Ariadne Florentina: Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving

135. Nevertheless, in landscape, there are two examples in your Reference series, of insuperable skill and extreme beauty: Miller's plate, before instanced, of the Grand Canal, Venice; and E. Goodall's of the upper fall of the Tees. The men who engraved these plates might have been exquisite artists; but their patience and enthusiasm were held captive in the false system of lines, and we lost the painters; while the engravings, wonderful as they are, are neither of them worth a Turner etching, scratched in ten minutes with the point of an old fork; and the common types of such elaborate engraving are none of them worth a single frog, pig, or puppy, out of the corner of a Bewick vignette.

136. And now, I think, you cannot fail to understand clearly what you are to look for in engraving, as a separate art from that of painting. Turn back to the 'Astrologia' as a perfect type of the purest school. She is gazing at stars, and crowned with them. But the stars are black instead of shining! You cannot have a more decisive and absolute proof that you must not look in engraving for chiaroscuro.

Nevertheless, her body is half in shade, and her left foot; and she casts a shadow, and there is a bar of shade behind her.

All these are merely so much acceptance of shade as may relieve the forms, and give value to the linear portions. The face, though turned from the light, is shadowless.

Again. Every lock of the hair is designed and set in its place with the subtlest care, but there is no luster attempted,—no texture,—no mystery. The plumes of the wings are set studiously in their places,—they, also, lusterless. That even their filaments are not drawn, and that the broad curve embracing them ignores the anatomy of a bird's wing, are conditions of design, not execution. Of these in a future lecture.³¹

IV.

"By the Springs of Parnassus."

137. The 'Poesia,' Plate IV., opposite, is a still more severe, though not so generic, an example; its decorative foreground reducing it almost to the rank of goldsmith's ornamentation. I need scarcely point out to you that the flowing water shows neither luster nor reflection; but notice that the observer's attention is supposed to be so close to every dark touch of the graver that he will see the minute dark spots which indicate the sprinkled shower falling from the vase into the pool.

138. This habit of strict and calm attention, constant in the artist, and expected in the observer, makes all the difference between the art of Intellect, and of mere sensation. For every detail of this plate has a meaning, if you care to understand it. This is Poetry, sitting by the fountain of Castalia, which flows first out of a formal urn, to show that it is not artless; but the rocks of Parnassus are behind, and on the top of them—only one tree, like a mushroom with a thick stalk. You at first are inclined to say, How very absurd, to put only one tree on Parnassus! but this one tree is the Immortal Plane Tree, planted by Agamemnon, and at once connects our Poesia with the Iliad. Then, this is the hem of the robe of Poetry,—this is the divine vegetation which springs up under her feet,—this is the heaven and earth united by her power,—this is the fountain of Castalia flowing out afresh among the grass,—and these are the drops with which, out of a pitcher, Poetry is nourishing the fountain of Castalia.

All which you may find out if you happen to know anything about Castalia, or about poetry; and pleasantly think more upon, for yourself. But the poor dunces, Sandro and Baccio, feeling themselves but 'goffi nell' arte,' have no hope of telling you all this, except suggestively. They can't engrave grass of Parnassus, nor sweet springs so as to look like water; but they can make a pretty damasked surface with ornamental leaves, and flowing lines, and so leave you something to think of—if you will.

139. 'But a great many people won't, and a great many more can't; and surely the finished engravings are much more delightful, and the only means we have of giving any idea of finished pictures, out of our reach.'

Yes, all that is true; and when we examine the effects of line engraving upon taste in recent art, we will discuss these matters; for the present, let us be content with knowing what the best work is, and why it is so. Although, however, I do not now press further my cavils at the triumph of modern line engraving, I must assign to you, in few words, the reason of its recent decline. Engravers complain that photography and cheap wood-cutting have ended their finer craft. No complaint can be less grounded. They themselves destroyed their own craft, by vulgarizing it. Content in their beautiful mechanism, they ceased to learn, and to feel, as artists; they put themselves under the order of publishers and print-sellers; they worked indiscriminately from whatever was put into their hands,—from Bartlett as willingly as from Turner, and from Mulready as carefully as from Raphael. They filled the windows of print-sellers, the pages of gift books, with elaborate rubbish, and piteous abortions of delicate industry. They worked cheap, and cheaper,—smoothly, and more smoothly,—they got armies of assistants, and surrounded themselves with schools of mechanical tricksters, learning their stale tricks with blundering avidity. They had fallen—before the days of photography—into providers of frontispieces for housekeepers' pocket-books. I do not know if photography itself, their redoubted enemy, has even now ousted them from that last refuge.

140. Such the fault of the engraver,—very pardonable; scarcely avoidable,—however fatal. Fault mainly of humility. But what has your fault been, gentlemen? what the patrons' fault, who have permitted so wide waste of admirable labor, so pathetic a uselessness of obedient genius? It was yours to have directed, yours to have raised and rejoiced in, the skill, the modesty, the patience of this entirely gentle and industrious race;—copyists with their heart. The common painter-copyists who encumber our European galleries with their easels and pots, are, almost without exception, persons too stupid to be painters, and too lazy to be engravers. The real copyists—the men who can put their soul into another's work—are employed at home, in their narrow rooms, striving to make their good work profitable to all men. And in their submission to the public taste they are truly national servants as much as Prime Ministers are. They fulfill the demand of the nation; what, as a people, you wish to have for possession in art, these men are ready to give you.

And what have you hitherto asked of them?—Ramsgate Sands, and Dolly Vardens, and the Paddington Station,—these, I think, are typical of your chief demands; the cartoons of Raphael—which you don't care to see themselves; and, by way of a flight into the empyrean, the Madonna di San Sisto. And literally, there are hundreds of cities and villages in Italy in which roof and wall are blazoned with the noblest divinity and philosophy ever imagined by men; and of all this treasure, I can, as far as I know, give you not one example, in line engraving, by an English hand!

Well, you are in the main matter right in this. You want essentially Ramsgate Sands and the Paddington Station, because there you can see yourselves.

Make yourselves, then, worthy to be seen forever, and let English engraving become noble as the record of English loveliness and honor.

LECTURE V

DESIGN IN THE GERMAN SCHOOLS OF ENGRAVING

141. By reference to the close of the preface to 'Eagle's Nest,' you will see, gentlemen, that I meant these lectures, from the first, rather to lead you to the study of the characters of two great men, than to interest you in the processes of a secondary form of art. As I draw my materials into the limited form necessary for the hour, I find my divided purpose doubly failing; and would fain rather use my time to-day in supplying the defects of my last lecture, than in opening the greater subject, which I must treat with still more lamentable inadequacy. Nevertheless, you must not think it is for want of time that I omit reference to other celebrated engravers, and insist on the special power of these two only. Many not inconsiderable reputations are founded merely on the curiosity of collectors of prints, or on partial skill in the management of processes; others, though resting on more secure bases, are still of no importance to you in the general history of art; whereas you will find the work of Holbein and Botticelli determining for you, without need of any farther range, the principal questions of moment in the relation of the Northern and Southern schools of design. Nay, a wider method of inquiry would only render your comparison less accurate in result. It is only in Holbein's majestic range of capacity, and only in the particular phase of Teutonic life which his art adorned, that the problem can be dealt with on fair terms. We Northerns can advance no fairly comparable antagonist to the artists of the South, except at that one moment, and in that one man. Rubens cannot for an instant be matched with Tintoret, nor Memling with Lippi; while Reynolds only rivals Titian in what he learned from him. But in Holbein and Botticelli we have two men trained independently, equal in power of intellect, similar in material and mode of work, contemporary in age, correspondent in disposition. The relation between them is strictly typical of the constant aspects to each other of the Northern and Southern schools.

142. Their point of closest contact is in the art of engraving, and this art is developed entirely as the servant of the great passions which perturbed or polluted Europe in the fifteenth century. The impulses which it obeys are all new; and it obeys them with its own nascent plasticity of temper. Painting and sculpture are only modified by them; but engraving is educated.

These passions are in the main three; namely,

1. The thirst for classical literature, and the forms of proud and false taste which arose out of it, in the position it had assumed as the enemy of Christianity.

2. The pride of science, enforcing (in the particular domain of Art) accuracy of perspective, shade, and anatomy, never before dreamed of.

3. The sense of error and iniquity in the theological teaching of the Christian Church, felt by the highest intellects of the time, and necessarily rendering the formerly submissive religious art impossible.

To-day, then, our task is to examine the peculiar characters of the Design of the Northern Schools of Engraving, as affected by these great influences.

143. I have not often, however, used the word 'design,' and must clearly define the sense in which I now use it. It is vaguely used in common art-parlance; often as if it meant merely the drawing of a picture, as distinct from its color; and in other still more inaccurate ways. The accurate and proper sense, underlying all these, I must endeavor to make clear to you.

'Design' properly signifies that power in any art-work which has a purpose other than of imitation, and which is 'designed,' composed, or separated to that end. It implies the rejection of some things, and the insistence upon others, with a given object.³²

Let us take progressive instances. Here is a group of prettily dressed peasant children, charmingly painted by a very able modern artist—not absolutely without design, for he really wishes to show you how pretty peasant children can be, (and, in so far, is wiser and kinder than Murillo, who likes to show how ugly they can be); also, his group is agreeably arranged, and its component children carefully chosen. Nevertheless, any summer's day, near any country village, you may come upon twenty groups in an hour as pretty as this; and may see—if you have eyes—children in them twenty times prettier than these. A photograph, if it could render them perfectly, and in color, would far excel the charm of this painting; for in it, good and clever as it is, there is nothing supernatural, and much that is subnatural.

144. Beside this group of, in every sense of the word, 'artless' little country girls, I will now set one—in the best sense of the word—'artful' little country girl,—a sketch by Gainsborough.

You never saw her like before. Never will again, now that Gainsborough is dead. No photography,—no science,—no industry, will touch or reach for an instant this super-naturalness. You will look vainly through the summer fields for such a child. "Nor up the lawn, nor by the wood," is she. Whence do you think this marvelous charm has come? Alas! if we knew, would not we all be Gainsboroughs? This only you may practically ascertain, as surely as that a flower will die if you cut its root away, that you cannot alter a single touch in Gainsborough's work without injury to the whole. Half a dozen spots, more or less, in the printed gowns of these other children whom I first showed you, will not make the smallest difference to them; nor a lock or two more or less in their hair, nor a dimple or two more or less in their cheeks. But if you alter one wave of the hair of Gainsborough's girl, the child is gone. Yet the art is so subtle, that I do not expect you to believe this. It looks so instinctive, so easy, so 'chanceux,'—the French word is better than ours. Yes, and in their more accurate sense, also, 'Il a de la chance.' A stronger Designer than he was with him. He could not tell you himself how the thing was done.

145. I proceed to take a more definite instance—this Greek head of the Lacinian Juno. The design or appointing of the forms now entirely prevails over the resemblance to Nature. No real hair could ever be drifted into these wild lines, which mean the wrath of the Adriatic winds round the Cape of Storms.

And yet, whether this be uglier or prettier than Gainsborough's child—(and you know already what I think about it, that no Greek goddess was ever half so pretty as an English girl, of pure clay and temper,)—uglier or prettier, it is more dignified and impressive. It at least belongs to the domain of a lordlier, more majestic, more guiding and ordaining art.

146. I will go back another five hundred years, and place an Egyptian beside the Greek divinity. The resemblance to Nature is now all but lost, the ruling law has become all. The lines are reduced to an easily counted number, and their arrangement is little more than a decorative sequence of pleasant curves cut in porphyry,—in the upper part of their contour following the outline of a woman's face in profile, over-crested by that of a hawk, on a kind of pedestal. But that the sign-engraver meant by his hawk, Immortality, and by her pedestal, the House or Tavern of Truth, is of little importance now to the passing traveler, not yet preparing to take the sarcophagus for his place of rest.

147. How many questions are suggested to us by these transitions! Is beauty contrary to law, and grace attainable only through license? What we gain in language, shall we lose in thought? and in what we add of labor, more and more forget its ends?

Not so.

Look at this piece of Sandro's work, the Libyan Sibyl.³³

It is as ordered and normal as the Egyptian's—as graceful and facile as Gainsborough's. It retains the majesty of old religion; it is invested with the joy of newly awakened childhood.

Mind, I do not expect you—do not wish you—to enjoy Botticelli's dark engraving as much as Gainsborough's aerial sketch; for due comparison of the men, painting should be put beside painting. But there is enough even in this copy of the Florentine plate to show you the junction of the two powers in it—of prophecy, and delight.

148. Will these two powers, do you suppose, be united in the same manner in the contemporary Northern art? That Northern school is my subject to-day; and yet I give you, as type of the intermediate condition between Egypt and England—not Holbein, but Botticelli. I am obliged to do this; because in the Southern art, the religious temper remains unconquered by the doctrines of the Reformation. Botticelli was—what Luther wished to be, but could not be—a reformer still believing in the Church: his mind is at peace; and his art, therefore, can pursue the delight of beauty, and yet remain prophetic. But it was far otherwise in Germany. There the Reformation of manners became the destruction of faith; and art therefore, not a prophecy, but a protest. It is the chief work of the greatest Protestant who ever lived,³⁴ which I ask you to study with me to-day.

149. I said that the power of engraving had developed itself during the introduction of three new—(practically and vitally new, that is to say)—elements, into the minds of men: elements which briefly may be expressed thus:

1. Classicism, and Literary Science.

2. Medicine, and Physical Science.³⁵

3. Reformation, and Religious Science.

And first of Classicism.

You feel, do not you, in this typical work of Gainsborough's, that his subject as well as his picture is 'artless' in a lovely sense;—nay, not only artless, but ignorant, and unscientific, in a beautiful way? You would be afterwards remorseful, I think, and angry with yourself—seeing the effect produced on her face—if you were to ask this little lady to spell a very long word? Also, if you wished to know how many times the sevens go in forty-nine, you would perhaps wisely address yourself elsewhere. On the other hand, you do not doubt that this lady³⁶ knows very well how many times the sevens go in forty-nine, and is more Mistress of Arts than any of us are Masters of them.

150. You have then, in the one case, a beautiful simplicity, and a blameless ignorance; in the other, a beautiful artfulness, and a wisdom which you do not dread,—or, at least, even though dreading, love. But you know also that we may remain in a hateful and culpable ignorance; and, as I fear too many of us in competitive effort feel, become possessed of a hateful knowledge.

Ignorance, therefore, is not evil absolutely; but, innocent, may be lovable.

Knowledge also is not good absolutely; but, guilty, may be hateful.

So, therefore, when I now repeat my former statement, that the first main opposition between the Northern and Southern schools is in the simplicity of the one, and the scholarship of the other, that statement may imply sometimes the superiority of the North, and sometimes of the South. You may have a heavenly simplicity opposed to a hellish (that is to say, a lustful and arrogant) scholarship; or you may have a barbarous and presumptuous ignorance opposed to a divine and disciplined wisdom. Ignorance opposed to learning in both cases; but evil to good, as the case may be.

151. For instance: the last time I was standing before Raphael's arabesques in the Loggias of the Vatican, I wrote down in my pocket-book the description, or, more modestly speaking, the inventory, of the small portion of that infinite wilderness of sensual fantasy which happened to be opposite me. It consisted of a woman's face, with serpents for hair, and a virgin's breasts, with stumps for arms, ending in blue butterflies' wings, the whole changing at the waist into a goat's body, which ended below in an obelisk upside-down, to the apex at the bottom of which were appended, by graceful chains, an altar, and two bunches of grapes.

Now you know in a moment, by a glance at this 'design'—beautifully struck with free hand, and richly gradated in color,—that the master was familiar with a vast range of art and literature: that he knew all about Egyptian sphinxes, and Greek Gorgons; about Egyptian obelisks, and Hebrew altars; about Hermes, and Venus, and Bacchus, and satyrs, and goats, and grapes.

You know also—or ought to know, in an instant,—that all this learning has done him no good; that he had better have known nothing than any of these things, since they were to be used by him only to such purpose; and that his delight in armless breasts, legless trunks, and obelisks upside-down, has been the last effort of his expiring sensation, in the grasp of corrupt and altogether victorious Death. And you have thus, in Gainsborough as compared with Raphael, a sweet, sacred, and living simplicity, set against an impure, profane, and paralyzed knowledge.

152. But, next, let us consider the reverse conditions.

Let us take instance of contrast between faultful and treacherous ignorance, and divinely pure and fruitful knowledge.

In the place of honor at the end of one of the rooms of your Royal Academy—years ago—stood a picture by an English Academician, announced as a representation of Moses sustained by Aaron and Hur, during the discomfiture of Amalek. In the entire range of the Pentateuch, there is no other scene (in which the visible agents are mortal only) requiring so much knowledge and thought to reach even a distant approximation to the probabilities of the fact. One saw in a moment that the painter was both powerful and simple, after a sort; that he had really sought for a vital conception, and had originally and earnestly read his text, and formed his conception. And one saw also in a moment that he had chanced upon this subject, in reading or hearing his Bible, as he might have chanced on a dramatic scene accidentally in the street. That he knew nothing of the character of Moses,—nothing of his law,—nothing of the character of Aaron, nor of the nature of a priesthood,—nothing of the meaning of the event which he was endeavoring to represent, of the temper in which it would have been transacted by its agents, or of its relations to modern life.

153. On the contrary, in the fresco of the earlier scenes in the life of Moses, by Sandro Botticelli, you know—not 'in a moment,' for the knowledge of knowledge cannot be so obtained; but in proportion to the discretion of your own reading, and to the care you give to the picture, you may know,—that here is a sacredly guided and guarded learning; here a Master indeed, at whose feet you may sit safely, who can teach you, better than in words, the significance of both Moses' law and Aaron's ministry; and not only these, but, if he chose, could add to this an exposition as complete of the highest philosophies both of the Greek nation, and of his own; and could as easily have painted, had it been asked of him, Draco, or Numa, or Justinian, as the herdsman of Jethro.

154. It is rarely that we can point to an opposition between faultful, because insolent, ignorance, and virtuous, because gracious, knowledge, so direct, and in so parallel elements, as in this instance. In general, the analysis is much more complex. It is intensely difficult to indicate the mischief of involuntary and modest ignorance, calamitous only in a measure; fruitful in its lower field, yet sorrowfully condemned to that lower field—not by sin, but fate.

When first I introduced you to Bewick, we closed our too partial estimate of his entirely magnificent powers with one sorrowful concession—he could draw a pig, but not a Venus.

Eminently he could so, because—which is still more sorrowfully to be conceded—he liked the pig best. I have put now in your educational series a whole galaxy of pigs by him; but, hunting all the fables through, I find only one Venus, and I think you will all admit that she is an unsatisfactory Venus.³⁷ There is honest simplicity here; but you regret it; you miss something that you find in Holbein, much more in Botticelli. You see in a moment that this man knows nothing of Sphinxes, or Muses, or Graces, or Aphrodites; and, besides, that, knowing nothing, he would have no liking for them even if he saw them; but much prefers the style of a well-to-do English housekeeper with corkscrew curls, and a portly person.

155. You miss something, I said, in Bewick which you find in Holbein. But do you suppose Holbein himself, or any other Northern painter, could wholly quit himself of the like accusations? I told you, in the second of these lectures, that the Northern temper, refined from savageness, and the Southern, redeemed from decay, met, in Florence. Holbein and Botticelli are the purest types of the two races. Holbein is a civilized boor; Botticelli a reanimate Greek. Holbein was polished by companionship with scholars and kings, but remains always a burgher of Augsburg in essential nature. Bewick and he are alike in temper; only the one is untaught, the other perfectly taught. But Botticelli needs no teaching. He is, by his birth, scholar and gentleman to the heart's core. Christianity itself can only inspire him, not refine him. He is as tried gold chased by the jeweler,—the roughest part of him is the outside.

Now how differently must the newly recovered scholastic learning tell upon these two men. It is all out of Holbein's way; foreign to his nature, useless at the best, probably cumbrous. But Botticelli receives it as a child in later years recovers the forgotten dearness of a nursery tale; and is more himself, and again and again himself, as he breathes the air of Greece, and hears, in his own Italy, the lost voice of the Sibyl murmur again by the Avernus Lake.

156. It is not, as we have seen, every one of the Southern race who can thus receive it. But it graces them all; is at once a part of their being; destroys them, if it is to destroy, the more utterly because it so enters into their natures. It destroys Raphael; but it graces him, and is a part of him. It all but destroys Mantegna; but it graces him. And it does not hurt Holbein, just because it does not grace him—never is for an instant a part of him. It is with Raphael as with some charming young girl who has a new and beautifully made dress brought to her, which entirely becomes her,—so much, that in a little while, thinking of nothing else, she becomes it; and is only the decoration of her dress. But with Holbein it is as if you brought the same dress to a stout farmer's daughter who was going to dine at the Hall; and begged her to put it on that she might not discredit the company. She puts it on to please you; looks entirely ridiculous in it, but is not spoiled by it,—remains herself, in spite of it.

157. You probably have never noticed the extreme awkwardness of Holbein in wearing this new dress; you would the less do so because his own people think him all the finer for it, as the farmer's wife would probably think her daughter. Dr. Woltmann, for instance, is enthusiastic in praise of the splendid architecture in the background of his Annunciation. A fine mess it must have made in the minds of simple German maidens, in their notion of the Virgin at home! I cannot show you this Annunciation; but I have under my hand one of Holbein's Bible cuts, of the deepest seriousness and import—his illustration of the Canticles, showing the Church as the bride of Christ.

You could not find a subject requiring more tenderness, purity, or dignity of treatment. In this maid, symbolizing the Church, you ask for the most passionate humility, the most angelic beauty: "Behold, thou art fair, my dove." Now here is Holbein's ideal of that fairness; here is his "Church as the Bride."

I am sorry to associate this figure in your minds, even for a moment, with the passages it is supposed to illustrate; but the lesson is too important to be omitted. Remember, Holbein represents the temper of Northern Reformation. He has all the nobleness of that temper, but also all its baseness. He represents, indeed, the revolt of German truth against Italian lies; but he represents also the revolt of German animalism against Hebrew imagination. This figure of Holbein's is half-way from Solomon's mystic bride, to Rembrandt's wife, sitting on his knee while he drinks.

But the key of the question is not in this. Florentine animalism has at this time, also, enough to say for itself. But Florentine animalism, at this time, feels the joy of a gentleman, not of a churl. And a Florentine, whatever he does,—be it virtuous or sinful, chaste or lascivious, severe or extravagant,—does it with a grace.

158. You think, perhaps, that Holbein's Solomon's bride is so ungraceful chiefly because she is overdressed, and has too many feathers and jewels. No; a Florentine would have put any quantity of feathers and jewels on her, and yet never lost her grace. You shall see him do it, and that to a fantastic degree, for I have an example under my hand. Look back, first, to Bewick's Venus (Lecture III.). You can't accuse her of being overdressed. She complies with every received modern principle of taste. Sir Joshua's precept that drapery should be "drapery, and nothing more," is observed more strictly even by Bewick than by Michael Angelo. If the absence of decoration could exalt the beauty of his Venus, here had been her perfection.

Now look back to Plate II. (Lecture IV.), by Sandro; Venus in her planet, the ruling star of Florence. Anything more grotesque in conception, more unrestrained in fancy of ornament, you cannot find, even in the final days of the Renaissance. Yet Venus holds her divinity through all; she will become majestic to you as you gaze; and there is not a line of her chariot wheels, of her buskins, or of her throne, which you may not see was engraved by a gentleman.

V.

"Heat considered as a Mode of Motion."

Florentine Natural Philosophy.

159. Again, Plate V., opposite, is a facsimile of another engraving of the same series—the Sun in Leo. It is even more extravagant in accessories than the Venus. You see the Sun's epaulets before you see the sun; the spiral scrolls of his chariot, and the black twisted rays of it, might, so far as types of form only are considered, be a design for some modern court-dress star, to be made in diamonds. And yet all this wild ornamentation is, if you will examine it, more purely Greek in spirit than the Apollo Belvedere.

You know I have told you, again and again, that the soul of Greece is her veracity; that what to other nations were fables and symbolisms, to her became living facts—living gods. The fall of Greece was instant when her gods again became fables. The Apollo Belvedere is the work of a sculptor to whom Apollonism is merely an elegant idea on which to exhibit his own skill. He does not himself feel for an instant that the handsome man in the unintelligible attitude,³⁸ with drapery hung over his left arm, as it would be hung to dry over a clothes-line, is the Power of the Sun. But the Florentine believes in Apollo with his whole mind, and is trying to explain his strength in every touch.