A Commonplace Book of Thoughts, Memories, and Fancies Part 34

It appears to me-and I speak it with reverence-that the Miltonic type is not the highest conceivable, nor the best fitted for sculptural treatment. Milton has evidently lavished all his power on this fairest of created beings; but he makes her too nymph-like-too G.o.ddess-like. In one place he compares her to a Wood-nymph, Oread, or Dryad of the groves; in another to Diana's self, "though not, as she, with bow and quiver armed." The scriptural conception of our first parent is not like this; it is ampler, grander, n.o.bler far. I fancy her the sublime ideal of maternity. It may be said that this idea of her predestined motherhood should not predominate in the conception of Eve before the Fall: but I think it should.

It is most beautifully imagined by Milton that Eve, separated from her mate, her Adam, is weak, and given over to the merely womanish nature, for only when linked together and supplying the complement to each other's _moral_ being, can man or woman be strong; but we must also remember that the "spirited sly snake," in tempting Eve, even when he finds her alone, uses no vulgar allurements. "Ye shall be as G.o.ds, knowing good and evil." Milton, indeed, seasons his harangue with flattery: but for this he has no warrant in Scripture.

As the Eve of Paradise should be majestically sinless, so after the Fall she should not cower and wail like a disappointed girl. Her infinite fault, her infinite woe, her infinite penitence, should have a touch of grandeur. She has paid the inevitable price for that mighty knowledge of good and evil she so coveted; that terrible predestined experience-she has found it, or it has found her;-and she wears her crown of grief as erst her crown of innocence.

I think the n.o.ble picture of Eve in Mrs. Browning's Drama of Exile, as that of the Mother of our redemption not less than the Mother of suffering humanity, might be read and considered with advantage by a modern sculptor.

"Rise, woman, rise To thy peculiar and best alt.i.tudes Of doing good and of resisting ill!

Something thou hast to bear through womanhood; Peculiar suffering answering to the sin, Some pang paid down for each new human life; Some weariness in guarding such a life, Some coldness from the guarded; some mistrust From those thou hast too well served; from those beloved Too loyally, some treason. But go, thy love Shall chant to itself its own beat.i.tudes After its own life-working!

I bless thee to the desert and the thorns, To the elemental change and turbulence, And to the solemn dignities of grief; To each one of these ends, and to this end Of Death and the hereafter!

_Eve._ I accept, For me and for my daughters, this high part Which lowly shall be counted!"

The figure of Eve in Raphael's design (the one engraved by Marc Antonio) is exquisitely statuesque as well as exquisitely beautiful. In the moment that she presents the apple to Adam she looks-perhaps she ought to look-like the _Venus Vincitrice_ of the antique time; but I am not sure; and, at all events, the less of the cla.s.sical sentiment the better.

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ADAM.

I have seen no statue of Adam; but surely he is a fine subject, either alone or as the companion of Eve; and the Miltonic type is here all-sufficient, combining the heroic ideal of Greek art with something higher still-

"Truth, wisdom, sanct.i.tude severe and pure,"

whence true authority in men-in fact, essential manliness.

Goethe had the idea that Adam ought to be represented with a spade, as the progenitor of all who till the ground, and partially draped with a deerskin, that is, after the Fall; which would be well: but he adds that Adam should have a child at his feet in the act of strangling a serpent.

This appears to me objectionable and ambiguous; if admissible at all, the accessory figure would be a fitter accompaniment for Eve.

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ANGELS.

Angels, properly speaking, are neither winged men nor winged children.

Wings, in ancient art, were the symbols of a divine nature; and the early Greeks, who humanised their G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses, and deified humanity through the perfection of the forms, at first distinguished the divine and the human by giving wings to all the celestial beings; thus lifting them above the earth. Our religious idea of angels is altogether different. Give to the child-form wings, in other words, give to the child-nature, innocent, and pure, the adjuncts of wisdom and power, and thus you realise the idea of the angel as Raphael conceived it. It is so difficult to imagine in the adult form the union of perfect purity and perfect wisdom, the absence of experience and suffering, and the capacity of thinking and feeling, a condition of being in which all conscious _motive_ is lost in the _impulse_ to good, that it remains a problem in art. The angels of Angelico da Fiesole, who are not only winged, but convey the idea of movement only by the wings, not by the limbs, are exquisite, as fitted to minister to us in heaven, but hardly as fitted to keep watch and ward for us on earth-

"Against foul fiends to aid us militant."

The feminine element always predominates in the conception of angels, though they are supposed to be masculine: I doubt whether it ought to be so.

While these sheets are going through the press, I find the following beautiful pa.s.sage relative to angels in the last number of "Fraser's Magazine":-

"It is safer, even, and perhaps more orthodox and scriptural, to 'impersonate' time and s.p.a.ce, strength and love, and even the laws of nature, than to give us any more angel worlds, which are but dead skeletons of Dante's creations without that awful and living reality which they had in his mind; or to fill children's books, as the High Church party are doing now, with pictures and tales of certain winged hermaphrodites, in whom one cannot think (even by the extremest stretch of charity) that the writers or draughtsmen really believe, while one sees them servilely copying mediaeval forms, and intermingling them with the ornaments of an extinct architecture; thus confessing _navely_ to every one but themselves, that they accept the whole notion as an integral portion of a creed, to which, if they be members of the Church of England, they cannot well belong, seeing that it was, happily for us, expelled both by law and by conscience at the Reformation."

This is eloquent and true; but not the less true it is, that if we have to represent in art those "spiritual beings who walk this earth unseen, both when we sleep and when we wake"-beings, who (as the author of the above pa.s.sage seems to believe) may be intimately connected with the phenomena of the universe-we must have a type, a bodily type, under which to represent them; and as we cannot do this from knowledge, we must do it symbolically. Angels, as we figure them, are _symbols_ of moral and spiritual existences elevated above ourselves-we do not believe in the forms, we only accept their significance. I should be glad to see a better impersonation than the impossible creatures represented in art; but till some artist-poet, or poet-artist, has invented such an impersonation, we must employ that which is already familiarised to the eye and hallowed to the fancy without imposing on the understanding.

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MIRIAM. RUTH.

Both the Old and the New Testament abound in sculptural subjects; but fitly to deal with the Old Testament required a Michal-Angelo. Beautiful as are the gates of Ghiberti they are hardly what the Germans would call "alt-testamentische," they are so essentially elegant and graceful, and the old Hebrew legends and personages are so tremendous. Even Miriam and Ruth dilate into a sort of grandeur. In representation I always fancy them above life-size.

I doubt whether the same artist who could conceive the Prophets would be able to represent the Apostles, or that the same hand which gave us Moses could give us Christ. Michal-Angelo's idea of Christ, both in painting and sculpture is, to me, revolting.

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CHRIST. SOLOMON. DAVID.

I do not like the idea of Moses and Christ placed together. Much finer in artistic and moral contrast would be the two teachers,-Christ as the divine and spiritual law-giver, Solomon as the type of worldly wisdom.

They should stand side by side, or be seated each on his throne, a crowned King, with book and sceptre-but how different in character!

We have multiplied statues of David. I have never seen one which realised the finest conception of his character, either as Hero, King, Prophet, or Poet. In general he figures as the slayer of Goliath, and is always too feeble and boyish. David, singing to his lute before Saul; David as the musician and poet, young, beautiful, half-draped, heaven-inspired, exorcising by his art the dark spirit of evil which possessed the jealous King:-this would be a theme for an artist, and would as finely represent the power of sacred song as a figure of St.

Cecilia. But the sentiment should not be that of a young Apollo, or an Orpheus; therein would lie the chief difficulty.

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HAGAR. REBEKAH. RACHEL.

I remember to have seen fine statues of Hagar holding her pitcher, of Rebekah contemplating her bracelet, and of Rachel as the shepherdess.

But I would have a different version; Hagar as the poor cast-away, driven forth with her boy into the wilderness; Rebekah as the exulting bride; and Rachel as the mild, pensive wife. They would represent, in a very complete manner, contrasted phases of the destiny of Woman, connected together by our religious a.s.sociations, and appealing to our deepest human sympathies.

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THE QUEEN OF SHEBA.

The Queen of Sheba would be a fine subject for a single statue, as the religious type of the queenly, intellectual woman, the treatment being kept as far as possible from that of a Pallas or a Muse.

The journey of the Queen of the South to visit Solomon would be a capital subject for a processional bas-relief, and as a _pendant_ to the journey of "the Wise Men of the East," to visit a greater than Solomon.

The latter has been perpetually treated from the fourth century. Of the journey of the Queen of Sheba I have seen, as yet, no example.

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LADY G.o.dIVA.

With regard to statuesque subjects from modern history and poetry,-_Romantic Sculpture_, as it is styled,-the taste both of the public and the artist evidently sets in this direction. That the treatment of such subjects should not be cla.s.sical is admitted; but in the development of this romantic tendency there is cause to fear that we may be inundated with all kinds of picturesque vagaries and violations of the just laws and limits of art.

I remember, however, a circ.u.mstance which makes me hopeful as to the progress of feeling; knowledge may come hereafter. I remember about twenty years ago proposing the figure and story of Lady G.o.diva as beautiful subjects for sculpture and painting. There were present on that occasion, among others, two artists and a poet. The two artists laughed outright, and the poet extemporised an epigram upon Peeping Tom.