IN order to comprehend the peculiar tendency which painting assumed in Umbria, it will be necessary briefly to examine the principles and history of what is now generally known under the denomination of Christian art.[*102] Until after the revival of European civilisation, painting had scarcely any other direction than religious purposes. For household furniture and decoration, its luxuries were unheard of; the delineation of nature in portraits and landscapes was unknown. But pictorial representations had been employed for embellishment of churches from the recognition of Christianity by the Emperors of the West, and they had assumed a conventional character, derived chiefly from rude tracings in which the uncultivated limners of an outcast sect had long before depicted Christ, his Mother, and his apostles, for the solace of those whose proscribed creed drove them to worship in the catacombs. When these delineations, originally cherished as emblems of faith, had been employed as the adjuncts, and eventually perverted into the objects of devotion, they acquired a sacred character which it was the tendency of ever-spreading superstition continually to exaggerate. They became, in fact, the originals of those pictures which in subsequent ages were adopted as part and portion of the Roman worship; and forms, which they derived perhaps from the fancy or caprice of their inventors, came to be the received types to which all orthodox painters were bound to adhere.[*103] The means adopted for repeating them were enlarged or narrowed by various circumstances; the success with which they were imitated fluctuated with the advance or decline of taste. But whether traced upon the tablets of ivory diptychs, or blazoned in the pages of illuminated missals; whether depicted on perishable ceilings, or fixed in unfading mosaics; whether degraded by the unskilful daubing and spiritless mechanism of Byzantine artists,[*104] or refined by the holier feeling and improved handling of the Sienese and Umbrian schools,—the original types might still be traced. Indeed, those traditionary forms were as little subjected to modification by painters as the dogmas of faith were open to the doubts of commentators. Heterodoxy on either point was liable to severe denunciation, and pictorial novelties were interdicted by the Church, not as absolutely wrong, but as liable to abuse from the eccentricities of human fancy.[105] It was in Spain, the land of suspicion and priestcraft, that such jealousy was chiefly entertained, and the censorship of the fine arts there became in the sixteenth century a special duty of the Holy Office.

With the aid of authorities thus deduced through an unbroken chain from primitive times,—to conceive and embody abstractions "which eye hath not seen nor ear heard," was reckoned no rash meddling with sacred mysteries. On the contrary, the subjects almost exclusively selected for the exercise of Christian art, belonged to the fundamental doctrines of Christian faith, to the traditional dogmas of the Church, to the legendary lives of the Saviour and of saints, or to the dramatic sufferings of early martyrs. Such were the transfiguration, the passion, the ascension of our Lord; the conception, the coronation, and the cintola of the Madonna[106]; the birth and marriage of the Blessed Virgin; the miracles performed by popular saints, the martyrdoms in which they sealed their testimony. The choice, and occasionally the treatment, of these topics was modified to meet the spiritual exigences of the period, or the circumstances of the place, but ever in subservience to conventional standards derived from remote tradition. Thus we detect, in works of the Byzantine period, rigid forms, harsh outlines, soulless faces; in the schools of Siena and Umbria, pure figures lit up by angelic expressions; in the followers of Giotto, a tendency to varied movement and dramatic composition.

There is yet another reason for what to the uninitiated may seem monstrosities. The old masters had not generally to represent men and women in human form, but either prophets, saints, and martyrs, whom it was their business to embody, not in their "mortal coil," but in the purer substance of those who had put on immortality; or the Mother of Christ, exalted by mariolatry almost to a parity with her Son; or the "Ancient of Days,"—the personages of the Triune Divinity with their attendant heavenly host, whom to figure at all was a questionable licence, and who, if impersonated, ought surely to seem other than the sons and daughters of men. Of such themes no conception could be adequate, no approximation otherwise than disappointing; and those who were called upon to deal with them usually preferred painting images suggested by their own earnest devotional thoughts, to the more difficult task of idealising human models. Addressing themselves to the spirit rather than to the eye, they sought to delineate features with nought of "the earth, earthy," expressions purified from grovelling interests and mundane ties.

How much this religious art depended for its due maintenance upon the personal character of those whose business it was to embody and transmit to a new generation its lofty inspirations, can scarcely require demonstration. That they were men of holy minds is apparent from their works. Some, by long poring over the mystic incarnations which they sought to represent; others, by deep study of the pious narratives selected for their pencils; many, by the abstraction of monastic seclusion, brought their souls to that pitch of devotional enthusiasm, which their pictures portray far better than words can describe. The biographies that remain of the early painters of Italy fully bear out this fact; and of many instances that might be given we shall select three from various places and periods.

Of the early Bolognese school, Vitale and his pupil Lippo di Dalmasio were each designed delle Madonne, from their formally devoting themselves to the exclusive representation of her

So far indeed did the latter of these carry enthusiastic mysticism, that he never resumed his labours without purifying his imagination and sanctifying his thoughts by a vigil of austere fasting, and by taking the blessed sacrament in the morning. In like manner did one of his comrades gain the appellation of Simon of the crucifixes. A century later, Gentile Bellini painted three of his noblest works for a confraternity in Venice, who possessed a relic of the True Cross, and chose for his subject various miracles ascribed to its influence. Refusing all remuneration, he affixed this touching record of his pious motives: "The work of Gentile Bellini, a knight of Venice, instigated by affection for the Cross, 1496." Similar anecdotes might be quoted of Giovanni da Fiesole, better known in Italy as Beato Angelico, whose life and pencil may well be termed seraphic, and to whom we shall again have occasion to allude; while parallel cases of a later date are found in Spain, where religion, and religious fervour, influenced by the self-mortification of dark fanatics and dismal ascetics, generally assumed less attractive forms.

A Christian ideal was thus the aim of the early masters; and most surviving works of the Umbrian and Sienese schools carry in themselves ample evidence of intensely serious sentiment animating their authors. But to those who have not enjoyed opportunities of observing this peculiar characteristic of a style of art almost unknown in England, it may be acceptable to trace the same spirit in a language legible by eyes unaccustomed to the delicacies of pictorial expression. This confirmation is found in the rules adopted by guilds of painters, incorporated in different towns of Italy, which are upon this point more important, as proving how entirely devotional feeling was systematised, instead of being left to the accident of individual inspiration. The statutes of the Sienese fraternity, confirmed in 1357, are thus prefaced: "Let the beginning, middle, and end of our words and actions be in the name of God Almighty, and of his Mother, our Lady the Virgin Mary! Whereas we, by the grace of God, being those who make manifest to rude and unlettered men the marvellous things effected by, and in virtue of, our holy faith; and our creed consisting chiefly in the worship and belief of one God in Trinity, and of God omnipotent, omniscient, and infinite in love and compassion; and as nothing, however unimportant, can have beginning or end without these three necessary ingredients, power, knowledge, and right good-will; and as in God only consists all high perfection; let us therefore anxiously invoke the aid of divine grace, in order that we may attain to a good beginning and ending of all our undertakings, whether of word or work, prefacing all in the name and to the honour of the Most Holy Trinity. And since spiritual things are, and should be, far preferable and more precious than temporal, let us commence by regulating the fÊte of our patron, the venerable and glorious St Luke," &c. Several subsequent rules relate to the observance of other festivals, whereof fifty-seven are enjoined to be strictly kept without working, a number which, added to Sundays and Easter holidays, monopolises for sacred purposes nearly a third of the year.[107] The Florentine statutes, dated about twenty years earlier, direct that all who come to enrol themselves in the Company of painters, whether men or women, shall be penitent and confessed, or at least shall purpose to confess themselves at the earliest opportunity; that they shall daily repeat five paternosters, and as many aves, and shall take the sacrament at least once a year.[108] Nor let these be regarded as mere unmeaning phrases, or as the vapid lip-service of a formalist faith. The ceremonial observances of an age in which the Roman Church was indeed Catholic cannot fairly be judged by a Protestant standard, yet few, who have seen with intelligence the productions of those painters, will doubt that they were men of piety and prayer. A vestige of the same holy feeling hung over artists, even after it had ceased to animate their efforts; the forms survived, when the spirit had fled. Thus, "On Tuesday morning, the 11th of June 1573, at eleven in the forenoon, Giorgio Vasari began to paint the cupola of the cathedral at Florence; and, before commencing, he had a Mass of the Holy Spirit celebrated at the altar of the sacrament, after hearing which he entered upon the work."[109] Vasari was a religious man; but the favourite painter of a dissolute court could scarcely be a religious artist, nor could the pupil of Michael Angelo appreciate the quiet pathos or feel the gentle fervour of earlier and more spiritualised times.

In Spain, where art was always in the especial service of the priesthood, and not unfrequently subservient to priestcraft, religion was a requisite of painters to a much later date. The rules of the academy established at Seville by Murillo, in 1658, imposed upon each pupil an ejaculatory testimony of his faith in, and devotion for, the blessed sacrament and immaculate conception.[110] But whilst the piety of the Sienese and Florentine guilds was an inherent sentiment of their age, willingly adopted by professional etiquette, that of the Iberian artists in the sixteenth century was regulated by the Inquisition, and savoured of its origin. The former was joyous as the bright thoughts of youthful enthusiasm springing in a land of beauty; the latter shadowed the grave and sombre temperament of the nation by austerities congenial to the Holy Office. Hence the religious paintings of Spain, appealing to the spectator's terrors rather than to his sympathies, revelled in the horrible, eschewing as a snare those lovely forms which in Italy were encouraged as conducive to devotion.

Yet, if the genius of early painters was hampered, and the effect of their creations impaired, by prescribed symbols and conventional rules, they were not without countervailing advantages. A limited range of forms did not always imply poverty of ideas, nor was simplicity inconsistent with sublimity. Those, accordingly, who look with intelligence upon pictures, which, to the casual glance of an uninformed spectator, are mere rude and monstrous representations, will often recognise in them a grandeur of sentiment, and a majesty of expression, altogether wanting in more matured productions, wherein truth to nature is manifested through unimportant accessories, or combined with trivial details. Familiarity is notoriously conducive to contempt; and to associate the grander themes and dogmas of holy writ with multiplied adjuncts skilfully borrowed from ordinary life, is to detract from the awe and mystery whereof they ought to be especially suggestive.

But here it may be well to premise that, our observations upon Christian art being purely Æsthetical, it forms no part of our plan to analyse its influences in a doctrinal view, or to discuss the Roman system of teaching religion to the laity, by attracting them to devotional observances through pictures and sculpture, to the exclusion of the holy scriptures; still less to raise any controversy regarding the incidents or tenets thus usually inculcated. We, therefore, pause not to inquire how far the Roman legends—often beautifully suggestive of truth, but how frequently redolent of fatal error!—have originated in art, or been corrupted by its creations. One danger of teaching by pictures is obvious; for where the eye is offered but a few detached scenes, without full explanation of their attendant circumstances and connecting links, very imperfect impressions and false conclusions may result. Under such a system, figurative representation will often be literally interpreted, symbols will be mistaken for facts, dreams for realities; and thus have the fertile imaginations of artists and commentators mutually reacted upon each other, until historical and spiritual truth is lost in a maze of allegory and fable, and error has been indelibly ingrafted upon popular faith. The dim allegories of early art have accordingly been overlaid by crude inventions, or obscured by gross ignorance and enthusiastic mysticism. Religious truth being thus misstated, or its symbols misread, those who thirsted for the waters of life were repelled by tainted streams, and hungry souls were mocked by stones for bread. It ought, however, to be constantly borne in mind that we are dealing with times when the authority of Rome was absolute throughout Europe; and that, whatever may now be alleged against the dogmas or legends embodied by early artists, they were then universally received. For our purpose they ought, therefore, to be examined by the light then enjoyed, not by that shed upon them in after times of gospel freedom. Neither ought we to forget the impressionable qualities of a southern people, when disposed to question the tendencies of religious instruction through the senses and the imagination. And, granting that it is well to employ such means, the mute eloquence of an altar-picture, or a reliquary, though less startling than impassioned pulpit appeals, less thrilling than choral voices sustained by the organ's impressive diapason, had the advantages of being accessible at all hours to devout visitors, and of demanding from them no sustained attention.

Such was Christian art in Italy during the fourteenth century, when it was destined to undergo very considerable modifications. As yet it had been exercised almost exclusively for decorating churches and monastic buildings with extensive works intended to nourish or revive devotion in the masses who resorted to them. In ages when the intelligence capable of ordering these works was almost limited to convents, and when it was only from such representations that the unlettered eye could convey impressions to the mind of the laity, Christian paintings were an effective adjunct to Christian preaching and devotional exercises. But, as the dark cloud began to roll away before the dawn of modern cultivation, mankind awoke to new wants. No longer content with the pittance of religious knowledge which their spiritual guides doled out to them, they sought to secure a store for their own uncontrolled use. Those who could vanquish the difficulties of reading, found in their office-books a continuation of the church services; the less educated placed by their bed, or in their domestic chapel, a small devotional picture, as a substitute for the larger representations which invoked them to holy feelings in the house of God. Thus there arose a general desire for objects of sacred art. The privilege assumed by all who wished for such, of ordering them in conformity with their individual feelings or superstitions, quickly introduced greater latitudinarianism as to the selection and treatment of the subjects. The demand so created exceeded the productive powers of such painters as had been regularly initiated into the language of form, according to the settled conventionalities of their sanctified profession. The chain of pictorial tradition was snapped, when a host of new competitors entered the field, free from its trammels. But the public taste had been too long and thoroughly imbued with a uniform class of religious compositions to relish any great innovations; and although historical painting began to find a place in the palace-halls of the princes and republics of Italy, works commissioned by private persons continued almost exclusively of a sacred cast. Thus for a time was the new path little frequented. Artists felt their way with caution, unaware of the direction whither it might lead them; timid of their own powers, doubtful of their influence on the public. They contented themselves at first with enlarging the range of subjects, or with varying the pose of the actors. Fearing to abandon traditional types, they ventured not beyond the addition of accessories, such as architecture, landscape, animals, fruits, and flowers, or a disposal of the draperies with greater freedom and attention to truth. But, the further they departed from received forms, the more willingly did their genius pluck by the way those graceful aids and appliances which spontaneous nature offered in a land of beauty; and every new combination which that awakened genius inspired, induced, and to a certain extent authorised, fresh novelties.

The modifications thus introduced have been distinguished in modern phrase by the term naturalism, in contradistinction to those traditional forms and spiritualised countenances which constitute the mysticism of mediÆval art. It would lead us too far from our subject to trace the progress of naturalism from such early symptoms as we have indicated, until portraits, at first interponed as donors of the picture, or as spectators of its incident, were habitually selected as models for the most sacred personages. That the adaptation of nature to the highest purposes of art, by skilful selection and by judicious idealisation, is the noblest object which pictorial genius can keep in view for its inventions will scarcely be contested. But another consideration, inherent in the axioms of the mystic school, was too often lost sight of by the naturalists. The portraiture of criminal or even vulgar life, in deeply religious works, is an outrage upon all holy feeling, whether in the example of Alexander VI., who commanded Pinturicchio to introduce into one of the Vatican frescoes his own portrait, kneeling before the ascending Redeemer;[111] or in the case of those painters in Rome whose favourite model for the Saviour has of late years been a cobbler, hence known in the streets by the blasphemous name of Jesus Christ.

To the naturalism which became gradually prevalent in most Italian schools after the beginning of the fourteenth century, there was, in the fifteenth, added another principle of antagonism to mystic feeling. In purist nomenclature it has been denominated paganism, but it seems to consist of paganism and classicism. By the former is to be understood that fashion for the philosophy, morality, literature, and mythology of ancient Greece and Rome, which, introduced from the recovered authors of antiquity, was assiduously cultivated by the Medici in their lettered but sceptical court, until it left a stamp on the literature and art of Italy not yet effaced. Under its influence, the vernacular language was neglected, or cramped into obsolete models; dead tongues monopolised students; the doctrines of Aristotle and Plato divided men, clouding their faith, and warping their morals from Christian standards; the beauty of holiness yielded before an ideal of form; and that unction which had purified the conceptions and guided the pencils of devotional painters, evaporated as they strove to master the technical excellences of the new manner. To the maxims and principles of revived pagan antiquity, the philosophic Schlegel has traced the selfish policy and morals of Italian tyrants and communities; but it seems easier to detect their fatal tendency in painting and sculpture than upon statecraft and manners.

Classicism, as here used, means that innovation of antique taste in art which arose out of renewed interest in the picturesque ruins of Rome, in her mighty recollections, in the excavation of her precious sculptures, and which imparted to pictorial representations sometimes a hard and plastic treatment, sometimes ornamental architecture, bas-reliefs, or grotesques. By paganism a blighting poison was infused through the spirit of art, while classicism has often ennobled the work and enriched its details, without injury to its sentiment. To schools such as those of Florence and Padua, wherein nature or classic imitation prevailed, there belonged the materialism of facts, the severity of definite forms.[*112] These qualities obtained favour from men of mundane pursuits and literary tastes; from citizens greedy after gainful commerce and devoted to political intrigue; or from princes who patronised, and pedants who deciphered, long forgotten, but at length reviving lore. The "new manner," as it was called, had, in Michael Angelo, a supporter whose mighty genius lent to its solecisms an irresistible charm. Yet against such innovations protests were long occasionally recorded. An anonymous writer, in 1549, mentions a PietÀ, said to have been designed by "Michael Angelo Buonarroti, that inventor of filthy trash, who adheres to art without devotion. Indeed, all the modern painters and sculptors, following the like Lutheran [that is, impious] caprices now-a-days, neither paint nor model for consecrated churches anything but figures that distract one's faith and devotion; but I hope that God will one day send his saints to cast down such idolatries."[113] In a land where mythology had slowly been supplanted by revelation, especially in a city successively the capital of paganism and Christianity, these influences were necessarily in frequent antagonism, or in forced and unseemly juxtaposition. Whilst art thus lost in sentiment, it gained in vigour; and although classic taste and the study of antique sculpture unquestionably tarnished its mystical purity, may they not have preserved it from the fate of religious painting in Spain, which, debarred by the Inquisition from access to nude models, and elevated by no refined standard, oscillated between the extremes of gloomy asceticism and grovelling vulgarity? The paganism of the Medici and Michael Angelo scared away the seraphic visions of monastic limners, but it also rescued Italy from religious prudery, and saved men from addressing their orisons to squalid beggars.[*114]

The brief sketch which we have thus introduced of the progress and tendency of Christian art, may be fittingly concluded by the definition of it supplied by Baron v. Rumohr, one of the laborious, learned, and felicitous expositors of mediÆval art whom the reviving taste of later times produced. "It is consecrated to religion alone; its object is sometimes to induce the mind to the contemplation of sacred subjects, sometimes to regulate the passions, by awakening those sentiments of peace and benevolence which are peculiar to practical Christianity." To narrate its extinction in the sixteenth century, speedily followed by the decline of all that was noblest in artistic genius, is a task on which we are not now called to enter. We approached the subject because, in the mountains of Umbria, that mystic school long maintained its chief seat; because there its types sank deepest into the popular mind; and because it reached its culminating point of perfection and glory in Raffaele of Urbino.

We are fully and painfully aware how opposed some of these views are to the received criticism and popular practice of art in England; but it were beyond our purpose to inquire into the many causes which combine to render our countrymen averse from the impartial study, as well as to the even partial adoption of them. Hogarth, the incarnation of our national taste in painting, saw in those spiritualised cherubim which usually minister to the holiest compositions of the Umbrian school, only "an infant's head with a pair of duck's wings under its chin, supposed always to be flying about and singing psalms."[115] The form conveyed by the eye, and the description of it traced by the pen, are here in accurate unison. Alas! how hopelessly blinded the writer's mental vision. As directly opposed to such grovelling views, and contrasting spiritual with material perceptions of art, it may not be out of place here to cite a passage from Savonarola, whose stern genius gladly invoked the muse of painting to aid his moral and political reformations. "Creatures are beautiful in proportion as they participate in and approximate the beauty of their creator; and perfection of bodily form is relative to beauty of mind. Bring hither two women equally perfect in person; let one be a saint, the other a sinner. You shall find that the saint will be more generally loved than the sinner, and that on her all eyes will be directed."

These quotations illustrate two extremes,—ribald vulgarity on the one hand, and transcendental mysticism on the other, between which the standard of sound criticism may be sought. It would be as unreasonable to suppose Hogarth capable of comprehending or appreciating the fervid conceptions of Christian art, as to look for sympathy from Savonarola, with his pot-house personifications. Each of those styles has its peculiar merit, which cannot fairly be considered with reference to the other: they differ in this among many respects,—that whilst English caricatures and Dutch familiar scenes are addressed to the most uncultivated minds, Umbrian or Sienese paintings can be understood only after long examination and elevated thought. The former, therefore, gratify the unintelligent many, the latter delight an enlightened few.

The difficulty of justly appreciating this branch of Æsthetics is greater among ourselves than is generally imagined, as our best authorities have entirely misled us, from themselves overlooking its true bent. More alive to the naturalism and technical merits of painting than to subtleties of feeling and expression, they are neither conscious of the aims nor aware of the principles of purist art. They look for perfection where only pathos should be sought. Burnet, a recent and valuable writer, considers Barry "one of those noble minds ruined by a close adherence to the dry manner of the early masters," an analogy which cannot but surprise those who compare the respective works of those thus brought unconsciously into contrast. Even Sir Joshua Reynolds was not exempt from prejudice on this point, for he sneers at the first manner of Raffaele as "dry and insipid," and avers that until Masaccio, art was so barbarous, "that every figure appeared to stand upon his toes." There is but one explanation applicable to assertions thus inconsistent at once with fact and with sound criticism, in a writer so candid and generally so careful. Living in an age devoid of Catholic feeling (we employ the phrase in an Æsthetic sense), which classed in the same category of contempt all painting before Michael Angelo, and speaking of "an excellence addressed to a faculty which he did not possess," he assumed, without observation or inquiry, that "the simplicity of the early masters would be better named penury, as it proceeds from mere want,—from want of knowledge, want of resources, want of abilities to be otherwise; that it was the offspring, not of choice, but of necessity." No argument is required to convince those who have impartially studied these masters, that a condemnation so sweeping is erroneous. In our day, the number of such persons is happily increasing, but there are still many impediments to a candid appreciation of the subject. So long as art was the handmaid of religion, its professors were ranked almost with those who ministered in the temple, and interpreted the records of inspiration. In absence of priests, their works became guides to popular devotion, and consequently were addressed to spectators who came to worship, not to criticise; whose credulous enthusiasm was nourished by yearnings of the heart, not by the cold judgment of the eye. How different the test applied by men who look upon such paintings as popish dogmas which it is a duty to repudiate, it may be to ridicule! How futile the perhaps more common error of trying them by the matured rules of pictorial execution, apart from their object and intention! Connoisseurship in painting, especially in England, has indeed too long consisted in a mere appreciation of its technical difficulties, and perception of their successful treatment. For it was not until Raffaele had attained grace, and Michael Angelo had mastered design,—until Correggio had blended light and shade into happy effect, and Titian had taught the gorgeous hues of his palette to mingle in harmony, that such perfections were looked for, or reduced to a standard. Why, then, apply such standard to works already old ere it had been adopted? The very imperfections of general treatment, the absence of linear perspective and anatomical detail, tended to develop what should be chiefly sought and most valued in these early productions; for the artist's time was thus free to elaborate the heads and extremities, until he gave them that grace and expression which constitutes their interest and their charm.

There are, however, no longer wanting writers in England, as well as in Germany, France, and Italy, to appreciate their lofty motives, and solemn feelings, and gentle forms. In the words of Ruskin, whose earnest and true thoughts are often most happily expressed, "the early efforts of Cimabue and Giotto are the burning messages of prophecy, delivered by the stammering lips of infants," but they are unintelligible to "the multitude, always awake to the lowest pleasures which art can bestow, and dead to the highest," for their beauties "can only be studied or accepted in the particular feeling that produced them." Under the modest title of Sketches Lord Lindsay has enriched our literature with the best history of Christian art as yet produced. He has brought to his task that sincerity of purpose, veneration for sacred things, and lively sense of beauty, which impart a charm to all he puts forth; and he has peculiarly qualified himself for its successful performance, by an anxious study of preceding writers, by a faithful, often toilsome, examination of monuments, even in the more obscure sites of Italy, and by a candour and accuracy of criticism seldom attained on topics singularly liable to prejudice. Public intelligence and taste must improve under such direction, notwithstanding passing sneers at "his narrow notions of admiring the faded and soulless attempts at painting of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries," or sapient conclusions that "the antiquities and curiosities of the early Italian painters would only infect our school with a retrograding mania of disfiguring art, and returning to the decrepit littleness of a period warped and tortured by monkish legends and prejudices."[116] In order to be comprehended, such "curiosities" must not only be seen, but studied maturely: both are in this country alike impracticable. When Wilkie first entered Italy, he found nothing to rank them above Chinese or Hindoo paintings,[*117] and could not discern the majestic simplicity ascribed to the primitive masters. Yet, ere six weeks had passed, he recorded the conviction "that the only art pure and unsophisticated, and that is worth study and consideration by an artist, or that has the true object of art in view, is to be found in the works of those masters who revived and improved the art, and those who ultimately brought it to perfection. These alone seem to have addressed themselves to the common sense of mankind. From Giotto to Michael Angelo, expression and sentiment seem the first thing thought of, whilst those who followed seem to have allowed technicalities to get the better of them, until, simplicity giving way to intricacy, they seem to have painted more for the artist and the connoisseur than for the untutored apprehensions of ordinary men." So, too, in writing to Mr. Phillips, R.A., he says, "respect for primitive simplicity and expression is perhaps the best advice for any school."[118]

Neither are religious innovations a necessary accompaniment of such tastes among ourselves, as is too generally supposed. The present reaction in favour of Romanist views, prevalent in England among a class of persons, many of whom are distinguished by high and cultivated intellect, as well as by youthful enthusiasm, takes naturally an Æsthetic as well as theological direction. The faith and discipline, which they labour to revive, having borrowed some winning illustrations and much imposing pageantry from painting, sculpture, and architecture, their neophytes gladly avail themselves of accessories so attractive. Nor can it be doubted that the same qualities which render such persons impressionable to popish observances, predispose them to admire or imitate works of devotional art. Yet there is no compulsory connection between these tendencies. Conversion to pantheism is not a requisite for appreciating the Belvidere Apollo or the Medicean Venus; and a serious Christian may surely appreciate the feeling of the early masters, without bowing the knee to their Madonnas,—may admire the

"Prelibations, foretastes high,"

of Fra Angelico's pencil, whilst demurring to the miracles he has so charmingly portrayed.

There is another observation of Wilkie's which merits our notice: "Could their system serve, which I think it may, as the border minstrelsy did Sir Walter Scott, it would be to any student a most admirable groundwork for a new style of art." This somewhat hasty hint must be cautiously received. The very absence of technical excellence interests us in the formal compositions and flat surfaces of the early masters. We feel that movement and distance, foreshortening and relief, symmetry and contrast, tone and effect, are scarcely wanted, where "a truth of actuality is fearlessly sacrificed to a truth of feeling." We are forced to admit that men who regarded form but as the vehicle of expression, attained a severe grandeur, a noble repose, very different from exaggerated action. Archaisms of style are, however, ill suited to our times. Originally significant, they are now an affectation—the offspring of penury or perverted taste, rather than of spiritual purity. So must they seem in modern productions, affectedly divested of the artificial means and improved methods which centuries of progress have developed, by artists who forget their academic studies and neglect the contour of the living model, without attaining the old inspiration. The spirit which animated devotional limners being long dead, any imitation of their style must be mechanical—a reproduction of its mannerism after its motives are extinct. Whilst, therefore, I endeavour to point out the merits of the old religious limners, it is with no wish to see their manner revived. Among a generation whose faith has been remodelled, whose social and intellectual habits have been entirely revolutionised, the restoration of purist painting would be a mockery. But it should not, therefore, be forbidden us to study and sympathise with forms which, though rigid and monotonous, were sufficient to express the simple faith of early times, and in which earnestness compensates the absence of skill, and fervour the lack of power.

During the early years of the thirteenth century, there appeared on the lofty Apennines of Central Italy, one of those mysterious beings who, with few gifts of nature, are born to sway mankind; whose brief and eccentric career has left behind a brilliant halo, that no lapse of time is likely to dim. Giovanni Bernardoni, better known as St. Francis of Assisi, by his eloquence, his austerities, and all the appliances of religious enthusiasm, quickly gathered among the fervid spirits of his native mountains a numerous following of devoted disciples. In a less judicious church, he might, as a field-preacher, have become a most dangerous schismatic; but, with that foresight and knowledge of human nature which have generally distinguished the Romish hierarchy, the sectarian leader was welcomed as a missionary, "seraphic all in fervency," and in due time canonised into a saint, whilst his poverty-professing sect was recognised as an order, and became one of the most influential pillars of the Papacy.

It was

From the desolate fastnesses of Lavernia, which witnessed his ascetic life and ecstatic visions, to the fertile slopes of Assisi, where his bones found repose from self-inflicted hardships, the people rallied round him while alive, and revered him when dead. Nor did the religious revival which his preaching and example there effected pass away. Acknowledged by popes, favoured by princes, his order rapidly spread. In every considerable town convents of begging friars were established and endowed. Still, it was in his mountain-land that his doctrines took deepest root, among a race of simple men, reared amid the sublime combinations of Alpine and forest scenery, familiar from their days of dreamy youth with hills and glades, caverns and precipices, shady grottoes and solitary cells. The visionary tales of his marvellous life, penetrating the devotional character of the inhabitants, became favourite themes of popular superstition.

Assisi in particular was the focus of the new faith. To its shrine flocked pilgrims laden with riches, which the saint taught them to despise. This influx of treasure had the usual destination of monastic wealth, being chiefly dedicated to the decoration of its sanctuary. During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the best artists in Italy competed for its embellishment, and even now it is there that the student of mediÆval art ought most to seek for enlightenment.

With the legends of St. Francis thus indelibly stamped on the inhabitants, and with the finest specimens of religious painting preserved at Assisi, it need scarcely be matter of surprise that devotional art, which we have endeavoured to describe, should have found in Umbria a fostering soil, even after it had been elsewhere supplanted by naturalist and pagan novelties; for the feelings which it breathed were those of mystery and sentiment—its beauty was sanctified and impalpable. By a people so trained, its traditional types were received with the fervour of faith; while to the limited range of its themes the miraculous adventures of the saint were a welcome supplement. The romantic character of these incidents borrowed from the picturesque features of the country a new but fitting element of pictorial effect, and for the first time nature was introduced to embellish without demeaning religious painting. But let us hear Rio, the eloquent elucidator of sacred art, upon this subject. "To the Umbrian school belongs the glory of having followed out the leading aim of Christian art without pause, and without yielding to the seductions of example or the distractions of clamour. It would seem that a peculiar blessing belongs to the spots rendered specially holy by the sainted Francis of Assisi, and that the odour of his sanctity has preserved the fine arts from degradation in that mountain district, where so many pious painters have successively contributed to ornament his tomb. From thence rose to heaven, like a sweet incense, prayers whose fervour and purity ensured their efficacy: from thence, too, in other times, there descended, like beneficent dew upon the more corrupt cities of the plain, penitential inspirations that spread into almost every part of Italy."

Since these pages were written I have met with a passage in the introduction of Boni's Italian translation of the work just quoted, which I subjoin, at the risk of some repetition, as a fair specimen of the ideas on Christian art now entertained by many on the Continent, but as yet little known to English literature.

"On the Umbrian mountains, by Assisi, slept, in the peace of Heaven, St. Francis, who left such sweet odour of sanctity in the middle ages. Round his tomb assembled, from every part of Christendom, pilgrims to pay their vows. With their offertories there was erected over his grave a magnificent temple, which became the point of concourse to all painters animated by Christian feeling, who thus displayed their gratitude to the Almighty for their endowment of genius, who in that solitude laid in a new store of inspiration, and who, after leaving on these walls a testimony of their powers, returned home joyful and enriched. Cimabue, among the first that raised a holy war against the Byzantine mannerism,[*120] there painted the most beautiful of his Madonnas; his pupil, the shepherd of Bondone, there traced those simple histories which established his superiority; thither sped the artists of Siena, Perugia, Arezzo, and the best of the Florentines,—the beatified Fiesole, of angelic life and works, Benozzo Gozzoli, Orcagna, Perugino, and, finally, Raffaele, the greatest of painters.

"Thus was there formed in the shadow of that sanctuary a truly Christian school, which sought its types of beauty in the heavens; or, when it laid the scene of its compositions here below, selected their subjects from the sainted ones of the earth. Its delight was to represent, now the Virgin-Mother kneeling before her Son, or seated caressing or holding him up for the veneration of patriarchs and saints; now the life of Christ, his preaching, his sufferings, his triumph; or, again, to embody the touching legends told in these simple times, or the martyrs crucified by early tyrants, or an anchorite's devotion in a lonely cave, or some beatified soul borne away on seraph's wings; or a religious procession, the miracle of a preacher, the solemnity of a sacrament: but ever, images of solace and of hope, cherubs singing and making melody, maidens contemplating with smiles the opening heavens, the scenes begun on earth but continued far beyond the clouds, where the Madonna and the Saviour are seen, radiant with serene exultation, beholding the concourse of suppliant faithful beneath."

But lest, in quoting from writers zealously devoted to the Roman Creed, we may seem to admit that such sympathies belong not to Protestant breasts, it will be well to appeal to one whose pen has, with no common success, combated the usages wherein popery most startles those whose faith is based on the Reformation. "I never looked at the pictures of one of these men that it did not instantaneously affect me, alluring me into a sort of dream or reverie, while my imagination was called into very lively activity. It is not that their drawing is good; for, on the other hand, it is often stiff, awkward, and unnatural. Nor is it that their imagination, as exhibited in grouping their figures or embodying the story to be represented, was correct or natural; for often it is most absurd and grotesque. But still there is palpably the embodiment of an idea; an idea pure, holy, exquisite, and too much so to seem capable of expression by the ordinary powers either of language or of the pencil. Yet the idea is there. And it must have had a mysterious and wondrous power on the imagination of these men, it must have thoroughly mastered and possessed them, or they never could have developed such an exquisite ideal of calm, peaceful, meek, heavenly holiness, as stands out so constantly and so pre-eminently in their paintings." In noticing the cavils of connoisseurs upon these paintings this author happily observes, that they were "looking for earthly creatures and found heavenly ones; and, expecting unholy expressions, were disappointed at finding none but the holy."[121]

We may here remark, in passing, the nearly coeval introduction of a class of themes which, though innovating upon the purity of Catholic faith, were admirably adapted to develop the mystic tendencies of devotional painting. It was about the thirteenth century that the Madonna acquired the unfortunately paramount place in the Romish worship she has since been permitted to hold. Her history became a favourite topic of Franciscan and other popular preachers, at once facile and fascinating. Not content with describing the scriptural events of her life, they adopted traditions regarding her birth, marriage, and death; or the more abstruse and questionable legends of her miraculous conception, her assumption, exaltation, and her coronation as queen of heaven, and the cintola or girdle by which she drew up souls from limbo. It would be quite foreign to the matter in hand were we to examine the orthodoxy of these devotional novelties, or their influence upon the social estimate of the female character. Enough to observe that they speedily enriched Christian art in all its branches, but chiefly in Umbria, where, in accordance with the prevailing popular taste, such of them as partook of dogmatic mystery gained a preference over more real or scenic incidents. The early Giottists were wont to close their dramatic delineations of her earthly history with a peaceful death, its only artistic licence being the transit of her soul in the shape of a swaddled babe. But the Madonna-worship of this more spiritual school was satisfied with nothing short of her translation in the body, direct to realms of bliss from amid a concourse of adoring disciples. In like manner, the old Byzantine painters inscribed over her image one uniform epigraph, "the Mother of God"; whilst the devotional masters delighted to seat her beyond the skies, where her blessed Son placed a diadem upon her brows as the queen of heaven. It hence became an established practice of the latter to depict her charms, not after the mould in which nature cast fair but frail humanity, but to clothe them in abstract and purer beauty appropriate to one whom, though incarnate, they were taught to regard as divine.