Stones of Venice, Volume 3 — Chapter 02, Roman Renaissance, part 1

ROMAN RENAISSANCE.

§ I.

Of all the buildings in Venice, later in date than the final additions to the Ducal Palace, the noblest is, beyond all question, that which, having been condemned by its proprietor, not many years ago, to be pulled down and sold for the value of its materials, was rescued by the Austrian government, and appropriated--the government officers having no other use for it--to the business of the Post-Office; though still known to the gondolier by its ancient name, the Casa Grimani.

It is composed of three stories of the Corinthian order, at once simple, delicate, and sublime; but on so colossal a scale, that the three-storied palaces on its right and left only reach to the cornice which marks the level of its first floor.

Yet it is not at first perceived to be so vast; and it is only when some expedient is employed to hide it from the eye, that by the sudden dwarfing of the whole reach of the Grand Canal, which it commands, we become aware that it is to the majesty of the Casa Grimani that the Rialto itself, and the whole group of neighboring buildings, owe the greater part of their impressiveness.

Nor is the finish of its details less notable than the grandeur of their scale.

There is not an erring line, nor a mistaken proportion, throughout its noble front; and the exceeding fineness of the chiselling gives an appearance of lightness to the vast blocks of stone out of whose perfect union that front is composed.

The decoration is sparing, but delicate: the first story only simpler than the rest, in that it has pilasters instead of shafts, but all with Corinthian capitals, rich in leafage, and fruited delicately; the rest of the walls flat and smooth, and the mouldings sharp and shallow, so that the bold shafts look like crystals of beryl running through a rock of quartz.

§ II.

This palace is the principal type at Venice, and one of the best in Europe, of the central architecture of the Renaissance schools; that carefully studied and perfectly executed architecture to which those schools owe their principal claims to our respect, and which became the model of most of the important works subsequently produced by civilized nations.

I have called it the Roman Renaissance, because it is founded, both in its principles of superimposition, and in the style of its ornament, upon the architecture of classic Rome at its best period.

The revival of Latin literature both led to its adoption, and directed its form; and the most important example of it which exists is the modern Roman basilica of St. Peter's. It had, at its Renaissance or new birth, no resemblance either to Greek, Gothic, or Byzantine forms, except in retaining the use of the round arch, vault, and dome; in the treatment of all details, it was exclusively Latin; the last links of connexion with mediæval tradition having been broken by its builders in their enthusiasm for classical art, and the forms of true Greek or Athenian architecture being still unknown to them.

The study of these noble Greek forms has induced various modifications of the Renaissance in our own times; but the conditions which are found most applicable to the uses of modern life are still Roman, and the entire style may most fitly be expressed by the term "Roman Renaissance."

§ III.

It is this style, in its purity and fullest form,--represented by such buildings as the Casa Grimani at Venice (built by San Micheli), the Town Hall at Vicenza (by Palladio), St. Peter's at Rome (by Michael Angelo), St. Paul's and Whitehall in London (by Wren and Inigo Jones),--which is the true antagonist of the Gothic school.

The intermediate, or corrupt conditions of it, though multiplied over Europe, are no longer admired by architects, or made the subjects of their study; but the finished work of this central school is still, in most cases, the model set before the student of the nineteenth century, as opposed to those Gothic, Romanesque, or Byzantine forms which have long been considered barbarous, and are so still by most of the leading men of the day.

That they are, on the contrary, most noble and beautiful, and that the antagonistic Renaissance is, in the main, unworthy and unadmirable, whatever perfection of a certain kind it may possess, it was my principal purpose to show, when I first undertook the labor of this work.

It has been attempted already to put before the reader the various elements which unite in the Nature of Gothic, and to enable him thus to judge, not merely of the beauty of the forms which that system has produced already, but of its future applicability to the wants of mankind, and endless power over their hearts.

I would now endeavor, in like manner, to set before the reader the Nature of Renaissance, and thus to enable him to compare the two styles under the same light, and with the same enlarged view of their relations to the intellect, and capacities for the service, of man.

§ IV.

It will not be necessary for me to enter at length into any examination of its external form.

It uses, whether for its roofs of aperture or roofs proper, the low gable or circular arch: but it differs from Romanesque work in attaching great importance to the horizontal lintel or architrave _above_ the arch; transferring the energy of the principal shafts to the supporting of this horizontal beam, and thus rendering the arch a subordinate, if not altogether a superfluous, feature.

The type of this arrangement has been given already at _c_, Fig. XXXVI.

, p. 145, Vol. I.

: and I might insist at length upon the absurdity of a construction in which the shorter shaft, which has the real weight of wall to carry, is split into two by the taller one, which has nothing to carry at all,--that taller one being strengthened, nevertheless, as if the whole weight of the building bore upon it; and on the ungracefulness, never conquered in any Palladian work, of the two half-capitals glued, as it were, against the slippery round sides of the central shaft.

But it is not the form of this architecture against which I would plead.

Its defects are shared by many of the noblest forms of earlier building, and might have been entirely atoned for by excellence of spirit.

But it is the moral nature of it which is corrupt, and which it must, therefore, be our principal business to examine and expose.

§ V.

The moral, or immoral, elements which unite to form the spirit of Central Renaissance architecture are, I believe, in the main, two,--Pride and Infidelity; but the pride resolves itself into three main branches,--Pride of Science, Pride of State, and Pride of System: and thus we have four separate mental conditions which must be examined successively.

§ VI.

1. PRIDE OF SCIENCE.

It would have been more charitable, but more confusing, to have added another element to our list, namely the _Love_ of Science; but the love is included in the pride, and is usually so very subordinate an element that it does not deserve equality of nomenclature.

But, whether pursued in pride or in affection (how far by either we shall see presently), the first notable characteristic of the Renaissance central school is its introduction of accurate knowledge into all its work, so far as it possesses such knowledge; and its evident conviction, that such science is necessary to the excellence of the work, and is the first thing to be expressed therein.

So that all the forms introduced, even in its minor ornament, are studied with the utmost care; the anatomy of all animal structure is thoroughly understood and elaborately expressed, and the whole of the execution skilful and practised in the highest degree.

Perspective, linear and aerial, perfect drawing and accurate light and shade in painting, and true anatomy in all representations of the human form, drawn or sculptured, are the first requirements in all the work of this school.

§ VII.

Now, first considering all this in the most charitable light, as pursued from a real love of truth, and not from vanity, it would, of course, have been all excellent and admirable, had it been regarded as the aid of art, and not as its essence.

But the grand mistake of the Renaissance schools lay in supposing that science and art are the same things, and that to advance in the one was necessarily to perfect the other.

Whereas they are, in reality, things not only different, but so opposed, that to advance in the one is, in ninety-nine cases out of the hundred, to retrograde in the other.

This is the point to which I would at present especially bespeak the reader's attention.

§ VIII.

Science and art are commonly distinguished by the nature of their actions; the one as knowing, the other as changing, producing, or creating.

But there is a still more important distinction in the nature of the things they deal with.

Science deals exclusively with things as they are in themselves; and art exclusively with things as they affect the human senses and human soul.

[8] Her work is to portray the appearance of things, and to deepen the natural impressions which they produce upon living creatures.

The work of science is to substitute facts for appearances, and demonstrations for impressions.

Both, observe, are equally concerned with truth; the one with truth of aspect, the other with truth of essence.

Art does not represent things falsely, but truly as they appear to mankind.

Science studies the relations of things to each other: but art studies only their relations to man; and it requires of everything which is submitted to it imperatively this, and only this,--what that thing is to the human eyes and human heart, what it has to say to men, and what it can become to them: a field of question just as much vaster than that of science, as the soul is larger than the material creation.

§ IX.

Take a single instance.

Science informs us that the sun is ninety-five millions of miles distant from, and 111 times broader than, the earth; that we and all the planets revolve round it; and that it revolves on its own axis in 25 days, 14 hours and 4 minutes.

With all this, art has nothing whatsoever to do.

It has no care to know anything of this kind.

But the things which it does care to know, are these: that in the heavens God hath set a tabernacle for the sun, "which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race.

His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it, and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof."

§ X.

This, then, being the kind of truth with which art is exclusively concerned, how is such truth as this to be ascertained and accumulated?

Evidently, and only, by perception and feeling.

Never either by reasoning, or report.

Nothing must come between Nature and the artist's sight; nothing between God and the artist's soul.

Neither calculation nor hearsay,--be it the most subtle of calculations, or the wisest of sayings,--may be allowed to come between the universe, and the witness which art bears to its visible nature.

The whole value of that witness depends on its being _eye_-witness; the whole genuineness, acceptableness, and dominion of it depend on the personal assurance of the man who utters it.

All its victory depends on the veracity of the one preceding word, "Vidi."

The whole function of the artist in the world is to be a seeing and feeling creature; to be an instrument of such tenderness and sensitiveness, that no shadow, no hue, no line, no instantaneous and evanescent expression of the visible things around him, nor any of the emotions which they are capable of conveying to the spirit which has been given him, shall either be left unrecorded, or fade from the book of record.

It is not his business either to think, to judge, to argue, or to know.

His place is neither in the closet, nor on the bench, nor at the bar, nor in the library.

They are for other men and other work.

He may think, in a by-way; reason, now and then, when he has nothing better to do; know, such fragments of knowledge as he can gather without stooping, or reach without pains; but none of these things are to be his care.

The work of his life is to be twofold only: to see, to feel.

§ XI.

Nay, but, the reader perhaps pleads with me, one of the great uses of knowledge is to open the eyes; to make things perceivable which, never would have been seen, unless first they had been known.

Not so.

This could only be said or believed by those who do not know what the perceptive faculty of a great artist is, in comparison with that of other men.

There is no great painter, no great workman in any art, but he sees more with the glance of a moment than he could learn by the labor of a thousand hours.

God has made every man fit for his work;

He has given to the man whom he means for a student, the reflective, logical, sequential faculties; and to the man whom He means for an artist, the perceptive, sensitive, retentive faculties.

And neither of these men, so far from being able to do the other's work, can even comprehend the way in which it is done.

The student has no understanding of the vision, nor the painter of the process; but chiefly the student has no idea of the colossal grasp of the true painter's vision and sensibility.

The labor of the whole Geological Society, for the last fifty years, has but now arrived at the ascertainment of those truths respecting mountain form which Turner saw and expressed with a few strokes of a camel's hair pencil fifty years ago, when he was a boy.

The knowledge of all the laws of the planetary system, and of all the curves of the motion of projectiles, would never enable the man of science to draw a waterfall or a wave; and all the members of Surgeons' Hall helping each other could not at this moment see, or represent, the natural movement of a human body in vigorous action, as a poor dyer's son did two hundred years ago.

[9] § XII.

But surely, it is still insisted, granting this peculiar faculty to the painter, he will still see more as he knows more, and the more knowledge he obtains, therefore, the better.

No; not even so.

It is indeed true, that, here and there, a piece of knowledge will enable the eye to detect a truth which might otherwise have escaped it; as, for instance, in watching a sunrise, the knowledge of the true nature of the orb may lead the painter to feel more profoundly, and express more fully, the distance between the bars of cloud that cross it, and the sphere of flame that lifts itself slowly beyond them into the infinite heaven.

But, for one visible truth to which knowledge thus opens the eyes, it seals them to a thousand: that is to say, if the knowledge occur to the mind so as to occupy its powers of contemplation at the moment when the sight work is to be done, the mind retires inward, fixes itself upon the known fact, and forgets the passing visible ones; and a _moment_ of such forgetfulness loses more to the painter than a day's thought can gain.

This is no new or strange assertion.

Every person accustomed to careful reflection of any kind, knows that its natural operation is to close his eyes to the external world.

While he is thinking deeply, he neither sees nor feels, even though naturally he may possess strong powers of sight and emotion.

He who, having journeyed all day beside the Leman Lake, asked of his companions, at evening, where it was,[10] probably was not wanting in sensibility; but he was generally a thinker, not a perceiver.

And this instance is only an extreme one of the effect which, in all cases, knowledge, becoming a subject of reflection, produces upon the sensitive faculties.

It must be but poor and lifeless knowledge, if it has no tendency to force itself forward, and become ground for reflection, in despite of the succession of external objects.

It will not obey their succession.

The first that comes gives it food enough for its day's work; it is its habit, its duty, to cast the rest aside, and fasten upon that.

The first thing that a thinking and knowing man sees in the course of the day, he will not easily quit.

It is not his way to quit anything without getting to the bottom of it, if possible.

But the artist is bound to receive all things on the broad, white, lucid field of his soul, not to grasp at one.

For instance, as the knowing and thinking man watches the sunrise, he sees something in the color of a ray, or the change of a cloud, that is new to him; and this he follows out forthwith into a labyrinth of optical and pneumatical laws, perceiving no more clouds nor rays all the morning.

But the painter must catch all the rays, all the colors that come, and see them all truly, all in their real relations and succession; therefore, everything that occupies room in his mind he must cast aside for the time, as completely as may be.

The thoughtful man is gone far away to seek; but the perceiving man must sit still, and open his heart to receive.

The thoughtful man is knitting and sharpening himself into a two-edged sword, wherewith to pierce.

The perceiving man is stretching himself into a four-cornered sheet wherewith to catch.

And all the breadth to which he can expand himself, and all the white emptiness into which he can blanch himself, will not be enough to receive what God has to give him.

§ XIII.

What, then, it will be indignantly asked, is an utterly ignorant and unthinking man likely to make the best artist?

No, not so neither.

Knowledge is good for him so long as he can keep it utterly, servilely, subordinate to his own divine work, and trample it under his feet, and out of his way, the moment it is likely to entangle him.

And in this respect, observe, there is an enormous difference between knowledge and education.

An artist need not be a _learned_ man, in all probability it will be a disadvantage to him to become so; but he ought, if possible, always to be an _educated_ man: that is, one who has understanding of his own uses and duties in the world, and therefore of the general nature of the things done and existing in the world; and who has so trained himself, or been trained, as to turn to the best and most courteous account whatever faculties or knowledge he has.

The mind of an educated man is greater than the knowledge it possesses; it is like the vault of heaven, encompassing the earth which lives and flourishes beneath it: but the mind of an educated and learned man is like a caoutchouc band, with an everlasting spirit of contraction in it, fastening together papers which it cannot open, and keeps others from opening.

Half our artists are ruined for want of education, and by the possession of knowledge; the best that I have known have been educated, and illiterate.

The ideal of an artist, however, is not that he should be illiterate, but well read in the best books, and thoroughly high bred, both in heart and in bearing.

In a word, he should be fit for the best society, _and should keep out of it_.

[11] § XIV.

There are, indeed, some kinds of knowledge with which an artist ought to be thoroughly furnished; those, for instance, which enable him to express himself; for this knowledge relieves instead of encumbering his mind, and permits it to attend to its purposes instead of wearying itself about means.

The whole mystery of manipulation and manufacture should be familiar to the painter from a child.

He should know the chemistry of all colors and materials whatsoever, and should prepare all his colors himself, in a little laboratory of his own.

Limiting his chemistry to this one object, the amount of practical science necessary for it, and such accidental discoveries as might fall in his way in the course of his work, of better colors or better methods of preparing them, would be an infinite refreshment to his mind; a minor subject of interest to which it might turn when jaded with comfortless labor, or exhausted with feverish invention, and yet which would never interfere with its higher functions, when it chose to address itself to them.

Even a considerable amount of manual labor, sturdy color-grinding and canvas-stretching, would be advantageous; though this kind of work ought to be in great part done by pupils.

For it is one of the conditions of perfect knowledge in these matters, that every great master should have a certain number of pupils, to whom he is to impart all the knowledge of materials and means which he himself possesses, as soon as possible; so that, at any rate, by the time they are fifteen years old, they may know all that he knows himself in this kind; that is to say, all that the world of artists know, and his own discoveries besides, and so never be troubled about methods any more.

Not that the knowledge even of his own particular methods is to be of purpose confined to himself and his pupils, but that necessarily it must be so in some degree; for only those who see him at work daily can understand his small and multitudinous ways of practice.

These cannot verbally be explained to everybody, nor is it needful that they should, only let them be concealed from nobody who cares to see them; in which case, of course, his attendant scholars will know them best.

But all that can be made public in matters of this kind should be so with all speed, every artist throwing his discovery into the common stock, and the whole body of artists taking such pains in this department of science as that there shall be no unsettled questions about any known material or method: that it shall be an entirely ascertained and indisputable matter which is the best white, and which the best brown; which the strongest canvas, and safest varnish; and which the shortest and most perfect way of doing everything known up to that time: and if any one discovers a better, he is to make it public forthwith.

All of them taking care to embarrass themselves with no theories or reasons for anything, but to work empirically only: it not being in any wise their business to know whether light moves in rays or in waves; or whether the blue rays of the spectrum move slower or faster than the rest; but simply to know how many minutes and seconds such and such a powder must be calcined, to give the brightest blue.

§ XV.

Now it is perhaps the most exquisite absurdity of the whole Renaissance system, that while it has encumbered the artist with every species of knowledge that is of no use to him, this one precious and necessary knowledge it has utterly lost.

There is not, I believe, at this moment, a single question which could be put respecting pigments and methods, on which the body of living artists would agree in their answers.

The lives of artists are passed in fruitless experiments;

fruitless, because undirected by experience and uncommunicated in their results.

Every man has methods of his own, which he knows to be insufficient, and yet jealously conceals from his fellow-workmen: every colorman has materials of his own, to which it is rare that the artist can trust: and in the very front of the majestic advance of chemical science, the empirical science of the artist has been annihilated, and the days which should have led us to higher perfection are passed in guessing at, or in mourning over, lost processes; while the so-called Dark ages, possessing no more knowledge of chemistry than a village herbalist does now, discovered, established, and put into daily practice such methods of operation as have made their work, at this day, the despair of all who look upon it.

§ XVI.

And yet even this, to the painter, the safest of sciences, and in some degree necessary, has its temptations, and capabilities of abuse.

For the simplest means are always enough for a great man; and when once he has obtained a few ordinary colors, which he is sure will stand, and a white surface that will not darken nor moulder, nor rend, he is master of the world, and of his fellow-men.

And, indeed, as if in these times we were bent on furnishing examples of every species of opposite error, while we have suffered the traditions to escape us of the simple methods of doing simple things, which are enough for all the arts, and to all the ages, we have set ourselves to discover fantastic modes of doing fantastic things,--new mixtures and manipulations of metal, and porcelain, and leather, and paper, and every conceivable condition of false substance and cheap work, to our own infinitely multiplied confusion,--blinding ourselves daily more and more to the great, changeless, and inevitable truth, that there is but one goodness in art;

and that is one which the chemist cannot prepare, nor the merchant cheapen, for it comes only of a rare human hand, and rare human soul.