Val d'Arno Part 14

And then note, and with conclusive admiration, how in the exact and only place where the poor modern fool's anatomical knowledge should have been shown, the wretch loses his hold of it! How he has entirely missed and effaced the grand Greek pectoral muscles of Giovanni's Adam, but has studiously added what mean fleshliness he could to the Eve; and marked with black spots the nipple and navel, where Giovanni left only the severe marble in pure light.

These instances are enough to enable you to detect the insolent changes in the design of Giovanni made by the modern Academy-student in so far as they relate to form absolute. I must farther, for a few moments, request your attention to the alterations made in the light and shade.

You may perhaps remember some of the pa.s.sages. They occur frequently, both in my inaugural lectures, and in "Aratra Pentelici," in which I have pointed out the essential connection between the schools of sculpture and those of chiaroscuro. I have always spoken of the Greek, or essentially sculpture-loving schools, as chiaroscurist; always of the Gothic, or colour-loving schools, as non-chiaroscurist. And in one place, (I have not my books here, and cannot refer to it,) I have even defined sculpture as light-and-shade drawing with the chisel. Therefore, the next point you have to look to, after the absolute characters of form, is the mode in which the sculptor has placed his shadows, both to express these, and to force the eye to the points of his composition which he wants looked at. You cannot possibly see a more instructive piece of work, in these respects, than Giovanni's design of the Nativity, Plate X. So far as I yet know Christian art, this is the central type of the treatment of the subject; it has all the intensity and pa.s.sion of the earliest schools, together with a grace of repose which even in Ghiberti's beautiful Nativity, founded upon it, has scarcely been increased, but rather lost in languor. The motive of the design is the frequent one among all the early masters; the Madonna lifts the covering from the cradle to show the Child to one of the servants, who starts forward adoring. All the light and shade is disposed

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE XII.--THE ANNUNCIATION AND VISITATION.]

to fix the eye on these main actions. First, one intense deeply-cut ma.s.s of shadow, under the pointed arch, to throw out the head and lifted hand of the Virgin. A vulgar sculptor would have cut all black behind the head; Giovanni begins with full shadow; then subdues it with drapery absolutely quiet in fall; then lays his fullest possible light on the head, the hand, and the edge of the lifted veil.

He has undercut his Madonna's profile, being his main aim, too delicately for time to spare; happily the deep-cut brow is left, and the exquisitely refined line above, of the veil and hair. The rest of the work is uninjured, and the sharpest edges of light are still secure. You may note how the pa.s.sionate action of the servant is given by the deep shadows under and above her arm, relieving its curves in all their length, and by the recess of shade under the cheek and chin, which lifts the face.

Now take your modern student's copy, and look how _he_ has placed his lights and shades. You see, they go as nearly as possible exactly where Giovanni's _don't_. First, pure white under this Gothic arch, where Giovanni has put his fullest dark. Secondly, just where Giovanni has used his whole art of chiselling, to soften his stone away, and show the wreaths of the Madonna's hair lifting her veil behind, the accursed modern blockhead carves his shadow straight down, because he thinks that will be more in the style of Michael Angelo. Then he takes the shadows away from behind the profile, and from under the chin, and from under the arm, and puts in two grand square blocks of dark at the ends of the cradle, that you may be safe to look at that, instead of the Child.

Next, he takes it all away from under the servant's arms, and lays it all behind above the calf of her leg. Then, not having wit enough to notice Giovanni's undulating surface beneath the drapery of the bed on the left, he limits it with a hard parallel-sided bar of shade, and insists on the vertical fold under the Madonna's arm, which Giovanni has purposely cut flat that it may not interfere with the arm above; finally, the modern animal has missed the only pieces of womanly form which Giovanni admitted, the rounded right arm and softly revealed breast; and absolutely removed, as if it were no part of the composition, the horizontal incision at the base of all--out of which the first folds of the drapery rise.

I cannot give you any better example, than this modern Academy-work, of the total ignorance of the very first meaning of the word 'Sculpture'

into which the popular schools of existing art are plunged. I will not insist, now, on the uselessness, or worse, of their endeavours to represent the older art, and of the necessary futility of their judgment of it. The conclusions to which I wish to lead you on these points will be the subject of future lectures, being of too great importance for examination here. But you cannot spend your time in more profitable study than by examining and comparing, touch for touch, the treatment of light and shadow in the figures of the Christ and sequent angels, in Plates VIII. and IX., as we have partly examined those of the subject before us; and in thus a.s.suring yourself of the uselessness of trusting to any ordinary modern copyists, for anything more than the rudest chart or map--and even that inaccurately surveyed--of ancient design.

The last plate given in this volume contains the two lovely subjects of the Annunciation and Visitation, which, being higher from the ground, are better preserved than the groups represented in the other plates.

They will be found to justify, in subtlety of chiselling, the t.i.tle I gave to Giovanni, of the Canova of the thirteenth century.

I am obliged to leave without notice, at present, the branch of ivy, given in ill.u.s.tration of the term 'marble rampant,' at the base of Plate VIII. The foliage of Orvieto can only be rightly described in connection with the great scheme of leaf-ornamentation which ascended from the ivy of the Homeric period in the sculptures of Cyprus, to the roses of Botticelli, and laurels of Bellini and t.i.tian.