Mornings in Florence Part 13

Over the door: 'I am the door;--by me, if any man enter in,' etc. Put to the right of the tower, you see, fearlessly, for the convenience of staircase ascent; all external symmetry being subject with the great builders to interior use; and then, out of the rightly ordained infraction of formal law, comes perfect beauty; and when, as here, the Spirit of Heaven is working with the designer, his thoughts are suggested in truer order, by the concession to use. After this sculpture comes the Christian arts,--those which necessarily imply the conviction of immortality. Astronomy without Christianity only reaches as far as--'Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels--and put all _things_ under His feet':--Christianity says beyond this,--'Know ye not that we shall judge angels (as also the lower creatures shall judge us!)' [Footnote: In the deep sense of this truth, which underlies all the bright fantasy and humour of Mr. Courthope's "Paradise of Birds,"

that rhyme of the risen spirit of Aristophanes may well be read under the tower of Giotto, beside his watch-dog of the fold.] The series of sculptures now beginning, show the arts which _can_ only be accomplished through belief in Christ.

20. _Geometry_.

Not 'mathematics': _they_ have been implied long ago in astronomy and architecture; but the due Measuring of the Earth and all that is on it.

Actually done only by Christian faith--first inspiration of the great Earth-measurers. Your Prince Henry of Spain, your Columbus, your Captain Cook, (whose tomb, with the bright artistic invention and religious tenderness which are so peculiarly the gifts of the nineteenth century, we have just provided a fence for, of old cannon open-mouthed, straight up towards Heaven--your modern method of symbolizing the only appeal to Heaven of which the nineteenth century has left itself capable--'The voice of thy Brother's blood crieth to me'--your outworn cannon, now silently agape, but sonorous in the ears of angels with that appeal)--first inspiration, I say, of these; constant inspiration of all who set true landmarks and hold to them, knowing their measure; the devil interfering, I observe, lately in his own way, with the Geometry of Yorks.h.i.+re, where the landed proprietors, [Footnote: I mean no accusation against any cla.s.s; probably the one-fielded statesman is more eager for his little gain of fifty yards of gra.s.s than the squire for his bite and sup out of the gypsy's part of the roadside. But it is notable enough to the pa.s.sing traveller, to find himself shut into a narrow road between high stone d.y.k.es which he can neither see over nor climb over, (I always deliberately pitch them down myself, wherever I need a gap,) instead of on a broad road between low grey walls with all the moor beyond--and the power of leaping over when he chooses in innocent trespa.s.s for herb, or view, or splinter of grey rock.] when the neglected walls by the roadside tumble down, benevolently repair the same, with better stonework, _outside_ always of the fallen heaps;--which, the wall being thus built _on_ what was the public road, absorb themselves, with help of moss and time, into the heaving swells of the rocky field-and behold, gain of a couple of feet--along so much of the road as needs repairing operations.

This then, is the first of the Christian sciences: division of land rightly, and the general law of measuring between wisely-held compa.s.s points. The type of mensuration, circle in square, on his desk, I use for my first exercise in the laws of Fesole.

21. _Sculpture_.

The first piece of the closing series on the north side of the Campanile, of which some general points must be first noted, before any special examination.

The two initial ones, Sculpture and Painting, are by tradition the only ones attributed to Giotto's own hand. The fifth, Song, is known, and recognizable in its magnificence, to be by Luca della Robbia. The remaining four are all of Luca's school,--later work therefore, all these five, than any we have been hitherto examining, entirely different in manner, and with late flower-work beneath them instead of our hitherto severe Gothic arches. And it becomes of course instantly a vital question--Did Giotto die leaving the series incomplete, only its subjects chosen, and are these two bas-reliefs of Sculpture and Painting among his last works? or was the series ever completed, and these later bas-reliefs subst.i.tuted for the earlier ones, under Luca's influence, by way of conducting the whole to a grander close, and making their order more representative of Florentine art in its fulness of power?

I must repeat, once more, and with greater insistence respecting Sculpture than Painting, that I do not in the least set myself up for a critic of authenticity,--but only of absolute goodness. My readers may trust me to tell them what is well done or ill; but by whom, is quite a separate question, needing for any certainty, in this school of much-a.s.sociated masters and pupils, extremest attention to minute particulars not at all bearing on my objects in teaching.

Of this closing group of sculptures, then, all I can tell you is that the fifth is a quite magnificent piece of work, and recognizably, to my extreme conviction, Luca della Robbia's; that the last, Harmonia, is also fine work; that those attributed to Giotto are fine in a different way,--and the other three in reality the poorest pieces in the series, though done with much more advanced sculptural dexterity.

But I am chiefly puzzled by the two attributed to Giotto, because they are much coa.r.s.er than those which seem to me so plainly his on the west side, and slightly different in workmans.h.i.+p--with much that is common to both, however, in the casting of drapery and mode of introduction of details. The difference may be accounted for partly by haste or failing power, partly by the artist's less deep feeling of the importance of these merely symbolic figures, as compared with those of the Fathers of the Arts; but it is very notable and embarra.s.sing notwithstanding, complicated as it is with extreme resemblance in other particulars.

You cannot compare the subjects on the tower itself; but of my series of photographs take 6 and 21, and put them side by side.

I need not dwell on the conditions of resemblance, which are instantly visible; but the _difference_ in the treatment of the heads is incomprehensible. That of the Tubal Cain is exquisitely finished, and with a painter's touch; every lock of the hair laid with studied flow, as in the most beautiful drawing. In the 'Sculpture,' it is struck out with ordinary tricks of rapid sculptor trade, entirely unfinished, and with offensively frank use of the drill hole to give picturesque rustication to the beard.

Next, put 22 and 5 back to back. You see again the resemblance in the earnestness of both figures, in the unbroken arcs of their backs, in the breaking of the octagon moulding by the pointed angles; and here, even also in the general conception of the heads. But again, in the one of Painting, the hair is struck with more vulgar indenting and drilling, and the Gothic of the picture frame is less precise in touch and later in style. Observe, however,--and this may perhaps give us some definite hint for clearing the question,--a picture-frame _would be_ less precise in making, and later in style, properly, than cusped arches to be put under the feet of the inventor of all musical sound by breath of man.

And if you will now compare finally the eager tilting of the workman's seat in 22 and 6, and the working of the wood in the painter's low table for his pots of colour, and his three-legged stool, with that of Tubal Cain's anvil block; and the way in which the lines of the forge and upper triptych are in each composition used to set off the rounding of the head, I believe you will have little hesitation in accepting my own view of the matter--namely, that the three pieces of the Fathers of the Arts were wrought with Giotto's extremest care for the most precious stones of his tower; that also, being a sculptor and painter, he did the other two, but with quite definite and wilful resolve that they _should be_, as mere symbols of his own two trades, wholly inferior to the other subjects of the patriarchs; that he made the Sculpture picturesque and bold as you see it is, and showed all a sculptor's tricks in the work of it; and a sculptor's Greek subject, Bacchus, for the model of it; that he wrought the Painting, as the higher art, with more care, still keeping it subordinate to the primal subjects, but showed, for a lesson to all the generations of painters for evermore,--this one lesson, like his circle of pure line containing all others,--'Your soul and body must be all in every touch.'

I can't resist the expression of a little piece of personal exultation, in noticing that he holds his pencil as I do myself: no writing master, and no effort (at one time very steady for many months), having ever cured me of that way of holding both pen and pencil between my fore and second finger; the third and fourth resting the backs of them on my paper.

As I finally arrange these notes for press, I am further confirmed in my opinion by discovering little finis.h.i.+ngs in the two later pieces which I was not before aware of. I beg the masters of High Art, and sublime generalization, to take a good magnifying gla.s.s to the 'Sculpture' and look at the way Giotto has cut the compa.s.ses, the edges of the chisels, and the keyhole of the lock of the toolbox. For the rest, nothing could be more probable, in the confused and perpetually false ma.s.s of Florentine tradition, than the preservation of the memory of Giotto's carving his own two trades, and the forgetfulness, or quite as likely ignorance, of the part he took with Andrea Pisano in the initial sculptures. I now take up the series of subjects at the point where we broke off, to trace their chain of philosophy to its close. To Geometry, which gives to every man his possession of house and land, succeed 21, Sculpture, and 22, Painting, the adornments of permanent habitation. And then, the great arts of education in a Christian home. First--

23. _Grammar_, or more properly Literature altogether, of which we have already seen the ancient power in the Spanish Chapel series; then,

24. _Arithmetic_, central here as also in the Spanish Chapel, for the same reasons; here, more impatiently a.s.serting, with both hands, that two, on the right, you observe-and two on the left-do indeed and for ever make Four. Keep your accounts, you, with your book of double entry, on that principle; and you will be safe in this world and the next, in your steward's office. But by no means so, if you ever admit the usurers Gospel of Arithmetic, that two and two make Five. You see by the rich hem of his robe that the a.s.serter of this economical first principle is a man well to do in the world.

25. _Logic_. The art of Demonstration. Vulgarest of the whole series, far too expressive of the mode in which argument is conducted by those who are not masters of its reins.

26. _Song._

The essential power of music in animal life. Orpheus, the symbol of it all, the inventor properly of Music, the Law of Kindness, as Daedalus of Music, the Law of Construction. Hence the "Orphic life" is one of ideal mercy, (vegetarian,)--Plato, _Laws_, Book VI., 782,--and he is named first after Daedalus, and in balance to him as head of the school of harmonists, in Book III., 677, (Steph.) Look for the two singing birds clapping their wings in the tree above him; then the five mystic beasts,--closest to his feet the irredeemable boar; then lion and bear, tiger, unicorn, and fiery dragon closest to his head, the flames of its mouth mingling with his breath as he sings. The audient eagle, alas! has lost the beak, and is only recognizable by his proud holding of himself; the duck, sleepily delighted after muddy dinner, close to his shoulder, is a true conquest. Hoopoe, or indefinite bird of crested race, behind; of the other three no clear certainty. The leaf.a.ge throughout such as only Luca could do, and the whole consummate in skill and understanding.

27. _Harmony._

Music of Song, in the full power of it, meaning perfect education in all art of the Muses and of civilized life: the mystery of its concord is taken for the symbol of that of a perfect state; one day, doubtless, of the perfect world. So prophesies the last corner stone of the Shepherd's Tower.