On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2). Ruskin John
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and his assistants, Mr. Burgess and Mr. Bunney, which he had divided into three series, and of which he had furnished a number of printed catalogues illustrated with notes.13
I. "Lombard, extending to the end of the twelfth century, being the expression of the introduction of Christianity into barbaric minds; Christianization.
II. "The Gothic period. Dante's time, from 1200 to 1400 (Dante beginning his poem exactly in the midst of it, in 1300); the period of vital Christianity, and of the development of the laws of chivalry and forms of imagination which are founded on Christianity.
III. "The first period of the revival, in which the arts of Greece and some of its religion return and join themselves to Christianity; not taking away its sincerity or earnestness, but making it poetical instead of practical. In the following period even this poetical Christianity expired; the arts became devoted to the pursuit of pleasure, and in that they persist except where they are saved by a healthy naturalism or domesticity.
235. I. "The Lombardic period is one of savage but noble life gradually subjected to law. It is the forming of men, not out of clay but wild beasts. And art of this period in all countries, including our own Norman especially, is, in the inner heart of it, the subjection of savage or terrible, or foolish and erring life, to a dominant law. It is government and conquest of fearful dreams. There is in it as yet no germ of true hope—only the conquest of evil, and the waking from darkness and terror. The literature of it is, as in Greece, far in advance of art, and is already full of the most tender and impassioned beauty, while the art is still grotesque and dreadful; but, however wild, it is supreme above all others by its expression of governing law, and here at Verona is the very center and utmost reach of that expression.
"I know nothing in architecture at once so exquisite and so wild and so strange in the expression of self-conquest achieved almost in a dream. For observe, these barbaric races, educated in violence—chiefly in war and in hunting—cannot feel or see clearly as they are gradually civilized whether this element in which they have been brought up is evil or not. They must be good soldiers and hunters—that is their life; yet they know that killing is evil, and they do not expect to find wild beasts in heaven. They have been trained by pain, by violence, by hunger and cold. They know there is a good in these things as well as evil: they are perpetually hesitating between the one and the other thought of them. But one thing they see clearly, that killing and hunting, and every form of misery, pleasure, and of passion, must somehow at last be subdued by law, which shall bring good out of it all, and which they feel more and more constraining them every hour. Now, if with this sympathy you look at their dragon and wild beast decoration, you will find that it now tells you about these Lombards far more than they could know of themselves.... All the actions, and much more the arts, of men tell to others, not only what the worker does not know, but what he can never know of himself, which you can only recognize by being in an element more advanced and wider than his.... In deliberate symbolism, the question is always, not what a symbol meant first or meant elsewhere, but what it means now and means here. Now, this dragon symbol of the Lombard is used of course all over the world; it means good here, and evil there; sometimes means nothing; sometimes everything. You have always to ask what the man who here uses it means by it. Whatever is in his mind, that he is sure partly to express by it; nothing else than that can he express by it."
236. II. In the second period Mr. Ruskin said was to be found "the highest development of Italian character and chivalry, with an entirely believed Christian religion; you get, therefore, joy and courtesy, and hope, and a lovely peace in death. And with these you have two fearful elements of evil. You have first such confidence in the virtue of the creed that men hate and persecute all who do not accept it. And worse still, you find such confidence in the power of the creed that men not only can do anything that is wrong, and be themselves for a word of faith pardoned, but are even sure that after the wrong is done God is sure to put it all right again for them, or even make things better than they were before. Now, I need not point out to you how the spirit of persecution, as well as of vain hope founded on creed only, is mingled in every line with the lovely moral teaching of the 'Divina Conmedia,' nor need I point out to you how, between the persecution of other people's creeds and the absolution of one's own crimes, all Christian error is concluded."
In relation to this Mr. Ruskin referred to the history of the founder of the power of the Scalas, Mastino, a simple citizen, chosen first to be podesta and then captain of Verona, for his justice and sagacity, who, although wise and peaceful in his policy, employed the civil power in the persecution of heresy, burning above two hundred persons; and he also related how Can Signorio della Scala on his death-bed, after giving a pious charge to his children, ordered the murder of his brother—examples of the boundless possibility of self-deception. One of these children killed the other, and was himself driven from the throne, so ending the dynasty of the Scalas. Referring to his illustrations, Mr. Ruskin pointed out the expressions of hope, in the conquest of death, and the rewards of faith, apparent in the art of the time. The Lombard architecture expresses the triumph of law over passion, the Christian, that of hope over sorrow.
Mr. Ruskin concluded his remarks on this period by commenting on the history and the tomb of Can Grande della Scala, a good knight and true, as busy and bright a life as is found in the annals of chivalry.
237. III. "The period when classical literature and art were again known in Italy, and the painters and sculptors, who had been gaining steadily in power for two hundred years—power not of practice merely, but of race also—with every circumstance in their favor around them, received their finally perfect instruction, both in geometrical science, in that of materials, and in the anatomy and action of the human body. Also the people about them—the models of their work—had been perfected in personal beauty by a chivalric war; in imagination by a transcendental philosophy; in practical intellect by stern struggle for civic law; and in commerce, not in falsely made or vile or unclean things, but in lovely things, beautifully and honestly made. And now, therefore, you get out of all the world's long history since it was peopled by men till now—you get just fifty years of perfect work. Perfect. It is a strong word; it is also a true one. The doing of these fifty years is unaccusably Right, as art; what its sentiment may be—whether too great or too little, whether superficial or sincere—is another question, but as artists' work it admits no conception of anything better.
"It is true that in the following age, founded on the absolutely stern rectitude of this, there came a phase of gigantic power and of exquisite ease and felicity which possess an awe and a charm of their own. They are more inimitable than the work of the perfect school. But they are not perfect." …
238. This period Mr. Ruskin named "the 'Time of the Masters,' Fifty Years, including Luini, Leonardo, John Bellini, Vitto Carpaccio, Andrea Mantegna, Andrea Verrocchio, Cima da Conegliano, Perugino, and in date, though only in his earlier life, belonging to the school, Raphael.... The great fifty years was the prime of life of three men: John Bellini, born 1430, died at 90, in 1516; Mantegna, born 1430, died at 76, in 1506; and Vittor Carpaccio, who died in 1522."
"The object of these masters is wholly different from that of the former school. The central Gothic men always want chiefly to impress you with the facts of their subject; but the masters of this finished time desire only to make everything dainty and delightful. We have not many pictures of the class in England, but several have been of late added to the National Gallery, and the Perugino there, especially the compartment with Raphael and Tobit, and the little St. Jerome by John Bellini, will perfectly show you this main character—pictorial perfectness and deliciousness—sought before everything else. You will find, if you look into that St. Jerome, that everything in it is exquisite, complete, and pure; there is not a particle of dust in the cupboards, nor a cloud in the air; the wooden shutters are dainty, the candlesticks are dainty, the saint's scarlet hat is dainty, and its violet tassel, and its ribbon, and his blue cloak and his spare pair of shoes, and his little brown partridge—it is all a perfect quintessence of innocent luxury—absolute delight, without one drawback in it, nor taint of the Devil anywhere." …
239. After dilating on several other pictures of this class, giving evidence of the entire devotion of the artists of the period to their art and work, Mr. Ruskin adverted to the second part of his discourse, the rivers of Verona. "There is but one river at
This catalogue (London: Queen Street Printing-Office, 1870) is printed below, p. 109, § 242