example, the statue of Zeus at 
 Olympia, the most famous of the works of Pheidias. 
 This colossal figure of ivory and gold was doubtless 
 according to all the testimony we possess, from a 
 merely aesthetic point of view, among the most 
 consummate creatioiis of human genius. But what 
 was the main airn of the artist who made it ? What 
 the main effecft on the spectator ? The artist had 
 
224 SCULPTURE AND PAINTING 
 
 designed and the speAator seemed to behold a 
 concrete image of that Homeric Zeus who was the 
 centre of his religious consciousness — the Zeus who 
 "nodded his dark brow, and the ambrosial locks 
 waved from the King's immortal head, and he made 
 great Olympus quake." "Those who approach 
 the temple," says Lucian, "do not conceive that 
 they see ivory from the Indies or gold from the 
 mines of Thrace; no? but the very son of Kronos 
 and Rhea, transported by Pheidias to earth and 
 set to watch over the lonely plain of Pisa." "He 
 was," says Dion Chrysostom, "the type of that 
 unattained ideal; Hellas come to unity with her- 
 self; in expression at once mild and awful, as be- 
 fits the giver of life and all good gifts, the common 
 father, savior and guardian of men, dignified as a 
 king, tender as a father, awful as giver of laws, 
 kind as proteAor of suppliants and friends, simple 
 and great as giver of increase and wealth; revealing, 
 in a word, in form and countenance, the whole array 
 of gifts and qualities proper to his supreme divinity." 
 The description is charadteristic of the whole aim 
 of Greek sculpture, — the representation not only 
 of beauty, but of charadter, not only of charadler 
 but of charadler ideahzed. The statues of the 
 various gods derive their distinguishing individu- 
 ality not merely from their association with con- 
 ventional symbols, but from a concrete repro- 
 duAion, in features, expression, drapery, pose, of 
 the ethical and intelledlual qualities for which they 
 stand. An Apollo differs in type from a Zeus, an 
 Athene from a Demeter; and in every case the 
 artist works from an intelledlual conception, bent 
 not simply on a graceful harmony of lines, but on 
 
SCULPTURE AND PAINTING 225 
 
 the representation of a charader at once definite 
 and ideal. 
 
 Primarily, then, Greek sculpture was an expres- 
 sion of the national religion; and therefore, also, 
 of the national life. For, as we saw, the cult of 
 the gods was the centre, not only of the religious 
 but of the political consciousness of Greece; and 
 an art which was born and flourished in the temple 
 and the sacred grove, naturally became the ex- 
 ponent of the ideal aspedl of the state. It was thus, 
 for example, that the Parthenon at Athens was at 
 once the centre of the worship of Athene, and a 
 symbol of the corporate life over which she presided; 
 the statue of the goddess having as its appropriate 
 complement the frieze over which the spirit of the 
 city moved in stone. And thus, too, the statues 
 of the vidtors at the Olympian games were dedi- 
 cated in the sacred precindl, as a memorial of what 
 was not only an athletic meeting, but also at once 
 a centre of Hellenic unity and the most consummate 
 expression of that asped: of their culture which con- 
 tributed at least as much to their aesthetic as to 
 their physical perfecflion. 
 
 Sculpture, in fadt, throughout was subordinated 
 to religion, and through religion to national life; 
 and it was from this that it derived its ideal and 
 intelledlual charafter. And, so far as our authori- 
 ties enable us to judge, the same is true of painting. 
 The great pidtures of which we have descriptions 
 were painted to adorn temples and public build- 
 ings, and represented either mythological or na- 
 tional themes. Such, for example, was the great 
 work of Polygnotus at Delphi, in which was de- 
 pidted on the one hand the sack of Troy, on the 
 
226 SCULPTURE AND PAINTING 
 
 Other, the descent of Odysseus into Hades; and 
 such his representation of the battle of Marathon, 
 in the painted porch that led to the Acropolis of 
 Athens. And even the vase paintings of which we 
 have innumerable examples, and which are mere 
 decorations of common domestic utensils, have 
 often enough some story of gods and heroes for 
 their theme, whereby over and above their purely 
 aesthetic value they made their appeal to the gen- 
 eral religious consciousness of Greece. Painting, 
 like sculpture, had its end, in a sense, outside it- 
 self; and from this very fa<9: derived its peculiar 
 dignity, simplicity, and power. 
 
 From this account of the plastic art of the Greeks 
 it follows as a simple corollary, that their aim was 
 not merely to reproduce, but to transcend nature. 
 For their subjeA was gods and heroes, and heroes 
 and gods were superior to men. Of this idealizing 
 tendency we have in sculpture evidence enough in 
 the many examples which have been preserved to 
 us; and with regard to painting there is a curious 
 literary testimony to the same efFedt. Aristotle, 
 for example, remarks that "even if it is impossible 
 that men should be such as Zeuxis painted them, 
 yet it is better that he should paint them so; for 
 the example ought to excel that for which it is an 
 example." And in an imaginary conversation 
 recorded between Socrates and Parrhasius the 
 artist admits without any hesitation that more 
 pleasure is to be derived from pidlures of men who 
 are morally good than from those of men who are 
 morally bad. In the Greek view, in fad, as we 
 saw, physical and moral excellence went together, 
 and it was excellence they sought to depidt in their 
 
REPOSE IN GREEK ART 227 
 
 art; not merely aesthetic beauty, though that was 
 a necessary presupposition, but on the top of that, 
 ideal types of charadter representative of their 
 conception of the hero and the god. Art, in a word, 
 was subordinate to the ethical ideal; or rather the 
 ethical and aesthetic ideals were not yet disso- 
 ciated; and the greatest artists the world has ever 
 known worked deliberately under the direction 
 and inspiration of the ideas that controlled and 
 determined the life of their time. 
 
 REPOSE IN GREEK ART 
 
 WILLIAM HAZLITT 
 
 I 
 
 N a general way it may be laid down as a rule, 
 that the most perfedl of the antiques are the most 
 simple, — those which affedt the least action, or 
 violence of passion, — which repose the most on 
 natural beauty of form, and a certain expression of 
 sweetness and dignity, that is, which remain most 
 nearly in that state in which they could be copied 
 from nature without straining the limbs or features 
 of the individual, or racking the invention of the 
 artist. This tendency of Greek art to repose has 
 indeed been reproached with insipidity by those 
 who had not a true feeling of beauty and sentiment. 
 I, however, prefer these models of habitual grace 
 or internal grandeur to the violent distortions of 
 suffering in the Laocoon. 
 
 In general, then, I would be understood to main- 
 tain that .the beauty and grandeur so much admired 
 in the Greek statues were not a voluntary fidlion 
 of the brain of the artist, but existed substantially 
 
228 REPOSE IN GREEK ART 
 
 in the forms from which they were copied, and by 
 which the artist was surrounded. A striking 
 authority in support of these observations, which 
 has in some measure been lately discovered, is to 
 be found in the Elgin Marbles, taken from the 
 Acropolis at Athens, and supposed to be the works 
 of the celebrated Phidias. The process of fastidi- 
 ous refinement and indefinite abstraction is cer- 
 tainly not visible there. The figures have all the 
 ease, the simplicity, and variety of individual 
 nature. Even the details of the subordinate 
 parts, the loose hanging folds in the skin, the veins 
 under the belly or on the sides of the horses, more 
 or less swelled as the animal is more or less in adion, 
 are given with scrupulous exactness. This is true 
 nature and true art. In a word, these invaluable 
 remains of antiquity are precisely like casts taken 
 from life. The ideal is not the preference of that 
 which exists only in the mind to that which exists 
 in nature; but the preference of that which is fine 
 in nature to that which is less so. There is nothing 
 fine in art but what is taken almost immediately, 
 and, as it were, in the mass, from what is finer in 
 nature. Where there have been the finest models 
 in nature, there have been the finest works of art. 
 Grandeur of conception, truth of nature, and 
 purity of taste, seem to have been at their height 
 when the masterpieces which adorned the Temple 
 of Minerva at Athens, of which we have only these 
 imperfedl fragments, were produced. Compared 
 with these, the later Greek statues display a more 
 elaborate workmanship, more of the artifices of 
 style. The several parts are more uniformly bal- 
 anced, made more to tally like modern periods; 
 
PARTHENON SCULPTURES 229 
 
 each muscle is more equally brought out, and more 
 highly finished as a part, but not with the same 
 subordination of each part to the whole. If some 
 of these wonderful productions have a fault, it is 
 the want of that entire and naked simplicity which 
 pervades the whole of the Elgin Marbles. 
 
 PARTHENON SCULPTURES 
 
 A. S. MURRAY 
 
 Wl 
 
 HEN the Parthenon stood forth complete on 
 the Acropolis of Athens in or about the year 438 B.C. 
 there was no other building in the whole of Greece 
 comparable even in the mere extent and variety of 
 its sculptures. Imagine a frieze 522 feet in length 
 sculptured all along with figures nearly half life- 
 size, in many parts densely crowded till the marble 
 could carry no more, the whole in very low relief, 
 and executed with marvelous detail. Above the 
 columns externally and round all the four sides of 
 the temple were ninety two metopes, each consist- 
 ing of a group of two figures two-thirds life size, 
 in the highest possible relief, and full of the most 
 beautiful workmanship. Within each of the two 
 pediments or gables was an immense group of 
 statues, the smallest equal to life size, the central 
 figures colossal. Lastly, inside the Parthenon was 
 the stupendous statue of Athene herself in gold 
 and ivory by Pheidias. It was he who directed 
 the whole of the work. 
 
 The greater the extent and variety of the sculp- 
 tures the more urgent was the need of a unifying 
 purpose to bring the whole together into one 
 
230 PARTHENON SCULPTURES 
 
 scheme. The Parthenon was a new temple to the 
 goddess Athene. To her the sculpture necessarily 
 turned for inspiration. Her birth, her influence on 
 the civilization of mankind, her special services to 
 Attica, and the consequent gratitude of the Athe- 
 nians, these were the themes which naturally arose 
 in his mind. Accordingly, in the east pediment, 
 the most conspicuous place externally, he gave the 
 birth of the goddess. In the metopes we have a 
 long series of combats with barbarism, in which 
 we may trace the state of things which she was 
 born to redlify. In the west pediment she herself 
 encounters her rival, Poseidon, and defeats him. 
 All this is shown on the external sculptures. Within 
 the colonnade the whole frieze is occupied with 
 solemnities in honour of the gods, while inside the 
 Parthenon itself the gratitude of the Athenians 
 was seen culminating in the new colossal statue of 
 gold and ivory. 
 
 To borrow the language of the drama, the east 
 pediment may be called Adl I, representing the 
 surprise of the birth of Athene. The metopes may 
 be described as a long choral ode, showing how 
 greatly her presence was needed by mankind in 
 its confliAs with barbarism. The west pediment 
 was AA II, illustrating the encounter between 
 Athene and Poseidon. Then followed the frieze, 
 equivalent to another long choral ode, describing 
 the solemnity and pomp with which the Athenians 
 accompanied their gift of a new robe to their 
 goddess. The chryselephantine statue may be 
 compared to a concluding burst of joy. 
 
THE PARTHENON MARBLES 23 1 
 
 Wi 
 
 THE PARTHENON MARBLES 
 
 BENJAMIN ROBERT HAYDON 
 
 ILKIE proposed that we should go and see 
 the Elgin Marbles as he had an order. I agreed, 
 dressed, and away we went to Park Lane. I had 
 no more notion of what I was to see than of any- 
 thing I had never heard of, and walked in with 
 the utmost nonchalance. 
 
 Young, strong and enthusiastic, with no sickness, 
 no debilities, full of hope, believing all the world 
 as honourable as ourselves, wishing harm to no one 
 and incredulous of any wishing harm to us, we 
 streamed on in a perpetual round of innocent en- 
 joyment, and I look back on these hours, as the 
 most uninterrupted by envy, the least harrassed by 
 anxiety, and the fullest of unalloyed pleasure, of 
 all that have crossed the path of my life. 
 
 Such being the condition of our minds, no op- 
 portunity for improvement was ever granted to the 
 one which he did not diredlly share with the other; 
 and naturally when Wilkie got this order for the 
 marbles his first thought was that I would like to go. 
 
 To Park Lane then we went, and after passing 
 through the hall and thence into an open yard, 
 entered a damp dirty pent-house where lay the 
 marbles ranged within sight and reach. The first 
 thing I fixed my eyes on was the wrist of a figure in 
 one of the female groups, in which were visible, 
 though in a feminine form, the radius and ulna. I 
 was astonished, for I had never seen them hinted 
 at in any female wrist in the antique. I darted 
 my eye to the elbow, and saw the outer condyle 
 
232 THE PARTHENON MARBLES 
 
 visibly affedting the shape as in nature. I saw 
 that the arm was in repose and the soft parts in re- 
 laxation. That combination of nature and idea 
 which I had felt was so much wanting for high 
 art was here displayed to midday convidlion. My 
 heart beat! If I had seen nothing else I had be- 
 held sufficient to keep me to nature for the rest of 
 my life. But when I turned to the Theseus and 
 saw that every form was altered by adlion or re- 
 pose, — when I saw that the two sides of his back 
 varied, one side stretched from the shoulder blade 
 being pulled forward, and the other side compressed 
 from the shoulder blade being pushed close to the 
 spine as he rested on his elbow, with the belly flat 
 because the bowels fell into the pelvis as he sat, — 
 and when, turning to the Ilyssus, I saw the belly 
 protrude from the figure lying on its side, — and 
 again, when in the figure of the fighting metope I 
 saw the muscle shown under the one arm-pit in 
 that instantaneous adlion of darting out, and left 
 out in the other arm-pits because not wanted, — 
 when I saw, in fadl, the most heroic style of art 
 combined with all the essential detail of adlual life 
 the thing was done at once and for ever. 
 
 I shall never forget the horses' heads — the feet 
 in the metopes! I felt as if a divine truth had 
 blazed inwardly upon my mind and I knew that 
 they would at last rouse the art of Europe from its 
 slumber in the darkness. 
 
 I do not say this now, when all the world ac- 
 knowledges it, but I said it then, when no one would 
 believe me. I went home in perfedl excitement, 
 Wilkie trying to moderate my enthusiasm with his 
 national caution. 
 
THE PARTHENON MARBLES 233 
 
 I passed the evening in a mixture of torture and 
 hope; all night I dozed and dreamed of the marbles, 
 I rose at five in a fever of excitement, tried to sketch 
 the Theseus from memory, did so and saw that I 
 comprehended it. I worked that day and another 
 and another, fearing that I was deluded. At last 
 I got an order for myself; I rushed away to Park 
 Lane; the impression was more vivid than before. 
 I drove off to Fuseli, and fired him to such a degree 
 that he ran upstairs, put on his coat and away we 
 sallied. I remember that first a coal-cart with 
 eight horses stopped us as it struggled up one of 
 the lanes of the Strand; then a flock of sheep blocked 
 us up; Fuseli, in a fury of haste and rage, burst 
 into the middle of them, and they got between his 
 little legs and jostled him so much that I screamed 
 with laughter in spite of my excitement. He 
 swore all along the Strand like a little fury. ^At 
 last we came to Park Lane. Never shall I forget 
 his uncompromising enthusiasm. He strode about 
 saying, "De Greeks were godes! de Greeks were 
 godes!" 
 
 For three months I drew until I had mastered 
 the forms of these divine works and brought my 
 hand and mind into subjedtion. 
 
 I saw that the essential was selected in them and 
 the superfluous rejected; — that first, all the causes 
 of acflion were known and then all of those causes 
 wanted for any particular adion were seleded. 
 
 I drew at the marbles ten, fourteen, and fifteen 
 hours at a time; staying often till twelve at night, 
 holding a candle and my board in one hand and 
 drawing with the other; and so I should have 
 staid till morning had not the sleepy porter come 
 
234 GOTHIC SCULPTURE AT AMIENS 
 
 yawning in to tell me it was twelve o'clock, and 
 then often have gone home, cold, benumbed and 
 damp, my clothes steaming up as I dried them; 
 and so spreading my drawings on the floor and 
 putting a candle on the ground, I have drank my 
 tea at one in the morning with ecstacy as its 
 warmth trickled through my frame, and looked at 
 my pidtures and dwelt on my drawings, and pon- 
 dered on the change of empires and thought that 
 I had been contemplating what Socrates looked at 
 and Plato saw, — and then, lifted up with my own 
 high urgings of soul, I have prayed God to enlighten 
 my mind to discover the principles of those divine 
 things. 
 
 GOTHIC SCULPTURE AT AMIENS 
 
 WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 J. HE Stalls in the choir are very rich, as people 
 know, carved in wood, in the early sixteenth 
 century, with high twisted canopies, and histories, 
 from the Old Testament mostly, wrought about 
 them. The history of Joseph I remember best 
 among these. Some of the scenes in it I thought 
 very delightful; the story told in such a gloriously 
 quaint, straightforward manner. Pharaoh's dream, 
 how splendid that was! the king lying asleep on 
 his elbow, and the kine coming up to him in two 
 companies. I think the lean kine was about the 
 best bit of wood-carving I have seen yet. There 
 they were, a writhing heap, crushing and crowding 
 one another, drooping heads and starting eyes, and 
 strange angular bodies; altogether the most wonder- 
 
GOTHIC SCULPTURE AT AMIENS 235 
 
 ful symbol of famine ever conceived. I never 
 fairly understood Pharoah's dream till I saw the 
 stalls at Amiens. 
 
 There is nothing else to see in the choir; all the 
 rest of the fittings being as bad as possible. So we 
 will go out again, and walk round the choir-aisles. 
 The screen round the choir is solid, the upper part 
 of it carved (in the flamboyant times), with the 
 history of St. John the Baptist, on the north 
 side; with that of St. Firmin on the south. I re- 
 member very little of the sculptures relative to 
 St. John but I know that I did not like them much. 
 Those about St. Firmin, who evangelized Picardy, 
 I remember much better, and some of them es- 
 pecially I thought very beautiful; they are painted 
 too, and at any rate one cannot help looking at 
 them. 
 
 I do not remember, in the least, the order in 
 which they come, but some of them are fixed well 
 enough in my memory; and, principally, a bishop, 
 (St. Firmin) preaching, rising out of a pulpit from 
 the midst of the crowd, in his jeweled cope and 
 mitre, and with a beautiful sweet face. Then 
 another, the baptizing of the king and his lords, 
 was very quaint and lifelike. I remember, too, 
 something about the finding of St. Firmin's relics, 
 and the translation of the same relics when found; 
 the many bishops, with their earnest faces, in the 
 first, and the priests, bearing the reliquaries, in 
 the second; with their long vestments girded at 
 the waist and falling over their feet, painted, too, 
 in light colours, with golden flowers on them. I 
 wish I remembered these carvings better, I liked 
 them so much. Just about this place, in the lower 
 
236 GOTHIC SCULPTURE AT AMIENS 
 
 part of the screen, I remember the tomb of a priest, 
 very gorgeous, with gold and colours; he lay in a 
 deep niche, under a broad segmental arch, which 
 is painted with angels; and, outside this niche, 
 angels were drawing back painted curtains, I am 
 sorry to say. But the priest lay there in cope and 
 alb, and the gentle colour lay over him, as his calm 
 face gazed ever at the angels painted in his resting- 
 place. I have dim recoUedlion of seeing, when I 
 was at Amiens before, not this last time, a tomb, 
 which I liked much, a bishop, I think it was, lying 
 under a small round arch, but I forget the figure 
 now. This was in a chapel on the other side of the 
 choir. It is very hard to describe the interior of a 
 great church like this, especially since the white- 
 wash (applied, as I said, on this scale in 1771) lies 
 on everything so; before that time, some book 
 says, the church was painted from end to end with 
 patterns of flowers and stars, and histories: think 
 — I might have been able to say something about 
 it then, with that solemn glow of colour all about 
 me; as I walked there from sunrise to sunset; and 
 yet, perhaps, it would have filled my heart too full 
 for speaking, all that beauty, I know not. 
 
 Concerning the southernmost porch of the west 
 front. — The doorway of the porch also has on the 
 centre pillar of it a statue of the Virgin standing, 
 holding the divine Christ in her arms. Both the 
 faces of the Virgin Mother and of her Son, are very 
 beautiful; I like them much better than those of 
 the south transept; indeed I think them the grand- 
 est of all the faces of the Madonna and Child that 
 I have seen carved by the French architedts. I 
 have seen many, the faces of which I do not like. 
 
GOTHIC SCULPTURE AT AMIENS 237 
 
 though the drapery is always beautiful; their 
 faces I do not like at all events, as faces of the Virgin 
 and Child, though as faces of other people even if 
 not beautiful they would be interesting. The Child 
 is, as in the transept, draped down to the feet; 
 draped too, how exquisitely I know not how to 
 say. His right arm and hand is stretched out 
 across His mother's breast, His left hangs down so 
 that His wrist as His hand is a little curved upwards, 
 rests upon His knee; His mother holds Him slightly 
 with her left arm, with her right she holds a fold 
 of her robe on which His feet rest. His figure is 
 not by any means that of an infant, for it is slim 
 and slender, too slender for even a young boy, yet 
 too soft, too much rounded for a youth, and the 
 head also is too large; I suppose some people would 
 objeA to this way of carving One who is supposed 
 to be an infant; yet I have no doubt that the old 
 sculptors were right in doing so, and to my help in 
 this matter comes the remembrance of Ruskin's 
 answer to what Lord Lindsay says concerning the 
 inability of Giotto and his school to paint young 
 children; for he says that it might very well hap- 
 pen that Giotto could paint children, but yet did 
 not choose to in this instance, (the Presentation of 
 the Virgin) for the sake of the much greater dignity 
 to be obtained by using the more fully developed 
 figure and face; and surely, whatever could be 
 said about Giotto's paintings, no one who was at 
 all acquainted with Early French sculpture could 
 doubt that the carvers of this figure here, could 
 have carved an infant if they had thought fit to do 
 so, men who again and again grasped eagerly com- 
 mon everyday things when in any way they would 
 
238 GOTHIC SCULPTURE AT AMIENS 
 
 tell their story. To return to the statues them- 
 selves. The face of the young Christ is of the 
 same character as His figure, such a face as Eliza- 
 beth Browning tells of, the face of One "Who never 
 sinned or smiled"; at least if the sculptor fell below 
 his ideal somewhat, yet for all that, through that 
 face with which he failed in a little, we can see 
 when we look, that his ideal was such an one. The 
 Virgin face is calm and very sweet, full of rest — 
 indeed the two figures are very full of rest; every- 
 thing about them expresses it from the broad fore- 
 head of the Virgin, to the resting of the feet of the 
 Child (who is almost self-balanced) in the fold of 
 the robe that she holds gently, to the falling of the 
 quiet lines of her robe over her feet, to the resting 
 of its folds between them. 
 
 The square heads of the door-valves, and a flat 
 moulding above them which runs up also into the 
 first division of the tympanum, is covered with 
 faintly cut diaper-work of four-leaved flowers. 
 
 The first division of the tympanum has six sitting 
 figures in it; on each side of the canopy over the 
 Virgin's head, Moses and Aaron; Moses with the 
 tables of the law, and Aaron with great blossomed 
 staff; with them again two on either side, sit the 
 four greater prophets, their heads veiled, and a 
 scroll lying along between them, over their knees: 
 old they look, very old, old and passionate and 
 fierce, sitting there for so long. 
 
 The next division has in it the death and burial 
 of the Virgin, — the twelve Apostles clustering 
 round the deathbed of the Virgin. I wish my 
 photograph were on a larger scale, for this indeed 
 seems to me one of the most beautiful pieces of 
 
GOTHIC SCULPTURE AT AMIENS 239 
 
 carving about this church, those earnest faces ex- 
 pressing so many things mingled with their regret 
 that she will be no more with them; and she, the 
 Virgin-Mother, in whom all those prophecies were 
 fulfilled, lying so quiet there, with her hands crossed 
 downwards, dead at last. Ah! and where will she 
 go now ? whose face will she see always ? Oh ! that 
 we might be there too! Oh! those faces so full of 
 all tender regret,' which even They must feel for 
 Her; full of all yearning, and longing that they too 
 might finish the long fight, that they might be with 
 the happy dead; there is a wonder on their faces 
 too, when they see what the mighty power of Death 
 is. The foremost is bending down, with his left 
 hand laid upon her breast, and he is gazing there 
 so long, so very long; one looking there too, over 
 his shoulder, rests his hand on him; there is one at 
 the head, one at the foot of the bed; and he at the 
 head is turning round his head, that he may see her 
 face, while he holds in his hands the long vestment 
 on which her head rests. 
 
 So also the third and last division filling the top 
 of the arch. I only know that it represents the 
 Virgin sitting glorified with Christ, crowned by 
 angels and with angels all about her. 
 
 All the three porches of the west front have a 
 fringe of cusps ending in flowers, hanging to their 
 outermost arch, and above this a band of flower- 
 work, consisting of a rose and three rose leaves al- 
 ternating with each other. 
 
 Concerning the central porch of the west front: 
 The pillar which divides the valves of the central 
 porch carries a statue of Our Lord; His right hand 
 raised to bless. His Left hand holding the Book; 
 
240 GOTHIC SCULPTURE AT AMIENS 
 
 along the jambs of the porch are the Apostles, but 
 not the Apostles alone, I shoud think; those that 
 are in the side that I can see have their distindive 
 emblems with them, some of them at least. Their 
 faces vary very much here, as also their figures and 
 dress; the one I like best among them is one who I 
 think is meant for St. James the Less, with a long 
 club in his hands; but they are all grand faces, 
 stern and indignant, for they have come to judg- 
 ment. 
 
 For there above in the tympanum, in the midst 
 over the head of Christ, stand three angels, and the 
 midmost of them bears scales in his hands, wherein 
 are the souls being weighed against the accusations 
 of the Accuser, and on either side of him stands 
 another angel, blowing a long trumpet, held down- 
 wards, and their long, long raiment, tight across 
 the breast, falls down over their feet, heavy, vast, 
 ungirt; and at the corners of this same division 
 stand two other angels, and they are also blowing 
 long trumpets held downward so that their blast 
 goes round the world and through it; and the dead 
 are rising between the robes of the angels with their 
 hands many of them lifted to heaven; and above 
 them and below them are deep bands of wrought 
 flowers; and in the vaulting of the porch are eight 
 bands of niches with many, many figures carved 
 therein; and in the first row in the lowest niche 
 Abraham stands with the saved souls in the folds 
 of his raiment. But above the resurrection from 
 the dead, in the tympanum, is the reward of the 
 good, and the punishment of the bad. Peter 
 standing there at the gate, and the long line of the 
 blessed entering one by one; each one crowned as 
 
NICCOLA PI SAN O 241 
 
 he enters by an angel waiting there; and above 
 their heads a cornice takes the shape of many 
 angels stooping down to them to crown them. 
 But on the inferno side the devil drives before him 
 the wicked, all naked, presses them on toward hell- 
 mouth, that gapes for them, and above their heads 
 the devil-cornice hangs and weighs on them. And 
 above these the Judge showing the wounds that 
 were made for the salvation of the world; and St. 
 Mary and St. John kneeling on either side of Him, 
 they who stood so once at the Crucifixion; two 
 angels carrying cross and spear and nails; two 
 other kneeling, and, above, other angels, with their 
 wings spread and singing. Something like this is 
 carved in the central porch at Amiens. 
 
 Once more forgive me, I pray, for the poor way 
 in which I have done even that which I have at- 
 tempted to do; and forgive me also for that which 
 I have left undone. 
 
 NICCOLA PISANO 
 
 LORD LINDSAY 
 
 xN comparing the advent of Niccola Pisano to 
 that of the sun at his rising, I am conscious of no 
 exaggeration; on the contrary, it is the only simile 
 by which I can hope to give you an adequate im- 
 pression of his brilliancy and power relatively to 
 the age in which he flourished. Those sons of 
 Erebus, the American Indians, fresh from their 
 traditional subterranean world, and gazing for the 
 first time on the gradual dawning of day in the 
 East, could not have been more dazzled, more 
 
242 NICCOLA PISANO 
 
 astounded when the sun adlually appeared, than 
 the popes and podestas, friars and freemasons must 
 have been in the thirteenth century, when from 
 among the Biduinos, Bonnanos and Antelamis of 
 the twelfth, Niccola emerged in his glory, sovereign 
 and supreme, a fount of light, diffusing warmth 
 and radiance over Christendom. It might be too 
 much to parallel him in adlual genius with Dante 
 and Shakespeare; they stand alone and unap- 
 proachable, each on his distindl pinnacle of the 
 temple of Christian song, — and yet neither of 
 them can boast such extent and durability of in- 
 fluence, for whatever of highest excellence has been 
 achieved in Sculpture and Painting, not in Italy 
 only but throughout Europe, has been in obedience 
 to the impulse he primarily gave, and in following 
 up the principle which he first struck out. — I 
 write this, fearless of contradiction, for you will 
 not, I am sure, misunderstand me as proposing 
 Niccola's men and women as models for an academy; 
 I think and speak of the immortal spirit, not of 
 bones and muscles, — though even in that point of 
 view he merits no small respedl. But to descend 
 to specification : — 
 
 Niccola's peculiar praise is this, — that, in prac- 
 tice at least, if not in theory, he first established the 
 principle that the study of nature, corrected by the 
 ideal of the antique, and animated by the spirit 
 of Christianity, personal and social, can alone lead 
 to excellence in art, each of the three elements of 
 human nature — Matter, Mind and Spirit — being 
 thus brought into union and co-operation in the 
 service of God, in due relative harmony and sub- 
 ordination. I cannot over-estimate the importance 
 
ANDREA PISANO 243 
 
 of this principle; it was on this that, consciously or 
 unconsciously, Niccola himself worked, — it has 
 been by following it that Donatello and Ghiberti, 
 Leonard, Raphael and Michael Angelo have risen 
 to glory. The Sienese school and the Florentine, 
 minds contemplative and dramatic, are alike be- 
 holden to it for whatever success has attended their 
 efforts. Like a treble-stranded rope, it drags after 
 it the triumphal car of Christian Art. 
 
 ANDREA PISANO 
 
 SIR W. MARTIN CONWAY 
 
 1 OSSESSING, as Andrea Pisano did the tech- 
 nical traditions and skill of the Pisan school of 
 sculpture, — he used them to give sculptured form 
 to those same new ideals which Giotto expressed 
 in the domain of painting. He had, indeed, al- 
 ready shown himself fit compeer with Giotto, in 
 the beautiful bronze gates which he designed in 
 1330, before the Campanile's foundations were 
 laid. As decorated doors they are finer than 
 Ghiberti's and more severe; but their good qualities 
 are of a less popular sort. If a visitor to Florence 
 will stand at a point equi-distant from Andrea's 
 and Ghiberti's doors, whence he can see both, he 
 will quickly perceive how superior the old ones are 
 in decorative efFedt. It is only when you come 
 close up to Ghiberti's that the grace of the figures 
 reveals its exquisite charm. Yet the panels of 
 Andrea's doors are not really less beautiful, even 
 if form, whilst they are more truly sculpturesque, 
 and far lovelier in sentiment. 
 
244 ANDREA PISANO 
 
 One might seleA a panel at random for study, 
 for all are excellent and all adapted to their places, 
 those below the line of sight being simpler than 
 those upon and above it. If I ask you now to 
 examine the panels representing John the Baptist's 
 Disciples carrying him to the Tomb, and burying 
 him, it is not because they are better than the rest, 
 but because space compels us to make a seledion. 
 In each instance you will note how beautifully the 
 artist fills the area at his disposal; how excellently 
 he groups his masses and breaks up his draperies 
 to refledl the light with a pleasing glitter; and, 
 finally, what sweetness of sentiment he infuses into 
 his figures. It is all done so simply. There is no 
 passion of grief in the sorrowing disciples, yet who 
 can doubt their affedtion and sincerity ? I know of 
 no work of early Tuscan Art, not even by Giotto 
 himself, more serenely complete and suited for its 
 place than this; none more lovely. Its little de- 
 tails of decoration, alternate nail-heads and flowers, 
 with lion-heads at the panel corners, are perfedl for 
 their purpose. The outside frame, added at a 
 later day, by Ghiberti and his pupils, however 
 elaborate and even beautiful in details, now mainly 
 serves by its relatively confused effedl at a distance 
 to manifest the superior decorative quality of the 
 doors it was intended to enrich. 
 
T. 
 
 THE B A S-R E L I E F S 245 
 
 THE BAS-RELIEFS OF GIOTTO'S 
 TOWER 
 
 SIR W. MARTIN CONWAY 
 
 HE conspicuous merit of these little sculptures 
 is the admirable way in which they are adapted to 
 the spaces they have to fill. It is a merit possessed 
 by all Giotto's paintings and by Andrea Pisano's 
 reliefs. Whether Andrea derived it from Giotto 
 we cannot say. He certainly did not derive it 
 from his master in sculpture, Giovanni Pisano, 
 whose works lack that particular quality. The 
 hexagonal reliefs of the lower tier are more finely 
 finished and more elaborate in design, as being 
 nearer the spedtator's eye than are the figures in 
 lozenges higher up. Those are relieved against 
 a coloured background. It is curious that com- 
 paratively little attention .has been paid to them, 
 and yet, in their place and for their purpose, they 
 are no wise inferior to the hexagons. They consist 
 of a series of allegorical figures, representing the 
 Seven Virtues, Seven Liberal Arts, Seven Sacra- 
 ments, and so forth. To quote only one example, 
 the Sacrament of the Mass is an admirable design 
 beautifully carried out. Its simplicity and lu- 
 cidity are as remarkable as the charm of the design 
 and the excellence of the execution, at once bold 
 enough to be eflFedlve at a distance, and yet to 
 suggest delicacy when beheld from the intended 
 stand-point of a spectator. 
 
 If it were necessary to seleA one of the lower 
 series of hexagons to stand as representative of all, 
 my choice would be the Jabal, "father of such as 
 
246 MICHELANGELO 
 
 dwell in tents and of such as have cattle." He sits 
 upon the ground and, opening the door of his tent, 
 looks forth serenely upon his flock (I suppose), his 
 little dog being just outside. This seems to me the 
 most Giottoesque panel. I suppose Giotto never 
 dwelt in tents. If he had done so, he would have 
 experienced the delight of sitting in his tent door, 
 amongst his small possessions, and gazing forth 
 upon the great outside world, especially at sunset. 
 The tent itself is beautifully sculptured, the droop 
 and hang of it rendered with skill, and the whole 
 designed to fit perfedlly into the given space and, 
 with its large and dignified surfaces, to surround 
 and sfet oflF the face and figure of the worthy patri- 
 arch. 
 
 T. 
 
 MICHELANGELO 
 
 JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS 
 
 HE sacristy may be looked on either as the 
 masterpiece of a sculptor who required fit setting 
 for his statues, or of an architect who designed 
 statues to enhance the structure he had planned. 
 Both arts are used with equal ease, nor has the 
 genius of Michelangelo dealt more masterfully 
 with the human frame than with the forms of 
 Roman architefture in this chapel. He seems to 
 have paid no heed to classic precedent, and to have 
 taken no pains to adapt the parts to the strudlural 
 purpose of the building. It was enough for him 
 to create a wholly novel framework for the modem 
 miracle of sculpture it enshrines, attending to such 
 rules of composition as determine light and shade, 
 
MICHELANGELO 247 
 
 and seeking by the relief of mouldings and pilasters 
 to enhance the terrible and massive forms that 
 brood above the Medicean tombs. The result is 
 a produdl of pidluresque and plastic art as true to 
 the Michelangelesque spirit as the Temple of the 
 Wingless Vidlory to that of Pheidias. But where 
 Michelangelo achieved a triumph of boldness, 
 lesser natures were betrayed into bizarrerie; and 
 this chapel of the Medici, in spite of its grandiose 
 simplicity proved a stumbling-block to subsequent 
 architedls by encouraging them to despise propriety 
 and violate the laws of strudlure. 
 
 The colossal statues of Giuliano and Lorenzo 
 were studied with a view to their light and shadow 
 as much as to their form; ,and this is a fadl to be 
 remembered by those who visit the chapel where 
 Buonarroti laboured both as architedl and sculptor. 
 Of the two Medici, it is not fanciful to say that the 
 Duke of Urbino is the most immovable of spe(5tral 
 shapes eternalized in marble; while the Duke of 
 Nemours, more graceful and elegant, seems in- 
 tended to present a contrast to this terrible thought- 
 burdened form. The allegorical figures, stretched 
 on segments of ellipses beneath the pedestals of the 
 two Dukes, indicate phases of darkness and of 
 light, of death and life. They are two women and 
 two men; tradition names them Night and Day, 
 Twilight and Dawning. Thus in the statues them- 
 selves and in their attendant genii we have a series 
 of abstradlions, symbolizing the sleep and waking 
 of existence, adlion and thought, the gloom of 
 death, the lustre of life, and the intermediate states 
 of sadness and of hope that form the borderland of 
 both. Life is a dream between two slumbers; 
 
248 MICHELANGELO 
 
 sleep is death's twin-brother; night is the shadow 
 of death; death is the gate of life: — such is the 
 mysterious mythology wrought by the sculptor of 
 the modern world in marble. All these figures, by 
 the intensity of their expression, the vagueness of 
 their symbolism, force us to think and question. 
 What, for example, occupies Lorenzo's brain? 
 Bending forward, leaning his chin upon his wrist, 
 placing the other hand upon his knee, on what 
 does he for ever ponder? 
 
 "The sight, as Rogers said well, 'fascinates and 
 is intolerable.' Michelangelo has shot the beaver 
 of the helmet forward on his forehead, and bowed 
 his head, so as to clothe the face in darkness. But 
 behind the gloom there lurks no fleshless skull, as 
 Rogers fancied. The whole frame of the powerful 
 man in instindl with some imperious thought. 
 Has he outlived his life and fallen upon everlasting 
 contemplation? Is he brooding, injured and in- 
 dignant, over his own doom and the extinAion of 
 his race ? Is he condemned to witness in immortal 
 immobility the woes of Italy he helped to cause? 
 Or has the sculptor symbolized in him the burden 
 of that personality we Carry with us in this life, 
 and bear for ever when We wake into another world ? 
 Beneath this incarnation of oppressive thought 
 there lie, full length and naked, the figures of Dawn, 
 and Twilight, Morn and Evening. So at least 
 they are commonly called, and these names are 
 not inappropriate; for the breaking of the day and 
 the approach of night are metaphors for many 
 transient conditions of the soul. It is only as al- 
 legories in a large sense, comprehending both the 
 physical and intelledual order and capable of 
 
MICHELANGELO 249 
 
 various interpretation, that any of these statues 
 can be understood. Even the Dukes do not pre- 
 tend to be portraits, and hence in part perhaps the 
 uncertainty that has gathered round them. Very 
 tranquil and noble is Twihght: a giant in repose, 
 he meditates, leaning upon his elbow, looking down. 
 But Dawn starts from her couch, as though some 
 painful summons had reached her, sunk in dream- 
 less sleep, and called her forth to suffer. Her 
 waking to consciousness is like that of one who has 
 been drowned, and who finds the return to life 
 agony. Before her eyes, seen even through the 
 mists of slumber, are the ruin and shame of Italy. 
 Opposite lies Night, so sorrowful, so utterly ab- 
 sorbed in darkness and the shade of death, that to 
 shake off that everlasting lethargy seems impos- 
 sible. Yet she is not dead. If we raise our voices, 
 she too will stretch her limbs, and, like her sister, 
 shudder into sensibility with sighs. Only we must 
 not wake her; for he who fashioned her has told 
 us that her sleep of stone is great good fortune. 
 Both of these women are large and brawny, unUke 
 the Fates of Pheidias, in their muscular maturity. 
 The burden of Michelangelo's thought was too 
 tremendous to be borne by virginal and graceful 
 beings. He had to make women no less capable of 
 suffering, no less world-wearied, than his country. 
 "Standing before these statues, we do not cry, 
 How beautiful! We murmur. How terrible, how 
 grand ! Yet, after long gazing, we find them gifted 
 with beauty beyond grace. In each of them there 
 is a palpitating thought, torn from the artist's 
 soul and crystallized in marble, ^t has been said 
 that architedure is petrified music. In the Sac- 
 
250 MICHELANGELO 
 
 risty of S. Lorenzo we feel impelled to remember 
 phrases of Beethoven. Each of these statues be- 
 comes for us a passion, fit for musical expression, 
 but turned like Niobe to stone. They have the 
 intelledlual vagueness, the emotional certainty, 
 that belong to the motives of a symphony. In 
 their allegories, left without a key, sculpture has 
 passed beyond her old domain of placid concrete 
 form. The anguish of intolerable emotion, the 
 quickening of the consciousness to a sense of suf- 
 fering, the acceptance of the inevitable, the strife 
 of the soul with destiny, the burden and the passion 
 of mankind: that is what they contain in their 
 cold chisel-tortured marble. It is open to critics 
 of the school of Lessing to objeA that here is the 
 suicide of sculpture. It is easy to remark that 
 those strained postures and writhen limbs may have 
 perverted the taste of lesser craftsmen. Yet if 
 Michelangelo was called to carve Medicean statues 
 after the sack of Rome and the fall of Florence — 
 if he was obliged in sober sadness to make sculpture 
 a fit language for his sorrow-liaden heart — how 
 could he have wrought more truthfully than this? 
 To imitate him without sharing his emotions or 
 comprehending his thoughts as the soulless artists 
 of the decadence attempted, was without all doubt 
 a grievous error. Surely also we may regret, not 
 without reason, that in the evil days upon which he 
 had fallen, the fair antique Heiterkeit and Allge- 
 meinbeit were beyond his reach." 
 
 That this regret is not wholly sentimental may 
 be proved, I think, by an exchange of verses, which 
 we owe to Vasari's literary sagacity. He tells us 
 that when the statue of Night was opened to the 
 
THE P I E T A 251 
 
 public view, it drew forth the following quatrain 
 from an author unknown to himself by name: — 
 
 The Night thou seest here, -posed gracefully 
 In a£l of slumber, was by an Angel wrought 
 Out of this stone; sleeping, with life she's fraught: 
 Wake her, incredulous wight; she'll speak to thee. 
 
 Michelangelo would have none of these aca- 
 demical conceits and compliments. He replied in 
 four verses, which show well enough what thoughts 
 were in his brain when he composed the nightmare 
 burdened, heavy-sleeping woman: — 
 
 Dear is my sleep, hut more to be mere stone. 
 So long as ruin and dishonour reign: 
 To hear naught, to feel naught, is my great gain; 
 Then wake me not; speak in an undertone. 
 
 THE PIETA 
 
 The best way to study Michelangelo's last work 
 in marble is to take the admirable photograph 
 produced under artificial illumination by Alinari. 
 No sympathetic mind will fail to feel that we are 
 in immediate contad: with the sculptor's very soul, 
 at the close of his life, when all his thoughts were 
 weaned from earthly beauty, and he cried — 
 
 Painting nor sculpture now can lull to rest 
 My soul, that turns to his great love on high. 
 Whose arms to clasp us dn the cross were spread. 
 
 As a French critic has observed: "It is the rhost 
 
 -intimately personal and the most pathetic of his 
 
 works. The idea of penitence exhales from it. 
 
252 MICHELANGELO 
 
 The marble preaches the sufferings of the Passion: 
 it makes us listen to an adl of bitter contrition and 
 an adl of sorrowing love." 
 
 MICHELANGELO 
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 B. 
 
 HJT the statue that sits above Morning and 
 Evening, is like no other that ever came from a 
 sculptor's hand. It is the one work worthy of 
 Michelangelo's reputation, and grand enough to 
 vindicate for him all the genius that the world gave 
 him credit for. And yet it seems a simple thing 
 enough to think of or to execute; merely a sitting 
 figure, the face partly overshadowed by a helmet, 
 one hand supporting the chin, the other resting on 
 the thigh. But after looking at it a little while, 
 the spectator ceases to think of it as a marble 
 statue; it comes to life, and you see that the princely 
 figure is brooding over some great design, which, 
 when he has arranged in his own mind, the world 
 will be fain to execute for him. No such grandeur 
 and majesty has elsewhere been put into human 
 shape. It is all a miracle; the deep repose, and the 
 deep life within it. It is as much a miracle to have 
 achieved this as to make a statue that would rise 
 up and walk. The face, when one gazes earnestly 
 into it, beneath the shadow of its helmet, is seen 
 to be calmly sombre; a mood which, I think, is 
 generally that of the rulers of mankind, except in 
 moments of vivid action. The statue is one of the 
 things which I look at with highest enjoyment, but 
 also with grief and impatience, because I feel that 
 
MICHELANGELO 253 
 
 I do not comprehend at all that which i% involves, 
 and that by and by I must go away and leave it 
 forever. How wonderful! To take a block of 
 marble, and convert it wholly into thought, and 
 to do it through all the obstructions and impedi- 
 ments of drapery; for there is nothing nude in this 
 statue but the face and hands. The vest is the 
 costume of Michelangelo's century. This is what 
 I always thought a sculptor of true genius should 
 be able to do, — to show the man, of whatever 
 epoch, nobly and heroically, through the costume 
 which he might adlually have worn. 
 
 The statue sits within a square niche of white 
 marble, and completely fills it. It seems to me a 
 pity that if should be thus confined. Its natural- 
 ness is as if it came out of the marble of its own 
 accord, with all its grandeur hanging heavily about 
 it, and sat down there beneath its weight. I cannot 
 describe it. It is like trying to stop the ghost of 
 Hamlet's father by crossing spears before it. 
 
GLOSSARY 
 
 Apse: Term applied to any circular or polygonal 
 projedling portion of a building. In churches the 
 place where the altar is. See Chancel. 
 
 Architrave: Beam, or succession of beams rest- 
 ing diredlly upon the columns in classical archi- 
 tedlure. 
 
 Archivolt: The moulded arches on the face of an 
 arch near, and concentric with the under side of the 
 arch as it springs from one of its supports to the 
 other. 
 
 Balustrade: Row of balusters, or short pillars, 
 connedted by an ornamental rail; to be used in 
 architecture as a fence either for protection or for 
 ornament, or for both. 
 
 Bas-relief: Low relief; carving or sculpture which 
 stands out, but not greatly, fro;n the slab on which 
 it is cut. 
 
 Buttress: Support built against a wall, or free of 
 the wall but strengthening it by connedling arches, 
 used especially to neutralize the thrusts in Gothic 
 vault construdlion. 
 
 Capital: Head of a column or pillar. 
 
 Chancel: The part of a church, without regard to 
 shape, which is appropriated to uses of the clergy. 
 See Apse. 
 
 Chevet: The circular or polygonal east end of a 
 church. 
 
 Choir: That part of a church between the tran- 
 septs and the apse; the part intended primarily for 
 the singers. 
 
256 GLOSSARY 
 
 Clerestory: Portion of a church containing win- 
 dows and rising above the roofs and vaults of the 
 side aisles. 
 
 Cloister: Covered walk, often around a quad- 
 rangle, with wall on outer, and windows or arcades 
 on inner side. 
 
 Corbel: A bracket. 
 
 Cornice: Horizontal moulded projection crown- 
 ing a building; upper portion of entablature in 
 classical architedlure. See Entablature. 
 
 Crocket: Small, carved, projedting ornament 
 applied to the edges of gables, spires, pinnacles, 
 etc. 
 
 Cusp: Point projedling inward from the edge of 
 an arch; used in connection with tracery. See 
 Tracery. 
 
 Dome: A vault or roof of curved plan and curved 
 sedtion. 
 
 Dormer: Projeding upright window in sloping 
 roof. 
 
 Drum: The wall, curved on plan, and built to 
 support a dome, in order to give it added height. 
 
 Entablature: The horizontal parts of a building 
 which rest diredlly upon its columns. Classical 
 architedture. 
 
 Fagade: Face or front of a building. 
 
 Finial: Carved ornament finishing off the point 
 of a gable, or pinnacle. See Pinnacle. 
 
 Frieze: Band of decoration, carved in relief, or 
 painted, which is placed beneath the cornice. See 
 Cornice. 
 
 Jamb: Side post of opening, door or window. 
 
 Lantern: A small tower with windows on all 
 sides, raised over the opening in the top of a dome. 
 
GLOSSARY 257 
 
 The purpose is first to admit light; second to form 
 an ornament. 
 
 Moulding: The more or less ornamental pro- 
 file given to the edges of various architedtural mem- 
 bers. The "trim." 
 
 Mullion: Upright bar dividing lights of a window; 
 a part of the tracery. See Tracery. 
 
 Nave: Broad central aisle; the body of a church 
 from west end to transepts. 
 
 Parapet: Low wall at the edge of a roof. 
 
 Pendentive: A triangular, spherical bracket of 
 masonry placed in the angle of a square compart- 
 ment, by which the angle may be translated to a 
 quarter circle. Four such pendentives, one each 
 in each of the four angles of a square compart- 
 ment, will translate the square to a complete circle, 
 on which, as base, a circular dome may be securely 
 and logically placed. 
 
 Pietd: The Virgin holding the body of Christ, 
 dead. 
 
 Pilaster: Redlangular column joined to, or en- 
 gaged with a wall. 
 
 Pinnacle: A much elongated pyramid or or- 
 namental point; little terminations much used in 
 Gothic design. 
 
 Rose: Circular window. 
 
 String-course: A narrow, continuous, horizontal 
 moulding, projedting from a wall. 
 
 Thrust: The sidewise push of arches and vaults. 
 What is meant by the Arabian proverb, "the arch 
 never sleeps." 
 
 Tracery: The stone divisions of a window open- 
 ing; especially the decorative, open work divisions 
 of the head of a window. 
 
258 GLOSSARY 
 
 Transept: Each of the transverse portions of a 
 cross-shaped church running out at right angles to 
 nave and choir. 
 
 Triforium: Gallery, usually the arcade, above 
 the side aisles of a church. 
 
 Tympanum: The pointed space beneath a Gothic 
 arch, or the gable space in classical architecture. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Academies, 72. 
 
 Achilles, Shield of, 219. 
 
 Acropolis, 29, 32, 40, 41, 42, 43, 
 
 Adriatic, 45, loi. 
 
 Aegean, 42, 45. 
 
 Aesculapius, Temple of, 58. 
 
 Africa, 54. 
 
 Agrippa, Statue of, 41. 
 
 Alcantara, 49. 
 
 Alcinous, Palace of, 27, 29. 
 
 Amiens, 80, 86. 
 
 Sculpture, 234. 
 
 South Porch, 236. 
 
 West Front, 239. 
 Anatomy, 142, ijo, 151, 158, 
 
 231. 232- 
 Andrea del Sarto, 180. 
 Angelico, 137, 146, 154. iS6, 
 Antonines, 49, 50. 
 Antwerp, 197. 
 Apennines, 121. 
 Apollo, 33. 
 Apollo Palatinus, temple 
 
 48. 
 Aquapendente, 99. 
 Arabs, 44. 
 Arch, Arabian, 44. 
 
 Pointed, 76. 
 
 Roman, 44. 
 Architefture: 
 
 Byzantine, 43. 
 
 Decorated, 44. 
 
 Early English, 44. 
 
 English: 
 Ripon Cathedral, 114. 
 Salisbury Cathedral, 105. 
 
 229. 
 
 Wakefield Church, 113. 
 Wells Cathedral, no. 
 Westminster Abbey, 117. 
 
 European, 43. 
 
 French, 44. 
 
 French Secular, 67. 
 
 German, 44. 
 
 Gothic, 44, 65, 72, 90. 
 
 Greek, 90. 
 
 Harmony of, 90. 
 
 Lombard, 43. 
 
 Mass and Shades, 121. 
 
 Materials of, 67. 
 
 Melody of, 90. 
 
 Norman, 43. 
 
 Pointed, 87. 
 
 Roman, 48, 54. 
 
 Roman Christian, 45. 
 
 Romanesque, 43, 88. 
 
 Romanesque Transitional, 74. 
 
 Roofs, 126. 
 
 Towers, 128. 
 
 Tuscan, 44. 
 of, Architrave, 35. 
 
 Aristotle, The ideal, 226. 
 Arras Road, The, by Corot, 203. 
 Jrt: 
 
 A language, 133. 
 
 And truth, 13. 
 
 As play, 8, 9. 
 
 Bad, 14. 
 
 Bold, 14. 
 
 Creative, 21. 
 
 Definition of, 7, 10, 36. 
 
 Delicate, 13. 
 
 Educative, 3, 15. 
 
 Ends of, 155. 
 2S9 
 
 161, 
 
 IS9 
 
26o 
 
 INDEX 
 
 For art's sake, 3. 
 
 For the masses, 11. 
 
 French Medixyal,democratic,66. 
 
 Future, 12. 
 
 Gothic, 63, 66. 
 
 Greek, 37; transcends nature, 
 226. 
 
 Improves on nature, 21. 
 
 Industrial, 22. 
 
 Inventive, 14. 
 
 Majesty in, 157. 
 
 Mediaeval, 65. 
 
 Moral asped of, 132, 226. 
 
 Moral, nonutilitarian, 3. 
 
 Not an affair of luxury, 66. 
 
 Not moral, 150. 
 
 Peasant, 12. 
 
 Powerful, 16. (See Art, Bad.) 
 
 Present, 12. 
 
 Purpose of, 132, 133, 150. 
 
 Repose in, 215, 227. 
 
 Sincerity in, 212. 
 
 Spanish, 181. 
 
 Thirteenth Century, &^. 
 
 Tuscan 244. 
 Artemis, 33. 
 Artist, Observation of, 47. 
 
 Professional, 12. 
 
 Soul of, 22. 
 Aryan Races, 38. 
 Asia, SI, S4- 
 Aspalathus, 59. 
 
 Assumption, The, of Titian, 170, 
 178. 
 
 Of Tintoret, 179. 
 Athene, 28, 32, 41, 230. 
 Athenians, 29, 30. 
 Athens, 30, 32, 40, 52. 
 Attica, 42, 230. 
 Augustus, 49. 
 
 B 
 Babel, 75. 
 Baptistry Doors, Qhjberti, 243. 
 
 Baptistry, Pisa, 106. 
 
 Barbarians, 36. 
 
 Barbarism, Defined, 37. 
 
 Basilica, 60; Roman, 77. 
 
 Beauty, 137. 
 
 Beauvais, 80. 
 
 Beethoven, 250. 
 
 Billingsgate, 210. 
 
 Bithynia, 49. 
 
 Blomfield, R., 39, 47, S4. 
 
 Boldness, 157. 
 
 Bologna, 16. 
 
 Bolsena, 93, 99. 
 
 Borgias, The, 169. 
 
 Bosphorus, 45. 
 
 Bourges, Cathedral of, 73. 
 
 Bramante, 60. 
 
 Breadth, 141. 
 
 Bristol, 211. 
 
 Bryce, Lord, 60. 
 
 Buonarroti, see Michael Angelo. 
 
 Burgundy, 67. 
 
 Burke, 186. 
 
 Butler, S., 154, 212. 
 
 Buttress, Gothic, 89. 
 
 Byron, 4. 
 
 Byzantine, 43. 
 
 Caird, John, 3, 19. 
 Caligula, 47. 
 Campagna, loi. 
 Campanile, Florence, 103, 104. 
 Campo Santo, Pisa, 106, 160. 
 Canterbury, 65, 88. 
 Capitol, The, 58. 
 Capua, 49. 
 Carrara, 100. 
 Cartoons, The, 141. 
 Castelfranco, 206. 
 Castelgandolfo, 121. 
 Cathedrals: 
 
 Amiens, 80, 86. 
 
 Bourges, 73. 
 
INDEX 
 
 261 
 
 Canterbury, 65, 88. 
 
 Chartres, 77, 78, 80, loi. 
 
 French, 61, 87. 
 
 Gothic, 61. 
 
 Lucca, 216. 
 
 Mediaeval, 62. 
 
 Notre Dame, Paris, 68, 77. 
 
 Orvieto, 93. 
 
 Rheims, 76. 
 
 Ripon, 114. 
 
 Salisbury, 105. 
 
 Siena, 95. 
 
 Wells, no. 
 Cenalis, Robert, 73. 
 Charlemagne, 68. 
 Charles, The Great, 60. 
 Chartres, Cathedral of, 77, 78, 80, 
 lOI. 
 
 Notre Dame de, 80. 
 
 Virgin of, 79. 
 Childebert, 70. 
 Chinese painting, 136. 
 Choisy, M., 42. 
 Christendom, 69. 
 Christianity, 45. 
 Churches, English Parish, 113. 
 
 Italian, 88. 
 Churclh, The, 64, 65. 
 Cimabue, 180. 
 City Planning, 47. 
 Civic Works, 48. 
 Clausen, G., 135. 
 Clusium, 99. 
 
 Cobden-Sanderson, T. J., 219. 
 Coliseum, 49, 52, S4. SS. S^, 57- 
 Cologne, 98. 
 Color, 144, 14;. 
 Column, 3;. 
 
 Concert, The, Giorgione, 171. 
 Constable, zo6. 
 Constantine, 45, 60. 
 Construction, Gothic, 89. 
 Conway, W. M., 132, 150, 154, 243, 
 
 Copying, Purposeless, 18. 
 Coreggio, 14s, 166, 170, 175, 176. 
 Corinthian Order, 43; Ornament 
 
 of, 44. 
 Corntce, 35. 
 Corot, 203. 
 Cortona, 162. 
 Cosmos, 36. 
 Courbet, 183. 
 Covent Garden, 208. 
 Crane, W., 92, 117. 
 Creation, Divine, 69. 
 Culture, Hellenic, 35. 
 Curtius, Ernst, 33. 
 
 D 
 
 Damascus, 130. 
 
 Danaides, 47, 48. 
 
 Dante, 215, 242. 
 
 Darius, Family of, Veronese, 176. 
 
 Darmstadt, Madonna, 188. 
 
 David, 106. 
 
 Decoration: 
 
 Gothic, 92. 
 
 Inorganic, 92. 
 
 Organic, 92. 
 Delacroix, 205. 
 Delicacy, 147. 
 Delos, 30. 
 Delphi, 36. 
 Design: 
 
 Architedlural, 123. 
 
 Complexity of, 69. 
 
 Organic, 39. 
 
 Subtlety of, 40. 
 
 Unity of, 69. 
 Detail, 141. 
 
 Diana, Temple of, at Ephesus, 73. 
 Dickinson, G. Lowes, 223. 
 Diocletian, Baths of, 118. 
 
 Palace of, 58, 59. 
 Dion Chtysostom, 224. 
 Disciples at Emmaus, 190. 
 Dolce, Carlo, iSo, 
 
262 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Domenichino, 16, 1 19. 
 Donatello, 243. 
 Doric, 36, 92. 
 
 Order, 40, 43. 
 
 Ornament, 44. 
 Drawing, Titian, 174. 
 Dresden Gallery, l88. 
 Duomo, Pisa, 106. 
 Durer, 167. 
 Dutch Masters, 152. 
 Dutch Painters, 197. 
 
 East, the, 43. 
 
 Eckermann, 192. 
 
 Egypt, 36, 39. 
 
 Elgin Marbles, 228, 231. 
 
 Ellis, Havelock, 184. 
 
 Empire, Roman, 45. 
 
 Empire, The Lower, 74. 
 
 England, 91, 96, 118, 209. 
 
 English, Early, 44. 
 
 Entombment, The, Titian, 170. 
 
 Ephesus, Temple of Diana at, 73. 
 
 Erechtheus, Temple of, 32, 41. 
 
 Erechthion, 41, 42. 
 
 Esmond, Henry, 147. 
 
 Eternal Father, The, Carlo Dolce, 
 
 180. 
 Europe, Christian, 76. 
 Execution, 143. 
 
 Fabriano, Gentile da, 151. 
 Farnese, Lord of, 99. 
 Fates, Temple of, 32. 
 Faust, 9. 
 
 Feudal System, 65. 
 Florence, 93. 
 
 Baptistry Doors, Pisano, 243. 
 
 Forum, 52, S3- 
 France, 61, 70, 71, 80, 96. 
 Frascati, 121. 
 French, The, 37, 44. 
 
 Fromentin, E., 190. 
 Communion of St. Francis of 
 Assisi, Rubens, 194. 
 
 Gainsborough, 211. 
 Games, Olympian, 22$. 
 Genius, 6, 43, 69. Greek, 40. 
 German Art, Modem, 137. 
 Germany, 96. 
 Ghiberti, 243, 244. 
 Gibbon, E., 48, S2, SS. 
 Gioconda, La, 167. 
 Giordano, Luca, 182. 
 Giorgione, 171, 206, 209. 
 Giotto, 150, 151, IS4, 160, l8o, 237, 
 243, 244. 
 
 Bas-reliefs of, 245. 
 
 Tower of, 103, 104. 
 Glass, Stained, Amiens, 91. 
 Goethe, 57, 120, 165, 171, 176, 192. 
 Golden Age, 63 . 
 Golden Gate, 58. 
 Goldsmith, 185. 
 Gothic, 44. 
 
 Italian, 95. 
 
 Northern,' 96. 
 Gozzoli, Benozzo, 151, 159, 160. 
 Greece, 29, 30, 33, 39, 43, 61, 169. 
 Greeks, 35, 37, 44. 
 Guild System, 65. 
 Guild Work, 65. 
 
 H 
 Hadrian, 49. 
 Hamlet, 9. 
 Hawthorne, N., 61, 103, 118, 131, 
 
 164, 180, 252. 
 Hay, J., 182. 
 Haydon, B. R., 231. 
 Hazlitt, W., 141, 166, 173, 189, 
 
 227. 
 Hellas, 224. 
 Hellenes, The, 33, 35, 36. 
 
INDEX 
 
 263 
 
 Hephaestus, 28. 
 Herod, 51. 
 Herodes Atticus, 50. 
 Herodotus, 26, 218. 
 Hesperides, S7- 
 Hieroglyphs, 26. 
 Hogarth, 199. 
 Holbein, 170, 188. 
 Homer, 27, 216. 
 Hugo, Victor, 6s, 68. 
 Hymettus, 47. 
 Hythe, no. 
 
 Ideal, The, 224, 226. 
 
 and nature, 228. 
 Idealist, The Vulgar, 138. 
 Iliad, The, 69. 
 lUaria di Caretto, 216. 
 Ilyssus, The, 232. 
 Imagination, 14, 22, 152. 
 
 Commercial, 63. 
 
 Greek, 38. 
 Imitation, 15, 37. 
 Indians, Iroquois, 37. 
 Ismael, 44. 
 Italy, 93. 
 
 Jacopo de la Querela, 216. 
 
 James, H., no, 188. 
 
 Japheth, 44. 
 
 Joachim, 153. 
 
 Johnson, 185. 
 
 John the Baptist, Burial of, Pisano, 
 
 244. 
 Judgment, The Last, 120. 
 Julius Atticusit 50. 
 Jumieges, Abbey of, 76. 
 
 Khafra, Temple of, 25. 
 Khufu, Pyramid of, 23. 
 Kinglake, A. W., 217. 
 
 La Beauce, 78, 79. 
 
 Landscape, 158. 
 
 Laocoon, The, 216, 227. 
 
 Las Meninas, Velasquez (The 
 
 Maids of Honour), 182, 184. 
 Lathe, Egyptian, 27, 
 Leaning Tower, Pisa, 106. 
 Lebanon, 130. 
 Leda, 169. 
 
 Leighton, Frederic, Lord, i, 181.. 
 Leonardo da Vinci, 167, 175, 182, 
 
 243- 
 Lessing, 2jo. 
 Lethaby, W. R., 32, 63. 
 Lido, The, Venice, no. 
 Likeness in Portraiture, 148. 
 Lindsay, Lord, 241. 
 Lisa, Lady, 170, see La Gioconda. 
 Lombard, 43. 
 London, 37, 65. 
 Louis XI, 74. 
 Low Countries, 96. 
 Lucca, Cathedral of, 216. 
 Lucian, 224. 
 Luna, 47. 
 
 Lung' Amo, Pisa, 107. 
 Luther, 72. 
 Lydgate, 64. 
 
 M 
 Maiden Lane, 210. 
 Maitani, 99, 102. 
 Majesty in Art, 157. 
 Man, Artistic, 21. 
 
 Poetic, 21. 
 
 Scientific, 21. 
 Manner, The Grand, 39. 
 Marriage a la Mode, Hogaith, 199. 
 Mars, Hill of, 32. 
 Mason, Craft, 6$. 
 Masterpiece, Definition of, 19. 
 Medicean Tombs, 247. 
 Medici, Juliano, 2471 Lor<enzo^247. 
 
264 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Melancholia, The, 167. 
 
 Mendelssohn, 9. 
 
 Metz, S3- 
 
 Meyer Family, The, i88. 
 
 Michael Angelo, 60, 119, 120, 142, 
 158, 161, 164, i6s, 181, 21S, 
 243, 246, 247, 251, 252. 
 
 Michel, E., 203. 
 
 Micklethwaite, T. J., 113. 
 
 Middle Ages, 63, 69, 71, 96, 98. 
 
 Milan, 98. 
 
 Mind, Hellenic, 33. 
 
 Mirabeau, 72. 
 
 Mnesicles, 40, 41. 
 
 Montefaico, 160. 
 
 Montepulciano, 99. 
 
 Montreale, 68. 
 
 Morris, William, 80, 118, 234. 
 
 Mouldings, Greek, 68; Mediaeval, 
 68. 
 
 Mugnano, 99. 
 
 MuriUo, 176. 
 
 Murray, A. S., 229. 
 
 Music, 3, 7, 17. 
 
 Mustard Seed Garden, The, 136. 
 
 Myron, 48. 
 
 N 
 Naples, 100. 
 Napoleon, 218. 
 Nature, i. 
 
 And Art, 137, 138, 193. 
 
 Idealization of, 19. 
 
 Not always right, 17. 
 
 Not to be improved upon, 20. 
 
 Study of, 242. 
 
 To be idealized, 194. 
 
 To be improved upon, 21. 
 Nero, 52. 
 Nerva, 50. 
 
 Nike Apteros, Temple of, 40. 
 Nile, 39. 
 Norman, 43. 
 Norton, C. E., 93, 106. 
 
 Notre Dame, Paris, 65, 68, 70, 73, 
 77. 
 
 O 
 
 Odysseus, 27. 
 
 Opie, 143. 
 
 Orleans, Church of St. Croix, 76. 
 
 Ornament: 
 
 Gothic, 92. 
 
 Greek, 92. 
 
 Test of, 125. 
 Orsini, Lord of, 99. 
 Orvieto, Cathedral of, 93. 
 
 Signorelli, at, 162. 
 Oxford, 65. 
 
 Paglia, 94. 
 Pagodas, Hindu, 75, 
 Painter, Test of, 144. 
 Painting, 131, 141. 
 
 Chinese, 136. 
 
 Flemish, 146. 
 
 Greek, 223, 225. 
 
 Greek Vases, 226. 
 Palace, Homeric, 27. 
 Palatine Hill, 47. 
 Pantheon, 58. 
 
 Paradise, The Earthly, llS. 
 Paris, 37, 65. 
 
 Cathedral of, 65, 68, 70, 73, 77. 
 
 Gothic, 63. 
 
 Old, 65. 
 Parrhasius, 226. 
 
 Parthenon, 32, 41, 42, 43, 61, 225. 
 Pater, W., 78, 86, 167, 171. 
 Pausanias, 32. 
 Peace, Temple of, 53. 
 Pedantry, Ardstic, 6. 
 Pere la Chaise, 125. 
 Pericles, 29, 30, 40, 42. 
 Persians, 41. 
 Perugjno, 151, 164, 180. 
 Peter Martyr, Titian, 171, 172, 
 
INDEX 
 
 265 
 
 Petrie, W. F., 23. 
 
 Phaeacians, 28. 
 
 Pharaohs, 39. 
 
 Phidias, 43, 215, 223, 224, 228, 247. 
 
 Fates of, 249. 
 Philip Augustus, 68, 70. 
 Philip IV, 183, 184. 
 Piftures, The art of, 131. 
 Pieta, The, Michael Angelo, 251. 
 Pinakotheca, 40. 
 Pisa, 106. 
 
 Pisano, Andrea,' 243. 
 Pisano, Niccola, 241. 
 Plato, 234. 
 Play and Art, 8, 9. 
 Pliny, 49. 
 Plutarch, 29. 
 
 Poem and Picture One, 134. 
 Poet and Artist One, 134. 
 Poetry and Painting Separate 
 
 Arts, 132. 
 Poetry and Pidlures not the Same, 
 
 ISS- 
 Polygnotus, 225. 
 Pompeii, 66 
 Pont-du-Gare, 51, 52. 
 Ponte a Mare, Pisa, 107. 
 Pontus, 49. 
 Porte-Rouge, 7.5. 
 Portraiture, 170. And likenesses, 
 
 148. 
 Poseidon, 230. 
 Prado, Museum, 184. 
 Propylaea, The, 40, 41, 42. 
 Protovengelion, 153. 
 Pyramid, 75, 217; The Great, 23. 
 
 R 
 Radicofani, 99. 
 Raphael, 15, 157, 164, i6j, 166, 
 
 167, 17s, 176, 178, 243. 
 Reade, C, 131. 
 Rembrandt, 139, 151, 176, 182, 189, 
 
 190, 
 
 Renaissance, The, 159. 
 Repose, 215, 227. 
 Retaliation, The, Goldsmith, 185, 
 Reynolds, Sir J., 135, 142, iji, 170. 
 
 185, 202, 208, 2H. 
 Rheims, Cathedral of, 76, 80. 
 Riccardi Palace, 160. 
 Rich, 186. 
 
 Ripon, Cathedral of, 114. 
 Robert de Luzarches, 88, 91. 
 Rodin, Auguste, 61. 
 Rogers, 248. 
 Romanceros, 69. 
 Romanesque, 43, 87. 
 Romans, 41, 51. 
 Rome, 43, 44, 47, 48, 49, so, 52, 
 
 93. 100, 
 Christian, 60. 
 Pagan, 100. 
 Roofs, 126. 
 Rouen, 125. 
 Rousseau, 51, 52. 
 Rubens, 135, 14S, 192, 193, 194. 
 Ruskin,J., 13, 43, 104, 108, 121, 125, 
 
 126, 128, 133, 137, 144, 148, 
 
 ISI, 170, 175. 185, 202, 206. 
 Ruysdael, 197, 198. 
 
 Saint Agnes, Martyrdom, 16. 
 Saint Anna, 153, 169. 
 Saint Brizio Chapel, 162. 
 Saint Cecelia, Raphael, 165. 
 Saint Christopher, 70, 84. 
 Saint Denis, 77. 
 Saint Dominic, 155. 
 Saint Firmin, 235. 
 Saint Francis, 87. 
 Saint Germain-des-Pres, 7S, 77. 
 Saint Gothard, Turner, 210. 
 Saint Lorenzo, Sacristy, 250. 
 Saint Louis, 87. 
 Saint Marks, Venice, 108. 
 Horses, no; Lion, no. 
 
266 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Saint Peters, Rome, 97, izo. 
 
 Old, 60. 
 
 Portico, 58. 
 Saint Sebastian, Martyrdom of, 
 
 119. 
 Salisbury, Cathedral of, 105. 
 Salvator Rosa, 146. 
 San Gemignano, 160. 
 San Lorenzo, 99. 
 San Rocco, Scuola, 179. 
 Santa Maria Degl' Angeli, 118. 
 Sant' Antimo, 100. 
 Sarcophagus, 25, 27. 
 Savant, see Scientist. 
 Savonarola, 154. 
 Schools, Professional, 11. 
 Science, 3, 5, 21. 
 
 Scientist, The Observation of, 47. 
 Sculpture, 215. 
 
 Gothic, 234. 
 
 Greek, 142; Aim of, 223, 224. 
 
 Italian, 242, 245. 
 
 Parthenon, 229, 231. 
 Seeley, J. R., 7. 16. 
 Segobia, 53. 
 Seine, The, 65. 
 Semitic Races, 38. 
 Shaft, Greek, 44. 
 Shakespeare, 138, 156, 216, 242. 
 Shelley, 4. 
 Shem, 44. 
 Sicily, 96. 
 
 Siena, Cathedral of, 93, 95. 
 Signorelli, Luca, 161, 162, 163. 
 Sistene, The, Chapel, 120, 163; 
 
 Madonna, 178. 
 Site, Treatment of, 48. 
 Size, Majesty of, 39. 
 Socrates, 226, 234. 
 SoraAe, 121. 
 Spain, 96, 
 Spalatro, 59. 
 
 Sphinx, The, 157, 217, 218. 
 Spina, Chapel, Pisa, 107. 
 
 Spoleto, S3- 
 
 Stevenson, R. L., 63. 
 
 Strasburg, 71. 
 
 Style, The finical, 142; the gross, 
 
 142. 
 Symbolism, 133, 152, 248. 
 Symmetry, 43, 45, 46. 
 
 Architectural, 39. 
 Symonds, J. A., 159, 161, 178, 246. 
 
 Tagus, 49. 
 
 Technique, 11, 12, 135. 
 Temeraire, The Old, 212. 
 Temple: 
 
 of Aesculapius, 58. 
 
 of Apollo Palatinus, 48. 
 
 of Diana at Ephesus, 73. 
 
 of Erechtheus, 32, 41. 
 
 of Fates, 32. 
 
 Greek, 37, 41, 45. 
 
 Jupiter, 59. 
 
 Khafra, 25. 
 
 Nike Apteros, 40. 
 
 Peace, S3- 
 Thackeray, W. M., 6, 147, 199. 
 The Old Shepherd's Chief 
 
 Mourner, 134. 
 Theseus, The, 216. 
 Thombury, W., 62. 
 Thrace, ^7. 
 Tiber, 94. 
 
 Tintoret, 13, 170, 17s. 
 Tischbein, 120. 
 Titian, 143, 14s, 170, 171, 173, 174, 
 
 17s, 178, 202, 206. 
 Titus, 52, $6. 
 Tivoli, 121. 
 Tolstoi, 10. 
 Tombs, Street of, 32. 
 Tools, Egyptian, 26. 
 Torre Guelfa, 107. 
 Toumus, 73. 
 Towers, 128; Lombardic, 130. 
 
INDEX 
 
 267 
 
 Trafalgar, 212. 
 
 Trajan, 49, 52; Column of, 53- 
 
 Transfiguration, The: 
 
 Angelico, 157. 
 
 Raphael, 157. 
 Traugutium, 58. 
 Troas, SI. 
 Troy, 32. 
 Truth, 137. 
 Tupper, 4. 
 
 Turner, J. M. W., 133, 206. 
 Tuscan, 44. 
 
 U 
 
 Ugliness, 137. 
 
 Vandals, The, 72. 
 Van Dyke, 175, .176, 189, 202. 
 Vasari, i6i, 162, 168, 251. 
 Velasquez, 135, 170, 181, 182, 183, 
 
 184, 18s, 187. 
 Venice, 108. 
 Venus of Milos, 19. 
 Verona, 49. 
 
 Veronese, 13, 135, 138, 139, 176. 
 Verrocchio, 168. 
 
 Vespasian, 49. 
 Vidory, Temple of, 32. 
 Vignola, 72. 
 
 Violet-le-Duc, 36, 45, 66. 
 Virgin, The, 59. 
 Virtues, The Seven, 150. 
 Viterbo, loi. 
 Vitruvius, 59, 72, 97. 
 Volsinium, 99. 
 
 W 
 Warburton, 218. 
 Wagner, 156. 
 Wakefield Church, 113. 
 War of Troy, 64. 
 Watts, Dr., 4. 
 Wells, Cathedral of, no. 
 Westminster Abbey, 117. 
 Whistler, James McNeil, Ten 
 
 o'clock Address, 17. 
 Wilkie, 231. 
 William the Conqueror, 74. 
 
 Zeus, 32; at Olympia, 223. 
 Zeuxis, 226. 
 
1^7f 
 
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