On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2). Ruskin John
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the exponent of Sense, Painting is chosen as the peculiar expression of Spirit. "The painting of Christendom is that of an immortal spirit conversing with its God." But in a note to the first chapter of the second volume, he will be surprised to find painting become a "twin of intellect," and architecture suddenly advanced from a type of sense to a type of spirit:—
"Sculpture and Painting, twins of Intellect, rejoice and breathe freest in the pure ether of Architecture, or Spirit, like Castor or Pollux under the breezy heaven of their father Jupiter."—Vol. ii., p. 14.
58. Prepared by this passage to consider painting either as spiritual or intellectual, his patience may pardonably give way on finding in the sixth letter—(what he might, however, have conjectured from the heading of the third period in the chart of the schools)—that the peculiar prerogative of painting—color, is to be considered as a sensual element, and the exponent of sense, in accordance with a new analogy, here for the first time proposed, between spirit, intellect, and sense, and expression, form, and color. Lord Lindsay is peculiarly unfortunate in his adoptions from previous writers. He has taken this division of art from Fuseli and Reynolds, without perceiving that in those writers it is one of convenience merely, and, even so considered, is as injudicious as illogical. In what does expression consist but in form and color? It is one of the ends which these accomplish, and may be itself an attribute of both. Color may be expressive or inexpressive, like music; form expressive or inexpressive, like words; but expression by itself cannot exist; so that to divide painting into color, form, and expression, is precisely as rational as to divide music into notes, words, and expression. Color may be pensive, severe, exciting, appalling, gay, glowing, or sensual; in all these modes it is expressive: form may be tender or abrupt, mean or majestic, attractive or overwhelming, discomfortable or delightsome; in all these modes, and many more, it is expressive; and if Lord Lindsay's analogy be in anywise applicable to either form or color, we should have color sensual (Correggio), color intellectual (Tintoret), color spiritual (Angelico)—form sensual (French sculpture), form intellectual (Phidias), form spiritual (Michael Angelo). Above all, our author should have been careful how he attached the epithet "sensual" to the element of color—not only on account of the glaring inconsistency with his own previous assertion of the spirituality of painting—(since it is certainly not merely by being flat instead of solid, representative instead of actual, that painting is—if it be—more spiritual than sculpture); but also, because this idea of sensuality in color has had much share in rendering abortive the efforts of the modern German religious painters, inducing their abandonment of its consecrating, kindling, purifying power.
59. Lord Lindsay says, in a passage which we shall presently quote, that the most sensual as well as the most religious painters have always loved the brightest colors. Not so; no painters ever were more sensual than the modern French, who are alike insensible to, and incapable of color—depending altogether on morbid gradation, waxy smoothness of surface, and lusciousness of line, the real elements of sensuality wherever it eminently exists. So far from good color being sensual, it saves, glorifies, and guards from all evil: it is with Titian, as with all great masters of flesh-painting, the redeeming and protecting element; and with the religious painters, it is a baptism with fire, an under-song of holy Litanies. Is it in sensuality that the fair flush opens upon the cheek of Francia's chanting angel,8 until we think it comes, and fades, and returns, as his voice and his harping are louder or lower—or that the silver light rises upon wave after wave of his lifted hair; or that the burning of the blood is seen on the unclouded brows of the three angels of the Campo Santo, and of folded fire within their wings; or that the hollow blue of the highest heaven mantles the Madonna with its depth, and falls around her like raiment, as she sits beneath the throne of the Sistine Judgment? Is it in sensuality that the visible world about us is girded with an eternal iris?—is there pollution in the rose and the gentian more than in the rocks that are trusted to their robing?—is the sea-blue a stain upon its water, or the scarlet spring of day upon the mountains less holy than their snow? As well call the sun itself, or the firmament, sensual, as the color which flows from the one, and fills the other.
60. We deprecate this rash assumption, however, with more regard to the forthcoming portion of the history, in which we fear it may seriously diminish the value of the author's account of the school of Venice, than to the part at present executed. This is written in a spirit rather sympathetic than critical, and rightly illustrates the feeling of early art, even where it mistakes, or leaves unanalyzed, the technical modes of its expression. It will be better, perhaps, that we confine our attention to the accounts of the three men who may be considered as sufficient representatives not only of the art of their time, but of all subsequent; Giotto, the first of the great line of dramatists, terminating in Raffaelle; Orcagna, the head of that branch of the contemplative school which leans towards sadness or terror, terminating in Michael Angelo; and Angelico, the head of the contemplatives concerned with the heavenly ideal, around whom may be grouped first Duccio, and the Sienese, who preceded him, and afterwards Pinturiccio, Perugino, and Leonardo da Vinci.
61. The fourth letter opens in the fields of Vespignano. The circumstances of the finding of Giotto by Cimabue are well known. Vasari's anecdote of the fly painted upon the nose of one of Cimabue's figures might, we think, have been spared, or at least not instanced as proof of study from nature "nobly rewarded." Giotto certainly never either attempted or accomplished any small imitation of this kind; the story has all the look of one of the common inventions of the ignorant for the ignorant; nor, if true, would Cimabue's careless mistake of a black spot in the shape of a fly for one of the living annoyances of which there might probably be some dozen or more upon his panel at any moment, have been a matter of much credit to his young pupil. The first point of any real interest is Lord Lindsay's confirmation of Förster's attribution of the Campo Santo Life of Job, till lately esteemed Giotto's, to Francesco da Volterra. Förster's evidence appears incontrovertible; yet there is curious internal evidence, we think, in favor of the designs being Giotto's, if not the execution. The landscape is especially Giottesque, the trees being all boldly massed first with dark brown, within which the leaves are painted separately in light: this very archaic treatment had been much softened and modified by the Giotteschi before the date assigned to these frescoes by Förster. But, what is more singular, the figure of Eliphaz, or the foremost of the three friends, occurs in a tempera picture of Giotto's in the Academy of Florence, the Ascension, among the apostles on the left; while the face of another of the three friends is again repeated in the "Christ disputing with the Doctors" of the small tempera series, also in the Academy; the figure of Satan shows much analogy to that of the Envy of the Arena chapel; and many other portions of the design are evidently either sketches of this very subject by Giotto himself, or dexterous compilations from his works by a loving pupil. Lord Lindsay has not done justice to the upper division—the Satan before God: it is one of the very finest thoughts ever realized by the Giotteschi. The serenity of power in the principal figure is very noble; no expression of wrath, or even of scorn, in the look which commands the evil spirit. The position of the latter, and countenance, are less grotesque and more demoniacal than is usual in paintings of the time; the triple wings expanded—the arms crossed over the breast, and holding each other above the elbow, the claws fixing in the flesh; a serpent buries its head in a cleft in the bosom, and the right hoof is lifted, as if to stamp.
62. We should have been glad if Lord Lindsay had given us some clearer idea of the internal evidence on which he founds his determination of the order or date of the works of Giotto. When no trustworthy records exist, we conceive this task to be of singular difficulty, owing to the differences of execution universally existing between the large and small works of the painter. The portrait of Dante in the chapel of the Podestá is proved by Dante's exile, in 1302, to have been painted before Giotto was six and twenty; yet we remember no head in any of his works which can be compared with it for carefulness of finish and truth of drawing; the crudeness of the material vanquished by dexterous hatching; the color not only pure, but deep—a rare virtue with Giotto; the eye soft and thoughtful, the brow nobly modeled. In the fresco of the Death of the Baptist, in Santa Croce, which we agree with Lord Lindsay in attributing to the same early period, the face of the musician is drawn with great refinement, and considerable power of rounding surfaces—(though in the drapery may be remarked a very singular piece of archaic treatment: it is warm white, with yellow stripes; the dress itself falls in deep folds, but the striped
At the feet of his Madonna, in the Gallery of Bologna.