Part 5

This is on a square piece of paper, similar in size to No. 1, and at present mounted on the same sheet at the left of No. 1. It shows the figure of a bearded man with arms outstretched as though on a cross. A curved dotted line stretches from hand to hand over the head and drops about an inch perpendicularly below each hand. This dotted line is a suggestion of the existing colonnades.

That the figure is thought of as being on a cross is borne out by sketches that follow and also by the dot in the palm of the left hand which possibly represents a nail.

The sharp, broken lines with which the figure is drawn are characteristic of Bernini.

No. 3.—PLATE XXIX

An outline plan of the church with the colonnades in front. It is to be noted the latter start at the corners of the façade of the church and project a short distance parallel to the main axis before curving to each side.

Size 6½ × 8¾ inches.

No. 4.—PLATE XXIX

Similar to No. 3, but in greater detail. The figure of a bearded man represented within the plan of the church in the attitude of crucifixion. In the left arm of the colonnade is drawn the sun and in the right arm the moon and stars.

This is pasted in the book at the left of No. 3.

Size 6⅝ × 8¾ inches.

No. 5.—PLATE XXX

This shows the same crucified figure as before. Over the head and below each hand is the dotted line seen in No. 2. Behind the head and arms is drawn with dots the elevation of St. Peter’s, the Vatican and the colonnades.

No. 6.—PLATE XXX

Similar figure to the preceding, but with the arms contorted so as to follow the straight portion of the colonnade (shown in No. 3) before following the curve. Behind the head the dotted outline of St. Peter’s and behind the figure’s left arm the colonnade and Vatican buildings laid in with dots and a few lines.

No. 5 is at the right of No. 6, and the size of the sheet is 14 × 6¾ inches.

It should be noted that the figure is so placed in these two drawings that the dome of the church suggests a bishop’s mitre.

No. 7.—PLATE XXXI

Outline elevation of the north half of the façade of St. Peter’s and the north colonnade, rising behind which is shown the Vatican Palace.

On the left half of the sheet are faint pencil lines showing the south side of the colonnade and façade.

The sky is touched in with bluish white.

Size 14¼ × 6½ inches.

[Illustration: PLATE XXXI.]

[Illustration: PLATE XXXII.]

[Illustration: PLATE XXXIII.]

[Illustration: PLATE XXXIV.]

[Illustration: PLATE XXXV.]

No. 8.—PLATE XXXII

Two drawings of the north colonnade. These are similar to the preceding, but more elaborate (with shadows washed in in gray), as shown by dotted lines drawn to the eyes of outlined figures from various points.

We find here the architect’s intention regarding the view from different positions.

Size 14⅜ × 6¾ inches.

On the back of the sheet is a sketch of the door of St. Peter’s with the balcony where the Pope used to appear. I do not feel sure that this is by Bernini. There is also another sheet with a more detailed drawing of this door.

No. 9.—PLATE XXXIII

Similar to No. 8, but still more elaborate and larger; there is only one drawing on the sheet.

In this design Bernini has altered the line of the colonnade. Instead of having, as in the preceding drawing, a straight portion projecting from the church, he has here drawn the colonnade in one large curve from the church outwards, putting an elaborate entrance to the Vatican Palace near the church. This entrance would have led to the Cortile di San Damaso.

Size 14 × 6⅝ inches.

No. 10.—PLATE XXXIV

Slight outline sketch of the outer end of the north arm of the colonnade, which is here made two-storied.

Size 13⅝ × 6⅜ inches.

No. 11.—PLATE XXXV

Interior of inner end of north arm of colonnade, showing the stairway as it exists at present. Size 14½ × 6⅜ inches.

No. 12.—PLATE XXXVI

Two sketches; one showing the plan, the other the elevation, of the Cortile di San Damaso.

Size 13⅝ × 6⅝ inches.

No. 13.—PLATE XXXVII

View of the façade of St. Peter’s with both colonnades, which are two-storied. The sky is touched in with bluish white.

The buildings of the Vatican are also shown,—those on the right exist, those on the left are imaginary.

Size 14⅝ × 6¾ inches.

No. 14.—PLATE XXXVIII

View looking east from the front of St. Peter’s.

On each side are the ends of the colonnades; they are in two stories, that on the right crowned with low clock-towers similar to the “asses’ ears” once placed by Bernini on the Pantheon.

Beyond the piazza is the _Borgo_ much reconstructed and made symmetrical. In the distance the Castel Sant’ Angelo.

Size 14⅜ × 6⅝ inches.

No. 15.—PLATE XXXIX

Two sketches in pen, washed with sepia, of the Borgo, looking towards St. Peter’s.

These show different methods of treating the north arm of the colonnade. The one on the right shows the colonnade closing the view up the Borgo, the other shows an opening carrying the eye beyond and between St. Peter’s and the Vatican.

Size 14½ × 6½ inches.

The buildings shown exist in much the same form to-day. Even the fountain still serves.

No. 16.—PLATE XL

Plan of the piazza showing how it was intended to symbolize the orb of the world suggested on No. 1.

In this sketch we see the circle within which is a dotted square. Within the square is a figure with arms and legs outstretched along the diagonals. At the top is written over a faint pencil outline of the church (perhaps not original) _San Pietro_. At the bottom is written twice _Piazza Rusticucci_ and on a piece of paper pasted on is the plan of a building shown in No. 14,—one of the buildings intended for the reconstructed _Borgo_.

On the right and left of the figure are indicated the _Porta Angelica_ and the _Porta Cavalleggieri_.

The dotted square within the circle is divided into quarters in which is written _Asia_, _Europa_, _America_, _Affrica_.

Size 7¾ × 8⅝ inches.

These are the plans showing Bernini’s ideas regarding the Piazza of St. Peter’s. From a study of them we see how the circular piazza itself was intended to represent the world at large, while the colonnade symbolized the arms of the Cross. Crowning all was the great Church, founded by Him whose arms could embrace the whole earth, and from whose doors should stream to every quarter the promise of hope and love for which He died.

[Illustration: PLATE XXXVI.]

[Illustration: PLATE XXXVII.]

[Illustration: PLATE XXXVIII.]

[Illustration: PLATE XXXIX.]

[Illustration: PLATE XL.]

ASPECTS OF THE ART OF SCULPTURE

I. THE ART OF PORTRAITURE

All students have noticed the similarity in style between certain Egyptian portraits and other works by ancient Roman as well as Florentine artists, and the resemblance in style that exists between Greek and Venetian portraits. Also there is a marked dissimilarity between the Egyptian-Roman-Florentine Group on the one hand and the Greek-Venetian Group on the other; and these two facts suggest the conclusion that the art of portraiture consists in something more than the mere photographic imitation in stone, or with paint, of the human face or figure. Were such imitation the essential factor in the art the only differences in portraits of different epochs would be those of ethnographic character. The special characteristics of portraiture as of the other arts at any given period are the result of the intellectual and material condition of the people to whom the artist belongs. Style, that is the distinguishing quality of the work of art, the quality which differentiates it from a work of another period or race, is the result, largely unconscious, of the relation of the artist to life and its effect upon him. The material, the means by which he gives expression to his endeavour at creation or representation, is of minor importance.

The Sheik-el-Beled (Plates XLI, XLII) and the bust of Scipio so called (Plate XLIII) might almost be portraits of brothers; and the family is increased by a little Egyptian head in the museum in Venice, and by some of the men immortalised by Donatello. So too Pericles as we see him in the bust by Kresilas seems separated by but a narrow margin from Giorgione’s Knight of Malta. And yet in blood, traditions, circumstances and hopes these men were the poles asunder.

How then is this likeness of certain portraits to one another to be explained unless by the existence of some connection dependent on the temper of the artist?

There is still another curious likeness and another difference to be noted among the carved and painted portraits of various epochs and schools. While the head of Corbulo is unlike that of Pericles in the æsthetic impression it gives, and that of Angelo Doni by Raphael also is æsthetically unlike the Duke of Norfolk by Titian, still the carved heads have a common bond as have also the painted ones.[19] They do not make the two broad groups into which I have, for the sake of making plain a general idea, divided portraits æsthetically similar, but they make plain when understood that painted portraits are necessarily different from carved ones—different in more than the mere fact that one is round and the other flat. The difference springs deep down from what is possible to attain by either art. The sculptor of the Pericles and the painter of the Norfolk both set before us the grave, elegant and stately face of a bearded man in middle life. Neither artist distracts our attention by bravura or technique or by realistic emphasis of detail. Though stylistically similar, these works still do not impress our minds in the same way. The following pages will be clearer if I say at once that this differing mental impression arises because in busts our attention is drawn chiefly to the mouth while in painted portraits it is turned on the eyes. This is due to the special laws of the technique by which the works are produced; given a painter and sculptor with the same point of view and the same mental tendencies, the portraits produced by them, even of the same person, though evidently expressing the same intellectual qualities both of artist and of sitter, are in modes of expression and certain external aspects necessarily unlike. In pursuing this investigation and in discussing the existence and nature of the various laws the governance of which I have suggested, the history of the rise and spread of portraiture must be kept in mind.

[Illustration: PLATE XLI.]

Before the intention of the maker of portraits can be comprehended the motives that lead to the desire of the public or of private individuals to possess such work must be understood. In the main they are two,—one religious and one historic; to these may be added a third, that of sentiment and friendship. The religious cause is best illustrated by Egyptian statues, of which a large proportion were made to be placed in tombs. These are the earliest portraits of western origin which exist in sufficient numbers to afford a sound basis of criticism. The well-known dependence, in that country, of these works on religious prescriptions needs hardly more than passing mention. That the soul of dead mortals might, returning to this earth and to the tomb, find its accustomed corporeal dwelling place, portrait statues of the deceased were placed in the sepulchral chamber.

Holding this belief, it was only natural that the sculptors often made statues life-size, and as closely resembling the dead original as possible, in order that the soul might find a shelter exactly similar to its original living one. Had they not been so made, the soul would have been troubled in its search. Work such as this was of course expensive and the mass of the people had to content themselves with smaller and less elaborate figures or with mere glazed figurines. But the more rare elaborate works show the ideal and serve as a sure guide in studying the conceptions and hopes of this or any people—just as the gold treasure from Mycenæ is of much greater value than all the terra-cotta vases in showing the life and thoughts of the time.

Other portraits of Pharaohs and their queens, of priests and generals, were carved on temple walls or set up to commemorate striking events, and these also were made realistic because of the egotistic idea that called them into being. Unless the person portrayed was carved realistically the commemorative value of the monument was lessened. These religious and commemorative ideas influenced the sculptors in their choice of material. Both the desire to make an enduring image of the dead for the sake of the soul that might return and the wish to make the memory of the person as enduring as possible led the sculptors to make use of the hardest stones; stones such as do not lend themselves to sculpture and such as are never used where the art develops in accordance with cultivated taste rather than special demand.[20] But though exactness of likeness was tirelessly sought for by the Egyptians (I refer of course to the earlier epochs before the influx of Greek or Roman ideas), it was not attained with the same success as in later days by the Romans and Florentines.

[Illustration: PLATE XLII.]

This failure was in part due to the use of unyielding material, such as granite and basalt. Successful representation, in such stone, of the finer details of facial form, was practically impossible, and furthermore, owing to the dark and variegated colour of these stones, would have been scarcely noticeable could it have been attained. Hence the sculptors were led to practise a certain broadness of treatment that makes their work seem, to careless observation, like the Greek; but though one of the chief charms of Greek work is broadness, it is the outcome of very different causes and, if carefully studied, is seen to produce a very different effect from that of Egyptian work.[21]

Any phenomenon is due to mixed causes, and it must not be supposed that the use of hard materials alone led to breadth of treatment. The conventional position of the figures in Egyptian art (due in large measure to various non-æsthetic causes) was suited better by a broad and conventionalised treatment of the face than by more particular niceness in the rendering of its detail.[22] Religious feeling led to the placing of quietly posed statues in the tombs, and as regards the figures of the great rulers whose word was law, attitudes expressive of the calm that results from absolute power were best fitted to express the current beliefs. These attitudes were also restrained in consequence of the refractory nature of the stones used.

It is interesting to consider what would have been the development of sculpture in Egypt had the art been freed from the necessity of conforming to the demands of religion and contemporary history. One searches in vain among the masses of Egyptian sculpture for the expression of the individual sculptor’s emotions. We do not even know the names of the sculptors. They were not noted by their contemporaries nor did interest in their work lead them to sign it. Sculpture in that antique land was not a fine art in the sense of being chosen by men of special tastes and feeling to express the enjoyment felt by them in certain forms. It was a highly developed handicraft, a technique pursued by rule. As illustrative of the character, the life and the thought of the people portrayed it is allied to Roman work rather than to Greek.

Religion is seen to influence portraiture in another way. Many pictures, the subjects of which are religious, by Botticelli, Ghirlandaio and others, are filled with portraits, but these are essential to the composition, and are thought of as figures first, as portraits afterwards. But there are many sacred pictures of the Renaissance in which, with varying degrees of simplicity and frankness, a portrait of the donor of the painting is inserted not as an essential part of the composition but because of the desire of the donor to secure lasting recognition of the fact that he had fulfilled his religious vows and duties. It was an accepted proof of respectability in this world and might possibly help in the next. Neither in Egypt nor in this class of pictures of the Renaissance are the works thought of primarily from the point of view of being artistic reproductions of the human face, but they are means to an end. They are in fact symbols. Work of this sort is so rare in Greek or Roman art that it may be considered as practically non-existent.[23]

The personal portrait, the portrait made for the sake of gratifying the self-esteem of the person represented, is well exhibited in Egyptian work in the bas-reliefs illustrating the conquests of the Pharaohs and in the colossal statues erected in a spirit of pride and self-glorification such as was exhibited again by the Romans. Such portraits as these are a certain indication of the all but universal desire for glory and fame. They are an expression of the same confident spirit that leads the owners of great buildings to carve their names over the entrance and are produced in large numbers only during periods when individuals seek eagerly for personal recognition.

Such periods occur when large stores of money are possessed by private persons; then religious beliefs grow faint, in men’s if not in women’s[24] minds, and the quiet and enduring appreciation of a few objects gives way to the excited pursuit of constant novelty in enjoyment. Consequently instead of being content with philosophic moderation men attribute an untrue value to mere possession, and, since money can buy many material things, come to the false conclusion that he who has the most is to be ranked among the world’s greatest sons.

But the qualities needful for amassing riches are by no means rare and in the main are correlated with lack of interest in the Past and with undeveloped imagination. Hence ignorant of, or at least not sympathetic with, the more subtle but more effective types of men who work not with money but with personal character, the wealthy naturally come to think of themselves as individually interesting and important, and in consequence their portraits are made in every shape and size. Such works cannot, as regards the person portrayed, be of much interest, and are usually ugly, because the lives and occupations of people invariably affect the forms and expressions of their faces. The exceptions to this rule are the portraits of such men as Lorenzo dei Medici, or others of our own day who use their inherited or acquired wealth in the patronage of the arts and sciences—who use their powers indirectly for the cultivation of ideals.

Such portraits as these are of varying character. They may be public, put up, that is, by a grateful and flattering people to commemorate a ruler or chief citizen, as in the case of Gattamalata in Padua and Colleone in Venice; or they may be of purely private interest and intended only for the eyes of the successive generations of the family to which the person depicted belongs. But public or private, in the one case as in the other, the desire for them being due to personal regard and love of fame, an accuracy in the reproduction of feature is sought that distinguishes them clearly from portraits made with other less worldly motives.

[Illustration: PLATE XLIII.]

It is known of course that this desire for fame stirred the hearts of oriental potentates long centuries before the beginning of connected history. But in that classic part of the ancient world with which we are intimately related, it does not become specially noticeable till the time of Alexander. It was an active factor in life during the existence of the Roman world, and again in the Renaissance. One of the phenomena most indicative of this aspiration is the character of the monuments placed on graves, and particularly the inscriptions on such stones. On the Greek grave stones we find often enough the name of the deceased but rarely if ever any intimate notice of his life. On Roman and Renaissance monuments, on the other hand, the length of life, and the honorific offices held, are all given with wearisomely full detail.

Portraits made for friendship’s sake are uncommon and do not, I believe, occur before the time of the Renaissance. Then one hears of friends sending their portraits to one another. In Rome a somewhat similar custom was practised to a certain extent, as is shown by the portraits on rings and cameos. Such work, meant as it was for personal adornment, must have been, at least in part, inspired by the tender regard of friend for friend. But it seems not to have been a common custom in the ancient world; just why it would be hard to tell, for no more inviolable friendships have ever been known than those told of in ancient history and drama, nor more tender feeling than is expressed in many of the inscriptions on ancient tombstones. Perhaps it was that the house architecture of those days was but little adapted to the displaying of such objects, and the collection by private individuals of things was but little practised except in Rome, and even there collectors were comparatively few. However this may be, the fact remains that the portraits of the ancient world were in the main religious or commemorative, and the idea of friendship being maintained or strengthened by the possession of the dumb semblance of absent dear ones seems to have grown and spread with the Christian religion.

At first sight it appears as if there were three ways of making portraits—the sculptor’s, the painter’s, and the writer’s. It is not however in any true sense a portrait that a writer sets before us. This is beyond his power to accomplish. He is unable, that is, to give various readers such impression of the look and carriage of the person described that they can inevitably recognise him in the passing crowd. Continuous and sequent events may be described by words, but they cannot show instantaneously isolated images. Masters of style can call up visions to the mind by well-selected epithets, but such visions are typical rather than actual; and they are of scenes of considerable scope, or of actions of dramatic quality, rather than accurate images of facial form and expression such as in the only true sense of the word, can be called portraits.

So far as art in the sense of reproduction is concerned, it is evident that language can be used for description, for suggestions of moods and general conditions, but not for showing in a sharp and quickly defined manner a given scene or object at a given moment. When Shelley speaks of

The obscene ravens, clamorous o’er the dead; The vultures to the conqueror’s banner true Who feed where Desolation first has fed, And whose wings rain contagion,—

[Illustration: PLATE XLIV.]

he calls to mind most vividly conditions consequent on war, but before no two readers of the lines will the same visions rise. To see such horrors as Shelley writes of, presented so that all beholders will regard them in the same way, we must turn to such a work as Turner’s Rizpah.[25]