Chapter I · (continued 3)

(γγ) However compatible with portraiture the course of painting may be in all its modes of production it should, however, make the particular features of the face, the specific forms, ways of posing, grouping, and schemes of colour consonant with the actual situation, in which it composes its figures and natural objects in order to express a content. For it is just this content in this particular situation which should be portrayed.

Out of the infinitely diversified detail which in this connection we might examine I will only touch upon one point of vital importance. It is this that the situation may either be on its own account a passing one, and the emotion expressed by it of a momentary character, so that one and the same individual could express many similar ones in addition and also feelings in contrast with it, or the situation and emotion strikes at the very heart of a character, which thereby discloses its entire and most intimate nature. Situations and emotions of this latter type are the truly momentous crises in characterization[327]. In the situations, for example, in which I have already referred to the Madonna, one finds nothing, however essentially complete the individualization of the Mother of God may be in its composition, which is not a real factor in the embracing compass of her soul and character. In this case, too, the characterization is such that it is self-evident that she does not exist apart from what she can express in this specific circumstance. Supreme masters consequently have painted the Madonna in such immortal maternal situations or phases. Other masters have still retained in her character the expression of ordinary life otherwise experienced and actual. This expression may be very beautiful and life-like, but this form, the like features, and a similar expression would be equally applicable to other interests and relations of marriage lore. We are consequently inclined to regard a figure of this type from yet other points of view than that of a Madonna, whereas in the supremest works we are unable to make room for any other thoughts but that which the situation awakens in us. It is on this ground that I admire so strongly the Mary Magdalene of Correggio in Dresden, and it will for ever awake such admiration. We have here the repentant sinner, but we cannot fail to see that sinfulness is not here the point of serious consideration[328]; it is assumed she was essentially noble and could not have been capable of bad passions and actions. Her profound and intimately self-imposed restraint therefore can only be a return to that which she really is, what is no momentary situation, but her entire nature. Throughout this entire composition, whether we look at form, facial expression, dress, pose, or environment, the artist has therefore not in the slightest degree laid a stress on those circumstances, which might indicate sin and culpability; she has lost the consciousness of those times, and is entirely absorbed in her present condition, and this faith, this instinct, this absorption appears to be her real and complete character.

Such a complete reciprocity between soul-life and external surroundings, determinacy of character and situation, the masters of Italy have illustrated with exceptional beauty. In the example I have already referred to of Kügelchen's picture of the Prodigal Son, on the contrary, we have no doubt the remorse of repentance and grief expressed to the life; but the artist has failed to secure the unity of the entire character, which, apart from such an aspect of it, he possessed, and of the actual conditions under which such was depicted to us. If we examine quietly such features, we can only find in them the physiognomy of any one we might chance to meet on the Dresden bridge or anywhere else. In the case of a real coalescence of character with the expression of a specific situation such a result would be impossible; just as, in true genre-painting, even where the concentration is upon the most fleeting moments of time, the realization is too vivid to leave room for the notion that the figures before us could ever be otherwise placed or could have received other traits or an altered type of expression.

These, then, are the main points we have to consider in respect to the content and the artistic treatment in the sensuous material of painting, the surface, that is, and colour.

3. HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF PAINTING

In our consideration of this third section of our subject we are unable to confine ourselves, as we have hitherto done, to a wholly general examination of the content and purport appropriate to painting, and the mode of configuration, which follows from its principle, for in so far as this art is built up on the particularity of characters and their situation, and upon form and its pose, colour, and so forth, we are compelled to fix in our minds and discuss the actual reality of this art's separate productions. No study of painting is complete that does not take into its survey and is unable to enjoy and criticize the pictures themselves, in which the aspects of it we have examined are enforced. This is a general rule in the case of all art, but it applies with exceptional force to painting among those we have up to the present considered. In the case of architecture and sculpture, where the embrace of the content is more restricted, the means of exposition and configuration are to a less extent stamped with wealth and distinctive modification, and the particular aspects of their definition are simpler and more radical, we can more readily avail ourselves of copies, descriptions, and casts. It is essential in dealing with the art of painting that we should see the actual works themselves. In this case mere descriptions, however important they may be in a subsidiary sense, will not suffice. In the infinite variety, however, of its explication, the various aspects of which are united in particular works of art, these works appear to us in the first instance as a mere motley array, which, by reason of the fact that our review of it is based upon no principle of classification, is only to a small extent able to disclose to us the unique quality of individual pictures. And it follows from this that galleries, as a rule, if we are not already able to connect with each picture our knowledge of the country, period, school, and master to which it belongs, is simply a collection without meaning, in which we lose ourselves. The most profitable arrangement for study and enjoyment with our eyes is therefore an exhibition based on historical sequence. A collection of this kind, co-ordinated in relation to such a principle, unique and invaluable of its class, we shall shortly be able to admire in the picture gallery of the royal museum in this city[329]. In this we shall not only possess a historical survey of the technique of art in its stages of development, but shall have set before our minds, as an essential process with a history, that articulation of its ideal content in the distinctions of its schools, their various subject-matter, and their different modes of artistic conception and treatment. It is only through having given us a survey as consonant as this is with that vital process that we can form an idea from its origins in traditional and eclectic types, of the living growth of art, its search after expression and individual characteristic, its liberation from the inactive and tranquil station of its figures, that we can appreciate its progress to dramatic movement, grouping, and all the wealth and witchery of its colour, or finally learn to distinguish its schools, which either to some extent treat similar subject-matter in a way peculiar to themselves, or are distinct from each other by reasons of the variety of their respective content.

A historical development of painting such as that referred to is of as great importance to scientific observation and exposition as it is to accurate study. The content of art as I have presented it, namely, the elaboration of its material, the distinct and fundamental changes in the mode of its conception, we find all this and more receives thus for the first time its concrete coherence in a sequence and under a classification which corresponds with the facts. It is therefore incumbent on us to glance at this process, if only by way of emphasis to what most immediately arrests attention.

In general the advance consists in this, that it originates in religious subjects conceived still in a typical way, with simple architectonic arrangement and unelaborated colour. After this, in an increasing degree of fusion with religious situations, we get actuality, vital beauty of form, individuality, depth of penetration, charm and witchery of colouring, until Art finally turns its attention to the world itself, makes itself master of Nature, the daily occurrence of ordinary life, or what is of significance in national history whether present or past, or portraiture and anything else down to the merest trifle and the least significant fact, and with an enthusiasm equal to that it devoted to the religious ideal, and pre-eminently in this sphere secures not merely the most consummate result of technical accomplishment, but also a treatment and execution which is most full of life and personality. This progress is followed in clearest outline if we take in succession the schools of Byzantine, Italian, Flemish, Dutch, and German painting, after noting the most prominent features of which briefly we shall finally indicate the transition to the art of music[330].

(a) In our review of Byzantine painting we may remark to start with that the practice of painting among the Greeks was to a definable degree always carried on; and examples of antique work contributed to the greater excellence of its results relatively to posture, draping, and other respects. On the other hand the touch of Nature and life wholly vanished from this art; in facial types it adhered strictly to tradition; in its figures and modes of expression it was conventional and rigid; in its general composition more or less architectonic. We find no trace of natural environment and a landscape background. The modelling, by means of light and shadow, brilliance and obscurity, and their fusion, no less than perspective and the art of lifelike grouping, either were not elaborated at all, or to a very slight extent. By reason of this strict adherence to a single acknowledged type independent artistic production had little room for its exercise. The art of painting and mosaic frequently degenerated into a mere craft, and became thereby lifeless and devoid of spirit, albeit such craftsmen, equally with the workers on antique vases, possessed excellent examples of previous work, which they could imitate so far as pose and the folding of drapery was concerned. A similar type of painting spread its sombre influence over the ravaged West and more particularly in Italy. Here, however, although in the first instance with beginnings of little strength, we are even at an early date conscious of an effort to break away from inflexible forms and modes of expression, and to face, at first, however, in a rough and ready way, a development of loftier aim. Of Byzantine pictures we may, on the contrary, affirm, as Herr von Rumohr[331] has maintained of Greek Madonnas and images of Christ that "it is obvious even in the most favoured examples, their origin was that of the mosaic, and artistic elaboration was rejected from the first." In other words[332] the Italians endeavoured even before the period of their independent art development in painting, and in contrast to the Byzantines to approximate to a more spiritual conception of Christian subjects. The writer above-named draws attention also as noteworthy support of his contention to the manner in which the later Greeks and Italians respectively represented Christ on crucifixes. According to this writer "the Greeks, to whom the sight of terrible bodily suffering was of common occurrence, conceived the Saviour suspended on the Cross with the entire weight of his body, the lower part of the body swollen and the slackened knees bent to the left, the bowed head contending with the pains of an awful death. Their subject was consequently in its essentials bodily suffering. The Italians, on the contrary, in their more ancient monuments, while we must not overlook the fact that the representation of the Virgin Mary with her Child no less than the Crucified is only of rare occurrence, were accustomed to depict the figure of the Saviour on the cross adopting, so it appears to us, the idea of the victory of the spiritual, not as in the former case the death of the body. And this unquestionably nobler conception asserts itself at an early date in the more favoured parts of Western Europe[333]." With this sketch I must here rest content.

(b) We have, however, secondly, another characteristic of art to consider in the earlier development of Italian painting. Apart from the religious content of the Old and New Testament and the biographies of martyrs and saints, it borrows its subjects in the main from Greek mythology, very seldom, that is, from the events of national history, or, if we except portraits, from the reality of contemporary life, and equally rarely, and only at a late stage and exceptionally, from natural landscape. Now that which it before all contributes to its conception and artistic elaboration of the subject-matter of religion is the vital reality of spiritual and corporeal existence, relatively to which at this stage all its forms are embodied and endowed with animation. For this vitality the essential principle on the spiritual side is that natural delightfulness, and on the corporeal side is that beauty which is consonant with physical form, a beauty which independently, as beautiful form, already displays innocence, buoyancy, maidenhood, natural grace of temperament, nobility, imagination, and a loving soul. If there is further added to a naturel of this type the exaltation and adornment of the soul in virtue of the ideal intimacy of religion and the spiritual characteristics of a profounder piety established as a vitalizing principle of soul-life in this essentially more admitted and inviolable province of spiritual redemption[334],—in such a case we have presented to us thereby an original harmony of form and its expression, which, wherever it is perfected, vividly reminds us in this sphere of romantic art and Christian art of the pure Ideal of art. No doubt also within a new accord of this type the inward life of the heart will be predominant; but this inward experience is a more happy, a purer heaven of the soul, the way of return to which form what is sensuous and finite, and the return to God, albeit the passage may be through a travail in the profounder anguish of repentance and death, is, however, less saturated with trouble and its insistency. And the reason of this is that the pain is concentrated in the sphere of soul, of idea, of faith, without making a descent into the region of passionate desire, intractable savagery, obstinate self-seeking and sin, and only arriving at the hardly won victory through smiting down such enemies of the blessed state. It is rather a transition of ideal permanence[335], a pain of the inward life, which feels itself as such suffering rather simply in virtue of its enthusiasm, a suffering of more abstract type, more spiritually abundant, which has as little need to brush away bodily anguish as we have to seek signs in the characterization of its bodily presence and physiognomy of obstinacy, uncouthness, crookedness, or the traits of superficial and mean natures, in which an obstinate conflict is first necessary, before such are meet to express real religious feeling[336] and piety. This more benign[337] intimacy of soul, this more original consonancy of exterior forms to ideal experience of this kind is what creates the charming clarity and the untroubled delight, which the genuinely beautiful works of Italian painting excite and supply. Just as we say of instrumental music that there is tone and melody in it, so, too, we find that the pure song of soul floats here in melodious fusion over the entire configuration and all its forms. And as in the music of the Italians and in the tones of their song, when the pure strains ring forth without a forced utterance, in every separate note and inflection of sound and melody, it is simply the delight of the voice itself which rings out; so, too, such an intimate personal enjoyment of the loving soul is the fundamental tone of their painting[338]. It is the same intimacy, clarity, and freedom which meet us again in the great Italian poets. To start with this artistic resonance of rhymes in their terzets, canzonets, sonnets, and stanzas, this accord, which is not merely satisfied to allay its thirst for reverberation in the one repetition, but repeats the echo three times and more, this is itself a euphony which streams forth on its own account and for the sake of its own enjoyment. And a like freedom is stamped upon the spiritual content. In Petrarch's sonnets, sestets, and canzonets it is not so much the actual possession of their subject, after which the heart yearns; it is not the consideration and emotion which are involved in the actual content of the poem as such, and which is therein necessarily expressed; rather it is the expression itself which constitutes the source of enjoyment. It is the self-delight of Love, which seeks its bliss in its own mourning, its laments, its descriptions, memories, and experience; a yearning, which is satisfied in itself as such, and with the image, the spirit of those it loves, is already in full possession of the soul, with which it longs to unite itself. Dante, too, when conducted by his master Virgil through hell and hell-fire, gazes at what is the culmination of horror, of awfulness; he is fearful, he often bursts into tears, but he strides on comforted and tranquil, without affright and anxiety, without the sullenness and embitterment which implies "these things should not be thus." Nay, even his damned in hell receive the blessedness of eternity. Io eterno duro is inscribed over the gates of hell. They are what they are, without repentance and longing; they do not speak of their sufferings; they are as immaterial to us as they are to them, for they endure for ever. Rather they are absorbed simply in their personal experience and actions, secure of themselves as rooted in the same interests, without lamentation and without yearning[339].

When we have grasped this trait of happy independence and freedom of the soul in love we shall understand the character of the greatest Italian painters. It is in this freedom that they are masters of the detail of expression, and situation. On the wings of this tranquillity of soul they can maintain their sovereignty over form, beauty, and colour. In their most defined presentation of reality and character, while remaining wholly on the earth and often only producing portraits, or appearing to produce such, what we have are pictures of another sun, another spring. They are roses which are equally heavenly blossoms. And, consequently, we find that in their beauty we do not have merely beauty of form, we do not have only the sensuous unity of soul impressed on sensuous corporeal shapes; we are confronted with this very trait of reconciled Love in every mode, feature, and individuality of character. It is the butterfly, the Psyche[340], which in the sunlight of its heaven, even hovers round stunted flowers[341]. It is only by virtue of this rich, free, and rounded beauty that they are able to unfold the ideals of the antique art's more recent perfection.

Italian art has, however, not immediately and from the first attained to such a point of perfection; it had in truth a long road to traverse before it arrived there. And yet, despite this, the purity and innocence of its piety, the largeness of the entire conception, the unassuming beauty of form, this intimate revelation of soul[342], are frequently and above all in the case of the old Italian masters most conspicuous where the technical elaboration is still wholly incomplete. In the previous century it was fashionable to depreciate these earlier masters, and place them on one side as clumsy, dull, and barren[343]. It is only in more recent times that they have been once more rescued from oblivion by savants and artists; but the wonder and imitation thus awakened has run off into the excess of a preference which tends to deny the advances of a further development in mode of conception and presentment, and can only lead astray in the opposite direction.

In drawing the reader's more close attention to the more important phases in the development of Italian art up to this period of its fullest perfection, I will only briefly emphasize the following points which immediately concern the characterization of the essential aspects of painting and its modes of expression.

(α) After the earliest stage of rawness and barbarism the Italians moved forward with a fresh impetus from that in the main craftsmanship type of art which was planted by the Byzantines. The compass of subjects depicted was, however, not extensive, and the distinctive features of the type were austerity, solemnity, and religious loftiness. But even at this stage—I am quoting the conclusions of Herr von Rumohr—who is generally recognized as an authority upon these earlier periods[344], Duccio, the Sienese, and Cimabue, the Florentine, endeavoured to assimilate the few remains of antique drawing, which was grounded on laws of perspective and anatomical precision, and so far as possible, to rejuvenate the same in their own genius. They "instinctively recognized the value of such drawings, but strove to soften the extreme insistence[345] of their ossification, comparing such insufficiently comprehended traits with the life such as we find it in fact or suggestion when face to face with their own productions[345]." Such are merely the first and mediating efforts of art to rise from the inflexibility of a type to lifelike and individual expression.

(β) The further step of advance consists in the complete severation from those previous Greek examples, in the full acceptance, relatively both to the entire conception and execution of what is distinctively human and individual, and along with this in the profounder suitability of human characters and forms which was gradually evolved to express the religious content thus to be expressed.

(αα) It is here before all we must draw attention to the great influence which Giotto and his pupils exercised. Giotto, along with the changes he effected in respect to modes of conception and composition, brought about a reform in the art of preparing colours. The later Greeks probably, such at least is the result of chemical analysis, made use of wax either as a medium of colour, or as a kind of varnish[346], and from this we get the yellow-green and obscure general tone, which is not sufficiently explained by the action of lamplight[347]. Giotto wholly dispensed with this glutinous medium of the Greek painters, and used instead, when preparing his colours[348], the clarified milk of young shoots, unripe figs, and other less oliginous limes[349], which Italian painters of the early Middle Ages had used, very likely even before they strenuously imitated the Byzantines[350]. A medium of this kind had no darkening effect on the colours, but left their luminosity and clarity unimpaired. Still more important was the reform effected by Giotto in Italian painting with respect to selection of subjects and their manner of presentment. Ghiberti himself praises Giotto for having abandoned the rude style of the Greeks, and without leaning in this direction to an excess having introduced the truth and grace of Nature. Boccaccio, too, says of him that Nature is unable to create anything that Giotto could not imitate to the point of deception[351]. In Byzantine pictures we can hardly detect a trace of natural appearance. It was Giotto, then, who concentrated his attention on what is present and actual, and compared the forms and effects which he undertook to exhibit with Life as it existed around him. And we may associate with this tendency the fact that during the times of Giotto not only do we find that the state of society was more free and intent on enjoyment, but that the veneration of several later saints took its rise then, saints whose lives more or less fell in that period[352]. It was such Giotto utilized particularly in emphasizing the truthful presentment of the subjects of his art; there was, in fact, thus the further demand suggested by the content itself that he should bring into prominence the natural features of the bodily presence and exhibit more defined characterization, action, passion, situation, pose, and movement. What we find, however, to a relative degree disappears from this attempt is that imposing religious seriousness which is the fundamental characteristic of the phase of art which it followed[353]. The things of the world receive a stage and a wider opportunity for expression; and this is illustrated by the way Giotto, under the influence of his age, found room for burlesque along with so much that was pathetic. In this connection Herr von Rumohr states rightly, "Under conditions of this description I am at a loss to understand how certain critics, who have exclusively insisted on this feature of Giotto's work, can so overestimate Giotto's tendency and performance by claiming it as the most sublime effort of modern art[354]." It is a great service of the above-named critic to have once more placed in a true light the point of view from which Giotto can be justly appreciated; he throughout makes us careful to see, that in this tendency of Giotto to humanize and towards realism he never really, as a rule, advances beyond a comparatively subordinate stage in the process.

(ββ) The advance of painting continued under the manner of conception for which Giotto was in the main responsible. The typical representation of Christ, the apostles, and the more important events which are reported us by the evangelists, were more and more thrust into the background. Yet in another direction the embrace of subject-matter was for that reason extended. As our author expresses it: "All artists engaged in depicting the various phases in the life of latter-day saints, such as their previous worldliness, the sudden awakening of conscience, their entrance into the life of piety and asceticism, the miracles of their lives, more particularly after their decease, in the representation of which, as is to be expected from the external conditions of the art, the expression of the effect upon the living exceeded any suggestion of invisible powder[355]." Add to this that the events of the Life and Passion of Christ were not neglected. The birth and education of Christ, the Madonna with her Child were exceptionally favoured subjects, and were invested with a more life-like domesticity, touched with a more intimate tenderness, revealed to us in the medium of human feeling, and, moreover, to quote yet further: "In the problems[356] suggested by the Passion it was not so much the sublime and the triumph as simply the pathetic aspect which was emphasized, a direct consequence of the enthusiastic wave of sympathy with the earthly sufferings of the Saviour, to which Saint Francis, both by example and teaching, had communicated a vital energy hitherto unheard of."

In respect to a yet further advance towards the middle of the fifteenth century, we have to lay exceptional stress on two names, Masaccio and Fiesole. In the progressive steps through which the religious content was vividly carried into the living forms of the human figure and the animated expression of human traits Herr von Rumohr[357] draws attention to two essential aspects as of most importance. The one is the increase of rondure in all forms to which it applies; the other he indicates as "a profounder penetration into the articulation, the consistency, the most varied phases of the charm and significance of the features of the human countenance." Masaccio and Angelico da Fiesole between them were the first to contribute effectively to the solution of this artistic problem, the difficulty of which in its entirety exceeded the powers of any one artist of that period. "Masaccio was mainly occupied with the problem of chiaroscuro, and the rounding and effective articulations of groups of figures. Angelico da Fiesole, on the other hand, devoted himself to sounding the depths of ideal coherence, that indwelling significance of human features, the mine of whose treasure he was the first to open to painting[358]." The effort of Masaccio was not so much one in the direction of grace as in that of imposing conception, manliness, and under the instinctive need for unity of the entire composition. The impulse of Fra Angelico was that of religious intensity, a love severed from the world, a cloistral purity of emotion, an exaltation and consecration of the soul. Vasari assures us in his account of him that he never commenced work without prayer, and never depicted the sufferings of the Redeemer without bursting into tears[359]. We have, then as aspects of this advance of painting a more exalted vitality and realism: but, on the other hand, the depth of piety, the ingenuous devotion of the soul in its faith overran itself and overpowered the freedom, dexterity, naturalism, and beauty of the composition, pose, drapery, and colour. If the later development was able to attain to a far more exalted and complete expression of the spiritual consciousness, yet the epoch we are now considering has never been surpassed in purity and innocence of religious feeling and serious depth of conception. Many pictures of this time may very well, by reason of the fact that the forms of life, which are used to depict the religious intensity of soul-life, do not appear fully adequate to this expression, give us something like a repulse; from the point of view, however, of spiritual emotion, which is the most vital source of these works of art, we have still less reason to fail to acknowledge the naive purity, the intimacy with the most profound depths of the truly religious content, the assuredness of faithful love even under oppression and in grief, and oft, too, the charm of innocence and blessedness, inasmuch as the epochs that followed it, however much in other aspects of artistic perfection they made a step forwards, yet for all that never secured again the perfection of these previous excellencies, when once it had been lost.

(γγ) A third aspect attaches to the further development of the art, in addition to those already discussed, which may be described as the wider embrace of it relatively to the subjects accepted for presentation by the new impulse. Just as what was regarded as sacred had from the very commencement of Italian painting approached more closely to reality by reason of the fact that men whose lives fell about the time of the painters themselves were declared to be saints, so too Art received into its own sphere other aspects of reality and present life. Starting from that earliest phase of pure spirituality and piety, an art whose aim was wholly absorbed in the expression of such religious emotions, painting proceeded more and more to associate the external life of the world with its religious subject-matter. The gladsome, forceful self-reliance of the citizen in the midst of his professional career, the business and the craft that was bound up with such qualities, the freedom, the manly courage and patriotism, in one word, his weal in the vital activities of the Present, all this newly-awakened sense of human delight in the virtues of civil life and its cheer and humour[360], this harmonized sympathy with what was actual in both its aspects of ideal life[361] and the external framework of the same, all this it was which entered now into his artistic conceptions and modes of presenting such and was made valid therein. It is in this spirit that the enthusiasm for landscape backgrounds, views of cities, environment of church buildings and palaces becomes a real instinct of artistic life; the living portraits of famous savants, friends, statesmen, artists, and other persons remarkable in their day for their wit and vivacity find a place in religious compositions; traits borrowed from both civil and domestic life are utilized with a greater or less degree of freedom and dexterity; and if, no doubt, the spiritual aspect of the religious content remained the foundation of all, yet the expression of piety was no longer exclusively isolate, but is linked together with the more ample life of reality and the open stage of the world[362]. No doubt we must add that by reason of this tendency the expression of religious concentration and its intimate piety is weakened, but art required also this worldly element in order to arrive at its culminating point.

(γ) Out of this fusion of the more embracing reality of life with the ideal material of religious emotion arose a new problem for genius to solve, the complete solution of which was reserved for the great masters of the sixteenth century. The supreme aim now was to bring the intimate life of soul, the seriousness and the loftiness of religious emotion into harmony with the animation, the actual presence of characters and forms both in its corporeal and spiritual aspect, in order that the bodily configuration in its pose, movement, and colour, may not simply remain an external framework, but become itself essentially an expression of spirit and life, and by virtue of that expression, made throughout all its parts wholly the reflex of soul-life no less than of external form, reveal a beauty without break or interruption.

Among the masters of most distinction, who set before themselves such an aim, we should pre-eminently mention Leonardo da Vinci. It was he, who, by virtue of his artistic thoroughness, his almost over-refined passion for detail, his exquisite delicacy of mind and feeling, not only penetrated further than any other[363] into the mysteries of the human form and the secrets of its expression, but, through his equally profound knowledge of all the technique of a painter, attained to an extraordinary infallibility in the employment of all the means that his researches and practice had placed within his reach. And, along with this, he was able to retain a reverential seriousness in composing his religious subjects, so that his figures, however much they present to us the ideal of a more complete and rounded actuality, and disclose the expression of sweet, smiling joyfulness in facial traits and the delicate rhythm of drapery, do not thereby dispense with the dignity, which the worth and truth of religion demand[364].

The most unflecked quality[365] of perfection reached in this direction was, however, that first attained by Raphael. Herr von Rumohr assigns more particularly to the artists of the Umbrian School dating from the middle of the fifteenth century a mysterious fascination, which no sympathetic nature can resist, and endeavours to find the source of this attraction in the depth and tenderness of feeling no less than the marvellous unity into which these painters knew how to bring memories from the oldest essays of Christian art of a style only very partially understood by them[366] with the milder conceptions of a later time, and in this respect proved themselves superior to the Tuscan, Lombard, and Venetian fellow artists of that period[367]. It was just this expression of "flawless purity of soul and absolute surrender to the yearning and enthusiastic flow of tender feeling" to which Pietro Perugino, the master of Raphael, devoted his artistic efforts, and succeeded by doing so in fusing the objectivity and vitality of external forms, throughout all its actual realization and in every detail, an aim which had previously received the most marked attention in the elaborate work of the Florentines. Starting from the work of Perugino, to whose artistic taste and style he appears to have consistently adhered in his early work, Raphael proceeded yet further to realize to the most consummate degree the demand of the ideal above indicated. In other words we find united in him the highest ecclesiastical feeling for the themes of religious art and a complete knowledge and enthusiastic respect for natural phenomena in all the animation of their colour and shape together with an insight fully as great for the beauty of the antique. This great admiration for the idealistic beauty of the ancients did not bring him in any way to imitate and adapt to his work the forms which Greek sculpture had elaborated in their perfection. What he seized from it was simply the general principle of their free beauty which in his hands was throughout suffused with a more individual vitality more applicable to his art and with a type of expression more deeply informed with soul-life, and at the same time with an open, blithesome clarity and thoroughness, in all the detail of the presentment that up to his time was as yet unknown among Italian artists. In the elaboration and consistent fusion and coherence of this ideal atmosphere he reached the highest point of his attainment. On the other hand, in the magical charm of chiaroscuro, in the exquisite tenderness and grace of soul-expression, of forms, movements, and grouping, it is Correggio who most excels, while the incomparable greatness of Titian consists in the wealth of natural life that he displays, the illuminating bloom, fervency, warmth, and power of his colour. We know nothing more delightful than the naïveté of Correggio's not so much natural as religious and spiritual grace, nothing more sweet than his smiling, unconscious beauty and innocence[368].

The artistic perfection of these great masters is a culminating point of art such as could only be mastered by one nation in the course of historical development.

(c) Thirdly, in so far as the question is that of German painting we may affiliate that which is entirely German with that of Flemish or Dutch painters. The general distinction between the above schools and that of the Italians, consists in this, that neither the Germans nor the painters of the Netherlands were willing as a creation of their own to attain to the free ideal forms and modes of expression characteristic of Italian art, or were able to progress to that spiritually transfigured type of beauty which is essentially the result of such. What they did elaborate, however, was, in one aspect of it, the expression of depth of emotion and the austere seclusion of the individual soul, and, from another point of view, they attach to this intensity of faith the separate definition of individual character in the broader significance of it, that is to say, one which does not merely disclose the fact of its close interest with the claims of faith and salvation, but also shows how the individuals represented are affected by the concerns of the world, how they are buffeted by the cares of life, and in this severe ordeal have gained worldly wisdom, fidelity, consistency, straightforwardness, the constancy of chivalry and the sterling character of good citizens. Agreeably to this more restricted and depressed vision of the detail of life we find here, and it is particularly conspicuous in the German school, from the beginning, in deliberate contrast with the purer forms and characters of the Italians, rather the expression of a formal obstinacy of stubborn natures, which either oppose themselves to God with energetic defiance and brutal wilfulness, or are forced to impose restraint on themselves in order that they may, with sore travail, wrest themselves from their limitations and uncouthness, and fight their way to the reconciliation of religion; consequently the deep wounds which they inflict on their spiritual life inevitably contribute to the visible expression of their piety. In illustrating this more closely I will merely draw attention to certain prominent features, which are important indications of the contrast between the older Flemish school and the upper German and more recent Dutch masters of the seventeenth century.

(α) Among the early Flemish masters, the brothers Van Eyck, Hubert, and John are exceptionally distinguished in the early half of the fifteenth century, and it is only recently that their true merits have once more been established. It is now an established fact that they discovered, or at least they were the first to fully perfect, the process of oil-painting. Looking at the great advance they made we must now assume that a distinct series of stages in the course of this progress to its culmination could be set forth. We have, however, no historical array of works of art preserved for us whereby we could illustrate such a gradual process. We are face to face at one moment of time with the beginning and final consummation. For painting of greater excellence than that of these two brothers it is almost impossible to imagine. Moreover, the works that have come down to us, in which the mere type is already dispensed with and overcome, not merely display a grand mastery in drawing, arrangement, grouping, ideal and exterior characterization, enthusiasm, clarity, harmony, and delicacy of colouring, dignity and repose of composition; but we must add that the entire wealth of painting respectively to nature's environment, architectonic accessories, backgrounds, splendour and variety of material, drapery, style of weapons, ornamentation, and much besides, is already treated with such fidelity, with such an instinctive sense of what is pictorial, and with such a technical virtuosity, that even later centuries, at any rate from the point of view of thoroughness and truth, have been unable to produce any more consummate result. We are, however, more strongly attracted by the master works of Italian painting, if we contrast them with this Flemish school, because the Italians, along with the completest expression of soul-life and the religious sense, retain throughout the ideal of spiritual freedom and imaginative beauty. The figures of Flemish art delight us, no doubt, by virtue of their innocence, naïveté, and piety; nay, in the depth of their emotional life they, in some measure, surpass the work of the most excellent Italian artists; but the Flemish masters have never been able to attain to a beauty of form and a freedom of soul comparable with that of the Italians. Their Christ-babes are, in particular, badly modelled; and for the rest their characters, whether men or women, however strongly, subject to their dominant expression of religious fervour, they may display a sterling character in their relation to secular interests sanctified by the depth of their faith, nevertheless appear to us lacking in a significance which can exalt itself over such a piety, or rather, as dominated by it, do not appear able at the same time to be essentially free, instinct with imagination and the enterprise of superior qualities.

(β) A further aspect we shall do well to consider is the transition from the more tranquil, reverential piety to the representation of martyrdoms, and, in general, what is not beautiful in reality. It is more particularly the North German masters who excel in scenes borrowed from the Passion in which they emphasize the savagery of the soldiery, the evil aspects of the mocking, the fierceness of the hate against Christ during the course of His sufferings, with particular insistence on features of ugliness and distortion, and which are intended to denote external forms correspondent with the depravity of spirit. The tranquil and beautiful activity of an unassuming personal piety is thrown into the background, and the movements which are inseparable from the situations above mentioned unfold us hideous distortions, expressions of ferocity, and all the unbridled exhibition of passions. Where we have the contending tumult and the uncouthness of characters presented with such detail, it is not surprising that such pictures are defective in the ideal harmony of their composition no less than their colour, so that, more especially where a taste for old German paintings first crops up, critics when thus confronted with what is, as a rule, an inferior class of technical accomplishment, fall into many mistakes when determining the date of their production. Thus it has been maintained that they are previous to the more consummate pictures of the Van Eyck period, although, for the most part, they hail from a more recent time. However, the Upper German masters were not exclusively occupied with works of this type, but have likewise treated a variety of religious subjects, and, indeed—Albrecht Dürer, with others, exemplifies this—even in scenes from Christ's Passion, have understood how effectively to grapple with the extremes of pure savagery, and even when treating such themes to preserve an ideal nobility and an external independence[369] and freedom.

(γ) Finally, the development of German and Flemish art is characterized in a complete identification of itself with the ordinary life of the Present; and, along with this, in a unified system of the most varied modes of presentation, which, both in respect to their content and technique, are distinct from one another and independently elaborated. We have seen already the advance made by Italian painting from the simple nobility of devotion to an ever-increasing assertion of secular motive, which here, however, as we pointed out in the case of Raphael, was in some measure permeated by ecclesiastical prepossessions, and in part limited by the coherent principle of antique beauty. We may add that the later course of this school is not so much a dissolution of that unity in the representation of every kind of subject-matter under the predominant interest of the colourist as a more superficial disposition, or rather, eclectic imitation of styles of draughtsmanship and painting. German and Flemish art, on the contrary, has in the most definite and exceptional degree traversed the entire scheme of content and modes of treatment, starting from its wholly traditional church pictures, single figures and half lengths, then on to thoughtful, pious, and devotional subjects, until we come to that animation and extension of the same in larger compositions and scenes, in which, however, the free characterization of figure, the heightened vitality effected by means of processions, retinues, incidental personages, embellishment of garments and utensils, wealth of portraiture, architectural works, environment, views of churches, cities, streams, forests, mountains, is still conceived and executed as a whole subject to religious motivation. This focal centre still persists; but we find that the range of subjects, which had hitherto been held together in unity, is broken into division, and the separate parts become, in the specific singularity and contingent character of their alternations or independent modifications, subject to every possible type of conception and pictorial execution[370].

In order to arrive at a full appreciation of this aspect of art's development in the present context, for we have already referred to the point, we will pass briefly in review the national conditions which were operative in the change. We are under the necessity to justify, as we shall attempt to do in the following observations, a transition from direct relations to the Church and the outlook and pictorial modes of piety to a delight in the world simply, that is to say, to the objects and particular phenomena of Nature, to domestic life in its dignity, congeniality, and peaceful seclusion, to an enjoyment of national festivities and processions, rustic dances, the games and follies attendant upon church fêtes. Now the Reformation had thoroughly penetrated Holland. The Dutch had become Protestants and overcome the despotism of the Spanish Crown and Church. And what is more we do not, if we consider the political condition here, either find a distinguished nobility which drives forth its princes and tyrants, or imposes laws on them, nor yet an agricultural people, oppressed peasantry, who break free as the Swiss have done, but rather a population which, in by far the largest proportion of it, if we except the few brave souls that tilled the soil and its more than brave heroes of the sea, consisted of citizens of the town, men of business, well-to-do burghers, men who, rejoicing in their ordinary avocations, entertained no lofty pretensions, but, as became their courage and intelligence, with audacious reliance in God, stood up to defend the freedom of their hardly-won liberties and the particular privileges of their provinces, cities, and guilds, dared to oppose themselves to all hazards without fear of the transcendent prestige of the Spanish dominion over half the world, to bravely let their blood flow for such an aim, and by virtue of this righteous boldness and endurance victoriously secured both their religious and civic independence. And if we may brand any single condition of soul-life as distinctively deutsch, it is just this loyal, well-to-do, and genial citizenship, which, in a self-respect that is without pride, in a piety which is not merely absorbed in enthusiasm and devotion, but which is concretely pious in the affairs of the world[371] and is homely and contented in its abundance, remains neat and clean, and in persistent carefulness and contentment under all circumstances, armed with its own enduring sense of independence and freedom, is able, with loyalty to its former life, to preserve the sterling character of its forefathers unimpaired. This intelligent and artistically endowed people furthermore seeks its enjoyment in the pictorial presentment of its vigorous, justly co-ordinated, satisfying, and comfortable existence; it is all for taking a renewed delight by means of its pictures in the cleanliness under all conditions of its towns, houses, and domestic arrangements, of enjoying thus its household felicity, its wealth, the generous adornment of its wives and children, the splendour of its civic feasts, the boldness of its seamen, the fame of its merchandise and the shipping, in which it rides over all the seas of the world. And it is just this instinct of orderly and cheerful existence, which the Dutch masters emphasize also in their landscape subjects. In one word, in all their pictorial accomplishment they succeed in combining with freedom, and truth of conception, with their enthusiasm for what is in appearance of inferior and momentary significance, with the freshness of open vision and the concentration of their entire soul on all that is most stamped with the seclusion and limitations of their life, the most ample freedom of artistic composition, no less than the finest feeling for accessories and the most perfect effects of studious elaboration. From one point of view this school of painting has developed to an incomparable degree the magic and mystery of lighting and colour[372] generally in its scenes borrowed from war and military life, in its tavern jollifications, in its weddings and other rustic fêtes, in its pictures of domestic life, in its portraits, landscapes, animals, flowers, and the rest. From another aspect it has elaborated with a similar excellence the characterization which penetrates to the heart of life in all the truth of which Art is capable. And although its insistence on the insignificant and contingent includes the expression of what is boorish, rude, and common, yet these scenes are so permeated throughout with ingenuous lustiness and jollity, that it is not the common in its meanness and naughtiness so much as the gaiety and joviality which creates the artistic subject and its content. We do not look at mean feelings and passions, but simply what is boorish, in the sense of being rustic, near to nature, in the poorer classes, a quality which connotes geniality, waggishness, and comedy. In short the Ideal itself is not wholly absent from this unperturbed easy-way-of-life. It is the Sabbath of Life, which brings all to one level and removes all badness, simply as such. Men who are thus so whole-heartedly of good temper can neither be wholly bad nor mean. In this respect it is not one and the same thing, whether evil is of purely momentary appearance in a character, or lies at its root and essence. In the work of these Dutch painters what is humorous in a situation cancels what is evil, and it is at once clear to us that the characters could be something other than that in the guise of which they are for the time being set before us[373]. A gaiety and comedy of this description contributes much to the invaluable character of these pictures. If pictures of this rollicking type are attempted nowadays, the painter, as a rule, only places before us what is essentially mean, coarse and bad without the illuminating atmosphere of a comic situation[374]. A bad wife rails at her tipsy husband in the tavern with all her might. In a scene of this kind we have only put before us, as I have already remarked, the bald facts that the man is a dissipated brute and the woman a rating wench.

If we look at the Dutch masters in this light we shall no longer entertain the view that the art of painting should have said good-bye to such subjects altogether, and merely confined itself to depicting the gods of old, myths, and fables, or even Madonna pictures, crucifixions, martyrs, popes, and saints of both sexes. What is a vital ingredient of every work of art is inseparable also from painting, and this is the observance of what generally concerns our humanity, the spirit and characterization of man, in other words what man is and what each individual is. This vital grasp of the conscious life of human nature and the external forms of its appearance, this naive delight and artistic freedom, this freshness and cheerfulness of imaginative sympathy, this absolute directness of execution is what constitutes the poetry that underlies the work of the majority of the Dutch painters of this period. In their paintings we may study and acquaint ourselves with human nature and mankind. Nowadays, however, our artist only too frequently will confront us with portraits and historical pictures, at which we have only to cast a bare glance, and we see that, while flatly contradicting the wildest dream of what is possible in mankind or anyone in particular, he neither knows aught at all about man or his natural colour, nor yet the modes of composition[375] in which we may justly express that humanity[376].