“Upon what grounds?” asked Diana. “I do not see how you can compare two profligate tyrants with two men who were certainly moral in their private lives, if they were nothing else.”
“Moral!” exclaimed Lionardo. “Savonarola — yes — he was moral enough, he meant to be a good man. But Giordano Bruno! One portion of his writings is not fit for man or beast, much less for woman! When he was not spiteful he was filthy, and when he was neither, he was blasphemous, though he was frequently all three together.”
“Of course I have never read his works,” answered Diana, quietly, “but I believe he was something of a philosopher, not to say a scientist.”
“I will do him the credit to say that he defended the system of Copernicus,” assented the artist, with a smile, “and he quarrelled with all known and unknown philosophies. But the system of Copernicus does not in itself constitute a morality, and it was on the ground of his morality that you proposed to defend him. I did not say he was a fool. I said he was a bad man. He was not so bad as Cesare Borgia, but he was very far from being so important a personage.”
“The greatness of the Borgias was not of the kind to be envied. I cannot see why you cling to them.”
“You yourself said you would like to see Cesare,” answered Lionardo. “Believe me, if you could see half a dozen of those men together, and talk with them, you would not think our age so delightful as it looks through the stained glass of three centuries. We artists enjoyed our lives more than other men, I suppose, because the reigning princes always had need of us, whoever they chanced to be. In my day I served the Florentine Republic, Ludovico Sforza of Milan, Cesare Borgia, Louis the Twelfth of France, Leo the Tenth and Francis the First. I painted for Florence, I made canals for Ludovico Moro, I fortified towns for the Duke Valentino, I made more canals for Louis and I painted pictures for the rest. No one ever molested me, and I had a very happy life. But look at the governments I served. Florence was the battle-ground of the Medici and the popes, Ludovico Sforza died in a dungeon, Cesare Borgia was killed in a skirmish after having been exiled for many years, and even Leo the Tenth is now generally believed to have been poisoned. Their lives were not easy and their deaths were less so, but we artists were rarely molested. We enjoyed a special immunity because we were always wanted.”
“Artists are not often molested in our day, and as far as numbers go they have the better of you,” replied Diana. “But apart from that, there was an individuality in your age which we do not understand. Single characters stand out, like Cesare Borgia, Ludovico Sforza or any of those men — but we form no distinct idea of their surroundings. I wonder why that is so. When I think of Cæsar, I think of him in connection with the other men of his time, as coming soon after Marius and Sulla, as the rival of Pompey, as the uncle of Octavius—”
“Cæsar was a greater man than our personages of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. You know more about him.”
“That is not the reason. I sometimes think I would rather know more about your times than about ancient history. I have a much clearer idea of the this at Nantes with the Card d’Amboise when VALENTINO, as the son of Pope Alexander teas commonly called, occupied Romagna.” surroundings of Alcibiades than of the daily life of Cesare Borgia.”
“I think,” answered Lionardo, “that the complication of small events in our day was too great to be remembered distinctly. There were too many romantic characters, involved in desperately romantic circumstances, producing on the whole very little effect upon the world. One remembers the individual without connecting him with the event. A fictitious interest is often attached to romantic personages which does not seem justified by their deeds. Hence it is not easy to compose a history of one of them which shall not disappoint the reader.”
“You artists, at least, are known by what you accomplished,” said Diana, looking at the old man’s expressive face.
“And perhaps some of those princes deserve only to be remembered for having paid the price of our works,” returned the painter. “We were often obliged to sing our own praises in order to obtain orders from them. I remember writing a letter to Ludovico, which I should be ashamed to write in your times, but it was necessary then. I professed myself able to build public and private edifices as well as any one alive, to construct canals against any known engineer, to produce statues of bronze or marble or clay, and to paint, all as well as any living artist. It is true that Michelangeolo was a boy at the time. Titian was a baby then, and Raphael and Andrea del Sarto were both born in the year I wrote the letter. Nevertheless I have often thought with wonder of my own assumption in enumerating my talents. On the other hand, if I had shown any modesty or diffidence I should never have attracted Ludovico’s attention. This was the way in which our individuality asserted itself. Men knew that their success depended on their ability to force themselves upon the attention of the great, unless they were great by birth, in which case they were obliged to rule as much by inspiring terror as by exhibiting clemency. The artist of course knew that if he failed to fulfil his promises, it was in the prince’s power to ruin him, and the prince himself, having power to destroy the artist, readily put faith in the professions of a man who showed himself ready to run so great a risk. The result of all this was the contrast of individualities which has surprised posterity. Where great forces are called into play, the will and intelligence of the leader are easily confounded with the executive power he directs, owing to the magnitude of the result. To take an instance from more recent times, such as the failure of Bonaparte’s expedition to Russia; I fancy that you think quite as much of Marshal Ney and of the ‘Grande Armée,’ as of the emperor himself, when you recall your general memories of the campaign. Most people do. But when you think of Cesare Borgia and his attempt to conquer the north of Italy, you think of the man alone and your mind probably provides you with no picture of his soldiers, his lieutenants, or his counsellors. He is, to you, a detached monster of wickedness, little better than Eccelino Romano, the tyrant of the Trevisan March, though a little more clear to the historical vision. The atrocious deeds of Cesare and Eccelino are not rendered insignificant by enormous military operations, decisive victories or defeats entailing the ruin of an empire. The background is but a panorama of petty warfare in the darkest episodes of which the princes themselves are the chief actors. Their individuality stands out like a black figure in the foreground of a grey picture. To understand those men thoroughly you must study their surroundings, you must fill in the middle distance and the background until you feel that the whole composition is harmonious. You must learn how the various classes of men lived in those days, and especially what the various classes thought of the princes who governed them. The light of history falls unequally on the armies of the past, as they stand drawn up in their dead ranks. The figures that chance to be illuminated look much as they did in life, but the effect they produce is exaggerated by the darkness which surrounds them.”
“for the sake of posterity,” said Diana, “painters should paint nothing but scenes from their own times. It might be less interesting to themselves, but it would be vastly more valuable to the people who live after them. Each succeeding generation paints subjects from the preceding times. Even in our day it is fashionable to paint pictures of persons in the dress of the beginning of the century. For a long time, anything later than shorts and silk stockings was considered impossible on canvas. Artists have now attacked the incroyable period. It is reserved for the genre painters of the next century to represent men in trousers and evening coats and women in costumes invented by Doucet or Redfern. I believe there are a few original geniuses who have tried even that. After all, why is it not better to preserve accurately for posterity what we can see, than to revive more or less inaccurately that which belonged to the past? Why should what we meet every day in real life look ridiculous in a gilt frame, unless it chances to be in the portrait of some living person? Why cannot history be painted as well as written? Raphael and Pinturicchio have left
a series of frescoes in the library of the Cathedral of Siena, which give one a complete idea of the life of Pius Second. Why could they not have done the same for Alexander Sixth who lived in their own time? I would have artists perpetuate the events of their day, and I would have governments bear the expense of such pictures as being valuable historical documents.”
“It would be good for history and bad for art,” answered Lionardo, thoughtfully. “A series of coloured photographs would answer the purpose without degrading art. But I doubt whether anything of the kind, if you had it, would recall our age to you as it was. A gallery of portraits of people assembled upon an important occasion and dressed in their best clothes would not suffice to create in your mind an impression of the way in which those people lived. Nor is it the object of art to perpetuate common and often repulsive details. Art, without a little inspiration, can be nothing but a laborious substitute for photography, whereas it should be the object of photography to perform at a cheap rate the drudgery which true art must always despise, or to reproduce at an insignificant price the works of good artists for the delectation of those persons who are unable to see the originals. Painters must paint portraits of all sorts of people, since the appreciation of beauty is greatest where there exists at the same time the most profound knowledge of the commonplace. Beauty being exceptional, the understanding of it requires a detailed acquaintance with what is not beautiful, since it is by constantly eliminating the imperfect that the highest perfection is attained. Much that is thought to be beautiful really borders upon the unnatural, and it needs both study and experience to decide at what point the exaggeration of one or more good features begins to produce the strange feeling of dissatisfaction that arises from the discord of proportion which is nicknamed ‘the grotesque.’ Therefore I say that painters must paint portraits of all kinds of people in order to be able to imagine and paint faces of ideal beauty.”
“I fancy it is generally believed that the way to create beautiful works is to study only the beautiful,” said Diana. “But your theory seems true.”
“It is because men have been confined so long by the schools to the study of the beautiful, that they have suddenly thrown themselves into the opposite extreme. From having been taught to believe that only one class of subjects ought to be represented, they have fallen into the error of supposing that nothing is so hideous as to be unworthy of the artist’s pencil.”
“You used to paint very ugly things yourself,” remarked Diana.
“For study,” answered the artist. “I was fond of physiognomy, as every painter should be. I loved to study the origin of expression in the face. When a beautiful woman laughs lightly the same muscles are in motion which produce a horrid grin in the face of a drunken boor. As far as the lines go, supreme beauty and repulsive ugliness are only a quarter of an inch apart.”
“Nothing quite symmetrical is entirely displeasing to the eye,” said the young girl. “The most horrible masks and gargoyle water-spouts are used as architectural ornaments and are not disagreeable, so long as their features have some symmetry.”
“Symmetry is a vertical notion,” replied Lionardo, “and corresponds to the horizontal notion we call proportion.”
“I do not understand,” said Diana.
“Our idea of symmetry only extends to the right hand and the left hand of a central vertical line,” answered the artist. “It does not extend above or below a horizontal line. In the latter direction we have only a desire for proportion. A church door, for instance, having two pillars on the one side and three on the other, would shock us by its lack of symmetry; but a temple in two stories may have seven pillars below and six or five above — we do not demand symmetry in that direction, though we require proportion. A building broader above than below would strike us as an architectural monstrosity on account of the evident lack of stability in the equilibrium. But a pyramid is pleasing to the eye. A pyramid in any other position than standing on its base would be offensive to our instincts. It is the same with the human face and the human body. We require that there should be an eye on each side of the nose and an ear on each side of the head, but we do not feel that, to be pleasing to the sight, the human face should begin again, in the reversed order, from the line of the hair upward, so that there should be a second forehead, a second pair of eyes, a second nose, mouth and chin, all upside down. The symmetry to right and left, however, is indispensable; if you preserve it you may invent any monster to be carved in wood, stone or metal. The result may be terrible, grotesque, or beautiful, it will never produce the sensation evoked by incongruity — it will never be half so frightful as the effigy of a monster with one eye on one side and a smooth surface in its place on the other. You may obliterate both the eyes without producing the startling effect caused by effacing only one of them. The absence of nose or mouth in a drawing only makes the face look unfinished — the lack of an eye inspires horror. If you preserve symmetry, you may paint grinning peasants to any extent of variety, and the painting of them will be useful as a study. Even commonplace heads are good to paint, as I said before, because you learn to eliminate gradually all that is not beautiful.”
“Do you mean that artists ought to begin by studying the ugly?” inquired Diana.
“They should not begin by drawing only academical noses and architectural eyebrows, as they generally do. They ought to draw alternately beautiful and ugly faces, and above all they should draw from the first faces having a great variety of expression. Over-study of the academic often produces a distaste for the beautiful.”
“As a child ends by hating the Collects and Gospels which he has been forced to learn by heart on Sunday,” suggested the young girl. “I suppose that the same truth extends to other things. People who make a hard and fast rule for themselves are sometimes more inclined to go suddenly to an opposite extreme than people who go along without any particular principle. When Karl Sand had murdered Kotzebue he fell on his knees before the crowd in the street outside the house and solemnly thanked God for his victory, while stabbing himself in the breast to escape justice. He lived long enough to be beheaded, after all. What an outrageous set of contradictions! And yet he was theoretically no more illogical than the painter who paints anatomical monstrosities because he is sick of the staid style of the academy.”
“Savonarola came very near being an instance of the same thing,” answered the old artist. “As for my good friend King Francis, when he was tired of imitating Bayard, he imitated Cesare Borgia. He was nearly as successful with the one as with the other.”
“Francis the First was one of the most inconsistent men who ever lived. I do not like him.”
“And yet he meant to be a good man. He fancied himself always what he really was on very rare occasions. But he was inconsistent, except in his desire to found an absolute monarchy.”
“I suppose it is something to a king’s credit if he is consistent in one thing,” said Diana. “One must not expect too much.”
“I have sometimes thought that with all their faults the Italians of our age were more consistent than the foreign princes who attacked them,” replied Lionardo. “The most apparently inconsistent of all was Gian Galeazzo Visconti, who lived before I did, but of whom people still talked when I was alive. And yet his inconsistency was only apparent, it was not real. He so concealed his own intentions that people were not able to reconcile together the results he produced. But it was clear in the end that every action of his life had tended to his own aggrandisement. When he locked himself up in his castle and pretended that he was afraid of being assassinated if he stirred abroad, no one suspected that it was a mere comedy calculated to increase the confidence of his brother Barnabô, whom he murdered at their next meeting. There was certainly an evil consistency at the bottom of his most contradictory actions. But Francis was really inconsistent. He was theatrical. He was easily moved to produce striking effects, and very hard to move to anything which did not amuse, him. He won the battle of Marignano against
the Swiss by his own heroic personal courage, and he lost the battle of Pavia by an unlucky display of vanity — by taking the advice of Bonnivet against that of every one else; and giving battle from a disadvantageous position. He loved glory when it was to be had by physical courage — he did not care for it when its price was the sacrifice of his own inclinations. He broke a very solemn promise made to the emperor when he was a prisoner, and he broke it for his own advantage. Then, when he had the emperor in his hands, he treated him with the utmost magnanimity, entertained him splendidly, and sent him on his way in peace.”
“That was to his credit, at all events,” said Diana. “A smaller man would perhaps have kept his promise in the first instance, but would have locked up Charles in the Bastille when he had a chance.”
“And what would a modern sovereign do under the circumstances?” asked the painter.
“I suppose that if he were defeated as Francis was at Pavia, his people would dethrone him and make a revolution. That was what happened to Napoleon Third.”
“Would the same thing happen if a king of England were caught and made prisoner by his enemies in these times?”
“I do not know,” answered Diana. “The English would fight for their king, I imagine, and perhaps they would dethrone him after they had got him back.”
“That sounds inconsistent.”
“No. They would be too patriotic to allow their king to remain a prisoner. That would touch their national pride. But as far as their relations with their sovereign were concerned, they would be independent enough to dethrone him if they were not satisfied with his kingship. Patriotism is not loyalty.”
While they were talking the sun went down, and all the sky grew soft and purple above them.
“Another day is gone,” said Diana almost sadly. “Let us go home. You will come with me, will you not?”
“I will come with you a part of the way,” answered the artist. “But I will come again this evening with the others of our friends. Why are you sad?”
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 318