Part 12

But though we must finally conclude that the mode of wearing the hair does not assist us, as the cut of the dress most certainly would have done had we been fortunate enough to find the body of the statue, still the tresses between the temple and the ear have a quality of their own which points to a definite time. They suggest the loose waving form of life with noteworthy success. The sculptor belonged to a period when the special nature of marble was thoroughly understood. The period had passed when bronze and marble were treated in almost identical fashion, and the time had come when sculptors could manage various materials with complete understanding and were enabled to reproduce surfaces or substances in the way best suited to malleable metal or to friable stone.

The most perfect example of this understanding of substance which we possess, and one that has never been surpassed, is the head of Hermes by Praxiteles made in the first half of the fourth century before Christ. The hair of the Athena is handled in much the same way. The locks and strands are not sharply outlined and separated one from another but flow from brow to neck in subtly broken masses among which the light plays in and out as softly as in nature. This naturalistic treatment became common after it had once been arrived at, but the tendency after the end of the fourth century was to try for purer realism. This could not be attained by greater skill in modelling and carving but only by polishing or engraving the surface. The Athena exhibits neither of these signs of decadence but the surface still shows that lovely dusty softness which is characteristic of the best work of the late fifth and early fourth centuries, a softness which would not have been imperceptible and lacking in effect even when the figure was tinted with colour, as, probably, all Greek sculpture was.

It is not only the hair which suggests the date of the early fourth century as the time when the Athena was made. The broad chin, projecting well away from the neck, a chin that would be heavy, were it not for the exquisiteness of its outline, which seems to have the living force of a coiled steel spring, is such as was common in the fifth and early fourth centuries. So, too, are the broad set, wide opened eyes overhung by the long low curve of the brow. Not a sign in these of the sentimentally dreaming eyes with their melting lower lids which we associate with the work of the imitators and followers of Praxiteles; not a trace of the furrowed brow and the eye gleaming, like a live coal, from the deep shadowed socket such as we see in the work of Scopas and the superb masters of Pergamon.

In discussing such a fragment as this Athena it cannot be too clearly remembered that the sculptor, like the poet, does but express his own day, and if Praxiteles was delicate and sentimental or Scopas forceful and passionate, it was because these were characteristic qualities of their periods. These are, furthermore, exactly the qualities one would expect at a time when old standards were beginning to be doubted and the future offered nothing so substantial to take their place.

The same phenomenon is seen in the seventeenth century of our era. In both periods thoughtful people either clung to a sentimental repetition of old ideas which no longer had life-giving and creative force, but were loved and dwelt on for the sake of old association, or else they were driven to a passionate striving after new and dimly seen hopes and ideals. Sentimental dreaming took the place of good hope and assurance while mystical passion took that of intelligent piety. In the face of the Athena there is seen no sign of a troubled spirit, she is calm and steadfast with the strength of perfect self-poise, which could hardly be, were she sprung from a later time than the early fourth century.

It has been insisted that there is in this head no trace of sentimentality, and it may be thought that I have failed to notice, or to give due weight to, the curious pose, drooping over slightly to one side. This is one of the most noticeable points about the head, but, to my mind, it expresses a feeling common in the fifth and early fourth centuries and is not motived in the slightest degree by the later sentimentality. In the old man seated on the ground in the Olympia pediment, in the Mourning Athena at Athens, in most of the grave steles of the late fifth and early fourth centuries, in the portrait bust of Pericles, is to be seen, in the pose and expression of the figures, the expression of a deep sentiment of combined gravity and tenderness. Again and again this sentiment is expressed by the great dramatists in words that ring down the centuries like distant bells. It is the recognition of suffering and sorrow but also of the self-control that meets them undismayed. When the Greeks lost their faith, at the same time they lost this control. In the Demeter of Cnidos and the portrait of Mausolus there are unmistakable signs of lack of control,—in the former the startled pose, and in the latter the look of distress plainly visible in the fine and vigorous face. The Athena resembles the Pericles and the grave steles in this respect. The head leans over as though bent by the wind (a position which emphasises the exquisite shape of the neck), but in the steady, quiet eyes and in the sensitive closed lips one sees plainly that simple directness that distinguished the Greeks of the period to which I attribute this head, from all the other peoples who have inhabited this earth.

I have just mentioned the mouth of the figure, and this is the feature to which I referred before as showing, possibly, the effect of local circumstance on the sculptor. It is a very noticeable mouth; large with unusually full and richly modelled lips—lips that could send the battle cry echoing across the scarred and rock-strewn hills or could whisper like the brook beneath the rosy-plumed oleanders. In shape it is by no means a typical Greek mouth, but has a trace of the fuller form common to the Libyans with whom the Cyreneans were in constant and close intercourse. While it is true that history fails to note a single case of an individual of pure black blood accomplishing anything of note except in a military way, such do often possess great beauty of form and feature, and this fact has been seized upon by the sculptor of the Athena. With great skill he has softened the somewhat savage shape and given it the lines that are consequent upon a higher civilization.

We have come now to the end of our study of this bit of sculpture. It could be compared indefinitely with other heads, and the similarities or differences could be pointed out. Little would result, however, from such comparisons. What is needed is more sculpture from the same region with which to study the Athena. But till this is forthcoming, we are left to the general conclusions derived from this single example. These conclusions are that the Athena was carved by some as yet unknown artist at Cyrene in the first half of the fourth century B.C. and that the work differs from the Greek work we are accustomed to in showing local characteristics both in special features and in method. This may seem to be of small importance and the head to be unworthy so elaborate a discussion; such would be the case were we to think of it merely as an archæological remnant of a forgotten city and time. But this head is more than a mere bit of flotsam. It is not a dead and meaningless fragment, but has still the suggestive and creative power of any true work of art. This vitality and artistic veracity are shown by the extreme clearness with which it illustrates two of the fundamental characteristics of the Greek genius—humanism and directness.

The simplicity and directness of the Greek showed itself in all he did or made. He never attributed human emotions to nature and never bound himself with dogmatic conventions. For these reasons he was never sentimental and never dry or false. He saw ugliness, moral as well as material, in the world around him, but recognising that it in no way added to happiness, he did not wallow in it and proclaim himself a “realist.” When he came to consider religion he was straightforward in his treatment of the Gods as he was with himself. They were but a superior race born from the same great mother Earth (Pindar, Nem. VI. 1). Athena, the Goddess, is but a woman and nothing more. He saw beautiful women in the cities where he dwelt and in form of their physical perfection he represented the bright-eyed Goddess. He sought no imaginary qualities, he attempted to express no hazy, mystical dreams but finding beauty in mankind, he was satisfied to reproduce it so well as might be.

Ordinary everyday life was the chief interest of the thoughtful Greek. He had the same circumstances of existence around him as we have to-day, and knew just as much of the origin or the end of it all. Life, death and the passing show of time were his schoolmasters as they are ours, and from them he learnt humanism. He thought of the world not as a blind accident nor as a mystical promise but merely as the setting for man and hence the conduct of life became his chief interest.

The Greek sought for all means whereby he might avoid the pitfalls of youth, secure the comforts of well-rounded growth and minimise the weaknesses and griefs of old age. To attain this ideal certain things were seen to be necessary, and from Solon, who considered that the man was happy who had health, good fortune, good looks and children, to Aristotle, who (Rhet. 1360 b, 14) gave the same definition in a more amplified form, the ideal did not alter. Even to-day there is but one part of this that seems strange to us. That is the stress laid on personal beauty. Good fortune, health, wisdom, children and particularly wealth go to form the general ideal of the modern world, but there can be only few who would admit that the desire for physical beauty was part and parcel of their ideal. The Greek on the other hand frankly desired it almost more than anything else and showed his perfectly simple and entirely pleasant belief in its value by his games and by many a story which he told as illustrative of enduring truths. One of these tales has a bearing on the Athena of Cyrene. It is that of Peisistratus, who in order to become ruler of Athens came there accompanied by a beautiful woman in regard to whom he told the credulous citizens that she was the Goddess Athena herself.

Thus we see that it is due to no mere partiality for the pleasing form on the part of the unknown sculptor that this head from Cyrene is beautiful, but because his brain and hand were guided by ideals that were second nature to him. As we grow familiar with the head, the loveliness of every feature, the sharp insistence on sweet feminine beauty make one wish destruction might fall on the vague and dreamy and contorted realisms with which many of the modern artists would attract our attention. The calm and steadfast eyes look at us across the centuries and question our mysticism. The straightforward, immediate, perfect humanity gives us pause in our mad search for novelty, and should we conclude that this is perfect art, though we may lose the sympathy of our contemporaries, we shall win the companionship of those whose laurels are immortal.

GIORGIONE

_Although in the following Study of Giorgione I express certain conclusions which seem to me certain, it is nevertheless probable that there will never be absolute agreement about his works. The indubitable facts concerning him are so very few that no two critics can be expected to see the matter eye to eye. I disagree in many points with the pathbreakers Morelli and Berenson, but it should not be forgotten that the knowledge of such men gives an added keenness to the innate powers of perception of those who come after them. Their torch lights ours, and so the path is pursued._

_The publication of Justi’s valuable work on Giorgione (Berlin, 1908), in which all the pictures still in existence that have bearing on Giorgione are reproduced, makes full illustration of this Study quite unnecessary._

I. PAINTINGS ATTRIBUTED TO GIORGIONE

A great upheaval and destruction of old traditions has taken place of late years in regard to paintings, and while much truth has been brought to light, a great deal of fancy has been given the semblance of veracity. The name of Morelli is familiar to all who take a serious interest in the paintings of the Italian schools, and though he was not the first to practise what not inaptly has been dubbed the ‘toe-nail’ method of criticism, yet his writings are more voluminous than those of other authors, and exemplify this method of criticism more completely, so that he may be taken as the protagonist of the school. It was the development of photography, and the vast increase in the number of pictures of which photographs could be procured, which gave rise to the Morellian school. The writers of earlier days who could not have before them on their tables, or carry with them to the galleries, a large quantity of reproductions of the works of any one master, were in a large measure prevented from studying the comparative likenesses or dissimilarities of such pictures.

But, as was natural, with this intensive study of photographs has come about a microscopic method of looking at pictures which often disregards the larger and more unquestionable qualities, and satisfies itself with tricks of drawing and the painting of details. It is as though instead of considering the structure and content of a book, one should measure the lines and number the punctuation points. It is within the realm of possibility that the day has passed for treatises based on such thorough study and acute perception of the qualities expressed by the Italian painters as were written by Crowe and Cavalcaselle, or such magnificently imaginative and poetic interpretations as the enduring verities first enunciated by Ruskin.

Not that these men did not make mistakes. Had they never done so we should not be able to give a true valuation to their work. Stupidity is not demonstrated by the making of blunders but by the spirit that animates the person at the moment of their commission. Ruskin, to illustrate by means of the brightest example, realised that paintings are expressions of thought just as much as are printed books, and that they are to be read and understood not by adding the vowels together in one heap and the consonants in another, but in their entirety.

Morelli and his followers, on the other hand, are obviously in large measure satisfied by an analysis of external forms and if they discover that each of two pictures presents the same number of curved and straight lines, no further proof is needed to satisfy them that the same author is responsible for both works. It is true that details of style must be studied and were often neglected by the earlier critics, but the famous proof of the identity of Moses and Melchisedek—“you take off the -_oses_ and add the -_elchisedek_”—will never satisfy many people. Morelli forgot that it requires no special perception to discover that Botticelli gave his figures square nails on their toes and fingers, or that the knuckles of Rosselli’s figures are apt to be swollen. But it is exactly this kind of observation which copyists possess. By the observation of such points one is able to say only that such and such a work is externally like the works of this or that artist, but that it is by him depends on quite other proofs.

One or two examples will show the fallacy of such a method of argument. There is in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts a picture representing the Virgin and Child with St. John. The name of Botticelli is on the frame. So far as finger nails or shape of nostril or locks of hair or position of fingers go (and all these details are peculiarly treated by Botticelli), the work might be considered to be by him. It is, however, certain that Botticelli was not the painter of the panel. Among several circumstances that demonstrate this, such as the method of painting employed by the artist, there is one that has to do with the spirit of the work, and which in itself is sufficient proof: I refer to the figure of St. John. We have enough works by Botticelli, the authenticity of which is established beyond all question, to know that he could never at any period of his career have represented this character with a simper that reminds one of Francia’s sentimental figures.

The picture is by a feeble imitator of the master. The works of Botticelli and his imitators offer, because of the very marked peculiarities of the master, extremely good examples to show what mistakes arise by relying too exclusively on the Morellian method, and in both public and private collections are many pictures showing the mannerisms of the Florentine but which are certainly not by him.[36] Take another master, Leonardo. There has lately gone to America[37] a panel representing the head of a woman. It was left by Morelli when he died to Donna Laura Minghetti. To the followers of Morelli, the picture seemed for a long time genuine enough, but when the style of the headdress, the tone of the colour and character of the painting, and lastly the position of the head on the panel itself, had been studied, it became evident that the painting was a modern forgery, and this was further proved when an attempt was made to clean the panel.

These illustrations are sufficient to show that the final judgment of a picture should be based on more than its technical peculiarities. The observation of these is good to begin with, but it does not suffice. That even Morelli himself instinctively felt the weakness of his method is shown in a most humorous way in his description of his “discovery” of the author of a portrait of a woman in the Borghese Gallery.

He tells us how before he looked at this canvas with _kritischem Auge_ he had first thought it to be by Dosso Dossi and then by Sebastiano Luciani. The rest is too naïve to translate, it must be given verbatim. “Eines Tages jedoch, als ich wieder fragend und entzückt vor dem mysteriösen Bilde stand, begegnete mein eigener Geist dem des Künstlers, welcher aus diesen weiblichen Zügen heraussah und siehe da, in der gegenseitigen Berührung zündete es plötzlich wie ein Funken und ich rief in meiner Freude aus: Nur du, mein Freund, Giorgione kannst es sein, und das Bild antwortete: Ja, ich bin’s”; and then follows analysis and dissection of the portrait.

The still small voice of his soul having interpreted the riddle of the picture he _then_ saw that the eye, the expression, the mouth were such as only Giorgione could paint. In a critical case like this Morelli had to look first to something other than anatomical or sartorial shapes. Unfortunately, in this particular case, he has convinced but few students by this sudden and mysterious interpretation of the picture, and only his most ardent apostles see in the ill-drawn portrait anything but a feeble imitation of certain of the less subtle qualities of the great Venetian.

Morelli made, however, other discoveries in regard to Giorgione of greater import than this; but before taking them up in detail it will be worth while to fix clearly in our minds what we know about the Venetian’s work from contemporary or approximately contemporary writers. Vasari and Ridolfi do not, indeed, fail to give the name of Giorgione to many a picture that had never felt the artist’s brush, but they saw many a picture that has since disappeared and what they tell us is the basis of all modern criticism of this most poetic of all the Venetians. I believe it can be shown that much which the earlier writers said of him, and which has since been forgotten or unwisely disregarded, is true.

I will say nothing of the life that Giorgio Barbarelli Giorgione, Zorzone as his comrade Venetians called him, led. That has little to do with us. I wish merely to show which pictures now labelled with his name may in my opinion be confidently accepted as his, and which ones we are justified in taking from him. In his early days he painted, says Vasari, in the second edition of the “Lives”:

1. Many pictures of the Virgin.

2. David, armed and with long hair, holding the head of Goliath.

3. Warrior with a red cap, a fur cloak and a silk jacket.

4. Child. (2, 3, and 4 were owned by the Patriarch of Aquileia.)

5. Portrait of Giovanni Borgherini and his master.

6. Head of a warrior, owned by Anton de’ Nobili in Florence.

7. Portrait of Consalvo Ferrante.

8. Portrait of the Doge Leonardo Loredano.

9. Many other portraits.

10. Frescoes on the Ca Soranzo in Venice—one representing a figure of Spring.

11. Frescoes on the front of the Fondaco de’ Tedeschi—the scenes were apparently fantastical or allegorical.

12. Christ carrying the cross, in the church of San Rocco.

13. A nude figure to show that by means of reflections painting is able to show all parts of a thing at once.

14. Portrait of Catharine, Queen of Cyprus.

15. Portrait of one of the Fugger family.

This list suffices to show that Vasari’s knowledge of Giorgione’s work was slight—and we can prove furthermore it was also imperfect. This is disheartening enough, but a still greater disappointment comes from the fact that of this list of fifteen numbers (including of course many more than fifteen pictures) there are but five of which either the originals or copies are preserved to-day. These five are Nos. 2, 5 (?), 11, 12, and 15. Numbers 5 and 15 are certainly not by Giorgione. The former is not improbably the picture in Berlin (No. 152) of which a replica is in the Louvre (No. 1156), both pictures attributed merely to the Venetian school, and the latter hangs in the Munich Gallery (No. 1107) under the name of Cariani.[38] No. 2 is usually thought to be the picture in Vienna, but Justi (Georgione, p. 182) shows that it may be a picture in Brunswick.[39]

Ridolfi gives a much longer list of Giorgione’s works:

16. Madonna enthroned, in the church of San Liberale in Castelfranco. Portraits.

17. The dead Christ held by angels, at Treviso.

18. Frescoes on Giorgione’s own house in Venice. Figures and fantasies.

Frescoes on the Ca Soranzo (same as No. 10). Destroyed all but a woman with flowers in her hand and Vulcan who whips Cupid.