_Library Edition_

 THE COMPLETE WORKS

 OF

 JOHN RUSKIN

 THE EAGLE'S NEST LOVE'S MEINIE ARIADNE FLORENTINA VAL D'ARNO PROSERPINA

 NATIONAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION NEW YORK CHICAGO

 ARIADNE FLORENTINA. 

 SIX LECTURES

 ON

 WOOD AND METAL ENGRAVING

 WITH APPENDIX. 

 GIVEN BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD, IN MICHAELMAS TERM, 1872. 

 CONTENTS. 

 LECTURE I. PAGEDEFINITION OF THE ART OF ENGRAVING 1

 LECTURE II. 

THE RELATION OF ENGRAVING TO OTHER ARTS IN FLORENCE 22

 LECTURE III. 

THE TECHNICS OF WOOD ENGRAVING 42

 LECTURE IV. 

THE TECHNICS OF METAL ENGRAVING 61

 LECTURE V. 

DESIGN IN THE GERMAN SCHOOLS OF ENGRAVING (HOLBEIN AND DÜRER) 81

 LECTURE VI. 

DESIGN IN THE FLORENTINE SCHOOLS OF ENGRAVING (SANDRO BOTTICELLI) 108

 APPENDIX. 

ARTICLE I. NOTES ON THE PRESENT STATE OF ENGRAVING IN ENGLAND 143

II. DETACHED NOTES 157

LIST OF PLATES

 Facing PageDiagram 27

The Last Furrow (Fig. 2). Facsimile from Holbein's woodcut 47

The Two Preachers (Fig. 3). Facsimile from Holbein's woodcut 48

 I. Things Celestial and Terrestrial, as apparent to the English mind 56

 II. Star of Florence 62

 III. "At evening from the top of Fésole" 72

 IV. "By the Springs of Parnassus" 77

 V. "Heat considered as a Mode of Motion. " Florentine Natural Philosophy 92

 VI. Fairness of the Sea and Air. In Venice and Athens 95

 The Child's Bedtime (Fig. 5). Facsimile from Holbein's woodcut 103

 "He that hath ears to hear let him hear" (Fig. 6). Facsimile from Holbein's woodcut 105

 VII. For a time, and times 130

VIII. The Nymph beloved of Apollo (Michael Angelo) 131

 IX. In the Woods of Ida 132

 X. Grass of the Desert 135

 XI. "Obediente Domino voci hominis" 145

 XII. The Coronation in the Garden 158

 ARIADNE FLORENTINA. 

 LECTURE I. 

 DEFINITION OF THE ART OF ENGRAVING. 

1. The entrance on my duty for to-day begins the fourth year of myofficial work in Oxford; and I doubt not that some of my audience areasking themselves, very doubtfully--at all events, I ask myself, veryanxiously--what has been done. 

For practical result, I have not much to show. I announced, a fortnightsince, that I would meet, the day before yesterday, any gentleman whowished to attend this course for purposes of study. My class, so minded, numbers four, of whom three wish to be artists, and ought not therefore, by rights, to be at Oxford at all; and the fourth is the last remainingunit of the class I had last year. 

2. Yet I neither in this reproach myself, nor, if I could, would Ireproach the students who are not here. I do not reproach myself; for itwas impossible for me to attend properly to the schools and to write thegrammar for them at the same time; and I do not blame the absentstudents for not attending a school from which I have generally beenabsent myself. In all this, there is much to be mended, but, in truelight, nothing to be regretted. 

I say, I had to write my school grammar. These three volumes of lecturesunder my hand, [A] contain, carefully set down, the things I want youfirst to know. None of my writings are done fluently; the second volumeof "Modern Painters" was all of it written twice--most of it, fourtimes, --over; and these lectures have been written, I don't know howmany times. You may think that this was done merely in an author'svanity, not in a tutor's care. To the vanity I plead guilty, --no man ismore intensely vain than I am; but my vanity is set on having it _known_of me that I am a good master, not in having it _said_ of me that I am asmooth author. My vanity is never more wounded than in being called afine writer, meaning--that nobody need mind what I say. 

3. Well, then, besides this vanity, I have some solicitude for yourprogress. You may give me credit for it or not, as you choose, but it issincere. And that your advance may be safe, I have taken the best painsI could in laying down laws for it. In these three years I have got mygrammar written, and, with the help of many friends, all workinginstruments in good order; and now we will try what we can do. Not that, even now, you are to depend on my presence with you in personalteaching. I shall henceforward think of the lectures less, of theschools more; but my best work for the schools will often be by drawingin Florence or in Lancashire--not here. 

4. I have already told you several times that the course through which Imean every student in these schools should pass, is one which shallenable them to understand the elementary principles of the finest art. It will necessarily be severe, and seem to lead to no immediate result. Some of you will, on the contrary, wish to be taught what is immediatelyeasy, and gives prospect of a manifest success. 

But suppose they should come to the Professor of Logic and Rhetoric, andtell him they want to be taught to preach like Mr. Spurgeon, or theBishop of ----. 

He would say to them, --I cannot, and if I could I would not, tell youhow to preach like Mr. Spurgeon, or the Bishop of ----. Your owncharacter will form your style; your own zeal will direct it; your ownobstinacy or ignorance may limit or exaggerate it; but my business is toprevent, as far as I can, your having _any_ particular style; and toteach you the laws of all language, and the essential power of your own. 

In like manner, this course, which I propose to you in art, will becalculated only to give you judgment and method in future study, toestablish to your conviction the laws of general art, and to enable youto draw, if not with genius, at least with sense and propriety. 

The course, so far as it consists in practice, will be defined in myInstructions for the schools. And the theory connected with thatpractice is set down in the three lectures at the end of the firstcourse I delivered--those on Line, Light, and Color. 

You will have, therefore, to get this book, [B] and it is the only onewhich you will need to have of your own, --the others are placed, forreference, where they will be accessible to you. 

5. In the 139th paragraph it states the order of your practical study inthese terms:--

"I wish you to begin by getting command of line;--that is to say, bylearning to draw a steady line, limiting with absolute correctness theform or space you intend it to limit; to proceed by getting command overflat tints, so that you may be able to fill the spaces you have inclosedevenly, either with shade or color, according to the school you adopt;and, finally, to obtain the power of adding such fineness of drawing, within the masses, as shall express their undulation, and theircharacters of form and texture. "

And now, since in your course of practice you are first required toattain the power of drawing lines accurately and delicately, so in thecourse of theory, or grammar, I wish you first to learn the principlesof linear design, exemplified by the schools which (§ 137) you will findcharacterized as the Schools of Line. 

6. If I had command of as much time as I should like to spend with youon this subject, I would begin with the early forms of art which usedthe simplest linear elements of design. But, for general service andinterest, it will be better that I should sketch what has beenaccomplished by the greatest masters in that manner; the rather thattheir work is more or less accessible to all, and has developed into thevast industries of modern engraving, one of the most powerful existinginfluences of education and sources of pleasure among civilized people. 

And this investigation, so far from interrupting, will facilitate ourexamination of the history of the nobler arts. You will see in thepreface to my lectures on Greek sculpture that I intend them to befollowed by a course on architecture, and that by one on Florentinesculpture. But the art of engraving is so manifestly, at Florence, though not less essentially elsewhere, a basis of style both inarchitecture and sculpture, that it is absolutely necessary I shouldexplain to you in what the skill of the engraver consists, before I candefine with accuracy that of more admired artists. For engraving, thoughnot altogether in the method of which you see examples in theprint-shops of the High Street, is, indeed, a prior art to that eitherof building or sculpture, and is an inseparable part of both, when theyare rightly practiced. 

7. And while we thus examine the scope of this first of the arts, itwill be necessary that we learn also the scope of mind of the earlypracticers of it, and accordingly acquaint ourselves with the mainevents in the biography of the schools of Florence. To understand thetemper and meaning of one great master is to lay the best, if not theonly, foundation for the understanding of all; and I shall thereforemake it the leading aim of this course of lectures to remind you of whatis known, and direct you to what is knowable, of the life and characterof the greatest Florentine master of engraving, Sandro Botticelli; and, incidentally, to give you some idea of the power of the greatest masterof the German, or any northern, school, Hans Holbein. 

8. You must feel, however, that I am using the word "engraving" in asomewhat different, and, you may imagine, a wider, sense, than thatwhich you are accustomed to attach to it. So far from being a widersense, it is in reality a more accurate and restricted one, while yet itembraces every conceivable right application of the art. And I wish, inthis first lecture, to make entirely clear to you the proper meaning ofthe word, and proper range of the art of, engraving; in my nextfollowing lecture, to show you its place in Italian schools, and then, in due order, the place it ought to take in our own, and in all schools. 

9. First then, to-day, of the Differentia, or essential quality ofEngraving, as distinguished from other arts. 

What answer would you make to me, if I asked casually what engravingwas? Perhaps the readiest which would occur to you would be, "Thetranslation of pictures into black and white by means admittingreduplication of impressions. " But if that be done by lithography, we donot call it engraving, --whereas we speak contentedly and continually ofseal engraving, in which there is no question of black and white. And, as scholars, you know that this customary mode of speaking is quiteaccurate; and that engraving means, primarily, making a permanent cut orfurrow in something. The central syllable of the word has become asorrowful one, meaning the most permanent of furrows. 

10. But are you prepared absolutely to accept this limitation withrespect to engraving as a pictorial art? Will you call nothing anengraving, except a group of furrows or cavities cut in a hardsubstance? What shall we say of mezzotint engraving, for instance, inwhich, though indeed furrows and cavities are produced mechanically as aground, the artist's work is in effacing them? And when we consider thepower of engraving in representing pictures and multiplying them, are weto recognize and admire no effects of light and shade except those whichare visibly produced by dots or furrows? I mean, will the virtue of anengraving be in exhibiting these imperfect means of its effect, or inconcealing them?

11. Here, for instance, is the head of a soldier by Dürer, --a meregridiron of black lines. Would this be better or worse engraving if itwere more like a photograph or lithograph, and no lines seen?--suppose, more like the head of Mr. Santley, now in all the music-shops, andreally quite deceptive in light and shade, when seen from over the way?Do you think Dürer's work would be better if it were more like that? Andwould you have me, therefore, leaving the question of technical methodof production altogether to the craftsman, consider pictorial engravingsimply as the production of a light-and-shade drawing, by some methodpermitting its multiplication for the public?

12. This, you observe, is a very practical question indeed. Forinstance, the illustrations of my own lectures on sculpture areequivalent to permanent photographs. There can be little doubt thatmeans will be discovered of thus producing perfect facsimiles ofartists' drawings; so that, if no more than facsimile be required, theold art of cutting furrows in metal may be considered as, at this day, virtually ended. And, indeed, it is said that line engravers cannot anymore get apprentices, and that a pure steel or copper plate is notlikely to be again produced, when once the old living masters of thebright field shall have been all laid in their earth-furrows. 

13. Suppose, then, that this come to pass; and more than this, supposethat wood engraving also be superseded, and that instead of imperfecttranscripts of drawings, on wood-blocks or metal-plates, photographyenabled us to give, quite cheaply, and without limit to number, facsimiles of the finished light-and-shade drawings of artiststhemselves. Another group of questions instantly offers itself, on thesenew conditions; namely, What are the best means for a light-and-shadedrawing--the pen, or the pencil, the charcoal, or the flat wash? That isto say, the pen, producing shade by black lines, as old engraving did;the pencil, producing shade by gray lines, variable in force; thecharcoal, producing a smoky shadow with no lines in it, or the washedtint, producing a transparent shadow with no lines in it. Which ofthese methods is the best?--or have they, each and all, virtues to beseparately studied, and distinctively applied?

14. See how curiously the questions multiply on us. 1st, Is engraving tobe only considered as cut work? 2d, For present designs multipliablewithout cutting, by the sunshine, what methods or instruments of drawingwill be best? And now, 3dly, before we can discuss these questions atall, is there not another lying at the root of both, --namely, what alight-and-shade drawing itself properly _is_, and how it differs, orshould differ, from a painting, whether by mere deficiency, or by someentirely distinct merit?

15. For instance, you know how confidently it is said, in common talkabout Turner, that his works are intelligible and beautiful whenengraved, though incomprehensible as paintings. Admitting this to be so, do you suppose it is because the translation into light and shade isdeficient in some qualities which the painting had, or that it possessessome quality which the painting had not? Does it please more because itis deficient in the color which confused a feeble spectator, andoffended a dogmatic one, --or because it possesses a decision in itssteady linear labor which interprets, or corrects, the swift pencilingof the artist?

16. Do you notice the two words I have just used, _Decision_, and_Linear_?--Decision, again introducing the idea of cuts or divisions, asopposed to gradations; Linear, as opposed to massive or broad?

Yet we use all these words at different times in praise, while theyevidently mark inconsistent qualities. Softness and decision, breadthand delineation, cannot co-exist in equal degrees. There must surelytherefore be a virtue in the engraving inconsistent with that of thepainting, and vice versâ. 

Now, be clear about these three questions which we have to-day toanswer. 

 A. Is all engraving to be cut work?

 B. If it need not be cut work, but only the reproduction of a drawing, what methods of executing a light-and-shade drawing will be best?

 C. Is the shaded drawing itself to be considered only as a deficient or imperfect painting, or as a different thing from a painting, having a virtue of its own, belonging to black and white, as opposed to color?

17. I will give you the answers at once, briefly, and amplify themafterwards. 

 A. All engraving must be cut work;--_that_ is its differentia. Unless your effect be produced by cutting into some solid substance, it is not engraving at all. 

 B. The proper methods for light-and-shade drawing vary according to subject, and the degree of completeness desired, --some of them having much in common with engraving, and others with painting. 

 C. The qualities of a light-and-shade drawing ought to be entirely different from those of a painting. It is not a deficient or partial representation of a colored scene or picture, but an entirely different reading of either. So that much of what is intelligible in a painting ought to be unintelligible in a light-and-shade study, and _vice versâ_. 

You have thus three arts, --engraving, light-and-shade drawing, andpainting. 

Now I am not going to lecture, in this course, on painting, nor onlight-and-shade drawing, but on engraving only. But I must tell yousomething about light-and-shade drawing first; or, at least, remind youof what I have before told. 

18. You see that the three elementary lectures in my first volume are onLine, Light, and Color, --that is to say, on the modes of art whichproduce linear designs, --which produce effects of light, --and whichproduce effects of color. 

I must, for the sake of new students, briefly repeat the explanation ofthese. 

Here is an Arabian vase, in which the pleasure given to the eye is onlyby lines;--no effect of light, or of color, is attempted. Here is amoonlight by Turner, in which there are no lines at all, and no colorsat all. The pleasure given to the eye is only by modes of light andshade, or effects of light. Finally, here is an early Florentinepainting, in which there are no lines of importance, and no effect oflight whatever; but all the pleasure given to the eye is in gayety andvariety of color. 

19. I say, the pleasure given to the _eye_. The lines on this vase writesomething; but the ornamentation produced by the beautiful writing isindependent of its meaning. So the moonlight is pleasant, first, aslight; and the figures, first, as color. It is not the shape of thewaves, but the light on them; not the expression of the figures, buttheir color, by which the _ocular_ pleasure is to be given. 

These three examples are violently marked ones; but, in preparing todraw _any_ object, you will find that, practically, you have to askyourself, Shall I aim at the color of it, the light of it, or the linesof it? You can't have all three; you can't even have any two out of thethree in equal strength. The best art, indeed, comes so near nature asin a measure to unite all. But the best is not, and cannot be, as goodas nature; and the mode of its deficiency is that it must lose some ofthe color, some of the light, or some of the delineation. And inconsequence, there is one great school which says, We will have thecolor, and as much light and delineation as are consistent with it. Another which says, We will have shade, and as much color anddelineation as are consistent with it. The third, We will havedelineation, and as much color and shade as are consistent with it. 

20. And though much of the two subordinate qualities may in each schoolbe consistent with the leading one, yet the schools are evermoreseparate: as, for instance, in other matters, one man says, I will havemy fee, and as much honesty as is consistent with it; another, I willhave my honesty, and as much fee as is consistent with it. Though theman who will have his fee be subordinately honest, --though the man whowill have his honor, subordinately rich, are they not evermore ofdiverse schools?

So you have, in art, the utterly separate provinces, though in contactat their borders, of

 The Delineators; The Chiaroscurists; and The Colorists. 

21. The Delineators are the men on whom I am going to give you thiscourse of lectures. They are essentially engravers, an engraved linebeing the best means of delineation. The Chiaroscurists are essentiallydraughtsmen with chalk, charcoal, or single tints. Many of them paint, but always with some effort and pain. Lionardo is the type of them; butthe entire Dutch school consists of them, laboriously painting, withoutessential genius for color. 

The Colorists are the true painters; and all the faultless (as far, thatis to say, as men's work can be so, ) and consummate masters of artbelong to them. 

22. The distinction between the colorist and chiaroscurist school istrenchant and absolute: and may soon be shown you so that you will neverforget it. Here is a Florentine picture by one of the pupils of Giotto, of very good representative quality, and which the University galleriesare rich in possessing. At the distance at which I hold it, you seenothing but a checker-work of brilliant, and, as it happens, evenglaring colors. If you come near, you will find this patchwork resolveitself into a Visitation, and Birth of St. John; but that St. Elizabeth's red dress, and the Virgin's blue and white one, and thebrown posts of the door, and the blue spaces of the sky, are painted intheir own entirely pure colors, each shaded with more powerful tints ofitself, --pale blue with deep blue, scarlet with crimson, yellow withorange, and green with richer green. 

The whole is therefore as much a mosaic work of brilliant color as if itwere made of bits of glass. There is no effect of light attempted, or somuch as thought of: you don't know even where the sun is: nor have youthe least notion what time of day it is. The painter thinks you cannotbe so superfluous as to want to know what time of day it is. 

23. Here, on the other hand, is a Dutch picture of good average quality, also out of the University galleries. It represents a group of cattle, and a herdsman watching them. And you see in an instant that the time isevening. The sun is setting, and there is warm light on the landscape, the cattle, and the standing figure. 

Nor does the picture in any conspicuous way seem devoid of color. On thecontrary, the herdsman has a scarlet jacket, which comes out ratherbrilliantly from the mass of shade round it; and a person devoid ofcolor faculty, or ill taught, might imagine the picture to be really afine work of color. 

But if you will come up close to it, you will find that the herdsman hasbrown sleeves, though he has a scarlet jacket; and that the shadows ofboth are painted with precisely the same brown, and in several placeswith continuous touches of the pencil. It is only in the light that thescarlet is laid on. 

This at once marks the picture as belonging to the lower orchiaroscurist school, even if you had not before recognized it as suchby its pretty rendering of sunset effect. 

24. You might at first think it a painting which showed greater skillthan that of the school of Giotto. But the skill is not the primaryquestion. The power of imagination is the first thing to be asked about. This Italian work imagines, and requires you to imagine also, a St. Elizabeth and St. Mary, to the best of your power. But this Dutch oneonly wishes you to imagine an effect of sunlight on cow-skin, which is afar lower strain of the imaginative faculty. 

Also, as you may see the effect of sunlight on cow-skin, in reality, anysummer afternoon, but cannot so frequently see a St. Elizabeth, it is afar less useful strain of the imaginative faculty. 

And, generally speaking, the Dutch chiaroscurists are indeed personswithout imagination at all, --who, not being able to get any pleasure outof their thoughts, try to get it out of their sensations; note, however, also their technical connection with the Greek school of shade, (see mysixth inaugural lecture, § 158, ) in which color was refused, not for thesake of deception, but of solemnity. 

25. With these final motives you are not now concerned; your presentbusiness is the quite easy one of knowing, and noticing, the universaldistinction between the methods of treatment in which the aim is light, and in which it is color; and so to keep yourselves guarded from thedanger of being misled by the, often very ingenious, talk of persons whohave vivid color sensations without having learned to distinguish themfrom what else pleases them in pictures. There is an interesting volumeby Professor Taine on the Dutch school, containing a valuable historicalanalysis of the influences which formed it; but full of the gravesterrors, resulting from the confusion in his mind between color and tone, in consequence of which he imagines the Dutch painters to be colorists. 

26. It is so important for you to be grounded securely in these firstelements of pictorial treatment, that I will be so far tedious as toshow you one more instance of the relative intellectual value of thepure color and pure chiaroscuro school, not in Dutch and Florentine, butin English art. Here is a copy of one of the lost frescoes of ourPainted Chamber of Westminster;--fourteenth-century work, entirelyconceived in color, and calculated for decorative effect. There is nomore light and shade in it than in a Queen of Hearts in a pack ofcards;--all that the painter at first wants you to see is that the younglady has a white forehead, and a golden crown, and a fair neck, and aviolet robe, and a crimson shield with golden leopards on it; and thatbehind her is clear blue sky. Then, farther, he wants you to read hername, "Debonnairete, " which, when you have read, he farther expects youto consider what it is to be debonnaire, and to remember your Chaucer'sdescription of the virtue:--

 She was not brown, nor dun of hue, But white as snowe, fallen new, With eyen glad, and browes bent, Her hair down to her heeles went, And she was simple, as dove on tree, Full debonnair of heart was she. 

27. You see Chaucer dwells on the color just as much as the painterdoes, but the painter has also given her the English shield to bear, meaning that good-humor, or debonnairete, cannot be maintained byself-indulgence;--only by fortitude. Farther note, with Chaucer, the"eyen glad, " and brows "bent" (high-arched and calm), the strong life, (hair down to the heels, ) and that her gladness is to be withoutsubtlety, --that is to say, without the slightest pleasure in any form ofadvantage-taking, or any shrewd or mocking wit: "she was simple as doveon tree;" and you will find that the color-painting, both in the frescoand in the poem, is in the very highest degree didactic andintellectual; and distinguished, as being so, from all inferior forms ofart. Farther, that it requires you yourself first to understand thenature of simplicity, and to like simplicity in young ladies better thansubtlety; and to understand why the second of Love's five kind arrows(Beauté being the first)--

 Simplece ot nom, la seconde Qui maint homme parmi le monde Et mainte dame fait amer. 

Nor must you leave the picture without observing that there is anotherreason for Debonnairete's bearing the Royal shield, --of all shieldsthat, rather than another. "De-bonne-aire" meant originally "out of agood eagle's nest, " the "aire" signifying the eagle's nest or eyrieespecially, because it is flat, the Latin "area" being the root of all. 

And this coming out of a good nest is recognized as, of all things, needfulest to give the strength which enables people to be good-humored;and thus you have "debonnaire" forming the third word of the group, with"gentle" and "kind, " all first signifying "of good race. "

You will gradually see, as we go on, more and more why I called my thirdvolume of lectures Eagle's Nest; for I am not fantastic in these titles, as is often said; but try shortly to mark my chief purpose in the bookby them. 

28. Now for comparison with this old art, here is a modern engraving, in which color is entirely ignored; and light and shade alone are usedto produce what is supposed to be a piece of impressive religiousinstruction. But it is not a piece of religious instruction atall;--only a piece of religious sensation, prepared for the sentimentalpleasure of young ladies; whom (since I am honored to-day by thepresence of many) I will take the opportunity of warning against suchforms of false theological satisfaction. This engraving represents ayoung lady in a very long and, though plain, very becoming white dress, tossed upon the waves of a terrifically stormy sea, by which neither herhair nor her becoming dress is in the least wetted; and saved fromdespair in that situation by closely embracing a very thick and solidstone Cross. By which far-sought and original metaphor young ladies areexpected, after some effort, to understand the recourse they may have, for support, to the Cross of Christ, in the midst of the troubles ofthis world. 

29. As those troubles are for the present, in all probability, limitedto the occasional loss of their thimbles when they have not taken careto put them into their work-boxes, --the concern they feel at theunsympathizing gayety of their companions, --or perhaps thedisappointment at not hearing a favorite clergyman preach, --(for I willnot suppose the young ladies interested in this picture to be affectedby any chagrin at the loss of an invitation to a ball, or the likeworldliness, )--it seems to me the stress of such calamities might berepresented, in a picture, by less appalling imagery. And I can assuremy fair little lady friends, --if I still have any, --that whatever ayoung girl's ordinary troubles or annoyances may be, her true virtue isin shaking them off, as a rose-leaf shakes off rain, and remainingdebonnaire and bright in spirits, or even, as the rose would be, thebrighter for the troubles; and not at all in allowing herself to beeither drifted or depressed to the point of requiring religiousconsolation. But if any real and deep sorrow, such as no metaphor canrepresent, fall upon her, does she suppose that the theological adviceof this piece of modern art can be trusted? If she will take the painsto think truly, she will remember that Christ Himself never saysanything about holding by His Cross. He speaks a good deal of bearingit; but never for an instant of holding by it. It is His Hand, not HisCross, which is to save either you, or St. Peter, when the waves arerough. And the utterly reckless way in which modern religious teachers, whether in art or literature, abuse the metaphor somewhat briefly andviolently leant on by St. Paul, simply prevents your understanding themeaning of any word which Christ Himself speaks on this matter! So yousee this popular art of light and shade, catching you by your merethirst of sensation, is not only undidactic, but the reverse ofdidactic--deceptive and illusory. 

30. This _popular_ art, you hear me say, scornfully; and I have toldyou, in some of my teaching in "Aratra Pentelici, " that all great artmust be popular. Yes, but great art is popular, as bread and water areto children fed by a father. And vile art is popular, as poisonous jellyis, to children cheated by a confectioner. And it is quite possible tomake any kind of art popular on those last terms. The color school maybecome just as poisonous as the colorless, in the hands of fools, or ofrogues. Here is a book I bought only the other day, --one of the thingsgot up cheap to catch the eyes of mothers at bookstalls, --Puss in Boots, illustrated; a most definite work of the color school--red jackets andwhite paws and yellow coaches as distinct as Giotto or Raphael wouldhave kept them. But the thing is done by fools for money, and becomesentirely monstrous and abominable. Here, again, is color art produced byfools for religion: here is Indian sacred painting, --a black god with ahundred arms, with a green god on one side of him and a red god on theother; still a most definite work of the color school. Giotto or Raphaelcould not have made the black more resolutely black, (though the wholecolor of the school of Athens is kept in distinct separation from oneblack square in it), nor the green more unquestionably green. Yet thewhole is pestilent and loathsome. 

31. Now but one point more, and I have done with this subject forto-day. 

You must not think that this manifest brilliancy and Harlequin's-jacketcharacter is essential in the color school. The essential matter is onlythat everything should be of _its own_ definite color: it may bealtogether sober and dark, yet the distinctness of hue preserved withentire fidelity. Here, for instance, is a picture of Hogarth's, --one ofquite the most precious things we have in our galleries. It represents ameeting of some learned society--gentlemen of the last century, verygravely dressed, but who, nevertheless, as gentlemen pleasantly did inthat day, --you remember Goldsmith's weakness on the point--wear coats oftints of dark red, blue, or violet. There are some thirty gentlemen inthe room, and perhaps seven or eight different tints of subduedclaret-color in their coats; and yet every coat is kept so distinctly ofits own proper claret-color, that each gentleman's servant would knowhis master's. 

Yet the whole canvas is so gray and quiet, that as I now hold it by thisDutch landscape, with the vermilion jacket, you would fancy Hogarth'shad no color in it at all, and that the Dutchman was half-way tobecoming a Titian; whereas Hogarth's is a consummate piece of the mostperfect colorist school, which Titian could not beat, in its way; andthe Dutchman could no more paint half an inch of it than he could summona rainbow into the clouds. 

32. Here then, you see, are, altogether, five works, all of theabsolutely pure color school:--

 1. One, Indian, --Religious Art; 2. One, Florentine, --Religious Art; 3. One, English, --from Painted Chamber, Westminster, --Ethic Art; 4. One, English, --Hogarth, --Naturalistic Art; 5. One, English, --to-day sold in the High Street, --Caricaturist Art. 

And of these, the Florentine and old English are divine work, God-inspired; full, indeed, of faults and innocencies, but divine, asgood children are. 

Then this by Hogarth is entirely wise and right; but worldly-wise, notdivine. 

While the old Indian, and this, with which we feed our children at thishour, are entirely damnable art;--every bit of it done by the directinspiration of the devil, --feeble, ridiculous, --yet mortally poisonousto every noble quality in body and soul. 

33. I have now, I hope, guarded you sufficiently from the danger eitherof confusing the inferior school of chiaroscuro with that of color, orof imagining that a work must necessarily be good, on the sole ground ofits belonging to the higher group. I can now proceed securely toseparate the third school, that of Delineation, from both; and toexamine its special qualities. 

It begins (see "Inaugural Lectures, " § 137) in the primitive work ofraces insensible alike to shade and to color, and nearly devoid ofthought and of sentiment, but gradually developing into both. 

Now as the design is primitive, so are the means likely to be primitive. A line is the simplest work of art you can produce. What are thesimplest means you can produce it with?

A Cumberland lead-pencil is a work of art in itself, quite anineteenth-century machine. Pen and ink are complex and scholarly; andeven chalk or charcoal not always handy. 

But the primitive line, the first and last, generally the best of lines, is that which you have elementary faculty of at your fingers' ends, andwhich kittens can draw as well as you--the scratch. 

The first, I say, and the last of lines. Permanent exceedingly, --even inflesh, or on mahogany tables, often more permanent than we desire. Butwhen studiously and honorably made, divinely permanent, ordelightfully--as on the venerable desks of our public schools, most ofthem, now, specimens of wood engraving dear to the heart of England. 

34. Engraving, then, is, in brief terms, the Art of Scratch. It isessentially the cutting into a solid substance for the sake of makingyour ideas as permanent as possible, graven with an iron pen in theRock forever. _Permanence_, you observe, is the object, notmultiplicability;--that is quite an accidental, sometimes not even adesirable, attribute of engraving. Duration of your work--fame, andundeceived vision of all men, on the pane of glass of the window on awet day, or on the pillars of the castle of Chillon, or on the wallsof the pyramids;--a primitive art, --yet first and last with us. 

Since then engraving, we say, is essentially cutting into the surface ofany solid; as the primitive design is in lines or dots, the primitivecutting of such design is a scratch or a hole; and scratchable solidsbeing essentially three--stone, wood, metal, --we shall have three greatschools of engraving to investigate in each material. 

35. On tablet of stone, on tablet of wood, on tablet of steel, --thefirst giving the law to everything; the second true Athenian, likeAthena's first statue in olive-wood, making the law legible and homely;and the third true Vulcanian, having the splendor and power ofaccomplished labor. 

Now of stone engraving, which is joined inseparably with sculpture andarchitecture, I am not going to speak at length in this course oflectures. I shall speak only of wood and metal engraving. But there isone circumstance in stone engraving which it is necessary to observe inconnection with the other two branches of the art. 

The great difficulty for a primitive engraver is to make his scratchdeep enough to be visible. Visibility is quite as essential to your fameas permanence; and if you have only your furrow to depend on, theengraved tablet, at certain times of day, will be illegible, and passedwithout notice. 

But suppose you fill in your furrow with something black, then it willbe legible enough at once; and if the black fall out or wash out, stillyour furrow is there, and may be filled again by anybody. 

Therefore, the noble stone engravers, using marble to receive theirfurrow, fill that furrow with marble ink. 

And you have an engraved plate to purpose;--with the whole sky for itsmargin! Look here--the front of the church of San Michele ofLucca, --white marble with green serpentine for ink; or here, --the stepsof the Giant's Stair, with lead for ink; or here, --the floor of thePisan Duomo, with porphyry for ink. Such cutting, filled in with coloror with black, branches into all sorts of developments, --Florentinemosaic on the one hand, niello on the other, and infinite minor arts. 

36. Yet we must not make this filling with color part of our definitionof engraving. To engrave is, in final strictness, "to decorate a surfacewith furrows. " (Cameos, in accuratest terms, are minute sculptures, notengravings. ) A plowed field is the purest type of such art; and is, onhilly land, an exquisite piece of decoration. 

Therefore it will follow that engraving distinguishes itself fromordinary drawing by greater need of muscular effort. 

The quality of a pen drawing is to be produced easily, --deliberately, always, [C] but with a point that _glides_ over the paper. Engraving, onthe contrary, requires always force, and its virtue is that of a lineproduced by pressure, or by blows of a chisel. 

It involves, therefore, always, ideas of power and dexterity, but alsoof restraint; and the delight you take in it should involve theunderstanding of the difficulty the workman dealt with. You perhapsdoubt the extent to which this feeling justly extends, (in the firstvolume of "Modern Painters, " expressed under the head "Ideas of Power. ")But why is a large stone in any building grander than a small one?Simply because it was more difficult to raise it. So, also, an engravedline is, and ought to be, recognized as more grand than a pen or pencilline, because it was more difficult to execute it. 

In this mosaic of Lucca front you forgive much, and admire much, because you see it is all cut in stone. So, in wood and steel, you oughtto see that every line has been costly; but observe, costly ofdeliberative, no less than athletic or executive power. The main use ofthe restraint which makes the line difficult to draw, is to give timeand motive for deliberation in drawing it, and to insure its being thebest in your power. 

37. For, as with deliberation, so without repentance, your engraved linemust be. It may, indeed, be burnished or beaten out again in metal, orpatched and botched in stone; but always to disadvantage, and at painswhich must not be incurred often. And there is a singular evidence inone of Dürer's finest plates that, in his time, or at least in hismanner of work, it was not possible at all. Among the disputes as to themeaning of Dürer's Knight and Death, you will find it sometimessuggested, or insisted, that the horse's raised foot is going to fallinto a snare. What has been fancied a noose is only the former outlineof the horse's foot and limb, uneffaced. 

The engraved line is therefore to be conclusive; not experimental. "Ihave determined this, " says the engraver. Much excellent pen drawing isexcellent in being tentative, --in being experimental. Indeterminate, notthrough want of meaning, but through fullness of it--halting _wisely_between two opinions--feeling cautiously after clearer opinions. Butyour engraver has made up his opinion. This is so, and must forever beso, he tells you. A very proper thing for a thoughtful man to say; avery improper and impertinent thing for a foolish one to say. Foolishengraving is consummately foolish work. Look, --all the world, --look forevermore, says the foolish engraver; see what a fool I have been! Howmany lines I have laid for nothing! How many lines upon lines, with noprecept, much less superprecept!

38. Here, then, are two definite ethical characters in all engravedwork. It is Athletic; and it is Resolute. Add one more; that it isObedient;--in their infancy the nurse, but in their youth the slave, ofthe higher arts; servile, both in the mechanism and labor of it, and inits function of interpreting the schools of painting as superior toitself. 

And this relation to the higher arts we will study at the source ofchief power in all the normal skill of Christendom, Florence; andchiefly, as I said, in the work of one Florentine master, SandroBotticelli. 

FOOTNOTES:

[A] "Inaugural Series, " "Aratra Pentelici, " and "Eagle's Nest. "

[B] My inaugural series of seven lectures (now published uniform in sizewith this edition. 1890). 

[C] Compare Inaugural Lectures, § 144. 

 LECTURE II. 

 THE RELATION OF ENGRAVING TO OTHER ARTS IN FLORENCE. 

39. From what was laid before you in my last lecture, you must now beaware that I do not mean, by the word 'engraving, ' merely the separateart of producing plates from which black pictures may be printed. 

I mean, by engraving, the art of producing decoration on a surface bythe touches of a chisel or a burin; and I mean by its relation to otherarts, the subordinate service of this linear work, in sculpture, inmetal work, and in painting; or in the representation and repetition ofpainting. 

And first, therefore, I have to map out the broad relations of the artsof sculpture, metal work, and painting, in Florence, among themselves, during the period in which the art of engraving was distinctly connectedwith them. [D]

40. You will find, or may remember, that in my lecture on Michael Angeloand Tintoret I indicated the singular importance, in the history of art, of a space of forty years, between 1480, and the year in which Raphaeldied, 1520. Within that space of time the change was completed, from theprinciples of ancient, to those of existing, art;--a manifold change, not definable in brief terms, but most clearly characterized, and easilyremembered, as the change of conscientious and didactic art, into thatwhich proposes to itself no duty beyond technical skill, and no objectbut the pleasure of the beholder. Of that momentous change itself I donot purpose to speak in the present course of lectures; but my endeavorwill be to lay before you a rough chart of the course of the arts inFlorence up to the time when it took place; a chart indicating for you, definitely, the growth of conscience, in work which is distinctivelyconscientious, and the perfecting of expression and means of popularaddress, in that which is distinctively didactic. 

41. Means of popular address, observe, which have become singularlyimportant to us at this day. Nevertheless, remember that the power ofprinting, or reprinting, black _pictures_, --practically contemporarywith that of reprinting black _letters_, --modified the art of thedraughtsman only as it modified that of the scribe. Beautiful and uniquewriting, as beautiful and unique painting or engraving, remain exactlywhat they were; but other useful and reproductive methods of both havebeen superadded. Of these, it is acutely said by Dr. AlfredWoltmann, [E]--

 "A far more important part is played in the art-life of Germany by the technical arts for the _multiplying_ of works; for Germany, while it was the land of book-printing, is also the land of picture-printing. Indeed, wood-engraving, which preceded the invention of book-printing, _prepared the way for it, and only left one step more necessary for it_. _Book-printing_ and _picture-printing_ have both the same inner cause for their origin, namely, the impulse to make each mental gain a common blessing. Not merely princes and rich nobles were to have the privilege of adorning their private chapels and apartments with beautiful religious pictures; the poorest man was also to have his delight in that which the artist had devised and produced. It was not sufficient for him when it stood in the church as an altar-shrine, visible to him and to the congregation from afar; he desired to have it as his own, to carry it about with him, to bring it into his own home. The grand importance of wood-engraving and copperplate is not sufficiently estimated in historical investigations. They were not alone of use in the advance of art; they form an epoch in the entire life of mind and culture. The idea embodied and multiplied in pictures became like that embodied in the printed word, the herald of every intellectual movement, and conquered the world. "

42. "Conquered the world"? The rest of the sentence is true, but this, hyperbolic, and greatly false. It should have been said that bothpainting and engraving have conquered much of the good in the world, and, hitherto, little or none of the evil. 

Nor do I hold it usually an advantage to art, in teaching, that it_should_ be common, or constantly seen. In becoming intelligibly andkindly beautiful, while it remains solitary and unrivaled, it has agreater power. Westminster Abbey is more didactic to the English nation, than a million of popular illustrated treatises on architecture. 

Nay, even that it cannot be understood but with some difficulty, andmust be sought before it can be seen, is no harm. The noblest didacticart is, as it were, set on a hill, and its disciples come to it. Thevilest destructive and corrosive art stands at the street corners, crying, "Turn in hither; come, eat of my bread, and drink of my wine, which I have mingled. "

And Dr. Woltmann has allowed himself too easily to fall into the commonnotion of Liberalism, that bad art, disseminated, is instructive, andgood art isolated, not so. The question is, first, I assure you, whetherwhat art you have got is good or bad. If essentially bad, the more yousee of it, the worse for you. Entirely popular art is all that is noble, in the cathedral, the council chamber, and the market-place; not thepaltry colored print pinned on the wall of a private room. 

43. I despise the poor!--do I, think you? Not so. They only despise thepoor who think them better off with police news, and colored tracts ofthe story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife, than they were with Luinipainting on their church walls, and Donatello carving the pillars oftheir market-places. 

Nevertheless, the effort to be universally, instead of locally, didactic, modified advantageously, as you know, and in a thousand waysvaried, the earlier art of engraving: and the development of its popularpower, whether for good or evil, came exactly--so fate appointed--at atime when the minds of the masses were agitated by the struggle whichclosed in the Reformation in some countries, and in the desperaterefusal of Reformation in others. [F] The two greatest masters ofengraving whose lives we are to study, were, both of them, passionatereformers: Holbein no less than Luther; Botticelli no less thanSavonarola. 

44. Reformers, I mean, in the full and, accurately, the only, sense. Notpreachers of new doctrines; but witnesses against the betrayal of theold ones, which were on the lips of all men, and in the lives of none. Nay, the painters are indeed more pure reformers than the priests. Theyrebuked the manifest vices of men, while they realized whatever wasloveliest in their faith. Priestly reform soon enraged itself into merecontest for personal opinions; while, without rage, but in stern rebukeof all that was vile in conduct or thought, --in declaration of thealways-received faiths of the Christian Church, and in warning of thepower of faith, and death, [G] over the petty designs of men, --Botticelliand Holbein together fought foremost in the ranks of the Reformation. 

45. To-day I will endeavor to explain how they attained such rank. Then, in the next two lectures, the technics of both, --their way of speaking;and in the last two, what they had got to say. 

First, then, we ask how they attained this rank;--who taught _them_ whatthey were finally best to teach? How far must every people--how far didthis Florentine people--teach its masters, before _they_ could teach_it_?

Even in these days, when every man is, by hypothesis, as good asanother, does not the question sound strange to you? You recognize inthe past, as you think, clearly, that national advance takes placealways under the guidance of masters, or groups of masters, possessed ofwhat appears to be some new personal sensibility or gift of invention;and we are apt to be reverent to these alone, as if the nation itselfhad been unprogressive, and suddenly awakened, or converted, by thegenius of one man. 

No idea can be more superficial. Every nation must teach its tutors, andprepare itself to receive them; but the fact on which our impression isfounded--the rising, apparently by chance, of men whose singular giftssuddenly melt the multitude, already at the point of fusion; or suddenlyform, and _in_form, the multitude which has gained coherence enough tobe capable of formation, --enables us to measure and map the gain ofnational intellectual territory, by tracing first the lifting of themountain chains of its genius. 

46. I have told you that we have nothing to do at present with the greattransition from ancient to modern habits of thought which took place atthe beginning of the sixteenth century. I only want to go as far as thatpoint;--where we shall find the old superstitious art represented_finally_ by Perugino, and the modern scientific and anatomical artrepresented _primarily_ by Michael Angelo. And the epithet bestowed onPerugino by Michael Angelo, 'goffo nell' arte, ' dunce, or blockhead, inart, --being, as far as my knowledge of history extends, the most cruel, the most false, and the most foolish insult ever offered by one greatman to another, --does you at least good service, in showing howtrenchant the separation is between the two orders of artists, [H]--howexclusively we may follow out the history of all the 'goffi nell' arte, 'and write our Florentine Dunciad, and Laus Stultitiæ, in peace; andnever trench upon the thoughts or ways of these proud ones, who showedtheir fathers' nakedness, and snatched their masters' fame. 

47. The Florentine dunces in art are a multitude; but I only want you toknow something about twenty of them. 

Twenty!--you think that a grievous number? It may, perhaps, appeaseyou a little to be told that when you really have learned a very little, accurately, about these twenty dunces, there are only five more menamong the artists of Christendom whose works I shall ask you to examinewhile you are under my care. That makes twenty-five altogether, --anexorbitant demand on your attention, you still think? And yet, but alittle while ago, you were all agog to get me to go and look at Mrs. A'ssketches, and tell you what was to be thought about _them_; and I've hadthe greatest difficulty to keep Mrs. B's photographs from being shownside by side with the Raphael drawings in the University galleries. Andyou will waste any quantity of time in looking at Mrs. A's sketches orMrs. B's photographs; and yet you look grave, because, out of nineteencenturies of European art-labor and thought, I ask you to learnsomething seriously about the works of five-and-twenty men!

48. It is hard upon you, doubtless, considering the quantity of time youmust nowadays spend in trying which can hit balls farthest. So I willput the task into the simplest form I can. 

 1200 1300 1400 | 1250 | 1350 | + + + + + Niccola Pisano |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | | | | | | Arnolfo |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | | | Cimabue |-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | | | | Giovanni Pisano |-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | | Andrea Pisano |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | Giotto |-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | Orcagna |-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | |

 1400 1500 1600 | 1450 | 1550 | + + + + + Quercia |-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |Brunelleschi |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Ghiberti |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Donatello |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | | | | | | | Luca della Robbia |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | | | | | | Filippo Lippi |-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | | | | | | | Giovanni Bellini |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | | Mantegna |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | | | Verrocchio |-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | | | | | Perugino |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | Botticelli |-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | | Luini |-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | Dürer |-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | Cima |-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | | Carpaccio |-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | Correggio |-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | Holbein |-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | Tintoret |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|

Here are the names of the twenty-five men, [I] and opposite each, a lineindicating the length of his life, and the position of it in hiscentury. The diagram still, however, needs a few words of explanation. Very chiefly, for those who know anything of my writings, there isneeded explanation of its not including the names of Titian, Reynolds, Velasquez, Turner, and other such men, always reverently put before youat other times. 

They are absent, because I have no fear of your not looking at these. All your lives through, if you care about art, you will be looking atthem. But while you are here at Oxford, I want to make you learn whatyou should know of these earlier, many of them weaker, men, who yet, forthe very reason of their greater simplicity of power, are better guidesfor you, and of whom some will remain guides to all generations. And, as regards the subject of our present course, I have a still moreweighty reason;--Vandyke, Gainsborough, Titian, Reynolds, Velasquez, andthe rest, are essentially portrait painters. They give you the likenessof a man: they have nothing to say either about his future life, or hisgods. 'That is the look of him, ' they say: 'here, on earth, we know nomore. '

49. But these, whose names I have engraved, have something tosay--generally much, --either about the future life of man, or about hisgods. They are therefore, literally, seers or prophets. False prophets, it may be, or foolish ones; of that you must judge; but you must readbefore you can judge; and read (or hear) them consistently; for youdon't know them till you have heard them out. But with Sir Joshua, orTitian, one portrait is as another: it is here a pretty lady, there agreat lord; but speechless, all;--whereas, with these twenty-five men, each picture or statue is not merely another person of a pleasantsociety, but another chapter of a Sibylline book. 

50. For this reason, then, I do not want Sir Joshua or Velasquez in mydefined group; and for my present purpose, I can spare from it even fourothers:--namely, three who have _too_ special gifts, and must each beseparately studied--Correggio, Carpaccio, Tintoret;--and one who has nospecial gift, but a balanced group of many--Cima. This leaves twenty-onefor classification, of whom I will ask you to lay hold thus. You mustcontinually have felt the difficulty caused by the names of centuriesnot tallying with their years;--the year 1201 being the first of thethirteenth century, and so on. I am always plagued by it myself, much asI have to think and write with reference to chronology; and I mean forthe future, in our art chronology, to use as far as possible a differentform of notation. 

51. In my diagram the vertical lines are the divisions of tens of years;the thick black lines divide the centuries. The horizontal lines, then, at a glance, tell you the length and date of each artist's life. In oneor two instances I cannot find the date of birth; in one or two more, of death; and the line indicates then only the ascertained[J] periodduring which the artist worked. 

And, thus represented, you see nearly all their lives run through theyear of a new century; so that if the lines representing them wereneedles, and the black bars of the years 1300, 1400, 1500 were magnets, I could take up nearly all the needles by lifting the bars. 

52. I will actually do this, then, in three other simple diagrams. Iplace a rod for the year 1300 over the lines of life, and I take up allit touches. I have to drop Niccola Pisano, but I catch five. Now, withmy rod of 1400, I have dropped Orcagna indeed, but I again catch five. Now, with my rod of 1500, I indeed drop Filippo Lippi and Verrocchio, but I catch seven. And here I have three pennons, with the staves of theyears 1300, 1400, and 1500 running through them, --holding the names ofnearly all the men I want you to study in easily remembered groups offive, five, and seven. And these three groups I shall hereafter call the1300 group, 1400 group, and 1500 group. 

 1300. ^ |1240-1302 Cimabue +-+-+-+-+-+-+ |1250-1321 Giovanni Pisano +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ |1232-1310 ARNOLFO -+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ |1270-1345 Andrea Pisano +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+- |1276-1336 Giotto +-+-+-+-+-+

 1400. ^ |1374-1438 Quercia -+-+-+-+-+-+-+ |1381-1455 Ghiberti +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+- |1377-1446 BRUNELLESCHI +-+-+-+-+-+-+- |1386-1468 Donatello +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+- |1400-1481 Luca +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

 1500. ^ |1431-1506 Mantegna -+-+-+-+-+-+-+- |1457-1515 Botticelli +-+-+-+-+-+- |1426-1516 Bellini +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+- |1446-1524 PERUGINO +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ |1470-1535 Luini +-+-+-+-+-+-+- |1471-1527 Dürer -+-+-+-+-+- |1498-1543 Holbein +-+-+-+-+

53. But why should four unfortunate masters be dropped out?

Well, I want to drop them out, at any rate; but not in disrespect. Inhope, on the contrary, to make you remember them very separatelyindeed;--for this following reason. 

We are in the careless habit of speaking of men who form a great numberof pupils, and have a host of inferior satellites round them, as mastersof great schools. 

But before you call a man a master, you should ask, Are his pupilsgreater or less than himself? If they are greater than himself, he is amaster indeed;--he has been a true teacher. But if all his pupils areless than himself, he may have been a great _man_, but in allprobability has been a bad _master_, or no master. 

Now these men, whom I have signally left out of my groups, are true_Masters_. 

Niccola Pisano taught all Italy; but chiefly his own son, who succeeded, and in some things very much surpassed him. 

Orcagna taught all Italy, after him, down to Michael Angelo. And thesetwo--Lippi, the religious schools, Verrocchio, the artist schools, oftheir century. 

Lippi taught Sandro Botticelli; and Verrocchio taught Lionardo da Vinci, Lorenzo di Credi, and Perugino. Have I not good reason to separate themasters of such pupils from the schools they created?

54. But how is it that I can drop just the cards I want out of my pack?

Well, certainly I force and fit matters a little: I leave some men outof my list whom I should like to have in it;--Benozzo Gozzoli, forinstance, and Mino da Fiesole; but I can do without them, and so can youalso, for the present. I catch Luca by a hair's-breadth only, with my1400 rod; but on the whole, with very little coaxing, I get the groupsin this memorable and quite literally 'handy' form. For see, I write mylists of five, five, and seven, on bits of pasteboard; I hinge my rodsto these; and you can brandish the school of 1400 in your left hand, andof 1500 in your right, like--railway signals;--and I wish all railwaysignals were as clear. Once learn, thoroughly, the groups in thisartificially contracted form, and you can refine and complete afterwardsat your leisure. 

55. And thus actually flourishing my two pennons, and getting my grip ofthe men, in either hand, I find a notable thing concerning my two flags. The men whose names I hold in my left hand are all sculptors; the menwhose names I hold in my right are all painters. 

You will infallibly suspect me of having chosen them thus on purpose. No, honor bright!--I chose simply the greatest men, --those I wanted totalk to you about. I arranged them by their dates; I put them into threeconclusive pennons; and behold what follows!

56. Farther, note this: in the 1300 group, four out of the five men arearchitects as well as sculptors and painters. In the 1400 group, thereis one architect; in the 1500, none. And the meaning of that is, that in1300 the arts were all united, and duly led by architecture; in 1400, sculpture began to assume too separate a power to herself; in 1500, painting arrogated all, and, at last, betrayed all. From which, withmuch other collateral evidence, you may justly conclude that the threearts ought to be practiced together, and that they naturally are so. Ilong since asserted that no man could be an architect who was not asculptor. As I learned more and more of my business, I perceived alsothat no man could be a sculptor who was not an architect;--that is tosay, who had not knowledge enough, and pleasure enough in structurallaw, to be able to build, on occasion, better than a mere builder. Andso, finally, I now positively aver to you that nobody, in the graphicarts, can be quite rightly a master of anything, who is not master ofeverything!

57. The junction of the three arts in men's minds, at the best times, isshortly signified in these words of Chaucer. Love's Garden, Everidele Enclosed was, and walled well With high walls, embatailled, Portrayed without, and well entayled With many rich portraitures. 

The French original is better still, and gives four arts in unison:--

 Quant suis avant un pou alé Et vy un vergier grant et le, Bien cloz de bon mur batillié Pourtrait dehors, et entaillié Ou (for au) maintes riches escriptures. 

Read also carefully the description of the temples of Mars and Venus inthe Knight's Tale. Contemporary French uses 'entaille' even of solidsculpture and of the living form; and Pygmalion, as a perfect master, professes wood carving, ivory carving, waxwork, and iron-work, no lessthan stone sculpture:--

 Pimalion, uns entaillieres Pourtraians en fuz[K] et en pierres, En mettaux, en os, et en cire, Et en toute autre matire. 

58. I made a little sketch, when last in Florence, of a subject whichwill fix the idea of this unity of the arts in your minds. At the baseof the tower of Giotto are two rows of hexagonal panels, filled withbas-reliefs. Some of these are by unknown hands, --some by Andrea Pisano, some by Luca della Robbia, two by Giotto himself; of these I sketchedthe panel representing the art of Painting. 

You have in that bas-relief one of the foundation-stones of the mostperfectly built tower in Europe; you have that stone carved by itsarchitect's own hand; you find, further, that this architect andsculptor was the greatest painter of his time, and the friend of thegreatest poet; and you have represented by him a painter in hisshop, --bottega, --as symbolic of the entire art of painting. 

59. In which representation, please note how carefully Giotto shows youthe tabernacles or niches, in which the paintings are to be placed. Notindependent of their frames, these panels of his, you see!

Have you ever considered, in the early history of painting, howimportant also is the history of the frame maker? It is a matter, Iassure you, needing your very best consideration. For the frame was madebefore the picture. The painted window is much, but the aperture itfills was thought of before it. The fresco by Giotto is much, but thevault it adorns was planned first. Who thought of these;--who built?

Questions taking us far back before the birth of the shepherd boy ofFésole--questions not to be answered by history of painting only, stillless of painting in _Italy_ only. 

60. And in pointing out to you this fact, I may once for all prove toyou the essential unity of the arts, and show you how impossible it isto understand one without reference to another. Which I wish you toobserve all the more closely, that you may use, without danger of beingmisled, the data, of unequaled value, which have been collected by Croweand Cavalcaselle, in the book which they have called a History ofPainting in Italy, but which is in fact only a dictionary of detailsrelating to that history. Such a title is an absurdity on the face ofit. For, first, you can no more write the history of painting in Italythan you can write the history of the south wind in Italy. The siroccodoes indeed produce certain effects at Genoa, and others at Rome; butwhat would be the value of a treatise upon the winds, which, for thehonor of any country, assumed that every city of it had a nativesirocco?

But, further, --imagine what success would attend the meteorologist whoshould set himself to give an account of the south wind, but take nonotice of the north!

And, finally, suppose an attempt to give you an account of either wind, but none of the seas, or mountain passes, by which they were nourished, or directed. 

61. For instance, I am in this course of lectures to give you an accountof a single and minor branch of graphic art, --engraving. But observe howmany references to local circumstances it involves. There are threematerials for it, we said;--stone, wood, and metal. Stone engraving isthe art of countries possessing marble and gems; wood engraving, ofcountries overgrown with forest; metal engraving, of countriespossessing treasures of silver and gold. And the style of a stoneengraver is formed on pillars and pyramids; the style of a wood engraverunder the eaves of larch cottages; the style of a metal engraver in thetreasuries of kings. Do you suppose I could rightly explain to you thevalue of a single touch on brass by Finiguerra, or on box by Bewick, unless I had grasp of the great laws of climate and country; and couldtrace the inherited sirocco or tramontana of thought to which the soulsand bodies of the men owed their existence?

62. You see that in this flag of 1300 there is a dark strong line in thecenter, against which you read the name of Arnolfo. 

In writing our Florentine Dunciad, or History of Fools, can we possiblybegin with a better day than All Fools' Day? On All Fools' Day--thefirst, if you like better so to call it, of the month of _opening_, --inthe year 1300, is signed the document making Arnolfo a citizen ofFlorence, and in 1310 he dies, chief master of the works of thecathedral there. To this man, Crowe and Cavalcaselle give half a page, out of three volumes of five hundred pages each. 

But lower down in my flag, (not put there because of any inferiority, but by order of chronology, ) you will see a name sufficiently familiarto you--that of Giotto; and to him, our historians of painting in Italygive some hundred pages, under the impression, stated by them at page243 of their volume, that "in his hands, art in the Peninsula becameentitled for the first time to the name of Italian. "

63. Art became Italian! Yes, but _what_ art? Your authors give aperspective--or what they call such, --of the upper church of Assisi, asif that were merely an accidental occurrence of blind walls for Giottoto paint on!

But how came the upper church of Assisi there? How came it to bevaulted--to be aisled? How came Giotto to be asked to paint upon it?

The art that built it, good or bad, must have been an Italian one, before Giotto. He could not have painted on the air. Let us see how hispanels were made for him. 

64. This Captain--the center of our first group--Arnolfo, has alwayshitherto been called 'Arnolfo di Lapo;'--Arnolfo the son of Lapo. 

Modern investigators come down on us delightedly, to tell us--Arnolfowas _not_ the son of Lapo. 

In these days you will have half a dozen doctors, writing each a longbook, and the sense of all will be, --Arnolfo wasn't the son of Lapo. Much good may you get of that!

Well, you will find the fact to be, there was a great Northman builder, atrue son of Thor, who came down into Italy in 1200, served the order ofSt. Francis there, built Assisi, taught Arnolfo how to build, with Thor'shammer, and disappeared, leaving his name uncertain--Jacopo--Lapo--nobodyknows what. Arnolfo always recognizes this man as his true father, who putthe soul-life into him; he is known to his Florentines always as Lapo'sArnolfo. 

That, or some likeness of that, is the vital fact. You never can get atthe literal limitation of living facts. They disguise themselves by thevery strength of their life: get told again and again in different waysby all manner of people;--the literalness of them is turned topsy-turvy, inside-out, over and over again;--then the fools come and read themwrong side upwards, or else, say there never was a fact at all. Nothingdelights a true blockhead so much as to prove a negative;--to show thateverybody has been wrong. Fancy the delicious sensation, to anempty-headed creature, of fancying for a moment that he has emptiedeverybody else's head as well as his own! nay, that, for once, his ownhollow bottle of a head has had the best of other bottles, and has been_first_ empty;--first to know--nothing. 

65. Hold, then, steadily the first tradition about this Arnolfo. Thathis real father was called "Cambio" matters to you not a straw. That henever called himself Cambio's Arnolfo--that nobody else ever called himso, down to Vasari's time, is an infinitely significant fact to you. Inmy twenty-second letter in Fors Clavigera you will find some account ofthe noble habit of the Italian artists to call themselves by theirmasters' names, considering their master as their true father. If notthe name of the master, they take that of their native place, as havingowed the character of their life to that. They rarely take their ownfamily name: sometimes it is not even known, --when best known, it isunfamiliar to us. The great Pisan artists, for instance, never bear anyother name than 'the Pisan;' among the other five-and-twenty names in mylist, not above six, I think, the two German, with four Italian, arefamily names. Perugino, (Peter of Perugia, ) Luini, (Bernard of Luino, )Quercia, (James of Quercia, ) Correggio, (Anthony of Correggio, ) arenamed from their native places. Nobody would have understood me if I hadcalled Giotto, 'Ambrose Bondone;' or Tintoret, Robusti; or even Raphael, Sanzio. Botticelli is named from his master; Ghiberti from hisfather-in-law; and Ghirlandajo from his work. Orcagna, who _did_, for awonder, name himself from his father, Andrea Cione, of Florence, hasbeen always called 'Angel' by everybody else; while Arnolfo, who nevernamed himself from his father, is now like to be fathered against hiswill. 

But, I again beg of you, keep to the old story. For it represents, however inaccurately in detail, clearly in sum, the fact, that somegreat master of German Gothic at this time came down into Italy, andchanged the entire form of Italian architecture by his touch. So thatwhile Niccola and Giovanni Pisano are still virtually Greek artists, experimentally introducing Gothic forms, Arnolfo and Giotto adopt theentire Gothic ideal of form, and thenceforward use the pointed arch andsteep gable as the limits of sculpture. 

66. Hitherto I have been speaking of the relations of my twenty-five mento each other. But now, please note their relations altogether to theart before them. These twenty-five include, I say, all the great mastersof _Christian_ art. 

Before them, the art was too savage to be Christian; afterwards, toocarnal to be Christian. 

Too savage to be Christian? I will justify that assertion hereafter; butyou will find that the European art of 1200 includes all the mostdeveloped and characteristic conditions of the style in the north whichyou have probably been accustomed to think of as NORMAN, and which youmay always most conveniently call so; and the most developed conditionsof the style in the south, which, formed out of effete Greek, Persian, and Roman tradition, you may, in like manner, most conveniently expressby the familiar word BYZANTINE. Whatever you call them, they are inorigin adverse in temper, and remain so up to the year 1200. Then aninfluence appears, seemingly that of one man, Nicholas the Pisan, (ourfirst MASTER, observe, ) and a new spirit adopts what is best in each, and gives to what it adopts a new energy of its own; namely, thisconscientious and didactic power which is the speciality of itsprogressive existence. And just as the new-born and natural art ofAthens collects and reanimates Pelasgian and Egyptian tradition, purifying their worship, and perfecting their work, into the livingheathen faith of the world, so this new-born and natural art of Florencecollects and animates the Norman and Byzantine tradition, and forms outof the perfected worship and work of both, the honest Christian faith, and vital craftsmanship, of the world. 

67. Get this first summary, therefore, well into your minds. The word'Norman' I use roughly for North-savage;--roughly, but advisedly. I meanLombard, Scandinavian, Frankish; everything north-savage that you canthink of, except Saxon. (I have a reason for that exception; never mindit just now. )[L]

All north-savage I call NORMAN, all south-savage I call BYZANTINE; thislatter including dead native Greek primarily--then dead foreign Greek, in Rome;--then Arabian--Persian--Phoenician--Indian--all you can thinkof, in art of hot countries, up to this year 1200, I rank under the oneterm Byzantine. Now all this cold art--Norman, and all this hotart--Byzantine, is virtually dead, till 1200. It has no conscience, nodidactic power;[M] it is devoid of both, in the sense that dreams are. 

Then in the thirteenth century, men wake as if they heard an alarumthrough the whole vault of heaven, and true human life begins again, andthe cradle of this life is the Val d'Arno. There the northern andsouthern nations meet; there they lay down their enmities; there theyare first baptized unto John's baptism for the remission of sins; thereis born, and thence exiled, --thought faithless, for breaking the font ofbaptism to save a child from drowning, in his 'bel San Giovanni, '--thegreatest of Christian poets; he who had pity even for the lost. 

68. Now, therefore, my whole history of _Christian_ architecture andpainting begins with this Baptistery of Florence, and with itsassociated Cathedral. Arnolfo brought the one into the form in which younow see it; he laid the foundation of the other, and that to purpose, and he is therefore the CAPTAIN of our first school. 

For this Florentine Baptistery[N] is the great one of the world. Here isthe center of Christian knowledge and power. 

And it is one piece of large _engraving_. White substance, cut into, andfilled with black, and dark-green. 

No more perfect work was afterwards done; and I wish you to grasp theidea of this building clearly and irrevocably, --first, in order (as Itold you in a previous lecture) to quit yourselves thoroughly of theidea that ornament should be decorated construction; and, secondly, asthe noblest type of the intaglio ornamentation, which developed itselfinto all minor application of black and white to engraving. 

69. That it should do so first at Florence, was the natural sequence, and the just reward, of the ancient skill of Etruria in chasedmetal-work. The effects produced in gold, either by embossing orengraving, were the direct means of giving interest to his surfaces atthe command of the 'auri faber, ' or orfevre: and every conceivableartifice of studding, chiseling, and interlacing was exhausted by theartists in gold, who were at the head of the metal-workers, and fromwhom the ranks of the sculptors were reinforced. 

The old French word 'orfroiz, ' (aurifrigia, ) expresses essentially whatwe call 'frosted' work in gold; that which resembles small dew orcrystals of hoar-frost; the 'frigia' coming from the Latin frigus. Tochase, or enchase, is not properly said of the gold; but of the jewelwhich it secures with hoops or ridges, (French, _en_chasser[O]). Thenthe armorer, or cup and casket maker, added to this kind of decorationthat of flat inlaid enamel; and the silver-worker, finding that theraised filigree (still a staple at Genoa) only attracted tarnish, or gotcrushed, early sought to decorate a surface which would bear externalfriction, with labyrinths of safe incision. 

70. Of the _security_ of incision as a means of permanent decoration, asopposed to ordinary carving, here is a beautiful instance in the base ofone of the external shafts of the Cathedral of Lucca; thirteenth-centurywork, which by this time, had it been carved in relief, would have beena shapeless remnant of indecipherable bosses. But it is still as safe asif it had been cut yesterday, because the smooth round mass of thepillar is entirely undisturbed; into that, furrows are cut with a chiselas much under command and as powerful as a burin. The effect of thedesign is trusted entirely to the depth of these incisions--here dyingout and expiring in the light of the marble, there deepened, by drillholes, into as definitely a black line as if it were drawn with ink;and describing the outline of the leafage with a delicacy of touch andof perception which no man will ever surpass, and which very few haverivaled, in the proudest days of design. 

71. This security, in silver plates, was completed by filling thefurrows with the black paste which at once exhibited and preserved them. The transition from that niello-work to modern engraving is one of noreal moment: my object is to make you understand the qualities whichconstitute the _merit_ of the engraving, whether charged with niello orink. And this I hope ultimately to accomplish by studying with you someof the works of the four men, Botticelli and Mantegna in the south, Dürer and Holbein in the north, whose names I have put in our last flag, above and beneath those of the three mighty painters, Perugino thecaptain, Bellini on one side--Luini on the other. 

The four following lectures[P] will contain data necessary for suchstudy: you must wait longer before I can place before you those by whichI can justify what must greatly surprise some of my audience--my havinggiven Perugino the captain's place among the three painters. 

72. But I do so, at least primarily, because what is commonly thoughtaffected in his design is indeed the true remains of the greatarchitectural symmetry which was soon to be lost, and which makes himthe true follower of Arnolfo and Brunelleschi; and because he is a soundcraftsman and workman to the very heart's core. A noble, gracious, andquiet laborer from youth to death, --never weary, never impatient, neveruntender, never untrue. Not Tintoret in power, not Raphael inflexibility, not Holbein in veracity, not Luini in love, --their gatheredgifts he has, in balanced and fruitful measure, fit to be the guide, andimpulse, and father of all. 

FOOTNOTES:

[D] Compare "Aratra Pentelici, " § 154. 

[E] "Holbein and His Time, " 4to, Bentley, 1872, (a very valuable book, )p. 17. Italics mine. 

[F] See Carlyle, "Frederick, " Book III. , chap. Viii. 

[G] I believe I am taking too much trouble in writing these lectures. This sentence, § 44, has cost me, I suppose, first and last, about asmany hours as there are lines in it;--and my choice of these two words, faith and death, as representatives of power, will perhaps, after all, only puzzle the reader. 

[H] He is said by Vasari to have called Francia the like. Francia is achild compared to Perugino; but a finished working-goldsmith andornamental painter nevertheless; and one of the very last men to becalled 'goffo, ' except by unparalleled insolence. 

[I] The diagram used at the lecture is engraved on page 30; the readerhad better draw it larger for himself, as it had to be madeinconveniently small for this size of leaf. 

[J] 'Ascertained, ' scarcely any date ever is, quite satisfactorily. Thediagram only represents what is practically and broadly true. I may haveto modify it greatly in detail. 

[K] For fust, log of wood, erroneously 'fer' in the later printededitions. Compare the account of the works of Art and Nature, towardsthe end of the Romance of the Rose. 

[L] Of course it would have been impossible to express in any accurateterms, short enough for the compass of a lecture, the conditions ofopposition between the Heptarchy and the Northmen;--between theByzantine and Roman;--and between the Byzantine and Arab, which formminor, but not less trenchant, divisions of Art-province, for subsequentdelineation. If you can refer to my "Stones of Venice, " see § 20 of itsfirst chapter. 

[M] Again much too broad a statement: not to be qualified but by alength of explanation here impossible. My lectures on Architecture, nowin preparation ("Val d'Arno"), will contain further detail. 

[N] At the side of my page, here, I find the following memorandum, whichwas expanded in the viva-voce lecture. The reader must make what he canof it, for I can't expand it here. 

_Sense_ of Italian Church plan. 

Baptistery, to make Christians in; house, or dome, for them to pray andbe preached to in; bell-tower, to ring all over the town, when they wereeither to pray together, rejoice together, or to be warned of danger. 

Harvey's picture of the Covenanters, with a shepherd on the outlook, asa campanile. 

[O] And 'chassis, ' a window frame, or tracery. 

[P] This present lecture does not, as at present published, justify itstitle; because I have not thought it necessary to write the viva-voceportions of it which amplified the 69th paragraph. I will give thesubstance of them in better form elsewhere; meantime the part of thelecture here given may be in its own way useful. 

 LECTURE III. 

 THE TECHNICS OF WOOD ENGRAVING. 

73. I am to-day to begin to tell you what it is necessary you shouldobserve respecting methods of manual execution in the two great arts ofengraving. Only to _begin_ to tell you. There need be no end of tellingyou such things, if you care to hear them. The theory of art is soonmastered; but 'dal detto al fatto, v'e gran tratto;' and as I haveseveral times told you in former lectures, every day shows me more andmore the importance of the Hand. 

74. Of the hand as a Servant, observe, --not of the hand as a Master. Forthere are two great kinds of manual work: one in which the hand iscontinually receiving and obeying orders; the other in which it isacting independently, or even giving orders of its own. And thedependent and submissive hand is a noble hand; but the independent orimperative hand is a vile one. 

That is to say, as long as the pen, or chisel, or other graphicinstrument, is moved under the direct influence of mental attention, andobeys orders of the brain, it is working nobly;--the moment it movesindependently of them, and performs some habitual dexterity of its own, it is base. 

75. _Dexterity_--I say;--some 'right-handedness' of its own. We mightwisely keep that word for what the hand does at the mind's bidding; anduse an opposite word--sinisterity, --for what it does at its own. Forindeed we want such a word in speaking of modern art; it is all full ofsinisterity. Hands independent of brains;--the left hand, by division oflabor, not knowing what the right does, --still less what it ought to do. 

76. Turning, then, to our special subject. All engraving, I said, isintaglio in the solid. But the solid, in wood engraving, is a coarsesubstance, easily cut; and in metal, a fine substance, not easily. Therefore, in general, you may be prepared to accept ruder and moreelementary work in one than the other; and it will be the means ofappeal to blunter minds. 

You probably already know the difference between the actual methods ofproducing a printed impression from wood and metal; but I may perhapsmake the matter a little more clear. In metal engraving, you cutditches, fill them with ink, and press your paper into them. In woodengraving, you leave ridges, rub the tops of them with ink, and stampthem on your paper. 

The instrument with which the substance, whether of the wood or steel, is cut away, is the same. It is a solid plowshare, which, instead ofthrowing the earth aside, throws it up and out, producing at first asimple ravine, or furrow, in the wood or metal, which you can widen byanother cut, or extend by successive cuts. This (Fig. 1) is the generalshape of the solid plowshare: but it is of course made sharper orblunter at pleasure. The furrow produced is at first the wedge-shaped orcuneiform ravine, already so much dwelt upon in my lectures on Greeksculpture. 

[Illustration: FIG. 1]

77. Since, then, in wood printing, you print from the surface leftsolid; and, in metal printing, from the hollows cut into it, it followsthat if you put few touches on wood, you draw, as on a slate, with whitelines, leaving a quantity of black; but if you put few touches on metal, you draw with black lines, leaving a quantity of white. 

Now the eye is not in the least offended by quantity of white, but is, or ought to be, greatly saddened and offended by quantity of black. Hence it follows that you must never put little work on wood. You mustnot sketch upon it. You may sketch on metal as much as you please. 

78. "Paradox, " you will say, as usual. "Are not all our journals, --andthe best of them, Punch, par excellence, --full of the most brilliantlyswift and slight sketches, engraved on wood; while line-engravings taketen years to produce, and cost ten guineas each when they are done?"

Yes, that is so; but observe, in the first place, what appears to you asketch on wood is not so at all, but a most laborious and carefulimitation of a sketch on paper; whereas when you see what appears to bea sketch on metal, it _is_ one. And in the second place, so far as thepopular fashion is contrary to this natural method, --so far as we do inreality try to produce effects of sketching in wood, and of finish inmetal, --our work is wrong. 

Those apparently careless and free sketches on the wood ought to havebeen stern and deliberate; those exquisitely toned and finishedengravings on metal ought to have looked, instead, like free inksketches on white paper. That is the theorem which I propose to you forconsideration, and which, in the two branches of its assertion, I hopeto prove to you; the first part of it, (that wood-cutting should becareful, ) in this present lecture; the second, (that metal-cuttingshould be, at least in a far greater degree than it is now, slight, andfree, ) in the following one. 

79. Next, observe the distinction in respect of _thickness_, no lessthan number, of lines which may properly be used in the two methods. 

In metal engraving, it is easier to lay a fine line than a thick one;and however fine the line may be, it lasts;--but in wood engraving itrequires extreme precision and skill to leave a thin dark line, and whenleft, it will be quickly beaten down by a careless printer. Therefore, the virtue of wood engraving is to exhibit the qualities and power of_thick_ lines; and of metal engraving, to exhibit the qualities andpower of _thin_ ones. 

All thin dark lines, therefore, in wood, broadly speaking, are to beused only in case of necessity; and thick lines, on metal, only in caseof necessity. 

80. Though, however, thin _dark_ lines cannot easily be produced inwood, thin _light_ ones may be struck in an instant. Nevertheless, eventhin light ones must not be used, except with extreme caution. Forobserve, they are equally useless as outline, and for expression ofmass. You know how far from exemplary or delightful your boy's firstquite voluntary exercises in white line drawing on your slate were? Youcould, indeed, draw a goblin satisfactorily in such method;--a round O, with arms and legs to it, and a scratch under two dots in the middle, would answer the purpose; but if you wanted to draw a pretty face, youtook pencil or pen, and paper--not your slate. Now, that instinctivefeeling that a white outline is wrong, is deeply founded. For Natureherself draws with diffused light, and concentrated dark;--never, exceptin storm or twilight, with diffused dark, and concentrated light; andthe thing we all like best to see drawn--the human face--cannot be drawnwith white touches, but by extreme labor. For the pupil and iris of theeye, the eyebrow, the nostril, and the lip are all set in dark on paleground. You can't draw a white eyebrow, a white pupil of the eye, awhite nostril, and a white mouth, on a dark ground. Try it, and see whata specter you get. But the same number of dark touches, skillfullyapplied, will give the idea of a beautiful face. And what is true of thesubtlest subject you have to represent, is equally true of inferiorones. Nothing lovely can be quickly represented by white touches. Youmust hew out, if your means are so restricted, the form by sheer labor;and that both cunning and dextrous. The Florentine masters, and Dürer, often practice the achievement, and there are many drawings by theLippis, Mantegna, and other leading Italian draughtsmen, completed togreat perfection with the white line; but only for the sake of severeststudy, nor is their work imitable by inferior men. And such studies, however accomplished, always mark a disposition to regard chiaroscurotoo much, and local color too little. 

We conclude, then, that we must never trust, in wood, to our power ofoutline with white; and our general laws, thus far determined, willbe--thick lines in wood; thin ones in metal; complete drawing on wood;sketches, if we choose, on metal. 

81. But why, in wood, lines at all? Why not cut out white _spaces_, anduse the chisel as if its incisions were so much white paint? Many finepieces of wood-cutting are indeed executed on this principle. Bewickdoes nearly all his foliage so; and continually paints the light plumesof his birds with single touches of his chisel, as if he were laying onwhite. 

But this is not the finest method of wood-cutting. It implies the ideaof a system of light and shade in which the shadow is totally black. Now, no light and shade can be good, much less pleasant, in which allthe shade is stark black. Therefore the finest wood-cutting ignoreslight and shade, and expresses only form, and _dark local color_. And itis convenient, for simplicity's sake, to anticipate what I shouldotherwise defer telling you until next lecture, that fine metalengraving, like fine wood-cutting, ignores light and shade; and that, ina word, all good engraving whatsoever does so. 

82. I hope that my saying so will make you eager to interrupt me. 'What!Rembrandt's etchings, and Lupton's mezzotints, and Le Keux'sline-work, --do you mean to tell us that these ignore light and shade?'

I never said that _mezzotint_ ignored light and shade, or ought to doso. Mezzotint is properly to be considered as chiaroscuro drawing onmetal. But I do mean to tell you that both Rembrandt's etchings, and LeKeux's finished line-work, are misapplied labor, in so far as theyregard chiaroscuro; and that consummate engraving never uses it as aprimal element of pleasure. 

[Illustration: THE LAST FURROW. 

(Fig. 2) Facsimile from Holbein's woodcut. ]

83. We have now got our principles so far defined that I can proceed toillustration of them by example. 

Here are facsimiles, very marvelous ones, [Q] of two of the best woodengravings ever produced by art, --two subjects in Holbein's Dance ofDeath. You will probably like best that I should at once proceed toverify my last and most startling statement, that fine engravingdisdained chiaroscuro. 

This vignette (Fig. 2) represents a sunset in the open mountainousfields of southern Germany. And Holbein is so entirely careless aboutthe light and shade, which a Dutchman would first have thought of, asresulting from the sunset, that, as he works, he forgets altogetherwhere his light comes from. Here, actually, the shadow of the figure iscast from the side, right across the picture, while the sun is in front. And there is not the slightest attempt to indicate gradation of light inthe sky, darkness in the forest, or any other positive element ofchiaroscuro. 

This is not because Holbein cannot give chiaroscuro if he chooses. He istwenty times a stronger master of it than Rembrandt; but he, therefore, knows exactly when and how to use it; and that wood engraving is not theproper means for it. The quantity of it which is needful for his story, and will not, by any sensational violence, either divert, or vulgarlyenforce, the attention, he will give; and that with an unrivaledsubtlety. Therefore I must ask you for a moment or two to quit thesubject of technics, and look what these two woodcuts mean. 

84. The one I have first shown you is of a plowman plowing at evening. It is Holbein's object, here, to express the diffused and intense lightof a golden summer sunset, so far as is consistent with granderpurposes. A modern French or English chiaroscurist would have coveredhis sky with fleecy clouds, and relieved the plowman's hat and hishorses against it in strong black, and put sparkling touches on thefurrows and grass. Holbein scornfully casts all such tricks aside; anddraws the whole scene in pure white, with simple outlines. 

[Illustration: THE TWO PREACHERS. 

(Fig. 3) Facsimile from Holbein's woodcut. ]

85. And yet, when I put it beside this second vignette, (Fig. 3, ) whichis of a preacher preaching in a feebly lighted church, you will feelthat the diffused warmth of the one subject, and diffused twilight inthe other, are complete; and they will finally be to you more impressivethan if they had been wrought out with every superficial means ofeffect, on each block. 

For it is as a symbol, not as a scenic effect, that in each case thechiaroscuro is given. Holbein, I said, is at the head of thepainter-reformers, and his Dance of Death is the most energetic andtelling of all the forms given, in this epoch, to the _Rationalist_spirit of reform, preaching the new Gospel of Death, --"It is no matterwhether you are priest or layman, what you believe, or what you do: hereis the end. " You shall see, in the course of our inquiry, thatBotticelli, in like manner, represents the _Faithful_ and _Catholic_temper of reform. 

86. The teaching of Holbein is therefore always melancholy, --for themost part purely rational; and entirely furious in its indignationagainst all who, either by actual injustice in this life, or by what heholds to be false promise of another, destroy the good, or the energy, of the few days which man has to live. Against the rich, the luxurious, the Pharisee, the false lawyer, the priest, and the unjust judge, Holbein uses his fiercest mockery; but he is never himself unjust; nevercaricatures or equivocates; gives the facts as he knows them, withexplanatory symbols, few and clear. 

87. Among the powers which he hates, the pathetic and ingeniouspreaching of untruth is one of the chief; and it is curious to find hisbiographer, knowing this, and reasoning, as German critics nearly alwaysdo, from acquired knowledge, not perception, imagine instantly that hesees hypocrisy in the face of Holbein's preacher. "How skillfully, "says Dr. Woltmann, "is the preacher propounding his doctrines; howthoroughly is his hypocrisy expressed in the features of hiscountenance, and in the gestures of his hands. " But look at the cutyourself, candidly. I challenge you to find the slightest trace ofhypocrisy in either feature or gesture. Holbein knew better. It is notthe hypocrite who has power in the pulpit. It is the _sincere_ preacherof untruth who does mischief there. The hypocrite's place of power is intrade, or in general society; none but the sincere ever get fatalinfluence in the pulpit. This man is a refined gentleman--ascetic, earnest, thoughtful, and kind. He scarcely uses the vantage even of hispulpit, --comes aside out of it, as an eager man would, pleading; he isintent on being understood--_is_ understood; his congregation aredelighted--you might hear a pin drop among them: one is asleep indeed, who cannot see him, (being under the pulpit, ) and asleep just becausethe teacher is as gentle as he is earnest, and speaks quietly. 

88. How are we to know, then, that he speaks in vain? First, becauseamong all his hearers you will not find one shrewd face. They are alleither simple or stupid people: there is one nice woman in front of all, (else Holbein's representation had been caricature, ) but she is not ashrewd one. 

Secondly, by the light and shade. The church is not in extremedarkness--far from that; a gray twilight is over everything, but the sunis totally shut out of it;--not a ray comes in even at thewindow--_that_ is darker than the walls, or vault. 

Lastly, and chiefly, by the mocking expression of Death. Mocking, butnot angry. The man has been preaching what he thought true. Death laughsat him, but is not indignant with him. 

Death comes quietly: _I_ am going to be preacher now; here is your ownhour-glass, ready for me. You have spoken many words in your day. But"of the things which you have spoken, _this_ is the sum, "--yourdeath-warrant, signed and sealed. There's your text for to-day. 

89. Of this other picture, the meaning is more plain, and far morebeautiful. The husbandman is old and gaunt, and has passed his days, notin speaking, but pressing the iron into the ground. And the payment forhis life's work is, that he is clothed in rags, and his feet are bare onthe clods; and he has no hat--but the brim of a hat only, and his long, unkempt gray hair comes through. But all the air is full of warmth andof peace; and, beyond his village church, there is, at last, lightindeed. His horses lag in the furrow, and his own limbs totter and fail:but one comes to help him. 'It is a long field, ' says Death; 'but we'llget to the end of it to-day, --you and I. '

90. And now that we know the meaning, we are able to discuss thetechnical qualities farther. 

Both of these engravings, you will find, are executed with blunt lines;but more than that, they are executed with quiet lines, entirely steady. 

Now, here I have in my hand a lively woodcut of the present day--a goodaverage type of the modern style of wood-cutting, which you will allrecognize. [R]

The shade in this is drawn on the wood, (not _cut_, but drawn, observe, )at the rate of at least ten lines in a second: Holbein's, at the rate ofabout one line in three seconds. [S]

91. Now there are two different matters to be considered with respect tothese two opposed methods of execution. The first, that the rapid work, though easy to the artist, is very difficult to the wood-cutter; so thatit implies instantly a separation between the two crafts, and that yourwood-cutter has ceased to be a draughtsman. I shall return to thispoint. I wish to insist on the other first; namely, the effect of themore deliberate method on the drawing itself. 

92. When the hand moves at the rate of ten lines in a second, it isindeed under the government of the muscles of the wrist and shoulder;but it cannot possibly be under the complete government of the brains. Iam able to do this zigzag line evenly, because I have got the use of thehand from practice; and the faster it is done, the evener it will be. But I have no mental authority over every line I thus lay: chanceregulates them. Whereas, when I draw at the rate of two or three secondsto each line, my hand disobeys the muscles a little--the mechanicalaccuracy is not so great; nay, there ceases to be any _appearance_ ofdexterity at all. But there is, in reality, more manual skill requiredin the slow work than in the swift, --and all the while the hand isthoroughly under the orders of the brains. Holbein deliberatelyresolves, for every line, as it goes along, that it shall be so thick, so far from the next, --that it shall begin here, and stop there. And heis deliberately assigning the utmost quantity of meaning to it, that aline will carry. 

93. It is not fair, however, to compare common work of one age with thebest of another. Here is a woodcut of Tenniel's, which I think containsas high qualities as it is possible to find in modern art. [T] I hold itas beyond others fine, because there is not the slightest caricature init. No face, no attitude, is pushed beyond the degree of natural humorthey would have possessed in life; and in precision of momentaryexpression, the drawing is equal to the art of any time, and shows powerwhich would, if regulated, be quite adequate to producing an immortalwork. 

94. Why, then, is it _not_ immortal? You yourselves, in compliance withwhose demand it was done, forgot it the next week. It will becomehistorically interesting; but no man of true knowledge and feeling willever keep this in his cabinet of treasure, as he does these woodcuts ofHolbein's. 

The reason is that this is base coin, --alloyed gold. There _is_ gold init, but also a quantity of brass and lead--willfully added--to make itfit for the public. Holbein's is beaten gold, seven times tried in thefire. Of which commonplace but useful metaphor the meaning here is, first, that to catch the vulgar eye a quantity of, --so-called, --lightand shade is added by Tenniel. It is effective to an ignorant eye, andis ingeniously disposed; but it is entirely conventional and false, unendurable by any person who knows what chiaroscuro is. 

Secondly, for one line that Holbein lays, Tenniel has a dozen. Thereare, for instance, a hundred and fifty-seven lines in Sir Peter Teazle'swig, without counting dots and slight cross-hatching;--but the entireface and flowing hair of Holbein's preacher are done with forty-fivelines, all told. 

95. Now observe what a different state of mind the two artists must bein on such conditions;--one, never in a hurry, never doing anything thathe knows is wrong; never doing a line badly that he can do better; andappealing only to the feelings of sensitive persons, and the judgment ofattentive ones. That is Holbein's habit of soul. What is the habit ofsoul of every modern engraver? Always in a hurry; everywhere doingthings which he knows to be wrong--(Tenniel knows his light and shade tobe wrong as well as I do)--continually doing things badly which he wasable to do better; and appealing exclusively to the feelings of thedull, and the judgment of the inattentive. 

Do you suppose that is not enough to make the difference between mortaland immortal art, --the original genius being supposed alike in both?[U]

96. Thus far of the state of the artist himself. I pass, next to therelation between him and his subordinate, the wood-cutter. 

The modern artist requires him to cut a hundred and fifty-seven lines inthe wig only, --the old artist requires him to cut forty-five for theface, and long hair, altogether. The actual proportion is roughly, andon the average, about one to twenty of cost in manual labor, ancient tomodern, --the twentieth part of the mechanical labor, to produce animmortal instead of a perishable work, --the twentieth part of the labor;and--which is the greatest difference of all--that twentieth part, atonce less mechanically difficult, and more mentally pleasant. Mr. Otley, in his general History of Engraving, says, "The greatest difficulty inwood engraving occurs in clearing out the minute quadrangular lights;"and in any modern woodcut you will see that where the lines of thedrawing cross each other to produce shade, the white interstices are cutout so neatly that there is no appearance of any jag or break in thelines; they look exactly as if they had been drawn with a pen. It ischiefly difficult to cut the pieces clearly out when the lines cross atright angles; easier when they form oblique or diamond-shapedinterstices; but in any case some half-dozen cuts, and in squarecrossings as many as twenty, are required to clear one interstice. Therefore if I carelessly draw six strokes with my pen across other six, I produce twenty-five interstices, each of which will need at least six, perhaps twenty, careful touches of the burin to clear out. --Say ten foran average; and I demand two hundred and fifty exquisitely precisetouches from my engraver, to render ten careless ones of mine. 

97. Now I take up Punch, at his best. The whole of the left side of JohnBull's waistcoat--the shadow on his knee-breeches and great-coat--thewhole of the Lord Chancellor's gown, and of John Bull's and Sir PeterTeazle's complexions, are worked with finished precision ofcross-hatching. These have indeed some purpose in their texture; but inthe most wanton and gratuitous way, the wall below the window iscross-hatched too, and that not with a double, but a treble line (Fig. 4). 

There are about thirty of these columns, with thirty-five intersticeseach: approximately, 1, 050--certainly not fewer--interstices to bedeliberately cut clear, to get that two inches square of shadow. Nowcalculate--or think enough to feel the impossibility of calculating--thenumber of woodcuts used daily for our popular prints, and how many menare night and day cutting 1, 050 square holes to the square inch, as theoccupation of their manly life. And Mrs. Beecher Stowe and the NorthAmericans fancy they have abolished slavery!

[Illustration: FIG. 4. ]

98. The workman cannot have even the consolation of pride; for his task, even in its finest accomplishment, is not really difficult, --onlytedious. When you have once got into the practice, it is as easy aslying. To cut regular holes WITHOUT a purpose is easy enough; but to cut_ir_regular holes WITH a purpose, that is difficult, forever;--no tricksof tool or trade will give you power to do that. 

The supposed difficulty--the thing which, at all events, it takes timeto learn, is to cut the interstices neat, and each like the other. Butis there any reason, do you suppose, for their being neat, and each likethe other? So far from it, they would be twenty times prettier if theywere irregular, and each different from the other. And an oldwood-cutter, instead of taking pride in cutting these interstices smoothand alike, resolutely cuts them rough and irregular; taking care, at thesame time, never to have any more than are wanted, this being only onepart of the general system of intelligent manipulation, which made sogood an artist of the engraver that it is impossible to say of anystandard old woodcut, whether the draughtsman engraved it himself ornot. I should imagine, from the character and subtlety of the touch, that every line of the Dance of Death had been engraved by Holbein; weknow it was not, and that there can be no certainty given by even thefinest pieces of wood execution of anything more than perfect harmonybetween the designer and workman. And consider how much this harmonydemands in the latter. Not that the modern engraver is unintelligent inapplying his mechanical skill: very often he greatly improves thedrawing; but we never could mistake his hand for Holbein's. 

99. The true merit, then, of wood execution, as regards this matter ofcross-hatching, is first that there be no more crossing than necessary;secondly, that all the interstices be various, and rough. You may lookthrough the entire series of the Dance of Death without finding anycross-hatching whatever, except in a few unimportant bits of background, so rude as to need scarcely more than one touch to each interstice. Albert Dürer crosses more definitely; but yet, in any fold of hisdrapery, every white spot differs in size from every other, and thearrangement of the whole is delightful, by the kind of variety which thespots on a leopard have. 

On the other hand, where either expression or form can be rendered bythe shape of the lights and darks, the old engraver becomes as carefulas in an ordinary ground he is careless. 

The endeavor, with your own hand, and common pen and ink, to copy asmall piece of either of the two Holbein woodcuts (Figures 2 and 3) willprove this to you better than any words. 

100. I said that, had Tenniel been rightly trained, there might havebeen the making of a Holbein, or nearly a Holbein, in him. I do notknow; but I can turn from his work to that of a man who was not trainedat all, and who was, without training, Holbein's equal. 

Equal, in the sense that this brown stone, in my left hand, is theequal, though not the likeness, of that in my right. They are both ofthe same true and pure crystal; but the one is brown with iron, andnever touched by forming hand; the other has never been in roughcompanionship, and has been exquisitely polished. So with these two men. The one was the companion of Erasmus and Sir Thomas More. His father wasso good an artist that you cannot always tell their drawings asunder. But the other was a farmer's son; and learned his trade in the backshops of Newcastle. 

Yet the first book I asked you to get was his biography; and in thisframe are set together a drawing by Hans Holbein, and one by ThomasBewick. I know which is most scholarly; but I do _not_ know which isbest. 

101. It is much to say for the self-taught Englishman;--yet do notcongratulate yourselves on his simplicity. I told you, a little whilesince, that the English nobles had left the history of birds to bewritten, and their spots to be drawn, by a printer's lad;--but I did nottell you their farther loss in the fact that this printer's lad couldhave written their own histories, and drawn their own spots, if they hadlet him. But they had no history to be written; and were too closelymaculate to be portrayed;--white ground in most places altogetherobscured. Had there been Mores and Henrys to draw, Bewick could havedrawn them; and would have found his function. As it was, the nobles ofhis day left him to draw the frogs, and pigs, and sparrows--of his day, which seemed to him, in his solitude, the best types of its Nobility. Nosight or thought of beautiful things was ever granted him;--no heroiccreature, goddess-born--how much less any native Deity--ever shone uponhim. To his utterly English mind, the straw of the sty, and itstenantry, were abiding truth;--the cloud of Olympus, and its tenantry, achild's dream. He could draw a pig, but not an Aphrodite. 

102. The three pieces of woodcut from his Fables (the two lower onesenlarged) in the opposite plate, show his utmost strength and utmostrudeness. I must endeavor to make you thoroughly understand both:--themagnificent artistic power, the flawless virtue, veracity, tenderness, --the infinite humor of the man; and yet the differencebetween England and Florence, in the use they make of such gifts intheir children. 

For the moment, however, I confine myself to the examination oftechnical points; and we must follow our former conclusions a littlefurther. 

[Illustration: I. 

Things Celestial and Terrestrial, as apparent to the English Mind. ]

103. Because our lines in wood must be thick, it becomes an extremevirtue in wood engraving to economize lines, --not merely, as in allother art, to save time and power, but because, our lines beingnecessarily blunt, we must make up our minds to do with fewer, by many, than are in the object. But is this necessarily a disadvantage?

_Absolutely_, an immense disadvantage, --a woodcut never can be sobeautiful or good a thing as a painting, or line engraving. But in itsown separate and useful way, an excellent thing, because, practicedrightly, it exercises in the artist, and summons in you, the habit ofabstraction; that is to say, of deciding what are the essential pointsin the things you see, and seizing these; a habit entirely necessary tostrong humanity; and so natural to all humanity, that it leads, in itsindolent and undisciplined states, to all the vulgar amateur's liking ofsketches better than pictures. The sketch seems to put the thing for himinto a concentrated and exciting form. 

104. Observe, therefore, to guard you from this error, that a bad sketchis good for nothing; and that nobody can make a good sketch unless theygenerally are trying to finish with extreme care. But the abstraction ofthe essential particulars in his subject by a line-master, has apeculiar didactic value. For painting, when it is complete, leaves itmuch to your own judgment what to look at; and, if you are a fool, youlook at the wrong thing;--but in a fine woodcut, the master says to you, "You _shall_ look at this, or at nothing. "

105. For example, here is a little tailpiece of Bewick's, to the fableof the Frogs and the Stork. [V] He is, as I told you, as stout a reformeras Holbein, [W] or Botticelli, or Luther, or Savonarola; and, as animpartial reformer, hits right and left, at lower or upper classes, ifhe sees them wrong. Most frequently, he strikes at vice, withoutreference to class; but in this vignette he strikes definitely at thedegradation of the viler popular mind which is incapable of beinggoverned, because it cannot understand the nobleness of kingship. Hehas written--better than written, engraved, sure to suffer no slip oftype--his legend under the drawing; so that we know his meaning:

"Set them up with a king, indeed!"

106. There is an audience of seven frogs, listening to a speaker, orcroaker, in the middle; and Bewick has set himself to show in all, butespecially in the speaker, essential frogginess of mind--the marshtemper. He could not have done it half so well in painting as he hasdone by the abstraction of wood-outline. The characteristic of a manlymind, or body, is to be gentle in temper, and firm in constitution; thecontrary essence of a froggy mind and body is to be angular in temper, and flabby in constitution. I have enlarged Bewick's orator-frog foryou, Plate I. C. , and I think you will feel that he is entirelyexpressed in those essential particulars. 

This being perfectly good wood-cutting, notice especially itsdeliberation. No scrawling or scratching, or cross-hatching, or '_free_'work of any sort. Most deliberate laying down of solid lines and dots, of which you cannot change one. The real difficulty of wood engraving isto cut every one of these black lines or spaces of the exactly rightshape, and not at all to cross-hatch them cleanly. 

107. Next, examine the technical treatment of the pig, above. I havepurposely chosen this as an example of a white object on dark ground, and the frog as a dark object on light ground, to explain to you what Imean by saying that fine engraving regards local color, but not lightand shade. You see both frog and pig are absolutely without light andshade. The frog, indeed, casts a shadow; but his hind leg is as white ashis throat. In the pig you don't even know which way the light falls. But you know at once that the pig is white, and the frog brown or green. 

108. There are, however, two pieces of chiaroscuro _implied_ in thetreatment of the pig. It is assumed that his curly tail would be lightagainst the background--dark against his own rump. This little piece ofheraldic quartering is absolutely necessary to solidify him. He wouldhave been a white ghost of a pig, flat on the background, but for thatalternative tail, and the bits of dark behind the ears. Secondly: Wherethe shade is necessary to suggest the position of his ribs, it is givenwith graphic and chosen points of dark, as few as possible; not for thesake of the shade at all, but of the skin and bone. 

109. That, then, being the law of refused chiaroscuro, observe furtherthe method of outline. We said that we were to have thick lines in wood, if possible. Look what thickness of black outline Bewick has left underour pig's chin, and above his nose. 

But that is not a line at all, you think?

No;--a modern engraver would have made it one, and prided himself ongetting it fine. Bewick leaves it actually thicker than the snout, butputs all his ingenuity of touch to vary the forms, and break theextremities of his white cuts, so that the eye may be refreshed andrelieved by new forms at every turn. The group of white touches fillingthe space between snout and ears might be a wreath of fine-weatherclouds, so studiously are they grouped and broken. 

And nowhere, you see, does a single black line cross another. 

Look back to Figure 4, page 54, and you will know, henceforward, thedifference between good and bad wood-cutting. 

110. We have also, in the lower woodcut, a notable instance of Bewick'spower of abstraction. You will observe that one of the chief charactersof this frog, which makes him humorous, --next to his vain endeavor toget some firmness into his fore feet, --is his obstinately angularhump-back. And you must feel, when you see it so marked, how important ageneral character of a frog it is to have a hump-back, --not at theshoulders, but the loins. 

111. Here, then, is a case in which you will see the exact function thatanatomy should take in art. 

All the most scientific anatomy in the world would never have taughtBewick, much less you, how to draw a frog. 

But when once you _have_ drawn him, or looked at him, so as to know hispoints, it then becomes entirely interesting to find out _why_ he has ahump-back. So I went myself yesterday to Professor Rolleston for alittle anatomy, just as I should have gone to Professor Phillips for alittle geology; and the Professor brought me a fine little active frog;and we put him on the table, and made him jump all over it, and then theProfessor brought in a charming Squelette of a frog, and showed me thathe needed a projecting bone from his rump, as a bird needs it from itsbreast, --the one to attach the strong muscles of the hind legs, as theother to attach those of the fore legs or wings. So that the entireleaping power of the frog is in his hump-back, as the flying power ofthe bird is in its breast-bone. And thus this Frog Parliament is mostliterally a Rump Parliament--everything depending on the hind legs, andnothing on the brains; which makes it wonderfully like some otherParliaments we know of nowadays, with Mr. Ayrton and Mr. Lowe for theiræsthetic and acquisitive eyes, and a rump of Railway Directors. 

112. Now, to conclude, for want of time only--I have but touched on thebeginning of my subject, --understand clearly and finally this simpleprinciple of all art, that the best is that which realizes absolutely, if possible. Here is a viper by Carpaccio: you are afraid to go near it. Here is an arm-chair by Carpaccio: you who came in late, and arestanding, to my regret, would like to sit down in it. This is consummateart; but you can only have that with consummate means, and exquisitelytrained and hereditary mental power. 

With inferior means, and average mental power, you must be content togive a rude abstraction; but if rude abstraction _is_ to be made, thinkwhat a difference there must be between a wise man's and a fool's; andconsider what heavy responsibility lies upon you in your youth, todetermine, among realities, by what you will be delighted, and, amongimaginations, by whose you will be led. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Q] By Mr. Burgess. The toil and skill necessary to produce a facsimileof this degree of precision will only be recognized by the reader whohas had considerable experience of actual work. 

[R] The ordinary title-page of Punch. 

[S] In the lecture-room, the relative rates of execution were shown; Iarrive at this estimate by timing the completion of two small pieces ofshade in the two methods. 

[T] John Bull, as Sir Oliver Surface, with Sir Peter Teazle and JosephSurface. It appeared in Punch, early in 1863. 

[U] In preparing these passages for the press, I feel perpetual need ofqualifications and limitations, for it is impossible to surpass thehumor, or precision of expressional touch, in the really golden parts ofTenniel's works; and they _may_ be immortal, as representing what isbest in their day. 

[V] From Bewick's Æsop's Fables. 

[W] See _ante_, § 43. 

 LECTURE IV. 

 THE TECHNICS OF METAL ENGRAVING. 

113. We are to-day to examine the proper methods for the technicalmanagement of the most perfect of the arms of precision possessed by theartist. For you will at once understand that a line cut by afinely-pointed instrument upon the smooth surface of metal issusceptible of the utmost fineness that can be given to the _definite_work of the human hand. In drawing with pen upon paper, the surface ofthe paper is slightly rough; necessarily, two points touch it instead ofone, and the liquid flows from them more or less irregularly, whateverthe draughtsman's skill. But you cut a metallic surface with one edgeonly; the furrow drawn by a skater on the surface of ice is like it on alarge scale. Your surface is polished, and your line may be whollyfaultless, if your hand is. 

114. And because, in such material, effects may be produced which nopenmanship could rival, most people, I fancy, think that a steel platehalf engraves itself; that the workman has no trouble with it, comparedto that of a pen draughtsman. 

To test your feeling in this matter accurately, here is a manuscriptbook written with pen and ink, and illustrated with flourishes andvignettes. 

You will all, I think, be disposed, on examining it, to exclaim, Howwonderful! and even to doubt the possibility of every page in the bookbeing completed in the same manner. Again, here are three of my owndrawings, executed with the pen, and Indian ink, when I was fifteen. They are copies from large lithographs by Prout; and I imagine that mostof my pupils would think me very tyrannical if I requested them to doanything of the kind themselves. And yet, when you see in the shopwindows a line engraving like this, [X] or this, [X] either of whichcontains, alone, as much work as fifty pages of the manuscript book, orfifty such drawings as mine, you look upon its effect as quite a matterof course, --you never say 'how wonderful' _that_ is, nor consider howyou would like to have to live, by producing anything of the same kindyourselves. 

[Illustration: II. 

The Star of FLORENCE. ]

115. Yet you cannot suppose it is in reality easier to draw a line witha cutting point, not seeing the effect at all, or, if any effect, seeinga gleam of light instead of darkness, than to draw your black line atonce on the white paper? You cannot really think[Y] that there issomething complacent, sympathetic, and helpful in the nature of steel;so that while a pen-and-ink sketch may always be considered anachievement proving cleverness in the sketcher, a sketch on steel comesout by mere favor of the indulgent metal; or that the plate is wovenlike a piece of pattern silk, and the pattern is developed by pasteboardcards punched full of holes? Not so. Look close at this engraving, ortake a smaller and simpler one, Turner's Mercury and Argus, --imagine itto be a drawing in pen and ink, and yourself required similarly toproduce its parallel! True, the steel point has the one advantage of notblotting, but it has tenfold or twentyfold disadvantage, in that youcannot slur, nor efface, except in a very resolute and laborious way, nor play with it, nor even see what you are doing with it at the moment, far less the effect that is to be. You must _feel_ what you are doingwith it, and know precisely what you have got to do; how deep, howbroad, how far apart your lines must be, etc. And etc. , (a couple oflines of etceteras would not be enough to imply all you must know). Butsuppose the plate _were_ only a pen drawing: take your pen--yourfinest--and just try to copy the leaves that entangle the head of Io, and her head itself; remembering always that the kind of work requiredhere is mere child's play compared to that of fine figure engraving. Nevertheless, take a small magnifying glass to this--count the dots andlines that gradate the nostrils and the edges of the facial bone; noticehow the light is left on the top of the head by the stopping, at itsoutline, of the coarse touches which form the shadows under the leaves;examine it well, and then--I humbly ask of you--try to do a piece of ityourself! You clever sketcher--you young lady or gentleman ofgenius--you eye-glassed dilettante--you current writer of criticismroyally plural, --I beseech you, --do it yourself; do the merely etchedoutline yourself, if no more. Look you, --you hold your etching needlethis way, as you would a pencil, nearly; and then, --you scratch with it!it is as easy as lying. Or if you think that too difficult, take aneasier piece;--take either of the light sprays of foliage that riseagainst the fortress on the right, pass your lens over them--look howtheir fine outline is first drawn, leaf by leaf; then how the distantrock is put in between, with broken lines, mostly stopping before theytouch the leaf-outline; and again, I pray you, do it yourself, --if noton that scale, on a larger. Go on into the hollows of the distantrock, --traverse its thickets, --number its towers;--count how many linesthere are in a laurel bush--in an arch--in a casement; some hundred andfifty, or two hundred, deliberately drawn lines, you will find, in everysquare quarter of an inch;--say _three thousand to the inch_, --each, with skillful intent, put in its place! and then consider what theordinary sketcher's work must appear, to the men who have been trainedto this!

116. "But might not more have been done by three thousand lines to asquare inch?" you will perhaps ask. Well, possibly. It may be with linesas with soldiers: three hundred, knowing their work thoroughly, may bestronger than three thousand less sure of their aim. We shall have topress close home this question about numbers and purpose presently;--itis not the question now. Suppose certain results required, --atmosphericeffects, surface textures, transparencies of shade, confusions oflight, --then, more could _not_ be done with less. There are engravingsof this modern school, of which, with respect to their particular aim, it may be said, most truly, they "cannot be better done. "

Here is one just finished, --or, at least, finished to the eyes ofordinary mortals, though its fastidious master means to retouch it;--aquite pure line engraving, by Mr. Charles Henry Jeens; (in calling itpure line, I mean that there are no mixtures of mezzotint or anymechanical tooling, but all is steady hand-work, ) from a picture by Mr. Armytage, which, without possessing any of the highest claims toadmiration, is yet free from the vulgar vices which disgrace most of ourpopular religious art; and is so sweet in the fancy of it as to deserve, better than many works of higher power, the pains of the engraver tomake it a common possession. It is meant to help us to imagine theevening of the day when the father and mother of Christ had been seekingHim through Jerusalem: they have come to a well where women are drawingwater; St. Joseph passes on, --but the tired Madonna, leaning on thewell's margin, asks wistfully of the women if they have seen such andsuch a child astray. Now will you just look for a while into the linesby which the expression of the weary and anxious face is rendered; seehow unerring they are, --how calm and clear; and think how many questionshave to be determined in drawing the most minute portion of anyone, --its curve, --its thickness, --its distance from the next, --its ownpreparation for ending, invisibly, where it ends. Think what theprecision must be in these that trace the edge of the lip, and make itlook quivering with disappointment, or in these which have made theeyelash heavy with restrained tears. 

117. Or if, as must be the case with many of my audience, it isimpossible for you to conceive the difficulties here overcome, lookmerely at the draperies, and other varied substances represented in theplate; see how silk, and linen, and stone, and pottery, and flesh, areall separated in texture, and gradated in light, by the most subtleartifices and appliances of line, --of which artifices, and the nature ofthe mechanical labor throughout, I must endeavor to give you to-day amore distinct conception than you are in the habit of forming. But as Ishall have to blame some of these methods in their general result, and Ido not wish any word of general blame to be associated with this mostexcellent and careful plate by Mr. Jeens, I will pass, for specialexamination, to one already in your reference series, which for the restexhibits more various treatment in its combined landscape, background, and figures; the Belle Jardinière of Raphael, drawn and engraved by theBaron Desnoyers. 

You see, in the first place, that the ground, stones, and other coarsesurfaces are distinguished from the flesh and draperies by broken andwriggled lines. Those broken lines cannot be executed with the burin, they are etched in the early states of the plate, and are a modernartifice, never used by old engravers; partly because the older men werenot masters of the art of etching, but chiefly because even those whowere acquainted with it would not employ lines of this nature. They havebeen developed by the importance of landscape in modern engraving, andhave produced some valuable results in small plates, especially ofarchitecture. But they are entirely erroneous in principle, for thesurface of stones and leaves is not broken or jagged in this manner, butconsists of mossy, or blooming, or otherwise organic texture, whichcannot be represented by these coarse lines; their general consequencehas therefore been to withdraw the mind of the observer from allbeautiful and tender characters in foreground, and eventually to destroythe very school of landscape engraving which gave birth to them. 

Considered, however, as a means of relieving more delicate textures, they are in some degree legitimate, being, in fact, a kind of chasing orjagging one part of the plate surface in order to throw out the delicatetints from the rough field. But the same effect was produced with lesspains, and far more entertainment to the eye, by the older engravers, who employed purely ornamental variations of line; thus in Plate IV. , opposite § 137, the drapery is sufficiently distinguished from the grassby the treatment of the latter as an ornamental arabesque. The grain ofwood is elaborately engraved by Marc Antonio, with the same purpose, inthe plate given in your Standard Series. 

118. Next, however, you observe what difference of texture and forceexists between the smooth, continuous lines themselves, which are allreally _engraved_. You must take some pains to understand the nature ofthis operation. 

The line is first cut lightly through its whole course, by absolutedecision and steadiness of hand, which you may endeavor to imitate ifyou like, in its simplest phase, by drawing a circle with yourcompass-pen; and then, grasping your penholder so that you can push thepoint like a plow, describing other circles inside or outside of it, inexact parallelism with the mathematical line, and at exactly equaldistances. To approach, or depart, with your point at finely gradatedintervals, may be your next exercise, if you find the first unexpectedlyeasy. 

119. When the line is thus described in its proper course, it is ploweddeeper, where depth is needed, by a second cut of the burin, first onone side, then on the other, the cut being given with gradated force soas to take away most steel where the line is to be darkest. Every lineof gradated depth in the plate has to be thus cut eight or ten timesover at least, with retouchings to smooth and clear all in the close. Jason has to plow his field ten-furrow deep, with his fiery oxen well inhand, all the while. 

When the essential lines are thus produced in their several directions, those which have been drawn across each other, so as to give depth ofshade, or richness of texture, have to be farther enriched by dots inthe interstices; else there would be a painful appearance of networkeverywhere; and these dots require each four or five jags to producethem; and each of these jags must be done with what artists andengravers alike call 'feeling, '--the sensibility, that is, of a handcompletely under mental government. So wrought, the dots look soft, andlike touches of paint; but mechanically dug in, they are vulgar andhard. 

120. Now, observe, that, for every piece of shadow throughout the work, the engraver has to decide with what quantity and kind of line he willproduce it. Exactly the same quantity of black, and therefore the samedepth of tint in general effect, may be given with six thick lines; orwith twelve, of half their thickness; or with eighteen, of a third ofthe thickness. The second six, second twelve, or second eighteen, maycross the first six, first twelve, or first eighteen, or go betweenthem; and they may cross at any angle. And then the third six may be putbetween the first six, or between the second six, or across both, and atany angle. In the network thus produced, any kind of dots may be put inthe severally shaped interstices. And for any of the series ofsuperadded lines, dots, of equivalent value in shade, may besubstituted. (Some engravings are wrought in dots altogether. ) Choiceinfinite, with multiplication of infinity, is, at all events, to bemade, for every minute space, from one side of the plate to the other. 

121. The excellence of a beautiful engraving is primarily in the use ofthese resources to exhibit the qualities of the original picture, withdelight to the eye in the method of translation; and the language ofengraving, when once you begin to understand it, is, in these respects, so fertile, so ingenious, so ineffably subtle and severe in its grammar, that you may quite easily make it the subject of your life'sinvestigation, as you would the scholarship of a lovely literature. 

But in doing this, you would withdraw, and necessarily withdraw, yourattention from the higher qualities of art, precisely as a grammarian, who is that, and nothing more, loses command of the matter and substanceof thought. And the exquisitely mysterious mechanisms of the engraver'smethod have, in fact, thus entangled the intelligence of the carefuldraughtsmen of Europe; so that since the final perfection of thistranslator's power, all the men of finest patience and finest hand havestayed content with it;--the subtlest draughtsmanship has perished fromthe canvas, [Z] and sought more popular praise in this labyrinth ofdisciplined language, and more or less dulled or degraded thought. And, in sum, I know no cause more direct or fatal, in the destruction of thegreat schools of European art, than the perfectness of modern lineengraving. 

122. This great and profoundly to be regretted influence I will proveand illustrate to you on another occasion. My object to-day is toexplain the perfectness of the art itself; and above all to request you, if you will not look at pictures instead of photographs, at least not toallow the cheap merits of the chemical operation to withdraw yourinterest from the splendid human labor of the engraver. Here is a littlevignette from Stothard, for instance, in Rogers' poems, to the lines, "Soared in the swing, half pleased and half afraid, 'Neath sister elms, that waved their summer shade. "

You would think, would you not? (and rightly, ) that of all difficultthings to express with crossed black lines and dots, the face of a younggirl must be the most difficult. Yet here you have the face of a brightgirl, radiant in light, transparent, mysterious, almost breathing, --herdark hair involved in delicate wreath and shade, her eyes full of joyand sweet playfulness, --and all this done by the exquisite order andgradation of a very few lines, which, if you will examine them through alens, you find dividing and checkering the lip, and cheek, and chin, sostrongly that you would have fancied they could only produce the effectof a grim iron mask. But the intelligences of order and form guide theminto beauty, and inflame them with delicatest life. 

123. And do you see the size of this head? About as large as the bud ofa forget-me-not! Can you imagine the fineness of the little pressures ofthe hand on the steel, in that space, which at the edge of the almostinvisible lip, fashioned its less or more of smile?

My chemical friends, if you wish ever to know anything rightlyconcerning the arts, I very urgently advise you to throw all your vialsand washes down the gutter-trap; and if you will ascribe, as you thinkit so clever to do, in your modern creeds, all virtue to the sun, usethat virtue through your own heads and fingers, and apply your solarenergies to draw a skillful line or two, for once or twice in your life. You may learn more by trying to engrave, like Goodall, the tip of anear, or the curl of a lock of hair, than by photographing the entirepopulation of the United States of America, --black, white, andneutral-tint. 

And one word, by the way, touching the complaints I hear at my havingset you to so fine work that it hurts your eyes. You have noticed thatall great sculptors--and most of the great painters of Florence--beganby being goldsmiths. Why do you think the goldsmith's apprenticeship isso fruitful? Primarily, because it forces the boy to do small work, andmind what he is about. Do you suppose Michael Angelo learned hisbusiness by dashing or hitting at it? He laid the foundation of all hisafter power by doing precisely what I am requiring my own pupils todo, --copying German engravings in facsimile! And for your eyes--you allsit up at night till you haven't got any eyes worth speaking of. Go tobed at half-past nine, and get up at four, and you'll see something outof them, in time. 

124. Nevertheless, whatever admiration you may be brought to feel, andwith justice, for this lovely workmanship, --the more distinctly youcomprehend its merits, the more distinctly also will the question risein your mind, How is it that a performance so marvelous has yet taken norank in the records of art of any permanent or acknowledged kind? Howis it that these vignettes from Stothard and Turner, [AA] like thewoodcuts from Tenniel, scarcely make the name of the engraver known; andthat they never are found side by side with this older and apparentlyruder art, in the cabinets of men of real judgment? The reason isprecisely the same as in the case of the Tenniel woodcut. This modernline engraving is alloyed gold. Rich in capacity, astonishing inattainment, it nevertheless admits willful fault, and misses what itought first to have attained. It is therefore, to a certain measure, vile in its perfection; while the older work is noble even in itsfailure, and classic no less in what it deliberately refuses, than inwhat it rationally and rightly prefers and performs. 

125. Here, for instance, I have enlarged the head of one of Dürer'sMadonnas for you out of one of his most careful plates. [AB] You think itvery ugly. Well, so it is. Don't be afraid to think so, nor to say so. Frightfully ugly; vulgar also. It is the head, simply, of a fat Dutchgirl, with all the pleasantness left out. There is not the least doubtabout that. Don't let anybody force Albert Dürer down your throats; normake you expect pretty things from him. Stothard's young girl in theswing, or Sir Joshua's Age of Innocence, is in quite angelic sphere ofanother world, compared to this black domain of poor, laborious Albert. We are not talking of female beauty, so please you, just now, gentlemen, but of engraving. And the merit, the classical, indefeasible, immortalmerit of this head of a Dutch girl with all the beauty left out, is inthe fact that every line of it, as engraving, is as good as canbe;--good, not with the mechanical dexterity of a watch-maker, but withthe intellectual effort and sensitiveness of an artist who knowsprecisely what can be done, and ought to be attempted, with his assignedmaterials. He works easily, fearlessly, flexibly; the dots are not allmeasured in distance; the lines not all mathematically parallel ordivergent. He has even missed his mark at the mouth in one place, andleaves the mistake, frankly. But there are no petrified mistakes; nor isthe eye so accustomed to the look of the mechanical furrow as to acceptit for final excellence. The engraving is full of the painter's higherpower and wider perception; it is classically perfect, because dulysubordinate, and presenting for your applause only the virtues proper toits own sphere. Among these, I must now reiterate, the first of all isthe _decorative_ arrangement of _lines_. 

126. You all know what a pretty thing a damask tablecloth is, and how apattern is brought out by threads running one way in one space, andacross in another. So, in lace, a certain delightfulness is given by thetexture of meshed lines. 

Similarly, on any surface of metal, the object of the engraver is, orought to be, to cover it with lovely _lines_, forming a lace-work, andincluding a variety of spaces, delicious to the eye. 

And this is his business, primarily; before any other matter can bethought of, his work must be ornamental. You know I told you asculptor's business is first to cover a surface with pleasant _bosses_, whether they mean anything or not; so an engraver's is to cover it withpleasant _lines_, whether they mean anything or not. That they shouldmean something, and a good deal of something, is indeed desirableafterwards; but first we must be ornamental. 

127. Now if you will compare Plate II. At the beginning of this lecture, which is a characteristic example of good Florentine engraving, andrepresents the Planet and power of Aphrodite, with the Aphrodite ofBewick in the upper division of Plate I. , you will at once understandthe difference between a primarily ornamental, and a primarilyrealistic, style. The first requirement in the Florentine work, is thatit shall be a lovely arrangement of lines; a pretty thing upon a page. Bewick _has_ a secondary notion of making his vignette a pretty thingupon a page. But he is overpowered by his vigorous veracity, and bentfirst on giving you his idea of Venus. Quite right, he would have been, mind you, if he had been carving a statue of her on Mount Eryx; but notwhen he was engraving a vignette to Æsop's fables. To engrave well is toornament a surface well, not to create a realistic impression. I begyour pardon for my repetitions; but the point at issue is the root ofthe whole business, and I _must_ get it well asserted, and variously. 

Let me pass to a more important example. 

128. Three years ago, in the rough first arrangement of the copies inthe Educational Series, I put an outline of the top of Apollo's scepter, which, in the catalogue, was said to be probably by Baccio Bandini ofFlorence, for your first real exercise; it remains so, the olive beingput first only for its mythological rank. 

The series of engravings to which the plate from which that exercise iscopied belongs, are part of a number, executed chiefly, I think, fromearly designs of Sandro Botticelli, and some in great part by his hand. He and his assistant, Baccio, worked together; and in such harmony, thatBandini probably often does what Sandro wants, better than Sandro couldhave done it himself; and, on the other hand, there is no design ofBandini's over which Sandro does not seem to have had influence. 

And wishing now to show you three examples of the finest work of theold, the renaissance, and the modern schools, --of the old, I will takeBaccio Bandini's Astrologia, Plate III. , opposite. Of the renaissance, Dürer's Adam and Eve. And of the modern, this head of the daughter ofHerodias, engraved from Luini by Beaugrand, which is asaffectionately and sincerely wrought, though in the modern manner, asany plate of the old schools. 

[Illustration: III. 

"At ev'ning from the top of Fésole. "]

129. Now observe the progress of the feeling for light and shade in thethree examples. 

The first is nearly all white paper; you think of the outline as theconstructive element throughout. 

The second is a vigorous piece of _white_ and _black_--not of _light_and _shade_, --for all the high lights are equally white, whether offlesh, or leaves, or goat's hair. 

The third is complete in chiaroscuro, as far as engraving can be. 

Now the dignity and virtue of the plates is in the exactly inverse ratioof their fullness in chiaroscuro. 

Bandini's is excellent work, and of the very highest school. Dürer'sentirely accomplished work, but of an inferior school. And Beaugrand's, excellent work, but of a vulgar and non-classical school. 

And these relations of the schools are to be determined by the qualityin the _lines_; we shall find that in proportion as the light and shadeis neglected, the lines are studied; that those of Bandini are perfect;of Dürer perfect, only with a lower perfection; but of Beaugrand, entirely faultful. 

130. I have just explained to you that in modern engraving the lines arecut in clean furrow, widened, it may be, by successive cuts; but, whether it be fine or thick, retaining always, when printed, the aspectof a continuous line drawn with the pen, and entirely black throughoutits whole course. 

Now we may increase the delicacy of this line to any extent by simplyprinting it in gray color instead of black. I obtained some verybeautiful results of this kind in the later volumes of 'ModernPainters, ' with Mr. Armytage's help, by using subdued purple tints; but, in any case, the line thus engraved must be monotonous in its character, and cannot be expressive of the finest qualities of form. 

Accordingly, the old Florentine workmen constructed the line _itself_, in important places, of successive minute touches, so that it became achain of delicate links which could be opened or closed atpleasure. [AC] If you will examine through a lens the outline of the faceof this Astrology, you will find it is traced with an exquisite seriesof minute touches, susceptible of accentuation or change absolutely atthe engraver's pleasure; and, in result, corresponding to the finestconditions of a pencil line drawing by a consummate master. In the fineplates of this period, you have thus the united powers of the pen andpencil, and both absolutely secure and multipliable. 

131. I am a little proud of having independently discovered, and had thepatience to carry out, this Florentine method of execution for myself, when I was a boy of thirteen. My good drawing-master had given me somecopies calculated to teach me freedom of hand; the touches were rapidand vigorous, --many of them in mechanically regular zigzags, far beyondany capacity of mine to imitate in the bold way in which they were done. But I was resolved to have them, somehow; and actually facsimiled aconsiderable portion of the drawing in the Florentine manner, with thefinest point I could cut to my pencil, taking a quarter of an hour toforge out the likeness of one return in the zigzag which my mastercarried down through twenty returns in two seconds; and so successfully, that he did not detect my artifice till I showed it him, --on which heforbade me ever to do the like again. And it was only thirty yearsafterwards that I found I had been quite right after all, and workinglike Baccio Bandini! But the patience which carried me through thatearly effort, served me well through all the thirty years, and enabledme to analyze, and in a measure imitate, the method of work employed byevery master; so that, whether you believe me or not at first, you willfind what I tell you of their superiority, or inferiority, to be true. 

132. When lines are studied with this degree of care, you may be surethe master will leave room enough for you to see them and enjoy them, and not use any at random. All the finest engravers, therefore, leavemuch white paper, and use their entire power on the outlines. 

133. Next to them come the men of the Renaissance schools, headed byDürer, who, less careful of the beauty and refinement of the line, delight in its vigor, accuracy, and complexity. And the essentialdifference between these men and the moderns is that these centralmasters cut their line for the most part with a single furrow, giving itdepth by force of hand or wrist, and retouching, _not in the furrowitself, but with others beside it_. [AD] Such work can only be done wellon copper, and it can display all faculty of hand or wrist, precision ofeye, and accuracy of knowledge, which a human creature can possess. Butthe dotted or hatched line is not used in this central style, and thehigher conditions of beauty never thought of. 

In the Astrology of Bandini, --and remember that the Astrologia of theFlorentine meant what we mean by Astronomy, and much more, --he wishesyou first to look at the face: the lip half open, faltering in wonder;the amazed, intense, dreaming gaze; the pure dignity of forehead, undisturbed by terrestrial thought. None of these things could be somuch as attempted in Dürer's method; he can engrave flowing hair, skinof animals, bark of trees, wreathings of metal-work, with the free hand;also, with labored chiaroscuro, or with sturdy line, he can reachexpressions of sadness, or gloom, or pain, or soldierly strength, --butpure beauty, --never. 

134. Lastly, you have the Modern school, deepening its lines insuccessive cuts. The instant consequence of the introduction of thismethod is the restriction of curvature; you cannot follow a complexcurve again with precision through its furrow. If you are a dextrousplowman, you can drive your plow any number of times along the simplecurve. But you cannot repeat again exactly the motions which cut avariable one. [AE] You may retouch it, energize it, and deepen it inparts, but you cannot cut it all through again equally. And theretouching and energizing in parts is a living and intellectual process;but the cutting all through, equally, a mechanical one. The differenceis exactly such as that between the dexterity of turning out two similarmoldings from a lathe, and carving them with the free hand, like a Pisansculptor. And although splendid intellect, and subtlest sensibility, have been spent on the production of some modern plates, the mechanicalelement introduced by their manner of execution always overpowers both;nor _can any plate of consummate value ever be produced in the modernmethod_. 

135. Nevertheless, in landscape, there are two examples in yourReference series, of insuperable skill and extreme beauty: Miller'splate, before instanced, of the Grand Canal, Venice; and E. Goodall's ofthe upper fall of the Tees. The men who engraved these plates might havebeen exquisite artists; but their patience and enthusiasm were heldcaptive in the false system of lines, and we lost the painters; whilethe engravings, wonderful as they are, are neither of them worth aTurner etching, scratched in ten minutes with the point of an old fork;and the common types of such elaborate engraving are none of them wortha 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 youare 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 proofthat you must not look in engraving for chiaroscuro. 

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

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

Again. Every lock of the hair is designed and set in its place with thesubtlest care, but there is no luster attempted, --no texture, --nomystery. The plumes of the wings are set studiously in theirplaces, --they, also, lusterless. That even their filaments are notdrawn, and that the broad curve embracing them ignores the anatomy of abird's wing, are conditions of design, not execution. Of these in afuture lecture. [AF]

[Illustration: IV. 

"By the Springs of PARNASSUS. "]

137. The 'Poesia, ' Plate IV. , opposite, is a still more severe, thoughnot so generic, an example; its decorative foreground reducing it almostto the rank of goldsmith's ornamentation. I need scarcely point out toyou that the flowing water shows neither luster nor reflection; butnotice that the observer's attention is supposed to be so close to everydark touch of the graver that he will see the minute dark spots whichindicate 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 artof Intellect, and of mere sensation. For every detail of this plate hasa meaning, if you care to understand it. This is Poetry, sitting by thefountain of Castalia, which flows first out of a formal urn, to showthat it is not artless; but the rocks of Parnassus are behind, and onthe top of them--only one tree, like a mushroom with a thick stalk. Youat first are inclined to say, How very absurd, to put only one tree onParnassus! but this one tree is the Immortal Plane Tree, planted byAgamemnon, and at once connects our Poesia with the Iliad. Then, thisis the hem of the robe of Poetry, --this is the divine vegetation whichsprings up under her feet, --this is the heaven and earth united by herpower, --this is the fountain of Castalia flowing out afresh among thegrass, --and these are the drops with which, out of a pitcher, Poetry isnourishing the fountain of Castalia. 

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

139. 'But a great many people won't, and a great many more can't; andsurely the finished engravings are much more delightful, and the onlymeans we have of giving any idea of finished pictures, out of ourreach. '

Yes, all that is true; and when we examine the effects of line engravingupon taste in recent art, we will discuss these matters; for thepresent, let us be content with knowing what the best work is, and whyit is so. Although, however, I do not now press further my cavils at thetriumph of modern line engraving, I must assign to you, in few words, the reason of its recent decline. Engravers complain that photographyand cheap wood-cutting have ended their finer craft. No complaint can beless grounded. They themselves destroyed their own craft, by vulgarizingit. Content in their beautiful mechanism, they ceased to learn, and tofeel, as artists; they put themselves under the order of publishers andprint-sellers; they worked indiscriminately from whatever was put intotheir hands, --from Bartlett as willingly as from Turner, and fromMulready as carefully as from Raphael. They filled the windows ofprint-sellers, the pages of gift books, with elaborate rubbish, andpiteous abortions of delicate industry. They worked cheap, andcheaper, --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 hadfallen--before the days of photography--into providers of frontispiecesfor 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; scarcelyavoidable, --however fatal. Fault mainly of humility. But what has _your_fault been, gentlemen? what the patrons' fault, who have permitted sowide waste of admirable labor, so pathetic a uselessness of obedientgenius? It was yours to have directed, yours to have raised and rejoicedin, the skill, the modesty, the patience of this entirely gentle andindustrious race;--copyists with their _heart_. The commonpainter-copyists who encumber our European galleries with their easelsand pots, are, almost without exception, persons too stupid to bepainters, and too lazy to be engravers. The real copyists--the men whocan put their soul into another's work--are employed at home, in theirnarrow rooms, striving to make their good work profitable to all men. And in their submission to the public taste they are truly nationalservants as much as Prime Ministers are. They fulfill the demand of thenation; what, as a people, you wish to have for possession in art, thesemen are ready to give you. 

And what have you hitherto asked of them?--Ramsgate Sands, and DollyVardens, and the Paddington Station, --these, I think, are typical ofyour chief demands; the cartoons of Raphael--which you don't care to seethemselves; and, by way of a flight into the empyrean, the Madonna diSan Sisto. And literally, there are hundreds of cities and villages inItaly in which roof and wall are blazoned with the noblest divinity andphilosophy ever imagined by men; and of all this treasure, I can, as faras I know, give you not _one_ example, in line engraving, by an Englishhand!

Well, you are in the main matter right in this. You want essentiallyRamsgate Sands and the Paddington Station, because there you can seeyourselves. 

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

FOOTNOTES:

[X] Miller's large plate of the Grand Canal, Venice, after Turner; andGoodall's, of Tivoli, after Turner. The other examples referred to areleft in the University Galleries. 

[Y] This paragraph was not read at the lecture, time not allowing:--itis part of what I wrote on engraving some years ago, in the papers forthe Art Journal, called the Cestus of Aglaia. (Refer now to "On the OldRoad. ")

[Z] An effort has lately been made in France, by Meissonier, Gérome, andtheir school, to recover it, with marvelous collateral skill ofengravers. The etching of Gérome's Louis XIV. And Molière is one of thecompletest pieces of skillful mechanism ever put on metal. 

[AA] I must again qualify the too sweeping statement of the text. Ithink, as time passes, some of these nineteenth century line engravingswill become monumental. The first vignette of the garden, with the cuthedges and fountain, for instance, in Rogers' poems, is so consummate inits use of every possible artifice of delicate line, (note the look of_tremulous_ atmosphere got by the undulatory etched lines on thepavement, and the broken masses, worked with dots, of the fountainfoam, ) that I think it cannot but, with some of its companions, survivethe refuse of its school, and become classic. I find in like manner, even with all their faults and weaknesses, the vignettes to Heyne'sVirgil to be real art-possessions. 

[AB] Plate XI. , in the Appendix, taken from the engraving of the Virginsitting in the fenced garden, with two angels crowning her. 

[AC] The method was first developed in engraving designs onsilver--numbers of lines being executed with dots by the punch, forvariety's sake. For niello, and printing, a transverse cut wassubstituted for the blow. The entire style is connected with the laterRoman and Byzantine method of drawing lines with the drill hole, inmarble. See above, Lecture II. , Section 70. 

[AD] This most important and distinctive character was pointed out to meby Mr. Burgess. 

[AE] This point will be further examined and explained in the Appendix. 

[AF] See Appendix, Article I. 

 LECTURE V. 

 DESIGN IN THE GERMAN SCHOOLS OF ENGRAVING. 

141. By reference to the close of the preface to 'Eagle's Nest, ' youwill see, gentlemen, that I meant these lectures, from the first, ratherto lead you to the study of the characters of two great men, than tointerest you in the processes of a secondary form of art. As I draw mymaterials into the limited form necessary for the hour, I find mydivided purpose doubly failing; and would fain rather use my time to-dayin supplying the defects of my last lecture, than in opening the greatersubject, which I must treat with still more lamentable inadequacy. Nevertheless, you must not think it is for want of time that I omitreference to other celebrated engravers, and insist on the special powerof these two only. Many not inconsiderable reputations are foundedmerely on the curiosity of collectors of prints, or on partial skill inthe management of processes; others, though resting on more securebases, are still of no importance to you in the general history of art;whereas you will find the work of Holbein and Botticelli determining foryou, without need of any farther range, the principal questions ofmoment in the relation of the Northern and Southern schools of design. Nay, a wider method of inquiry would only render your comparison lessaccurate 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 canadvance no fairly comparable antagonist to the artists of the South, except at that one moment, and in that one man. Rubens cannot for aninstant be matched with Tintoret, nor Memling with Lippi; whileReynolds only rivals Titian in what he learned from him. But in Holbeinand Botticelli we have two men trained independently, equal in power ofintellect, similar in material and mode of work, contemporary in age, correspondent in disposition. The relation between them is strictlytypical of the constant aspects to each other of the Northern andSouthern schools. 

142. Their point of closest contact is in the art of engraving, and thisart is developed entirely as the servant of the great passions whichperturbed or polluted Europe in the fifteenth century. The impulseswhich it obeys are all new; and it obeys them with its own nascentplasticity 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 falsetaste which arose out of it, in the position it had assumed as the enemyof 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 theChristian Church, felt by the highest intellects of the time, andnecessarily rendering the formerly submissive religious art impossible. 

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

143. I have not often, however, used the word 'design, ' and must clearlydefine the sense in which I now use it. It is vaguely used in commonart-parlance; often as if it meant merely the drawing of a picture, asdistinct from its color; and in other still more inaccurate ways. Theaccurate and proper sense, underlying all these, I must endeavor to makeclear to you. 

'Design' properly signifies that power in any art-work which has apurpose other than of imitation, and which is 'designed, ' composed, orseparated to that end. It implies the rejection of some things, and theinsistence upon others, with a given object. [AG]

Let us take progressive instances. Here is a group of prettily dressedpeasant children, charmingly painted by a very able modern artist--notabsolutely without design, for he really wishes to show you how prettypeasant children can be, (and, in so far, is wiser and kinder thanMurillo, who likes to show how ugly they can be); also, his group isagreeably arranged, and its component children carefully chosen. Nevertheless, any summer's day, near any country village, you may comeupon twenty groups in an hour as pretty as this; and may see--if youhave eyes--children in them twenty times prettier than these. Aphotograph, if it could render them perfectly, and in color, would farexcel 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' littlecountry girls, I will now set one--in the best sense of theword--'artful' little country girl, --a sketch by Gainsborough. 

You never saw her like before. Never will again, now that Gainsboroughis dead. No photography, --no science, --no industry, will touch or reachfor an instant this _super_-naturalness. You will look vainly throughthe 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 weknew, would not we all be Gainsboroughs? This only you may practicallyascertain, 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 withoutinjury to the whole. Half a dozen spots, more or less, in the printedgowns of these other children whom I first showed you, will not make thesmallest difference to them; nor a lock or two more or less in theirhair, nor a dimple or two more or less in their cheeks. But if you alterone wave of the hair of Gainsborough's girl, the child is gone. Yet theart is so subtle, that I do not expect you to believe this. It looks soinstinctive, so easy, so 'chanceux, '--the French word is better thanours. 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 himselfhow the thing was done. 

145. I proceed to take a more definite instance--this Greek head of theLacinian Juno. The design or appointing of the forms now entirelyprevails over the resemblance to Nature. No real hair could ever bedrifted into these wild lines, which mean the wrath of the Adriaticwinds round the Cape of Storms. 

And yet, whether this be uglier or prettier than Gainsborough'schild--(and you know already what I think about it, that no Greekgoddess was ever half so pretty as an English girl, of pure clay andtemper, )--uglier or prettier, it is more dignified and impressive. It atleast belongs to the domain of a lordlier, more majestic, more guidingand ordaining art. 

146. I will go back another five hundred years, and place an Egyptianbeside the Greek divinity. The resemblance to Nature is now all butlost, the ruling law has become all. The lines are reduced to an easilycounted number, and their arrangement is little more than a decorativesequence of pleasant curves cut in porphyry, --in the upper part oftheir 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 thesign-engraver meant by his hawk, Immortality, and by her pedestal, theHouse or Tavern of Truth, is of little importance now to the passingtraveler, not yet preparing to take the sarcophagus for his place ofrest. 

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

Not so. 

Look at this piece of Sandro's work, the Libyan Sibyl. [AH]

It is as ordered and normal as the Egyptian's--as graceful and facile asGainsborough's. It retains the majesty of old religion; it is investedwith the joy of newly awakened childhood. 

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

148. Will these two powers, do you suppose, be united in the same mannerin the contemporary Northern art? That Northern school is my subjectto-day; and yet I give you, as type of the intermediate conditionbetween Egypt and England--not Holbein, but Botticelli. I am obliged todo this; because in the Southern art, the religious temper remainsunconquered by the doctrines of the Reformation. Botticelli was--whatLuther wished to be, but could not be--a reformer still believing in theChurch: his mind is at peace; and his art, therefore, can pursue thedelight of beauty, and yet remain prophetic. But it was far otherwise inGermany. There the Reformation of manners became the destruction offaith; and art therefore, not a prophecy, but a protest. It is thechief work of the greatest Protestant who ever lived, [AI] which I askyou to study with me to-day. 

149. I said that the power of engraving had developed itself during theintroduction of three new--(practically and vitally new, that is tosay)--elements, into the minds of men: elements which briefly may beexpressed thus:

 1. Classicism, and Literary Science. 

 2. Medicine, and Physical Science. [AJ]

 3. Reformation, and Religious Science. 

And first of Classicism. 

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

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

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

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

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

151. For instance: the last time I was standing before Raphael'sarabesques in the Loggias of the Vatican, I wrote down in my pocket-bookthe description, or, more modestly speaking, the inventory, of the smallportion of that infinite wilderness of sensual fantasy which happened tobe opposite me. It consisted of a woman's face, with serpents for hair, and a virgin's breasts, with stumps for arms, ending in bluebutterflies' 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 bottomof which were appended, by graceful chains, an altar, and two bunches ofgrapes. 

Now you know in a moment, by a glance at this 'design'--beautifullystruck with free hand, and richly gradated in color, --that the masterwas familiar with a vast range of art and literature: that he knew allabout Egyptian sphinxes, and Greek Gorgons; about Egyptian obelisks, andHebrew altars; about Hermes, and Venus, and Bacchus, and satyrs, andgoats, and grapes. 

You know also--or ought to know, in an instant, --that all this learninghas done him no good; that he had better have known nothing than any ofthese things, since they were to be used by him only to such purpose;and that his delight in armless breasts, legless trunks, and obelisksupside-down, has been the last effort of his expiring sensation, in thegrasp of corrupt and altogether victorious Death. And you have thus, inGainsborough as compared with Raphael, a sweet, sacred, and livingsimplicity, 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 treacherousignorance, and divinely pure and fruitful knowledge. 

In the place of honor at the end of one of the rooms of your RoyalAcademy--years ago--stood a picture by an English Academician, announcedas a representation of Moses sustained by Aaron and Hur, during thediscomfiture of Amalek. In the entire range of the Pentateuch, there isno other scene (in which the visible agents are mortal only) requiringso much knowledge and thought to reach even a distant approximation tothe probabilities of the fact. One saw in a moment that the painter wasboth powerful and simple, after a sort; that he had really sought for avital conception, and had originally and earnestly read his text, andformed his conception. And one saw also in a moment that he had chancedupon this subject, in reading or hearing his Bible, as he might havechanced on a dramatic scene accidentally in the street. That he knewnothing of the character of Moses, --nothing of his law, --nothing of thecharacter of Aaron, nor of the nature of a priesthood, --nothing of themeaning of the event which he was endeavoring to represent, of thetemper in which it would have been transacted by its agents, or of itsrelations to modern life. 

153. On the contrary, in the fresco of the earlier scenes in the life ofMoses, by Sandro Botticelli, you know--not 'in a moment, ' for theknowledge of knowledge cannot be so obtained; but in proportion to thediscretion 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 teachyou, better than in words, the significance of both Moses' law andAaron's ministry; and not only these, but, if he chose, could add tothis an exposition as complete of the highest philosophies both of theGreek nation, and of his own; and could as easily have painted, had itbeen asked of him, Draco, or Numa, or Justinian, as the herdsman ofJethro. 

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 indicatethe mischief of involuntary and modest ignorance, calamitous only in ameasure; fruitful in its lower field, yet sorrowfully condemned to thatlower field--not by sin, but fate. 

When first I introduced you to Bewick, we closed our too partialestimate of his entirely magnificent powers with one sorrowfulconcession--he could draw a pig, but not a Venus. 

Eminently he could so, because--which is still more sorrowfully to beconceded--he liked the pig best. I have put now in your educationalseries a whole galaxy of pigs by him; but, hunting all the fablesthrough, I find only one Venus, and I think you will all admit that sheis an unsatisfactory Venus. [AL] There is honest simplicity here; but youregret it; you miss something that you find in Holbein, much more inBotticelli. 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 prefersthe style of a well-to-do English housekeeper with corkscrew curls, anda 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, couldwholly quit himself of the like accusations? I told you, in the secondof these lectures, that the Northern temper, refined from savageness, and the Southern, redeemed from decay, met, in Florence. Holbein andBotticelli are the purest types of the two races. Holbein is a civilizedboor; Botticelli a reanimate Greek. Holbein was polished bycompanionship with scholars and kings, but remains always a burgher ofAugsburg in essential nature. Bewick and he are alike in temper; onlythe one is untaught, the other perfectly taught. But Botticelli _needs_no teaching. He is, by his birth, scholar and gentleman to the heart'score. Christianity itself can only inspire him, not refine him. He is astried gold chased by the jeweler, --the roughest part of him is theoutside. 

Now how differently must the newly recovered scholastic learning tellupon these two men. It is all out of Holbein's way; foreign to hisnature, useless at the best, probably cumbrous. But Botticelli receivesit as a child in later years recovers the forgotten dearness of anursery tale; and is more himself, and again and again himself, as hebreathes the air of Greece, and hears, in his own Italy, the lost voiceof the Sibyl murmur again by the Avernus Lake. 

156. It is not, as we have seen, every one of the Southern race who canthus receive it. But it graces them all; is at once a part of theirbeing; destroys them, if it is to destroy, the more utterly because itso 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_ gracehim--never is for an instant a part of him. It is with Raphael as withsome charming young girl who has a new and beautifully made dressbrought to her, which entirely becomes her, --so much, that in a littlewhile, thinking of nothing else, she becomes _it_; and is only thedecoration of her dress. But with Holbein it is as if you brought thesame dress to a stout farmer's daughter who was going to dine at theHall; and begged her to put it on that she might not discredit thecompany. 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 Holbeinin wearing this new dress; you would the less do so because his ownpeople think him all the finer for it, as the farmer's wife wouldprobably think her daughter. Dr. Woltmann, for instance, is enthusiasticin praise of the splendid architecture in the background of hisAnnunciation. A fine mess it must have made in the minds of simpleGerman maidens, in their notion of the Virgin at home! I cannot show youthis Annunciation; but I have under my hand one of Holbein's Bible cuts, of the deepest seriousness and import--his illustration of theCanticles, showing the Church as the bride of Christ. 

[Illustration]

You could not find a subject requiring more tenderness, purity, ordignity of treatment. In this maid, symbolizing the Church, you ask forthe most passionate humility, the most angelic beauty: "Behold, thou artfair, my dove. " Now here is Holbein's ideal of that fairness; here ishis "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 tooimportant to be omitted. Remember, Holbein represents the temper ofNorthern Reformation. He has all the nobleness of that temper, but alsoall its baseness. He represents, indeed, the revolt of German truthagainst Italian lies; but he represents also the revolt of Germananimalism against Hebrew imagination. This figure of Holbein's ishalf-way from Solomon's mystic bride, to Rembrandt's wife, sitting onhis knee while he drinks. 

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

158. You think, perhaps, that Holbein's Solomon's bride is so ungracefulchiefly because she is overdressed, and has too many feathers andjewels. No; a Florentine would have put any quantity of feathers andjewels 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 herof being overdressed. She complies with every received modern principleof taste. Sir Joshua's precept that drapery should be "drapery, andnothing more, " is observed more strictly even by Bewick than by MichaelAngelo. If the absence of decoration could exalt the beauty of hisVenus, here had been her perfection. 

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

[Illustration: V. 

"Heat considered as a Mode of Motion. "

Florentine Natural Philosophy. ]

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

You know I have told you, again and again, that the soul of Greece isher veracity; that what to other nations were fables and symbolisms, toher became living facts--living gods. The fall of Greece was instantwhen her gods again became fables. The Apollo Belvedere is the work of asculptor to whom Apollonism is merely an elegant idea on which toexhibit his own skill. He does not himself feel for an instant that thehandsome man in the unintelligible attitude, [AM] with drapery hung overhis left arm, as it would be hung to dry over a clothes-line, is thePower of the Sun. But the Florentine believes in Apollo with his wholemind, and is trying to explain his strength in every touch. 

For instance; I said just now, "You see the sun's epaulets before thesun. " Well, _don't_ you, usually, as it rises? Do you not continuallymistake a luminous cloud for it, or wonder where it is, behind one?Again, the face of the Apollo Belvedere is agitated by anxiety, passion, and pride. Is the sun's likely to be so, rising on the evil and thegood? This Prince sits crowned and calm: look at the quiet fingers ofthe hand holding the scepter, --at the restraint of the reins merely by adepression of the wrist. 

160. You have to look carefully for those fingers holding the scepter, because the hand--which a great anatomist would have made so exclusivelyinteresting--is here confused with the ornamentation of the arm of thechariot on which it rests. But look what the ornamentation is;--fruitand leaves, abundant, in the mouth of a cornucopia. A quite vulgar andmeaningless ornament in ordinary renaissance work. Is it so here, thinkyou? Are not the leaves and fruits of earth in the Sun's hand?[AN]

You thought, perhaps, when I spoke just now of the action of the righthand, that less than a depression of the wrist would stop horses such asthose. You fancy Botticelli drew them so, because he had never seen ahorse; or because, able to draw fingers, he could not draw hoofs! Howfine it would be to have, instead, a prancing four-in-hand, in the styleof Piccadilly on the Derby-day, or at least horses like the real Greekhorses of the Parthenon!

Yes; and if they had had real ground to trot on, the Florentine wouldhave shown you he knew how they should trot. But these have to maketheir way up the hill-side of other lands. Look to the example in yourstandard series, Hermes Eriophoros. You will find his motion amongclouds represented precisely in this laboring, failing, half-kneelingattitude of limb. These forms, toiling up through the rippled sands ofheaven, are--not horses;--they are clouds themselves, _like_ horses, butonly a little like. Look how their hoofs lose themselves, buried in theripples of cloud; it makes one think of the quicksands of Morecambe Bay. 

And their tails--what extraordinary tufts of tails, ending in points!Yes; but do you not see, nearly joining with them, what is not a horsetail at all; but a flame of fire, kindled at Apollo's knee? All the restof the radiance about him shoots _from_ him. But this is rendered _up_to him. As the fruits of the earth are in one of his hands, its fire isin the other. And all the warmth, as well as all the light of it, arehis. 

We had a little natural philosophy, gentlemen, as well as theology, inFlorence, once upon a time. 

161. Natural philosophy, and also natural art, for in this the Greekreanimate was a nobler creature than the Greek who had died. His art hada wider force and warmer glow. I have told you that the first Greekswere distinguished from the barbarians by their simple humanity; thesecond Greeks--these Florentine Greeks reanimate--are human morestrongly, more deeply, leaping from the Byzantine death at the call ofChrist, "Loose him, and let him go. " And there is upon them at once thejoy of resurrection, and the solemnity of the grave. 

[Illustration: VI. 

Fairness of the Sea and Air. 

In VENICE and ATHENS. ]

162. Of this resurrection of the Greek, and the form of the tomb he hadbeen buried in "those four days, " I have to give you some account in thelast lecture. I will only to-day show you an illustration of it whichbrings us back to our immediate question as to the reasons why Northernart could not accept classicism. When, in the closing lecture of "AratraPentelici, "[AO] I compared Florentine with Greek work, it was to pointout to you the eager passions of the first as opposed to the formallegalism and proprieties of the other. Greek work, I told you, whiletruthful, was also restrained, and never but under majesty of law; whileGothic work was true, in the perfect law of Liberty or Franchise. Andnow I give you in facsimile (Plate VI. ) the two Aphrodites thuscompared--the Aphrodite Thalassia of the Tyrrhene seas, and theAphrodite Urania of the Greek skies. You may not at first like theTuscan best; and why she is the best, though both are noble, again Imust defer explaining to next lecture. But now turn back to Bewick'sVenus, and compare her with the Tuscan Venus of the Stars, (Plate II. );and then here, in Plate VI. , with the Tuscan Venus of the Seas, and theGreek Venus of the Sky. Why is the English one vulgar? What is it, inthe three others, which makes them, if not beautiful, at leastrefined?--every one of them 'designed' and drawn, indisputably, by agentleman?

I never have been so puzzled by any subject of analysis as, for theseten years, I have been by this. Every answer I give, however plausibleit seems at first, fails in some way, or in some cases. But there isthe point for you, more definitely put, I think, than in any of myformer books;--at present, for want of time, I must leave it to your ownthoughts. 

163. II. The second influence under which engraving developed itself, Isaid, was that of medicine and the physical sciences. Gentlemen, themost audacious, and the most valuable, statement which I have yet madeto you on the subject of practical art, in these rooms, is that of theevil resulting from the study of anatomy. It is a statement soaudacious, that not only for some time I dared not make it to you, butfor ten years, at least, I dared not make it to myself. I saw, indeed, that whoever studied anatomy was in a measure injured by it; but I keptattributing the mischief to secondary causes. It _can't_ be this drinkitself that poisons them, I said always. This drink is medicinal andstrengthening: I see that it kills them, but it must be because theydrink it cold when they have been hot, or they take something else withit that changes it into poison. The drink itself _must_ be good. Well, gentlemen, I found out the drink itself to be poison at last, by thebreaking of my choicest Venice glass. I could not make out what it wasthat had killed Tintoret, and laid it long to the charge of chiaroscuro. It was only after my thorough study of his Paradise, in 1870, that Igave up this idea, finding the chiaroscuro, which I had thoughtexaggerated, was, in all original and undarkened passages, beautiful andmost precious. And then at last I got hold of the true clue: "Il disegnodi Michel Agnolo. " And the moment I had dared to accuse that, itexplained everything; and I saw that the betraying demons of Italianart, led on by Michael Angelo, had been, not pleasure, but knowledge;not indolence, but ambition; and not love, but horror. 

164. But when first I ventured to tell you this, I did not know, myself, the fact of all most conclusive for its confirmation. It will take me alittle while to put it before you in its total force, and I must firstask your attention to a minor point. In one of the smaller rooms of theMunich Gallery is Holbein's painting of St. Margaret and St. Elizabethof Hungary, --standard of his early religious work. Here is a photographfrom the St. Elizabeth; and, in the same frame, a French lithograph ofit. I consider it one of the most important pieces of comparison I havearranged for you, showing you at a glance the difference between trueand false sentiment. Of that difference, generally, we cannot speakto-day, but one special result of it you are to observe;--the omission, in the French drawing, of Holbein's daring representation of disease, which is one of the vital honors of the picture. Quite one of the chiefstrengths of St. Elizabeth, in the Roman Catholic view, was in thecourage of her dealing with disease, chiefly leprosy. Now observe, I say_Roman_ Catholic view, very earnestly just now; I am not at all surethat it is so in a Catholic view--that is to say, in an eternallyChristian and Divine view. And this doubt, very nearly now a certainty, only came clearly into my mind the other day after many and many ayear's meditation on it. I had read with great reverence all thebeautiful stories about Christ's appearing as a leper, and the like; andhad often pitied and rebuked myself alternately for my intense dislikeand horror of disease. I am writing at this moment within fifty yards ofthe grave of St. Francis, and the story of the likeness of his feelingsto mine had a little comforted me, and the tradition of his conquest ofthem again humiliated me; and I was thinking very gravely of this, andof the parallel instance of Bishop Hugo of Lincoln, always desiring todo service to the dead, as opposed to my own unmitigated andLouis-Quinze-like horror of funerals;--when by chance, in the cathedralof Palermo, a new light was thrown for me on the whole matter. 

165. I was drawing the tomb of Frederick II. , which is shut off by agrating from the body of the church; and I had, in general, quite anunusual degree of quiet and comfort at my work. But sometimes it wasparalyzed by the unconscious interference of one of the men employed insome minor domestic services about the church. When he had nothing todo, he used to come and seat himself near my grating, not to look at mywork, (the poor wretch had no eyes, to speak of, ) nor in any waymeaning to be troublesome; but there was his habitual seat. His nose hadbeen carried off by the most loathsome of diseases; there were two vividcircles of scarlet round his eyes; and as he sat, he announced hispresence every quarter of a minute (if otherwise I could have forgottenit) by a peculiarly disgusting, loud, and long expectoration. On thesecond or third day, just I had forced myself into some forgetfulness ofhim, and was hard at my work, I was startled from it again by thebursting out of a loud and cheerful conversation close to me; and onlooking round, saw a lively young fledgling of a priest, seventeen oreighteen years old, in the most eager and spirited chat with the man inthe chair. He talked, laughed, and spat, himself, companionably, in themerriest way, for a quarter of an hour; evidently without feeling theslightest disgust, or being made serious for an instant, by the aspectof the destroyed creature before him. 

166. His own face was simply that of the ordinary vulgar type ofthoughtless young Italians, rather beneath than above the usualstandard; and I was certain, as I watched him, that he was not at all mysuperior, but very much my inferior, in the coolness with which hebeheld what was to me so dreadful. I was positive that he could lookthis man in the face, precisely because he could _not_ look, discerningly, at any beautiful or noble thing; and that the reason Idared not, was because I had, spiritually, as much better eyes than thepriest, as, bodily, than his companion. 

Having got so much of clear evidence given me on the matter, it wasdriven home for me a week later, as I landed on the quay of Naples. Almost the first thing that presented itself to me was the sign of atraveling theatrical company, displaying the principal scene of thedrama to be enacted on their classical stage. Fresh from the theater ofTaormina, I was curious to see the subject of the Neapolitan populardrama. It was the capture, by the police, of a man and his wife wholived by boiling children. One section of the police was coming in, armed to the teeth, through the passage; another section of the police, armed to the teeth, and with high feathers in its caps, was coming upthrough a trap-door. In fine dramatic unconsciousness to the lastmoment, like the clown in a pantomime, the child-boiler was representedas still industriously chopping up a child, pieces of which, ready forthe pot, lay here and there on the table in the middle of the picture. The child-boiler's wife, however, just as she was taking the top off thepot to put the meat in, had caught a glimpse of the foremost policeman, and stopped, as much in rage as in consternation. 

167. Now it is precisely the same feeling, or want of feeling, in thelower Italian (nor always in the lower classes only) which makes himdemand the kind of subject for his secular drama; and the Crucifixionand Pietà for his religious drama. The only part of Christianity he canenjoy is its horror; and even the saint and saintess are not alwaysdenying themselves severely, either by the contemplation of torture, orthe companionship with disease. 

Nevertheless, we must be cautious, on the other hand, to allow fullvalue to the endurance, by tender and delicate persons, of what isreally loathsome or distressful to them in the service of others; and Ithink this picture of Holbein's indicative of the exact balance andrightness of his own mind in this matter, and therefore of his power toconceive a true saint also. He had to represent St. Catherine's chiefeffort;--he paints her ministering to the sick, and, among them, is aleper; and finding it thus his duty to paint leprosy, he courageouslyhimself studies it from the life. Not to insist on its horror; but toassert it, to the needful point of fact, which he does with medicalaccuracy. 

Now here is just a case in which science, in a subordinate degree, isreally required for a spiritual and moral purpose. And you find Holbeindoes not shrink from it even in this extreme case in which it is mostpainful. 

168. If, therefore, you _do_ find him in other cases not using it, youmay be sure he knew it to be unnecessary. 

Now it may be disputable whether in order to draw a living Madonna, oneneeds to know how many ribs she has; but it would have seemedindisputable that in order to draw a skeleton, one must know how manyribs _it_ has. 

Holbein is par excellence the draughtsman of skeletons. His paintedDance of Death was, and his engraved Dance of Death is, principal ofsuch things, without any comparison or denial. He draws skeleton afterskeleton, in every possible gesture; but never so much as counts theirribs! He neither knows nor cares how many ribs a skeleton has. There arealways enough to rattle. 

Monstrous, you think, in impudence, --Holbein for his carelessness, and Ifor defending him! Nay, I triumph in him; nothing has ever more pleasedme than this grand negligence. Nobody wants to know how many ribs askeleton has, any more than how many bars a gridiron has, so long as theone can breathe, and the other broil; and still less, when the breathand the fire are both out. 

169. But is it only of the bones, think you, that Holbein iscareless?[AP] Nay, incredible though it may seem to you, --but, to me, explanatory at once of much of his excellence, --he did not know anatomyat all! I told you in my Preface, [AQ] already quoted, Holbein studiesthe face first, the body secondarily; but I had no idea, myself, howcompletely he had refused the venomous science of his day. I showed youa dead Christ of his, long ago. Can you match it with your academydrawings, think you? And yet he did not, and would not, know anatomy. _He_ would not; but Dürer would, and did:--went hotly into it--wrotebooks upon it, and upon 'proportions of the human body, ' etc. , etc. , andall your modern recipes for painting flesh. How did his studies prosperhis art?

People are always talking of his Knight and Death, and his Melancholia, as if those were his principal works. They are his characteristic ones, and show what he might have been _without_ his anatomy; but they weremere by-play compared to his Greater Fortune, and Adam and Eve. Look atthese. Here is his full energy displayed; here are both male and femaleforms drawn with perfect knowledge of their bones and muscles, and modesof action and digestion, --and I hope you are pleased. 

But it is not anatomy only that Master Albert studies. He has a tastefor optics also; and knows all about refraction and reflection. Whatwith his knowledge of the skull inside, and the vitreous lens outside, if any man in the world is to draw an eye, here's the man to do it, surely! With a hand which can give lessons to John Bellini, and a carewhich would fain do all so that it can't be done better, andacquaintance with every crack in the cranium, and every humor in thelens, --if we can't draw an eye, we should just like to know who can!thinks Albert. 

So having to engrave the portrait of Melanchthon, instead of looking atMelanchthon as ignorant Holbein would have been obliged to do, --wiseAlbert looks at the room window; and finds it has four cross-bars in it, and knows scientifically that the light on Melanchthon's eye must be areflection of the window with its four bars--and engraves it so, accordingly; and who shall dare to say, now, it isn't like Melanchthon?

Unfortunately, however, it isn't, nor like any other person in hissenses; but like a madman looking at somebody who disputes his hobby. While in this drawing of Holbein's, where a dim gray shadow leaves amere crumb of white paper, --accidentally it seems, for all the finescientific reflection, --behold, it is an eye indeed, and of a noblecreature. 

170. What is the reason? do you ask me; and is all the common teachingabout generalization of details true, then?

No; not a syllable of it is true. Holbein is right, not because he drawsmore generally, but more truly, than Dürer. Dürer draws what he knows isthere; but Holbein, only what he sees. And, as I have told you oftenbefore, the really scientific artist is he who not only asserts bravelywhat he _does_ see, but confesses honestly what he does _not_. You mustnot draw all the hairs in an eyelash; not because it is sublime togeneralize them, but because it is impossible to see them. How manyhairs there are, a sign painter or anatomist may count; but how few ofthem you can see, it is only the utmost masters, Carpaccio, Tintoret, Reynolds, and Velasquez, who count, or know. 

171. Such was the effect, then, of his science upon Dürer's ideal ofbeauty, and skill in portraiture. What effect had it on the temper andquantity of his work, as compared with poor ignorant Holbein's! You haveonly three portraits, by Dürer, of the great men of his time, and thosebad ones; while he toils his soul out to draw the hoofs of satyrs, thebristles of swine, and the distorted aspects of base women and viciousmen. 

What, on the contrary, has ignorant Holbein done for you? Shakespeareand he divide between them, by word and look, the Story of England underHenry and Elizabeth. 

172. Of the effect of science on the art of Mantegna and Marc Antonio, (far more deadly than on Dürer's, ) I must tell you in a futurelecture;--the effect of it on their minds, I must partly refer to now, in passing to the third head of my general statement--the influence ofnew Theology. For Dürer and Mantegna, chiefly because of their science, forfeited their place, not only as painters of men, but as servants ofGod. Neither of them has left one completely noble or completelydidactic picture; while Holbein and Botticelli, in consummate pieces ofart, led the way before the eyes of all men, to the purification oftheir Church and land. 

173. III. But the need of reformation presented itself to these two menlast named on entirely different terms. 

To Holbein, when the word of the Catholic Church proved false, and itsdeeds bloody; when he saw it selling permission of sin in his nativeAugsburg, and strewing the ashes of its enemies on the pure Alpinewaters of Constance, what refuge was there for _him_ in more ancientreligion? Shall he worship Thor again, and mourn over the death ofBalder? He reads Nature in her desolate and narrow truth, and sheteaches him the Triumph of Death. 

But, for Botticelli, the grand gods are old, are immortal. The priestsmay have taught falsely the story of the Virgin;--did they not also lie, in the name of Artemis, at Ephesus;--in the name of Aphrodite, atCyprus?--but shall, therefore, Chastity or Love be dead, or the fullmoon paler over Arno? Saints of Heaven and Gods of Earth!--shall _these_perish because vain men speak evil of them! Let _us_ speak good forever, and grave, as on the rock, for ages to come, the glory of Beauty, andthe triumph of Faith. 

174. Holbein had bitterer task. 

Of old, the one duty of the painter had been to exhibit the virtues ofthis life, and hopes of the life to come. Holbein had to show the vicesof this life, and to obscure the hope of the future. "Yes, we walkthrough the valley of the shadow of death, and fear all evil, for Thouart not with us, and Thy rod and Thy staff comfort us not. " He does notchoose this task. It is thrust upon him, --just as fatally as the burialof the dead is in a plague-struck city. These are the things he sees, and must speak. He will not become a better artist thereby; no drawingof supreme beauty, or beautiful things, will be possible to him. Yet wecannot say he ought to have done anything else, nor can we praise himspecially in doing this. It is his fate; the fate of all the bravest inthat day. 

[Illustration: THE CHILD'S BEDTIME. 

(Fig. 5) Facsimile from Holbein's woodcut. ]

175. For instance, there is no scene about which a shallow and feeblepainter would have been more sure to adopt the commonplaces of the creedof his time than the death of a child, --chiefly, and most of all, thedeath of a country child, --a little thing fresh from the cottage and thefield. Surely for such an one, angels will wait by its sick bed, andrejoice as they bear its soul away; and over its shroud flowers will bestrewn, and the birds will sing by its grave. So your commonsentimentalist would think, and paint. Holbein sees the facts, as theyverily are, up to the point when vision ceases. He speaks, then, nomore. 

The country laborer's cottage--the rain coming through its roof, theclay crumbling from its partitions, the fire lighted with a few chipsand sticks on a raised piece of the mud floor, --such dais as can becontrived, for use, not for honor. The damp wood sputters; the smoke, stopped by the roof, though the rain is not, coils round again, anddown. But the mother can warm the child's supper of bread and milkso--holding the pan by the long handle; and on mud floor though it be, they are happy, --she, and her child, and its brother, --if only theycould be left so. They shall not be left so: the young thing must leavethem--will never need milk warmed for it any more. It would fainstay, --sees no angels--feels only an icy grip on its hand, and that itcannot stay. Those who loved it shriek and tear their hair in vain, amazed in grief. 'Oh, little one, must you lie out in the fields then, not even under this poor torn roof of thy mother's to-night?'

[Illustration: "HE THAT HATH EARS TO HEAR, LET HIM HEAR. "

(Fig. 6) Facsimile from Holbein's woodcut. ]

176. Again: there was not in the old creed any subject more definitelyand constantly insisted on than the death of a miser. He had been happy, the old preachers thought, till then: but his hour has come; and theblack covetousness of hell is awake and watching; the sharp harpy clawswill clutch his soul out of his mouth, and scatter his treasure forothers. So the commonplace preacher and painter taught. Not so Holbein. The devil want to snatch his soul, indeed! Nay, he never _had_ a soul, but of the devil's giving. His misery to begin on his death-bed! Nay, hehad never an unmiserable hour of life. The fiend is with him now, --apaltry, abortive fiend, with no breath even to blow hot with. Hesupplies the hell-blast _with a machine_. It is winter, and the rich manhas his furred cloak and cap, thick and heavy; the beggar, bare-headedto beseech him, skin and rags hanging about him together, touches hisshoulder, but all in vain; there is other business in hand. More haggardthan the beggar himself, wasted and palsied, the rich man counts withhis fingers the gain of the years to come. 

But of those years, infinite that are to be, Holbein says nothing. 'Iknow not; I see not. This only I see, on this very winter's day, the lowpale stumbling-block at your feet, the altogether by you unseen andforgotten Death. You shall not pass _him_ by on the other side; here isa fasting figure in skin and bone, at last, that will stop you; and forall the hidden treasures of earth, here is your spade: dig now, and findthem. '

177. I have said that Holbein was condemned to teach these things. Hewas not happy in teaching them, nor thanked for teaching them. Nor wasBotticelli for his lovelier teaching. But they both could do nootherwise. They lived in truth and steadfastness; and with both, intheir marvelous design, veracity is the beginning of invention, and loveits end. 

I have but time to show you, in conclusion, how this affectionateself-forgetfulness protects Holbein from the chief calamity of theGerman temper, vanity, which is at the root of all Dürer's weakness. Here is a photograph of Holbein's portrait of Erasmus, and a fine proofof Dürer's. In Holbein's, the face leads everything; and the most lovelyqualities of the face lead in that. The cloak and cap are perfectlypainted, just because you look at them neither more nor less than youwould have looked at the cloak in reality. You don't say, 'Howbrilliantly they are touched, ' as you would with Rembrandt; nor 'Howgracefully they are neglected, ' as you would with Gainsborough; nor 'Howexquisitely they are shaded, ' as you would with Lionardo; nor 'Howgrandly they are composed, ' as you would with Titian. You say only, 'Erasmus is surely there; and what a pleasant sight!' You don't think ofHolbein at all. He has not even put in the minutest letter H, that I cansee, to remind you of him. Drops his H's, I regret to say, often enough. 'My hand should be enough for you; what matters my name?' But now, lookat Dürer's. The very first thing you see, and at any distance, is thisgreat square tablet with

 "The image of Erasmus, drawn from the life by Albert Dürer, 1526, "

and a great straddling A. D. Besides. Then you see a cloak, and a table, and a pot, with flowers in it, and a heap of books with all theirleaves and all their clasps, and all the little bits of leather gummedin to mark the places; and last of all you see Erasmus's face; and whenyou do see it, the most of it is wrinkles. 

All egotism and insanity, this, gentlemen. Hard words to use; but nottoo hard to define the faults which rendered so much of Dürer's greatgenius abortive, and to this day paralyze, among the details of alifeless and ambitious precision, the student, no less than the artist, of German blood. For too many an Erasmus, too many a Dürer, among them, the world is all cloak and clasp, instead of face or book; and the firstobject of their lives is to engrave their initials. 

178. For us, in England, not even so much is at present to be hoped; andyet, singularly enough, it is more our modesty, unwisely submissive, than our vanity, which has destroyed our English school of engraving. 

At the bottom of the pretty line engravings which used to represent, characteristically, our English skill, one saw always _two_inscriptions. At the left-hand corner, "Drawn by--so-and-so;" at theright-hand corner, "Engraved by--so-and-so. " Only under the worst andcheapest plates--for the Stationers' Almanack, or the like--one sawsometimes, "Drawn and engraved by--so-and-so, " which meant nothing morethan that the publisher would not go to the expense of an artist, andthat the engraver haggled through as he could. (One fortunate exception, gentlemen, you have in the old drawings for your Oxford Almanack, thoughthe publishers, I have no doubt, even in that case, employed thecheapest artist they could find. [AR]) But in general, no engraverthought himself able to draw; and no artist thought it his business toengrave. 

179. But the fact that this and the following lecture are on the subjectof design in engraving, implies of course that in the work we have toexamine, it was often the engraver himself who designed, and as oftenthe artist who engraved. 

And you will observe that the only engravings which bear imperishablevalue are, indeed, in this kind. It is true that, in wood-cutting, bothDürer and Holbein, as in our own days Leech and Tenniel, have workmenunder them who can do all they want. But in metal cutting it is not so. For, as I have told you, in metal cutting, ultimate perfection of Linehas to be reached; and it can be reached by none but a master's hand;nor by his, unless in the very moment and act of designing. Never, unless under the vivid first force of imagination and intellect, can theLine have its full value. And for this high reason, gentlemen, thatparadox which perhaps seemed to you so daring, is nevertheless deeplyand finally true, that while a woodcut may be laboriously finished, agrand engraving on metal must be comparatively incomplete. For it mustbe done, throughout, with the full fire of temper in it, visiblygoverning its lines, as the wind does the fibers of cloud. 

180. The value hitherto attached to Rembrandt's etchings, and othersimitating them, depends on a true instinct in the public mind for thisvirtue of line. But etching is an indolent and blundering method at thebest; and I do not doubt that you will one day be grateful for thesevere disciplines of drawing required in these schools, in that theywill have enabled you to know what a line may be, driven by a master'schisel on silver or marble, following, and fostering as it follows, theinstantaneous strength of his determined thought. 

FOOTNOTES:

[AG] If you paint a bottle only to amuse the spectator by showing himhow like a painting may be to a bottle, you cannot be considered, inart-philosophy, as a designer. But if you paint the cork flying out ofthe bottle, and the contents arriving in an arch at the mouth of arecipient glass, you are so far forth a designer or signer; probablymeaning to express certain ultimate facts respecting, say, thehospitable disposition of the landlord of the house; but at all eventsrepresenting the bottle and glass in a designed, and not merely natural, manner. Not merely natural--nay, in some sense non-natural, orsupernatural. And all great artists show both this fantastic conditionof mind in their work, and show that it has arisen out of acommunicative or didactic purpose. They are the Signpainters of God. 

I have added this note to the lecture in copying my memoranda of it hereat Assisi, June 9th, being about to begin work in the Tavern, orTabernaculum, of the Lower Church, with its variously significant fourgreat 'signs. '

[AH] Plate X. , Lecture VI. 

[AI] I do not mean the greatest teacher of reformed faith; but thegreatest protestant against faith unreformed. 

[AJ] It has become the permitted fashion among modern mathematicians, chemists, and apothecaries, to call themselves 'scientific men, ' asopposed to theologians, poets, and artists. They know their sphere to bea separate one; but their ridiculous notion of its being a peculiarlyscientific one ought not to be allowed in our Universities. There is ascience of Morals, a science of History, a science of Grammar, a scienceof Music, and a science of Painting; and all these are quite beyondcomparison higher fields for human intellect, and require accuracies ofintenser observation, than either chemistry, electricity, or geology. 

[AK] The Cumaean Sibyl, Plate VII. , Lecture VI. 

[AL] Lecture III. , § 101. 

[AM] I read somewhere, lately, a new and very ingenious theory about theattitude of the Apollo Belvedere, proving, to the author's satisfaction, that the received notion about watching the arrow was all a mistake. Thepaper proved, at all events, one thing--namely, the statement in thetext. For an attitude which has been always hitherto taken to mean onething, and is plausibly asserted now to mean another, must be in itselfunintelligible. 

[AN] It may be asked, why not corn also? Because that belongs to Ceres, who is equally one of the great gods. 

[AO] "Aratra Pentelici, " § 181. 

[AP] Or inventive! See Woltmann, p. 267. "The shinbone, or the lowerpart of the arm, exhibits only one bone, while the upper arm and thighare often allowed the luxury of two!"

[AQ] See ante, § 141. The "preface" is that to "The Eagle's Nest. "

[AR] The drawings were made by Turner, and are now among the chieftreasures of the Oxford Galleries. I ought to add some notice of Hogarthto this lecture in the Appendix; but fear I shall have no time: besides, though I have profound respect for Hogarth, as, in literature, I havefor Fielding, I can't criticise them, because I know nothing of theirsubjects. 

 LECTURE VI. 

 DESIGN IN THE FLORENTINE SCHOOLS OF ENGRAVING. 

181. In the first of these lectures, I stated to you their subject, asthe investigation of the engraved work of a group of men, to whomengraving, as a means of popular address, was above all precious, because their art was distinctively didactic. 

Some of my hearers must be aware that, of late years, the assertion thatart should be didactic has been clamorously and violently derided by thecountless crowd of artists who have nothing to represent, and of writerswho have nothing to say; and that the contrary assertion--that artconsists only in pretty colors and fine words, --is accepted, readilyenough, by a public which rarely pauses to look at a picture withattention, or read a sentence with understanding. 

182. Gentlemen, believe me, there never was any great advancing art yet, nor can be, without didactic purpose. The leaders of the strong schoolsare, and must be always, either teachers of theology, or preachers ofthe moral law. I need not tell you that it was as teachers of theologyon the walls of the Vatican that the masters with whose names you aremost familiar obtained their perpetual fame. But however great theirfame, you have not practically, I imagine, ever been materially assistedin your preparation for the schools either of philosophy or divinity byRaphael's 'School of Athens, ' by Raphael's 'Theology, '--or by MichaelAngelo's 'Judgment. ' My task, to-day, is to set before you some part ofthe design of the first Master of the works in the Sistine Chapel; and Ibelieve that, from his teaching, you will, even in the hour which I askyou now to give, learn what may be of true use to you in all your futurelabor, whether in Oxford or elsewhere. 

183. You have doubtless, in the course of these lectures, beenoccasionally surprised by my speaking of Holbein and Sandro Botticelli, as Reformers, in the same tone of respect, and with the same impliedassertion of their intellectual power and agency, with which it is usualto speak of Luther and Savonarola. You have been accustomed, indeed, tohear painting and sculpture spoken of as supporting or enforcing Churchdoctrine; but never as reforming or chastising it. Whether Protestant orRoman Catholic, you have admitted what in the one case you held to bethe abuse of painting in the furtherance of idolatry, --in the other, itsamiable and exalting ministry to the feebleness of faith. But neitherhas recognized, --the Protestant his ally, --or the Catholic his enemy, inthe far more earnest work of the great painters of the fifteenthcentury. The Protestant was, in most cases, too vulgar to understand theaid offered to him by painting; and in all cases too terrified tobelieve in it. He drove the gift-bringing Greek with imprecations fromhis sectarian fortress, or received him within it only on the conditionthat he should speak no word of religion there. 

184. On the other hand, the Catholic, in most cases too indolent toread, and, in all, too proud to dread, the rebuke of the reformingpainters, confused them with the crowd of his old flatterers, and littlenoticed their altered language or their graver brow. In a little while, finding they had ceased to be amusing, he effaced their works, not asdangerous, but as dull; and recognized only thenceforward, as art, theinnocuous bombast of Michael Angelo, and fluent efflorescence ofBernini. But when you become more intimately and impartially acquaintedwith the history of the Reformation, you will find that, as surely andearnestly as Memling and Giotto strove in the north and south to setforth and exalt the Catholic faith, so surely and earnestly did Holbeinand Botticelli strive, in the north, to chastise, and, in the south, torevive it. In what manner, I will try to-day briefly to show you. 

185. I name these two men as the reforming leaders: there were many, rank and file, who worked in alliance with Holbein; with Botticelli, twogreat ones, Lippi and Perugino. But both of these had so much pleasurein their own pictorial faculty, that they strove to keep quiet, and outof harm's way, --involuntarily manifesting themselves sometimes, however;and not in the wisest manner. Lippi's running away with a novice was notlikely to be understood as a step in Church reformation correspondent toLuther's marriage. [AS] Nor have Protestant divines, even to this day, recognized the real meaning of the reports of Perugino's 'infidelity. 'Botticelli, the pupil of the one, and the companion of the other, heldthe truths they taught him through sorrow as well as joy; and he is thegreatest of the reformers, because he preached without blame; though theleast known, because he died without victory. 

I had hoped to be able to lay before you some better biography of himthan the traditions of Vasari, of which I gave a short abstract sometime back in Fors Clavigera (Letter XXII. ); but as yet I have only addedinternal evidence to the popular story, the more important points ofwhich I must review briefly. It will not waste your time if Iread, --instead of merely giving you reference to, --the passages on whichI must comment. 

186. "His father, Mariano Filipepi, a Florentine citizen, brought him upwith care, and caused him to be instructed in all such things as areusually taught to children before they choose a calling. But althoughthe boy readily acquired whatever he wished to learn, yet was heconstantly discontented; neither would he take any pleasure in reading, writing, or accounts, insomuch that the father, disturbed by theeccentric habits of his son, turned him over in despair to a gossip ofhis, called Botticello, who was a goldsmith, and considered a verycompetent master of his art, to the intent that the boy might learn thesame. "

"He took no pleasure in reading, writing, nor accounts"! You will findthe same thing recorded of Cimabue; but it is more curious when statedof a man whom I cite to you as typically a gentleman and a scholar. Butremember, in those days, though there were not so many entirely correctbooks issued by the Religious Tract Society for boys to read, there werea great many more pretty things in the world for boys to see. The Vald'Arno was Pater-noster Row to purpose; their Father's Row, with booksof His writing on the mountain shelves. And the lad takes to looking atthings, and thinking about them, instead of reading about them, --which Icommend to you also, as much the more scholarly practice of the two. Tothe end, though he knows all about the celestial hierarchies, he is notstrong in his letters, nor in his dialect. I asked Mr. Tyrwhitt to helpme through with a bit of his Italian the other day. Mr. Tyrwhitt couldonly help me by suggesting that it was "Botticelli for so-and-so. " Andone of the minor reasons which induced me so boldly to attribute thesesibyls to him, instead of Bandini, is that the lettering is so ill done. The engraver would assuredly have had his lettering all right, --or atleast neat. Botticelli blunders through it, scratches impatiently outwhen he goes wrong: and as I told you there's no repentance in theengraver's trade, leaves all the blunders visible. 

187. I may add one fact bearing on this question lately communicated tome. [AT] In the autumn of 1872 I possessed myself of an Italian book ofpen drawings, some, I have no doubt, by Mantegna in his youth, others bySandro himself. In examining these, I was continually struck by thecomparatively feeble and blundering way in which the titles werewritten, while all the rest of the handling was really superb; and stillmore surprised when, on the sleeves and hem of the robe of one of theprincipal figures of women, ("Helena rapita da Paris, ") I found whatseemed to be meant for inscriptions, intricately embroidered; whichnevertheless, though beautifully drawn, I could not read. In copyingBotticelli's Zipporah this spring, I found the border of her robewrought with characters of the same kind, which a young painter, workingwith me, who already knows the minor secrets of Italian art better thanI, [AU] assures me are letters, --and letters of a language hithertoundeciphered. 

188. "There was at that time a close connection and almost constantintercourse between the goldsmiths and the painters, wherefore Sandro, who possessed considerable ingenuity, and was strongly disposed to thearts of design, became enamored of painting, and resolved to devotehimself entirely to that vocation. He acknowledged his purpose at onceto his father; and the latter, who knew the force of his inclination, took him accordingly to the Carmelite monk, Fra Filippo, who was a mostexcellent painter of that time, with whom he placed him to study theart, as Sandro himself had desired. Devoting himself thereupon entirelyto the vocation he had chosen, Sandro so closely followed thedirections, and imitated the manner, of his master, that Fra Filippoconceived a great love for him, and instructed him so effectually, thatSandro rapidly attained to such a degree in art as none would havepredicted for him. "

I have before pointed out to you the importance of training by thegoldsmith. Sandro got more good of it, however, than any of the otherpainters so educated, --being enabled by it to use gold for light tocolor, in a glowing harmony never reached with equal perfection, andrarely attempted, in the later schools. To the last, his paintings arepartly treated as work in niello; and he names himself, in perpetualgratitude, from this first artisan master. Nevertheless, the fortunatefellow finds, at the right moment, another, even more to his mind, andis obedient to him through his youth, as to the other through hischildhood. And this master loves him; and instructs him 'soeffectually, '--in grinding colors, do you suppose, only; or in laying oflines only; or in anything more than these?

189. I will tell you what Lippi must have taught any boy whom he loved. First, humility, and to live in joy and peace, injuring no man--if suchinnocence might be. Nothing is so manifest in every face by him, as itsgentleness and rest. Secondly, to finish his work perfectly, and in suchtemper that the angels might say of it--not he himself--'Iste perfecitopus. ' Do you remember what I told you in the Eagle's Nest (§ 53), thattrue humility was in hoping that angels might sometimes admire _our_work; not in hoping that we should ever be able to admire _theirs_?Thirdly, --a little thing it seems, but was a great one, --love offlowers. No one draws such lilies or such daisies as Lippi. Botticellibeat him afterwards in roses, but never in lilies. Fourthly, due honorfor classical tradition. Lippi is the only religious painter who dressesJohn Baptist in the camelskin, as the Greeks dressed Heracles in thelion's--over the head. Lastly, and chiefly of all, --Le Père Hyacinthetaught his pupil certain views about the doctrine of the Church, whichthe boy thought of more deeply than his tutor, and that by a great deal;and Master Sandro presently got himself into such question for paintingheresy, that if he had been as hot-headed as he was true-hearted, hewould soon have come to bad end by the tar-barrel. But he is so sweetand so modest, that nobody is frightened; so clever, that everybody ispleased: and at last, actually the Pope sends for him to paint his ownprivate chapel, --where the first thing my young gentleman does, mindyou, is to paint the devil in a monk's dress, tempting Christ! Thesauciest thing, out and out, done in the history of the Reformation, itseems to me; yet so wisely done, and with such true respect otherwiseshown for what was sacred in the Church, that the Pope didn't mind: andall went on as merrily as marriage bells. 

190. I have anticipated, however, in telling you this, the proper courseof his biography, to which I now return. 

"While still a youth he painted the figure of Fortitude, among thosepictures of the Virtues which Antonio and Pietro Pollaiuolo wereexecuting in the Mercatanzia, or Tribunal of Commerce, in Florence. InSanto Spirito, a church of the same city, he painted a picture for thechapel of the Bardi family: this work he executed with great diligence, and finished it very successfully, depicting certain olive and palmtrees therein with extraordinary care. "

It is by a beautiful chance that the first work of his, specified by hisItalian biographer, should be the Fortitude. [AV] Note also what is saidof his tree drawing. 

"Having, in consequence of this work, obtained much credit andreputation, Sandro was appointed by the Guild of Porta Santa Maria topaint a picture in San Marco, the subject of which is the Coronation ofOur Lady, who is surrounded by a choir of angels--the whole extremelywell designed, and finished by the artist with infinite care. Heexecuted various works in the Medici Palace for the elder Lorenzo, moreparticularly a figure of Pallas on a shield wreathed with vine branches, whence flames are proceeding: this he painted of the size of life. A SanSebastiano was also among the most remarkable of the works executed forLorenzo. In the church of Santa Maria Maggiore, in Florence, is a Pietà, with small figures, by this master: this is a very beautiful work. Fordifferent houses in various parts of the city Sandro painted manypictures of a round form, with numerous figures of women undraped. Ofthese there are still two examples at Castello, a villa of the DukeCosimo, --one representing the birth of Venus, who is borne to earth bythe Loves and Zephyrs; the second also presenting the figure of Venuscrowned with flowers by the Graces: she is here intended to denote theSpring, and the allegory is expressed by the painter with extraordinarygrace. "

Our young Reformer enters, it seems, on a very miscellaneous course ofstudy; the Coronation of Our Lady; St. Sebastian; Pallas invine-leaves; and Venus, --without fig-leaves. Not wholly Calvinistic, FraFilippo's teaching seems to have been! All the better for the boy--beingsuch a boy as he was: but I cannot in this lecture enter farther into myreasons for saying so. 

191. Vasari, however, has shot far ahead in telling us of this pictureof the Spring, which is one of Botticelli's completest works. Longbefore he was able to paint Greek nymphs, he had done his best inidealism of greater spirits; and, while yet quite a youth, painted, atCastello, the Assumption of Our Lady, with "the patriarchs, theprophets, the apostles, the evangelists, the martyrs, the confessors, the doctors, the virgins, and the hierarchies!"

Imagine this subject proposed to a young, (or even old) British Artist, for his next appeal to public sensation at the Academy! But do yousuppose that the young British artist is wiser and more civilized thanLippi's scholar, because his only idea of a patriarch is of a man with along beard; of a doctor, the M. D. With the brass plate over the way; andof a virgin, Miss ---- of the ---- theater?

Not that even Sandro was able, according to Vasari's report, to conductthe entire design himself. The proposer of the subject assisted him; andthey made some modifications in the theology, which brought them bothinto trouble--so early did Sandro's innovating work begin, into whichsubjects our gossiping friend waives unnecessary inquiry, as follows. 

"But although this picture is exceedingly beautiful, and ought to haveput envy to shame, yet there were found certain malevolent andcensorious persons who, not being able to affix any other blame to thework, declared that Matteo and Sandro had erred gravely in that matter, and had fallen into grievous heresy. 

"Now, whether this be true or not, let none expect the judgment of thatquestion from me: it shall suffice me to note that the figures executedby Sandro in that work are entirely worthy of praise; and that the painshe took in depicting those circles of the heavens must have been verygreat, to say nothing of the angels mingled with the other figures, orof the various foreshortenings, all which are designed in a very goodmanner. 

"About this time Sandro received a commission to paint a small picturewith figures three parts of a braccio high, --the subject an Adoration ofthe Magi. 

"It is indeed a most admirable work; the composition, the design, andthe coloring are so beautiful that every artist who examines it isastonished; and, at the time, it obtained so great a name in Florence, and other places, for the master, that Pope Sixtus IV. Having erectedthe chapel built by him in his palace at Rome, and desiring to have itadorned with paintings, commanded that Sandro Botticelli should beappointed Superintendent of the work. "

192. Vasari's words, "about this time, " are evidently wrong. It musthave been many and many a day after he painted Matteo's picture that hetook such high standing in Florence as to receive the mastership of theworks in the Pope's chapel at Rome. Of his position and doings there, Iwill tell you presently; meantime, let us complete the story of hislife. 

"By these works Botticelli obtained great honor and reputation among themany competitors who were laboring with him, whether Florentines ornatives of other cities, and received from the Pope a considerable sumof money; but this he consumed and squandered totally, during hisresidence in Rome, where he lived without due care, as was his habit. "

193. Well, but one would have liked to hear _how_ he squandered hismoney, and whether he was without care--of other things than money. 

It is just possible, Master Vasari, that Botticelli may have laid outhis money at higher interest than you know of; meantime, he is advancingin life and thought, and becoming less and less comprehensible to hisbiographer. And at length, having got rid, somehow, of the money hereceived from the Pope; and finished the work he had to do, anduncovered it, --free in conscience, and empty in purse, he returned toFlorence, where, "being a sophistical person, he made a comment on apart of Dante, and drew the Inferno, and put it in engraving, in whichhe consumed much time; and not working for this reason, brought infinitedisorder into his affairs. "

194. Unpaid work, this engraving of Dante, you perceive, --consuming muchtime also, and not appearing to Vasari to be work at all. It is but ashort sentence, gentlemen, --this, in the old edition of Vasari, andobscurely worded, --a very foolish person's contemptuous report of athing to him totally incomprehensible. But the thing itself isout-and-out the most important fact in the history of the religious artof Italy. I can show you its significance in not many more words thanhave served to record it. 

Botticelli had been painting in Rome; and had expressly chosen torepresent there, --being Master of Works, in the presence of the Defenderof the Faith, --the foundation of the Mosaic law; to his mind the EternalLaw of God, --that law of which modern Evangelicals sing perpetuallytheir own original psalm, "Oh, how hate I Thy law! it is my abominationall the day. " Returning to Florence, he reads Dante's vision of the Hellcreated by its violation. He knows that the pictures he has painted inRome cannot be understood by the people; they are exclusively for thebest trained scholars in the Church. Dante, on the other hand, can onlybe read in manuscript; but the people could and would understand _his_lessons, if they were pictured in accessible and enduring form. Hethrows all his own lauded work aside, --all for which he is most honored, and in which his now matured and magnificent skill is as easy to him assinging to a perfect musician. And he sets himself to a servile anddespised labor, --his friends mocking him, his resources failing him, infinite 'disorder' getting into his affairs--of this world. 

195. Never such another thing happened in Italy any more. Botticelliengraved her Pilgrim's Progress for her, putting himself in prison todo it. She would not read it when done. Raphael and Marc Antonio werethe theologians for her money. Pretty Madonnas, and satyrs withabundance of tail, --let our pilgrim's progress be in _these_ directions, if you please. 

Botticelli's own pilgrimage, however, was now to be accomplishedtriumphantly, with such crowning blessings as Heaven might grant to him. In spite of his friends and his disordered affairs, he went his ownobstinate way; and found another man's words worth engraving as well asDante's; not without perpetuating, also, what he deemed worthy of hisown. 

196. What would that be, think you? His chosen works before the Pope inRome?--his admired Madonnas in Florence?--his choirs of angels andthickets of flowers? Some few of these yes, as you shall presently see;but "the best attempt of this kind from his hand is the Triumph ofFaith, by Fra Girolamo Savonarola, of Ferrara, of whose sect our artistwas so zealous a partisan that he totally abandoned painting, and nothaving any other means of living, he fell into very great difficulties. But his attachment to the party he had adopted increased; he became whatwas then called a Piagnone, or Mourner, and abandoned all labor;insomuch that, finding himself at length become old, being also verypoor, he must have died of hunger had he not been supported by Lorenzode' Medici, for whom he had worked at the small hospital of Volterra andother places, who assisted him while he lived, as did other friends andadmirers of his talents. "

197. In such dignity and independence--having employed his talents notwholly at the orders of the dealer--died, a poor bedesman of Lorenzo de'Medici, the President of that high academy of art in Rome, whoseAcademicians were Perugino, Ghirlandajo, Angelico, and Signorelli; andwhose students, Michael Angelo and Raphael. 

'A worthless, ill-conducted fellow on the whole, ' thinks Vasari, 'with acrazy fancy for scratching on copper. '

Well, here are some of the scratches for you to see; only, first, I mustask you seriously for a few moments to consider what the two powerswere, which, with this iron pen of his, he has set himself to reprove. 

198. Two great forms of authority reigned over the entire civilizedworld, confessedly, and by name, in the Middle Ages. They reign over itstill, and must forever, though at present very far from confessed; and, in most places, ragingly denied. 

The first power is that of the Teacher, or true Father; the Father 'inGod. ' It may be--happy the children to whom it is--the actual fatheralso; and whose parents have been their tutors. But, for the most part, it will be some one else who teaches them, and molds their minds andbrain. All such teaching, when true, being from above, and coming downfrom the Father of Lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadowof turning, is properly that of the holy Catholic '[Greek: ekklêsia], 'council, church, or papacy, of many fathers in God, not of one. Eternally powerful and divine; reverenced of all humble and lowlyscholars, in Jewry, in Greece, in Rome, in Gaul, in England, and beyondsea, from Arctic zone to zone. 

The second authority is the power of National Law, enforcing justice inconduct by due reward and punishment. Power vested necessarily inmagistrates capable of administering it with mercy and equity; whoseauthority, be it of many or few, is again divine, as proceeding from theKing of kings, and was acknowledged, throughout civilized Christendom, as the power of the Holy Empire, or Holy Roman Empire, because firstthroned in Rome; but it is forever also acknowledged, namelessly, or byname, by all loyal, obedient, just, and humble hearts, which trulydesire that, whether for them or against them, the eternal equities anddooms of Heaven should be pronounced and executed; and as the wisdom orword of their Father should be taught, so the will of their Fathershould be done, on earth, as it is in heaven. 

199. You all here know what contention, first, and then what corruptionand dishonor, had paralyzed these two powers before the days of which wenow speak. Reproof, and either reform or rebellion, became necessaryeverywhere. The northern Reformers, Holbein, and Luther, and Henry, andCromwell, set themselves to their task rudely, and, it might seem, carried it through. The southern Reformers, Dante, and Savonarola, andBotticelli, set hand to their task reverently, and, it seemed, did notby any means carry it through. But the end is not yet. 

200. Now I shall endeavor to-day to set before you the art ofBotticelli, especially as exhibiting the modesty of great imaginationtrained in reverence, which characterized the southern Reformers; and asopposed to the immodesty of narrow imagination, trained in self-trust, which characterized the northern Reformers. 

'The modesty of great _imagination_;' that is to say, of the power whichconceives all things in true relation, and not only as they affectourselves. I can show you this most definitely by taking one example ofthe modern, and unschooled temper, in Bewick;[AW] and setting it besideBotticelli's treatment of the same subject of thought, --namely, themeaning of war, and the reforms necessary in the carrying on of war. 

201. Both the men are entirely at one in their purpose. They yearn forpeace and justice to rule over the earth, instead of the sword; but seehow differently they will say what is in their hearts to the people theyaddress. To Bewick, war was more an absurdity than it was a horror: hehad not seen battle-fields, still less had he read of them, in ancientdays. He cared nothing about heroes, --Greek, Roman, or Norman. What heknew, and saw clearly, was that Farmer Hodge's boy went out of thevillage one holiday afternoon, a fine young fellow, rather drunk, witha colored ribbon in his hat; and came back, ten years afterwards, withone leg, one eye, an old red coat, and a tobacco-pipe in the pocket ofit. That is what he has got to say, mainly. So, for the pathetic side ofthe business, he draws you two old soldiers meeting as bricklayers'laborers; and for the absurd side of it, he draws a stone, slopingsideways with age, in a bare field, on which you can just read, out of along inscription, the words "glorious victory;" but no one is there toread them, --only a jackass, who uses the stone to scratch himselfagainst. 

202. Now compare with this Botticelli's reproof of war. _He_ had seenit, and often; and between noble persons;--knew the temper in which thenoblest knights went out to it;--knew the strength, the patience, theglory, and the grief of it. He would fain see his Florence in peace; andyet he knows that the wisest of her citizens are her bravest soldiers. So he seeks for the ideal of a soldier, and for the greatest glory ofwar, that in the presence of these he may speak reverently, what he mustspeak. He does not go to Greece for his hero. He is not sure that evenher patriotic wars were always right. But, by his religious faith, hecannot doubt the nobleness of the soldier who put the children of Israelin possession of their promised land, and to whom the sign of theconsent of heaven was given by its pausing light in the valley ofAjalon. Must then setting sun and risen moon stay, he thinks, only tolook upon slaughter? May no soldier of Christ bid them stay otherwisethan so? He draws Joshua, but quitting his hold of the sword: its hiltrests on his bent knee; and he kneels before the sun, not commands it;and this is his prayer:--

"Oh, King of kings, and Lord of lords, who alone rulest always ineternity, and who correctest all our wanderings, --Giver of melody to thechoir of the angels, listen Thou a little to our bitter grief, and comeand rule us, oh Thou highest King, with Thy love which is so sweet!"

Is not that a little better, and a little wiser, than Bewick's jackass?Is it not also better, and wiser, than the sneer of modern science?'What great men are we!--we, forsooth, can make almanacs, and know thatthe earth turns round. Joshua indeed! Let us have no more talk of theold-clothes-man. '

All Bewick's simplicity is in that; but none of Bewick's understanding. 

203. I pass to the attack made by Botticelli upon the guilt of wealth. So I had at first written; but I should rather have written, the appealmade by him against the cruelty of wealth, then first attaining thepower it has maintained to this day. 

The practice of receiving interest had been confined, until thisfifteenth century, with contempt and malediction, to the profession, sostyled, of usurers, or to the Jews. The merchants of Augsburg introducedit as a convenient and pleasant practice among Christians also; andinsisted that it was decorous and proper even among respectablemerchants. In the view of the Christian Church of their day, they mightmore reasonably have set themselves to defend adultery. [AX] However, they appointed Dr. John Eck, of Ingoldstadt, to hold debates in allpossible universities, at their expense, on the allowing of interest;and as these Augsburgers had in Venice their special mart, Fondaco, called of the Germans, their new notions came into direct collision withold Venetian ones, and were much hindered by them, and all the more, because, in opposition to Dr. John Eck, there was preaching on the otherside of the Alps. The Franciscans, poor themselves, preached mercy tothe poor: one of them, Brother Marco of San Gallo, planned the 'Mount ofPity' for their defense, and the merchants of Venice set up the first inthe world, against the German Fondaco. The dispute burned far on towardsour own times. You perhaps have heard before of one Antonio, a merchantof Venice, who persistently retained the then obsolete practice oflending money gratis, and of the peril it brought him into with theusurers. But you perhaps did not before know why it was the flesh, orheart of flesh, in him, that they so hated. 

204. Against this newly risen demon of authorized usury, Holbein andBotticelli went out to war together. Holbein, as we have partly seen inhis designs for the Dance of Death, struck with all his soldier'sstrength. [AY] Botticelli uses neither satire nor reproach. He turnsaltogether away from the criminals; appeals only to heaven for defenseagainst them. He engraves the design which, of all his work, must havecost him hardest toil in its execution, --the Virgin praying to her Sonin heaven for pity upon the poor: "For these are also my children. "[AZ]Underneath, are the seven works of Mercy; and in the midst of them, thebuilding of the Mount of Pity: in the distance lies Italy, mapped incape and bay, with the cities which had founded mounts of pity, --Venicein the distance, chief. Little seen, but engraved with the master'sloveliest care, in the background there is a group of two smallfigures--the Franciscan brother kneeling, and an angel of Victorycrowning him. 

205. I call it an angel of Victory, observe, with assurance; althoughthere is no legend claiming victory, or distinguishing this angel fromany other of those which adorn with crowns of flowers the namelesscrowds of the blessed. For Botticelli has other ways of speaking than bywritten legends. I know by a glance at this angel that he has taken theaction of it from a Greek coin; and I know also that he had not, in hisown exuberant fancy, the least need to copy the action of any figurewhatever. So I understand, as well as if he spoke to me, that he expectsme, if I am an educated gentleman, to recognize this particular actionas a Greek angel's; and to know that it is a temporal victory which itcrowns. 

206. And now farther, observe, that this classical learning ofBotticelli's, received by him, as I told you, as a native element of hisbeing, gives not only greater dignity and gentleness, but far widerrange, to his thoughts of Reformation. As he asks for pity from thecruel Jew to the _poor_ Gentile, so he asks for pity from the proudChristian to the _untaught_ Gentile. Nay, for more than pity, forfellowship, and acknowledgment of equality before God. The learned menof his age in general brought back the Greek mythology asanti-Christian. But Botticelli and Perugino, as pre-Christian; nor onlyas pre-Christian, but as the foundation of Christianity. But chieflyBotticelli, with perfect grasp of the Mosaic and classic theology, thought over and seized the harmonies of both; and he it was who gavethe conception of that great choir of the prophets and sibyls, of whichMichael Angelo, more or less ignorantly borrowing it in the SistineChapel, in great part lost the meaning, while he magnified the aspect. 

207. For, indeed, all Christian and heathen mythology had alike becometo Michael Angelo only a vehicle for the display of his own powers ofdrawing limbs and trunks: and having resolved, and made the world of hisday believe, that all the glory of design lay in variety of difficultattitude, he flings the naked bodies about his ceiling with anupholsterer's ingenuity of appliance to the corners they could fit, butwith total absence of any legible meaning. Nor do I suppose that oneperson in a million, even of those who have some acquaintance with theearlier masters, takes patience in the Sistine Chapel to conceive theoriginal design. But Botticelli's mastership of the works evidently wasgiven to him as a theologian, even more than as a painter; and themoment when he came to Rome to receive it, you may hold for the crisisof the Reformation in Italy. The main effort to save her priesthood wasabout to be made by her wisest Reformer, --face to face with the head ofher Church, --not in contest with him, but in the humblest subjection tohim; and in adornment of his own chapel for his own delight, and morethan delight, if it might be. 

208. Sandro brings to work, not under him, but with him, the three otherstrongest and worthiest men he knows, Perugino, Ghirlandajo, and LucaSignorelli. There is evidently entire fellowship in thought betweenBotticelli and Perugino. They two together plan the whole; andBotticelli, though the master, yields to Perugino the principal place, the end of the chapter, on which is to be the Assumption of the Virgin. It was Perugino's favorite subject, done with his central strength;assuredly the crowning work of his life, and of lovely Christian art inEurope. 

Michael Angelo painted it out, and drew devils and dead bodies all overthe wall instead. But there remains to us, happily, the series ofsubjects designed by Botticelli to lead up to this lost one. 

209. He came, I said, not to attack, but to restore the Papal authority. To show the power of inherited honor, and universal claim of divine law, in the Jewish and Christian Church, --the law delivered first by Moses;then, in final grace and truth, by Christ. 

He designed twelve great pictures, each containing some twenty figuresthe size of life, and groups of smaller ones scarcely to be counted. Twelve pictures, --six to illustrate the giving of the law by Moses; andsix, the ratification and completion of it by Christ. Event by event, the jurisprudence of each dispensation is traced from dawn to close inthis correspondence. 

 1. Covenant of Circumcision. 2. Entrance on his Ministry by Moses. 3. Moses by the Red Sea. 4. Delivery of Law on Sinai. 5. Destruction of Korah. 6. Death of Moses. 7. Covenant of Baptism. 8. Entrance on His Ministry by Christ. 9. Peter and Andrew by the Sea of Galilee. 10. Sermon on Mount. 11. Giving Keys to St. Peter. 12. Last Supper. 

Of these pictures, Sandro painted three himself, Perugino three, and theAssumption; Ghirlandajo one, Signorelli one, and Rosselli four. [BA] Ibelieve that Sandro intended to take the roof also, and had sketched outthe main succession of its design; and that the prophets and sibylswhich he meant to paint, he drew first small, and engraved his drawingsafterwards, that some part of the work might be, at all events, thuscommunicable to the world outside of the Vatican. 

210. It is not often that I tell you my beliefs; but I am forced here, for there are no dates to found more on. Is it not wonderful that amongall the infinite mass of fools' thoughts about the "majestic works ofMichael Angelo" in the Sistine Chapel, no slightly more rational personhas ever asked what the chapel was first meant to be like, and how itwas to be roofed?

Nor can I assume myself, still less you, that all these prophets andsibyls are Botticelli's. Of many there are two engravings, withvariations: some are inferior in parts, many altogether. He signed none;never put grand tablets with 'S. B. ' into his skies; had other lettersthan those to engrave, and no time to spare. I have chosen out of theseries three of the sibyls, which have, I think, clear internal evidenceof being his; and these you shall compare with Michael Angelo's. Butfirst I must put you in mind what the sibyls were. 

211. As the prophets represent the voice of God in man, the sibylsrepresent the voice of God in nature. They are properly all forms of onesibyl, [Greek: Dios Boulê], the counsel of God; and the chief one, atleast in the Roman mind, was the Sibyl of Cumae. From the traditions ofher, the Romans, and we through them, received whatever lessons themyth, or fact, of sibyl power has given to mortals. 

How much have you received, or may you yet receive, think you, of thatteaching? I call it the myth, or fact; but remember that, _as_ a myth, it _is_ a fact. This story has concentrated whatever good there is inthe imagination or visionary powers in women, inspired by nature only. The traditions of witch and gypsy are partly its offshoots. You despiseboth, perhaps. But can you, though in utmost pride of your suprememodern wisdom, suppose that the character--say, even of so poor andfar-fallen a sibyl as Meg Merrilies--is only the coinage of Scott'sbrain; or that, even being no more, it is valueless? Admit the figure ofthe Cumaean Sibyl, in like manner, to be the coinage only of Virgil'sbrain. As such, it, and the words it speaks, are yet facts in which wemay find use, if we are reverent to them. 

To me, personally, (I must take your indulgence for a moment to speakwholly of myself, ) they have been of the truest service--quite materialand indisputable. 

I am writing on St. John's Day, in the monastery of Assisi; and I had noidea whatever, when I sat down to my work this morning, of saying anyword of what I am now going to tell you. I meant only to expand andexplain a little what I said in my lecture about the Florentineengraving. But it seems to me now that I had better tell you what theCumaean Sibyl has actually done for me. 

212. In 1871, partly in consequence of chagrin at the Revolution inParis, and partly in great personal sorrow, I was struck by acuteinflammatory illness at Matlock, and reduced to a state of extremeweakness; lying at one time unconscious for some hours, those about mehaving no hope of my life. I have no doubt that the immediate cause ofthe illness was simply, eating when I was not hungry; so that modernscience would acknowledge nothing in the whole business but an extremeand very dangerous form of indigestion; and entirely deny anyinterference of the Cumaean Sibyl in the matter. 

I once heard a sermon by Dr. Guthrie, in Edinburgh, upon the wickednessof fasting. It was very eloquent and ingenious, and finely explained thesuperiority of the Scotch Free Church to the benighted Catholic Church, in that the Free Church saw no merit in fasting. And there was nomention, from beginning to end of the sermon, of even the existence ofsuch texts as Daniel i. 12, or Matthew vi. 16. 

Without the smallest merit, I admit, in fasting, I was neverthelessreduced at Matlock to a state very near starvation; and could not risefrom my pillow, without being lifted, for some days. And in the firstclearly pronounced stage of recovery, when the perfect powers of spirithad returned, while the body was still as weak as it well could be, Ihad three dreams, which made a great impression on me; for in ordinaryhealth my dreams are supremely ridiculous, if not unpleasant; and inordinary conditions of illness, very ugly, and always without theslightest meaning. But these dreams were all distinct and impressive, and had much meaning, if I chose to take it. 

213. The first[BB] was of a Venetian fisherman, who wanted me to followhim down into some water which I thought was too deep; but he called meon, saying he had something to show me; so I followed him; andpresently, through an opening, as if in the arsenal wall, he showed methe bronze horses of St. Mark's, and said, 'See, the horses are puttingon their harness. '

The second was of a preparation at Rome, in St. Peter's, (or a vast hallas large as St. Peter's, ) for the exhibition of a religious drama. Partof the play was to be a scene in which demons were to appear in the sky;and the stage servants were arranging gray fictitious clouds, andpainted fiends, for it, under the direction of the priests. There was awoman dressed in black, standing at the corner of the stage watchingthem, having a likeness in her face to one of my own dead friends; and Iknew somehow that she was not that friend, but a spirit; and she made meunderstand, without speaking, that I was to watch, for the play wouldturn out other than the priests expected. And I waited; and when thescene came on, the clouds became real clouds, and the fiends realfiends, agitating them in slow quivering, wild and terrible, over theheads of the people and priests. I recollected distinctly, however, whenI woke, only the figure of the black woman mocking the people, and ofone priest in an agony of terror, with the sweat pouring from his brow, but violently scolding one of the stage servants for having failed insome ceremony, the omission of which, he thought, had given the devilstheir power. 

The third dream was the most interesting and personal. Some one came tome to ask me to help in the deliverance of a company of Italianprisoners who were to be ransomed for money. I said I had no money. Theyanswered, Yes, I had some that belonged to me as a brother of St. Francis, if I would give it up. I said I did not know even that I _was_a brother of St. Francis; but I thought to myself, that perhaps theFranciscans of Fésole, whom I had helped to make hay in their field in1845, had adopted me for one; only I didn't see how the consequence ofthat would be my having any money. However, I said they were welcome towhatever I had; and then I heard the voice of an Italian woman singing;and I have never heard such divine singing before nor since;--the soundsabsolutely strong and real, and the melody altogether lovely. If I couldhave written it! But I could not even remember it when I woke, --only howbeautiful it was. 

214. Now these three dreams have, every one of them, been of much use tome since; or so far as they have failed to be useful, it has been my ownfault, and not theirs; but the chief use of them at the time was to giveme courage and confidence in myself, both in bodily distress, of which Ihad still not a little to bear; and worse, much mental anxiety aboutmatters supremely interesting to me, which were turning out ill. Andthrough all such trouble--which came upon me as I was recovering, as ifit meant to throw me back into the grave, --I held out and recovered, repeating always to myself, or rather having always murmured in my ears, at every new trial, one Latin line, Tu ne cede malis, sed contra fortior ito. 

Now I had got this line out of the tablet in the engraving of Raphael'svision, and had forgotten where it came from. And I thought I knew mysixth book of Virgil so well, that I never looked at it again while Iwas giving these lectures at Oxford, and it was only here at Assisi, the other day, wanting to look more accurately at the first scene by thelake Avernus, that I found I had been saved by the words of the CumaeanSibyl. 

215. "Quam tua te Fortuna sinet, " the completion of the sentence, hasyet more and continual teaching in it for me now; as it has for all men. Her opening words, which have become hackneyed, and lost all presentpower through vulgar use of them, contain yet one of the most immortaltruths ever yet spoken for mankind; and they will never lose their powerof help for noble persons. But observe, both in that lesson, "Facilisdescensus Averni, " etc. ; and in the still more precious, becauseuniversal, one on which the strength of Rome was founded, --the burningof the books, --the Sibyl speaks only as the voice of Nature, and of herlaws;--not as a divine helper, prevailing over death; but as a mortalteacher warning us against it, and strengthening us for our mortal time;but not for eternity. Of which lesson her own history is a part, and herhabitation by the Avernus lake. She desires immortality, fondly andvainly, as we do ourselves. She receives, from the love of her _refused_lover, Apollo, not immortality, but length of life;--her years to be asthe grains of dust in her hand. And even this she finds was a falsedesire; and her wise and holy desire at last is--to die. She wastesaway; becomes a shade only, and a voice. The Nations ask her, Whatwouldst thou? She answers, Peace; only let my last words be true. "L'ultimo mie parlar sie verace. "

[Illustration: VII. 

For a time, and times. ]

216. Therefore, if anything is to be conceived, rightly, and chiefly, inthe form of the Cumaean Sibyl, it must be of fading virginal beauty, ofenduring patience, of far-looking into futurity. "For after my deaththere shall yet return, " she says, "another virgin. "

 Jam redit et virgo;--redeunt Saturnia regna, Ultima Cumaei venit jam carminis aetas. 

Here then is Botticelli's Cumaean Sibyl. She is armed, for she is theprophetess of Roman fortitude;--but her faded breast scarcelyraises the corselet; her hair floats, not falls, in waves like thecurrents of a river, --the sign of enduring life; the light is full onher forehead: she looks into the distance as in a dream. It isimpossible for art to gather together more beautifully or intenselyevery image which can express her true power, or lead us to understandher lesson. 

[Illustration: VIII. 

The Nymph beloved of Apollo. 

(MICHAEL ANGELO. )]

217. Now you do not, I am well assured, know one of Michael Angelo'ssibyls from another: unless perhaps the Delphian, whom of course hemakes as beautiful as he can. But of this especially Italian prophetess, one would have thought he might, at least in some way, have shown thathe knew the history, even if he did not understand it. She might havehad more than one book, at all events, to burn. She might have had astray leaf or two fallen at her feet. He could not indeed have paintedher only as a voice; but his anatomical knowledge need not have hinderedhim from painting her virginal youth, or her wasting and watching age, or her inspired hope of a holier future. 

218. Opposite, --fortunately, photograph from the figure itself, so thatyou can suspect me of no exaggeration, --is Michael Angelo's CumaeanSibyl, wasting away. It is by a grotesque and most strange chance thathe should have made the figure of this Sibyl, of all others in thechapel, the most fleshly and gross, even proceeding to the monstrouslicense of showing the nipples of the breast as if the dress were moldedover them like plaster. Thus he paints the poor nymph beloved ofApollo, --the clearest and queenliest in prophecy and command of all thesibyls, --as an ugly crone, with the arms of Goliath, poring down upon asingle book. 

219. There is one point of fine detail, however, in Botticelli's CumaeanSibyl, and in the next I am going to show you, to explain which I mustgo back for a little while to the question of the direct relation of theItalian painters to the Greek. I don't like repeating in one lecturewhat I have said in another; but to save you the trouble of reference, must remind you of what I stated in my fourth lecture on Greek birds, when we were examining the adoption of the plume crests in armor, thatthe crest signifies command; but the diadem, _obedience_; and that everycrown is primarily a diadem. It is the thing that binds, before it isthe thing that honors. 

Now all the great schools dwell on this symbolism. The long flowing hairis the symbol of life, and the [Greek: diadêma] of the law restrainingit. Royalty, or kingliness, over life, restraining and glorifying. Inthe extremity of restraint--in death, whether noble, as of death toEarth, or ignoble, as of death to Heaven, the [Greek: diadêma] isfastened with the mort-cloth: "Bound hand and foot with grave-clothes, and the face bound about with the napkin. "

220. Now look back to the first Greek head I ever showed you, used asthe type of archaic sculpture in Aratra Pentelici, and then look at thecrown in Botticelli's Astrologia. It is absolutely the Greek form, --evento the peculiar oval of the forehead; while the diadem--the governinglaw--is set with appointed stars--to rule the destiny and thought. Thenreturn to the Cumaean Sibyl. She, as we have seen, is the symbol ofenduring life--almost immortal. The diadem is withdrawn from theforehead--reduced to a narrow fillet--here, and the hair thrown free. 

[Illustration: IX. 

In the woods of Ida. ]

221. From the Cumaean Sibyl's diadem, traced only by points, turn tothat of the Hellespontic, (Plate 9, opposite). I do not know whyBotticelli chose her for the spirit of prophecy in old age; but he hasmade this the most interesting plate of the series in the definitenessof its connection with the work from Dante, which becomes his ownprophecy in old age. The fantastic yet solemn treatment of the gnarledwood occurs, as far as I know, in no other engravings but this, and theillustrations to Dante; and I am content to leave it, with littlecomment, for the reader's quiet study, as showing the exuberance ofimagination which other men at this time in Italy allowed to wasteitself in idle arabesque, restrained by Botticelli to his most earnestpurposes; and giving the withered tree-trunks, hewn for the rude throneof the aged prophetess, the same harmony with her fading spirit whichthe rose has with youth, or the laurel with victory. Also in itsweird characters, you have the best example I can show you of the ordersof decorative design which are especially expressible by engraving, andwhich belong to a group of art instincts scarcely now to be understood, much less recovered, (the influence of modern naturalistic imitationbeing too strong to be conquered)--the instincts, namely, for thearrangement of pure line, in labyrinthine intricacy, through which thegrace of order may give continual clue. The entire body of ornamentaldesign, connected with writing, in the Middle Ages seems as if it were asensible symbol, to the eye and brain, of the methods of error andrecovery, the minglings of crooked with straight, and perverse withprogressive, which constitute the great problem of human morals andfate; and when I chose the title for the collected series of theselectures, I hoped to have justified it by careful analysis of themethods of labyrinthine ornament, which, made sacred by Theseiantraditions, [BC] and beginning, in imitation of physical truth, with thespiral waves of the waters of Babylon as the Assyrian carved them, entangled in their returns the eyes of men, on Greek vase and Christianmanuscript--till they closed in the arabesques which sprang round thelast luxury of Venice and Rome. 

But the labyrinth of life itself, and its more and more interwovenoccupation, become too manifold, and too difficult for me; and of thetime wasted in the blind lanes of it, perhaps that spent in analysis orrecommendation of the art to which men's present conduct makes theminsensible, has been chiefly cast away. On the walls of the little roomwhere I finally revise this lecture, [BD] hangs an old silken sampler ofgreat-grandame's work: representing the domestic life of Abraham:chiefly the stories of Isaac and Ishmael. Sarah at her tent-door, watching, with folded arms, the dismissal of Hagar: above, in awilderness full of fruit trees, birds, and butterflies, little Ishmaellying at the root of a tree, and the spent bottle under another; Hagarin prayer, and the angel appearing to her out of a wreathed line ofgloomily undulating clouds, which, with a dark-rayed sun in the midst, surmount the entire composition in two arches, out of which descendshafts of (I suppose) beneficent rain; leaving, however, room, in thecorner opposite to Ishmael's angel, for Isaac's, who stays Abraham inthe sacrifice; the ram in the thicket, the squirrel in the plum treeabove him, and the grapes, pears, apples, roses, and daisies of theforeground, being all wrought with involution of such ingeniousneedlework as may well rank, in the patience, the natural skill, and theinnocent pleasure of it, with the truest works of Florentine engraving. Nay; the actual tradition of many of the forms of ancient art is in manyplaces evident, --as, for instance, in the spiral summits of the flamesof the wood on the altar, which are like a group of first-springingfern. On the wall opposite is a smaller composition, representingJustice with her balance and sword, standing between the sun and moon, with a background of pinks, borage, and corn-cockle: a third is only acluster of tulips and iris, with two Byzantine peacocks; but the spiritsof Penelope and Ariadne reign vivid in all the work--and the richness ofpleasurable fancy is as great still, in these silken labors, as in themarble arches and golden roof of the cathedral of Monreale. 

But what is the use of explaining or analyzing it? Such work as thismeans the patience and simplicity of all feminine life; and can beproduced, among _us_ at least, no more. Gothic tracery itself, anotherof the instinctive labyrinthine intricacies of old, though analyzed toits last section, has become now the symbol only of a foolishecclesiastical sect, retained for their shibboleth, joyless andpowerless for all good. The very labyrinth of the grass and flowers ofour fields, though dissected to its last leaf, is yet bitten bare, ortrampled to slime, by the Minotaur of our lust; and for the traceriedspire of the poplar by the brook, we possess but the four-square furnacetower, to mingle its smoke with heaven's thunder-clouds. [BE]

We will look yet at one sampler more of the engraved work, done in thehappy time when flowers were pure, youth simple, and imaginationgay, --Botticelli's Libyan Sibyl. 

Glance back first to the Hellespontic, noting the close fillet, and thecloth bound below the face, and then you will be prepared to understandthe last I shall show you, and the loveliest of the southernPythonesses. 

[Illustration: X. 

Grass of the Desert. ]

222. A less deep thinker than Botticelli would have made her parchedwith thirst, and burnt with heat. But the voice of God, through nature, to the Arab or the Moor, is not in the thirst, but in the fountain--notin the desert, but in the grass of it. And this Libyan Sibyl is thespirit of wild grass and flowers, springing in desolate places. 

You see, her diadem is a wreath of them; but the blossoms of it are notfastening enough for her hair, though it is not long yet--(she is onlyin reality a Florentine girl of fourteen or fifteen)--so the littledarling knots it under her ears, and then makes herself a necklace ofit. But though flowing hair and flowers are wild and pretty, Botticellihad not, in these only, got the power of Spring marked to his mind. Anygirl might wear flowers; but few, for ornament, would be likely to weargrass. So the Sibyl shall have grass in her diadem; not merelyinterwoven and bending, but springing and strong. You thought it uglyand grotesque at first, did not you? It was made so, because preciselywhat Botticelli wanted you to look at. 

But that's not all. This conical cap of hers, with one bead at thetop, --considering how fond the Florentines are of graceful head-dresses, this seems a strange one for a young girl. But, exactly as I know theangel of Victory to be Greek, at his Mount of Pity, so I know thishead-dress to be taken from a Greek coin, and to be meant for a Greeksymbol. It is the Petasus of Hermes--the mist of morning over the dew. Lastly, what will the Libyan Sibyl say to you? The letters are large onher tablet. Her message is the oracle from the temple of the Dew: "Thedew of thy birth is as the womb of the morning. "--"Ecce venientem diem, et latentia aperientem, tenebit gremio gentium regina. "

223. Why the daybreak came not then, nor yet has come, but only a deeperdarkness; and why there is now neither queen nor king of nations, butevery man doing that which is right in his own eyes, I would fain go on, partly to tell you, and partly to meditate with you: but it is not ourwork for to-day. The issue of the Reformation which these greatpainters, the scholars of Dante, began, we may follow, farther, in thestudy to which I propose to lead you, of the lives of Cimabue andGiotto, and the relation of their work at Assisi to the chapel andchambers of the Vatican. 

224. To-day let me finish what I have to tell you of the style ofsouthern engraving. What sudden bathos in the sentence, you think! Socontemptible the question of style, then, in painting, though not inliterature? You study the 'style' of Homer; the style, perhaps, ofIsaiah; the style of Horace, and of Massillon. Is it so vain to studythe style of Botticelli?

In all cases, it is equally vain, if you think of their style first. Butknow their purpose, and then, their way of speaking is worth thinkingof. These apparently unfinished and certainly unfilled outlines of theFlorentine, --clumsy work, as Vasari thought them, --as Mr. Otley and mostof our English amateurs still think them, --are these good or badengraving?

You may ask now, comprehending their motive, with some hope of answeringor being answered rightly. And the answer is, They are the finestgravers' work ever done yet by human hand. You may teach, by process ofdiscipline and of years, any youth of good artistic capacity to engravea plate in the modern manner; but only the noblest passion, and thetenderest patience, will ever engrave one line like these of SandroBotticelli. 

225. Passion, and patience! Nay, even these you may have to-day inEngland, and yet both be in vain. Only a few years ago, in one of ournorthern iron-foundries, a workman of intense power and naturalart-faculty set himself to learn engraving;--made his own tools; gaveall the spare hours of his laborious life to learn their use; learnt it;and engraved a plate which, in manipulation, no professional engraverwould be ashamed of. He engraved his blast furnace, and the casting of abeam of a steam engine. This, to him, was the power of God, --it was hislife. No greater earnestness was ever given by man to promulgate aGospel. Nevertheless, the engraving is absolutely worthless. The blastfurnace _is not_ the power of God; and the life of the strong spirit wasas much consumed in the flames of it, as ever driven slave's by theburden and heat of the day. 

How cruel to say so, if he yet lives, you think! No, my friends; thecruelty will be in you, and the guilt, if, having been brought here tolearn that God is your Light, you yet leave the blast furnace to be theonly light of England. 

226. It has been, as I said in the note above (§ 200), with extreme painthat I have hitherto limited my notice of our own great engraver andmoralist, to the points in which the disadvantages of Englishart-teaching made him inferior to his trained Florentine rival. But, that these disadvantages were powerless to arrest or ignobly depresshim;--that however failing in grace and scholarship, he should neverfail in truth or vitality; and that the precision of his unerringhand[BF]--his inevitable eye--and his rightly judging heart--shouldplace him in the first rank of the great artists not of England only, but of all the world and of all time:--that _this_ was possible to him, was simply because he lived a _country_ life. Bewick himself, Botticelli himself, Apelles himself, and twenty times Apelles, condemnedto slavery in the hell-fire of the iron furnace, could havedone--NOTHING. Absolute paralysis of all high human faculty _must_result from labor near fire. The poor engraver of the piston-rod hadfaculties--not like Bewick's, for if he had had those, he never wouldhave endured the degradation; but assuredly, (I know this by his work, )faculties high enough to have made him one of the most accomplishedfigure painters of his age. And they are scorched out of him, as the sapfrom the grass in the oven: while on his Northumberland hill-sides, Bewick grew into as stately life as their strongest pine. 

227. And therefore, in words of his, telling consummate and unchangingtruth concerning the life, honor, and happiness of England, and bearingdirectly on the points of difference between class and class which Ihave not dwelt on without need, I will bring these lectures to a close. 

"I have always, through life, been of opinion that there is no businessof any kind that can be compared to that of a man who farms his ownland. It appears to me that every earthly pleasure, with health, iswithin his reach. But numbers of these men (the old statesmen) weregrossly ignorant, and in exact proportion to that ignorance they weresure to be offensively proud. This led them to attempt appearing abovetheir station, which hastened them on to their ruin; but, indeed, thisdisposition and this kind of conduct invariably leads to such results. There were many of these lairds on Tyneside; as well as many who heldtheir lands on the tenure of 'suit and service, ' and were nearly on thesame level as the lairds. Some of the latter lost their lands (notfairly, I think) in a way they could not help; many of the former, bytheir misdirected pride and folly, were driven into towns, to slide awayinto nothingness, and to sink into oblivion, while their 'ha' houses'(halls), that ought to have remained in their families from generationto generation, have moldered away. I have always felt extremely grievedto see the ancient mansions of many of the country gentlemen, fromsomewhat similar causes, meet with a similar fate. The gentry should, in an especial manner, prove by their conduct that they are guardedagainst showing any symptom of foolish pride; at the same time that theysoar above every meanness, and that their conduct is guided by truth, integrity, and patriotism. If they wish the people to partake with themin these good qualities, they must set them the example, without whichno real respect can ever be paid to them. Gentlemen ought never toforget the respectable station they hold in society, and that they arethe natural guardians of public morals and may with propriety beconsidered as the head and the heart of the country, while 'a boldpeasantry' are, in truth, the arms, the sinews, and the strength of thesame; but when these last are degraded, they soon become dispirited andmean, and often dishonest and useless. "

 * * * * *

"This singular and worthy man[BG] was perhaps the most invaluableacquaintance and friend I ever met with. His moral lectures and adviceto me formed a most important succedaneum to those imparted by myparents. His wise remarks, his detestation of vice, his industry, andhis temperance, crowned with a most lively and cheerful disposition, altogether made him appear to me as one of the best of characters. Inhis workshop I often spent my winter evenings. This was also the casewith a number of young men who might be considered as his pupils; manyof whom, I have no doubt, he directed into the paths of truth andintegrity, and who revered his memory through life. He rose early towork, lay down when he felt weary, and rose again when refreshed. Hisdiet was of the simplest kind; and he ate when hungry, and drank whendry, without paying regard to meal-times. By steadily pursuing this modeof life he was enabled to accumulate sums of money--from ten to thirtypounds. This enabled him to get books, of an entertaining and moraltendency, printed and circulated at a cheap rate. His great object was, by every possible means, to promote honorable feelings in the minds ofyouth, and to prepare them for becoming good members of society. I haveoften discovered that he did not overlook ingenious mechanics, whosemisfortunes--perhaps mismanagement--had led them to a lodging inNewgate. To these he directed his compassionate eye, and for thedeserving (in his estimation), he paid their debt, and set them atliberty. He felt hurt at seeing the hands of an ingenious man tied up inprison, where they were of no use either to himself or to the community. This worthy man had been educated for a priest; but he would say to me, 'Of a "trouth, " Thomas, I did not like their ways. ' So he gave up thethoughts of being a priest, and bent his way from Aberdeen to Edinburgh, where he engaged himself to Allan Ramsay, the poet, then a bookseller atthe latter place, in whose service he was both shopman and bookbinder. From Edinburgh he came to Newcastle. Gilbert had had a liberal educationbestowed upon him. He had read a great deal, and had reflected upon whathe had read. This, with his retentive memory, enabled him to be apleasant and communicative companion. I lived in habits of intimacy withhim to the end of his life; and, when he died, I, with others of hisfriends, attended his remains to the grave at the Ballast Hills. "

And what graving on the sacred cliffs of Egypt ever honored them, asthat grass-dimmed furrow does the mounds of our Northern land?

FOOTNOTES:

[AS] The world was not then ready for Le Père Hyacinthe;--but the realgist of the matter is that Lippi did, openly and bravely, what thehighest prelates in the Church did basely and in secret; also he loved, where they only lusted; and he has been proclaimed therefore bythem--and too foolishly believed by us--to have been a shameful person. Of his true life, and the colors given to it, we will try to learnsomething tenable, before we end our work in Florence. 

[AT] I insert supplementary notes, when of importance, in the text ofthe lecture, for the convenience of the general reader. 

[AU] Mr. Charles F. Murray. 

[AV] Some notice of this picture is given at the beginning of my thirdMorning in Florence, 'Before the Soldan. '

[AW] I am bitterly sorry for the pain which my partial references to theman whom of all English artists whose histories I have read, I mostesteem, have given to one remaining member of his family. I hope mymeaning may be better understood after she has seen the close of thislecture. 

[AX] Read Ezekiel xviii. 

[AY] See also the account by Dr. Woltmann of the picture of the Triumphof Riches. 'Holbein and his Time, ' p. 352. 

[AZ] These words are engraved in the plate, as spoken by the Virgin. 

[BA] Cosimo Rosselli, especially chosen by the Pope for his gaycoloring. 

[BB] I am not certain of their order at this distance of time. 

[BC] Callimachus, 'Delos, ' 304, etc. 

[BD] In the Old King's Arms Hotel, Lancaster. 

[BE] A manufacturer wrote to me the other day, "We don't _want_ to makesmoke!" Who said they did?--a hired murderer does not want to commitmurder, but does it for sufficient motive. (Even our shipowners don'twant to drown their sailors; they will only do it for sufficientmotive. ) If the dirty creatures _did_ want to make smoke, there would bemore excuse for them: and that they are not clever enough to consume it, is no praise to them. A man who can't help his hiccough leaves the room:why do they not leave the England they pollute?

[BF] I know no drawing so subtle as Bewick's, since the fifteenthcentury, except Holbein's and Turner's. I have been greatly surprisedlately by the exquisite water-color work in some of Stothard's smallervignettes; but he cannot set the line like Turner or Bewick. 

[BG] Gilbert Gray, bookbinder. I have to correct the inaccurate--andvery harmfully inaccurate, expression which I used of Bewick, in Love'sMeinie (§ 3), 'a printer's lad at Newcastle. ' His first master was agoldsmith and engraver, else he could never have been an artist. I amvery heartily glad to make this correction, which establishes anotherlink of relation between Bewick and Botticelli; but my error was partlycaused by the impression which the above description of his "mostinvaluable friend" made on me, when I first read it. 

Much else that I meant to correct, or promised to explain, in thislecture, must be deferred to the Appendix; the superiority of the Tuscanto the Greek Aphrodite I may perhaps, even at last, leave the reader toadmit or deny as he pleases, having more important matters of debate onhand. But as I mean only to play with Proserpina during the spring, Iwill here briefly anticipate a statement I mean in the Appendix toenforce, namely, of the extreme value of colored copies by hand, ofpaintings whose excellence greatly consists in color, as auxiliary toengravings of them. The prices now given without hesitation for nearlyworthless original drawings by fifth-rate artists, would obtain for themisguided buyers, in something like a proportion of ten to one, mostprecious copies of drawings which can only be represented at all inengraving by entire alteration of their treatment, and abandonment oftheir finest purposes. I feel this so strongly that I have given my bestattention, during upwards of ten years, to train a copyist to perfectfidelity in rendering the work of Turner; and having now succeeded inenabling him to produce facsimiles so close as to look like replicas, facsimiles which I must sign with my own name and his, in the very workof them, to prevent their being sold for real Turner vignettes, I canobtain no custom for him, and am obliged to leave him to make his breadby any power of captivation his original sketches may possess in theeyes of a public which maintains a nation of copyists in Rome, but iscontent with black and white renderings of great English art; thoughthere is scarcely one cultivated English gentleman or lady who has notbeen twenty times in the Vatican, for once that they have been in theNational Gallery. 

 NOTES. 

228. I. The following letter, from one of my most faithful readers, corrects an important piece of misinterpretation in the text. The wavingof the reins must be only in sign of the fluctuation of heat round theSun's own chariot:--

 "Spring Field, Ambleside, "February 11, 1875. 

"Dear Mr. Ruskin, --Your fifth lecture on Engraving I have to hand. 

"Sandro intended those wavy lines meeting under the Sun's right[BH]hand, (Plate V. ) primarily, no doubt, to represent the four ends of thefour reins dangling from the Sun's hand. The flames and rays are seen tocontinue to radiate from the platform of the chariot between and beyondthese ends of the reins, and over the knee. He may have wanted toacknowledge that the warmth of the earth was Apollo's, by making theseends of the reins spread out separately and wave, and thereby inclose aform like a flame. But I cannot think it. 

 "Believe me, "Ever yours truly, "CHAS. WM. SMITH. "

II. I meant to keep labyrinthine matters for my Appendix; but thefollowing most useful by-words from Mr. Tyrwhitt had better be read atonce:--

"In the matter of Cretan Labyrinth, as connected by Virgil with theLudus Trojæ, or equestrian game of winding and turning, continued inEngland from twelfth century; and having for last relic the maze[BI]called 'Troy Town, ' at Troy Farm, near Somerton, Oxfordshire, whichitself resembles the circular labyrinth on a coin of Cnossus in ForsClavigera. (Letter 23, p. 12. )

"The connecting quotation from Virg. , Æn. , V. 588, is as follows:

 'Ut quondam Creta fertur Labyrinthus in alta Parietibus textum cæcis iter, ancipitemque Mille viis habuisse dolum, qua signa sequendi Falleret indeprensus et inremeabilis error. Haud alio Teucrün nati vestigia cursu Impediunt, texuntque fagas et proelia ludo, Delphinum similes. '"

Labyrinth of Ariadne, as cut on the Downs by shepherds from timeimmemorial, --

Shakespeare, 'Midsummer Night's Dream, ' Act ii. , sc. 2:

"_Oberon. _ The nine-men's morris[BJ] is filled up with mud; And the quaint mazes in the wanton green By lack of tread are undistinguishable. "

The following passage, 'Merchant of Venice, ' Act iii. , sc. 2, confuses(to all appearance) the Athenian tribute to Crete, with the story ofHesione: and may point to general confusion in the Elizabethan mindabout the myths:

"_Portia. _ ... With much more love Than young Alcides, when he did reduce The virgin-tribute paid by howling Troy To the sea monster. "[BK]

Theseus is the Attic Hercules, however; and Troy may have been a sort ofhouse of call for mythical monsters, in the view of midland shepherds. 

FOOTNOTES:

[BH] "Would not the design have looked better, to us, on the plate thanon the print? On the plate, the reins would be in the left hand; and thewhole movement be from the left to the right? The two different formsthat the radiance takes would symbolize respectively heat and light, would they not?"

[BI] Strutt, pp. 97-8, ed. 1801. 

[BJ] Explained as "a game still played by the shepherds, cowkeepers, "etc. , in the midland counties. 

[BK] See Iliad, 20, 145. 

[Illustration: XI. 

"Obediente Domino voci hominis. "]

 APPENDIX. 

 ARTICLE I. 

 NOTES ON THE PRESENT STATE OF ENGRAVING IN ENGLAND. 

229. I have long deferred the completion of this book, because I hadhoped to find time to show, in some fullness, the grounds for myconviction that engraving, and the study of it, since the development ofthe modern finished school, have been ruinous to European knowledge ofart. But I am more and more busied in what I believe to be better work, and can only with extreme brevity state here the conclusions of manyyears' thought. 

These, in several important particulars, have been curiously enforced onme by the carelessness shown by the picture dealers about the copiesfrom Turner which it has cost Mr. Ward and me[BL] fifteen years of studytogether to enable ourselves to make. "They are only copies, " saythey, --"nobody will look at them. "

230. It never seems to occur even to the most intelligent persons thatan engraving also is 'only a copy, ' and a copy done with refusal ofcolor, and with disadvantage of means in rendering shade. But justbecause this utterly inferior copy can be reduplicated, and introduces adifferent kind of skill, in another material, people are content to loseall the composition, and all the charm, of the original, --so far asthese depend on the chief gift of a _painter_, --color; while they aregradually misled into attributing to the painter himself qualitiesimpertinently added by the engraver to make his plate popular: and, which is far worse, they are as gradually and subtly prevented fromlooking, in the original, for the qualities which engraving could neverrender. Further, it continually happens that the very bestcolor-compositions engrave worst; for they often extend colors overgreat spaces at equal pitch, and the green is as dark as the red, andthe blue as the brown; so that the engraver can only distinguish them bylines in different directions, and his plate becomes a vague and deadmass of neutral tint; but a bad and forced piece of color, or a piece ofwork of the Bolognese school, which is everywhere black in the shadows, and colorless in the lights, will engrave with great ease, and appearspirited and forcible. Hence engravers, as a rule, are interested inreproducing the work of the worst schools of painting. 

Also, the idea that the merit of an engraving consisted in light andshade, has prevented the modern masters from even attempting to renderworks dependent mainly on outline and expression; like the earlyfrescoes, which should indeed have been the objects of their mostattentive and continual skill: for outline and expression are entirelywithin the scope of engraving; and the scripture histories of an aisleof a cloister might have been engraved, to perfection, with little morepains than are given by ordinary workmen to round a limb by Correggio, or imitate the texture of a dress by Sir Joshua, --and both, at last, inadequately. 

231. I will not lose more time in asserting or lamenting the mischiefarising out of the existing system: but will rapidly state what thepublic should now ask for. 

1. Exquisitely careful engraved outlines of all remaining frescoes ofthe thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries in Italy, with somuch pale tinting as may be explanatory of their main masses; and withthe local darks and local lights brilliantly relieved. The ArundelSociety have published some meritorious plates of this kind fromAngelico, --not, however, paying respect enough to the local colors, butconventionalizing the whole too much into outline. 

2. Finished small plates for book illustration. The cheap wood-cuttingand etching of popular illustrated books have been endlessly mischievousto public taste: they first obtained their power in a general reactionof the public mind from the insipidity of the lower school of lineengraving, brought on it by servile persistence in hack work forignorant publishers. The last dregs of it may still be seen in thesentimental landscapes engraved for cheap ladies' pocket-books. But thewoodcut can never, educationally, take the place of serene andaccomplished line engraving; and the training of young artists in whomthe gift of delineation prevails over their sense of color, to theproduction of scholarly, but small plates, with their utmost honor ofskill, would give a hitherto unconceived dignity to the character andrange of our popular literature. 

3. Vigorous mezzotints from pictures of the great masters, whichoriginally present noble contrasts of light and shade. Many Venetianworks are magnificent in this character. 

4. Original design by painters themselves, decisively engraved in fewlines--(_not_ etched); and with such insistence by dotted work on themain contours as we have seen in the examples given from Italianengraving. 

5. On the other hand, the men whose quiet patience and exquisite manualdexterity are at present employed in producing large and costly plates, such as that of the Belle Jardinière de Florence, by M. BoucherDesnoyers, should be entirely released from their servile toil, andemployed exclusively in producing colored copies, or light drawings, from the original work. The same number of hours of labor, applied withthe like conscientious skill, would multiply precious likenesses of thereal picture, full of subtle veracities which no steel line couldapproach, and conveying, to thousands, true knowledge and unaffectedenjoyment of painting; while the finished plate lies uncared for in theportfolio of the virtuoso, serving only, so far as it is seen in theprintseller's window by the people, to make them think that sacredpainting must always be dull, and unnatural. 

232. I have named the above engraving, because, for persons wishing tostudy the present qualities and methods of line-work, it is a pleasantand sufficient possession, uniting every variety of texture with greatserenity of unforced effect, and exhibiting every possible artifice andachievement in the distribution of even and rugged, or of close and openline; artifices for which, --while I must yet once more and emphaticallyrepeat that they are illegitimate, and could not be practiced in arevived school of classic art, --I would fain secure the reader'sreverent admiration, under the conditions exacted by the school to whichthey belong. Let him endeavor, with the finest point of pen or pencil hecan obtain, to imitate the profile of this Madonna in its relief againstthe gray background of the water surface; let him examine, through agood lens, the way in which the lines of the background are ended in alance-point as they approach it; the exact equality of depth of shadebeing restored by inserted dots, which prepare for the transition to themanner of shade adopted in the flesh: then let him endeavor to tracewith his own hand some of the curved lines at the edge of the eyelid, orin the rounding of the lip; or if these be too impossible, even a few ofthe quiet undulations which gradate the folds of the hood behind thehair; and he will, I trust, begin to comprehend the range of delightfulwork which would be within the reach of such an artist, employed withmore tractable material on more extended subject. 

233. If, indeed, the present system were capable of influencing the massof the people, and enforcing among them the subtle attention necessaryto appreciate it, something might be pleaded in defense of its severity. But all these plates are entirely above the means of the lower middleclasses, and perhaps not one reader in a hundred can possess himself, for the study I ask of him, even of the plate to which I have justreferred. What, in the stead of such, he can and does possess, let himconsider, --and, if possible, just after examining the noble qualities ofthis conscientious engraving. 

234. Take up, for an average specimen of modern illustrated works, thevolume of Dickens's 'Master Humphrey's Clock, ' containing 'BarnabyRudge. '

You have in that book an entirely profitless and monstrous story, inwhich the principal characters are a coxcomb, an idiot, a madman, asavage blackguard, a foolish tavern-keeper, a mean old maid, and aconceited apprentice, --mixed up with a certain quantity of ordinaryoperatic pastoral stuff, about a pretty Dolly in ribbons, a lover with awooden leg, and an heroic locksmith. For these latter, the only elementsof good, or life, in the filthy mass of the story, [BM] observe that theauthor must filch the wreck of those old times of which we fiercely andfrantically destroy every living vestige, whenever it is possible. Youcannot have your Dolly Varden brought up behind the counter of a railwaystation; nor your jolly locksmith trained at a Birmingham brass-foundry. And of these materials, observe that you can only have the ugly onesillustrated. The cheap popular art cannot draw for you beauty, sense, orhonesty; and for Dolly Varden, or the locksmith, you will look throughthe vignettes in vain. But every species of distorted folly andvice, --the idiot, the blackguard, the coxcomb, the paltry fool, thedegraded woman, --are pictured for your honorable pleasure in every page, with clumsy caricature, struggling to render its dullness tolerable byinsisting on defect, --if perchance a penny or two more may be coined outof the Cockney reader's itch for loathsomeness. 

235. Or take up, for instance of higher effort, the 'Cornhill Magazine'for this month, July, 1876. It has a vignette of Venice for anilluminated letter. That is what your decorative art has become, by helpof Kensington! The letter to be produced is a T. There is a gondola inthe front of the design, with the canopy slipped back to the stern likea saddle over a horse's tail. There is another in the middle distance, all gone to seed at the prow, with its gondolier emaciated into an oar, at the stern; then there is a Church of the Salute, and a DucalPalace, --in which I beg you to observe all the felicity and dexterity ofmodern cheap engraving; finally, over the Ducal Palace there issomething, I know not in the least what meant for, like an umbrelladropping out of a balloon, which is the ornamental letter T. Oppositethis ornamental design, there is an engraving of two young ladies and aparasol, between two trunks of trees. The white face and black feet ofthe principal young lady, being the points of the design, are done withas much care, --not with as much dexterity, --as an ordinary sketch of DuMaurier's in Punch. The young lady's dress, the next attraction, is donein cheap white and black cutting, with considerably less skill than thatof any ordinary tailor's or milliner's shop-book pattern drawing. Forthe other young lady, and the landscape, take your magnifying glass, andlook at the hacked wood that forms the entire shaded surface--one massof idiotic scrabble, without the remotest attempt to express a singleleaf, flower, or clod of earth. It is such landscape as the public seesout of its railroad window at sixty miles of it in the hour--and goodenough for such a public. 

236. Then turn to the last--the poetical plate, p. 122: "Lifts her--laysher down with care. " Look at the gentleman with a spade, promoting theadvance, over a hillock of hay, of the reposing figure in theblack-sided tub. Take your magnifying glass to _that_, and look what adainty female arm and hand your modern scientific and anatomical schoolsof art have provided you with! Look at the tender horizontal flux of thesea round the promontory point above. Look at the tender engraving ofthe linear light on the divine horizon, above the ravenous sea-gull. Here is Development and Progress for you, from the days of Perugino'shorizon, and Dante's daybreaks! Truly, here it seems

 "Si che le bianche e le vermiglie guance Per troppa etate divenivan rance. "

237. I have chosen no gross or mean instances of modern work. It is oneof the saddest points connected with the matter that the designer ofthis last plate is a person of consummate art faculty, but bound to thewheel of the modern Juggernaut, and broken on it. These woodcuts, for'Barnaby Rudge' and the 'Cornhill Magazine, ' are favorablyrepresentative of the entire illustrative art industry of the modernpress, --industry enslaved to the ghastly service of catching the lastgleams in the glued eyes of the daily more bestial Englishmob, --railroad born and bred, which drags itself about the black worldit has withered under its breath, in one eternal grind andshriek, --gobbling, --staring, --chattering, --giggling, --trampling outevery vestige of national honor and domestic peace, wherever it sets thestaggering hoof of it; incapable of reading, of hearing, of thinking, oflooking, --capable only of greed for money, lust for food, pride ofdress, and the prurient itch of momentary curiosity for the politicslast announced by the newsmonger, and the religion last rolled by thechemist into electuary for the dead. 

238. In the miserably competitive labor of finding new stimulus for theappetite--daily more gross--of this tyrannous mob, we may count as lost, beyond any hope, the artists who are dull, docile, or distressed enoughto submit to its demands; and we may count the dull and the distressedby myriads;--and among the docile, many of the best intellects wepossess. The few who have sense and strength to assert their own placeand supremacy, are driven into discouraged disease by their isolation, like Turner and Blake; the one abandoning the design of his 'LiberStudiorum' after imperfectly and sadly, against total public neglect, carrying it forward to what it is, --monumental, nevertheless, inlandscape engraving; the other producing, with one only majestic seriesof designs from the book of Job, nothing for his life's work butcoarsely iridescent sketches of enigmatic dream. 

239. And, for total result of our English engraving industry during thelast hundred and fifty years, I find that practically at this moment Icannot get a _single_ piece of true, sweet, and comprehensible art, toplace for instruction in any children's school! I can get, for tenpounds apiece, well-engraved portraits of Sir Joshua's beauties showinggraceful limbs through flowery draperies; I can get--dirt-cheap--anyquantity of Dutch flats, ditches, and hedges, enlivened by cows chewingthe cud, and dogs behaving indecently; I can get heaps upon heaps oftemples, and forums, and altars, arranged as for academical competition, round seaports, with curled-up ships that only touch the water with themiddle of their bottoms. I can get, at the price of lumber, any quantityof British squires flourishing whips and falling over hurdles; and, insuburban shops, a dolorous variety of widowed mothers nursing babies ina high light with the Bible on a table, and baby's shoes on a chair. Also, of cheap prints, painted red and blue, of Christ blessing littlechildren, of Joseph and his brethren, the infant Samuel, or Daniel inthe lions' den, the supply is ample enough to make every child in theseislands think of the Bible as a somewhat dull story-book, allowed onSunday;--but of trained, wise, and worthy art, applied to gentlepurposes of instruction, no single example can be found in the shops ofthe British printseller or bookseller. And after every dilettante tonguein European society has filled drawing-room and academy alike with idleclatter concerning the divinity of Raphael and Michael Angelo, for theselast hundred years, I cannot at this instant, for the first school whichI have some power of organizing under St. George's laws, get a goodprint of Raphael's Madonna of the tribune, or an ordinarily intelligibleview of the side and dome of St. Peter's!

240. And there are simply no words for the mixed absurdity andwickedness of the present popular demand for art, as shown by its supplyin our thoroughfares. Abroad, in the shops of the Rue de Rivoli, brightest and most central of Parisian streets, the putrescent remnantof what was once Catholicism promotes its poor gilded pedlars' ware ofnativity and crucifixion into such honorable corners as it can findamong the more costly and studious illuminations of the brothel: andalthough, in Pall Mall, and the Strand, the large-marginedLandseer, --Stanfield, --or Turner-proofs, in a few stately windows, stillrepresent, uncared-for by the people, or inaccessible to them, the powerof an English school now wholly perished, --these are too surelysuperseded, in the windows that stop the crowd, by the thrillingattraction with which Doré, Gérome, and Tadema have invested thegambling table, the dueling ground, and the arena; or by the morematerial and almost tangible truth with which the apothecary-artiststereographs the stripped actress, and the railway mound. 

241. Under these conditions, as I have now repeatedly asserted, noprofessorship, nor school, of art can be of the least use to the generalpublic. No race can understand a visionary landscape, which blasts itsreal mountains into ruin, and blackens its river-beds with foam ofpoison. Nor is it of the least use to exhibit ideal Diana at Kensington, while substantial Phryne may be worshiped in the Strand. The onlyrecovery of our art-power possible, --nay, when once we know the fullmeaning of it, the only one desirable, --must result from thepurification of the nation's heart, and chastisement of its life:utterly hopeless now, for our adult population, or in our large cities, and their neighborhood. But, so far as any of the sacred influence offormer design can be brought to bear on the minds of the young, and sofar as, in rural districts, the first elements of scholarly educationcan be made pure, the foundation of a new dynasty of thought may beslowly laid. I was strangely impressed by the effect produced in aprovincial seaport school for children, chiefly of fishermen's families, by the gift of a little colored drawing of a single figure from theParadise of Angelico in the Accademia of Florence. The drawing waswretched enough, seen beside the original; I had only bought it from thepoor Italian copyist for charity: but, to the children, it was like anactual glimpse of heaven; they rejoiced in it with pure joy, and theirmistress thanked me for it more than if I had sent her a whole libraryof good books. Of such copies, the grace-giving industry of younggirls, now worse than lost in the spurious charities of the bazaar, orselfish ornamentations of the drawing-room, might, in a year's time, provide enough for every dame-school in England; and a year's honestwork of the engravers employed on our base novels, might represent toour advanced students every frescoed legend of philosophy and moralityextant in Christendom. 

242. For my own part, I have no purpose, in what remains to me ofopportunity, either at Oxford or elsewhere, to address any farthercourse of instruction towards the development of existing schools. Afterseeing the stream of the Teviot as black as ink, and a putrid carcass ofa sheep lying in the dry channel of the Jed, under Jedburgh Abbey, (theentire strength of the summer stream being taken away to supply a singlemill, ) I know, finally, what value the British mind sets on the'beauties of nature, ' and shall attempt no farther the excitement of itsenthusiasm in that direction. I shall indeed endeavor to carry out, withMr. Ward's help, my twenty years' held purpose of making the realcharacter of Turner's work known, to the persons who, formerlyinterested by the engravings from him, imagined half the merit was ofthe engraver's giving. But I know perfectly that to the general people, trained in the midst of the ugliest objects that vice can design, inhouses, mills, and machinery, _all_ beautiful form and color is asinvisible as the seventh heaven. It is not a question of appreciation atall; the thing is physically invisible to them, as human speech isinaudible during a steam whistle. 

243. And I shall also use all the strength I have to convince those, among our artists of the second order, who are wise and modest enoughnot to think themselves the matches of Turner or Michael Angelo, that inthe present state of art they only waste their powers in endeavoring toproduce original pictures of human form or passion. Modern aristocraticlife is too vulgar, and modern peasant life too unhappy, to furnishsubjects of noble study; while, even were it otherwise, themultiplication of designs by painters of second-rate power is no moredesirable than the writing of music by inferior composers. They may, with far greater personal happiness, and incalculably greater advantageto others, devote themselves to the affectionate and sensitive copyingof the works of men of just renown. The dignity of this self-sacrificewould soon be acknowledged with sincere respect; for copies produced bymen working with such motive would differ no less from the commontrade-article of the galleries than the rendering of music by anenthusiastic and highly trained executant differs from the grinding of astreet organ. And the change in the tone of public feeling, produced byfamiliarity with such work, would soon be no less great than in theirmusical enjoyment, if having been accustomed only to hear blackChristys, blind fiddlers, and hoarse beggars scrape or howl about theirstreets, they were permitted daily audience of faithful and gentleorchestral rendering of the work of the highest classical masters. 

244. I have not, until very lately, rightly appreciated the results ofthe labor of the Arundel Society in this direction. Although, from thebeginning, I have been honored in being a member of its council, myaction has been hitherto rather of check than help, because I thoughtmore of the differences between our copies and the great originals, thanof their unquestionable superiority to anything the public couldotherwise obtain. 

I was practically convinced of their extreme value only this lastwinter, by staying at the house of a friend in which the Arundelengravings were the principal decoration; and where I learned more ofMasaccio from the Arundel copy of the contest with Simon Magus, than inthe Brancacci chapel itself; for the daily companionship with theengraving taught me subtleties in its composition which had escaped mein the multitudinous interest of visits to the actual fresco. 

But the work of the Society has been sorely hindered hitherto, becauseit has had at command only the skill of copyists trained in foreignschools of color, and accustomed to meet no more accurate requisitionsthan those of the fashionable traveler. I have always hoped for, andtrust at last to obtain, co-operation with our too mildly laboriouscopyists, of English artists possessing more brilliant color faculty;and the permission of our subscribers to secure for them the great ruinsof the noble past, undesecrated by the trim, but treacherous, plasteringof modern emendation. 

245. Finally, I hope to direct some of the antiquarian energy often tobe found remaining, even when love of the picturesque has passed away, to encourage the accurate delineation and engraving of historicalmonuments, as a direct function of our schools of art. All that I havegenerally to suggest on this matter has been already stated withsufficient clearness in the first of my inaugural lectures at Oxford:and my forthcoming 'Elements of Drawing'[BN] will contain all thedirections I can give in writing as to methods of work for such purpose. The publication of these has been hindered, for at least a year, by theabuses introduced by the modern cheap modes of printing engravings. Ifind the men won't use any ink but what pleases them; nor print but withwhat pressure pleases them; and if I can get the foreman to attend tothe business, and choose the ink right, the men change it the moment heleaves the room, and threaten to throw up the job when they aredetected. All this, I have long known well, is a matter of course, inthe outcome of modern principles of trade; but it has rendered ithitherto impossible for me to produce illustrations, which have beenready, as far as my work or that of my own assistants is concerned, fora year and a half. Any one interested in hearing of our progress--orarrest, may write to my Turner copyist, Mr. Ward:[BO] and, in themeantime, they can help my designs for art education best by makingthese Turner copies more generally known; and by determining, when theytravel, to spend what sums they have at their disposal, not in fadyphotography, but in the encouragement of any good _water-color_ and_pencil_ draughtsmen whom they find employed in the _galleries_ ofEurope. 

 ARTICLE II. 

 DETACHED NOTES. 

 I. 

 _On the series of Sibyl engravings attributed to Botticelli. _

246. Since I wrote the earlier lectures in this volume, I have been mademore doubtful on several points which were embarrassing enough before, by seeing some better (so-called) impressions of my favorite platescontaining light and shade which did not improve them. 

I do not choose to waste time or space in discussion, till I know moreof the matter; and that more I must leave to my good friend Mr. Reid ofthe British Museum to find out for me; for I have no time to take up thesubject myself, but I give, for frontispiece to this Appendix, theengraving of Joshua referred to in the text, which however beautiful inthought, is an example of the inferior execution and more elaborateshade which puzzle me. But whatever is said in the previous pages of theplates chosen for example, by whomsoever done, is absolutelytrustworthy. Thoroughly fine they are, in their existing state, andexemplary to all persons and times. And of the rest, in fitting place Ihope to give complete--or at least satisfactory account. 

 II. 

 _On the three excellent engravers representative of the first, middle, and late schools. _

[Illustration: XII. 

The Coronation in the Garden. ]

247. I have given opposite a photograph, slightly reduced from the DürerMadonna, alluded to often in the text, as an example of his bestconception of womanhood. It is very curious that Dürer, the leastable of all great artists to represent womanhood, should of late havebeen a very principal object of feminine admiration. The last thing awoman should do is to write about art. They never see anything inpictures but what they are told, (or resolve to see out ofcontradiction, )--or the particular things that fall in with their ownfeelings. I saw a curious piece of enthusiastic writing by an Edinburghlady, the other day, on the photographs I had taken from the tower ofGiotto. She did not care a straw what Giotto had meant by them, declaredshe felt it her duty only to announce what they were to _her_; and wrotetwo pages on the bas-relief of Heracles and Antæus--assuming it to bethe death of Abel. 

248. It is not, however, by women only that Dürer has been over-praised. He stands so alone in his own field, that the people who care much forhim generally lose the power of enjoying anything else rightly; and arecontinually attributing to the force of his imagination quaintnesseswhich are merely part of the general mannerism of his day. 

The following notes upon him, in relation to two other excellentengravers, were written shortly for extempore expansion in lecturing. Igive them, with the others in this terminal article, mainly for use tomyself in future reference; but also as more or less suggestive to thereader, if he has taken up the subject seriously, and worth, therefore, a few pages of this closing sheet. 

249. The men I have named as representative of all the good onescomposing their school, are alike resolved their engraving shall belovely. 

But Botticelli, the ancient, wants, with as little engraving, as muchSibyl as possible. 

Dürer, the central, wants, with as much engraving as possible, anythingof Sibyl that may chance to be picked up with it. 

Beaugrand, the modern, wants, as much Sibyl as possible, and as muchengraving too. 

250. I repeat--for I want to get this clear to you--Botticelli wants, with as little engraving, as much Sibyl as possible. For his head isfull of Sibyls, and his heart. He can't draw them fast enough: onecomes, and another and another; and all, gracious and wonderful andgood, to be engraved forever, if only he had a thousand hands and lives. He scratches down one, with no haste, with no fault, divinely careful, scrupulous, patient, but with as few lines as possible. 'AnotherSibyl--let me draw another, for heaven's sake, before she has burnt allher books, and vanished. '

Dürer is exactly Botticelli's opposite. He is a workman, to the heart, and will do his work magnificently. 'No matter what I do it on, so thatmy craft be honorably shown. Anything will do; a Sibyl, a skull, aMadonna and Christ, a hat and feather, an Adam, an Eve, a cock, asparrow, a lion with two tails, a pig with five legs, --anything will dofor me. But see if I don't show you what engraving is, be my subjectwhat it may!'

251. Thirdly: Beaugrand, I said, wants as much Sibyl as possible, and asmuch engraving. He is essentially a copyist, and has no ideas of hisown, but deep reverence and love for the work of others. He will givehis life to represent another man's thought. He will do his best withevery spot and line, --exhibit to you, if you will only look, the mostexquisite completion of obedient skill; but will be content, if you willnot look, to pass his neglected years in fruitful peace, and count everyday well spent that has given softness to a shadow, or light to a smile. 

 III. 

 _On Dürer's landscape, with reference to the sentence on p. 101_: "I hope you are pleased. "

252. I spoke just now only of the ill-shaped body of this figure ofFortune, or Pleasure. Beneath her feet is an elaborate landscape. It isall drawn out of Dürer's head;--he would look at bones or tendonscarefully, or at the leaf details of foreground;--but at the breadthand loveliness of real landscape, never. 

He has tried to give you a bird's-eye view of Germany; rocks, and woods, and clouds, and brooks, and the pebbles in their beds, and mills, andcottages, and fences, and what not; but it is all a feverish dream, ghastly and strange, a monotone of diseased imagination. 

And here is a little bit of the world he would not look at--of the greatriver of his land, with a single cluster of its reeds, and two boats, and an island with a village, and the way for the eternal waters openedbetween the rounded hills. [BP]

It is just what you may see any day, anywhere, --innocent, seeminglyartless; but the artlessness of Turner is like the face ofGainsborough's village girl, and a joy forever. 

 IV. 

 _On the study of anatomy. _

253. The virtual beginner of artistic anatomy in Italy was a man called'The Poulterer'--from his grandfather's trade; 'Pollajuolo, ' a man ofimmense power, but on whom the curse of the Italian mind in this age[BQ]was set at its deepest. 

Any form of passionate excess has terrific effects on body and soul, innations as in men; and when this excess is in rage, and rage againstyour brother, and rage accomplished in habitual deeds of blood, --do youthink Nature will forget to set the seal of her indignation upon theforehead? I told you that the great division of spirit between thenorthern and southern races had been reconciled in the Val d'Arno. TheFont of Florence, and the Font of Pisa, were as the very springs of thelife of the Christianity which had gone forth to teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Prince of Peace. Yet these two brothercities were to each other--I do not say as Abel and Cain, but asEteocles and Polynices, and the words of Æschylus are now fulfilled inthem to the uttermost. The Arno baptizes their dead bodies:--theirnative valley between its mountains is to them as the furrow of agrave;--"and so much of their land they have, as is sepulcher. " Nay, notof Florence and Pisa only was this true: Venice and Genoa died indeath-grapple; and eight cities of Lombardy divided between them the joyof leveling Milan to her lowest stone. Nay, not merely in city againstcity, but in street against street, and house against house, the fury ofthe Theban dragon flamed ceaselessly, and with the same excuse uponmen's lips. The sign of the shield of Polynices, Justice bringing backthe exile, was to them all, in turn, the portent of death: and theirhistory, in the sum of it and substance, is as of the servants of Joaband Abner by the pool of Gibeon. "They caught every one his fellow bythe head, and thrust his sword in his fellow's side; so they fell downtogether: wherefore that place was called 'the field of the strongmen. '"

254. Now it is not possible for Christian men to live thus, except undera fever of insanity. I have before, in my lectures on Prudence andInsolence in art, deliberately asserted to you the logical accuracy ofthe term 'demoniacal possession'[BR]--the being in the power orpossession of a betraying spirit; and the definite sign of such insanityis delight in witnessing pain, usually accompanied by an instinct thatgloats over or plays with physical uncleanness or disease, and always bya morbid egotism. It is not to be recognized for demoniacal power somuch by its _viciousness_, as its _paltriness_, --the taking pleasure inminute, contemptible, and loathsome things. [BS] Now, in the middle ofthe gallery of the Brera at Milan, there is an elaborate study of adead Christ, entirely characteristic of early fifteenth century Italianmadman's work. It is called--and was presented to the people as--aChrist; but it _is_ only an anatomical study of a vulgar and ghastlydead body, with the soles of the feet set straight at the spectator, andthe rest foreshortened. It is either Castagno's or Mantegna's, --in mymind, set down to Castagno; but I have not looked at the picture foryears, and am not sure at this moment. It does not matter a straw which:it is exactly characteristic of the madness in which all ofthem--Pollajuolo, Castagno, Mantegna, Lionardo da Vinci, and MichaelAngelo, polluted their work with the science of the sepulcher, [BT] anddegraded it with presumptuous and paltry technical skill. Foreshortenyour Christ, and paint Him, if you can, half putrefied, --that is thescientific art of the Renaissance. 

255. It is impossible, however, in so vast a subject to distinguishalways the beginner of things from the establisher. To the poulterer'sson, Pollajuolo, remains the eternal shame of first making insanecontest the only subject of art; but the two _establishers_ of anatomywere Lionardo and Michael Angelo. You hear of Lionardo chiefly becauseof his Last Supper, but Italy did not hear of him for that. This was notwhat brought _her_ to worship Lionardo--but the Battle of the Standard. 

 V. 

 _Fragments on Holbein and others. _

256. Of Holbein's St. Elizabeth, remember, she is not a perfect SaintElizabeth, by any means. She is an honest and sweet German lady, --thebest he could see; he could do no better;--and so I come back to my oldstory, --no man can do better than he sees: if he can reach the natureround him, it is well; he may fall short of it; he cannot rise above it;"the best, in this kind, are but shadows. "

 * * * * *

Yet that intense veracity of Holbein is indeed the strength and glory ofall the northern schools. They exist only in being true. Their workamong men is the definition of what is, and the abiding by it. Theycannot dream of what is not. They make fools of themselves if they try. Think how feeble even Shakspere is when he tries his hand at aGoddess;--women, beautiful and womanly, as many as you choose; but whocares what his Minerva or Juno says, in the masque of the Tempest? Andfor the painters--when Sir Joshua tries for a Madonna, or Vandyke for aDiana--they can't even _paint_! they become total simpletons. Look atRubens' mythologies in the Louvre, or at modern French heroics, orGerman pietisms! Why, all--Cornelius, Hesse, Overbeck, and David--puttogether, are not worth one De Hooghe of an old woman with a broomsweeping a back-kitchen. The one thing we northerns can do is to findout what is fact, and insist on it: mean fact it may be, or noble--butfact always, or we die. 

257. Yet the intensest form of northern realization can be matched inthe south, when the southerns choose. There are two pieces of animaldrawing in the Sistine Chapel unrivaled for literal veracity. The sheepat the well in front of Zipporah; and afterwards, when she is goingaway, leading her children, her eldest boy, like every one else, hastaken his chief treasure with him, and this treasure is his pet dog. Itis a little sharp-nosed white fox-terrier, full of fire and life; butnot strong enough for a long walk. So little Gershom, whose name was"the stranger" because his father had been a stranger in a strangeland, --little Gershom carries his white terrier under his arm, lying onthe top of a large bundle to make it comfortable. The doggie puts itssharp nose and bright eyes out, above his hand, with a little roguishgleam sideways in them, which means, --if I can read rightly a dog'sexpression, --that he has been barking at Moses all the morning and hasnearly put him out of temper:--and without any doubt, I can assert toyou that there is not any other such piece of animal painting in theworld, --so brief, intense, vivid, and absolutely balanced in truth: astenderly drawn as if it had been a saint, yet as humorously asLandseer's Lord Chancellor poodle. 

258. Oppose to--

 Holbein's Veracity--Botticelli's Fantasy. " Shade " Color. " Despair " Faith. " Grossness " Purity. 

True Fantasy. Botticelli's Tree in Hellespontic Sibyl. Not a real treeat all--yet founded on intensest perception of beautiful reality. So theswan of Clio, as opposed to Dürer's cock, or to Turner's swan. 

The Italian power of abstraction into one mythologicpersonage--Holbein's death is only literal. He has to split his deathinto thirty different deaths; and each is but a skeleton. But Orcagna'sdeath is one--the power of death itself. There may thus be as much_breadth in thought_, as in execution. 

 * * * * *

259. What then, we have to ask, is a man _conscious of_ in what he sees?

For instance, in all Cruikshank's etchings--however slight theoutline--there is an intense consciousness of light and shade, and oflocal color, _as a part_ of light and shade; but none of color itself. He was wholly incapable of coloring; and perhaps this very deficiencyenabled him to give graphic harmony to engraving. 

 * * * * *

Bewick--snow-pieces, etc. _Gray_ predominant; _perfect sense of color_, coming out in patterns of birds;--yet so uncultivated, that he engravesthe brown birds better than pheasant or peacock!

For quite perfect consciousness of color makes engraving impossible, andyou have instead--Correggio. 

 VI. 

 _Final notes on light and shade. _

260. You will find in the 138th and 147th paragraphs of my Inaugurallectures, statements which, if you were reading the book by yourselves, would strike you probably as each of them difficult, and in some degreeinconsistent, --namely, that the school of color has exquisite characterand sentiment; but is childish, cheerful, and fantastic; while theschool of shade is deficient in character and sentiment; but supreme inintellect and veracity. "The way by light and shade, " I say, "is takenby men of the highest powers of thought and most earnest desire fortruth. "

The school of shade, I say, is deficient in character and sentiment. Compare any of Dürer's Madonnas with any of Angelico's. 

Yet you may discern in the Apocalypse engravings that Dürer's mind wasseeking for truths, and dealing with questions, which no more could haveoccurred to Angelico's mind than to that of a two-years-old baby. 

261. The two schools unite in various degrees; but are alwaysdistinguishably generic, the two headmost masters representing eachbeing Tintoret and Perugino. The one, deficient in sentiment, andcontinually offending us by the want of it, but full of intellectualpower and suggestion. 

The other, repeating ideas with so little reflection that he gets blamedfor doing the same thing over again, (Vasari); but exquisite insentiment and the conditions of taste which it forms, so as to becomethe master of it to Raphael and to all succeeding him; and remainingsuch a type of sentiment, too delicate to be felt by the latterpractical mind of Dutch-bred England, that Goldsmith makes theadmiration of him the test of absurd connoisseurship. But yet, withunder-current of intellect, which gets him accused of free-thinking, andtherefore with under-current of entirely exquisite chiaroscuro. 

Light and shade, then, imply the understanding of things--Color, theimagination and the sentiment of them. 

262. In Turner's distinctive work, color is scarcely acknowledged unlessunder influence of sunshine. The sunshine is his treasure; his lividestgloom contains it; his grayest twilight regrets it, and remembers. Blueis always a blue shadow; brown or gold, always light;--nothing ischeerful but sunshine; wherever the sun is not, there is melancholy orevil. Apollo is God; and all forms of death and sorrow exist inopposition to him. 

But in Perugino's distinctive work, --and therefore I have given him thecaptain's place over all, --there is simply _no_ darkness, _no_ wrong. Every color is lovely, and every space is light. The world, theuniverse, is divine: all sadness is a part of harmony; and all gloom, apart of peace. 

 THE END. 

FOOTNOTES:

[BL] See note to the close of this article, p. 156. 

[BM] The raven, however, like all Dickens's animals, is perfect: and Iam the more angry with the rest because I have every now and then toopen the book to look for him. 

[BN] "Laws of Fésole. "

[BO] 2, Church Terrace, Richmond, Surrey. NOTE. --I have hithertopermitted Mr. Ward to copy any Turner drawing he was asked to do; but, finding there is a run upon the vignettes of Loch Lomond and Derwent, Ihave forbidden him to do more of them for the present, lest his workshould get the least mechanical. The admirable drawings of Venice, by mygood assistant, Mr. Bunney, resident there, will become of more value totheir purchasers every year, as the buildings from which they are madeare destroyed. I was but just in time, working with him at Verona, tocatch record of Fra Giocondo's work in the smaller square; the mostbeautiful Renaissance design in North Italy. 

[BP] The engraving of Turner's "Scene on the Rhine" (near Bingen?) withboats on the right, and reedy foreground on the left; the openingbetween its mountain banks in central distance. It is exquisitelyengraved, the plate being of the size of the drawing, about ten inchesby six, and finished with extreme care and feeling. 

[BQ] See the horrible picture of St. Sebastian by him in our ownNational Gallery. 

[BR] See "The Eagle's Nest, " § 79. 

[BS] As in the muscles of the legs and effort in stretching bows, of theexecutioners, in the picture just referred to. 

[BT] Observe, I entirely distinguish the study of _anatomy_--i. E. , ofintense bone and muscle--from study of the nude, as the Greeks practicedit. This for an entirely great painter is absolutely necessary; but yetI believe, in the case of Botticelli, it was nobly restricted. Thefollowing note by Mr. Tyrwhitt contains, I think, the probable truth:--

"The facts relating to Sandro Botticelli's models, or rather to hisfavorite model (as it appears to me), are but few; and it is greatly tobe regretted that his pictures are seldom dated;--if it were certain inwhat order they appeared, what follows here might approach moralcertainty. 

"There is no doubt that he had great personal regard for Fra Filippo, upto that painter's death in 1469, Sandro being then twenty-two years old. He may probably have got only good from him; anyhow he would get astrong turn for Realism, --i. E. The treatment of sacred and all othersubjects in a realistic manner. He is described in Crowe andCavalcaselle from Filippino Lippi's Martyrdom of St. Peter, as a sullenand sensual man, with beetle brows, large fleshy mouth, etc. , etc. Probably he was a strong man, and intense in physical and intellectualhabit. 

"This man, then, begins to paint in his strength, withconviction--rather happy and innocent than not--that it is right topaint any beautiful thing, and best to paint the most beautiful, --say in1470, at twenty-three years of age. The allegorical Spring and theGraces, and the Aphrodite now in the Ufficii, were painted for Cosmo, and seem to be taken by Vasari and others as early, or early-central, works in his life: also the portrait of Simonetta Vespucei[1]. He isknown to have painted much in early life for the Vespucei and theMedici;--and this daughter of the former house seems to have beeninamorata or mistress of Giuliano de' Medici, murdered by the Pazzi in1478. Now it seems agreed by Crowe and Cavalcaselle, Pater, etc. , (and Iam quite sure of it myself as to the pictures mentioned)--first, thatthe same slender and long-throated model appears in Spring, theAphrodite, Calumny, and other works. [2] Secondly, that she wasSimonetta, the original of the Pitti portrait. 

"Now I think she must have been induced to let Sandro draw from herwhole person undraped, more or less; and that he must have done so assuch a man probably would, in strict honor as to deed, word, and_definite_ thought, but under occasional accesses of passion of which hesaid nothing, and which in all probability and by grace of God refineddown to nil, or nearly so, as he got accustomed to look in honor at sobeautiful a thing. (He may have left off the undraped after her death. )First, her figure is absolutely fine Gothic; I don't think any antiqueis so slender. Secondly, she has the sad, passionate, and exquisiteLombard mouth. Thirdly, her limbs shrink together, and she seems notquite to have 'liked it' or been an accustomed model. Fourthly, there istradition, giving her name to all those forms. 

"Her lover Giuliano was murdered in 1478, and Savonarola hanged andburnt in 1498. Now, can her distress, and Savonarola's preaching, between them, have taken, in few years, all the carnality out of Sandro, supposing him to have come already, by seventy-eight, to that state inwhich the sight of her delighted him, without provoking ulteriorfeelings? All decent men accustomed to draw from the nude tell us theyget to that. 

"Sandro's Dante is dated as published in 1482. He may have beensaddening by that time, and weary of beauty, pure or mixed;--though hewent on painting Madonnas, I fancy. (Can Simonetta be traced in any ofthem? I think not. The Sistine paintings extend from 1481 to 1484, however. I cannot help thinking Zipporah is impressed with her. ) AfterSavonarola's death, Sandro must have lost heart, and gone into Dantealtogether. Most ways in literature and art lead to Dante; and thisquestion about the nude and the purity of Botticelli is no exception tothe rule. 

"Now in the Purgatorio, Lust is the last sin of which we are to be madepure, and it has to be burnt out of us; being itself as searching asfire, as smoldering, devouring, and all that. Corruptio: optimi pessima;and it is the most searching and lasting of evils, because it really isa corruption attendant on true Love, which is eternal--whatever the wordmeans. That this is so, seems to me to demonstrate the truth of the Fallof Man from the condition of moral very-goodness in God's sight. And Ithink that Dante connected the purifying pains of his intermediate statewith actual sufferings in this life, working out repentance, --in himselfand others. And the 'torment' of this passion, to the repentant orresisting, or purity-seeking soul is decidedly like the pain of physicalburning. 

"Further, its casuistry is impracticable; because the more you stir thesaid 'fire' the stronger hold it takes. Therefore, men and women are_rightly_ secret about it, and detailed confessions unadvisable. Muchtalk about 'hypocrisy' in this matter is quite wrong and unjust. Then, its connection with female beauty, as a cause of love between man andwoman, seems to me to be the inextricable nodus of the Fall, the hereinseparable mixture of good and evil, till soul and body are parted. Forthe sense of seen Beauty is the awakening of Love, at whatever distancefrom any kind of return or sympathy--as with a rose, or what not. Sandromay be the man who has gone nearest to the right separation of Delightfrom Desire: supposing that he began with religion and a straightconscience; saw lovingly the error of Fra Filippo's way; saw withintense distant love the error of Simonetta's; and reflected on Florenceand _its_ way, and drew nearer and nearer to Savonarola, being yet toobig a man for asceticism; and finally wearied of all things and sunkinto poverty and peace. "

[1] Pitti, Stanza di Prometeo, 348. 

[2] I think Zipporah may be a remembrance of her. 

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