On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2)
Or again in Staffordshire, would it not be easily answered to an honest question of what is good and not, in clay or ware, "This will work, and that will stand"? and might not a series of the mugs which have been matured with discrimination, and of the pots which have been popular in use, be so ordered as to display their qualities in a convincing and harmonious manner against all gainsayers?
205. Nor is there any mystery of taste, or marvel of skill, concerning which you may not get quite easy initiation and safe pilotage for the common people, provided you once make them clearly understand that there is indeed something to be learned, and something to be admired, in the arts, which will need their attention for a time; and cannot be explained with a word, nor seen with a wink. And provided also, and with still greater decision, you set over them masters, in each branch of the arts, who know their own minds in that matter, and are not afraid to speak them, nor to say, "We know," when they know, and "We don't know," when they don't.
To which end, the said several branches must be held well apart, and dealt with one at a time. Every considerable town ought to have its exemplary collections of woodwork, iron-work, and jewelry, attached to the schools of their several trades, leaving to be illustrated in its public museum, as in an hexagonal bee's cell, the six queenly and muse-taught arts of needlework, writing, pottery, sculpture, architecture, and painting.
206. For each of these, there should be a separate Tribune or Chamber of absolute tribunal, which need not be large—that, so called, of Florence, not the size of a railway waiting-room, has actually for the last century determined the taste of the European public in two arts!—in which the absolute best in each art, so far as attainable by the communal pocket, should be authoritatively exhibited, with simple statement that it is good, and reason why it is good, and notification in what particulars it is unsurpassable, together with some not too complex illustrations of the steps by which it has attained to that perfection, where these can be traced far back in history.
207. These six Tribunes, or Temples, of Fame, being first set with their fixed criteria, there should follow a series of historical galleries, showing the rise and fall (if fallen) of the arts in their beautiful associations, as practiced in the great cities and by the great nations of the world. The history of Egypt, of Persia, of Greece, of Italy, of France, and of England, should be given in their arts,—dynasty by dynasty and age by age; and for a seventh, a Sunday Room, for the history of Christianity in its art, including the farthest range and feeblest efforts of it; reserving for this room, also, what power could be reached in delineation of the great monasteries and cathedrals which were once the glory of all Christian lands.
208. In such a scheme, every form of noble art would take harmonious and instructive place, and often very little and disregarded things be found to possess unthought-of interest and hidden relative beauty; but its efficiency—and in this chiefly let it be commended to the patience of your practical readers—would depend, not on its extent, but on its strict and precise limitation. The methods of which, if you care to have my notions of them, I might perhaps enter into, next month, with some illustrative detail.—Ever most truly yours,
J. R.10th June, 1880.7
My Dear –,
209. I can't give you any talk on detail, yet; but, not to drop a stitch in my story, I want to say why I've attached so much importance to needlework, and put it in the opening court of the six. You see they are progressive, so that I don't quite put needlework on a level with painting. But a nation that would learn to "touch" must primarily know how to "stitch." I am always busy, for a good part of the day, in my wood, and wear out my leathern gloves fast, after once I can wear them at all: but that's the precise difficulty of the matter. I get them from the shop looking as stout and trim as you please, and half an hour after I've got to work they split up the fingers and thumbs like ripe horse-chestnut shells, and I find myself with five dangling rags round my wrist, and a rotten white thread draggling after me through the wood, or tickling my nose, as if Ariadne and Arachne had lost their wits together. I go home, invoking the universe against sewing-machines; and beg the charity of a sound stitch or two from any of the maids who know their woman's art; and thenceforward the life of the glove proper begins. Wow, it is not possible for any people that put up with this sort of thing, to learn to paint, or do anything else with their fingers decently:—only, for the most part they don't think their museums are meant to show them how to do anything decently, but rather how to be idle, indecently. Which extremely popular and extremely erroneous persuasion, if you please, we must get out of our way before going further.
210. I owe some apology, by the way, to Mr. Frith, for the way I spoke of his picture8 in my letter to the Leicester committee, not intended for publication, though I never write what I would not allow to be published, and was glad that they asked leave to print it. It was not I who instanced the picture, it had been named in the meeting of the committee as the kind of thing that people best like, and I was obliged to say why people best liked it:—namely, not for the painting, which is good, and worthy their liking, but for the sight of the racecourse and its humors. And the reason that such a picture ought not to be in a museum, is precisely because in a museum people ought not to fancy themselves on a racecourse. If they want to see races, let them go to races; and if rogues, to Bridewells. They come to museums to see something different from rogues and races.
211. But, to put the matter at once more broadly, and more accurately, be it remembered, for sum of all, that a museum is not a theater. Both are means of noble education—but you must not mix up the two. Dramatic interest is one thing; aesthetic charm another; a pantomime must not depend on its fine color, nor a picture on its fine pantomime.
Take a special instance. It is long since I have been so pleased in the Royal Academy as I was by Mr. Britton Rivière's "Sympathy." The dog in uncaricatured doggedness, divine as Anubis, or the Dog-star; the child entirely childish and lovely, the carpet might have been laid by Veronese. A most precious picture in itself, yet not one for a museum. Everybody would think only of the story in it; everybody be wondering what the little girl had done, and how she would be forgiven, and if she wasn't, how soon she would stop crying, and give the doggie a kiss, and comfort his heart. All which they might study at home among their own children and dogs just as well; and should not come to the museum to plague the real students there, since there is not anything of especial notableness or unrivaled quality in the actual painting.
212. On the other hand, one of the four pictures I chose for permanent teaching in Fors was one of a child and a dog. The child is doing nothing; neither is the dog. But the dog is absolutely and beyond comparison the best painted dog in the world—ancient or modern—on this side of it, or at the Antipodes, (so far as I've seen the contents of said world). And the child is painted so that child cannot be better done. That is a picture for a museum.
Not that dramatic, still less didactic, intention should disqualify a work of art for museum purposes. But—broadly—dramatic and didactic art should be universally national, the luster of our streets, the treasure of our palaces, the pleasure of our homes. Much art that is weak, transitory, and rude may thus become helpful to us. But the museum is only for what is eternally right, and well done, according to divine law and human skill. The least things are to be there—and the greatest—but all good with the goodness that makes a child cheerful and an old man calm; the simple should go there to learn, and the wise to remember.
213. And now to return to what I meant to be the subject of this letter—the arrangement of our first ideal room in such a museum. As I think of it, I would fain expand the single room, first asked for, into one like Prince Houssain's,—no, Prince Houssain had the flying tapestry, and I forget which prince had the elastic palace. But, indeed, it must be a lordly chamber which shall be large enough to exhibit the true nature of thread and needle—omened in "Thread-needle Street!"
The structure, first of wool and cotton, of fur, and hair, and down, of hemp, flax, and silk:—microscope permissible if any cause can be shown why wool is soft, and fur fine, and cotton downy, and down downier; and how a flax fiber differs from a dandelion stalk, and how the substance of a mulberry leaf can become velvet for Queen Victoria's crown, and clothing of purple for the housewife of Solomon.
Then the phase of its dyeing. What azures, and emeralds, and Tyrians scarlets can be got into fibers of thread.
214. Then the phase of its spinning. The mystery of that divine spiral, from finest to firmest, which renders lace possible at Valenciennes—anchorage possible, after Trafalgar—if Hardy had but done as he was bid.
Then the mystery of weaving. The eternal harmony of warp and woof, of all manner of knotting, knitting, and reticulation, the art which makes garment possible, woven from the top throughout, draughts of fishes possible, miraculous enough in any pilchard or herring shoal, gathered into companionable catchableness;—which makes, in fine, so many Nations possible, and Saxon and Norman beyond the rest.
215. And finally, the accomplished phase of needlework, the Acu Tetigisti of all time, which does, indeed, practically exhibit what mediæval theologists vainly tried to conclude inductively—How many angels can stand on a needle-point. To show the essential nature of a stitch—drawing the separate into the inseparable, from the lowly work of duly restricted sutor, and modestly installed cobbler, to the needle-Scripture of Matilda, the Queen.
All the acicular Art of Nations, savage and civilized, from Lapland boot, letting in no snow-water—to Turkey cushion bossed with pearl—to valance of Venice gold in needlework -to the counterpanes and samplers of our own lovely ancestresses, imitable, perhaps, once more, with good help from Whiteland's College—and Girton.
216. It was but yesterday, my own womankind were in much wholesome and sweet excitement delightful to behold, in the practice of some new device of remedy for rents (to think how much of evil there is in the two senses of that four-lettered word! as in the two methods of intonation of its synonym tear!) whereby they might be daintily effaced, and with a newness which would never make them worse. The process began beautifully, even to my uninformed eyes, in the likeness of herring-bone masonry, crimson on white, but it seemed to me marvelous that anything should yet be discoverable in needle process, and that of so utilitarian character.
All that is reasonable, I say of such work is to be in our first museum room. All that Athena and Penelope would approve. Nothing that vanity has invented for change, or folly loved for costliness; but all that can bring honest pride into homely life, and give security to health—and honor to beauty.
J. Ruskin.MINOR WRITINGS UPON ART
THE CAVALLI MONUMENTS IN THE CHURCH OF ST. ANASTASIA, VERONA.9
217. The tomb of Federigo and Nicola Cavalli is in the southernmost chapel of the five which form the east end of the church of St. Anastasia at Verona.
The traveler in Italy is so often called upon to admire what he cannot enjoy, that it must relieve the mind of any reader intending to visit Verona to be assured that this church deserves nothing but extraordinary praise; it has, however, some characters which a quarter of an hour's attention will make both interesting and instructive, and which I will note briefly before giving an account of the Cavalli chapel. This church "would, if the font were finished, probably be the most perfect specimen in existence of the style to which it belongs," says a critic quoted in "Murray's Guide." The conjecture is a bold one, for the font is not only unfinished, and for the most part a black mass of ragged brickwork, but the portion pretending to completion is in three styles; approaches excellence only in one of them; and in that the success is limited to the sides of the single entrance door. The flanks and vaults of this porch, indeed, deserve our almost unqualified admiration for their beautiful polychrome masonry. They are built of large masses of green serpentine alternating with red and white marble, and the joints are so delicate and firm that a casual spectator might pass the gate with contempt, thinking the stone was painted.
218. The capitals on these two sides, the carved central shaft, and the horizontal lintel of this door are also excellent examples of Veronese thirteenth century sculpture, and have merits of a high order, but of which the general observer cannot be cognizant. I do not mean, in saying this, to extol them greatly; the best art is pleasing to all, and its virtue, or a portion of its virtue, instantly manifest. But there are some good qualities in every earnest work which can only be ascertained by attention; and in saying that a casual observer cannot see the good qualities in early Veronese sculpture, I mean that it possesses none but these, nor of these many.
219. Yet it is worth a minute's delay to observe how much the sculpture has counted on attention. In later work, figures of the size of life, or multitudinous small ones, please, if they do not interest, the spectator who can spare them a momentary glance. But all the figures on this door are diminutive, and project so slightly from the stone as scarcely to catch the eye; there are none in the sides and none in the vault of the gate, and it is only by deliberate examination that we find the faith which is to be preached in the church, and the honor of its preacher, conclusively engraved on the lintel and door-post. The spiral flutings of the central shaft are uninterrupted, so as to form a slight recess for the figure of St. Dominic, with, I believe, St. Peter Martyr and St. Thomas Aquinas, one on each side with the symbols of the sun and moon. At the end of the lintel, on the left, is St. Anastasia; on the right, St. Catherine (of Siena); in the center, on the projecting capital, the Madonna; and on the lintel, the story of Christ, in the four passages of the Annunciation, Nativity, Crucifixion, and Resurrection.
220. This is the only part of the front of the church which is certainly part of the first structure in 1260. The two statues of St. Anastasia and St. Catherine are so roughly joined to the lateral capitals as to induce a suspicion that even these latter and the beautiful polychrome vault are of later work, not, however, later than 1300. The two pointed arches which divide the tympanum are assuredly subsequent, and the fresco which occupies it is a bad work of the end of the fourteenth century; and the marble frieze and foundations of the front are at least not earlier than 1426.
Of this portion of the building the foundation is noble, and its color beautifully disposed, but the sculpture of the paneling is poor, and of no interest or value.
221. On entering the church, and turning immediately to the left, there will be seen on the inner side of the external wall a tomb under a boldly trefoiled canopy. It is a sarcophagus with a recumbent figure on it, which is the only work of art in the church deserving serious attention. It is the tomb of Gerard Bolderius "sui temporis physicorum principi," says his epitaph,10 not, as far as I can discover, untruly. On the front of the sarcophagus is the semi-figure of Christ rising from the tomb, used generally at the period for the type of resurrection, between the Virgin and St. John; and two shields, bearing, one the fleur-de-lys, the other an eagle. The recumbent figure is entirely simple and right in treatment, sculptured without ostentation of skill or exaggeration of sentiment, by a true artist, who endeavors only to give the dead due honor, and his own art subordinate and modest scope.
This monument, being the best in St. Anastasia, is, by the usual spite of fortune, placed where it is quite invisible except on bright days. On the opposite side of the church, the first monument on the right, well lighted by the tall western window, should be looked at next to the physician's; for as that is the best, this is essentially the worst, piece of sculptured art in the building; a series of academy studies in marble, well executed, but without either taste or invention, and necessarily without meaning, the monument having been erected to a person whose only claim to one was his having stolen money enough to pay for it before he died. It is one of the first pieces extant of entirely mechanical art workmanship, done for money; and the perfection of its details may justify me in directing special attention to it.
222. There are no other monuments, still less pictures, in the body of the church deserving notice. The general effect of the interior is impressive, owing partly to the boldness and simplicity of the pillars which sustain the roof; partly to the darkness which involves them: these Dominican churches being, in fact, little more than vast halls for preaching in, and depending little on decoration, and not at all on light. But the sublimity of shadow soon fails when it has nothing interesting to shade; and the chapel or monuments which, opposite each interval between the pillars, fill the sides of the aisles, possess no interest except in their arabesques of cinque-cento sculpture, of which far better examples may be seen elsewhere; while the differences in their ages, styles, and purposes hinder them from attaining any unity of decorative effect, and break the unity of the church almost as fatally, though not as ignobly, as the incoherent fillings of the aisles at Westminster. The Cavalli chapel itself, though well deserving the illustration which the Arundel Society has bestowed upon it, is filled with a medley of tombs and frescoes of different dates, partly superseding, none illustrating, each other, and instructive mainly as showing the unfortunate results of freedom and "private enterprise" in matters of art, as compared with the submission to the design of one ruling mind which is the glory of all the chapels in Italy where the art is entirely noble.
223. Instructive, thus, at least, even if seen hastily; much better teaching may be had even from the unharmonious work, if we give time and thought to it. The upper fresco on the north wall, representing the Baptism of Christ, has no beauty, and little merit as art; yet the manner of its demerit is interesting. St. John kneels to baptize. This variation from the received treatment, in which he stands above the Christ, is enough in itself to show that the poor Veronese painter had some intelligence of his subject; and the quaint and haggard figure, grim-featured, with its black hair rising in separate locks like a crown of thorns, is a curious intermediate type between the grotesque conception which we find in earlier art (or, for instance, on the coins of Florence) and the beautiful, yet always melancholy and severe figures of St. John painted by Cima da Conegliano at Venice. With this stern figure, in raiment of camel's hair, compare the Magdalen in the frescoes at the side of the altar, who is veiled from head to foot with her own, and sustained by six angels, being the type of repentance from the passions, as St. John of resistance to them. Both symbols are, to us, to say the very least, without charm, and to very few without offense; yet consider how much nobler the temper of the people must have been who could take pleasure in art so gloomy and unadorned, than that of the populace of to-day, which must be caught with bright colors and excited by popular sentiment.
224. Both these frescoes, with the others on the north wall of the chapel, and Madonna between four saints on the south side, by the Cavalli tomb, are evidently of fourteenth century work, none of it good, but characteristic; and the last-named work (seen in the plate) is so graceful as to be quite worth some separate illustration. But the one above it is earlier, and of considerable historical interest. It was discovered with the other paintings surrounding the tomb, about the year 1838, when Persico published his work, "Verona, e la sua Provincia," in which he says (p. 13), "levatane l'antica incrostatura, tornarono a vita novella."
It would have been more serviceable to us if we could have known the date of the rough cast, than of its removal; the period of entire contempt for ancient art being a subject of much interest in the ecclesiastical history of Italy. But the tomb itself was an incrustation, having been raised with much rudeness and carelessness amidst the earlier art which recorded the first rise of the Cavalli family.
225. It will be seen by reference to the plate that the frescoes round the tomb have no symmetrical relation to it. They are all of earlier date, and by better artists. The tomb itself is roughly carved, and coarsely painted, by men who were not trying to do their best, and could not have done anything very well, even if they had tried: it is an entirely commonplace and dull work, though of a good school, and has been raised against the highest fresco with a strange disregard of the merit of the work itself, and of its historical value to the family. This fresco is attributable by Persico to Giotto, but is, I believe, nothing more than an interesting example of the earnest work of his time, and has no quality on which I care to enlarge; nor is it ascertainable who the three knights are whom it commemorates, unless some evidence be found of the date of the painting, and there is, yet, none but that of its manner. But they are all three Cavallis, and I believe them to represent the three first founders of the family, Giovanni, "che fioriva intorno al 1274," his son Nicola (1297), and grandson Federigo, who was Podesta of Vicenza under the Scaligers in 1331, and by whom I suppose the fresco to have been commanded. The Cavallis came first from Germany into the service of the Visconti of Milan, as condottieri, thence passing into the service of the Scaligers. Whether I am right in this conjecture or not, we have, at all events, record in this chapel of seven knights of the family, of whom two are named on the sarcophagus, of which the inscription (on the projecting ledge under the recumbent figure) is:—
S. (Sepulchrum) nobilis et egregii viri Federici et egregii et strenui viri domini Nicolai de Cavalis suorunique heredum, qui spiritum redidit astris Ano Dni MCCCLXXXX.
Of which, I think, the force may be best given thus in modern terms:—
"The tomb of the noble and distinguished Herr Frederic, and of the distinguished and energetic Herr the Lord Nicholas of the house of the Horse, and of their heirs, who gave back his soul to the stars in the year of our Lord 1390."
226. This Frederic and Nicolas Cavalli were the brothers of the Jacopo Cavalli who is buried at Venice, and who, by a singular fatality, was enrolled among the Venetian nobles of the senate in the year in which his brother died at Verona (for I assume the "spiritum redidit" to be said of the first-named brother). Jacopo married Constance della Scala, of Verona, and had five sons, of whom one, Giorgio, Conte di Schio, plotted, after the fall of the Scaligers, for their restoration to power in Verona, and was exiled, by decree of the Council of Ten, to Candia, where he died. From another son, Conrad, are descended the Cavallis of Venice, whose palace has been the principal material from which recent searchers for the picturesque in Venice compose pictures of the Grand Canal. It forms the square mass of architecture on the left, in the continually repeated view of the Church of the Salute seen from the steps of the Academy.
The genealogy of the family, from the thirteenth century, when they first appeared in Italy, to the founder of this Venetian lordship, had better be set before the reader in one view.11