by Mary Shelley
“Of good, “wise, just, the perfect shape.”
It is with extreme delight that I have viewed some of the works of the elder Florentine painters, who excelled in pourtraying the human countenance lighted up by the nobler passions. Simplicity and innocence; rapt enthusiasm, or dignified repose, characterise their various productions. It has been remarked that Shakspeare’s personages speak the very words which we may imagine that our noble selves would say under the suggestions of certain passions, dispositions, and circumstances. So it may be said that every figure painted by these higher artists looks an individual chosen among our species for nobility of bearing and beauty of countenance, and that their attitude and look strictly belong to them. There is nothing theatrical nor affected, which is the Charybdis — nor anything constrained or inane, which may be termed the Scylla of the art.
Among the compositions eminent for the conjunction of the truth of nature and ideal beauty, is the fresco of Cosimo Rosselli, in the church of Saint Ambrosio. The subject is the translation of the miraculous chalice to the episcopal palace. It is replete with figures of various aspect, but all expressive of the sentiment of worship and admiration proper to the occasion. There is a group of women in particular, which, if such lived and assembled in the churches of Florence, show that personal beauty and graceful dignity then existed among the sex in a degree unparalleled elsewhere. But these evidently are not mere portraits; and the painter, though accustomed to associate with a race occupied by nobler thoughts and desires than now for the most part harbour in the brain and heart of women, yet idealised his actual experiences.
There is another picture of this age, which to see, is to feel the happiness which the soul receives from objects presented to the eye, that kindle and elevate the imagination. It represents the Adoration of the Magi, by Ghirlandajo, in the chapel of an hospital in the Piazza della Annunziata. There is one of the Kings standing on one side of the Virgin, which might (as the Apollo Belvidere is said to have done), create a passion in a woman’s heart. Where on earth find a man so fall of majesty, gentleness, and feeling? There is a charming accessory to this picture. In the back-ground is represented the Murder of the Innocents, in all its terror; but immediately in the fore-ground, on each side of the Virgin, kneel two children — the souls of the Innocents who died for Christ, and are redeemed by him. The attitude of these babes, especially of one, has that inexpressible charm of innocence which words cannot convey, and which since the creation of man, the pencil has seldom been able to depict.
Led by the admiration which this picture excited, I visited every other in Florence by Ghirlandajo; they mostly bear the stamp of the power I have mentioned. Vasari, albeit of a different school, praises him highly, but chiefly for the naturalness and truth with which he pourtrayed the feelings; and speaks of the wonder excited by those effects, and the pleasure they produced in the beholders. Describing one of the paintings in a chapel of the Church of the Santa Trinità, at Florence, representing the Death of St. Francis, and the grief of the monks, he says, “there is one friar who kisses his hand; and it is not possible, in painting, better to pourtray the expression; and there is besides a bishop, with spectacles on, who is singing vespers, not hearing whom is the only testimony that it is a mere painting.”
Lanzi speaks of his perfection of outline, grace of attitude, truth of ideas, and of his facility and rare diligence. He was the master of Michael Angelo; and, it is said, envying the talents his pupil displayed, contrived that he should quit painting for sculpture. But this, I have no doubt, is a calumny. He is one of the most prolific among the early Florentine painters; but, among his many pictures, I liked none so well as the Adoration of the Magi I before mentioned, and the Life of St. Francis, in a chapel dedicated to this Saint, in the Church of the Santa Trinità.
The Beato Fra Angelico surpasses all his contemporaries in the celestial sweetness he infuses into the countenances of his saints and angels. We may believe ourselves regarding the blessed in the kingdom of heaven, as we look at these creations of a mind cradled in love, charity, and devotion. Fra Giovanni, of Fiesole, known as the blessed Fra Angelico, presents in his life the very type of a Christian ecclesiastic. He gave himself wholly up to piety and good works. His humility was such, that when Pope Nicholas V. desired to make him Archbishop of Florence, he represented to his Holiness that he did not feel himself formed to govern the many, and implored him to name another more worthy in his stead. “It appears, from this holy man,” says Vasari, “that the monks of his time did not desire to obtain those burthensome honours which they did not think that they could worthily fulfil, and were ready to yield them to others whom they judged more capable — as did this truly angelic father, who spent his life in the service of God, and in benefiting the world and his neighbour; and what more can be desired by man than by living holily to attain the kingdom of heaven, and acting worthily to acquire eternal fame on earth.” Fra Angelico was no lazy priest — besides his works elsewhere, Florence abounds with lovely images whose serene and blessed faces breathe the virtues of their author. The delicacy and softness for which he is remarkable never degenerates into insipidity. His pure taste made him conceive the highest beauty, his faith gave him a foretaste of beatitude, and he adorned with these attributes the beings whom alone he consented to represent, the saints and angels of Paradise.
We had a curious scene in the sacristy of the church of Santa Maria Novella, whither we went to hunt for one of the works of this angelic artist; the reliquaries mentioned by M. Rio; consisting of two tablets painted with a series of miniatures, representing the Life of Jesus Christ; the Last Judgment, in which the beatitude of the elect appears in all its living ecstasy, and St. Thomas Aquinas and Albert the Great, surrounded by their disciples. For a long time the keys could not be found of the closet in which these reliquaries were deposited; and a most active hunt after them was made. At length they came to light, and the tablets were brought out. The Dominican, who took every pains to find them for us, had lately arrived from Rome, and had never seen them. His almost childish delight, as he regarded the inexpressible loveliness of these exquisite miniatures, was highly amusing. Whenever you have to do with an Italian, you do not encounter the doltish ignorance of an English clown, nor the dogged sullenness of a German. He takes pleasure in your pleasure, and interests himself in the objects which are exciting your interest, in a manner at once gratifying to us and honourable to himself.
Of a later age is Poccetti, unnamed by Vasari, because, when he wrote, he had not painted the pictures which render him one of the most admirable fresco painters in the world: Florence is fall of his works, and every one may be visited with pleasure and profit, for he depicts Nature in her truth and yet in her elegance; — if that word denotes the power of displaying in the demeanour and attitude, and countenances of men, their souls defecated of every meaner quality — dignified through unaffected self-forgetfulness — animated by charity — beaming with faith. — One of his most renowned works is a series of frescos in the cloister of the convent of the Santissima Annunziata: they represent the conversion, holy life, and death, of seven Florentine gentlemen, who dedicated themselves to religion under the name of Servi di Maria. The aspect and bearing of these holy men mark them as gentlemen in the best sense of the word. Men, “generous, brave, and gentle and, in addition, animated by earnest benevolence towards their fellow-creatures, and lively faith towards the divinity. Perhaps, however, the most admirable of his works is the cupola of a chapel, belonging to the church and convent of Santa Maria degli Angioli. It is painted in fresco, and represents the Saints of the Old and New Testament; the more beautiful portion is the congregation of female saints — Saint Cecilia, the musician; Saint Clara, the nun; Saint Catherine, the bride of Christ, &c. The foreshortening is admirable, the spirit and grace of the attitudes worthy of the highest masters of the art.
Such is the spirit that animates the earlier school of Florence. But as painting became more of an art, and grew to
represent domestic scenes and portraits, artists broke from the confinement of mere religious subjects, or treated them in a mundane manner. Then it was that their imagination so degenerated, that they had recourse to portraits to represent Christ, the Virgin, and the Saints; some of them even fell so far from the ideal of sinless chastity, as to paint their mistresses and women of unworthy life; offering to the worship of the pious, the image of mere physical beauty, without the superior grandeur of moral excellence.
I must confess, that any rules (except the immutable laws of moral rectitude) that tend to limit the objects on which man is to exercise his faculty of the imagination, appear to me contrary to the scope of our creation. We are so far from being all born possessed of equal powers of mind, that since the world began there has been scarcely a hundred among us capable of the higher flights of the intellect. How few possess, in any degree, the capacity of becoming painters, and far fewer are those who are able to rise to an exalted order of art. We ought to know what the highest is, — that those who feel the power should endeavour to elevate themselves to it; but beauty may be found elsewhere, and must not be rejected. Bigotry is ever to be eschewed in all that pertains to man; to confine painters to one class of pictures, is to turn some who would be great, if allowed to originate subjects of a lower grade, into tame copyists, and humble, lifeless imitators of the thoughts of others. As well insist that all poets should write hymns and heroic poetry, as that painters should confine the pencil to the delineation of the conceptions of religious mysticism.
The genuine school of Christian idealism is, for the present, come to an end. And I confess, as far as I may be allowed to judge, that it strikes me that the Germans of the present day, who are endeavouring to revive it, fall into the same mistake as our sculptors, who employ themselves in imitating the ancients; — they are good copyists, but are never original. And what appears to prove this is, that the Germans are not content with endeavouring to reproduce that composed and severe expression which the earlier painters yet knew how to ally to vitality in its highest sense, but they return to the dry colouring and meagre composition, which is the chief defect of the infancy of painting.
Still, there can be no question that in poetry, music, or the plastic arts, the ideal must rank above the merely imitative. Those painters who can embody ideas conceived in their purest and most elevated contemplations, far removed from vulgar and trivial reality, are the greatest. Artists, however, are men formed by nature with the peculiar eye to see and represent form and colour; and it is not strange that the majority among them should turn to the study of these, and view in the perfection of representing the one or the other, the aim of their labours. Thus the study of nature succeeded to the ideal; art fell lower afterwards, and became the copyist of art; and ancient statues grew to be the models from which modern painters strove to gain inspiration, till the uniformity, stiffness, and even deformity thus produced, induced others, who perceived these faults and their cause, to have again recourse to nature.
But these remarks tend beyond the limits of my knowledge, or even powers of observation. I have mentioned pictures not much visited except by the curious, just to shew the way towards, not to guide you (for I cannot), in your search after pictorial excellence: nor will I long detain you in the more beaten road of the public galleries.
LETTER XIII.
The Gallery. — Palazzo Pitti. — Le Belle Arti. — Portrait of Dante. — The Churches.
With slow steps my feet almost unwillingly first moved to the collection in the Reali Uffizi. As I entered the Tribune I felt a crowd of associations rise up around me, gifted with painful vitality. I was long lost in tears. But novelty seems all in all to us weak mortals; and when I revisited these rooms, these saddest ghosts were laid; the affliction calmed, and my mind was free to receive new impressions.
The Tribune is adorned with the selected chefs-d’œuvre of the best artists of every school, in addition to some of the finest ancient sculpture in the world. The matchless statue of the Queen of Beauty reigns over the whole — Venus, majestic in her bending softness, which once to see does not reveal its perfection. There is here one of the most beautiful of Raphael’s Madonnas — one of the eight which M. Rio mentions as among the chefs-d’œuvre that Raphael executed in the short interval of two years, during which he especially dedicated himself to multiplying representations of the Virgin, for whom from childhood he had felt an especial devotion.
Here is the master-piece of Andrea del Sarto, a painter of very high, though not the highest, merit. He wants warmth of colouring, fire of expression, and variety of invention; while he has been named Andrea senza Errori, from the purity of his outlines, the graceful decorum of his personages, and the faultless completeness of every portion of his pictures.
Perfection in drawing, of which Michael Angelo was the great master, is the leading merit of the subsequent Florentine school. It has not the glowing colouring of the Venetian, nor possesses artists to compare with Raphael, Correggio, or Leonardo da Vinci. Michael Angelo was its most glorious example — a man whom I do not dare criticize; whom I will wait to mention till I have seen the Sistine Chapel, at Rome; to whose majestic powers of conception every connoisseur bears testimony, while still there is something of extravagant — something which is not absolute beauty — in most of his works at Florence. The glorious Medicean monuments, —
“Where the gigantic shapes of Night and Day,
Turned into stone, rest everlastingly;
Yet still are breathing.”
— in spite of the magic art which makes them for ever sit and sleep, yet jar with the sense of harmony in form. His love of the naked was carried to a curious excess. In the Tribune, is a Holy Family, into which he has introduced a variety of naked figures in different attitudes, that have not the smallest connection with the subject of the picture, but intrude impertinently to mar its effect.
A charming Madonna of Correggio, kneeling beside the divine infant, adorns the Tribune; there is also the portrait termed the Fornarina of Raphael; certainly it is not the Fomarina, for it does not at all resemble her undoubted portraits, and it has been doubted whether the picture be by Raphael. From the Tribune, which, as a focus, collects the rarest and brightest rays of art, branch off several rooms, divided into schools. One of the most interesting is that containing the portraits of painters, by themselves.
There is a stately chamber, dedicated to the Niobe and her children, whose maternal, remediless grief sheds a solemn sadness around. The Florentine school possesses specimens of its worst style, the inane, expressionless nudities of Vasari and his imitators. In the room of bronzes is the model of the Perseus of Benvenuto Cellini, and there is something more spirited and graceful in his attitude than in the larger bronze in the Piazza. There is the model of the glorious statue of John of Bologna, which Shakspeare we might think had seen when he spoke of the “herald Mercury;” and a David of Donatello, neither imitated from ancient sculpture, nor conceived under their inspiration. There is all the verve of an original idea; the youthful hero is neither Mars nor Hercules; he is the inspired Hebrew shepherd boy, who derived his victory from his faith. The galleries which run round three sides of the square, from which open the various rooms, are hung with many pictures, and adorned by a series of the busts of the Roman Emperors, and by a number of statues. Just below the cornice is a range of highly interesting portraits. Paul Jovius had made a vast collection of original portraits of all the illustrious personages of his time, and placed them in the palace of the Conte Giovio at Como. Cosimo I. sent a painter, celebrated for his portraits, Cristofaro dell’ Altissimo, to make copies, and these are here hung up.
With the exception of the Tribune, the collection in the Pitti Palace exceeds that of the gallery. There are here pictures from every school; and by going often, and selecting beforehand the master whose works I wished to see, I have spent many a morning with delight. Once or twice I have gone merely to refresh my eyes with a marine view — a sunset b
y Salvator Rosa; it is a picture all calm, all softness, all glowing beauty; and, during the misty and darker days of this unsouthern winter, I have gone — as I would in England — to warm my heart and imagination by the golden hues of a sunnier and purer atmosphere.
The gallery of the Belle Arti is rich in paintings of the olden times, when the soul worked more than the hand; when the artist sought, in the first place, to conceive the sublime, and the glorious endeavour bore him aloft among the angels and saints, whose blissful ecstasies he was enabled to represent. Why did not some among these great artists portray the other passions that ennoble our nature? We have portraits of great men, worthy of them, it is true; but the ideal of the warrior who would die for his country — nay, I may say, of the lover who loves unto the death — the representation of such men and women as Milton and Shakspeare have embodied in verse, is not to be found in the works of these painters; or only found, because among their groups of worshippers at some miracle, we see the power of great actions sit upon the brow, and add majesty to the gesture of some among them. When they portrayed earthly love, they betook themselves to mythology, and depicted passion, without the touch of tender fear which must ever mingle with, and chasten the affection we feel one for another. As far as I remember, there is no picture such as would idealise Ferruccio Ferruccini or Bayard — nor can I recollect the representation of mutual and tender love in any picture by a great artist, with one exception — that called the Three Ages of Man, by Titian — the original of which is in the Bridgwater collection; and there is a fine copy in Palazzo Manfrin, at Venice. The expression of the lover’s face seems to say, “I love a creature who is mortal, and for whose safety I fear; yet in her life I live — without her I die;” and she catches the light of tenderness from his eyes, and the two souls seem fused in one commingling glance; but there is nothing to shock the most bashful mind — love is evidently hallowed by that enduring affection which is proof against adversity, and looks beyond the grave.