On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2). Ruskin John
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cloister, lifted tower and lengthened wall, from the utmost blue of the plain of Padua to the Southern wildernesses of the hermit-haunted Apennine.
70. From the head of the Dramatic branch of Art, we turn to the first of the great Contemplative Triad, associated, as it most singularly happens in name as well as in heart; Orcagna—Arcagnuolo; Fra Giovanni—detto Angelico; and Michael Angelo:—the first two names being bestowed by contemporary admiration.
"Orcagna was born apparently about the middle of the (14th) century, and was christened Andrea, by which name, with the addition of that of his father, Cione, he always designated himself; that, however, of Orcagna, a corruption of Arcagnuolo, or 'The Archangel,' was given him by his contemporaries, and by this he has become known to posterity.
"The earliest works of Orcagna will be found in that sanctuary of Semi-Byzantine art, the Campo Santo of Pisa. He there painted three of the four 'Novissima,' Death, Judgment, Hell, and Paradise—the two former entirely himself, the third with the assistance of his brother Bernardo, who is said to have colored it after his designs. The first of the series, a most singular performance, had for centuries been popularly known as the 'Trionfo della Morte.' It is divided by an immense rock into two irregular portions. In that to the right, Death, personified as a female phantom, batwinged, claw-footed, her robe of linked mail [?] and her long hair streaming on the wind, swings back her scythe in order to cut down a company of the rich ones of the earth, Castruccio Castracani and his gay companions, seated under an orange-grove, and listening to the music of a troubadour and a female minstrel; little genii or Cupids, with reversed torches, float in the air above them; one young gallant caresses his hawk, a lady her lapdog,—Castruccio alone looks abstractedly away, as if his thoughts were elsewhere. But all are alike heedless and unconscious, though the sand is run out, the scythe falling and their doom sealed. Meanwhile the lame and the halt, the withered and the blind, to whom the heavens are brass and life a burthen, cry on Death with impassioned gestures, to release them from their misery,—but in vain; she sweeps past, and will not hear them. Between these two groups lie a heap of corpses, mown down already in her flight—kings, queens, bishops, cardinals, young men and maidens, secular and ecclesiastical—ensigned by their crowns, coronets, necklaces, miters and helmets—huddled together in hideous confusion; some are dead, others dying,—angels and devils draw the souls out of their mouths; that of a nun (in whose hand a purse, firmly clenched, betokens her besetting sin) shrinks back aghast at the unlooked-for sight of the demon who receives it—an idea either inherited or adopted from Andrea Tafi. The whole upper half of the fresco, on this side, is filled with angels and devils carrying souls to heaven or to hell; sometimes a struggle takes place, and a soul is rescued from a demon who has unwarrantably appropriated it; the angels are very graceful, and their intercourse with their spiritual charge is full of tenderness and endearment; on the other hand, the wicked are hurried off by the devils and thrown headlong into the mouths of hell, represented as the crater of a volcano, belching out flames nearly in the center of the composition. These devils exhibit every variety of horror in form and feature."—Vol. iii., pp. 130-134.
71. We wish our author had been more specific in his account of this wonderful fresco. The portrait of Castruccio ought to have been signalized as a severe disappointment to the admirers of the heroic Lucchese: the face is flat, lifeless, and sensual, though fine in feature. The group of mendicants occupying the center are especially interesting, as being among the first existing examples of hard study from the model: all are evidently portraits—and the effect of deformity on the lines of the countenance rendered with appalling truth; the retractile muscles of the mouth wrinkled and fixed—the jaws projecting—the eyes hungry and glaring—the eyebrows grisly and stiff, the painter having drawn each hair separately: the two stroppiati with stumps instead of arms are especially characteristic, as the observer may at once determine by comparing them with the descendants of the originals, of whom he will at any time find two, or more, waiting to accompany his return across the meadow in front of the Duomo: the old woman also, nearest of the group, with gray disheveled hair and gray coat, with a brown girdle and gourd flask, is magnificent, and the archetype of all modern conceptions of witch. But the crowning stroke of feeling is dependent on a circumstance seldom observed. As Castruccio and his companions are seated under the shade of an orange grove, so the mendicants are surrounded by a thicket of teasels, and a branch of ragged thorn is twisted like a crown about their sickly temples and weedy hair.
72. We do not altogether agree with our author in thinking that the devils exhibit every variety of horror; we rather fear that the spectator might at first be reminded by them of what is commonly known as the Dragon pattern of Wedgwood ware. There is invention in them however—and energy; the eyes are always terrible, though simply drawn—a black ball set forward, and two-thirds surrounded by a narrow crescent of white, under a shaggy brow; the mouths are frequently magnificent; that of a demon accompanying a thrust of a spear with a growl, on the right of the picture, is interesting as an example of the development of the canine teeth noticed by Sir Charles Bell ("Essay on Expression," p. 138)—its capacity of laceration is unlimited: another, snarling like a tiger at an angel who has pulled a soul out of his claws, is equally well conceived; we know nothing like its ferocity except Rembrandt's sketches of wounded wild beasts. The angels we think generally disappointing; they are for the most part diminutive in size, and the crossing of the extremities of the two wings that cover the feet, gives them a coleopterous, cockchafer look, which is not a little undignified; the colors of their plumes are somewhat coarse and dark—one is covered with silky hair, instead of feathers. The souls they contend for are indeed of sweet expression; but exceedingly earthly in contour, the painter being unable to deal with the nude form. On the whole, he seems to have reserved his highest powers for the fresco which follows next in order, the scene of Resurrection and Judgment.
"It is, in the main, the traditional Byzantine composition, even more rigidly symmetrical than usual, singularly contrasting in this respect with the rush and movement of the preceding compartment. Our Saviour and the Virgin, seated side by side, each on a rainbow and within a vesica piscis, appear in the sky—Our Saviour uttering the words of malediction with uplifted arm, showing the wound in his side, and nearly in the attitude of Michael Angelo, but in wrath, not in fury—the Virgin timidly drawing back and gazing down in pity and sorrow. I never saw this co-equal juxtaposition in any other representation of the Last Judgment."—Vol. iii., p. 136.
73. The positions of our Saviour and of the Virgin are not strictly co-equal; the glory in which the Madonna is seated is both lower and less; but the equality is more complete in the painting of the same subject in Santa M. Novella. We believe Lord Lindsay is correct in thinking Orcagna the only artist who has dared it. We question whether even wrath be intended in the countenance of the principal figure; on the contrary, we think it likely to disappoint at first, and appear lifeless in its exceeding tranquillity; the brow is indeed slightly knit, but the eyes have no local direction. They comprehend all things—are set upon all spirits alike, as in that word-fresco of our own, not unworthy to be set side by side with this, the Vision of the Trembling Man in the House of the Interpreter. The action is as majestic as the countenance—the right hand seems raised rather to show its wound (as the left points at the same instant to the wound in the side), than in condemnation, though its gesture has been adopted as one of threatening—first (and very nobly) by Benozzo Gozzoli, in the figure of the Angel departing, looking towards Sodom—and afterwards, with unfortunate exaggeration, by Michael Angelo. Orcagna's Madonna we think a failure, but his strength has been more happily displayed in the Apostolic circle. The head of St. John is peculiarly beautiful. The other Apostles look forward or down as in judgment—some in indignation, some in pity, some serene—but the eyes of St. John are fixed upon the Judge Himself with the stability of love—intercession and sorrow struggling for utterance with awe—and through both is seen a tremor of submissive astonishment, that the lips which had once forbidden his to call down fire from heaven should now themselves burn with irrevocable condemnation.
74. "One feeling for the most part pervades this side of the composition,—there is far more variety in the other; agony is depicted with fearful intensity and in every degree and character; some clasp their hands, some hide their faces, some look up in despair, but none towards Christ; others seem to have grown idiots with horror:—a few gaze, as if fascinated, into the gulf of fire towards which the whole mass of misery are being urged by the ministers of doom—the