Civilization has nothing to do with morality. That is rather a shocking statement, perhaps, but it is a true one. It may be balanced by saying that civilization has nothing to do with immorality either. The early Christians were looked upon as very uncivilized people by the Romans of their time, and the meanest descendants of the Greeks secretly called the Romans themselves barbarians. In point of civilization and what we call cultivation, Alcibiades was immeasurably superior to Saint Paul, Peter the Hermit or Abraham Lincoln, though Alcibiades had no morality to speak of and not much conscience. Moreover, it is a fact that great reformers of morals have often been great enemies of art and destroyers of the beautiful. Fra Bartolommeo, who is thought by many to have equalled Raphael in the latter’s early days, became a follower of Savonarola, burned all his wonderful drawings and studies, and shut himself up in a monastery to lead a religious life; and though he yielded after several years to the command of his superiors, and began painting again, he confined himself altogether to devotional subjects as long as he lived, and fell far behind Raphael, who was certainly not an exemplary character, even in those days.
In Europe, and in the Latin languages, there is a distinction, and a universally accepted one, between education and instruction. It is something like that which I am trying to make clear between Civilization and Progress. An ‘instructed man’ means a man who has learned much but who may have no manners at all, may eat with his knife, forget to wash his hands, wear outlandish clothes, and be ignorant even of the ordinary forms of politeness. An ‘educated person,’ on the contrary, may know very little Latin, and no Greek, and may be shaky in the multiplication table; but he must have perfect manners to deserve the designation, and tact, with a thorough knowledge of all those customs and outward forms which distinguish what calls itself civilized society from the rest of the world. Anyone can see that such instruction, on the one hand, and such education, on the other, are derived from wholly different sources, and must lead to wholly different results; and it is as common nowadays to find men who have the one without the other, as it ever was in ancient Greece or Rome. I should like to assert that it is more common, since Progress is so often mistaken for Civilization and tacitly supposed to be able to do without it, and that Diogenes would not be such a startling exception now as he was in the days of Alexander the Great. But no one would dare to say that Progress cannot go on in a high state of Civilization. All that can be stated with absolute certainty is that they are independent of each other, since Progress means ‘going on’ and therefore ‘change’; whereas Civilization may remain at the same high level for a very long period, without any change at all. Compare our own country with China, for instance. In the arts — the plural ‘arts’ — in applied science, we are centuries ahead of Asia; but our manners are rough and even brutal compared with the elaborate politeness of the Chinese, and we should labour in vain to imitate the marvellous productions of their art. We may prefer our art to that of the far East, though there are many critics who place the Japanese artists much higher than our own; but no one can deny the superior skill of the Asiatics in the making of everything artistic.
Nor must we undervalue in art the importance of the minor and special sort of progress which means a real and useful improvement in methods and materials. That is doubtless a part, a first step, in the general progress which tends ultimately to the invention of machinery, but which, in its development, passes through the highest perfection of manual work.
The first effect of this sort of progress in art was to give men of genius new and better tools, and therefore a better means of expression. In a way, almost every painter of early times was an inventor, and had to be, because for a long time the methods and tools of painting were absurdly insufficient. Every man who succeeded had discovered some new way of grinding and mixing colours, of preparing the surface on which he worked, of using the brush and the knife, and of fixing the finished picture by means of varnishes. The question of what painters call the vehicle for colour was always of immense importance. Long before Giotto began to work there seem to have been two common ways of painting, namely, in fresco, with water-colours, and on prepared surfaces by means of wax mixed with some sort of oil.
In fresco painting, the mason, or the plasterer, works with the painter. A surface as large as the artist expects to use during a few hours is covered with fresh stucco by the mason, and thoroughly smoothed with a small trowel. Stucco, as used in Italy, is a mixture of slaked lime and white marble dust, or very fine sand which has been thoroughly sifted. If stained to resemble coloured or veined marbles, and immediately ironed till it is dry with hot smooth irons, the surface of the mass is hardened and polished to such a degree that it is almost impossible to distinguish it from real marble without breaking into it. Waxing gives it a still higher polish. But if water-colours are used for painting a picture upon it, and if the colours are laid on while the stucco is still damp, they unite with the lime, and slowly dry to a surface which is durable, but neither so hard nor so polished as that produced when the stucco is ironed. The principal conditions are that the stucco must be moist, the wall behind it absolutely dry and the colours very thin and flowing. Should the artist not cover all that has been prepared for his day’s work, the remainder has to be broken out again and laid on fresh the next day. It is now admitted that the wall-paintings of the ancients were executed in this way. As it was impossible for the artist at any time to have the whole surface of the freshly stuccoed wall at his disposal in order to draw his picture before painting it, he either drew the design in red upon the rough dry plaster, and then had the stucco laid over it in bits, or else he made a cartoon drawing of the work in its full size. The outlines were then generally pricked out with a stout pin, and the cartoon cut up into pieces of convenient dimensions, so that the painter could lay them against the fresh stucco and rub the design through, or pounce it, as we should say, with charcoal dust, like a stencil. He then coloured it as quickly as he could. If he made a mistake, or was not pleased with the effect, there was no remedy except the radical one of breaking off the stucco, laying it on fresh, and beginning over again. It was clearly impossible to paint over the same surface again and again as can be done in oil painting.
No one knows exactly when eggs were first used in fresco painting, nor does it matter much. Some people used the yolk and the white together, some only one or the other, but the egg was, and is, always mixed with water. Some artists now put gum tragacanth into the mixture. It is then used like water in water-colour work, but is called ‘tempera’ or ‘distemper.’ The effect of the egg is to produce an easy flow of the colour with so little liquid that the paint does not run on the surface, as it easily does in ordinary water-colours. The effect of the yellow yolk of the egg upon the tints is insignificant, unless too much be used. By using egg, one may paint upon ordinary prepared canvas as easily as with oils, which is impossible with water-colour.
As for the early paintings upon panels of wood, before oils were used, they were meant to be portable imitations of fresco. The wood was accordingly prepared by covering it with a thin coating of fine white cement, or stucco, which was allowed to dry and become perfectly hard, because it was of course impossible to lay it on fresh every day in such small quantities. The vehicle used could therefore not be water, which would have made the colours run. The most common practice of the Byzantine and Romanesque schools seems to have been to use warm melted wax in combination with some kind of oil, the mixture being kept ready at hand over a lighted lamp, or on a pan of burning charcoal. There are artists in Europe, still, who occasionally use wax in this way, though generally mixed with alcohol or turpentine, and the result is said to be very durable. Sir Joshua Reynolds painted many pictures in this way.
With regard to using oils on a dry surface in wall painting, instead of fresco, Lionardo da Vinci tried it repeatedly with the result that many of his wall paintings were completely lost within thirty or forty years after they had been painted. The greatest o
f those which have survived at all, the Last Supper in Milan, has had to be restored so often that little of the original picture remains untouched.
The enormous value of linseed oil and nut oil as a vehicle was apparent as soon as it was discovered in Holland. Its great advantages are that, unlike water or egg, it will carry a large quantity of colour upon the canvas at the first stroke, that it dries slowly, so that the same ground may be worked over without haste while it is still fresh, and that it has a very small effect in changing the tints of the original paints used. One may see what value was attached to its use from the fact that those who first brought it to Italy worked in secret. Andrea Castagno, surnamed the Assassin, learned the method from his best friend, Domenico Veneziano, and then murdered him while he was singing a serenade under a lady’s window, in order to possess the secret alone. But it soon became universally known and made a revolution in Italian painting.
In the older times, when rare and valuable pigments were used, as well as large quantities of pure gold, the materials to be employed and their value were stipulated for in the contract made between the painter and his employer before the picture was begun, and an artist’s remuneration at that time was much of the nature of a salary, calculated on an approximate guess at the time he might need for the work. That was, of course, a survival from the time of the Byzantine artists, to whom gold and silver and paints were weighed out by the ecclesiastics for whom they painted, and had to be accounted for in the finished picture. There is a story told of an artist’s apprentice, who made a considerable sum of money by selling the washings of his master’s brushes when the latter was using a great quantity of ultramarine; and that shows the costliness of mere paints at that time. As for the more valuable materials, the great altar picture in Saint Mark’s, in Venice, is entirely composed of plates of pure gold enamelled in different colours, and fastened in a sort of mosaic upon the wood panel as required, the lights and shades being produced by hatching regular lines through the hard enamel with a sharp instrument. The whole technical history of painting lies between that sort of work and the modern painter’s studio.
Before oil painting became general, artists were largely dependent on commissions in order to do any work except drawing. Fresco needed a wall, and work done in that manner could not be removed from place to place. The old-fashioned panel work with its gold background was so expensive that few artists could afford to paint pictures on the mere chance of selling them. But the facilities and the economy of pure tempera work, and work in oils, soon made easel pictures common.
Between the time of Giotto and that of Mantegna another means of expression, besides painting, was found for artists, if not by accident, by the ingenuity of the celebrated goldsmith, Maso Finiguerra, who was the first man in Italy, and probably the first in the world, to take off upon paper impressions in ink from an engraved plate.
THE PALATINE
The especial branch of goldsmithing which he practised was what the Italians still call ‘niello’ work, or the enamelling of designs upon precious metals. The method of doing such work is this. Upon the piece to be enamelled the design is first carefully drawn with a fine point, precisely as in silver chiselling, and corrected till quite perfect in all respects. This design is then cut into the metal with very sharp tools, evenly, but not to a great depth. When completely cut, the enamelling substance, which is generally sulphate of silver, is placed upon the design in just sufficient quantities, and the whole piece of work is then put into a furnace and heated to such a point that the enamel melts and fills all the cuttings of the design, while the metal itself remains uninjured. This is an easier matter than might be supposed, because gold and silver, though soft under the chisel, will not melt except at a very high temperature. When the enamel has cooled, the whole surface is rubbed down to a perfect level, and the design appears with sharp outlines in the polished metal.
Now anyone who has ever worked with a steel point on bright metal knows how very hard it is to judge of the correctness of the drawing by merely looking at it, because the light is reflected in all directions into one’s eyes, not only from untouched parts of the plate, but from the freshly cut lines. The best way of testing the work is to blacken it with some kind of colour that is free from acid, such as a mixture of lampblack and oil, to rub the surface clean so as to leave the ink only in the engraved lines, and then take an impression of the drawing upon damp paper. That is practically what Finiguerra did, and in so doing he discovered the art of engraving. Probably goldsmiths had done the same before him, as they have always done since, but none of them had thought of drawing upon metal merely for the sake of the impression it would make, and without any intention of using the metal afterwards. Within fifty years of Finiguerra’s invention very beautiful engravings were sold all over Italy, and many famous painters engraved their own works — foremost among these, Mantegna and Botticelli.
Early Italian art rose thus by regular steps, from the helpless, traditional, imitative work of the Romanesque and Byzantine artists to its highest development. It then passed a succession of climaxes in the masterpieces of Lionardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael and Titian, and thence descended gradually to the miserably low level of the eighteenth century.
It is easy to trace the chief objects which painting had in view in its successive phases. Tradition, Reality and Illusion were the three. Cimabue was still a Traditionist. Giotto was the first Realist. Mantegna first aimed at the full illusion which finished art is capable of producing, and though not so great a man as Giotto, was a much greater painter. Then came Lionardo, Michelangelo and Raphael, the men of universal genius, who could make use of tradition without being commonplace, who could be realistic without being coarse, and who understood how to produce illusion without being theatrical. In the decay of Italian art what strikes one most strongly is the combination of the three faults which the great men knew how to avoid — coarseness, commonplace thought and theatrical execution.
PALAZZO DEI CONSERVATORI
From a print of the last century
Cimabue had found out that it was possible to paint sacred pictures without the dictation of priests, as prescribed by the Council of Nice. The idea discovered by Giotto, or rather the fact, namely, that nature could be copied artistically, produced a still greater revolution, and he had hosts of scholars and followers and imitators. But they were nothing more, or at the most it may be said that they developed his idea to the furthest with varying success. It was realism — sometimes a kind of mystic evocation of nature, disembodied and divinely pure, as in Beato Angelico; often exquisitely fresh and youthful, as in his pupil, Benozzo Gozzoli, whose vast series of frescoes half fills the Camposanto of Pisa — sometimes tentative and experimental, or gravely grand, as in Masaccio, impetuous and energetic as in Fra Lippo Lippi, fanciful as in Botticelli — but still, always realism, in the sense of using nature directly, without any distinct effort at illusion, the figures mostly taken from life, and generally disposed in one plane, the details minute, the landscapes faithful rather than suggestive.
The lives of those men were all typical of the times in which they lived, and especially the life of the holy man we call Beato Angelico, of saintly memory, that of the fiery lay brother, Filippo Lippi, whose astounding talents all but redeemed his little less surprising sins — and lastly that of Andrea Mantegna.
The first two stand out in tremendous contrast as contemporaries — the realist of the Soul, and the realist of the Flesh, the Saint and the Sinner, the Ascetic and the Sensualist.
Beato Angelico — of his many names, it is easier to call him by the one we know best — was born in 1387. At that time the influence of the Empire in Italy was ended, and that of the Popes was small. The Emperors and the Popes had in fact contended for the control of municipal rights in the free Italian cities; with the disappearance of those rights under the Italian despots the cause of contention was gone, as well as the partial liberty which had given it existence. The whole country wa
s cut up into principalities owned and ruled by tyrants. Dante had been dead about sixty years, and the great imperial idea which he had developed in his poem had totally failed. The theoretical rights of man, as usual in the world’s history, had gone down before the practical strength of individuals, whose success tended, again, to call into activity other individuals, to the general exaltation of talent for the general oppression of mediocrity. In other words, that condition had been produced which is most favourable to genius, because everything between genius and brute strength had been reduced to slavery in the social scale. The power to take and hold, on the one hand, and the power to conceive and execute great works on the other, were as necessary to each other as supply and demand; and all moral worth became a matter of detail compared with success.
In such a state of the world, a man of creative genius who chanced to be a saint was an anomaly; there was no fit place for him but a monastery, and no field for his powers but that of Sacred Art. It was as natural that Angelico should turn monk as that Lippo Lippi, who had been made half a monk against his will, should turn layman.
In the peaceful convent of Saint Mark, among the Dominican brethren, Beato Angelico’s character and genius grew together; the devout artist and the devotional mystic were inseparably blended in one man, and he who is best remembered as a famous painter was chosen by a wise Pope to be Archbishop of Florence, for his holy life, his gentle character and his undoubted learning.
He could not refuse the great honour outright; but he implored the Pope to bestow it upon a brother monk, whom he judged far more worthy than himself. He was the same consistent, humble man who had hesitated to eat meat at the Pope’s own table without the permission of the prior of his convent — a man who, like the great Saint Bernard, had given up a prosperous worldly existence in pure love of religious peace. It was no wonder that such a man should become the realist of the angels and a sort of angel among realists — himself surnamed by his companions the ‘Blessed’ and the ‘Angelic.’
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 1393