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**
LECTURES ON ART
BY
Hippolyte
Adolphic
H. TAINE
PROFESSOr of ÆSTHETICS AND OF THE HISTORY OF ART IN THE
ECOLE DES BEAUX-ARts, paris,
TRANSLATED BY
JOHN DURAND

SECOND SERIES
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART IN ITALY
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART IN THE
NETHERLANDS.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART IN GREECE.

NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
OMPANY
1877.
A
COPYRIGHT, 1875, BY
HENRY HOLT.
JOHN F. TROW & SON, PRINters,
205-213 EAST 12th St., New York,
004 772-276
PUBLISHERS' NOTE.
This volume completes a uniform edition of all works
written by M. Taine which are translated into English.
A list of them is given on the page facing the title.
The present volume also completes, by the publication
of the treatise, hitherto untranslated, upon the Philo-
sophy of Art in Italy, all that M. Taine has written
directly upon the subject of art. These works-origi-
nally lectures-include, beside those in this volume,
treatises on the general principles of the Philosophy of
Art and the Ideal in Art, and appear in this edition as
the first series of "Lectures on Art."
Uniform with this edition, the publishers expect to
issue, early in 1876, the first work of a series which M.
Taine is now writing on the influences which have
developed the present state of French society and
politics, and which he includes under the general title
of "Les Origines de la France Contemporaine." The
first work is upon the Ancien Régime. It will be
followed by one upon the Revolution, and others bring-
ing the discussion up to the present time.
NOVEMBER, 1875.
PHILOSOPHY OF ART
IN
ITALY
A MONSIEUR Édouarl bertin
H. TAINE
SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS.
Object of this study-General law governing the produc
tion of the work of Art-Its application to the Italian Art in
the Renaissance
9
I.
1. Extent and limits of the Classic Epoch-Character of
the preceding age-Character of the following age-Apparent
exceptions-How these are accounted for
·
10
2. Characteristics of Classic Painting-In what respect it
differs from Flemish Painting-In what respect it differs
from Primitive Painting-In what respect it differs from Con-
temporary Painting-The ideal human form its special object 13
II.
1. Circumstances under which it is produced-Race-
Special characteristics of the Italian Imagination-Difference
between the Latin and Germanic Imagination—Difference
between the Italian and French Imagination
2. Agreement of this native aptitude with its historic sur-
roundings-Proofs-The great artists of the Renaissance are
not isolated-The state of Art corresponds with a certain
intellectual condition
19
22
viii
SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS.
III.
1. Conditions essential for the appearance of High Art-
The cultivation of the mind
2. Precocity of modern culture in Italy - Intellectual
vivacity of the Race-Italy less Germanic than the rest of
Europe
25
26
3. Comparison of Italy in the XVth Century with En-
gland, Germany and France-Appreciation of intellectual
ability and enjoyments-The Humanists-Their discoveries
-Their writings-Their repute-The new Italian Pocts-
Their excellence-The great number of them-Their success 29
4. Il Cortegiano by Balthazar de Castiglione-The charac-
ters - The Palace - The Drawing-Room - Diversions —
Entertainments-Style-Portraiture of the perfect gentleman
and lady
37
IV.
1. Another condition essential for the appearance of High
Art-Spontaneous images
· 51
2. Comparison of Italy in the XVth Century with modern
people-Germany-Taste for abstract philosophy-Influence
of speculative habits on German Art - England - The
dominion of business-Influence of practical life on English
Art-France-Literary painting opposed to picturesque
painting-In what respect the intellect of the XIXth Century
differs from that of the XVth Century-The labor, competi-
tion and excitement of centralized and industrial democracies 52
3. Italy in the XVth Century-Moderate size of cities-
Slight need of comforts-Fewer outlets for ambition-Equi-
librium between images and ideas
59
4. The equilibrium between images and ideas disturbed by
civilization - Modern imagination inadequate or morbid-
Italian imagination in the XVth Century is rich and healthy 60
་
SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS.
ix
5. Proofs derived from costume and manners-Masquer-
ades, civic receptions, cavalcades and splendors-Triumphant
processions in Florence
6. Gratification of the eye and sensuous delights generally
-Epicureanism and Incredulity-Judgments of Luther and
Savonarola-Domestic life and manners of the Medicis -
Paganism of the Roman Court-The festivals and hunts of
Leo X.-Average state of minds between too little and too
much culture
64
66
V.
1. Third condition for painting-Circumstances which led
Art to the representation of the human form
2. Characters in Italy in the Renaissance Epoch-The
manners and costumes which fashioned them - Lack of
justice and a police-Recurrence to force and self-defense—
Assassinations and affrays-Oliveretto da Formo and Cæsar
Borgia- Theory of murder and treachery Machiavelli's
"Prince"-Effects of these costumes on characters-De-
velopment of energy and familiarity with tragic passions
3. Benvenuto Cellini-Force of temperament-Richness
of faculties-Joyous and vigorous expansiveness-Vivacity
of imagination-Violence and impetuosity in action .
4. How these habits and these characters prepare men for
comprehending the representation of the human form-
Personal and habitual knowledge of human forms-Aptness
for comprehending simple, energetic forms- Sensitiveness
to beauty-The life and tastes of a modern individual com-
pared with those of a Renaissance Italian
VI.
81
82
105
·
122
1. Summary of the circumstances stated-Spontaneous
and universal outgrowth of the arts of design-They are
simply an offshoot of general decorative taste - Living
pictures in the streets-"Triumph of the Golden Age"-
Carnival choruses-"The Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne" 31
X
SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS.
2. General conditions essential for the production of all
great works-Personal originality-Sympathetic association
-Examples-The Puritan Colonists of the United States-
The French armies during the Revolution
-
3. The Studio in Italy during the Renaissance-The artist
as apprentice and companion-Brotherhoods of the masters
-Suppers of "The Caldron" - Masquerades of "The
Trowel"—The municipal spirit-Festival in Florence on the
reception of Leo X.-Rivalries and festivities of quarters
and corporations
4. Verification of the law designated - Corresponding
variations of Art and surrounding influences-The mystic
school-The naturalistic school and the creation of the ideal
form-The Venetian school-The school of the Caracci-
Ancient Greece-Importation of Art into foreign countries-
冷
​The connection indicated is not accidental but necessary
•
139
142
· 151
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART IN ITALY.
GENTLEMEN :
Last year, at the beginning of this course of
lectures, I set before you the general law according
to which works of art are at all times produced,
that is to say, the exact and necessary correspond-
ence which is always seen between a work and the
medium out of which it is evolved. This year, in
pursuing the history of painting in Italy I find a
striking instance which allows me to apply and
verify the law in question.
I
We have now to consider the glorious epoch
which men are agreed to look upon as the most
beautiful of Italian creation, and which comprises,
along with the last quarter of the fifteenth century,
the first thirty or forty years of the sixteenth.
Within this narrow limit the most accomplished
artists flourished,-Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Mi-
chael Angelo, Andrea del Sarto, Fra Bartolomeo,
Giorgione, Titian, Sebastian del Piombo, and Cor-
reggio; and this limit is clearly defined; and if you
look backward or forward of it, you find it pre-
ceded by an incomplete art, and succeeded by a
degenerate art; hitherto by those groping, and who
are as yet dry, stiff and colorless,-Paolo Uccello,
Antonio Pollaiolo, Fra Filippo Lippi, Ghirlandaijo,
Verocchio, Mantegna, Perugino, Giovanni Bellini;
subsequently, by exaggerating disciples or defective
ART IN ITALY.
11
restorers,-Giulio Romano, Il Rosso, Primaticcio,
Parmegiano, Palma the younger, the Caracci, and
their school. Up to this time art is a growth, and
after, it declines, its bloom being between both
periods and lasting for about fifty years. If, during
the early period, we encounter an all but finished
artist, Masaccio, it is due to meditation rather than
to an impulse of genius, a solitary originator who
instinctively sees beyond his age, an unrecognized
precursor who is without followers, whose sepulchre,
even, bears no inscription, who lived poor and alone
and whose precocious greatness is to be compre-
hended only half a century later. If, in the follow-
ing epoch, we find a flourishing and healthy school,
it is at Venice, in a favored city overtaken by de-
cline later than the others, and which yet for a long
time remains free, tolerant and eminent after con-
quest, oppression and final corruption have, in the
rest of Italy, degraded the soul and distorted the
intellect. You may compare this epoch of creative-
ness, perfect and beautiful, to the zone in which the
vine is cultivated on the slope of a mountain; be-
low, the grape is not yet good, above, it is no longe
१
812
12
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
good; on the low ground the atmosphere is too
dense, while on the upper it is too cold; such is the
cause and such the law; if there are exceptions they
are trifling and are easily explained. Perhaps, on
the low ground, we may encounter a solitary stem
which, owing to its excellent sap, will produce a
few rich grapes in spite of its surroundings. But
it will stand alone, will not be reproductive, and
will be regarded as among the irregularities which
the mass and confusion of active forces always in-
terpose in the regular operation of nature's laws.
Perhaps, on the upper ground, we may find in some
out of the way place a few perfect vines; but it
will be on some spot in which peculiar circum-
stances, the character of the soil, the protection of
a wall, the possession of a spring, will furnish nour-
ishment and protection to the plant which it cannot
obtain elsewhere. The law, accordingly, remains
intact, and the conclusion is that there is a kind of
soil and of temperature with which the success of
the plant is connected. In like manner the law
which governs the production of a complete school
of painting remains unchanged, thus enabling us to
T
ART IN ITALY.
13
discover the condition of mind and of manners on
which the school depends.
First of all, we must have a clear idea of it. For,
in calling it perfect or classic, according to the
usual term, we do not note its characteristics, we
only give it its rank. But if it has its rank it has
also its characteristics, which means its proper do-
main from which it does not vary.
It disdains or neglects landscape; the painters
of the great world of inanimate objects are to be
found in Flanders; the Italian painter selects man
for his subject; trees, the ground and structures
are, to him, simply accessories; Michael Angelo,
the undisputed monarch of the entire school, de-
clares, according to Vasari, that these must be
abandoned to the pleasure and profit of minor tal-
ents, and that the true object of art is the human
figure. If landscape is taken up at a subsequent
period it is under the later Venetians, and especially
under the Caracci, when high art declines; and
then they simply use it as decoration, a sort of
architectural villa, an Armida's garden, a theatre
for pastorals and pageantry, a noble and ingenious
2
14
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
accompaniment of mythological galanteries and
seignorial pleasure-parties; there symbolic trees be-
long to no distinct species, the mountains being ar-
ranged to please the eye, while temples, ruins and
palaces are grouped together in ideal lines; nature
loses her native independence and her peculiar in-
stincts in order to be subordinated to man, to adorn
his festivities and expand his apartments.
On the other hand, they still leave to the Flemings
the copying of actual life, the contemporary in his
ordinary dress, in the midst of his daily duties,
amongst veritable pieces of furniture, taking his
walks, at market, at the table, at the town hall, in
the tavern, just as the eye sees him, a gentleman,
bourgeois, peasant, with the innumerable and strik-
ing particulars which belong to his character, pro-
fession and condition. They discard these details
as vulgar; according as art becomes perfect they.
more and more avoid literal exactness and positive
resemblance; it is just as this great epoch opens
that they cease introducing portraits into their
compositions; Filippo Lippi, Pollaiolo, Andrea dal
Castagno, Verocchio, Giovanni Bellini, Ghirlandaijo,
ART IN ITALY.
15
:
Masaccio himself, all anterior painters, filled their
frescoes with contemporary figures; the great step --
which separates perfected art from rude art is this
creation of faultless forms which the eye of the
soul discovers and which the physical eye cannot
encounter.
Thus bounded, the field of classic painting must
be still further limited. In the ideal which it takes
for a centre, if there is any distinction between
the body and the soul, it is easy to see that the first
place is not awarded to the soul. This art is neither
mystic, nor dramatic, nor spiritual. Its aim is not
to present to the eye the incorporeal and sublime
world, the innocent and ecstatic spirits, the theolog-
ical or ecclesiastical dogmas, which, from Giotto and
Simone Memmi down to Fra Angelico, constituted
the subject matter of the excellent but incomplete
art of the preceding age; it abandons the Christian
and monastic period to enter on the laic and pagan
period. Its aim is not to fix some violent or pain-
ful circumstance on a canvas, calculated to excite
pity or terror, as with Delacroix in "The Murder
of the Bishop of Liége," or as with Décamps in “La
16
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
Morte," or in the "Bataille des Cimbres," or as with
Ary Scheffer in "Le Larmoyeur." Its aim is not
to express profound, extreme, complicated senti-
ments, as with Delacroix in his "Hamlet," or in
his "Tasso." These diversified or powerful effects
are not sought for until the subsequent period,
when the decadence becomes visible in the se-
ductive, dreamy Magdalens, in the delicate, pen-
sive Madonnas, and in the tragic and vehement
martyrs of the Bolognese school. The pathetic art
which serves to arrest and disturb a morbid and ex-
cited sensibility is opposed to its nature. It is not
preoccupied with the moral order of things at the
expense of the physical; it does not portray man
as a superior being betrayed by his organs; one
painter alone, the precocious originator of all mod-
ern wonders and ideas, Leonardo da Vinci, a subtle
and universal genius, an isolated and insatiate in-
vestigator, pushes his divinations beyond his own
age until he sometimes reaches our own But with
other artists, and frequently with himself, form is
an end and not a means; it is not subordinated
to physiognomy, to expression, to gesture, to the
ART IN ITALY.
17
situation, to action; their work is picturesque, and
not literary or poetic. "The main thing in the art
of design," says Cellini, "is to cleverly fashion a
naked man or woman." The point of departure
with almost all of them is, in reality, goldsmith's
work and sculpture; their hands have manipulated
the relief of the muscles, traced the curvature of
outlines, and felt the articulation of the bones;
that which they desire to present to the eye is, first,
the natural human body, that is to say, healthy,
active and energetic, endowed with all animal and
athletic aptitudes; and, besides this, the ideal hu-
man body, akin to the Greek type, so well propor-
tioned and balanced in all its parts, selected and
posed in such a happy attitude, draped and sur-
rounded by other bodies so well grouped, that the
whole forms a harmony, and the entire work con-
veys the idea of a corporeal world like that of an-
cient Olympus, that is to say, heroic or divine, in
any case, superior and complete. Such is the pecu-
liar genius of these artists. Others have better ex-
pressed, at one time, rural life, at another, the truth
of real life, at another, the throes and depths of the
18
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
soul, at another, a moral lesson, a historical discov
ery, a philosophic conception. We find in Fra An-
gelico, in Albert Durer, in Rembrandt, in Metzu, in
Paul Potter, in Hogarth, in Delacroix, and in Dé-
camps, either more edification, more pedagogism,
more psychology, more interior and domestic peace,
hore intense reverie, more transcendental meta
physics, or internal emotions. They have created
for themselves a peculiar race, that of the aristo-
cratic and noble bodies which live nobly, and which
announce a prouder, stronger, serener, more active
humanity, in short, completer than our own. It is
of this race, joined to its elder born, the child
of the Greek sculptors, that, in other countries,
France, Spain and Italy, ideal figures have been
born by which man teaches nature how she might
have made him and how she has not accomplished it.
E
II.
Such is the work; it is for us, according to our
method, to recognize its conditions.
Let us first consider the race of men who accom-
plished it; if, in the art of design they have taken
this course, it is by virtue of national and enduring✓
instincts. The imagination of the Italian is classic,
that is to say, Latin, analogous to that of the an-
cient Greeks and Romans. Evidence of this is
found not alone in its renaissance work, its sculpt-
ure, edifices and paintings, but also in its mediæval
architecture and in its modern music. In the mid-
dle ages the Gothic architecture which spread
itself over Europe penetrated into Italy but slowly,
through incomplete imitations; if we encounter there
two churches completely Gothic, one at Milan and
the other at the convent of Assisi, they are the work
of foreign architects; even under the German in-
vaders, at the extreme point of Christian enthu-
20
THE IIIILOSOPHY OF
siasm, the Italians built in the ancient style; on
reviving it they preserved the taste for substantial
forms, full walls, moderate ornamentation and
pure, natural light, and their edifices, through
their aspect of strength, cheerfulness, serenity and
unaffected elegance form a contrast with the
grandiose complexity, the bristling fretwork, the
gloomy sublimity, the sombre or transfigured day-
light of northern cathedrals. In like manner, and
in our days, their vocal music, distinctly rhythmic,
pleasing even in the rendering of tragic sentiments,
opposes its symmetries, its fullness, its cadences, its
theatrical genius, eloquent, brilliant, limpid and lim-
ited, to German instrumental music, so imposing, so
untrammeled, at times so vague, so well adapted to
express the most delicate reveries, the most secret
emotions, and I know not what of that grave soul
which, in its solitary divinations and tremors, takes
in the infinite and the great beyond. If we should
consider the way in which the Italians, and, in gen-
eral, the Latin races, comprehend love, morality,
and religion; if we should study their literature,
their manners, and their way of contemplating life,
ART IN ITALY.
21
we would see a similar kind of imagination declare
itself through a multitude of profound traits. Its
distinguishing trait is the talent and taste for ar-
rangement, and therefore regularity and a harmo-
nious, correct form; it is less flexible and pene-
trating than the German imagination; it is less
attached to the inward than to the outward; it pre-
fers exterior adornment to conscious truth; it is
more idolatrous and less religious; more pictur-
esque and less philosophic; it is less broad and
more beautiful. It comprehends man better than
nature; it better comprehends man in society
than the barbarian. It has difficulty in accommo-
dating itself, as the other does, to imitating and
representing savagery, rusticity, the fantastic, the
accidental, disorder, the eruption of spontaneous
forces, the countless and incommunicable character-
istics of the individual, creatures of the lower
grade or without forms, the still and undefined life
distributed to every order of being; it is not a uni-
versal mirror; its sympathies are circumscribed.
But in its kingdom, which is that of form, it is sov-
ereign; the spirit of other races, compared to it, is
22
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
coarse and brutal; it alone has discovered and man
ifested the natural order of ideas and of images.
Of the two great races in which this is the most
completely expressed, one, the French, more north-
ern, more prosaic and more social, has had for its
province the systematizing of pure ideas, that is to
say, the method of reasoning and the art of conver-
sation; the other, the Italian, more southern, more
artistic and more given to imagery, has had for its
province the ordination of sensible forms, that is to
say, music and the arts of design. It is this native.
talent, visible from the beginning, permanent
throughout its 'history, stamped on all sides of its
thought and action, which, meeting with favorable
circumstances at the end of the fifteenth century,
produced a harvest of masterpieces. In fine, Italy
then had, altogether or nearly at the same time, not
only five or six great painters of extraordinary
genius, superior to all we have since seen, Leo-
nardo da Vinci, Michael Angelo, Raphael, Gior-
gione, Titian, Veronese, and Correggio, but also a
brotherhood of eminent and accomplished painters,
Andrea del Sarto, Fra Bartolomeo, Pontormo, Al-
ART IN ITALY.
23
bertinelli, il Rosso, Giulio Romano, Caravaggio,
Primaticcio, Sebastian del Piombo, Palma Vecchio,
Bonifazio, Paris Bordone, Tintoretto, Luini, and a
hundred others less known, brought up with the
same taste, possessors of the like style, and who
constitute an army of which these are only the
captains; and besides these there is an almost equal
number of superior sculptors and architects, some a
little earlier, but for the most part contemporary,
Ghiberti, Donatello, Jacopa della Quercia, Baccio
Bandinelli, Bambaja, Lucca della Robbià, Cellini,
Brunelleschi, Bramante, San Gallo, Palladio, San-
sovino; and finally, around these families of artists,
so diversified and so fruitful, a crowd of connois-
seurs, patrons and buyers, a vast public forming an
escort, not alone of gentlemen and cultivated
people, but of townsmen, artisans, simple monks,
and the commonalty; so that fine taste, at this
epoch, was natural, spontaneous, universal, the en-
tire community, in its sympathy and intelligence,
contributing to the works which the masters signed
with their names. We cannot, accordingly, con-
sider the art of the Renaissance as the result of a
24
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
happy accident; we have not here a cast of dice
bringing on the stage of the world a few better-
endowed intellects, an extraordinary batch of pict-
uresque geniuses; we cannot deny that the cause of
this great efflorescence is the general disposition of
minds, a wonderful aptitude diffused throughout all
the channels of the nation. This aptitude was mo-
mentary, and the art was momentary. It began
and ended at fixed epochs; the art began and ended.
at the same fixed epochs. It developed itself in a
certain sense; art developed herself in the same
sense. It is like the body of which that is the
shadow; she follows its birth, its growth, its de-
cline, and its direction. It brings her on and leads
her off, and makes her vary as she varies; she de-
pends on it in all her parts and throughout her
pathway. It is her essential and proper condition;
and consequently it must be studied in detail in
. order that she may be understood and explained.
{
III.
THREE conditions of things are necessary to ena-
ble man to appreciate and produce high art. He
must, in the first place, be cultivated. Poor, brutal-
ized rustics daily pressed to the earth, predatory
chieftains, gluttons and wine bibbers occupied
throughout the year with marching and fighting,
are still too deeply sunk in animal life to compre-
hend the refinement of forms and the harmony of
colors. A picture in a palace or in a church is an or-
nament, and to look at it with pleasure or intelli-
gence the spectator must be partially free from
grosser preoccupations; he must not be wholly ab-
sorbed with strifes and revelries; he must have ad-
vanced out of the primitive state of barbarism and
oppression; apart from the exercise of his muscles,
the gratification of bellicose instincts, and the satis-
faction of his physical wants, he must crave noble
3
26
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
and refined pleasures. Once brutal, he is now
thoughtful; once a consumer and destroyer, he now
embellishes and enjoys; once merely existing, he
now adorns his life. Such is the vast transformation
which took place in Italy in the fifteenth century.
Man, at this epoch, passes from feudal manners to
the spirit of modern times, and this great change
is effected in Italy sooner than anywhere else.
There are many causes for this change. The first
one is the extreme acuteness and readiness of mind
which characterizes the people of this country.
Civilization seems to them innate; they, at least, at-
tain to it almost without effort and almost without
assistance. Even among peasants and the unculti-
vated, the intelligence is quick and free. Compare
them with people of the same condition in the north
of France, in Germany, and in England; the differ-
ence will become a contrast. In Italy a hotel boy,
a peasant, a porter whom you meet in the street,
knows how to talk, comprehend and reason; they
advance opinions, they know mankind, they discuss
politics; they manipulate ideas as they do language,
by instinct, sometimes brilliantly, always with facil-
ART IN ITALY.
27
ity and almost always correctly; and above all they
possess the natural and impassioned sentiment for
the beautiful. Only in this country do we hear the
populace exclaim before a picture or a church, “Oh
God, how beautiful it is!" (O Dio com' è bello!)
and the Italian language has for the expression of
this transport of the heart and senses, an accent,
a sonorousness, an emphasis perfectly admirable,
whereof the saplessness of the same French words
is powerless to render the effect.
This race, so intelligent, has had the advantage of
not being Teutonized, that is to say, crushed and
transformed to the same degree, as other European
countries, by the invasion of the northern peoples.
The Barbarians established themselves on the soil
temporarily or imperfectly. The Visigoths, the
Franks, the Heruli, the Ostrogoths, all abandoned it
or were soon driven away. If the Lombards re-
mained there, they soon profited by the Latin cult-
ure; in the twelfth century, the Germans, under
Frederic Barbarossa, expecting to find them men of
their own race were surprised to see them so Latin-
ized, "having discarded the fierceness of barbaric
28
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
ferocity and taken from the influences of the air
and soil something of Roman finesse and gentleness;
having preserved the elegance of the language and
the urbanity of primitive manners, even imitating
the skill of the ancient Romans in the constitution
of their cities and in the government of their public.
affairs." Latin is spoken in Italy up to the thir-
teenth century; Saint Anthony of Padua preaches in
Latin; the people, who jabber the growing Italian,
always comprehend the literary language. The
Germanic crust, extending over the nation, is thin
or is early found pierced by the revival of the Latin
civilization. Italy knows of the troubadour's songs
(chansons de geste), the chivalric and feudal poems
which overspread Europe, only in translations. I
but just now stated to you that Gothic architecture
found its way slowly into Italy and in an imperfect
manner; from the eleventh century, when the Ital-
ians again began to build, it was with the forms or,
at least, in the spirit of Latin architecture. We see
there in institutions, in manners, in language and in
art, in the darkest and bitterest night of the mid-
dle ages, antique civilization extricating itself, or
ART IN ITALY.
29
reviving, on the soil over which the Barbarians had
swept and melted away like the winter snow.
Hence it is that if you compare Italy in the fif-
teenth century with other European nations you
will find her more learned, wealthier, more polished
and better qualified to embellish her life, that is to
say, to appreciate and produce works of art.
At this moment England, issuing from the hun-
dred years' war, entered into that horrible contest
of the Two Roses in which people cut cach other's
throats in cool blood, and in which, when the battle
ended, unarmed children were destroyed. Up to
1550 it is simply a country of boors, huntsmen,
soldiers and cultivators. Only two or three chim-
neys could be counted in a town in the interior of
the kingdom; gentlemen's country mansions con-
sisted of tenements covered with thatch, plastered
with the coarsest clay and only lighted through
lattices. The middle classes slept on pallets of
straw, "with a good round log for a bolster."
"Pillows seem to have been made only for women
in confinement," while dishes consisted not of pewter
but of wood.
1
30
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
In Germany we see the atrocious and merciless
Hussite war breaking out; the Emperor is without
authority; the nobles are ignorant and insolent;
even under Maximilian the right of the fist prevails,
that is to say, the appeal to force and the custom of
doing one's self justice. We see in Luther's Table
Talk, also in the Memoirs of Hans von Schwei-
nichen, to what extent gentlemen and the learned
then carried drunkenness and brutality.
As to France she is going through the most dis-
astrous period of her history. The country is con-
quered, devastated by the English. Under Charles
VII. wolves enter the faubourgs of Paris. When
the English are driven out the écorcheurs, military
adventurers, live on the peasant, ransom him and
pillage him as they please; one of these lordly
brigands and assassins, Gilles de Retz, has given
birth to the legend of Bluebeard. Up to the end of
the century the élite of the nation, the nobles, re-
main rustic and uncultivated. The Venetian am-
bassadors report that all French noblemen have
twisted and bowed legs because they pass their lives
on horseback. Rabelais will show you in the middle
ART IN ITALY.
31
of the sixteenth century the gross obscenities and
persistent brutality of Gothic manners and customs.
Count Baldassare Castiglione wrote thus about 1525:
"The French know no other merit than that of arms
and take no account of other things, so that not only
do they not esteem learning, but again they abhor
learned men and regard them as the vilest of creat-
ures; and they seem to think that there is no
greater insult for a man, whoever he may be, than
to call him clerk.”
In sum, throughout Europe, the régime is still
feudal, and men, like powerful savage brutes, think
of but little besides eating, drinking and physical
activity. Italy, on the contrary, is almost a modern
country. With the supremacy of the Medicis peace
is established in Florence; citizens rule and rule
tranquilly; like their chiefs, the Medicis, they manu-
facture, trade, are bankers and make money to spend
it like people of intelligence. The cares of war
have not the same bitter and tragic hold on them
as formerly. They wage war with the paid hands
of the condottieri who are shrewd tradesmen and
reduce it to "cavalcades;" if they kill each other it
32
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
is by mistake; battles are cited in which three
soldiers and sometimes only one rest on the field.
Diplomacy is a substitute for force. "Italian sov-
ereigns believe,” says Machiavelli, "that the quality
of a prince consists in knowing how to appreciate a
pointed repartee in a document, the composition of
a fine letter, how to display vivacity and finesse in
language, weave a network of fraud, bedeck them-
selves with gold and precious stones, sleep and eat
more magnificently than others and organize around
themselves every description of voluptuousness."
They become connoisseurs, men of letters and lovers
of learned conversation. For the first time since
the fall of ancient civilization we find a society
which gives the first place to intellectual pleasures.
The men of mark of this age are the humanists,
enthusiastic restorers of Greek and Roman belles-
lettres, Poggio, Filelfo, Marcile Ficin, Pic de la
Mirandole, Calchondyle, Ermolao Barbaro, Laurent
Valla and Politicien. They rummage all the libra-
ries of Europe to discover and publish manuscripts;
not only do they decipher and study them, but they
derive inspiration from them; they become antique
ART IN ITALY.
33
in mind and feeling; they write Latin with almost
the same purity as the contemporaries of Cicero and
Virgil. Style suddenly becomes exquisite and the
intellect as suddenly mature. When we turn from
the tedious hexameters and heavy, pretentious
cpistles of Petrarch to the elegant distich of Politi-
oien or to the eloquent prose of Valla, we are con-
scious of a pleasure almost physical. The fingers
and the ear involuntarily scan the easy march of
poetic dactyls and the ample unfolding of oratorical
periods. Language has become noble while it has
also become clear, and erudition, passing from
cloister to palace, ceases to be a medium of quib-
bling in order to be changed into an instrument of
pleasure.
These savants, in fine, do not form a small and
unknown class, shut up in libraries and remote from
public consideration. Far from that. The title of
humanist is sufficient at this epoch to draw to a
man the attention and favors of princes. Duke
Ludovic Sforza of Milan invites Merula and Deme-
trius Calchondyle to his university and appoints the
learned Cecco Simoneta his minister. Leonardo
34
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
Aretino, Poggio and Machiavelli are, in turn, secre-
taries of the Florentine Republic. Antonio Becca-
delli is secretary for the King of Naples. A pope,
Nicholas V., is the great patron of Italian letters.
One of these sends an ancient manuscript to the
King of Naples, and the king returns thanks for the
gift as a great favor. Cosmo de Medici establishes
an academy of philosophy and Lorenzo revives the
Platonic banquets. Landino, his friend, composes
dialogues in which the characters, withdrawing to
the Camaldoli convent, discuss for several days
the question as to which of two lives is the better,
that of action or that of meditation. Pietro, son of
Lorenzo, institutes a discussion on true friendship
in Santa Maria del Fiore and awards a silver crown
as a prize to the victor. We see the princes of
commerce and of the state gather around them
philosophers, artists, and savants, here Pic de la Mi-
randola, Marsile Ficin, and Politicien, and there
Leonardo da Vinci, Merula, and Pomponius Lotus,
to converse with them in an apartment decked with
fine busts, over the recovered manuscripts of an-
cient wisdom, in choice and elegant language, with-
ART IN ITALY.
35
out ceremony or thought of rank, with that enga-
ging and generous curiosity which, enlarging the
field of science and making it attractive, transforms
the arena of scholastic dissensions into a festival
of thinkers.`
It is not surprising if the vulgar tongue, almost
abandoned since Petrarch, furnishes in its turn a
new literature. Lorenzo de Medici, the leading
banker and first magistrate of the city, is the first
of the new Italian poets; alongside of him Pulci,
Boiardo, Berni and, a little later, Bembo, Machia-
velli and Ariosto, are the standard models of pure
style, of serious and fanciful poetry, of biting satire
and profound reflection. Below them a crowd of
story-tellers, jesters and debauchees, Molza, Bibiena,
Aretino, Franco and Bandello gain the favor of
princes and public applause through their ribald-
ry, invention and wit. The sonnet is an instrument
of praise or of satire which passes through all hands.
It circulates among the artists; Cellini narrates that
when his Perseus was exhibited there were twenty
posted up the first day. No festival and no banquet
was then complete without poetry; one day Pope
36
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
Leo X. gave five hundred ducats to the poet Tebal-
deo for an epigram which had given him pleasure
At Rome, another poet, Bernardo Accolti, was sc
admired that when he read in public people closed
their shops to go and hear him; he read in a large
apartment by torch-light: prelates, surrounded by
the Swiss Guard, attended; they called him the
unique. His too clever verses flashed with refined
conceits (concetti); and those literary charms, simi-
lar to the embellishments which Italian singers
give to their most tragic airs, were so well compre-
hended as to excite applause on all sides.
Such, then, is an intellectual culture, refined and
general, fresh in Italy, and which appears there
simultaneously with the new art. I would like you
to have a nearer appreciation of it, no longer through
general statements, but by a complete picture of it;
one circumstantial case can alone render clear ideas
of it. There is a book of the time which paints the
portrait of the accomplished seignior, and of the
lady, that is to say, of the two personages which
contemporaries could set up as models; around these
ideal figures real figures move at various distances;
ART IN ITALY.
37
you have a saloon before your eyes, a saloon of the
year 1500, with its guests, its conversations, its deco
rations, its dances, its music, its wit, its discussions,
more decorous, indeed more chivalric and more
spiritual than those of Rome or of Florence, but
nevertheless faithfully depicted and admirable for
presenting in exalted attitudes the purest and no-
blest group of cultivated and superior characters.
To see this it suffices to turn over the pages of "Il
Cortegiano," by Count Baldassare de Castiglione.
Count Castiglione had been in the service of
Guido d' Ubaldo, duke of Urbino, and next in that
of his successor, Francesco Maria della Rovere, and
he wrote this book as a souvenir of the conver-
sations which he had heard while he was with the
first named seignior. As Duke Guido was infirm
and crippled with rheumatism, the little court as-
sembled every evening in his wife's apartments, the
Duchess Elizabeth, a person of great virtue and in-
tellect. All sorts of distinguished men from all
parts of Italy gathered around her and her most
intimate friend, Signora Emilia Pia; Castiglione
himself, Bernardo Accolti d' Arezzo, a famous poet,
4
38
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
Bembo, who afterwards became the pope's secretary
and a cardinal, Seignior Ottaviano Fregoso, Julian
de Medici and many others; Pope Julius II. some-
times stopped there in traveling. The place and
the circumstances of the entertainment were worthy
of such characters. They assembled in a magnifi-
cent palace built by the duke's father, and which,
(6
as many relate," was the finest in Italy. The
apartments were splendidly decorated with silver
vases, hangings of gold and of silk, antique busts
in marble and in bronze, and paintings by Pietro
della Francesca and by Giovanni Santi, the father
of Raphael. It contained a large number of Latin
Greek and Hebrew books, collected throughout
Europe, and which, out of respect for their contents,
were covered with ornaments of gold and silver.
The court was one of the most gallant in Italy.
There was nothing but festivals, dances, tiltings,
tournaments and conversation. "The pleasant con-
verse and the innocent mirth of this mansion," says
Castiglione, "made it the veritable house of joy."
Ordinarily when the guests had supped and danced
they performed a certain species of charade; these
ART IN ITALY.
39
↑
diversions were followed by more intimate conversa-
tions, at once grave and gay, in which the Duchess
took part. There was no ceremony; all seated
themselves as they pleased; each placed himself
alongside of a lady and there was no formality or
constraint in the intercourse; originality and inven-
tion had full play. One evening, at the request of
a lady, Bernardo Accolti improvises a pretty sonnet
in honor of the Duchess; the Duchess then orders
Signora Margarita and Signora Costanza Fregoza
to dance; the two ladies join hands, when the favor-
ite musician, Barletta, having tuned his instrument,
they dance to the sound of the music, at first in a
measured and afterwards with a livelier step.
Towards the end of the fourth day, having forgotten
themselves in the agreeable pastimes of the night,
they notice the appearance of daylight. "They
opened the windows on the side of the palace facing
the lofty summit of Mount Catari; and they saw to
the eastward a beautiful aurora of the color of roses.
The stars had all vanished except Venus, the sweet
messenger, who occupies the frontier between day-
light and darkness; from her there seemed to ema-
40
ȚIIE PHILOSOPHY OF
nate a soft atmosphere which filled the sky with its
bracing freshness and which in the murmuring
forests of the neighboring slopes, began to awaken
the sweet warblings of the gentle birds."
You can already judge by this extract how agree-
able, elegant, and even flowery, the style is;
Bembo, one of the interlocutors, is the most pol-
ished, the most Ciceronian, the most harmonious of
the Italian prose writers. The tone of conversation
is similar. Politeness abounds everywhere, compli
ments to the ladies on their beauty, grace and virtue,
and compliments to the seigniors on their valor, in-
telligence and knowledge. All maintain their self-
respect and strive to please each other, which is the
great law of good-breeding and the most delicate
charm of good society. But politeness does not
exclude gayety. We often find their intercourse
spiced with little piques, the skirmishings of society,
and besides these, with witticisms, drolleries, anec-
dotes, and gay and humorous story-telling. In the
effort which they make to explain true gallantry, a
lady states, as a counter-illustration, how an an-
tiquated scignior, who was a fighting man and
ART IN ITALY.
41
rusted by a country life, on paying her a visit enu-
merated to her the enemies he had slain, and then,
suiting the action to the word, he tried to explain
to her how the sword was used in cutting and
thrusting. She confessed with a smile that she
was uneasy, all the while looking at the door and
doubting every moment whether he was not dis-
posed to slay her. Frequent touches of this de-
scription relieve the dialogue of its seriousness.
But seriousness subsists nevertheless. We see that
the gentlemen are familiar with Greek and Latin
literature, acquainted with history, and versed in
philosophy and even in scholastic philosophy. The
ladies interpose, scolding a little, and warn them
to return to matters of more human interest; they
do not like to see Aristotle and Plato with their
surly commentators too often introduced into the
conversation, together with theories on heat and cold
and on forms and substance. The talkers immedi-
ately come back to the charming current of ordi-
nary topics and obtain pardon for their erudition
and metaphysics by agreeable and gallant discourse.
In other respects, however difficult the subject may
42
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
be, and however animated the discussion, they ai
ways preserve the elegance and perfection of style.
They are scrupulous in the choice of words, they
argue on proprieties of expression, they are purists
like the fine-talkers of the Hotel Rambouillet, con-
temporary with Vaugelas and the founders of our
classic literature. But the turn of their mind is
more poetic as their language is more musical. The
Italian language, through its rich cadences and
sonorous terminations, imparts beauty and harmony
to the commonest things, placing objects which are
already beautiful in themselves in a noble and volup-
tuous framework. Is it necessary to portray the
saddening effects of old age? The style, like the
Italian sky, sheds golden light on ruins and trans-
forms a lugubrious spectacle into a noble picture.
"At that time the sweet flowers of gladness fado
away and fall in our hearts like the leaves of the
trees in autumn. Instead of serene and limpid
thoughts comes sadness, like a dark cloud, accom-
panied with many calamities, so that not alone the
body but the mind becomes weakened, and of all its
past pleasures preserves but a fond recollection,
ART IN ITALY.
43
the image of that happy period, of that tender age
in which, when the mind dwells on it, heaven, earth
and all things seem to us to smile and gladden our
eyes, and there blooms in our soul, as if in a beauti-
ful and luxurious garden, the mellow spring of joy.
Thus it is that when in the chilly season the sun of
our days declines towards its setting and robs us
of our pleasures, it would perhaps be to our profit
to lose the memory of them and to find the art of
oblivion."
The subject of the conversation does not fail to
embellish the conversation itself. Each person, at
the request of the Duchess, undertakes to describe
some of the qualities which form the perfect gentle-
man, also the accomplished lady; they seek the kind
of education which is best adapted to form the soul
and the body, not only for the duties of civil life, but
again for the enjoyment of ordinary life. Consider
all that was then required of a well-educated man,
what finesse, what tact, what a variety of acqui-
sitions! We think that we are highly civilized and
yet, after three hundred years of education and cult-
ure, we might still obtain examples and lessons from
them.
44
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
"I would have our courtier more than ordinarily
instructed in literature, at least in the department
of belles-lettres; and that he should know not only
the Latin tongue, but again the Greek, on account
of the multitude and variety of divine writings in
that tongue.
.. That he should be familiar with
the poets, and, in like manner, with the orators and
historians, and, moreover, exercised in writing in
verse and in prose, and especially in our vulgar
tongue; for, besides the satisfaction which he will
find in it himself, it will never fail him in providing
pleasing speech for the ladies, who commonly enjoy
these things. I should not be satisfied with our
gentleman if he were not, in addition to this, a mu-
sician, and if, besides understanding and being in
the habit of reading his part on the book, he did
not know how to play on divers instruments.
For, besides the diversion, and the soothing of care
which music affords every one, it often serves tc
gratify the ladies, whose tender and delicate hearts
are easily penetrated by harmony and filled with
gentleness." The object is not to be a virtuoso and
make a display of a special capacity. Talents are
ART IN ITALY.
45
only formed for society; they are not to be acquired
through pedantry, but for agreeable ends; they
are not to be exercised for the admiration of
others, but to afford pleasure. Hence the necessity
of not being ignorant of any of the arts of pleasing.
"There is another thing which I esteem of great
importance, and in which our gentlemen must in no
respect be backward, and that is the talent for
drawing and a knowledge of art." It is one of the
adornments of a superior, polished life and, in this
respect, the cultivated mind ought to be devoted to
it as to every other accomplishment. But in this as
in other things there must be no excess. The true
talent, the art to which all the rest are subordinated,
is tact, "judgment, a certain prudence, a judicious
choice, a knowledge of the more or less, of that of
the increase or decrease of things, and so arranged
as to be accomplished at the favorable or unfavor-
able moment. For example, even if our gentleman
knew that the praise bestowed on him was true he
ought not to acknowledge it openly, . . . but
rather to modestly repel it, always showing and
decidedly taking for his principal profession the
46
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
profession of arms, and only adopting the other
pursuits as ornaments. If he dances in the presence
of many persons, and where there is a large assem-
blage, it seems to me that he should maintain a
certain dignity, tempered nevertheless by an easy
and gracious gentleness of movement. If he hap-
pens to be a musician, let it be for a pastime, as if
reluctantly; . . . and although he may perfectly
comprehend what he does, and be therein a master,
I wish him to dissimulate the study and fatigue
which are necessary in all things in order to know
them well; let him have the appearance of not
attaching great importance to that sort of thing,
while at the same time doing it well and in such a
way as to make others highly esteem it." He must
not pride himself on the skill which is suited to
those who belong to the craft. He must respect.
himself and make himself respected by others, never
through this giving way to his feeling, but, on the
contrary, controlling and remaining master of him-
self. His face must remain calm like that of a
Spaniard. He must be clean and neat in his dress;
in this respect his taste must be manly and not
ART IN ITALY.
47
feminine; he should prefer a dark color as the sign
of a graver and more sedate character. In like
manner he must not let himself be carried away by
gayety or impetuosity, by anger or egotism. Let
him avoid vulgarity, coarse expressions, terms
which would bring a blush to a lady's cheek. He
must be polite, full of condescension and of consid-
eration for others. He must know how to utter
amusing jests and to tell gay stories, but with
propriety. The best rule that can be given to him
is to regulate his actions so as to please the accom-
plished lady. Through this ingenious transition the
portrait of the gentleman leads to the portrait of
the lady, and the delicate touches which served in
the first picture become still more delicate in the
second.
"As there is no court in the world, however
great it may be, which can possess any adornment,
splendor, or gayety without ladies, and as there is
no gentleman who can be graceful, agreeable or
fearless, or perform any brilliant or manly act with-
out the society, affection and favor of ladies, our
portrait of the gentleman would remain very im
48
THE PIILOSOPHY OF
perfect if the ladies did not interpose and give it a
portion of that grace by which they adorn and make
perfect the life of the court.”
She
"I maintain that the lady who lives at court
should, above all things, have a certain pleasing af-
fability through which she may be able to gracious-
ly entertain all classes of persons of agreeable and
sincere discourse, adapted to time and place, and to
the quality of the person to whom she speaks.
must have a quiet and modest deportment, a sense
of propriety by which sho measures all her actions,
but besides this a certain mental vivacity by which
she may appear estranged from all dullness; and
yet she must associate with this a certain air of
kindness that will cause her to be esteemed no less
prudent, chaste and gentle, than amiable, discreet
and sagacious. Hence it is why she has to main-
tain herself in a certain difficult situation, made up,
as it were, of contrary things, and to go to certain
limits but without passing beyond them.”
"This lady, accordingly, in order to secure a rep-
utation for being honest and virtuous, must not be
so prudish and show so much horror of company
ART IN ITALY.
49
and discourse somewhat free as to withdraw when
she chances to find herself in it, because it might be
easily supposed that she pretended to this austerity
for the purpose of concealing something concerning
herself which another might know; and moreover
blunt ways are always odious. As little should she
give utterance to insincere words in order to show
herself liberal and amiable, and make use of a cer-
tain intemperate and lawless familiarity in such a
way as to lead one to think of her that which may
not, probably, be true. But when it happens that she
is obliged to listen to insinuations, like those alluded
to, she must do it with some shame and blush."
If she has any tact she can turn the conversation to
nobler and more proper subjects. For her education
is not of a much lower standard than that of men.
Ladies should be equally familiar with literature,
music, painting, dancing, and the art of agreeable
conversation.
The ladies who take part in the entertainment
combine example with precept; their good taste
and their wit are displayed with moderation; they
applaud Bembo's enthusiasm, and his noble platonic
K
50
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
theories on a universal and pure love. You will
find at this time in Italy women who, like Vittoria
Colonna, Veronica, Gambara, Costanza d'Amalfi,
Tullia d' Aragona and the Duchess of Ferrara, com-
bine superior talents with superior instruction. If,
now, you call to mind the portraits of that day in
the Louvre, the pale, pensive Venetians in dark
costumes, the "Youth" by Francia, so ardent and
yet so impassible, the delicate "Joanna of Naples,"
with the swan's neck, the "Young Man with a
Statuette," by Bronzino, all those calm and intelli-
gent countenances, all those rich and grave cos-
tumes, you will be able to form some idea of the
exquisite finesse, the fertile faculties, the perfect
culture of that society which, three centuries before
our own, stimulated ideas, loved beauty and prac
ticed urbanity as much and perhaps more than our-
selves.
IV.
THIS leads us to distinguish another characteris-
tic of this civilization and another condition of fine
art. Intellectual culture has been equally good at
other epochs, without art having attained to the
same brilliancy. In our own day, for instance, men
having acquired three centuries of experience and
discovery over and above the knowledge of the six-
teenth century, are better informed and better sup-
plied with ideas than ever, and yet we cannot say
that the arts of design in Europe produce nowadays
as fine works as in Italy in the time of the Renais-
sance. Accordingly, to explain the great works of
the year 1500, it is not sufficient to note the active
intelligence and the finished culture of Raphael's
contemporaries; we have to define this species of
intelligence and culture, and, after comparing Italy
with Europe of the fifteenth century, compare it
with the Europe in which we are living to-day.
52
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
Let us first commence with the country which, in
our time, is certainly the most learned in Europe,
Germany. There, especially in northern Germany,
everybody knows how to read; young people, again,
pass five or six years in the universities, and not
only those who are rich and comfortably off, but al-
most all men belonging to the middle class, includ-
ing men of the humbler class, at the expense of long
suffering and great privations. Science, there, is
held in such repute that it sometimes produces af-
fectation, and frequently pedantry. Many of the
young men wear spectacles, although they have
very good eyes, in order to give themselves a wiser
look. The dominant idea in the brain of a German
twenty years old is, not to make a figure at a club
or a café, as we see in France, but the desire to ob-
tain general ideas of humanity, society, the super-
natural, nature, and countless other things, in brief,
a complete philosophy. There is no other country
in which we find so great a taste for, such constant
preoccupation with, such a natural comprehension of,
the higher abstract theories. It is the land of met-
aphysics and systems. This excess of profound
ART IN ITALY.
53
meditation, however, has proved detrimental to the
arts of design. The German painters strive hard to
express on their canvases, or in their frescoes, hu-
manitarian and religious ideas. They subordinate
color and form to thought; their work is symbolic;
they depict on their walls courses of philosophy and
of history; and if you should go to Munich, you will
see that the greatest of them are philosophers
astray in art, better qualified to appeal to reason
than to the eye, and who ought to make use of a
pen rather than of a brush.
Let us pass over to England. There, a man of
the middle classes enters a store or a counting-room
at a very early age; he works there ten hours a day,
works again in his home, and strains all the energies
of his mind and body to make enough money. He
marries and has a good many children; he works
still harder; competition is bitter, the climate is
rigid and his necessities become greater. A gentle-
man, a man of wealth, a nobleman has scarcely
more leisure. He is always busy and tied down
with absorbing duties. Politics take up the atten-
tion of everybody. There are meetings, commit-
54
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
{
tees, clubs, newspapers like the "Times" which
daily bring you a whole volume to read, figures,
statistics, a ponderous mass of undigested facts to
devour and digest, and, in addition to all these,
weighty religious affairs, foundations, endowments,
incessant preoccupation in improving public and
private things, questions of finance, of the balance of
power, of conscience and utilitarian or moral argu-
ments—such is their intellectual pasture-land! And
therefore painting and the other arts, which appeal
to the senses, are relegated to or fall naturally into
an inferior position. People have no time to attend
to them; they are concerned with graver and more
urgent matters; they take art up through fashion
and conventionally; they regard it simply as some-
thing curious; it furnishes an interesting subject to
a few amateurs. It is easy to find patrons to give
money for founding museums, for purchasing orig-
inal drawings, for establishing schools, just as they
can be found for other purposes, such as evangel-
ical missions, the support of foundlings and the cure
of epileptic patients. These patrons again are the
guardians of the public and social welfare; they
ART IN ITALY.
55
believe that music polishes the people and diminishes.
Sunday inebriation; that the arts of design render
workmen good for making cloths and costly jewelry.
There is an absence of taste. The feeling for
beautiful forms and fine color here is only the fruit
of education, an exotic orange cultivated with diffi-
culty in a hot-house, at great expense, and which is
generally sour or rancid. The contemporary paint-
ers of the country are workmen of an exacting and
narrow talent; they will paint a bundle of hay, the
fold of a dress, a sprig of bramble with grievous
dryness and minuteness; prolonged effort, the con-¡
stant strain on the physical and moral machine, has,
with them, disturbed the balance of sensations and
impressions; they have become insensible to the
harmony of colors; they cover their canvases with
parrot green, make trees of zinc or tin and paint
figures with a red of the tint of rare beef; with the
exception of a study of physiognomies, and in the
science of moral traits, their art is disagreeable; their
national exhibitions place before strangers a medley
of colors as crude, discordant and violent as a chari-
vari.
56
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
The answer may be made that these people are
Teutonic and English, carnest, Protestant and de-
voted to crudition and to practical matters, and that
in Paris, at least, there is taste and a love of pleas-
ure. It is true that Paris, at this time, is the city
of the world where people love most to talk and
read, to criticise art, to define gradations of the
beautiful, and in which strangers find life the most
agreeable, the most varied and the gayest. And
yet French art, although it surpasses that of other
countries, does not equal, as the French themselves
admit, the Italian art of the Renaissance. In any
event it is different; its works indicate another spirit
and appeal to other minds. It is much more poetic,
historic or dramatic than it is picturesque. Inferior
in the sentiment of the beauty of the nude form, as
well as of what is beautiful in a simple natural ex-
istence, it has labored in every sense to represent
actual scenes and the exact costume of distant
countries and of past times, the tragic emotions of
the soul, and the attractive aspects of landscape. It
thas
has become the rival of literature; it has plowed
the same ground and turned it to the same purposes;
ART IN ITALY.
57
it has made the same appeal to an insatiable curios-
ity, to an archæological taste, to the craving for
powerful emotions and to a morbid and over-refined
sensibility. It has transformed itself with a view to
address citizens weary with work, confined to a seden-
tary occupation, overwhelmed with composite ideas,
greedy for novelties, documents, and sensations,
and likewise for the repose of the fields. Between
the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries a vast change
is brought about; the furnishing and derange-
ments of the human brain have become immeasur-
ably complicated. At Paris and throughout France
there is an excess of effort owing to two reasons.
the first place life has become costly. A multitude of
little conveniences has become indispensable. Car-
pets, curtains and armchairs are essential, even to a
plain man who lives by himself; if he marries he must
have, besides these, étageres covered with nicknacks,
a handsome, expensive outfit, an endless display of
minor objects which, having to be bought with
money and not to be got by highway robbery, or
obtained by confiscations as in the fifteenth century,
In
must be painfully earned by labor. The greater (
58
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
portion of our existence is accordingly spent in
laborious effort. Moreover, there is the ambition
for position in life. As we constitute a great de-
mocracy, in which places are put to competition,
obtained by perseverance, won through ability, each
one of us cherishes a vague hope of becoming a
minister of state or a millionaire, which rivalry
causes us to redouble our occupations, work and
worry.
On the other hand, we number in Paris sixteen
hundred thousand inhabitants, which is considera-
ble, and too many. Paris being the city where
there are the most chances for succeeding, all those
who possess intelligence, ambition and energy, flock
to it and elbow each other. The capital of the
country thus becomes the universal resort of all su-
perior and professional men; they make common
stock of their inventions and researches; they goad
each other on through their studies, the theatre,
and every species of conversation; they contract a
sort of fever. The brain, at Paris, is not in a sound
and healthy state; it is over-heated, over-tasked,
over-excited, and its efforts, whether in art or in lit-
ART IN ITALY.
59
erature, show the effects of this, sometimes to their
advantage but oftener to their detriment.
This is not the case in Italy. We do not find
there a million of men crowded together as in a
paddock, but numerous cities of fifty, a hundred, or
two hundred thousand souls; we do not find there
that ambitious throng, that fermentation of curios-
ity, that concentration of effort, that excess of hu-
man activity. A city there was a select number, |
and not, as with us, a mere mass.
The desire for
comfort, moreover, was moderate; bodies were still
rude and vigorous; people traveled on horseback or
lived very well in the open air. The great palaces
of that epoch are magnificent, but I doubt if an or-
dinary modern citizen would like to live in one of
them; they are inconvenient and chilly; the seats
there which are sculptured with lions' heads and
dancing satyrs are artistic masterpieces, but you
would find them very hard, while the smallest apart-
ment, the lodging of the concierge of a respectable
establishment, is more comfortable than the palaces
of Leo X. or Julius II. They did not require all the
little conveniences which we cannot nowadays dis-
60
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
pense with; they placed their luxury in the posses-
sion of the beautiful and not in well-being; they
cared for a noble arrangement of columns and fig-
ures, and not for the economical acquisition of
trinkets, divans and fire-screens. In fine, the ranks
being closed and only opened by military success or
by princely favor to a few illustrious brigands, five
or six superior assassins, or a group of agreeable
parasites, there was not seen in society that sharp
competition, that bee-hive agitation, that ceaseless
and prolonged fury with which each one of us tries
to get ahead of his neighbor.
1 All this is tantamount to saying that the human
intellect was better balanced in those days than it is
now in Europe, and in this Paris in which we live.
It was at least better balanced in relation to art.
To make the arts of design flourish demands a soil
which is not uncultivated, but, at the same time,
which is not over-cultivated. In feudal Europe it
was heavy and hard; nowadays it is well pulverized;
formerly civilization had not plowed it enough; to-
day it has multiplied its furrows to excess. To have
grand, simple forms fixed on canvas by the hand of
ART IN ITALY.
61
a Titian or of a Raphael, requires a natural pro
duction of these in the minds of the men around
them; and to have them naturally produced in
men's minds it is necessary that images be not
smothered nor mutilated by ideas. /
Allow me to dwell a moment on this expression,
for it is the main point. The province of extreme
culture is to efface images more and more to the
advantage of ideas. Under the constant pressure.
of education, conversation, thought and knowledge,
the primitive observation of things gets to be dis-
ordered, becomes disintegrated and fades out to
give place to naked ideas, to terms well classified,
to a sort of algebraic notation. The ordinary track
of the mind, henceforth, is pure abstraction. If it
reverts back to imagery it is with an effort, through
a convulsive and morbid shock, through a species
of disordered and dangerous hallucination. Such
is our mental condition at the present time. We
are no longer artists naturally. Our brain is filled
with intermixed, graduated, multiplied, intersect-
ing ideas; all civilizations, that of our own land,
those of foreign lands, those of the past and those
-
6
62
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
of the present, have poured into it their inundations
and their deposits. For example, pronounce the
word tree to a modern; he knows that it does not
signify a dog, a sheep or a piece of furniture; he
lodges this sign in his brain, in a distinct and labeled.
section of it; with us of the present time we call
that comprehension. Our studies and our knowl-
edge have filled our minds with abstract signs; our
habits of systematizing lead us regularly and log-
ically from one to the other. We obtain only frag-
mentary glimpses of colored forms; they do not
remain with us; they are vaguely sketched on the
inward canvas and immediately vanish. If we suc-
ceed in retaining them and fixing them accurately,
it is through an effort of the will, after long prac-
tice, and a counter-education which does violence
to our ordinary education. This extreme effort
ends in torment and fever; our greatest colorists,
whether literary or plastic, are over-excited or per-
verted visionaries.* The artists of the Renaissance,
* Heine, Victor Hugo, Shelley, Keats, Elizabeth Barrett Byvo
Browning, Poc, Balzac, Delacroix, Décamps and many others.
We have had a good many fine artistic temperaments in our time;
ART IN ITALY.
63
on the contrary, are close observers. This same
word tree, heard by still healthy and simple minds,
conveys to them an instantaneous perception of the
complete tree, the round and moving mass of bright
foliage with the dark angles which its branches
define on the blue of the sky, with its rugged trunk
furrowed with big veins, with its feet buried in the
soil to withstand wind and storm, so that that which
for us is simply notation and a figure, is for them
an animated and complete spectacle. They will
adhere to it without difficulty and recur to it with.
out effort; they will extract the essential from it;
they will not insist on detail with painful and stub-
born minuteness; they will enjoy their fine "painted
imagery" without convulsively forcing and thrust-
ing it outside of themselves like a palpitating fibre
of their own existence. They paint as a horse runs,
as a bird flies, spontaneously; colored forms there
constitute the natural language of the intellect; if
spectators contemplate them in a fresco or on a can-
almost all have suffered through their education and surround-
ings. Goethe alone maintained his balance, but it required his
great wisdom, orderly life and constant self-discipline.
64
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
vas they have already seen them inwardly and they
recognize them; they are not strangers to them,
artificially brought on the stage through an archæo-
logical combination, an effort of the will, a conven
tionalism of the schools; they are so familiar to
them they introduce them into their private life
and their public ceremonies; they surround them-
selves with them and compose living pictures out
of them alongside of their painted pictures.
Consider, in effect, costume. What a difference
between our trousers, frock-coats and funereal dress-
coats, and their ample bedizened gowns, their velvet
and silk doublets, their lace collars, their .poniards,
their Damascene and arabesque swords, their gold
embroideries, their diamonds and their feathered
caps. All this display of magnificence, which is
only nowadays suitable for women, then shone on
the attire of gentlemen. Notice, again, the pictur-
esque festivities which took place in all the cities,
the state parades, the masquerades and the caval-
cades which formed the delight of the people and
the princes. For example, Galeazzo Sforza, Duke
of Milan, visits Florence in 1471; he is accompanied
ART IN ITALY.
65
by a hundred men at arms, five hundred of infantry,
fifty lackeys on foot clad in silk and velvet, two
thousand gentlemen and domestics in his suite, five
hundred dogs and an infinite number of falcons.
This excursion cost him two hundred thousand gold
ducats. Pietro Riario, Cardinal of San Sisto, ex-
pends twenty thousand ducats on a single festival.
in honor of the Duchess of Ferrara. Traveling
afterwards through Italy with a numerous escort
and with great splendor, he is taken for the pope,
his brother, Lorenzo de Medici contrives a mas-
querade at Florence which represents the triumph
of Camillus. A company of cardinals come there
to see it. Lorenzo requests an elephant of the pope
who sends him, in place of the elephant, which is
engaged elsewhere, two leopards and a panther; the
pope regrets that his office hinders him from attend-
ing such a pompous ceremony. The Duchess Lucre-
tia Borgia makes her entry into Rome with two
hundred magnificently dressed ladies, all on horse-
back and each one accompanied with a gentleman.
The stateliness, the costumes, the lordly and princely
display everywhere give an idea of a superb parade.
4
66
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
by serious actors. On reading their memoirs and
chronicles we see that the Italians construe life as a
delightful festivity. Others' cares seem to them an
imposition. It concerns them to enjoy, to enjoy
nobly and grandly, through the mind, through the
senses and especially through the eyes. They have,
indeed, nothing else to do. They are unacquainted
with our political and humanitarian schemes; they
have no parliaments, no meetings, no immense news-
papers; their prominent or influential men are not
obliged to lead a disputatious crowd; they have no
public opinion to consult, no barren discussions to
maintain, no statistics to bring forth, no moral or
social arguments to string along. Italy is governed
by petty tyrants who have seized the government
by force, and who keep it the same way as they got
it. In their leisure moments they have buildings
erected and pictures painted. The rich and the
noble, like them, devote themselves to amusements,
to obtaining fine mistresses, to possessing statues,
pictures and fine clothes, to placing confidants near
the prince so that they may be advised if any one is
plotting against them with a view to kill them.
ART IN ITALY.
67
Neither do religious ideas trouble them or occupy
their time. The friends of Lorenzo de Medici, of
Alexander VI. or of Ludovico the Moor think but
little of organizing missions, of enterprises for the
conversion of pagans, of subscriptions for instruct-
ing and "moralizing" the populace. People in
those days in Italy were not fervent; they were any-
thing else but fervent. Luther, who visited Italy,
his mind filled with scruples and faith, was scandal-
ized and he stated on his return: "The Italians are
the most impious of men. They jeer at true religion;
Christians like us are ridiculed because we believe in
sal
the Scriptures. . . . Here is an expression of which
they make use when they go to church, 'Let us
conform to the popular errors !'" "If we were
obliged," they say again, "to believe God's word
fully we should be the most miserable of men, and
we should never have a moment of pleasure. We
must put on a suitable appearance and not believe
everything." The people, in fact, are pagan by
temperament, and those who are well brought up
are incredulous through their education. "The
Italians," says Luther again, with horror, "are either
68
TIE PIILOSOPHY OF
epicurean or superstitious. The people are more
afraid of St. Anthony, or of St. Sebastian, than they
are of Christ, on account of the wounds which they
contemplate. Hence it is that when it is necessary
to warn Italians not to commit a nuisance on a
particular spot, an image of St. Anthony with his
fiery lance is painted there. They remain thus in the
greatest superstition, without knowing the word of
God, and believing neither in the resurrection of the
flesh, nor in life eternal, and only in dread of tem-
poral suffering." Many of the philosophers are
secretly, or almost openly, opposed to revelation
and to the immortality of the soul. Christian asceti-
cism and the doctrine of penitence is repugnant to
everybody. You will find in their poets, in Ariosto,
in Ludovico the Venetian, and in Pulci, lively
attacks against the monks and the most open insinu-
ations against dogmas. Pulci, in a comic poem,
places a Hosanna, an in principio, a sacred text
from the mass, at the head of each canto.
In ex-
planation of the way in which the soul enters the
body he compares it to sweetmeats which are envel--
oped in hot white bread. What becomes of it in
ART IN ITALY.
69
the next world? "Certain people think that they
will find becaficos there, ortolans with their plumage,
good beds, and for this reason that they can tread
on the monks' heels. But, my dear fellow, once we
descend into the dark valley we shall hear no more
hallelujahs sung!"
ཝཱུ
The moralists and preachers of the day, Bruto and
Savonarola for example, thunder against this sensu-
ality and atheism with all their might. Savonarola
told the Florentines that he was going to engage in
conversions for three or four years: "Your life is
that of swine, you pass it in bed, in idle gossip, in
the streets, in orgies and in debauchery." Subtract
from this what must always be taken off when a
preacher or a moralist speaks loud in order to be
heard; but whatever you take off there is plenty
left. We see in the biographies of the nobles of this
epoch, in the cynical or refined pleasures of the
Dukes of Ferrara and Milan, in the dainty epicure-
anism or in the open license of the Medicis at Flor-
ence, how far the quest for any description of
pleasure was carried. These Medicis were bankers
who, through a little force or a good deal of address,
1
70
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
had become the first magistrates and the veritable
sovereigns of the city. They entertained around
them poets, painters, sculptors and scholars. They
! gave representations in their palaces of mythological
hunting and amatory scenes. In the direction of
painting they prized the nudities of Dello and Pol-
laiolo; they sharpened the great and noble sentiment
of paganism with a point of voluptuous sensuality.
Hence it is they were very tolerant of the pranks of
their artists. You know the story of Fra Filippo
Lippi who carried off a nun; on her parents com-
plaining to the Medicis they merely laugh. The
same Fra Filippo, when working in their palace, was
so fond of his mistresses that, on being shut up to
make him finish some subject, he made a rope of his
bed clothes to enable him to escape through the
window. Finally, Cosmo ordered "the door to be
left open, men of genius being celestial essences and
not beasts of burden, and not to be either imprisoned
or constrained." At Rome it was worse. I will not
narrate Alexander VI.'s amusements to you; they
are to be perused in the journal of his chaplain
Burchard; the Latin tongue can alone expose his im
ART IN ITALY.
71
moralities and Bacchanalian excesses.
As for Leo
X., he is a man of taste, fond of elegant latinity and
clever epigrams; but for all that he does not abstain
from illicit pleasure and open animal enjoyment.
Around him, Bembo, Molza, Aretino, Baraballo and
Querno, numbers of poets, musicians and parasites,
lead not very edifying lives, while their verses, gen-
erally, are more than free. Cardinal Bibiena has a
comedy played before him, la Calandra, which no
theatre of the present day would dare have repre-
sented. He amuses himself with serving his guests
with dishes in the shape of monkeys and crows. His
clown is a mendicant monk named Mariano, and a
huge eater, “who swallows a boiled or roasted
pigeon at one mouthful, and who can take down
forty eggs and twenty chickens." He delighted in
coarse pastimes and in fantastic and burlesque crea-
tions; the spirit and impulse of the animal abounded
in him as in others; booted and spurred, he is a
passionate hunter of stag and boar among the savage
hills of Civita-Vecchia, while the festivals to which
he treats himself are no more ecclesiastic than his
habits. A secretary of the Duke of Ferrara, an eye-
72
THE PIIILOSOPHY OF
witness, thus describes one of his days. Judge by
the contrast between his pleasures and ours how
much the law of propriety has increased, how much
free and powerful natural instincts have diminished,
to what extent an active imagination has become
subject to pure reason and what a gulf there is be-
tween us and those half-pagan, completely sensual
but eminently picturesque times when the life of the
spirit did not undermine the life of the flesh.
"I was at the play on Sunday evening;* Mon-
seigneur de Rangoni f introduced me into one of
Cibo'st anterooms where the Pope was with his
young and right reverend cardinals. His Holiness
was walking about the room, allowing those to enter
it whose quality suited him, and as soon as the
company reached the number he had fixed upon
they betook themselves to the spot assigned for the
play; our Holy Father stood by the door, and, with-
* First published in the Gazette des Beaux Arts by the Marquis
Joseph Campori.
+ Hercules Rangoni, Cardinal.
Cardinal Innocent, son of Franceschetto Cibo and of Mag
dalen Medicis, sister of Leo X.
ART IN ITALY.
73
out any confusion, he allowed admission by giving
his benediction to whomsoever he pleased. Once
admitted into the room we found the stage on one
side and, on the other, a set of steps on which was
placed the pontiff's chair who, after the laymen had
entered, seated himself in his chair, raised five or
six steps above the floor, followed by the right
reverend cardinals and the ambassadors who took
their positions around the chair according to their
rank; and once the crowd was received, which might
be about two thousand, they sounded the fifes and
lowered the curtain on which there was painted
Brother Mariano* with several devils capering about
him on each side of the curtain, in the midst of
which there was a scroll which stated: "Behold the
fancies of Brother Mariano!' The music com-
menced and the Pope, through his spectacles, ad-
mired the scene which was very beautiful, being
* Brother Mariano Fetti, a lay Dominican who succeeded
Bramante, the predecessor of Sebastiano in the department of
the Piombo, one of the gayest and most agreeable spirits of the
court of Leo X., conjointly with Baraballo, Querno and their fel.
lows and at once patron and friend of artists.
4
74
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
executed by the hand of Raphael; it was really a
fine prospect of highly-lauded issues and perspec-
tives. His Holiness likewise admired the sky which
was marvelously represented; the candelabras were
formed with letters and each letter supported five
torches inscribed with: 'Leo X., Pont. Maximus.'
The Nuncio appeared on the stage and recited an
argument. He ridiculed the title of the play, the
Suppositi, to such an extent that the Pope, with the
spectators, laughed heartily, and judging by what I
heard, the French were somewhat scandalized by
the subject of the Suppositi. The comedy was pre-
sented and well played, and at each act there was an
interlude of music with fifes, bagpipes, two cornets,
viols, lutes, and the small organ with such varied
tones, generously presented to the Pope by the
most illustrious Monseigneur of blessed memory;
there was at the same time a flute and a voice which
gave great pleasure; there was also a concert of
voices which, in my opinion, did not succeed as well
as the other musical performances. The last inter-
lude was the Mauresque, which represented the
Gorgon fable very well, but not with that perfec-
ART IN ITALY.
75
The
tion in which I have seen it represented in your
lordship's palace; thus the festival ended.
audience began to retire, and in such haste, and
with such crowding that, it being my fate to be
pushed over a small bench, I came very near having
my leg broken. Bondelmonte received a violent
shock from a Spaniard and whilst beginuing to
strike the latter with his fists, the way was made
much easier for me to escape; it is certain that
my leg was in great danger; I found, besides, com-
pensation for this mishap in a grand benediction,
and in the gracious look with which the Holy
Father honored me."
"On the day preceding this entertainment there
was a race of horses in which was seen a number
of jennets, with Monseigneur Corner for master,
dressed diversely à la Mauresque; and afterwards
another wholly in the Spanish style, clad in Alex-
andrine satin with a lining of changeable silk,
capuchin and doublet, with Serapica and several
valets de chambre on service, at the head of it. This
race was composed of twenty horses; the Pope had
presented each cavalier with forty-five ducats; and,
76
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
indeed, the livery was beautiful, with the servants
and trumpeters dressed in the same silken hues.
Having reached the ground they began to run two
and two towards the palace gate, where the Pope
stood at the windows, and when both troops had
finished this race the Serapica company withdrew to
the other side of the square and the Cornera towards
St. Peter's; the Serapica, taking cane lances, ap-
proached to attack the Cornera who also had theirs;
the Serapica cast their lances at the Cornera who
did the same thing against their rivals, and both
attacked and rushed at each other, which was very
beautiful to see and without danger. Many were
the fine horses and mares among them. The follow-
ing day there were bull-fights; I was with Seignior
Marc Antonio, as I have mentioned; three men were
killed and five horses were wounded; two are dead,
and among others a Serapica, a very fine jennet,
which threw him to the ground and brought him in
great danger, for the bull was upon him and if the
brute had not been goaded with a pike it would not
have relaxed its hold and would have killed him.
The Pope, it is stated, exclaimed 'Poor Serapica!
ART IN ITALY.
77
and bewailed him a good deal. I am told that, in
the evening, a certain comedy by a monk was
played, . . . and as it did not give great satisfac-
tion, the Pope, instead of ordering La Mauresque
to be danced, had the monk put in a blanket and
tossed in such a way in the air as to make him come
down on his belly on the stage-floor, and after that
his garters were cut and he was made to take to his
heels; the good monk, however, showed his teeth
and bit three or four of the grooms. He was, at
last, forced to mount a horse, and they struck him
so many blows on his back with their hands that, I
am told, it was necessary to make several cuppings
on the lower parts; he is now in bed and not at all
well. It is said that the Pope did this to set an ex-
ample to other monks, that they might not take it
into their heads to make further exhibitions of their
mummeries. This Mauresque excited a good deal
of laughter. To-day the turn came for the ring race
before the palace gate, the Pope being there and
looking on from his windows; the prizes were
already inscribed on vases.
Next to this came the
buffalo race. It was amusing to see these ugly
78
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
i
brutes running, now heaving ahead and now falling
backward, in order that they should arrive at the
goal, and before reaching it, they required much
time, for they take one step ahead and four back-
ward, so that it is not easy to reach the goal. The
last one to get there was the one that was ahead
and he accordingly bore off the prize; they num-
bered ten and, in faith, it was a great scramble. I
withdrew afterwards to Bembo's residence; I called
on IIis IIoliness where I met the Bishop of Bayeux.
Nothing was talked about but masks and matters of
gaiety.
"From Rome, this day, 8 March MDXVIII, at
four o'clock in the night.
"Of your illustrious Seigneurie
"The Servant, ALPHONSE PAUluzo."
The above are carnival amusements at the court
which apparently ought to be the soberest and
most decorous in Italy. We also encounter here
races of naked men as in the ancient Greek games,
and we know of obscenities such as were given in
the amphitheatres of the Roman empire. With
such a vigorous imagination turned towards phys
ART IN ITALY.
79
ical pleasures, with a civilization which sets up
pleasure as the end of human life, with such a com-
plete emancipation from political cares, from indus-
trial complications and from the moral aims which
now fix minds on positive interests and on abstract
ideas, it is not surprising that a race richly endowed
for the arts, and highly cultivated, should have
loved, created and perfected the art which repre-
sents to us outward forms. The Renaissance is a
unique moment, intermediate between the middle
ages and modern times, between a lack of culture
and over-culture, between the reign of crude in-
stincts and the reign of ripe ideas. Man ceases
then to be a gross, warlike, carnivorous animal,
only capable of exercising his limbs; he has not yet
become a devotee of the midnight lamp or of the
drawing-room, only capable of exercising his tongue
and his understanding. He partakes of both na-
tures. He has long and profound reveries like the
savage; he is moved by keen, delicate curiosity like
the civilized man. Like the former he thinks
through images; like the latter he discovers laws.
Like the former he seeks sensuous pleasure; like the
い
​1
80
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
latter he steps beyond vulgar pleasure.
His ap-
petites have become refined. He is interested in the
externals of things, but he requires to have them
perfect; while the beautiful forms which he con-
templates in the works of his great artists do no
more than set free the vague figures with which his
brain is peopled, and satisfy the mute instincts with
which his heart is moulded.
V.
Ir now remains to be shown why this great, pictur-
esque talent selected the human form for its prin-
cipal subject; by what experiences, habits and
passions men were prepared to be interested in
muscles; why, in this great domain of art their eyes
preferred to turn towards healthy, powerful, ener-
getic figures which subsequent ages have only been
able to find or to copy traditionally.
For this purpose, after having laid before you the
state of minds, I shall try to show you the kind of
characters. By the state of minds is understood
the kind, number and quality of ideas which are
found in a human brain, and of which they are, in
some sort, the furniture. But the furniture of a
brain, like that of a palace, is changed without
much trouble. Without touching the palace itself
we may place in it other hangings, buffets, bronzes
82
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
and carpets; in a similar way, without touching the
internal structure of a soul, we can place in it other
ideas; a change of condition or of education is
sufficient for that purpose; according as man is
ignorant or learned, plebeian or noble, his ideas are
different. There is within him, then, something
more important than ideas, which is his structure
itself; I mean his character, in other words, his
natural instincts, his inborn passions, the greatness
of his sensibility, the degree of his energy, in short
the force and direction of his inner activity. To
enable you to see this profound structure of the
Italian soul, I am going to show you the circum-
stances, habits, and necessities that have produced
it; you will comprehend it better through its history
than by a definition of it.
The first trait, then, which is observed in Italy is
the want of a long and firmly-established peace,
impartial justice, and a watchful police like that to
which we are accustomed in our country. We have
some difficulty in picturing to ourselves that excess
of anxiety, of disorder and of violence. We have
been too long in an opposite condition. We have
ART IN ITALY.
83
so many gendarmes and policemen that we are in-
clined to find them more troublesome than useful.
With us if fifteen persons gather together in the
street to look at a dog with a broken leg, a man
with a moustache approaches and says, "Move on,
gentlemen, crowds are forbidden." This seems to
us unreasonable; we denounce it, forgetting to
remark that these very men with moustaches afford
both to the rich and to the weak the assurance of
being able to walk lonely streets at midnight safe
and unarmed. Let us suppose these dispensed with,
and a society imagined in which a police force is
powerless or disregarded. We find countries of this
sort in Australia, or in America, as for example, in
the placers where the gold-hunters flock in crowds.
and live haphazard without having yet formed a
government. In these regions if one fears that he
may receive either a blow or an insult he at once
discharges his revolver at the offending party. The
latter fires back, and sometimes the neighbors in-
terfere. One is constantly obliged there, to defend
his life or his property; danger, brutal and sudden,
hems man in on all sides.
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THE PHILOSOPHY OF
Such was nearly the state of things in Italy about
the year 1500; there was no knowledge then of any-
thing like this great government which, perfected
with us for four hundred years past, considers that
its simplest duty is to preserve to each person, not
only his property and his life, but again his repose
and his security. The princes of Italy were petty
tyrants who had generally usurped power through
assassinations or poisonings, or, at least, through
violence and treachery. Naturally their sole con-
cern was to retain this power. As to the security
of citizens, they made but little provision for it.
Individuals had to defend themselves and, moreover,
to do themselves justice; if a man had a too refrac-
tory debtor, if he encountered an impertinent fellow
in the street, if he considered this or that person as
dangerous or inimical to him, he found it quite
natural to get rid of him as soon as possible.
Instances abound; you have only to look through
the memoirs of the time to see how deeply rooted
this custom of self-appeal was and this habit of
personal violence.
"On the 20th September," says Stefano d' Infes-
ART IN ITALY.
85
sura, “there was a great tumult in the city of Rome,
and all the tradesmen closed their shops. Those
who were in the fields or in their vineyards, went
home in great haste and all, whether citizens or
strangers, took up arms because it was stated as a
certain thing that Pope Innocent III. was dead."
The feeble bond which held society together
broke and the people returned to a savage state;
each one took advantage of the hour to rid himself
of his enemies. It must be noted that although
assaults in ordinary times were a little less frequent
they were not the less sanguinary. The private
feuds of the Colonna and Orsini families extended
all around Rome; these nobles kept armed men and
summoned their peasants; each band devastated the
lands of the enemy; if a truce was effected it was
soon broken and each chief, buckling on his giacco,
sent word to the Pope that his adversary was the
aggressor.
"Even in the city a good many murders took
place day and night, and scarcely a day passed that
some one was not slain. . . . On the third of Sep-
tember a certain Salvador attacked his enemy,
86
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
Seignior Bencaccaduto, with whom he was neverthe
less at peace under a bond of five hundred ducats."
This signifies that each had made a deposit of
five hundred ducats which was to be lost by the
first one that broke the truce. A guarantee, like
this, of a sworn pledge was an habitual thing; there
was no other way of maintaining a slight degree of
public tranquillity. We find the following note in
the private account book of Benvenuto Cellini: "I
make note that, this day, October 26, 1556, I, Ben-
venuto Cellini, am released from prison and that I
have made a truce with my enemy for one year.
Each of us has given security in three hundred
crowns." But a guarantee of money is feeble
against violence of temperament and the ferocity of
manners and customs. Hence it is that Salvador
could not refrain from attacking Beneaccaduto;
"IIe pierced him twice with his sword, and wounded
him mortally, so that he died."
The magistrates, too openly defied, now interfere,
while the people take the matter up somewhat as, in
our day, in San Francisco during the sway of Lynch
law. In San Francisco when assassinations became
ART IN ITALY.
87
too frequent, business men and respectable persons,
the leading men of the city, accompanied by all
well-disposed persons, went to the prison, seized the
culprits and hung them forthwith. In the same
way "on the fourth day, the Pope sent his vice-
chamberlain with the conservators and the entire
people to destroy Salvador's house. They destroyed
it, and on the same fourth day of September,
Jerome, brother of the said Salvador, was hung,"
probably because they could not lay hands on Sal-
vador himself. In these tumultuous and popular
executions every one is responsible for his relations.
There are fifty similar examples; the men of this
time are accustomed to affrays, and not only men of
the lower class but men who, belonging to the upper
ranks or of high culture, ought, apparently, to have
exercised some self-control. Guiccardini relates
that, one day, Trivulcio, governor of the Milan
territory for the King of France, killed with his own
hand some butchers in the market "who, with the
usual insolence of people of that class, made opposi-
tion to the levying of certain taxes from which they
had not been exempted." You are accustomed now-
68
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
adays to see artists as men of society, peaceable
citizens, and well qualified for suitably wearing a
dress-coat and white cravat in the evening. In
Cellini's memoirs you find a goldsmith named Piloto
who is a "worthy man," but yet a captain of brig-
ands. In another place we find Raphael's pupils
determining to kill Rosso because Rosso, who is
given to scandal, had maligned Raphael; and Rosso
thinks it most prudent to leave Rome; after threats
of this kind a journey becomes urgent. The slight-
est excuse suffices them for killing a man. Cellini
narrates again that Vasari was in the habit of wear-
ing his nails very long, and one night, sleeping with
his apprentice Manno, "he scratched his leg with
his hands thinking that he was scratching himself,
whereupon Manno absolutely wanted to murder
Vasari." The motive was a slight one. But at this
time man is so fierce, so accustomed to blows, the
blood rushes at once to his head and he strikes
blindly. A bull first strikes with his horns; he first
strikes with a dagger.
The spectacles, accordingly, which are daily wit-
nessed in Rome, or in its environs, are atrocious.
ART IN ITALY.
89
Punishments seem to be those of an oriental mon-
archy. Enumerate, if you can, the murders com-
mitted by that handsome and clever Cæsar Borgia,
son of the Pope, and Duke of Valentinois, whose
portrait you may see at Rome in the Borghese
gallery. He is a man of taste, an able politician,
and fond of fêtes and refined conversation; his fine
form is fitted with a doublet of black velvet; he has
perfect hands and the calm expression of a grand
seignior. But he knows how to ensure respect, and
he manages his own affairs, with his own hands,
either with the sword or the dagger.
"On the second Sunday," says Burchard, the
Pope's chamberlain, "a man with a mask on, in the
Borgo, uttered some offensive words against the
Duke of Valentinois. The Duke, hearing of it, had
him arrested; they cut off his hand and the fore part
of his tongue, which was attached to the little finger
of the severed hand," undoubtedly to set an example.
Another time, as with the chauffeurs of 1789, "the
servants of the same Duke suspended two old men
and eight old women by the arms, after having
kindled a fire under their feet to make them confess
90
TIIE PHILOSOPHY OF
where money was concealed, while they, not know-
ing, or not wishing to reveal where it was, died
under the said torture."
""
Another day, the Duke causes "gladiandi" to be
led into the prison court and he himself, dressed in
his finest suit, and in the presence of a numerous
and select audience, pierces them with arrows.
"IIe also killed Perotto, who was the Pope's
favorite," under the Pope's own robe, in such a way
that the blood spurted in the Pope's face. This fam-
ily is given to cutting each other's throats. He
had already had his brother-in-law attacked with a
sword, the Pope taking care of the wounded man;
but the Duke exclaimed: "What is not done at
dinner can be done at supper.' And one day, the
seventeenth of August, he entered his room, as the
young man was already up, and ordered his wife and
sister to leave it; then having called in three assas-
sins he had the said young man strangled." Besides
this, he killed his own brother, the Duc di Gandia,
and had his body cast in the Tiber. After various
enquiries they discovered a fisherman who was on
the river bank at the time of the occurrence. And
ART IN ITALY.
91
as they asked him why he had said nothing about it
to the governor of the city, he replied, "that he did
not think it worth while, for on different nights in
his lifetime he had seen more than a hundred bodies
thrown in at the same spot without anybody con-
cerning themselves about it."
The Borgias, that privileged family, seem un-
doubtedly to have had a special taste and talent for
poisonings and assassinations; but you will find, in
the small Italian states, numerous personages,
princes and princesses, worthy of having been their
contemporaries. The Prince of Faenza had given
his wife cause for jealousy; she conceals four assas-
sins under his bed and lets them loose at him when
he enters to go to rest; but he makes vigorous
resistance and she then springs out of bed, seizes a
dagger attached to the bed-post, and stabs him her-
self in the back. She is excommunicated for this
act and her father entreats Lorenzo de Medici, who
is in great credit with the Pope, to intercede for her
and have the ecclesiastical censure removed, alleg-
ing among other motives that she has "the intention
of providing herself with another husband."
At
92
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
Milan, Duke Galeazzo is assassinated by three young
men in the habit of reading Plutarch; one of them
*
was killed in the affray and his body was cast to the
hogs; the others declared, before being quartered,
that they had struck the blow because the Duke
"not only debauched women but, again, caused
their deaths by refined torments." At Rome, Pope
Leo X. just escaped being killed by his cardinals;
his surgeon, in their pay, was to poison him when
dressing a fistula; cardinal Petrucci, the principal
instigator of the crime, was put to death. If now,
we consider the house of Malatesta at Rimini, or the
house of Este at Ferrara, we find with them similar
hereditary habits of poisoning and assassination.
If, at length, you contemplate a city which seems
to be somewhat better governed, Florence, the chief
of which, a Medici, is an intelligent, liberal, honest
man, you will find acts committed there as savage
as any of those which you have just heard described.
For example, the Pazzi, irritated at seeing power
wholly in the hands of the Medicis, conspired with
the archbishop of Pisa to assassinate both of the
Medicis, Julian and Lorenzo; Pope Sixtus IV. was
ART IN ITALY.
93
an accomplice. The time selected for this act was
the hour of mass in the church of Santa Reparata,
the signal being the elevation of the Host. One of
the conspirators, Bandini, stabbed Julian de Medici;
then Francesco dei Pazzi, maddened with rage,
attacked the corpse so furiously as to wound himself
in the thigh, afterwards killing one of the friends
of the Medici house.
was brave; he had time to draw his sword and to
roll his cloak around his arm for a shield while his
friends gathered around him and protected him
with their swords or their bodies, well enough to
enable him to retreat into the sacristie. Meanwhile
the other conspirators, numbering thirty and with
the archbishop at their head, had surprised the
town-hall with a view to possess themselves of the
seat of government. But the governor on taking
command of this had arranged the gates in such a
way that when they were once closed they could
not be opened on the inside. The conspirators, ac-
cordingly, were taken as in a mousetrap. The
people rushed to arms and assembled on all sides.
They seized the archbishop and hung him in his
Lorenzo was wounded, but he
94
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
pontifical robes alongside of Francesco dei Pazzi,
the first instigator of the conspiracy, while the prel-
ate in his rage, dying and hanging as he was, grap-
pled the body of his accomplice and ravenously bit
him. "About twenty persons of the Pazzi family
were cut to pieces at the same time, as well as twenty
more of the archbishop's house, while sixty persons
were hung at the palace windows." A painter,
whose history I have related to you, Andrea da
Castagno, another assassin who slew his friend for
stealing his discovery of painting in oil, was com-
missioned to paint this great hanging, which,
later, secured to him the name of Andrea of the
Hung.
I should never stop if I attempted to relate to you
the histories of the time, which are full of similar
characteristics. Here is one, however, which I must
still select because the personage will appear again
on the stage and because the narrator is Machiavelli.
"Oliveretto da Fermo, being left young and an or-
phan, was brought up by one of his maternal uncles
named Giovanni Fogliani." He then learns the
profession of arms under his brothers.
"As he was
ART IN ITALY.
95
naturally intelligent, and cheerful and vigorous
both in body and in feeling, he in a short time
became one of the best men of his troop. But,
concluding that it was a disgraceful thing to remain
lost in a crowd, he determined, with the assistance
of some of the citizens of Fermo, to get possession
of the city, and he wrote to his uncle to say that,
having remained absent from his country several
years, he wished to return to see it himself, also the
city, and to obtain a glimpse of his patrimony.
He added that, if he took so much trouble it was
only to acquire honor; and, in order that his fellow
citizens might satisfy themselves that he had not
passed his time in a fruitless way, he wished to come
accompanied by a hundred horsemen, his friends
and followers, begging him to give orders to the
people of Fermo to welcome him honorably, which
would not alone be creditable to him, Oliveretto,
but again to himself, Giovanni, who had brought
up Oliveretto from infancy. Giovanni omitted
none of the good offices requested of him; he caused
him to be honorably received by the people of
Fermo, and he lodged him in his own house.
96
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
Oliveretto, having passed several days in arranging
all that was necessary for his nefarious crime, gave
a very formal banquet to which he invited Giovanni
and all the first citizens of Fermo. Towards the
end of it. . . . having purposely led the conversa-
tion to serious subjects, on the greatness of Pope
Alexander, and of his son and their enterprises, he
suddenly arose, saying that for such topics they
must have a more retired place. He withdrew into
a room and Giovanni and the others followed him.
Scarcely had they seated themselves, when soldiers
issued from the secret recesses of the chamber, who
killed Giovanni and all the rest. After the homi-
cide Oliveretto mounted his horse, rode through the
town, and besieged the chief magistrate in the town-
hall, so that, through fear the inhabitants were con-
strained to obey him and to establish a government
and place him at the head of it. He put to death
all those who were discontented and who might an-
noy him
and in one year he became formida-
ble to all his neighbors."
Enterprises of this sort are frequent. The life of
Cæsar Borgia is full of them, while the submission
ART IN ITALY.
97
of the Romagna to the Holy See is only one long
train of treasons and assassinations. Such is the
veritable feudal state, that in which every man, left
to himself, attacks another or defends himself,
pushing his ambition, villainy or vengeance to the
utmost without fearing the intervention of the gov-
ernment or the repression of the law.
But that which marks an enormous difference be-
tween Italy of the fifteenth century and Europe of
the middle ages is the great cultivation of the Ital-
ians at that period. You have but just now seen
the repeated proofs of this high culture. Through
an extraordinary contrast, whilst manners have be-
come elegant and tastes delicate, the hearts and
characters of men have remained ferocious. These
people who are learned, critical, fine talkers, pol-
ished, and men of society, are at the same time
freebooters, assassins and murderers. Their actions
are those of savages and their arguments those of
civilized people; they may be called intelligent
wolves. Suppose, now, that a wolf should form
judgments of his species; he would probably found
his code on murder. This is what happened in Italy;
98
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
the philosophers erected the customs of which they
were witnesses into a theory, and ended by believ-
ing, or saying, that if you wish to subsist or to
exist in this world you must act like a scoundrel.
The most profound of these theorists was Machia-
velli, a great man, and indeed an honest man, a
patriot, a superior genius, who wrote a work called
"The Prince" to justify or, at least, to sanction
treachery and assassination. Or rather he neither
justifies nor sanctions; he passes beyond indignation
and puts conscience to one side; he analyzes and
explains as a scientist and connoisseur of men; he
provides documents and comments on them; he
sends plain instructive reports to the magistrates of
Florence, written in a style as cool as the narrative
of a skillful surgical operation.
(6
'Description of the mode employed by the Duke
of Valentinois to kill Vitellozo Vitelli, Oliveretto da
Fermo, Seignior Pagolo and Duke Gravina Orsini.
(C
Magnificent Seigniors, as your lordships have
not received all my letters in which a large portion
of the affair of Sinigaglia is comprised, it seemed to
me advisable to write it out in detail, and I think
9
ART IN ITALY.
99
that this will prove agreeable to you on account of
the spirit of the matter which is rare and memorable
in every point of view.”
The Duke had been worsted by these seigniors
and he found himself weak against them. He made
peace with them, promised them a good deal, gave
them something, lavished all sorts of fine speeches
on them, became their ally and finally got them to
propose a conference on a matter of mutual interest.
They were afraid, and hesitated a long time. But
his protestations were so winning, he handled their
hopes and desires so adroitly, he pretended to be so
gentle and loyal, that they came, with troops in-
deed, and let themselves be conducted, under the
semblance of a sumptuous hospitality, to a palace
which the Duke occupied at Sinigaglia. They en-
tered it on horseback, and the Duke received them
courteously; but, "all having dismounted at the
Duke's lodging, and having entered along with him
into a secret chamber, they were made his prison-
ers.
"The Duke immediately mounted his horse and
ordered the followers of Oliveretto and Orsini to be
Uor M
100
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
plundered. But the Duke's soldiers, not content.
with plundering Oliveretto's followers, began to
sack Sinigaglia, and if the Duke had not repressed
their insolence by slaying a good many of them,
they would have sacked it completely."
The small as well as the great acted like brigands;
force was the universal rule.
"When night came, and the tumult was sup-
pressed, the Duke thought it advisable to have
Vitellozo and Oliveretto killed, and, having them
led to a certain spot he caused them to be strangled.
Vitellozo implored them to entreat the Pope to give
him full absolution for his sins. Oliveretto wept,
casting on Vitellozo the blame of all that had been
done to the Duke. Pagolo and the Duke of
Gravini were allowed to live until the Duke had
heard that the Pope had secured Cardinal Orsino,
Archbishop of Florence, and Messire Jacopo de
Santa-Croce. On receiving the news, the 18th
January, at the castle of La Pieve, they were
strangled in the same manner."
This is simple narrative; but, not content with
stating facts, Machiavelli elsewhere deduces infer
MoU
ART IN ITALY.
101
ences. He writes a book, half real, half imaginary,
in the style of Xenophon's Cyrus, the Life of Cas-
truccio Castracani, whom he presents to the Italians
as the type of an accomplished prince. This Cas-
truccio Castracani, a foundling, had made himself
sovereign of Lucca and Pisa two hundred years be-
fore, and had become sufficiently powerful to
threaten Florence. He had performed "a good
many acts which in their wisdom and integrity
might be regarded as excellent examples," and
"leaving of himself a happy memory, his friends
having regretted him more than any other prince of
his day." Here is one of the admirable acts of this
hero, so beloved and worthy of eternal praise.
The Poggio family having rebelled at Lucca
against him, Stefano Poggio, " an old and peaceable
man," arrested the insurgents and promised to inter-
cede for them. "They then laid down their arms,
as unwisely as they had taken them up." Castruc-
cio returns. "Stefano, thinking that Castruccio was
under obligations to him, went to see him and asked
nothing in his own behalf, not deeming it necessary,
but in behalf of others of his house, urging him to
102
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
A
excuse much on account of youth, and much on ac-
count of old friendship and the obligations that he,
Castruccio, owed to their family. To which Cas-
truccio graciously replied, telling him to be of good
cheer, evincing more gratification in finding the dis
turbance arrested than resentment in learning that
it had broken out. He encouraged Stefano to in-
duce them all to come to him, telling him that he
gave thanks to God for having an opportunity to
show his clemency and generosity. They all came,
accordingly, on faith in the word of Stefano and of
Castruccio, and all of them together, with Stefano,
were made prisoners and put to death."
Machiavelli's other hero is that Cæsar Borgia, the
greatest assassin and most complete traitor of the
century, an accomplished man of his kind, who
always looks upon peace the same as the Hurons
and Iroquois look upon war, that is to say, as a con-
dition in which dissimulation, feint, perfidy and am-
buscade are a right, a duty and an achieveinent.
practiced these on everybody, even on his own fam-
ily, and even on those faithful to him. One day,
wishing to silence the rumors spread about concern-
He
ART IN ITALY.
103
ing his cruelty, he had his governor of the Romagna
seized, Remiro d'Orco, who had rendered him im-
portant services, and to whom he owed the tranquil-
lity of the whole country. And the following day
the citizens saw, with satisfaction and with terror,
Remiro d'Orco lying on the public square in two
pieces with a bloody knife alongside of him. The
Duke ordered it to be proclaimed that he had had
him punished for his too great severity, thus creating
for himself the reputation of a just and good ruler
and a protector of the people. Machiavelli, accord-
ingly, comes to such a conclusion as this:
"Everybody knows how laudable it is for a prince
to keep his word and live with integrity and not
with craftiness. We nevertheless see by experience
in our day that those among princes have accom-
plished great things who have made little account
of their faith and have known how, through crafti-
ness, to turn men's brains and have at last destroyed
those who built upon their loyalty. . A wise
•
seignior cannot or ought not to keep his word when
that is injurious to him, and when the motives that
induced him to give it have disappeared. Besides,
104
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
never did a prince lack legitimate reasons for giving
a color to his bad faith. It is necessary, however,
to give a good coloring to them and to be a com-
petent cheat and dissimulator. . . . And men are
so simple, and so readily obey present necessity that
he who deceives always finds some one who lets him-
self be deceived."
It is evident that such customs and such maxims
have an important bearing on characters. In the first
place the entire absence of justice and of a police,
that license for crime and assassination, that obliga-
tion to avenge oneself without pity and to be feared
in order to exist, that incessant appeal to force,
hardens the soul; man becomes addicted to sudden
and extreme resolutions; he is constrained to know
how to kill or to cause death at any moment.
Again, as he lives in constant and extreme danger
he is absorbed with great anxieties and tragic
passions; he is not diverted by nice discriminations
of sentiment; he is not a calm and curious critic.
The emotions which stir him are grand and simple.
It is not some detail of his observation or a portion
of his fortune which is at stake, but his whole life
ART IN ITALY.
105
and that of those who belong to him. IIe can fall
from the highest to the lowest place, and, like
Remiro, Poggio, Gravina, and Oliveretto, open his
eyes under the knife or the cord of the exccutioner.
Life is tempestuous and the will strained to the
utmost. The spirit is stronger and it has full play.
I would like to collect all these peculiarities, and
no longer present you with an abstraction, but a per-
son in action. There is one whose memoirs we have,
written with his own hand, in a very simple style,
so much the more instructive, and which will place
before your eyes better than any other book the
ways in which contemporaries felt, thought and
acted. Benvenuto Cellini may be considered as an
abridgment in high relief of the violent passions,
the perilous lives, the impulsive and powerful
geniuses, the fertile and dangerous faculties which
produced the Renaissance in Italy and which, in dev-
astating society, produced the arts.
The first thing that strikes us in him is the power
of inward force, the energetic and courageous
character, the vigorous initiative, the habit of
sudden resolve and of extreme measures, the great
106
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
•
capacity of action and of suffering, in short, the in-
domitable force of an intact temperament. Such
was the splendid animal, at once militant and un-
daunted, which the harsh customs of the middle
ages had nourished and which, with us, are softened
by peaceful times and a police of long-standing.
lle was sixteen years of age, and his brother Gio-
vanni was fourteen. One day, Giovanni, having
been insulted by another young man, challenged him
to fight. They betook themselves to the city gate
and fought with swords. Giovanni disarmed his
antagonist, wounded him, and was continuing the
battle when some of the relations of the wounded
man arrived and began to stone him and attack
him with swords, so effectively that he too was
wounded and fell to the ground. Cellini appeared
on the stage, picked up a sword and fell upon the
assailants, avoiding the stones as he best could,
and never leaving his brother a step; he was about
to be overcome when, a few soldiers passing by and
admiring his courage, they took part in the fray and
aided in his deliverance. He then lifted his brother
on his shoulders and carried him home.
ART IN ITALY.
107
You may find a hundred instances of the like
energy. It is a miracle that he was not killed
twenty times over. He always has a sword, or an
arquebus, or a dagger in his hand, in the streets, on
the highways, against personal enemies, disbanded
soldiers, brigands, and all sorts of rivals; he is on
the defensive and, more frequently, he is the attack-
ing party. The most surprising of these traits is
his escape from the Castle of St. Angelo, where he
was imprisoned after a murder. He descends from
this enormous height by means of ropes which he
made out of his bed clothes, encountering a sentinel
whom he frightened with his terribly resolute air
and who pretended not to see him, using a pole to
get across the second inclosure and tying his last
rope and gliding down. But his rope was too short;
he fell and broke his leg below the knee; he then
bound up the leg and, bleeding all the while, crawls
to the city gate; it is shut and he crawls under
it after digging the ground away with his poniard;
dogs assail him, one of which he disembowels and
then, coming across a porter he has himself carried
to the house of an ambassador who was one of his
108
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
friends. He thinks he is safe, as he has the Pope's
safeguard. But he is suddenly again arrested and
put into a foul dungeon, into which light comes
only two hours in the day. The executioner comes
and, moved with pity, spares him that day. After
this they are content to keep him in captivity; the
walls sweat with moisture, his straw rots, his
wounds do not heal. Several months pass in this
way; his strong constitution resists everything. A
body and a soul thus fashioned seem to be of
porphyry or of granite, whilst ours are of clay or of
plaster.
But the resources of his nature are as great in
him as the vigor of his constitution. Nothing is
more pliant and copious than these fresh and
healthy natures. He found an example in his own
family. His father was an architect, a good
draughtsman, an impassioned musician, playing on
the viol and singing only to please himself; he
made admirable wooden organs, harpsichords, viols,
lutes and harps; he worked in ivory, he was skillful
in the construction of machines, he played on the
flute amongst the fifers of the seigniory, he knew a
ART IN ITALY.
109
little Latin and wrote verse. The men of this
epoch are universal. Without mentioning Leonardo
da Vinci, Pic de la Mirandola, Lorenzo de Medici,
Leo Batista Alberti and those of superior genius,
we see business men and traders, monks and artisans
placing themselves, by their tastes and habits, on a
level with the occupations and pleasures which
nowadays seem the peculiar province of the most
cultivated men and of the most delicate organiza-
tion. Cellini was of this number. He had got to
be an excellent flute and cornet player in spite of
himself, disliking these exercises and only devoting
himself to them to please his father. Besides this
he, very early, became an admirable draughtsman,
goldsmith, niello-worker, enameler, sculptor and
founder. He, at the same time, proved himself an
engineer and armorer, a machinist, a builder of
fortifications, loading, manoeuvring and aiming can-
non better than those of the profession. At the
siege of Rome by the Constable Bourbon he makes
great havoc with his bombs in the besieging army.
A capital shot with the arquebus, he kills the Con-
stable with his own hand; he manufactures his own
10
110
TIIE PHILOSOPHY OF
gun
and powder and hits a bird with a ball at two
hundred paces.
His genius was so inventive that
he discovered special processes in all arts and in all
industries, the secret of which he kept and which
excited "the admiration of the whole world." This
is the age of great discovery; all is spontaneous in
it; nothing is done through routine, while such is
the fertility of minds they cannot touch anything
without rendering it fecund.
When man's nature is so vigorous, so richly en-
dowed, so productive, when the faculties play with
such buoyancy and precision, when activity is so con-
stant and so striking, the tone of the soul is ordinarily
an excess of joyousness, an unbounded gaiety and
animation. We find Cellini, for instance, after his
tragic and terrible experiences, setting out on a
journey, and all along the road, he says, "I did
nothing but sing and laugh." This prompt recovery
of spirits is frequent in Italy, and especially in this
age when minds are still simple. "My sister
Liberata," he says, "after having for a while la-
mented her father, her sister, her husband and a
little son she had lost, began to prepare supper; and
ART IN ITALY.
111
during the rest of the evening there was not a word
more spoken of the dead, but the conversation
turned upon all of the most joyous and gay topics
that could be thought of; thus we supped together
in the greatest cheerfulness imaginable.”
The assaults, the attacks on shops, the dangers of
poison and assassination amidst which he lived at
Rome are intermingled constantly with suppers,
masquerades, humorous devices and love scrapes
so frank, so free of any delicacy or concealment
that they resemble the great Venetian and Floren-
tine nudities in contemporary pictures. You can
read of them in the text. Incidents of this kind
are too broad to be exposed in public; but they are
only broad; they are not made worse by low humor
or refinements of obscenity; man becomes jolly
and free in his pleasures as water follows a slope;
healthiness of soul and senses, intact and youthful,
the fire of animal exuberance, bursts out in voluptu-
ousness as in works and actions.
A moral and physical organism of this stamp
naturally evolves the lively imagination which I
have but just now described to you. A man thus
112
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
fashioned does not perceive objects fragmentarily
and through words, as we do, but in mass and by
means of images. His ideas are not sundered,
classed, and cast in abstract formulas like ours; they
leap forth, entire, colored, and alive. While we re-
flect, he sees. Hence he is often visionary. These
full heads, peopled with picturesque images, are al-
ways boiling and tempestuous. Benvenuto has in-
fantile faith; he is as superstitious as the most ignor-
ant peasant. A certain Pierino, who vilified him and
his family, exclaimed in a fit of anger, "If I do not
speak truly may my house fall down on my head!"
A little while after his house, in fact, did fall and he
had a leg broken. Benvenuto does not fail to con-
sider this event as an act of Providence who wished
to punish Pierino for lying. He narrates very se-
riously that, being at Rome, he became acquainted
with a magician who, having conducted him one
night to the Colosseum, cast a certain powder on
burning coals, uttering, at the same time, some mag-
ical words; immediately the entire enclosure ap-
peared filled with devils. He evidently had an
hallucination that day. While in prison his head
ART IN ITALY.
113
ferments; if he does not succumb to his wounds and
the fetid atmosphere it is owing to his mind being
occupied with God. He has long conversations
with his guardian angel; he hopes to see the sun'
again either in a dream or actually, and one day he
finds himself transported to the presence of a mag-
nificent sun from which Christ issues, and afterwards
the Virgin, who make signs of mercy to him, and he
beholds the heavens with the entire court of God.
Imaginings of this kind are frequent in Italy. Af-
ter a life of debauchery and violence, even at the
height of his vices, man suddenly becomes changed.
The Duke of Ferrara "having been attacked with a
grave malady which stopped his secretions for over
forty-eight hours had recourse to God and ordered
all back salaries to be paid." Hercules d'Este, on
leaving an orgie, went to sing divine service with
his company of French musicians; he either put out
an eye or cut off the hand of two hundred and
eighty prisoners before selling them, and on Holy
Thursday he is found washing the feet of the poor.
Pope Alexander, likewise, on learning the assassina-
tion of his son, beat his breast and confessed his
114
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
crimes to the assembled cardinals. The imagina-
tion, instead of working on the side of pleasure,
works on the side of fear, and, through a similar
operation, their intellect receives religious images
as vividly as the sensuous images which assailed
them before.
From this fury and feverishness of the intellect,
from this interior trepidation by which absorbing
and blinding images shake the whole soul and the
whole corporeal machinery, is born a species of
action peculiar to the men of this time. This
action is impetuous and irresistible, aiming directly
and suddenly at what is most extreme, at conflict,
at murder, at bloodshed. There is in the life of
Benvenuto hundreds of examples of these tempests
and thunder gusts. He gets into a dispute with two
rival goldsmiths who begin to disparage him:
"I being a stranger to fear,* little regarded their
Whilst I spoke thus, one Gherardo
Guasconti, a cousin of theirs who was in all proba-
bility set on by them, took the opportunity as a
menaces.
*
English translation of the Life of Benvenuto Cellini by
Thomas Nugent.
ART IN ITALY.
115
beast loaded with bricks happened to pass by to
push it so violently against me that I was very much
hurt; upon which I instantly turned about, and see-
ing him laugh, gave him so violent a blow on the
temple, that he fell down and lay upon the ground
motionless and insensible: then, turning to his
cousins, I said to them, "That is the way I use
cowardly rascals like you!' And as they, confiding
in their number, seemed preparing to take their
revenge, I, in a violent passion, drew a little knife,
and vented my anger in these words: 'If any one of
you offer to quit the shop, let another run for a con-
fessor, as there will be no occasion for a physician.'
This declaration struck such terror into them all,
that not one of them ventured to stir to the assist-
ance of his cousin." Upon this he is summoned
before the tribunal of the Eight, a body of magis-
trates administering justice in Florence, and he is
condemned to a penalty of four measures of meal.
"Inflamed by this treatment and being naturally
of a very passionate temper I waited till the court
was broken up and the magistrates gone to dinner;
finding myself then alone, and that I was no longer
116
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
observed by any of the officers of the court, I left
the place in a violent fury, and went in all haste to
my workshop, where I took up a dagger, and ran to
attack my adversaries. I found them at table, and
young Gherardo, who had been the chief cause of
the quarrel, immediately flew at me. I thereupon
gave him a stab in the breast, which pierced through
his cloak and doublet, without once reaching his skin,
or doing him any sort of harm; imagining, however,
from the rustling of his clothes upon my giving the
stab, and from his falling flat on the ground through
fright and astonishment, that I had done him some
great hurt, I cried out, "Traitors, this is the day
that I shall be revenged upon you all.' The father,
mother, and sisters thinking that the day of judg
ment was come, fell prostrate on their knees, and,
with voices full of terror and consternation, implored.
my protection. Seeing then that none of my adver-
saries stood upon the defensive, and that Gherardo
lay stretched out upon the ground like a corpse, I
scorned to meddle with them, but ran down stairs.
like a madman. When I got into the street I found
the rest of the family who were above a dozen ir
ART IN ITALY.
117
number, ready to attack me; one of them held a
ball of iron, another a thick iron tube, others a
hammer taken from an anvil, and others, again, had
cudgels in their hands. Rushing amongst them like
a mad bull I threw down four or five, and fell to the
ground along with them, now aiming my dagger at
one and now at another."
Always, with him, the action and the blow follow
the thought instantly, as the explosion follows the
flash. The too powerful inward excitement prevents
any reflection, fear, or sentiment of justice; any of
that interference of calculation and reasoning which,
in a civilized brain, or in a phlegmatic temperament,
puts an interval, like some soft fender, between the
first impulse of rage and the final resolution. In an
inn, the uneasy host, and who, doubtless, had reason
for being so, wanted to be paid in advance before
supplying him with some necessary things: "I never
closed my eyes the whole night, my mind being en-
tirely occupied with thinking of a way of avenging
myself. I thought first, that I would set fire to the
house, and then slay the good horses which the inn-
keeper had in his stable. All this seemed to me
118
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
!
easy to carry out, but I did not see that it was
equally easy for my companion and myself to es
cape." He contents himself with cutting and hack-
ing four of the beds with a knife. Another day,
being at Florence, preparing to cast his Perseus, he
is attacked with a fever: the excessive heat and the
length of his watches in superintending the casting,
had so exhausted him that they thought his last
hour had come.
One of his men runs in and cries
out that the casting had failed. "I uttered a yell
so terrible that it might have been heard in the
seventh heaven. I jumped out of bed, took my
clothes and began to dress myself, giving either
kicks or cuffs to the maid-servants or the boys who
came to help me on with them." Another time he
was sick and the physician had forbidden any one to
give him anything to drink; the servant, taking
pity on him, gave him some water. "They told me
afterwards that, on learning this, my poor Felice
was almost ready to drop down dead;" he took a
stick and cudgeled the girl, upbraiding her bitterly
for her treacherous conduct and declaring that she
had been the cause of his death. Servants were as
ART IN ITALY.
119
ready to strike as their masters, and not only with
clubs, but with swords. Benvenuto being in prison
in the castle of St. Angelo, his pupil, Ascanio, meet-
ing a certain Michelle, who made fun of him, was
told by him that Benvenuto was undoubtedly dead.
"He is alive,' retorted Ascanio, ‘but you shall die,'
and thereupon he gave him two blows with his sabre
on his head. The first one stretched him on the
ground while the other, glancing off, cut off three
of the fingers of his right hand." There are an infi-
nite number of similar occurrences. Benvenuto
wounds or kills his pupil Luigi, the courtesan Pen-
thesilea, his enemy Pompeo, innkeepers, seigniors,
brigands, in France, in Italy, everywhere. Let us
take one of these stories and carefully consider the
petty details of the narrative which portrays these
sentiments.
The death of Bertino Aldobrandi, a pupil of Ben-
venuto's brother, and which had just taken place, is
reported to him:
"At this my brother set up a loud howl, which
might be heard ten miles off, and said to Giovanni:
'Alas, unhappy wretch that I am, can you tell me
120
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
which of them it was that killed him?'
Giovanni
made answer that it was one of those who wore
+
a large two-handed sword, with a blue feather in
his hat. My poor brother having come forward
and knowing the person by the mark he had been
told of, fell upon the murderer with great agility
and bravery, and in spite of all resistance ran his
sword through his body, pushing him with the hilt
of it to the ground. He then assailed the rest with
such intrepidity that he alone, and unassisted,
would have put all the guards to flight, had it not
been that, unluckily turning about to discharge his
fury upon a musketeer, the latter, finding himself
obliged to fire in his own defense, hit the valiant
but unfortunate youth just above the knee of the
right leg which brought him to the ground; where-
upon the guards made haste to retreat, lest some
other such formidable champion should fly to his
assistance."
The poor young fellow is carried to Cellini's
house; the treatment not being successful, the sur-
geons of that epoch not being skillful, he dies of
the wound. Cellini hereupon becomes enraged
and his brain swims with ideas:
ART IN ITALY.
121
"My sole distraction was to watch the musketeer
who had killed my brother, as a man eyes a mis-
tress. Perceiving that my solicitude and anx-
ious desire of revenge deprived me of both sleep.
and appetite I prepared to put an end to my tor-
ment, without giving any heed to what was not
laudable in such an undertaking. . . . I, with great
address, came close up to him with a long dagger,
similar to a hunting knife. I hoped to fell him
with a blow behind his head but he turned round so
suddenly the blow only fell on his right shoulder,
fracturing the bone. He got up, dropped his sword
and, writhing with the pain, he took to his heels. I
followed him and in four paces I came up with him,
when raising my dagger above his head, which he
bent down low, I struck him between the collar
bone and the back of his neck, so deeply that, in
spite of every effort, I could not withdraw the
blade."
Complaint, accordingly, is made to the Pope.
But, before going to the palace, he takes care to
execute several exquisite pieces of goldsmith's work.
"When I came into the presence of the pontiff, he
11
122
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
frowned on me very much which caused me to
tremble; but as soon as he saw my work his coun-
tenance began to clear up." Another time, and
after a much less excusable murder, the Pope re-
plies to the friends of the man killed by Cellini:
"You must know that men who are unique in their
art, like Cellini, must not be subjected to the law,
and he less than any other for I know how right he
is." This shows you to what extent the practice of
murder had then taken root in Italy. The sover-
eign of the state, the vicar of God, finds it natural
to do one's self justice, protecting the murderer
through his indifference or his indulgence, through
his partiality or his forgiveness.
Out of this condition of mind and of manners
originate innumerable consequences affecting art.
In the first place the men of this period are obliged
to be interested in one thing with which we are no
longer familiar, because we no longer have it before
us and pay no attention to it, and that is the body,
the muscles and the different attitudes which the
human figure in action presents to us. At this
epoch a man, no matter what his rank might be, is
ART IN ITALY.
123
expected to be a man of arms, to be skilled in the
use of the sword and dagger in his own defense;
consequently, and without being aware of it, he
charges his memory with every form and attitude
of the active or militant body. Count Balthazar
de Castiglione, in describing a polished society,
enumerates the exercises in which a man who is
well brought up should be expert. You will see
that gentlemen of those days have the education
and, consequently, the ideas, not only of a master
of arms, but again of a bull-fighter, of a gymnast,
of a horseman, of a knight-errant.
"I require," says Castiglione, "that our courtier
be a complete horseman, and, as it is a special merit
of Italians to govern the horse with the bridle, to
manœuvre it systematically, especially horses difficult
of control, to run with lances, and to joust, let him
in these matters be an Italian among the best. In
tourneys and passages at arms, and in races within
barriers, let him be one of the good among the best
of the French. In cudgeling, bull-fighting,
casting darts and lances let him excel among the
Spaniards. . . . It is well, again, that he should
124
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
know how to run and to jump. Another noble
exercise is tennis, and I esteem it no slight merit to
know how to leap a horse."
These are not simple maxims confined to conver-
sation or to books; they were put in practice; the
habits of men of the highest rank were in con-
formity with them. Julian de Medici, who was
assassinated by the Pazzi, is lauded by his biog-
rapher, not only for his talent in poetry and his
tact as a connoisseur, but again for his skill in
managing the horse, in wrestling, and in throwing
the lance. Cæsar Borgia, that great assassin and
able politician, possessed hands as vigorous as his
intellect and his will. His portrait shows us the
man of fashion, and his history the diplomatist;
but his private life also shows us the matadore as
we see it in Spain from whence his family came.
"He is twenty-seven years old," says a contempo-
rary; "he has a very handsome figure and the Popc,
his father, is much afraid of him. He has slain six
wild bulls, fighting them on horseback with a
pike, and he split the head of one of these bulls
at a single blow."
ART IN ITALY.
125
Consider men thus educated, with experience in
and taste for all corporeal exercises; they are fully
qualified to comprehend the representation of the
body, that is to say, painting and sculpture; a rear-
ing horse, the curvature of a thigh, an uplifted
arm, the projection of a muscle, every function and
every form of the human body arouse in their minds
inward and pre-existing images. They can be in-
terested in its members, and become connoisseurs
through instinct, without any self-distrust.
In the next place, the absence of justice and of a
police, an aggressive life, and the constant presence
of extreme danger fill the soul with energetic, sim-
ple and grand passions. It is accordingly ready
to appreciate energy, simplicity and grandeur in
attitudes and in figures; for the source of taste
is sympathy, and in order that an expressive object
should please us its expression must be in conform-
ity with our moral condition.
In the last place, and for the same reasons, we
have a deeper sensibility; for it is forced back
within us by the terrible pressure of the various
trials which encircle a human life.
The more a
126
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
man has suffered, dreaded or grieved, the more
delighted he is to expand. The more his soul has
been beset with painful anxieties or with dark
thoughts, the greater his pleasure in the presence of
harmonious and noble beauty. The more he has
strained or bridled himself either for action or for
dissimulation, the more he enjoys when he is able to
give vent to and unbend himself. A calm, bloom-
ing Madonna in his alcove, the shape of a valiant
youth over his dresser, occupies his eye the more
agreeably after tragic preoccupations and funereal
reveries. Pleasant, earnest, complex conversation,
incessantly renewed and varied, does not exist there
for his relief; in the silence in which he shuts him-
self up he discourses inwardly with forms and
colors; while the usual solemnity of his life, the
multitude of his perils and the obstacles in the way
of his expansiveness only contribute to intensifying
and refining the impressions which he derives from
the arts.
Let us try to bring together these diverse traits
of character and consider, on the one hand, a man
of our time, rich and well educated, and on the
}
ART IN ITALY.
127
other, a grand seignior of the year fifteen hundred,
both selected from the class in which you look for
judges. Our contemporary gets up at eight o'clock
in the morning, puts on his dressing-gown, takes
his chocolate, goes into his library, overlooks some
piles of papers if he is a business man, or turns over
the leaves of some fresh publications if he is a man
of society; after this, with his mind filled and at
ease, having taken a few turns on a soft carpet and
breakfasted in a handsome room warmed with a
heater, he goes out to promenade on the boulevard,
smoke his cigar and visit a club to read the news-
papers, and talk about literature, stock quotations,
politics or railroad improvements. When he goes
home, if on foot, an hour after midnight, he knows
that the streets are lined with policemen and that
no accident can well happen to him. His spirit
is perfectly calm and he goes to bed thinking that
to-morrow he will do the same thing over again.
Such is life to-day. What has this man seen in the
way of the body? He has perhaps entered a cold
bath-house and contemplated the grotesque pool in
which every human deformity is plashing about;
128
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
i
perhaps, if he is curious, he has looked two or three
times in his life at the market athletes; and the
most decided thing in the way of the nude that
he has seen, is the common pink fleshings of the
opera house. What experience has he been sub-
jected to in the matter of strong passions? Per-
haps to some cases of wounded vanity or to some
uneasiness about investments; he has made a poor
speculation at the stock exchange or he has not
secured a place he hoped to get; his friends have
reported in society that he was dull; his wife spends
too much money or his son has committed impru-
dences. But the great passions which put his own
life and the life of his kindred in peril, which may
bring his head to the block or in a slipping-noose,
which may precipitate him into a dungeon, lead him
to torture or to execution, he knows nothing of.
He is too tranquil, too well protected, too much.
parceled out into little delicate and pleasing sen-
sations; except the rare chance of a duel, with its
ceremonial and polite accompaniments, he is ig-
norant of the inner state of a man who is about
to kill or be killed. Consider, on the contrary, one
ART IN ITALY.
129
of those grand seigniors of whom I have just
spoken. Oliveretto del Fermo, Alfonso d'Este,
Cæsar Borgia, Lorenzo de Medici, and their gentle-
men, all those who are at the head of affairs. The
first concern in the morning for a Renaissance noble
or cavalier is to strip naked with his fencing master
a dagger in one hand and a sword in the other
Thus do we see him represented in engravings.
What is his life devoted to and what is his prin-
cipal pleasure? It consists of cavalcades, masquer-
ades, entries into cities, mythological pageants,
tourneys, receptions of sovereigns, in which he
figures on horseback magnificently dressed, display-
ing his laces, velvet doublets and gold embroid-
ery, proud of his imposing aspect and of the vig-
orous attitude by which, along with his companions,
he enhances the dignity of his sovereign. On leav-
ing his house for the day he generally has on a full
suit of armor under his doublet; he is obliged to
guard against the dagger strokes and sword thrusts
which may possibly greet him at the corner of the
street. Even in his own palace he is not at ease;
the vast stone recesses, the windows barred with
130
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
*
thick iron, the military solidity of the entire struct
ure indicate a dwelling which, like a cuirass, ha
got to defend its master against sudden surprises.
Such a man, when he is well locked up at home and
sees before him the fine form of a courtesan or of a
Virgin, of a Hercules, of the Eternal grandly draped
or with vigorous development of muscle, is more
capable than a modern of comprehending their
beauty and physical perfection. He will appreciate,
without being educated in a studio, through invol-
untary sympathy, the heroic nudities and terrible
muscularities of Michael Angelo, the health, the
placidity, the pure expression of a Madonna by
Raphael, the natural and hardy vitality of a bronze
by Donatello, the twining, strangely seductive atti-
tude of a figure by da Vinci, the superb animal
voluptuousness, the impetuous movement, the ath-
letic force and joyousness of the figures of Gior-
gione and Titian.
:
VI.
A PICTURESQUE state of mind, that is to say, mid
way between pure ideas and pure images, energetic
characters and passionate habits suited to giving
a knowledge of and taste for beautiful physical
forms, constitute the temporary circumstances which,
added to the innate aptitudes of the race, produced,
in Italy, the great and perfect painting of the hu-
man form. We have, now, only to descend into the
streets, or to enter the studios, and we shall see it
giving itself birth. It is not, as with us, a school
production, an occupation of the critics, a pastime
for the curious, an amateur's mania, an artificial
plant cultivated at great cost, withering in spite of
the compost heaped about it, foreign to the soil and
painfully supported in an atmosphere made for
maintaining the sciences, literatures, manufactures,
policemen and dress-coats; it forms a portion of a
132
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
whole; the cities which cover their town halls and ·
their churches with painted figures, gather around.
it countless tableaux vivants more transient but
more imposing; it is only a summary of these:
The men of this day are amateurs of painting, not
for an hour, for a single moment in their life, but
throughout their life, in their religious ceremonies,
in their national festivities, in their public receptions,
in their avocations and in their amusements.
Let us view them at work. We are only embar-
rassed in our selection. Corporations, cities, princes,
prelates, put their pride and pleasure in picturesque
parades and cavalcades. I select one instance among
twenty. Judge for yourselves of the aspect of
streets and public grounds filled with similar spec-
tacles many times a year:
"Lorenzo de Medici was desirous that the Bron-
coni fraternity, of which he was the chief, should
surpass in magnificence that of the Diamond. He
had recourse to Jacopo Nardi, a noble and learned
Florentine gentleman, who constructed six cars for
him."
"The first car, drawn by two oxen covered with
ART IN ITALY.
133
leaves, represented the age of Saturn and Janus.
Saturn was placed on the top of the car with his
scythe, with Janus holding the keys of the Temple
of Peace. Beneath the feet of these divinities Pon-
tormo had painted Rage in chains and other subjects
relating to Saturn. Accompanying the car were
twelve shepherds clad in marten and ermine skins,
with antique sandals on their feet, bearing baskets
and crowned with garlands of leaves. The horses on
which these shepherds were mounted had for saddles
the skins of lions, tigers and lynxes whose claws were
gilded; the cruppers were of golden cords; the spurs
were shaped in the form of the heads of rams, dogs
and other animals; the bridles consisted of tresses of
silver and of leaves. Each shepherd was followed
by four boys, less richly dressed, holding torches re-
sembling branches of pine.”
"Four oxen, covered with rich stuffs, drew the
second car. From their gilded horns hung garlands
of flowers and chaplets. On the car were placed
Numa Pompilius, the second king of Rome, sur-
rounded by books of religion, all of the sacerdotal
ornaments and the instruments necessary for sacri
134
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
fices. After this came six priests mounted on mag-
nificent mules. Veils decked with ivy leaves em-
broidered with gold covered their heads. Their
robes, imitated from the antique, were fringed with
gold. Some of them held a casket filled with per-
fumes others a golden vase or some other object of
that sort. Alongside of them marched subaltern
ministers bearing antique candelabra."
"On the third car, drawn by horses of great
beauty, and decorated with paintings by Pontormo,
was T. Manlius Torquatus, who was consul after
the first Carthaginian war and whose wise rule
rendered Rome flourishing. This car was preceded
by twelve senators mounted on horses covered with
housings of gold and accompanied with a crowd of
lictors bearing the fasces, and other insignia of
justice."
“Four buffaloes, disguised as clephants, pulled the
fourth car, occupied by Julius Cæsar. Pontormo
had painted the car with the most famous actions
of the conqueror, who was followed by twelve cav-
aliers whose brilliant arms were enriched with gold.
Each of them had a lance supported against his
ART IN ITALY.
135
thigh. Their squires bore torches figuring tro-
phies."
"On the fifth car, drawn by winged horses, in
the shape of griffins, was Cæsar Augustus. Twelve
poets on horseback, crowned with laurels, accompa-
nied the Emperor, whom their works had helped to
immortalize. Each of these wore a scarf on which
his name was inscribed."
"On the sixth car, painted by Pontormo, and
attached to eight heifers richly caparisoned, was
seated the Emperor Trajan. He was preceded by
twelve doctors or jurisconsults on horseback and
clothed in long togas. Scribes, copyists, and re-
corders bore in one hand a torch, and in the other,
books."
(6
Succeeding these six cars came the car, or tri-
umph, of the golden age, painted by Pontormo and
ornamented by Baccio Bandinelli with numerous
figures in relief and, among others, the four car-
dinal virtues. In the middle of this car was an
immense golden globe on which was stretched a
corpse covered with rusty iron armor. From the
flank of this corpse issued an infant, naked and
136
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
gilded, to represent the resurrection of the age of
gold and the end of the age of iron for which
the world was indebted to the exaltation of Leo X.
to the popedom. The dry branch of laurel, whose
leaves were growing green, expressed the same
idea, although many persons pretended that it was
an allusion to Lorenzo de Medici, Duke of Urbino.
I must add that the child which had been gilded
died in a short time from the effects of the opera-
tion which it had undergone to gain ten crowns."
The death of the child is the afterpiece, at once
humorous and mournful, succeeding the main piece.
Dry as this enumeration may be it serves to show
you the picturesque tastes of the time. They were
not merely peculiar to the rich and noble, for the
people possessed them likewise. Lorenzo gave his
fêtes to maintain his ascendency over the people.
There were others which were called carnival Chants
or Triumphs. Lorenzo had enlarged and varied
these; he took part in them himself; he sometimes
sang his own verses and appeared in the first rank
in the sumptuous ceremony. Bear in mind, gentle-
men, that Lorenzo de Medici was at this epoch the
ART IN ITALY.
137
principal banker, the most liberal patron of the fine
arts, the leading manufacturer of the city and, at
the same time, the chief magistrate. He combined
in his person the qualities which, at the present day,
are distributed among the Duke de Luynes, Roths-
child, the Prefect of the Seine, the Presidents re-
spectively of the Academy of the Fine Arts, the
Academy of Inscriptions, the Academy of Political
and Moral Sciences and the French Academy.
Such was the man who, without dreaming of com-
promising his dignity, paraded through the streets
at the head of masquerades. The taste of the time
was so decided and so earnest in this direction that
this zeal, far from rendering him ridiculous, was an
honor to him. Towards nightfall three hundred
cavaliers and three hundred men on foot issued
from his palace with torches and paraded the streets
of Florence until three or four o'clock in the morn-
ing. Amongst them were musical choruses of ten,
twelve and fifteen voices; the little pocms sung
in these masquerades have been printed and form
two large volumes. I shall quote but one of them,
"Bacchus and Ariadne," which was composed by
138
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
him. He is completely pagan in the sentiment of
beauty and in morality. Antique paganism in fact,
with its arts and intellect, then flourished a second
time.
'How beautiful is youth! and yet how fleeting!
Let him be happy who would be for there is no
certainty of the morrow."
"Behold Bacchus and Ariadne, beautiful, and
mutually enamored! While time flies and betrays
us, they live happy together always.”
"These nymphs and their companions, enjoy the
passing hour. Let him be happy who would be for
there is no certainty of the morrow!"
"These sportive satyrs, enamored of the nymphs,
hide and lay in wait for them through the forests
and in the caves; and meanwhile, fired by Bacchus,
they leap and dance. Let him be happy who would
be for there is no certainty of the morrow!"
"Amorous swains and damsels, all hail to Cupid
and Bacchus! Let each tune his pipe and dance
and sing! Let your hearts glow with love's sweet
warmth! Banish all pain and sorrow! Let him
be happy who would be for there is no certainty
of the morrow."
ART IN ITALY.
139
“How beautiful is youth, and yet how fleeting!"
Besides this chorus there were many others, some
sung by the gold-spinners and others by mendicants,
girls, hermits, shoemakers, oil-manufacturers, and
waffle-makers. All the corporations of the city
took part in the festival. The spectacle would ap-
pear about the same to-day if, for several days in
succession, the companies of the Opera, Opera
Comique, the Chatelet and the Cirque Olympique,
should parade our streets, but with this difference,
that, in Florence, the crowd would not be com-
posed of supernumeraries, so many poor fellows.
paid to don a costume that did not suit them.
This festival was given by the city to itself and
it was the city which appeared and drilled itself, in
these performances, happy in self-admiration and
self-contemplation like a beautiful girl offering her-
self to view in all the magnificence of her charms.
Nothing is more efficacious in giving an impulse
to human faculties than such a common enjoyment
of ideas, sentiments and tastes. It has been re-
marked that two conditions are essential for the
production of great works; the first one is the vivac-
\ X
140
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
if
/ity
ity of a spontaneous sentiment, personal and char-
acteristic, expressed according as the feeling arises,
without fear of any restraint or subject to any di-
rection; the second is the presence of sympathetic.
souls, the outward and steady support of kindred
ideas, through which the vague ideas we carry about
with us are gestated, nourished, perfected, multi-
plied and strengthened. This truth is patent every-
where, in religious foundations as in military under-
takings, in literary works as in social amusements.
The soul is like a glowing firebrand; in order to be ef-
fective, it must first burn with its own fire, and next
through the flames of the firebrands which surround
it. Mutual contact keeps them alive, while their
augmented heat spreads the conflagration on all
sides.
Consider those brave little Protestant sects
who, abandoning England, left it to found the
United States of America; they were composed of
men who dared to believe, to feel, to think pro-
foundly, in an original and impassioned manner,
each through a vigorous and peculiar conviction,
and who, when once united, penetrated with the
same sentiments and sustained by the same enthu-
ART IN ITALY.
141
siasm, became capable of colonizing wild territory
and of founding civilized governments.
And so is it even in armies. When, at the end of
the last century, the French armies, so badly organ-
ized, so inexperienced in the art of war, in the hands.
of officers almost as ignorant as the soldiers, met
the drilled battalions of Europe, that which sus-
tained them, that which impelled them on, that
which finally brought them victory, was that spirit
and force of inward belief through which each
soldier considered himself superior to those he had
to contend with and destined to carry truth, reason
and justice against all obstacles to the heart of all
nations; it was also that generous fraternity, that
mutual trust, that community of sympathies and
aspirations by which all, the first as well as the last,
the common soldier as well as the captain and the
general, felt himself devoted to the same cause;
each serving as volunteer, each grasping the situa-
tion, the danger and the necessities, each ready to
correct mistakes, all forming but one soul and but
one will, and surpassing, through native inspiration
as through unconscious agreement, that mechanical
142
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
perfection which tradition, parades, canings and the
Prussian hierarchy had fabricated on the far bank
of the Rhine.
*
Things are not otherwise when art and pleasure
are in question than when it is a question of interest
and of business. People of intelligence are never
more intelligent than when they are all combined
together. To have works of art it is necessary first
to have artists, but also studios. There were stu-
dios in those days and, moreover, artists formed
corporate bodies. All were united, and in the large
community smaller communities existed with their
members closely and voluntarily bound together.
Familiarity brought them together and rivalry
stimulated them. The studio of that time was a
workshop and not, as nowadays, an ostentatious
saloon to provoke commissions. The pupils are
apprentices sharing in the life and fame of the
masters, and not amateurs who consider themselves
free when they have paid for their lesson. A child
at school learned to read and to write, also a little.
spelling; when he got to be twelve or thirteen years.
of age he at once entered the painter's, goldsmith's,
ART IN ITALY.
143
architect's or sculptor's household; the master
usually combined all these pursuits, and the young
man, accordingly, studied under him not merely a
fragment of art but art entire. He worked for him,
he did easy things-the backgrounds of pictures,
small ornamental accessories and figures; he shared
in the success of the masterpiece and was interested
in it the same as in his own work: he was called the
master's creature.* He ate at his table, ran on
errands for him, slept above him in a garret, and
endured the cuffs and scoldings of his wife.t
"I remained," says Rafaello di Montelupo, " from
twelve to fourteen years of age, which makes two
years, with Michael Agnolo Bandinelli, and the
greater portion of the time I blew the bellows for
the work which the master did; sometimes I made
drawings for him. One day it happened that the
master set me to annealing, that is to say, reheating
certain bosses of gold which were being made for
Lorenzo de Medici, Duke of Urbino. He was ham-
mering them on the anvil, and whilst he was ham-
* Il creato.
For instance those of Lucretia, Andrea del Sarto's wife.
144
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
mering one I was heating the other. Stopping a
moment to whisper to one of his friends, and not
having noticed that I had substituted the hot one
for the cold one, he took hold of it and burnt the
two fingers with which he grasped it. Upon which,
yelling and capering about the shop, he tried to
thrash me, while I, getting out of his way here and
there, managed it so as not to be caught. But when
the time came to eat, as I was passing near the door
where the master stood, he seized me by the hair
and gave me several good cuffings."
Such are the ways of associate locksmiths or
masons, rude, frank, gay, and friendly; the pupils
travel with the master, boxing and fencing along-
side of him along the highway. They protect
him from assaults and insults. You are aware of
how the followers of Raphael and Cellini drew the
sword or the dagger for the honor of their houses.
The masters amongst each other are equally
familiar and keep up the same beneficial intimacy.
One of their associations at Florence was called
the Brotherhood or Society of the Paiuolo,* and
* A caldron or pot for boiling meat.
A
ART IN ITALY.
145
was limited to twelve members; the principal ones.
consisted of Andrea del Sarto, Gian Francesco Rus-
tici, Aristote da San Gallo, Domenico Puligo, Fran-
cesco di Pellegrino, the engraver Robetta and the
musician Domenico Bacelli. Each of them had the
privilege of introducing three or four persons.
Each brought a dish of his own invention, and who-
ever coincided with another paid a forfeit. Observe
the vigor and vitality of these spirits, one stimu-
lating the other, and how the arts of design found
place even at a supper. One evening Gian Fran-
cesco selects an enormous cistern for a table and
places his guests within it; then, from the centre
of the cistern issues a tree whose branches present a
dish to each one, while, underneath, are musicians
playing a concert. One of the viands served up
consists of a huge pie, into which is seen "Ulysses
plunging his father for the purpose of making him
young again," the two figures (of Ulysses and
Laertes) being represented by two boiled capons.
made into the forms of men and garnished with all
* Vasari, who gives this account of the supper, is not very
accurate in mythology, taking Ulysses for (Eson, father of Jason.
13
146
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
sorts of things good to eat. "Andrea del Sarto
presented on the same occasion* a temple of eight
sides, resembling the Baptistery of San Giovanni in
form, but raised upon columns. The pavement of
this temple was an enormous dish of jelly, divided
into compartments of various colors to represent
mosaic; the columns which appeared to be of por-
phyry, were very large and thick sausages, the
capitals of the columns being made of Parmesan
cheese, and the cornices of sugar work, while the
pulpit was formed out of sections of marchpane. †
In the centre of the temple was a singing-desk made
of cold veal; the (music) book was formed of vermi-
celli, the letters and musical notes being made of
pepper-corns; the singers standing before the desk
were roasted thrushes and other small birds placed
upright with their beaks wide open, as in the act of
chanting; they wore a sort of shirt resembling the
tunic of the choristers, and this was made of a kind
of network, contrived in the thinnest parts of a
* This description, more extended than the author's, is copied
from Vasari's "Lives of the Painters," Bohn's edition.-Tr.
+ Cake something like German gingerbread.-TR.
ART IN ITALY.
147
caul of hog's lard; behind them stood two very fat
pigeons as contra-bassi, with six ortolans, which
represented the soprani, or trebles. . . . Domenico
Puligo brought a roasted pig but so treated as to
represent a scullery maid watching a brood of
chickens. Spillo, the figure of a tinker made
from a great goose."
•
You can almost hear the shouts of laughter
proceeding from this comic and fantastic humor.
Another society, that of the Trowel, gives masquer-
ades in addition to suppers. The company amuse
themselves with representing at one time Proserpine
and Pluto, at another time, the amours of Venus
and Mars, at other times, the Mandragore of
Machiavelli, the Suppositi of Ariosto, the Calandra
of Cardinal Bibiena.. On another occasion, as the
Trowel is their emblem, the president orders the
members to appear in mason's attire with all the
tools of the craft, and to construct an edifice out of
meat, bread, cakes and sugar. An excess of imagi-
nation thus finds vent in these picturesque junket-
ings. Man here seems like a child, so youthful are
his spirits; he everywhere introduces the corporcal
148
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
forms he loves; he resolves himself into an actor
and mimic, and plays with the art with which he is
overflowing.
Above these superficial societies there were others
of wider scope which combined all artists together in
a single effort. You have just observed in these sup-
pers their gaiety, expansiveness and good fellowship,
a burlesque simplicity and good humor which seems
like that of ordinary workmen; they likewise pos-
sessed the municipal patriotism of workmen. They
speak with pride of their "glorious Florentine
School." According to them there is no other in
which one can learn drawing. "There," says Vasari,
cr come the most accomplished men in the arts, and
especially in painting; since, in this city, there are
three things which stimulate them. The first is
strict and frequent criticism; for the atmosphere of
the country makes minds free by nature which can
not content themselves with simply mediocre works,
and which esteem what is good and beautiful rather
than the name of the author. The second is the
necessity of working for a living, which means that
it is important to be original and judicious, discern
ART IN ITALY.
149
ing and prompt in executing work, in short, to know
how to earn one's living, because the country, being
neither rich nor luxuriant, cannot support people,
like other countries, with little expense. The third,
which is of no less importance than the others, is a
certain eagerness for fame and honor, which the at-
mosphere of the country greatly engenders in men
of every profession, which makes them rebel against
the idea of being the equals, I do not say the inferi-
ors, of those whom they consider as masters, but on
whom they look as men like themselves; an ambi-
tion and emulation so lively which, unless amiable
and wise by nature, makes them ungrateful and de-
famatory." When the honor of the city is at stake,
all concur in well-doing; the competition which leads
each to surpass the other, leads them all to do bet-
ter. When, in 1515, Pope Leo X. came to visit
Florence, his native city, all the artists were con-
voked to receive him magnificently. Twelve tri-
umphal arches were constructed in the city, deco-
rated with statues and paintings; various monuments,
obelisks, columns and groups, similar to those in
Rome, were erected in the intermediate places.
150
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
"On the Piazzi dei Signori, Antonio da San Gallc
erected an octangular temple and Baccio Bandinelli
made a colossal figure for the Loggia. Between the
Abbey and the Palace of the Podestat an arch of
triumph was constructed by Granaccio and Aristo-
tete da San Gallo; and at the corner of the Bischeri
another was erected by Il Rosso whose work was
much admired for the beauty of its order and the
variety of the figures wherewith it was decorated.
But that which was esteemed the most beautiful of
all was the façade erected before the cathedral
church of Santa Maria del Fiore; this was of wood,
so beautifully decorated by Andrea del Sarto that
nothing more admirable could be desired; and as
the architecture of this work was by Jacopo Sanso-
vino, as were likewise certain historical representa-
tions in basso-relievo, with numerous figures of
sculpture in full relief, it was declared by the Pope
to be so fine, that the edifice could not have been
more beautiful had it been of marble. The decora-
tion here described had been invented during his life-
time by Lorenzo de Medici, the father of Pope Leo
X. The same Jacopo also prepared the figure of a
ART IN ITALY.
151
Horse, on the Piazza Novella. It was in imitation
of that at Rome and was considered exceedingly
beautiful. An immense variety of ornaments was
likewise added to the Hall of the Pope in the Via
della Scala, and the full half of that street was also
decorated with very beautiful stones by the hands
of many artists, but the greater part of them de-
signed by Baccio Bandinelli.”*
You see that the sheaf of talents is complete, and
to what height it attains through association. The
city labors to beautify itself; now it is given up
entire to a carnival or to the reception of a prince;
to-morrow, and throughout the year, it will be its
different wards, its corporations, brotherhoods or
convents, each little group, "richer in feeſing than
in money," carried away by its zeal, at once super-
stitious and popular, priding itself in handsomely
decorating its chapel or monastery, its portico and
its public meeting-place, its costumes and tourna-
ment banners, its cars and its insignia for the fête
of St. John. Never was mutual excitement so pow-
* See Life of Andrea del Sarto in Vasari's works for the par-
ticulars of these commissions.
152
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
erful or so universal; never was the temperature
requisite for the growth of the arts of design so
favorable; never has a similar moment and similar
surroundings been seen. The conjunction of cir-
cumstances is unique; a race endowed with a rhyth-
mic and figurative imagination attains to modern.
culture while preserving feudal customs, harmonizes
energetic instincts with refined ideas, uses outward
forms in the process of thinking, and, its genius.
pushed to extreme by the spontaneous, sympathetic,
contagious inspiration of the small free groups
which compose it, discovers the ideal model whose
bodily perfection can alone express the noble pagan-
ism which it, for a moment, revives. All art which
represents the forms of the body depends on this
cluster of conditions. The highest order of painting
depends on this cluster of conditions. According
as one is wanting or undergoes a change so is
the other wanting and affected by the change. The
former did not arise so long as the latter was incom-
plete. It began to weaken when the other began to
disintegrate. It kept pace with the formation, the
greatness, the dismemberment and the ruin of the
ART IN ITALY.
153
latter. This order of painting remained symbolic
and mystic up to the end of the fourteenth century,
under the control of christian theological ideas. It
perpetuated the symbolic and mystic school down
to the middle of the fifteenth century,* during the
long contest between the christian spirit and the
pagan spirit. In the middle of the fifteenth century
its most angelic interpreter is found in a holy spirit
preserved from paganism by the seclusion of the
cloister. It began to be interested in the real and
substantial body during the early years of the fif-
teenth century, and, following in the footsteps of
sculpture, through the discovery of perspective, the
study of anatomy, the perfection of modeling, the
appliance of portraiture and the use of oil, when, at
the same period, the mitigation of warfare, the
pacification of cities, the development of manufact-
ures, the increase of wealth and comforts, the resto-
ration of ancient ideas and literature brought back
* Paro Spinello and the Bicci still painted in the Giotto manner
in 1444.
+ Fra Angelico.
154
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
to the present life eyes hitherto bent on the future,
and substituted for the hope of celestial felicity the
search for terrestrial happiness. It passed over
from exact imitation to creative beauty when, at
the time of Leonardo da Vinci, Michael Angelo,
Lorenzo de Medici and Francesco della Rovere,
superior culture, enlarging the mind and perfecting
ideas, produced a national literature alongside of
the classic restoration and a finished paganism far be-
yond the rudely sketched hellenism. It maintained
itself at Venice half a century later than elsewhere,
in a sort of oasis rescued from the barbarians, in an
independent city where toleration was upheld in
the face of the Pope, patriotism in the face of the
Spaniards and military habits in the face of the
Turks. It became enfeebled in the time of Cor-
reggio, and chilled under the successors of Michael
Angelo when accumulated miseries and invasions
had broken the spring of human will; when a lay
monarchy, the ccclesiastical inquisition and academ-
ical pedantry had regulated and reduced the sap of
native invention; when habits assumed a decorous air
and minds took a sentimental turn; when the painter
ART IN ITALY.
155
who was a simple artisan became a polished cavalier;
when the shop with its apprentices gave way to an
"Academy"; when the bold and free artist, who per-
formed and sculptured his jests in the suppers of the
"Trowel," became a diplomatic courtier convinced
of his own importance, a respecter of etiquette, a de-
fender of rules, and the vain flatterer of prelates and
the great. By this exact and constant correspond-
ence we see that if high art and its surrounding
conditions are contemporary it is not a chance com-
bination, but the second rough draught, developing,
ripening, decaying, and dissolving with itself the
first one, athwart the accidents of the great human
medley and the unforeseen outbursts of individual
originality. It leads or carries away art in its wake
as a temperature more or less cool forms or sup-
presses the dew, as a weaker or stronger light nour-
ishes or blanches the green of a plant. Analogous
customs, which were still more perfect of their kind,
* "The fêtes they gave," says Vasari, "were infinite in num-
ber; but the custom of forming such companies is now aban-
doned." By way of contrast see the lives of Guido, the Caracci,
Lanfranco. Ludivico Caracci was the first who, instead of Mes-
ser, had himself called the Magnifico.
156
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
once produced an analogous and still more perfect
art in the small martial cities and in the noble
gymnasia of ancient Greece. Analogous customs,
but of their kind a little less perfect, produced, in
establishing itself in Spain, in Flanders and even in
France, an analogous art, although altered or per-
verted by the original dispositions of the races
amongst which it is transplanted; and we may come
to this conclusion with certainty that, to bring a
similar art afresh on the world's stage there must be
a lapse of centuries, which will first establish here a
similar milieu.
ART
IN THE

NETHERLANDS
ΤΟ
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS.
PART I-PERMANENT CAUSES.
Two groups of people in European civilization-The Italians
among the Latins.-The Flemish and the Dutch among the
Germans.-National characteristics of Flemish and Dutch
art.....
167
§ I. Race. Contrast between the Latin and Germanic races.—
The Body.-Animal instincts and faculties.-Defects of
the Germanic races.-Advantages of the Germanic races.
-Aptitude for labor and free association.-Love of Truth. 169
§ II. The Nation.-Influence of climate and soil.-Physical
character of the Netherlands.-Formation of the positive
spirit and calmness of character.-Limitations of the phil-
osophic and literary spirit.-Precocious perfection of the
useful arts.- Practical inventions.- Outward life, taste
and customs.
•
191
§ III. Art.- Inferiority of painting among other Germanic
peoples. Causes of its incompleteness in Germany and
England. Excellence of painting in the Netherlands.
Causes of its superiority.-Its characteristics.-In what
respect it is Germanic.-In what respect it is national.-
Predominance of color.-Reason of this predominance.-
Resemblance of the climate of Venice to that of the Nether-
lands. Differences.- Corresponding resemblances and
differences between painters.-Rubens and Rembrandt.... 217
162
SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS.
1
1
PART II.-HISTORIC EPOCHS.
§ I. The Primitive Epoch.-Flanders in the fourteenth cen-
tury.-Energy of character.-Prosperity of the cities.-
Decline of the ascetic and monastic spirit.-Splendor and
sensuality. The Burgundian Court and the Festivities of
Lillo.-Love of the Picturesque.-Resemblances and dif-
ferences between Flanders and Italy.-Maintenance of the
religious and mystic sentiment in Flanders.-Harmony of
character, of art and of society.-Exaltation of this life
and of Christian belief.-Types, relief, landscape, costumes,
subjects, expressions, and sentiment from Hubert Van
Eyck to Quintin Matsys..
§ II. The Second Epoch.-The sixteenth century.-Emanci-
pation of the intellect and Polemics against the clergy.
Picturesque and sensual customs.-Entries and festivities
of the belle-lettre academies.- Gradual transformation
of painting.-Predominance of laic and human subjects.—
Promise of the new art.-Italian models prevalent.-In-
congruity of Italian art with the Flemish mind.-The
ambiguous and unsatisfactory style of the new school.-
Growing influence of the Italian masters from John de
Mabuse to Otto Venius.-Persistency of the indigenous
style and spirit in genre, landscape and portrait art.-The
Revolution of 1572.-Concentration of the nation and of
art......
239
267
§ III. The Third Epoch.-Formation of Belgium.-How it
became Catholic and was conquered.-Rule of the arch-
lukes and restoration of the country.-Revival of the im-
agination and sensuous conception of life. The school
of the seventeenth century.-Rubens.-Analogies and dif-
ferences between that and Italian art.-Its works Catholic
in name, but pagan at bottom.-In what respect national.
-Idea of the living body.-Crayer, Jordaens and Van
Dyck. Change in the political and moral state. Decline
of painting.-End of the picturesque age..
291
SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS.
163
§ IV. The Fourth Epoch.-Formation of Holland. How it
became republican and Protestant.-Development of Prim-
itive Instincts.- Heroism, triumphs and prosperity of
the nation. The revival and freedom of original inven-
tion.-Characteristics of Dutch art in opposition to Italian
and classic art.-Portrait pictures.- Representation of
actual life.-Rembrandt.-His conception of Light, Man
and Divinity.-Commencement of decline towards 1667.—
The war of 1672.-Prolongation of art down to the eigh-
teenth century.-Weakness and degeneracy of Holland.-.
Diminution of active energies.-Decline of national art.-
Temporary survival of the lesser styles.-General corres-
pondence between art and milieu...
317
PART I.
PERMANENT CAUSES.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART IN
THE NETHERLANDS.
DURING the last three years I have explained to
you the history of painting in Italy; this year I
propose to set before you the history of painting in
the Netherlands.
Two groups of mankind have been, and still are,
the principal factors of modern civilization; on the
one hand, the Latin or Latinized people-the Italians,
French, Spanish and Portuguese, and on the other,
the Germanic people-the Belgians, Dutch, Germans,
Danes, Swedes, Norwegians, English, Scotch and
Americans. In the Latin group the Italians are unde-
niably the best artists; in the Germanic group they
are indisputably the Flemings and the Dutch. In
studying, accordingly, the history of art along with
these two races, we are studying the history of mod
érn art with its greatest and most opposite repre
sentatives.
168
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
}
A product so vast and varied, an art enduring
nearly four hundred years, an art enumerating so
many masterpieces and imprinting on all its works
an original and common character, is a national prod
uct; it is consequently intimately associated with
the national life, and is rooted in the national charac-
ter itself. It is a flowering long and deeply matured
through a development of vitality conformably to the
acquired structure and primitive organization of the
plant. According to our method we shall first study
the innate and preliminary history which explains
the outward and final history. I shall first show you
the seed, that is to say the race, with its fundamental
and indelible qualities, those that persist through all
circumstances and in all climates; and next the plant,
that is to say the people itself, with its original qual
ities expanded or contracted, in any case grafted on
and transformed by its surroundings and its his-
tory; and finally the flower, that is to say the art,
and especially painting, in which this development
culminates.
z
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
169
I.
The men who inhabit the Netherlands belong, for
the most part, to that race which invaded the Roman
empire in the fifth century, and which then, for the
first time, claimed its place in broad sunshine along-
side of Latin nations. In certain countries, in Gaul,
Spain and Italy, it simply brought chiefs and a
supplement to the primitive population. In other
countries, as in England and the Netherlands, it drove
out, destroyed and replaced the ancient inhabitants,
its blood, pure, or almost pure, still flowing in the
veins of the men now occupying the same soil.
Throughout the middle ages the Netherlands were
called Low Germany. The Belgic and Dutch lan-
guages are dialects of the German, and, except in
the Walloon district, where a corrupt French is
spoken, they form the popular idiom of the whole
country.
Let us consider the common characteristics of the
Germanic race, and the differences by which it is
opposed to the Latin race. Physically, we have
8
170
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
a whiter and softer skin, generally speaking, blue
eyes, often of a porcelain or pale hue, paler as you
approach the north, and sometimes glassy in Hol-
land; hair of a flaxy blonde, and, with children, al-
most white; the ancient Romans early wondered at
it, and stated that infants in Germany had the hair
of old men. The complexion is of a charming rose,
infinitely delicate among young girls, and lively
and tinged with vermilion among young men, and
sometimes even among the aged; ordinarily, how-
ever, among the laboring classes and in advanced
life I have found it wan, turnip-hued, and in Hol-
land cheese-colored, and mouldy cheese at that.
The body is generally large, but thick-set or burly,
heavy and inelegant. In a similar manner the
features are apt to be irregular, especially in Hol-
land, where they are flabby, with projecting check-
bones and strongly-marked jaws. They lack, in
short, sculptural nobleness and delicacy. You will
rarely find the features regular like the numerous
pretty faces of Toulouse and Bordeaux, or like the
spirited and handsome heads which abound in the
vicinity of Rome and Florence. You will much
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
171
oftener find exaggerated features, incoherent combi-
nations of form and tones, curious fleshy protuberan
ces, so many natural caricatures. Taking them for
works of art, living forms testify to a clumsy and
fantastic hand through their more incorrect and
weaker drawing.
Observe now this body in action, and you will
find its animal faculties and necessities of a grosser
kind than among the Latins; matter and mass seem
to predominate over motion and spirit; it is voracious
and even carnivorous. Compare the appetite of an
Englishman, or even a Hollander, with that of a
Frenchman or an Italian; those among you who
have visited the country can call to mind the public
dinner tables and the quantities of food, especially
meat, tranquilly swallowed several times a day by
a citizen of London, Rotterdam or Antwerp. In
English novels people are always lunching-the most
sentimental heroine, at the end of the third volume,
having consumed an infinite number of buttered muf-
fins, cups of tea, bits of chicken, and sandwiches.
The climate contributes to this; in the fogs of the
north, people could not sustain themselves, like a
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THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
peasant of the Latin race, on a bowl of soup or a
piece of bread flavored with garlic, or on a plate of
macaroni. For the same reason the German is fond
of potent beverages. Tacitus had already remarked
it, and Ludovico Guiccardini, an eye-witness in the
sixteenth century, whom I shall repeatedly quote,
says, in speaking of the Belgians and Hollanders:
"Almost all are addicted to drunkenness, which vice,
with them, is a passion. They fill themselves with
liquor every evening, and even at day-break." At
the present time, in America and in Europe, in most.
of the German countries, intemperance is the national
bane; half of the suicides and mental maladies flow
from it. Even among the reflective and those in
good circumstances the fondness for liquor is very
great in Germany and in England it is not regarded
as disreputable for a well-educated man to rise from
the table partially intoxicated; now and then he be
comes completely drunk. With us, on the contrary,
it is a reproach, in Italy a disgrace, and in Spain,
during the last century, the name of drunkard was an
insult which a duel could not wholly wipe out, provok
ing, as it often did, the dagger. There is nothing of
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
173
this sort in German countries; hence the great num-
ber and frequency of breweries and the innumerable
shops for the retailing of ardent spirits and different
kinds of beer, all bearing witness to the public taste.
Enter, in Amsterdam, one of these little shops, gar-
nished with polished casks, where glass after glass is
swallowed of white, yellow, green and brown brandy,
strengthened with pepper and pimento. Place your-
self at nine o'clock in the evening in a Brussels
brewery, near a dark wooden table around which
the hawkers of crabs, salted rolls and hard-boiled
eggs circulate; observe the people quietly seated
there, each one intent on himself, sometimes in
couples, but generally silent, smoking, eating, and
drinking bumpers of beer which they now and then
warm up with a glass of spirits; you can understand
sympathetically the strong sensation of heat and
animal plenitude which they feel in their speechless.
solitude, in proportion as superabundant solid and
liquid nourishment renews in them the living sub-
stance, and as the whole body partakes in the grati-
fication of the satisfied stomach.
One point more of their exterior remains to be
174
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
shown which especially strikes people of southern
climes, and that is the sluggishness and torpidity of
their impressions and movements. An umbrella-
dealer of Amsterdam, a Toulousian, almost threw
himself into my arms on hearing me speak French,
and for a quarter of an hour I had to listen to the
story of his griefs. To a temperament as lively as
his, the people of this country were intolerable-
“stiff, frigid, with no sensibility or sentiment, dull
and insipid, perfect turnips, sir, perfect turnips!"
And, truly, his cackling and expansiveness formed a
contrast. It seems, on addressing them, as if they
did not quite comprehend you, or that they required
time to set their expressional machinery agoing;
the keeper of a gallery, a houschold servant, stands
gaping at you a minute before answering. In coffee-
houses and in public conveyances the phlegm and
passivity of their features are remarkable; they do
not feel as we do the necessity of moving about
and talking-they remain stationary for hours,
absorbed with their own ideas or with their pipes.
At evening parties in Amsterdam, ladies, bedecked
like shrines, and motionless on their chairs, seem to
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
175
be statues. In Belgium, in Germany and in Eng-
land, the faces of the peasantry seem to us inani-
mate, devitalized or benumbed. A friend, return- .
ing from Berlin, remarked to me, "those people all
have dead eyes." Even the young girls look simple
and drowsy. Many a time have I paused before a
shop-window to contemplate some rosy, placid and
candid face, a mediæval madonna making up the
fashions. It is the very reverse of this in our land
and in Italy, where the grisette's eyes seem to be
gossiping with the chairs for lack of something
better, and where a thought, the moment it is born,
translates itself into gesture. In Germanic lands
the channels of sensation and expression seem to be
obstructed; delicacy, impulsiveness, and readiness
of action appear impossible; a southerner has to
exclaim at their awkwardness and lack of adroit-
ness, and this was the deliberate opinion of our
French in the wars of the Revolution and the
Empire. In this respect the toilette and deportment
afford us the best indications, especially if we take
the middle and lower classes of society.ompare
the grisettes of Rome, Bologna, Paris and Toulouse
1
176
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
with the huge mechanical dolls to be seen at Hamp
ton Court on Sundays, starched and stiff in their
blue scarfs, staring silks and gilded belts, and other
details of a pompous extravagance. I remember at
this moment two fêtes-one at Amsterdam to which
the rich peasant women of Friesland flocked, their
heads decked with a fluted cap and a hat like a cab-
riolet rearing itself convulsively, whilst on the tem-
ples and brow were two gold plates, a gold pediment
and gold corkscrews surrounding a wan and dis-
torted countenance; the other at Fribourg, in Bris-
gau, where, planted on their solid feet, the village
women stood vaguely staring at us and exhibiting
themselves in their national costume-so many black,
red, purple and green skirts, with stiff folds like
those of gothic statues, a swollen corsage front and
rear, massive sleeves puffed out like legs of mutton,
forms girded close under the armpits, dull, yellow
hair twisted into a knot and drawn towards the top
of the head, chignons in a net of gold and silver
embroidery, and above this a man's hat, like an
orange-colored pipe, the heteroclite crown of a body
seemingly hewn out with a cleaver, and vaguely
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
177
suggesting a painted sign-post. In brief, the human
animal of this race is more passive and more gross
than the other. One is tempted to regard him as
inferior on comparing him with the Italian or south-
ern Frenchman, so temperate, so quick intellectually,
who is naturally apt in expression, in chatting and
in pantomine, possessing taste and attaining to
elegance, and who, without effort, like the Proven-
çals of the twelfth, and the Florentines of the four-
teenth century, become cultivated, civilized and
accomplished at the first effort.
We must not confine ourselves to this first glance
which presents only one phase of things; there is
another associated with it, as light accompanies
dark. This finesse, and this precocity, natural to
the Latin families, leads to many bad results. It
is the source of their craving for agreeable sensa-
tions; they are exacting in their comforts; they
demand many and varied pleasures, whether coarse
or refined, an entertaining conversation, the ameni
ties of politeness, the satisfactions of vanity, the
sensualities of love, the delights of novelty and of
accident, the harmonious symmetries of form and
8*
178
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
?
}
of phrase; they readily develope into rhetoricians,
dilettanti, epicureans, voluptuaries, libertines, gal
lants and worldlings. It is indeed through these
vices that their civilization becomes corrupt or ends;
you encounter them in the decline of ancient Greece
and Rome, in Provençe of the twelfth, in Italy of
the sixteenth, in Spain of the seventeenth, and in
France of the eighteenth centuries. Their more
quickly cultivated temperament bears them more
speedily on to subtleties. Coveting keen emotions,
they cannot be happy with moderate ones: they
are like people who, accustomed to eating oranges,
throw away carrots and turnips; and yet it is
carrots and turnips, and other equally insipid vege-
tables, which make up our ordinary diet. It is in
Italy that a noble lady exclaims, on partaking of a
delicious ice-cream, "What a pity there is no sin in
it!" In France a noble lord remarks, speaking of
a diplomatic roué, "Who wouldn't admire him, he is
so wicked!" In other directions their vivacity of
impression and promptness of action render them
improvisators; they are so quickly and so deeply
excited by a crisis as to forget duty and reason,
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
179
resorting to daggers in Italy and Spain, and to pis-
tols in France; showing by this that they are only
moderately capable of biding their time, of self-sub-
ordination, and of maintaining order. Success in
life depends on knowing how to be patient, how to
endure drudgery, how to unmake and remake, how
to recommence and continue without allowing the
tide of anger or the flight of the imagination to
arrest or divert the daily effort. In fine, if we com-
pare their faculties with the world as it runs, it is
too mechanical, too rude, and too monotonous for
them, and they too lively, too delicate, and too
brilliant for it. Always after the lapse of centuries
this discord shows itself in their civilization; they
demand too much of things, and, through their mis-
conduct, fail even to reach that which things might
confer on them.
Suppress, now, these fortunate endowments, and,
on the dark side, these mischievous tendencies,-im-
agine on the slow and substantial body of the Ger-
man a well-organized brain, a sound mind, and trace
the effects. With less lively impressions a man thus
fashioned will be more collected and more thought-
180
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
ful; less solicitous of agreeable emotions, he can, with
out weariness, do disagreeable things. His senses
being blunter, he prefers depth to form, and truth
within to show without. As he is less impulsive he
is less subject to impatience and to unreasonable out-
bursts; he has an idea of sequence, and can persist
in enterprises the issue of which is of long achieve-
ment. Finally, with him the understanding is the
better master, because outward temptations are
weaker and inward explosions rarer; reason governs
better where there is less inward rebellion and less
outward attack. Consider, in effect, the Germanic
people of the present day and throughout history.
They are, primarily, the great laborers of the world;
in matters of intellect none equal them; in erudition,
in philosophy, in the most crabbed linguistic studies,
in voluminous editions, dictionaries and other compi
lations, in researches of the laboratory, in all science,
in short, whatever stern and hard, but necessary and
preparatory work there is to be done, that is their
province; patiently, and with most commendable
self-sacrifice they hew out every stone that enters into
the edifice of modern times. In material matters the
;
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
181
English, Americans and Dutch perform the same ser-
vice. I should like to show you an English spinner
or cloth-dresser at work; he is a perfect automaton,
occupied day in and day out without a moment's
relaxation, and the tenth hour as well as the first.
If he is in a workshop with French workmen, these
form a striking contrast; they are unable to adapt
themselves to the same mechanical regularity; they
are sooner tired and inattentive, and thus produce
less at the end of the day; instead of eighteen hun-
dred spools, they only turn out twelve hundred.
The farther south you go the less the capacity. A
Provençal or Italian must gossip, sing and dance;
he is a willing lounger, and lives as he can, and in
this way easily contents himself with a threadbare
Indolence there seems natural and honorable.
A noble life, the laziness of the man who, to save his
honor, lives on expedients, and sometimes fasts, has
been the curse of Spain and Italy for the last two
hundred years. On the other hand, in the same
epoch, the Fleming, the Hollander, the Englishman
and the German have gloried in providing them ^lves
with all useful things; the instinctive repugace
coat.
182
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
which leads an ordinary man to shun trouble, the
puerile vanity which leads the cultivated man to dis-
tinguish himself from the artizan, disappear alongside
of their good sense and reason.
This same reason and this same good sense estab-
lish and maintain amongst them diverse descriptions
of social engagements, and first, the conjugal bond.
You are aware that among the Latin families this is
not over respected; in Italy, Spain and France
adultery is always the principal subject of the play
and the romance; at all events, literature in these
lands always incarnates passion in the hero, and is
prodigal of sympathy for him by granting him all
privileges. In England, on the contrary, the novel
is a picture of loyal affection and the laudation of
wedlock; in Germany, gallantry is not honorable,
even among students. In Latin countries it is
excused or accepted, and even sometimes approved
of. The matrimonial yoke, and the monotony of the
household, there seem galling. Sensational allure-
ments penetrate too deeply; the caprices of the
imagination there are too brusque; the mind creates
for self visions of transports and of ecstatic
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
183
delight, or at least a romance of exciting and
varied sensuality, and at the first opportunity the
suppressed flood bursts forth, carrying with it every
barrier of duty and of law. Consider Spain, Italy
and France in the sixteenth century; read the tales
of Bandello, the comedies of Lope de Vega, the nar-
ratives of Brantôme, and listen for a moment to the
comment of Guiccardini, a contemporary, on the
social habits of the Netherlands. "They hold
adultery in horror... Their women are extremely
circumspect, and are consequently allowed much
freedom. They go out alone to make visits, and
even journeys without evil report; they are able to
take care of themselves. Moreover they are house-
keepers, and love their households." Only very
lately, again, a wealthy and noble Hollander named
to me several young ladies belonging to his family
who had no desire to see the Great Exposition, and
who remained at home whilst their husbands and
brothers visited Paris. A disposition so calm and
so sedentary diffuses much happiness throughout
domestic life; in the repose of curiosity and of de-
sire the ascendancy of pure ideas is much greater;
134
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
the constant presence of the same person not being
wearisome, the memory of plighted faith, the senti-
ment of duty and of self-respect easily prevails
against temptations which elsewhere triumph be-
cause they are elsewhere more powerful. I can say
as much of other descriptions of association, and es-
pecially of the free assemblage. This, practically, is
a very difficult thing. To make the machine work
regularly, without obstruction, those who compose
it must have calm nerves and be governed by the
end in view. One is expected to be patient in a
'meeting,' to allow himself to be contradicted and
even vilified, await his turn for speaking, reply
with moderation, and submit twenty times in suc-
cession to the same argument enlivened with figures
and documentary facts. It will not answer to fling
aside the newspaper the moment its political interest
flags, nor take up politics for the pleasure of discus-
sion and speech-making, nor excite insurrections
against officials the moment they become distasteful,
which is the fashion in Spain and elsewhere. You
yourselves have some knowledge of a country where
the government has been overthrown because in
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
185
active and because the nation felt ennui. Among
Germanic populations, people meet together not to
talk but to act; politics is a matter to be wisely
managed, they bring to bear on it the spirit of busi-
ness; speech is simply a means, while the effect,
however remote, is the end in view. They subor-
dinate themselves to this end, and are full of defer-
ence for the persons who represent it. How unique!
Here the governed respect the governing; if the
latter prove objectionable they are resisted, but
legally and patiently; if institutions prove defective,
they are gradually reformed without being dis-
rupted. Germanic countries are the patrimony of
free parliamentary rule. You see it established to-
day in Sweden, in Norway, in England, in Belgium,
in Holland, in Prussia, and even in Austria; the
colonists engaged in clearing Australia and the
West of America, plant it in their soil, and, how-
ever rude the new-comers may be, it prospers at
once, and is maintained without difficulty. We find
it at the outset in Belgium and Holland; the old
citics of the Netherlands were republics, and so
maintained themselves throughout the middle ages
186
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
in spite of their feudal suzerains. Free communities
arose, and maintained themselves without effort, at
once, the small as well as the great, and in the great
whole. In the sixteenth century we find in each
city, and even in small towns, companies of arquebu-
siers and rhetoricians, of which more than two hun-
dred have been enumerated. In Belgium to-day
there still flourish an infinity of similar corporations,
societies of archers, of musicians, of pigeon fanciers,
and for singing birds. In Holland volunteer asso-
ciations of private individuals minister to every
requirement of public charity. To act in a body, no
one person oppressing another, is a wholly Germanic
talent, and one which gives them such an empire
over matter; through patience and reflection they
conform to the laws of physical and human nature,
and instead of opposing them profit by them.
If, now, from action we turn to speculation, that
is to say to the mode of conceiving and figuring
the world, we shall find the same imprint of this
thoughtful and slightly sensualistic genius. The
Latins show a decided taste for the external and
decorative aspect of things, for a pompous display
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
187
Their
feeding the senses and vanity, for logical order, out-
ward symmetry and pleasing arrangement, in short,
for form. The Germanic people, on the contrary,
have rather inclined to the inward order of things,
to truth itself, in fact, to the fundamental.
instinct leads them to avoid being seduced by
appearances, to remove mystery, to seize the hidden,
even when repugnant and sorrowful, and not to
eliminate or withhold any detail, even when vulgar
and unsightly. Among the many products of this
instinct there are two which place it in full light
through the strongly marked contrast in each of
form and substance, and these are literature and
religion. The literatures of Latin populations are
classic and nearly or remotely allied to Greek poesy,
Roman eloquence, the Italian renaissance, and the
age of Louis XIV.; they refine and ennoble, they
embellish and prune, they systematize and give pro-
portion. Their latest masterpiece is the drama of
Racine, who is the painter of princely ways, court
proprieties, social paragons, and cultivated natures;
the master of an oratorical style, skilful composi-
tion and literary elegance. The Germanic litera
188
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
T
tures, on the contrary, are romantic; their primitive
source is the Edda and the ancient sagas of the
north; their greatest masterpiece is the drama of
Shakespeare, that is to say the crude and complete.
representation of actual life, with all its atrocious,
ignoble and common-place details, its sublime and
brutal instincts, the entire outgrowth of human
character displayed before us, now in a familiar
style bordering on the trivial, and now poetic even
to lyricism, always independent of rule, incoherent,
excessive, but of an incomparable force, and filling
our souls with the warm and palpitating passion of
which it is the outcry. In a similar manner take
religion, and view it at the critical moment when the
people of Europe had to choose their faith, that is to
say in the sixteenth century; those who have
studied original documents know what this at that
time meant; what secret preferences kept some in
the ancient faith and led others to take the new one.
All Latin populations, up to the last, remained
Catholic; they were not willing to renounce their
intellectual habits; they remained faithful to tradi-
tion; they continued subject to authority; they
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
189
were affected through sensuous externalities—the
pomp of worship, the imposing system of the Catho-
'ic hierarchy, the majestic conception of Catholic
unity and Catholic perpetuity; they attached abso-
lute importance to the rites, outward works and visi-
ble acts through which piety is manifested. Almost
all the Germanic nations, on the contrary, became
Protestants. If Belgium, which inclined to the
Reformation, escaped, it was owing to force through
the successes of Farnese, the destruction and flight
of so many Protestant families, and to a special
moral crisis which you will find in the history of
Rubens. All other Germanic peoples subordinated ✓
outward to inward worship. They made salvation
to consist of a renewal of the heart and of religious
sentiment; they made the formal authority of the
Church yield to personal convictions; through this
predominance of the fundamental form became acces-
sory, worship, daily life and rites being modified in
the same degree. We shall soon see that in the
arts the same opposition of instincts produced an
analogous contrast of taste and style. Meanwhile
let it suffice for us to seize the cardinal points which
190
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
distinguish the two races. If the latter, compared
with the former, presents a less sculpturesque form,
grosser appetites and a more torpid temperament,
it furnishes through tranquillity of nerve and cool-
ness of blood a stronger hold on pure reason; its
mind, less diverted from the right road by delight
in sensous attractions, the impetuosities of impulse
and the illusions of external beauty, is better able to
accommodate itself now to comprehend things and
now to direct them.
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
191
II.
This race, thus endowed, has received various im
prints, according to the various conditions of its
abiding-place. Sow a number of seeds of the same
vegetable species in different soils, under various
temperatures, and let them germinate, grow, bear
fruit and reproduce themselves indefinitely, each on
its own soil, and each will adapt itself to its soil,
producing several varieties of the same species sc
much the more distinct as the contrast is greater
between the diverse climates. Such is the experience
of the Germanic race in the Netherlands. Ten cen-
turies of habitation have done their work; the end
of the middle ages shows us that, in addition to its
innate character, there is an acquired character.
It becomes necessary, therefore, to study the soil
and the sky; in default of travel take the next best
thing, a map. Excepting the mountainous district
to the south-east, the Netherlands consist of a watery
plain, formed out of the deposits of three large rivers
-the Rhine, the Meuse and the Scheldt, besides sev
192
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
eral smaller streams. Add to this numerous inlets,
ponds and marshes. The country is an outflow of
mighty waters, which, as they reach it, become slug-
gish and remain stagnant for want of a fall. Dig a
hole anywhere and water comes. Examine the land-
scapes of Van der Neer and you will obtain some idea
of the vast sluggish streams which, on approaching
the sea, become a league wide, and lie asleep, wal-
lowing in their beds like some huge, flat, slimy fish,
turbid and feebly glimmering with scaly reflections.
The plain is oftentimes below their level, and is only
protected by levées of earth. You feel as if some of
them were going to give way; a mist is constantly
rising from their surfaces, and at night a dense fog
envelopes all things in a bluish humidity. Follow
them down to the sea, and here a second and more
violent inundation, arising from the daily tides, com-
pletes the work of the first. The northern ocean is
hostile to man. Look at the "Estacade" of Ruysdael,
and imagine the frequent tempests casting up ruddy
waves and monstrous foaming billows on the low, flat
band of earth already half submerged by the enlarge-
ment of the rivers. A belt of islands, some of them
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
193
equal to the half of a department, indicates, along
the coast, this choking up of inland currents and the
assaults of the sea-Walcheren, North and South
Beveland, Tholen, Schouwen, Voorn, Beierland, Texel,
Vlieland and others. Sometimes the ocean runs up
and forms inner seas like that of Harlem, or deep
gulfs like the Zuyder Zee. If Belgium is an alluvial
expanse, formed by the rivers, Holland is simply a
deposit of mud surrounded by water. Add to all
this an unpropitious soil and a rigorous climate,
and you are tempted to conclude that the coun-
try was not made for man but for storks and
beavers.
When the first Germanic tribes came to encamp
here it was still worse. In the time of Cæsar and
Strabo there was nothing but a swampy forest;
travellers narrate that one could pass from tree to
tree over all Holland without touching the ground.
The uprooted oaks falling into the streams formed
rafts, as nowadays on the Mississippi, and barred
the way to the Roman flotillas. The Waal, the
Meuse and the Scheldt annually overflowed their
banks, the water covering the flat country around to
9
194
ร
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
a great distance. Autumnal tempests every year
submerged the island of Batavia, while in Holland
the line of the coast changed constantly. Rain fell
incessantly, and the fog was as impenetrable as in
Russian America; daylight lasted only three or four
hours. A solid coating of ice annually covered the
Rhine. Civilization, meanwhile, as the soil became
cleared, tempered the climate; the rude Holland of
that day possessed the climate of Norway. Flanders,
four centuries after the invasion, was still called "the
interminable and merciless forest." In 1197 the
country about Waes, now a garden, remained untilled,
the monks on it being besieged by wolves. In the four-
teenth century droves of wild horses roamed through
the forests of Holland. The sea encroached on the
land. Ghent was a seaport in the ninth century,
Thorout, St. Omer and Bruges in the twelfth century,
Damme in the thirteenth, and Ecloo in the fourteenth.
On looking at the Holland of old maps we no
longer recognize it.* Still, at the present day its
inhabitants are obliged to guard the soil against the
*Michiels, "IIistoire de la Peinture Flamande." Vol. I., p. 230; and
Schayes' Les Pays-Bas-avant et pendant la domination Romaine.”
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
195
rivers and the sea. In Belgium the margin of the
sea is below the level of the water at high tide, the
polders or low spots thus reclaimed displaying vast
argillaceous flats, with a slimy soil tinged with purple
reflections, between dykes, which, even in our days,
sometimes break away. The danger in Holland is
still greater, life there seeming to be very precarious.
For thirteen centuries a great inundation has taken
place, on an average, every seven years, besides
smaller ones; one hundred thousand persons were
drowned in 1230, eighty thousand in 1287, twenty
thousand in 1470, thirty thousand in 1570, and twelve
thousand in 1717. Similar disasters occurred in 1776,
in 1808, and still later in 1825. Dollart Bay, about
seven miles wide by twenty deep, and the Zuyder
Zee, forty-four leagues square, are invasions of the
sea in the thirteenth century. In order to protect
Friesland it was necessary to drive three rows of
piles a distance of twenty-two leagues, each pile cost-
ing seven florins. To protect the coast of Harlem
they had to build a dyke of Norway granite five
miles long by forty feet in height, and which is
buried two hundred feet beneath the waves. Am
196
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
sterdam, which has two hundred and sixty thousand
inhabitants, is entirely built on piles, frequently
thirty feet long. The foundations of every town and
village in Friesland are artificial constructions. It
is estimated that seven and a half billions of francs
have been expended on protective works between the
Scheldt and the Dollart. Life has to be purchased
in Holland. And when from Harlem or Amsterdam
you see the enormous yellow surf beating against
that narrow strip of mud, and enclosing it as far as
the eye can reach, it is evident that man, in casting
this sop to the monster, obtains safety at a low rate.*
Imagine, now, on this quagmire, the ancient Ger-
manic tribes, so many fishers and hunters roaming
about in hide boats and clad in seal-skin tunics, and
estimate if you can the effort those barbarians were
forced to make in order to create a habitable soil
and transform themselves into a civilized people.
Men of another stamp would not have succeeded;
the milieu was too unfavorable. In analogous con-
ditions the inferior races of Canada and Russian
See Alphonse Esquiros' "La Néerlande et la Vie Neérlandaise.
2 vols.
99
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
197
America have remained savage; other well-endowed
races, the Celts of Ireland and the Highland Scotch,
attained only to a chivalric standard of society and
poetic legends. Here there had to be good, sound
heads, a capacity to subject sensation to thought, to
patiently endure ennui and fatigue, to accept priva-
tion and labor in view of a remote end, in short a
Germanic race, meaning by this men organized to
co-operate together, to toil, to struggle, to begin
over and over again and ameliorate unceasingly, to
dike streams, to oppose tides, to drain the soil, to
turn wind, water, flats, and argillaceous mud to
account, to build canals, ships and mills, to make
brick, raise cattle, and organize various manufac-
turing and commercial enterprises. The difficulty
being very great the mind was absorbed in over-
coming it, and, turned wholly in this direction,
was diverted from other things. To subsist, to
obtain shelter, food and raiment, to protect them-
selves against cold and damp, to accumulate stores
and lay up wealth left the settlers no time to think
of other matters; the mind got to be wholly positive
and practical. It is impossible in such a country to
193
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
indulge in revery, to philosophize German fashion,
to stray off amidst chimeras of the fancy and
through the world of metaphysical systems.* One
is immediately brought back to the earth. The
necessity of action is too universal, too urgent, too
constant; if people think at all, it is to act. Under
this steady pressure the character forms; that which
was habit becomes instinct; the form acquired by
the parent is found hereditary in the child; laborer,
artisan, trader, factor, householder, man of common
sense and nothing more, he is by birth and without
effort what his ancestors got to be through necessity
and constraint.f
This positive spirit, moreover, is found to be tran
quillized. Compared with other nations of the same
stock and with a genius no less practical, the denizen
of the Netherlands appears better balanced and more
capable of being content. We do not see in him the
violent passions, the militant disposition, the over-
strained will, the bull-dog instincts, the sombre and
* Alfred Michiels' "Histoire de la Peinture," Vol. I., p. 238. This
volume contains a number of general views all deserving of attention.
+ Prosper Lucas' "De l'Hérédité," and Darwin's "Origin of Species.'
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
199
grandiose pride which three permanent conquests and
the secular establishment of political strife have im-
planted in the English; nor that restless and exag-
gerated desire for action which a dry atmosphere,
sudden changes from heat to cold, a surplus elec-
tricity, have implanted in the Americans of the
United States. He lives in a moist and equable
climate, one which relaxes the nerves and developes
the lymphatic temperament, which moderates the
insurrections, explosions and impetuosity of the spirit,
soothing the asperities of passion and diverting the
character to the side of sensuality and good humor.
You have already observed this effect of climate in
our comparisons of the genius and the art of the
Venetians with those of the Florentines. Here,
moreover, events come to the aid of climate, history
laboring in the same direction as physiology. The
natives of these countries have not undergone, like
their neighbors over the channel, two or three inva-
sions, the overrunning of an entire people, Saxons,
Danes and Normans installed on their premises;
they have not garnered a heritage of hatred which
oppression, resistance, rancor, prolonged struggle,
200
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
warfare at first open and violent, and afterwards
subdued and legal-transmit from one generation to
another. From the earliest times down we find them
engaged, as in the age of Pliny, in making salt,
"combined together, according to ancient usage, in
bringing under cultivation marshy grounds,"* free in
their guilds, asserting their independence, claiming
their rights and immemorial privileges, devoted to
whaling, trade and manufacturing, calling their towns
ports, in brief, as Guiccardini describes them in the
sixteenth century, " very desirous of gain and watch-
ful of profit, but without anything feverish or irra-
tional in their desire to provide for themselves.
They are by nature cool and self-possessed. They
delight in wealth and other worldly things prudently
and as occasion offers, and are not easily disturbed,
which is at once apparent both in their discourse and
in their physiognomies. They are not prone to anger
or to pride, but live together on good terms, and are
especially of a gay and lively humor." According to
him they entertain no vast and overweening ambi-
* Moke's "Mœurs et Usages des Belges," pp. 111, 113. A capitulary
of the ninth century.
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
201
tion; many of them retire from business carly, amus-
ing themselves with building, and taking life easily
and pleasantly. All circumstances, moral and phys
ical, their geographical and political state, the past
and the present, combine to one end, namely, the
development of one faculty and one tendency at the
expense of the rest, shrewd management and tem-
perate emotions, a practical understanding and lim-
ited desires; they comprehend the amelioration of
outward things, and, this accomplished, they crave.
no more.
Consider, in effect, their work; its perfection and
lacunæ indicate at once the limits and the power of
their intellect. The profound philosophy which is so
natural in Germany, and the elevated poetry which
flourishes in England, they lack. They fail to over-
look material things and positive interests in order
to yield to pure speculation, to follow the temerities
of logic, to attenuate the delicacy of analysis, and
bury themselves in the depths of abstraction. They
ignore that spiritual turmoil, those eruptions of
suppressed feeling which give to style a tragic
accent, and that vagabond fancy, those exquisite
9*
202
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
and sublime reveries which outside of life's vulgari
ties reveal a new universe. They can boast of no
great philosopher; their Spinoza is a Jew, a pupil
of Descartes and the rabbis, an isolated recluse of a
different genius and a different race. None of their
books have become European like those of Burns
and Camoens, who, nevertheless, were born out of
nations equally small. One only of their authors
has been read by every man of his epoch, Erasmus,
a refined writer but who wrote in Latin, and who,
in education, taste, style and ideas belongs to the
erudites and humanists of Italy. The old Dutch
poets, as for example, Jacob Cats, are grave, sensi-
ble, somewhat tedious moralists, who laud home en-
joyments and the life of the family. The Flemish
poets of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries tell
their auditors that they do not recount chivalric
fables-but veritable histories, their poesy ending in
practical maxins and contemporary events. In vain
do their belle-lettre academies cultivate and make
poetry prominent, there being no talent to produce
out of such resources any great or beautiful perfor-
Chroniclers arise like Châtelain, and pam
mance.
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
203
phleteers like Marnix de Sainte-Aldegonde, but their
unctuous narratives are inflated; their overcharged
eloquence, coarse and crude, recalls, without equal
ling it, the rude color and vigorous grossness of their
national art. They have scarcely any literature at
the present day. Their only novelist, Conscience,
seems to us, although a tolerable observer, dull and
unrefined. If we visit their country and read their
journals, those at least not got up in Paris, we seem
to have fallen upon the provinces, and even lower.
Polemical discussions are gross, the flowers of rheto-
ric stale, humor rudely indulged, and wit pointless;
a coarse joviality and a coarse anger supply the
material; their very caricatures seem to us stupid.
If we attempt to ascertain their contributions to
the great edifice of modern thought we find that
patiently and methodically, like honest and faithful
workmen, they have hewn out a few blocks. They
can point to a learned school of philologists at
Leyden, to jurisprudential authorities like Grotius,
to naturalists and physicians like Leeuvenhoeck,
Swammerdam and Boerhaave, to physicists like
Huyghens, and to cosmographers like Ortelius and
204
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
Mercator, in short, to a contingent of specialist
and useful men, but to no creative intellect dis-
closing to the world grand original ideas or enshrin-
ing original conceptions in beautiful forms capable
of universal ascendancy. They have left to neigh-
boring nations the part filled by the contemplative
Mary at the feet of Jesus, choosing for themselves
that of Martha; in the seventeenth century they
provided pulpits for the Protestant erudites exiled.
from France, a country for free thought persecuted
throughout Europe, and editors for all books of
science and polemics; at a later period they fur-
nished printers for the whole of our eighteenth
century philosophy, and finally booksellers, brokers
and counterfeiters for the entire literature of mod-
ern times. All this is of service to them for they
are versed in languages, and read and are in-
structed, instruction being an acquisition and some-
thing which it is good to lay up like other things.
But there they stop, and neither their ancient nor
their modern works show any need of or faculty for
contemplating the abstract beyond the apparent
world and the imaginary world outside of reality.
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
205
وو
"First
On the contrary they have always excelled and
they still excel in the arts called useful.
among transalpine people," says Guiccardini, "they
invented woolen fabrics." Up to 1404 they alone
were capable of weaving and manufacturing them.
England supplied them with the raw material, the
English doing no more than raise and shear the
sheep. At the end of the sixteenth century, an
unique thing in Europe, "almost everybody, even
the peasantry, could read and write; a great many
even acquired the principles of grammar.' We
find, accordingly, belle-lettre academies, that is to
say associations for oratory and dramatic representa-
tions, even in the small towns. This indicates the
degree of perfection to which they brought their
civilization. They have," says Guiccardini, a
special and happy talent for the ready invention of
all sorts of machines, ingenious and suitable for
facilitating, shortening and dispatching everything
they do, even in the matter of cooking." They,
indeed, with the Italians, are the first in Europe tc
attain to prosperity, wealth, security, liberty, com
fort, and all other benefits which seem to us the
(6
(6
200
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
paraphernalia of modern times. In the thirteenth
century Bruges was equal to Venice; in the six-
teenth century Antwerp was the industrial and com-
mercial capital of the North. Guiccardini never
wearies in praising it, and he only saw it when it
was in full decline, reconquered by the Duke of
Parma after the terrible siege of 1585. In the sev-
enteenth century Holland, remaining free, occupies
for a century the place which England now holds in
the world of to-day. It is in vain for Flanders to
fall back into Spanish hands, to be ravaged by the
wars of Louis XIV., to be surrendered to Austria, to
serve as a battle-ground for the wars of the Revo-
lution; she never descends to the level of Spain or
Italy; the partial prosperity she maintains through-
out the miseries of repeated invasion and under a
bungling despotism shows the energy of her inspir-
ing good sense and the fecundity of her assiduous
labor.
Of all the countries of Europe at the present day
Belgium is the one which with an equal area sup-
ports the most inhabitants; she feeds twice as many
as France; the most populous of our departments,
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
207
that of the North, is a portion which Louis XIV
detached from her. Towards Lille and Douai you
already see spread out in an indefinable circle, ex.
tending up to the horizon, this great kitchen garden,
a deep and fertile soil diapered with pale grain
sheaves, poppy-fields, and the large-leaved beet, and
richly stimulated by a low, warm sky swimming with
vapor. Between Brussels and Malines begins the
broad prairie, here and there striped with rows of
poplars, intersected with water-courses and fences
where cattle browse throughout the year, an inex-
haustible storehouse of hay, milk, cheese and meat.
In the environs of Ghent and Bruges, the land of
Waes, "the classic soil of agriculture," is nourished
by fertilizers gathered in all countries, and by barn-
yard manure brought from Zealand. Holland, in like
manner, is simply a pasturage, a natural tillage,
which, instead of exhausting the soil, renews it, pro-
viding its cultivators with the amplest crops, and
affording to the consumer the most strengthening
aliments. In Holland, at Buicksloot, there are mil-
lionaire cow-herds, the Netherlands ever seeming
to the stranger to be a land of feasting and good
208
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
cheer. If you turn from agricultural to industrial
results, you will everywhere encounter the same art
of utilizing and making the best of things. Obsta-
cles with them are transformed into aids. The soil
was flat and soaked with water; they took advan-
tage of it to cover it with canals and railroads, no
place in Europe presenting so many channels of com-
munication and of transport. They were in want of
fuel; they dug down into the bowels of the earth,
the coal-pits of Belgium being as rich as those of
England. The rivers annoyed them with their inun-
dations and inland pools deprived them of a portion
of their territory; they drained the pools, diked the
streams, and profited by the rich alluvions and the
slow deposits of vegetable mould with which the
surplus or stagnant waters overspread their land.
Their canals freeze up; they take skates and travel
in winter five leagues an hour. The sea threatened
them; after forcing it back, they avail themselves of
it to traffic with all nations. The winds sweep unim-
peded across their flat country and over the turbu-
lent ocean; they make them swell the sails of their
vessels and move the wings of their windmills. Iu
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
209
Holland you
will observe at every turn of the road
one of these enormous structures, a hundred feet
high, furnished with machinery and pumps, busy in
emptying the overflow of water, sawing ship-timber
and manufacturing oil. From the steamer, in front
of Amsterdam, you see, stretching off as far as the
eye can reach, an infinite spider's web, a light, indis-
tinct and complex fringe of masts and arms of wind-
mills encircling the horizon with their innumerable
fibres. The impression you carry away is that of a
country transformed from end to end by the hand
and the art of man, and sometimes entirely created
until it becomes a comfortable and productive ter-
ritory.
Let us go further; let us take a near view of man,
and appreciate the most important object belonging
to him-his habitation. There is no stone in this
country-nothing but an adhesive clay, suitable for
men and horses to mire their feet in. It occurred to
the people, however, to bake it, and in this way
brick and tile, which are the best of defences against
humidity, came into their hands. You see well con-
trived buildings of an agreeable aspect, with red,
210
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
brown and rosy walls covered with a bright stucco
white façades varnished and sometimes decorated
with sculptured flowers, animals, medallions and
small columns. In the older cities the house often
stands with its gable to the street, festooned with
arcades, branchings and leafage, which terminate in
a bird, an apple or a bust; it is not, as in our
cities, a continuation of its neighbor-an abstract
compartment of vast barracks, but an object apart,
endowed with a special and private character, at
once interesting and picturesque. Nothing could
be better kept and cleaner. At Douai the poorest
have their domicile whitewashed once a year, out-
side and in, it being necessary to engage the white-
washer six months in advance. At Antwerp, in
Ghent and in Bruges, and especially in the small
towns, most of the façades seem to be newly painted
or freshened the day before. Washing and sweep.
ing are going on on all sides. When you reach
Holland there is extra care even to exaggera-
tion. You see domestics at five o'clock in the
morning scrubbing the sidewalks. In the envi-
rons of Amsterdam the villages seem to be scenery
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
211
from the Opera - Comique, so tidy and so well.
dusted are they. There are stables for cows, the
flooring of which is cabinet work; you can enter
them only in slippers or sabots placed at the
entrance for that purpose; a spot of dirt would be
scandalous, and still more so any odor; the cows'
tails are held up by a small cord to prevent them
from soiling themselves. Vehicles are prohibited
from entering the village; the sidewalks of brick
and blue porcelain are more irreproachable than a
vestibule with us. In autumn children come and
gather up the fallen leaves in the streets to deposit
them in a pit. Everywhere, in the small rooms,
seemingly the state-rooms of a ship, the order and
arrangement are the same as on a ship. In Broeck,
it is said, there is in each house a particular room
which is entered only once a week in order to clean
and rub the furniture, and then carefully closed; in
a country so damp, dirt immediately becomes a
deleterious mould; man, compelled to scrupulous
cleanliness, contracts the habit, experiences its neces-
sity, and at last falls under its tyranny. You would
be pleased, however, to see the humblest shop of
212
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
the smallest street in Amsterdam, with its brown
casks, its immaculate counter, its scoured benches,
everything in its place, the economy of small quar-
ters, the intelligent and handy arrangement of all
utensils. Guiccardini already remarks "that their
houses and clothes are clean, handsome and well-
arranged, that they have much furniture, utensils
and domestic objects, kept in better order and with
a finer lustre than in any other country." It is
necessary to see the comfort of their apartments,
especially the houses of the middle classes-carpets,
waxed cloths for the floors, warm and heat-saving
chimneys of iron and porcelain, triple curtains at the
windows, clear, dark and highly polished window-
panes, vases of flowers and green plants, innumera-
ble knick-knacks indicative of sedentary habits and
which render home life pleasant, mirrors placed so as
to reflect the people passing in the street together
with its changing aspects;—every detail shows some
inconvenience remedied, some want satisfied, some
pleasant contrivance, some thoughtful provision, in
short, the universal reign of a sagacious activity and
the extreme of comfort.
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
213
Man, in effect, is that which his work indicates.
Thus endowed and thus situated, he enjoys and knows
how to enjoy. The bountiful soil furnishes him with
abundant nutriment-meat, fish, vegetables, beer
and brandy; he eats and drinks copiously, while in
Belgium the Germanic appetite, as it grows in fas-
tidiousness without decreasing, becomes gastronomic
sensuality. Cooking there is scientific and perfect,
even to the hotel tables; I believe that they are the
best in Europe. There is a certain hotel in Mons to
which visitors from the small neighboring towns
come to dine every Saturday, especially to enjoy a
delicate meal. They lack wine, but they import it
from Germany and France, and boast the possession
of the best vintages: we do not, in their opinion,
treat our wines with the respect they deserve; it is
necessary to be a Belgian to care for and relish them
in a proper manner. There is no important hotel
which is not supplied with a varied and select stock;
its reputation and custom are made by the selection;
in the railroad cars the conversation tends sponta-
neously to the merits of two rival cellars. A prudent
merchant will have twelve thousand bottles in his
214
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
sanded cellars, duly classified; it constitutes his
library. The burgomaster of a petty Dutch town
possesses a cask of genuine Johannisberger, made in
the best year, and this cask adds to the consideration
of its owner. A man there, who gives a dinner party,
knows how to make his wines succeed each other in
such a way as not to impair the taste and have ar
many as possible consumed. As to the pleasures of
the ear and the eye, they understand them as well
as those of the palate and the stomach. They in-
✓stinctively love the music which we only appreciate
through culture. In the sixteenth century they are
first in this art; Guiccardini states that their vocalists
and instrumentalists are esteemed in all the courts
of Christendom; abroad, their professors found
schools, and their compositions are standards of au-
thority. Even nowadays the great musical endow-
ment of being able to sing in parts is encountered
even amongst the populace; the coal-miners organ-
ize choral societies; I have heard laborers in Brussels
and Antwerp, and the ship caulkers and sailors of
Amsterdam sing in chorus, and in true time, while at
work and in the street on returning home at night.
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
215
There is no large Belgian town in which a chime of
bells, perched in the belfry, does not every quarter
of an hour amuse the artizan in his shop and the
trader at his counter with the peculiar harmonies of
their sonorous metal. In like manner their city halls,
their house-fronts, even their old drinking-cups are,
through their complex ornamentation, their intricate
lines and their original and often fantastic design,
agreeable to the eye. Add to this the free or well-
composed tones of the bricks forming the walls, and
the richness of the brown and red tints relieving on
white displayed on the roofs and façades-assuredly
the towns of the Netherlands are as picturesque of
their kind as any in Italy. In all times they have
delighted in kermesses and fêtes de Gayant, in corpor-
ation processions, and in the parade and glitter of
costumes and materials. I shall show you the com-
pletely Italian pomp of the civic entries and other
ceremonies in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
They are epicureans as well as gourmands in the
matter of comfortable living; regularly, calmly,
without heat or enthusiasm they glean up every
pleasing harmony of savor, sound, color and form
UorM
216
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
that arises out of their prosperity and abundance,
like tulips on a heap of compost. All this produces
good sense somewhat limited, and happiness some-
what gross. A Frenchman would soon yawn over
it, but he would make a mistake, for this civiliza-
tion, which seems to him unctuous and vulgar, pos-
sesses one sterling merit-it is healthy; the men
living here have a gift we lack the most-wisdom,
and a compensation we are equally undeserving of—
contentment.
Maou
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
217
III.
Such, in this country, is the human plant; we
have now to examine its art, which is the flower.
Among all the branches of the Germanic trunk,
this plant alone has produced a complete flower.
the art which developes so happily and so naturally
in the Netherlands proves abortive with the other
Germanic nations for the reason that this glorious
privilege emanates from the national character as
we have just set it forth.
To comprehend and love painting requires an eye
sensitive to forms and to colors, and, without edu-
cation or apprenticeship, one which takes pleasure
in the juxtaposition of tones and is delicate in the
matter of optical sensations; the man who would be
a painter must be capable of losing himself in view-
ing the rich consonance of red and green, in watch-
ing the diminution of light as it is transformed into
darkness, and in detecting the subtle hues of silks
and satins, which according to their breaks, recesses
and depths of fold, assume opaline tints, vague
10
218
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
luminous gleams and imperceptible shades of blue.
The eye is epicurean like the palate, and painting is
an exquisite feast served up to it. For this reason
it is that Germany and England have had no
great pictorial art. In Germany the too great dom-
ination of abstract ideas has left no room for the
sensuousness of the eye. Its early school, that of
Cologne, instead of representing bodies, represented
mystic, pious and tender souls. In vain did the
great German artist of the sixteenth century, Albert
Dürer, familiarize himself with the Italian masters;
he retains his graceless forms, his angular folds,
his ugly nudities, his dull color, his barbarous,
gloomy and saddened faces; the wild imagination,
the deep religious sentiment and the vague philoso-
phic divinations which shine through his works,
show an intellect to which form is inadequate.
Examine the infant Christ in the Louvre, by Wohl-
gemuth, his master, and an Eve, by Lucas Cranach,
a contemporary; you will realize that the men who
executed such groups and such bodies were born
for theology and not for painting. Again at the
present day they esteem and enjoy the inward
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
219
rather than the outward; Cornelius and the Mu-
nich masters regard the idea as principal, and exe
cution as secondary; the master conceives and the
pupil paints; the aim of their wholly philosophic
and symbolic work is to excite the spectator to
reflect on some great moral or social verity. In
like manner Overbeck aims at edification and
preaches sentimental asceticism; and even Knauss,
again, who is such an able psychologist that his
pictures form idyls and comedies. As to the Eng-
lish, up to the eighteenth century, they do but
little more than import pictures and artists from
abroad. Temperament in this country is too mil-
itant, the will too stern, the mind too utilitarian,
man too case-hardened, too absorbed and too over-
tasked to linger over and revel in the beautiful
and delicate gradations of contours and colors.
Their national painter, Hogarth, simply produced
moral caricatures. Others, like Wilkie, use their
pencil to render sentiments and characteristic traits
visible; even in landscape they depict the spiritual
element, corporeal objects serving them simply as
an index or suggestion; it is even apparent in their
220
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
two great landscapists, Constable and Turner, and
in their two great portrait painters, Gainsborough
and Reynolds. Their coloring of to-day, finally, is
shockingly crude, and their drawing literal minu
tiæ. The Flemings and Hollanders alone have
prized forms and colors for their own sake. This
sentiment still persists. Proof of this is to be
found in the picturesqueness of their towns and in
the agreeable aspect of their homes; last year at
the Universal Exposition (1867) you could see for
yourselves that genuine art-painting exempt from
philosophic motive and literary deviation, capable of
manipulating form without servility and color with-
out barbarisms-scarcely exists anywhere but with
them and with ourselves.
Thanks to this national endowment, in the fif
teenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when
circumstances became favorable, they were able to
maintain in the face of Italy a great school of paint-
ing. But as they were Germans their school fol.
lowed the German track.
race from classic races is,
What distinguishes their
as you have seen, a pref
rence for substance over form, of actual verity to
:
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
221
beautiful externals, of the real, complex, irregular
and natural object to the well-ordered, pruned,
"efined and transformed object. This instinct, of
which you remark the ascendancy in their religion
and literature, has likewise controlled their art and
notably their painting. "The prime significance of
the Flemish school," says M. Wäagen, "proceeds
from its having, through its freedom from foreign
influences, revealed to us the contrast of sentiments
of the Greek and the German races, the two columnar
capitals of ancient and modern civilization. Whilst
the Greeks sought to idealize not merely concep-
tions taken from the ideal world, but even portraits,
oy simplifying the forms and accentuating the most
important features, the early Flemings on the con
trary translated into portraiture the ideal personifi-
cations of the Virgin, the apostles, the prophets and
the martyrs, ever striving to represent in an exact
manner the petty details of nature. Whilst the
Greeks expressed the details of landscape, rivers,
fountains and trees under abstract forms, the Flem-
ings strove to render them precisely as they saw
them. In relation to the ideal and the tendency of
#
222
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
the Greeks to personify everything, the Flemings
created a realistic school, a school of landscape. In
this respect the Germans first and the English after-
wards have pursued the same course. Run over
a collection of engravings containing the works of
German origin from Albert Dürer, Martin Schon-
gauer, the Van Eycks, Holbein and Lucas of Leyden,
down to Rubens, Rembrandt, Paul Potter, Jan Steen
and Hogarth; if your imagination is filled with noble
Italian or with elegant French forms, your eyes will
be offended; you will experience some difficulty in
taking the proper standpoint; you will often fancy
that the artist purposely studied the ugly. The
truth is he is not repelled by the trivialities and
deformities of life. He does not naturally enter into
the symmetrical composition, the tranquil and easy
action, the beautiful proportions, the healthiness and
agility of the naked figure. When the Flemings in
the sixteenth century resorted to the Italian school,
they only succeeded in spoiling their original style.
During seventy years of patient imitation they
brought forth nothing but hybrid abortions. This
"Manuel de l'historie de la Peinture," Vol. 1, p. 79.
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
223
long period of failure, placed between two long peri-
ods of superiority, shows the limits and the power
of their original aptitudes. They were incapable of
simplifying nature; they aimed to reproduce her en-
tire. They did not concentrate her in the nude body;
they assigned equal importance to all her appear-
ances-landscapes, edifices, animals, costumes and
accessories. They are not qualified to comprehend
and prize the ideal body; they are constituted to
paint and enforce the actual body.
*
Allowing this, we easily discern in what particu-
lars they differ from other masters of the same race.
I have described to you their national genius, so
sensible and so well-balanced, exempt from lofty
aspiration, limited to the present and disposed to
enjoyment. Such artists will not create the melan-
* In this respect the verdict of Michael Angelo is very instructive.
"In Flanders,” he says, "they prefer to paint what are called landscapes
and many figures scattered here and there. . . . . There is neither art nor
reason in this, no proportion, no symmetry, no careful selection, no
grandeur... If I speak so ill of Flemish painting it is not because it
is wholly bad, but because it seeks to render in perfection so many
objects of which one alone, through its importance, would suffice, and
none is produced in a satisfactory manner." We here recognize the
•
classic and simplifying trait of Italian genius.
224
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
choly beings in painful abstraction, weighed down
with the burden of life and obstinately resigned, of
Albert Dürer. They will not devote themselves
like the mystic painters of Cologne, or the moralist
painters of England, to the representation of spirit-
ual traits and characters; little will they concern
themselves with the disproportion between mind
and matter. In a fertile and luxurious country,
amidst jovial customs, in the presence of placid,
honest and blooming faces they are to obtain the
models suited to their genius. They almost always
paint man in a well-to-do condition and content
with his lot. When they exalt him it is without
raising him above his terrestrial condition. The
Flemish school of the seventeenth century does no
more than expand his appetite, his lusts, his energy
and his gayety. Generally they leave him as he
is. The Dutch school confines itself to reproduc-
ing the repose of the bourgeois interior, the com-
forts of shop and farm, out-door sports and tavern
enjoyments, all the petty satisfactions of an orderly
and tranquil existence. Nothing could be better
a lapted to painting; too much thought and emɔ
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
225
tion is detrimental to it. Subjects of this order con·
ceived in such a spirit, furnish works of a rare har
mony; the Greeks alone, and a few great Italian
artists have set us the example; the painters of the
Netherlands on a lower stage do as they did, they
represent man to us complete of his type, adapted
to things around him and therefore happy without
effort.
One point remains to be considered. One of the
leading merits of this art is the excellence and deli-
cacy of its coloring. This is owing to the education
of the eye, which in Flanders and in Holland is pecu-
liar. The country is a saturated delta like that of
the Po, while Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp, Amsterdam,
Rotterdam, Hague and Utrecht, through their rivers,
canals, sea and atmosphere resemble Venice. Here,
as at Venice, nature has made man colorist. Ob-
serve the different aspect of things according as you
are in a dry country like Provençe and the neighbor-
hood of Florence, or on a wet plain like the Nether-
lands. In the dry country the line predominates,
and at once attracts attention; the mountains cut
sharp against the sky, with their stories of architco
10*
226
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
ture of a grand and noble style, all objects projecting
upward in the limpid air in varied prominence.
Here the low horizon is without interest, and the
contours of objects are softened, blended and blurred
out by the imperceptible vapor with which the at
mosphere is always filled; that which predominates
is the spot. A cow pasturing, a roof in the centre
of a field, a man leaning on a parapet appear as one
tone among other tones. The object emerges; it
does not start suddenly out of its surroundings as if
punched out; you are struck by its modelling, that
is to say by the different degrees of advancing lumin-
ousness and the diverse gradations of melting color
which transforms its general tint into a relief and
gives to the eye a sensation of thickness.*
*
You
W. Burger's "Musées de la Hollande," p. 206: "Modelling, and not
fines, is what always impresses you in the beauty of the North. Form,
in the North, does not declare itself by contour, but by relief. Nature,
in expressing herself, does not avail herself of drawing, properly s0
called. Walk about an Italian town for an hour, and you will encounter
women accurately defined, whose general structure brings to mind Greck
statuary, and whose profile recalls Greek cameos. You might pass a
year in Antwerp without finding a single form suggesting the idea of
translating it by a contour, but simply by saliencies, which color only can
anodel. . . . . Objects never present themselves as silhouettes, but, so to
max in full shape."
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
227
would have to pass many days in this country in
order to appreciate this subordination of the line to
the spot. A bluish or gray vapor is constantly ris-
ing from the canals, the rivers, the sea, and from the
saturated soil; a universal haze forms a soft gauze
over objects, even in the finest weather. Flying
scuds, like thin, half-torn white drapery, float over
the meadows night and morning. I have repeatedly
stood on the quays of the Scheldt contemplating the
broad, pallid and slightly rippled water, on which
float the dark hulks. The river shines, and on its
flat surface the hazy light reflects here and there
unsteady scintillations. Clouds ascend constantly
around the horizon, their pale, leaden hue and their
motionless files suggesting an army of spectres, the
spectres of the humid soil, like so many phantoms,
always revived and bringing back the eternal show
ers. Towards the setting sun they become ruddy,
while their corpulent masses, trellissed all over with
gold, remind one of the damascene copes, the bro-
caded simarres and the embroidered silks with which
Jordaens and Rubens envelope their bleeding mar-
tyrs and their sorrowful madonnas. Quite low down
228
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
on the sky the sun seems an enormous blaze subsiding
into smoke. On reaching Amsterdam or Ostend the
impression again deepens; both sea and sky have no
form; the fog and interposed showers leave nothing
to remember but colors. The water changes in hue
every half hour-now of a pale wine tinge, now of a
chalky whiteness, now yellow like softened mortar,
now black like liquid soot, and sometimes of a som-
bre purple striped with dashes of green. After a
few days' experience you find that, in such a nature
only gradations, contrasts and harmonies, in short,
the value of tones is of any importance.
These tones, moreover, are full and rich. A dry
country is of a dull aspect; southern France and
the whole of the mountainous portion of Italy leave
on the eye no sensation but that of a gray and
yellow checker-board. Besides this, all the tones
of the soil and of buildings are lost in the prepon-
derating splendor of the sky and the all-pervading
luminousness of the atmosphere. In truth, a south-
ern city, and a Provençe or Tuscan landscape are
simply drawings; with white paper, charcoal, and
the feeble tints of colored crayons you can express
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
229
the whole thing. On the contrary, in a country of
humidity like the Netherlands, the earth is green, a
quantity of lively spots diversifying the uniform-
ity of the wide prairie-sometimes it is the dark or
brown color of the wet mould, again the deep red
of tiles and bricks, again the white or rosy coating
of the façades, again the ruddy spots of reclining
cattle, again the flickering sheen of canals and
streams. And these spots are not subdued by the
too powerful light of the sky. Contrary to the dry
country it is not the sky but the earth which has
a preponderating influence. In Holland especially,
for several months, "there is no transparency of at-
mosphere; a kind of opaque vail hovering between
sky and ground intercepts all radiance. In winter
darkness seems to come from above.” * The rich
colors, accordingly, with which all terrestrial objects.
are clothed, remain unrivalled. To their strength
must be added their gradation and their mobility.
In Italy a tone remains fixed; the steady light of the
sky maintains it so for many hours, and as it was
yesterday so it will be to-morrow. Return to it and
* W. Burger's "Musées de la Hollande," p. 213.
*
230
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
you will find it the same as you placed it on your
palette a month before. In Flanders it varies inces
santly along with the variations of light and the am-
bient vapor. Here again, I should like to take you
into the country and let you appreciate yourselves
the original beauty of the towns and the landscape.
The red of the bricks, the lustrous white of the
façades are agreeable to the eye because they are
softened by the grayish atmosphere; against the neu-
tral background of the sky extend rows of peaked,
shell-like roofs, all of deep brown, here and there a
gothic gutter, or some gigantic belfry covered with
elaborate finials and heraldic animals. Frequently
the crenelated cornice of chimney and of ridge is
reflected as it glows in a canal or in an arm of the
sea. Outside the cities, as within them, all is
material for pictures-you have nothing to do but
to copy. The universal green of the country is nei
ther crude nor monotonous; it is tinted by diverse
degrees of maturity of foliage and herbage and by
the various densities and perpetual changes of hazi-
ness and clouds. It has for complement or for relief
the blackness of clouds which suddenly melt away
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
231
in transient showers, the grayness of scattered and
ragged banks of fog, the vague, bluish network
enveloping distances, the sparkling of flickering
light arrested in flying scuds-sometimes the daz-
zling satin of a motionless cloud, or some abrupt
opening through which the azure penetrates. A sky
which is thus filled up, thus mobile, thus adapted
to harmonizing, varying and emphasizing the tones
of the earth, affords a colorist school. Here, as at
Venice, art has followed nature, the hand having
been forcibly guided by optical sensations.
If, however, the analogies of climate have endowed
the Venetian eye and that of the inhabitant of the
Netherlands with an analogous education, differences
of climate have given them a different education.
The Netherlands are situated three hundred leagues
to the north of Venice. The atmosphere there is
colder, rains more frequent, and the sun the oftenest
concealed. Hence a natural gamut of colors, which
has provoked a corresponding artificial gamut. A
full light being rare, objects do not reflect the im-
print of the sun. You do not meet with those golden
tones, that magnificent ruddiness so frequent in the
232
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
monuments of Italy. The water is not of that deep
sea-green resembling silkiness, as in the lagoons of
Venice. The fields and trees have not that solid and
vigorous tone visible in the verdure of Verona and
Padua. The herbage is pale and softened, the water
dull or dark, the flesh white, now pink like a flower
grown in the shade, now rubicund after exposure to
the weather and rendered coarse by food, generally
yellow and flabby, sometimes, in Holland, pallid and
inanimate and of a waxy tone. The tissues of the
living organism, whether man, animal or plant, im
bibe too much fluid, and lack the ripening power of
sunshine. This is why, if we compare the two schools
of painting, we find a difference in the general tone.
Examine, in any gallery, the Venetian school, and
afterwards the Flemish school; pass from Canaletto
and Guardi to Ruysdacl, Paul Potter, Hobbema,
Adrian Van der Velde, Teniers and Ostade; from
Titian and Veronese to Rubens, Van Dyck and Rem-
brandt, and consult your optical impressions. On
going from the former to the latter, color loses a por-
tion of its warmth. Shadowed, ruddy and autumnal
tones disappear; you see the fiery furnace envelop
་་
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
233
ing the Assumptions going out; flesh becomes of the
whiteness of milk or snow, the deep purple of dra-
peries grows lighter, and paler silks have cooler re-
flections. The intense brown which faintly impreg-
nates foliage, the powerful reds gilding sunlit dis-
tances, the tones of veined marble, amethyst and
sapphire with which water is resplendent, all decline,
in order to give place to the deadened whiteness of
expanded vapor, the bluish glow of misty twilight,
the slaty reflections of the ocean, the turbid hue of
rivers, the pallid verdure of the fields, and the gray-
ish atmosphere of household interiors.
Between these new tones there is established a
new harmony. Sometimes a full light falls upon
objects, and to which they are not accustomed; the
green campagna, the red roofs, the polished façades
and the satiny flesh flushed with blood show extra-
ordinary brilliancy. They are adapted to the sub-
dued light of a northerly and humid country; they
have not been transformed as at Venice by the slow
scorching of the sun; beneath this irruption of lumi-
nousness their tones become too vivid, almost crude;
they vibrate together like the blasts of trumpets,
234
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
leaving on the mind and senses an impression of
energetic and boisterous joyousness. Such is the
coloring of the Flemish painters who love the full
light of day. Rubens furnishes us with the best
example; if his restored canvasses in the Louvre
represent his work to us as it left his hands, it is cer-
tain that he did not discipline his eyes; in any event
his color lacks the rich and mellow harmony of the
Venetian; the greatest extremes meet; the snowy
whiteness of flesh, the sanguine red of the draperies,
the dazzling lustre of silks have their full force and
are not united, tempered and enveloped, as at Ven-
ice, in that amber tint which prevents contrasts from
being discordant and effects from being too startling.
Sometimes, on the contrary, the light is feeble or
nearly gone, which is commonly the case, and espe
cially in Holland. Objects issue painfully out of
shadow; they are almost lost in their surroundings;
at evening, in a cellar, beneath a lamp, in an apart-
ment into which a dying ray from a window glides,
they are effaced and seem to be only more intense
darks in a universal duskiness. The eye is led to
noticing these gradations of obscurity, this vague
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
235
train of light mingling with shadow, the remains of
brightness clinging to the lingering lustre of the fur-
niture, a reflection from a greenish window-sash, a
piece of embroidery, a pearl, some golden spark
astray upon a necklace. Having become sensitive to
these delicacies, the painter, instead of uniting the
extremes of the gamut, simply selects the beginning
of it; his entire picture, except in one point, is in
shadow; the concert he offers us is a continuous sor-
dine in which now and then occurs some brilliant
passage.
He thus discloses unknown harmonies,
those of chiaroscuro, those of modeling, those of
emotion, all of them infinite and penetrating; using
a daub of dirty yellow, or of wine lees, or a mixed.
gray, or vague darks, here and there accentuated by
a vivid spot, he succeeds in stirring the very depths
of our nature. Herein consists the last great pic-
turesque creation; it is through this that painting
nowadays most powerfully addresses the modern
mind, and this is the coloring with which the light
of Holland supplied the genius of Rembrandt.
You have seen the seed, the plant and the flower.
A race with a genius totally opposed to that of the
236
ART IN THE NETHERLANDS.
Latin peoples makes for itself, after and alongside of
them its place in the world. Among the numerous
nations of this race, one there is in which a special
territory and climate develope a particular character
predisposing it to art and to a certain phase of art.
Painting is born with it, lasts, becomes complete,
and the physical milieu surrounding it, like the
national genius which founds it, give to and im-
pose upon it its subjects, its types and its coloring.
Such are the remote preparatives, the profound
causes, the general conditions which have nourished
this sap, directed this vegetation, and produced the
final efflorescence. It only remains to us now to
expose historical events, the diversity and succession
of which have brought about the successive and
diverse phases of the great flowering epoch.
3
PART II.
HISTORIC EPOCHS.
ART IN THE NETHERLANDS.
239
I.
WE find four distinct periods in the pictorial art of
the Netherlands, and, through a remarkable coinci-
dence, each corresponds to a distinct historic period.
Here, as everywhere, art translates life; the talent
and taste of the painter change at the same time and
in the same sense as the habits and sentiments of the
public. Just as each profound geological revolution
brings with it its own fauna and flora, so does each
great transformation of society and intellect bring
with it its ideal figures. In this respect our galleries
of art resemble museums, the imaginary creations
they contain being, like living organisms, both the
fruit and the index of their surroundings.
The first period of art lasts about a century and a
half, and extends from Hubert Van Eyck to Quintin
Matsys (1400-1530). It issues from a renaissance,
that is to say, from a great development of pros-
perity, wealth and intellect. Here, as in Italy, the
cities at an early period are flourishing, and almost
free. I have already stated to you that in the thir
240
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
teenth century serfdom was abolished in Flanders,
and that the guilds to manufacture salt "for the pur-
pose of bringing under cultivation marshy grounds,”
ascend to the Roman epoch. From the seventh and
ninth centuries, Bruges, Antwerp and Ghent are
'ports," or privileged markets; they carry on com-
merce on a large scale; they fit out cruisers for the
whale fishery; they serve as the entrepôts of the
North and the South. Prosperous people, well sup-
plied with arms and provisions, accustomed through
association and activity to foresight and enterprise,
are better qualified to protect themselves than mis-
erable serfs scattered about in defenceless villages.
Their great populous cities with narrow streets, and
a saturated soil intersected with deep canals, are not
a suitable ground for the cavalry of barons.* Hence
it is that the feudal net, so close and so tightly
drawn over all Europe, had, in Flanders, to enlarge
its meshes. In vain did the Count appeal for aid to
his suzerain, the French king, and urge his Burgun
dian chivalry against the cities; overcome at Mons-
en-Puelle, at Cassel, at Rosebecque, at Othée, at
*Battle of Courtenay, 1302.
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
241
Gavre, at Brusthem, at Liege, they always recover
themselves, and from revolt to revolt preserve the
best portion of their liberties, even under the prin
ces of the house of Austria. The fourteenth century
is the heroic and tragic epoch of Flanders. She pos-
sesses brewers like Arteveldt, who are tribunes, dic-
tators and captains, and who end life on the field of
battle or are assassinated; civil war is mixed up with
foreign war; people fight from city to city, trade
against trade, and man to man; there are fourteen
hundred murders in Ghent in one year; the stores
of energy are so great that she survives all ills and
sustains all efforts. Men seek death twenty thousand
at a time, and fall in heaps before lances without
giving an inch. "Banish all hope of returning with-
out honor," said the citizens of Ghent to the five
thousand volunteers under Philip Van Arteveldt, for
so soon that we hear that you are dead or discom-
fited we shall fire the city and destroy ourselves with
our own hands."* In 1384, in the country of the
Four Trades, prisoners refused their lives, declar-
ing that after death their bones would rise up against
* Froissart.
242
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
the French. Fifty years later, around rebellious
Ghent, the peasantry "chose death rather than ask
quarter, declaring that they would perish as martyrs
in a fair fight." In these swarming hives an abun
dance of food and habits of personal activity main-
tain courage, turbulence, audacity and even inso-
lence, all excesses of brutal and boundless energy;
these weavers were men, and when we encounter
man we may expect soon to encounter the arts.
An interval of prosperity at this time was suffi-
cient; under this ray of sunshine the flowering thus
maturing is perfected. At the end of the fourteenth
century Flanders, with Italy, is the most industri-
ous, the wealthiest and most flourishing country in
Europe.* In 1370 there are thirty-two hundred
woollen factories at Malines and on its territory.
One of its merchants carries on an immense trade
with Damascus and Alexandria. Another, of Valen-
ciennes, being at Paris during the fair, monopolizes
all provisions exposed for sale with a view to dis-
play his opulence. Ghent in 1389 has one hundred
and eighty-nine thousand men bearing arms; the
* Michiel's "Historie de la Peinture Flamande," Vol. II. p. 8.
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
243
"
drapers alone furnish eighteen thousand men in a
revolt; the weavers form twenty-seven sections, and
at the sound of the great bell, fifty-two corporations
under their own banners rush to the market-place.
In 1380 the goldsmiths of Bruges are numerous
enough to form in war time an entire division of the
army. A little later Enius Sylvius states that she is
one of the three most beautiful cities in the world;
a canal four leagues and a half in length joins her to
the sea; a hundred vessels a day pass through it.
Bruges was then what London is at the present
time. Political matters at this period attain to a
sort of equilibrium. The Duke of Burgundy finds
himself by inheritance, in 1384, sovereign of Flan-
ders. The grandeur of his possessions and the mul
tiplication of civil wars during the minority and
madness of Charles VI. divorce him from France;
he is no longer, like the ancient counts, a dependant
of the king, domiciliated in Paris and soliciting
aid to reduce and tax his Flemish merchants. His
power and the misfortunes of France render him
independent. Although a prince he belongs, in
Paris, to the popular party, and the butchers shout
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THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
for him.
Although a Frenchman his politics are
Flemish, and when not in alliance with the English
he negotiates with them. In the matter of money
he certainly quarrels with his Flemings more than
once, and is obliged to kill a good many of them.
But to one who is familiar with the disturbances and
violence of the middle ages, the order and harmony
which is then established seem sufficient; at all
} events they are greater than ever before. Hence-
forth, as at Florence about the year 1400, authority
becomes recognized and society organized; hence-
forth, as in Italy about the year 1400, man aban-
dons the ascetic and ecclesiastic regime that he may
interest himself in nature and enjoy life. The ancient
compression is relaxed; he begins to prize strength,
health, beauty and pleasure. On all sides we see the
mediæval spirit undergoing change and disintegra-
tion. An elegant and refined architecture converts
stone into lace, festooning churches with pinnacles,
trefoils and intricate mullions, and in such a fashion
that the honey-combed, gilded and flowering edifice
becomes a vast and romantic casket, a product of
fancy rather than of faith, less calculated to excite
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
245
piety than wonder. In like manner chivalry becomes
a mere parade. The nobles frequent the Valois
court, devote themselves to pleasure, to "pretty con-
ceits" and especially to the "conceits of love." In
Chaucer and in Froissart we are spectators of their
pomp their tourneys, their processions and their
banquets, of the new reign of frivolity and fashion,
of the creations of an infatuated and licentious ima-
gination, of their extravagant and overcharged cos-
tumes-robes twelve ells long, tight hose and Bohe-
mian jackets with sleeves falling to the ground, shoes
terminating in the claws, horns and tail of the scor-
pion, suits embroidered with letters, animals, and
with musical notes enabling one to read and sing
a song on the owner's back, hoods adorned with
golden garlands and with animals, robes covered
with sapphires, rubies and jewelled swallows, each
holding in its beak a golden cup; one costume has
fourteen hundred of these cups, and we find nine hun
dred and sixty pearls used in embroidering a song on
Women in magnificently ornamented veils,
the breast nude, the head crowned with huge cones
and crescents, and dressed in gaudy robes covered
a coat.
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THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
with the figures of unicorns, lions and savages, place
themselves on seats representing small sculptured
and gilded cathedrals. The life of the court and
of princes seems a carnival. When Charles VI.
is knighted a hall is prepared in the abbey of St.
Denis, thirty-two toises (about two hundred feet)
long, hung in white and green, with a lofty pavilion
of tapestry: here, after three days of feasting and
jousting, a nocturnal masked ball ends in an orgie,
Many a damsel forgot herself, many were the
husbands who suffered," and, in contrast to this,
showing the sentiments of the age, they cele-
brate the funeral of Duguesclin at the end of it.
In the accounts and chronicles of the period we
follow the course of a broad, golden stream, flowing,
glistening, ostentatious and interminable, that is to
say, the domestic history of the king and queen and
the dukes of Orleans and Burgundy; there is noth-
ing but entries into cities, cavalcades, masks, dances,
voluptuous caprices, and the prodigality of the newly
enriched. The Burgundian and French chevaliers
who go to contend with Bagazet at Nicopolis equip
themselves as if for a party of pleasure; their ban
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
247
ners and the trappings of their horses are loaded
with gold and silver, their dishes are all of silver
plate and their tents are of green satin; exquisite
wines follow them in boats on the Danube, and their
camps are filled with courtesans. This excess of
animal spirits, which, in France, is mingled with
morbid curiosity and lugubrious fancies, breaks out
in Burgundy into a grand and jolly kermesse. Philip
the Good has three legitimate wives, twenty-four
mistresses, and sixteen bastards; he attends to all,
feasting, making merry and admitting the towns-
women to his court; seeming at the outset to be
one of Jordaens' characters. A Count of Clèves has
sixty-three bastards; the chroniclers in their narra-
tion of ceremonies constantly and gravely mention
those of both sexes; the institution appears to be
official: seeing them swarming in this manner, we
are reminded of the buxom nurses of Rubens and
the Gangamelles of Rabelais. "It was," says a con-
temporary, "a great pity, this sin of luxury which
prevailed far and wide, and especially amongst prin-
ces and the wedded. . . He was the gentlest com-
panion who was able to deceive and possess at the
248
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
same time more than one woman.. and even there
prevailed likewise the sin of luxury among the prel-
ates of the Church and among all Church people."*
Jacques de Croy, archbishop of Cambray, officiated
pontifically with his thirty-six bastards and bas-
tards' sons, and kept in reserve a sum of money for
those to come. At the third marriage of Philip the
Good the gala seems to be a Gamache's wedding
commanded by Gargantua; the streets of Bruges
were hung with tapestry; for eight days and eight
nights a stone lion spurted Rhine wine, while a stone
stag discharged Beaune Burgundy; at meal times
an unicorn poured forth rosewater or malvoisie. On
the entry of the Dauphin into the city, eight hun-
dred merchants of divers nations advanced to meet
him, all in garments of silk and velvet. At another
ceremonial the duke appears with a saddle and bri-
dle covered with precious stones; "nine pages cov-
ered with plumes of jewels" followed behind him,
* "C'était grand' pitié que le péché de luxare qui regnait moult et
fort, et par especial esprinces ét gens mariés. Et était le plus gentil
compagnon qui plus d'une femme savait tromper et avoir au moment...
et même regnait icelui péché de luxure es prélats de l'Eglise et en tous
gens d'Eglise.”
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
249
and "
one of the said pages bore a salad which was
stated to be of the value of one hundred thousand
gold crowns." Another time the jewels worn by
the duke are estimated at a million. I wish to
describe one of these fêtes to you; like those of
Florence at the same epoch they bear witness to the
picturesque and decorative tastes which here as in
Florence produced pictorial art. One of them took
place at Lille under Philip the Good, the Festival of
the Pheasant, which may be compared with the tri-
umph of Lorenzo de Medici; you will observe here
in a hundred naive details the resemblances and the
differences of the two societies, and accordingly of
their culture, their taste and their art.
The Duke of Clèves had given a "superb banquet"
at Lille, at which were present "Monseigneur," (of
Burgundy) "together with the lords, ladies and dam-
sels of his house." At this banquet there was seen
on the table an entremets,” that is to say, a decora-
tion representing "a ship with lifted sails, in which
was a knight erect and armed
and before it a
silver swan, bearing on his neck a gold collar, to
which hung a long chain, with which the said swan
11*
250
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
appeared to draw the vessel, and on the back of the
said vessel stood a castle most skilfully contrived.”
On this allegorical machine the Duke of Clèves,
Knight of the Swan, and "slave of the fair," caused
proclamation to be made that he might be encoun-
tered in the lists, "armed in jousting harness and in
war saddle, and that he who should do the best would
gain a rich golden swan, chained with a chain of gold,
and on the end of this chain a magnificent ruby."
Ten days after this the Count d'Etampes gave the
second act of the fairy spectacle. Bear in mind that
the second as well as the first act with all the others
began with a feast. In this court life is gross, and
people never tire of bumpers. "When the 'entre-
mets' were removed there issued from an apartment a
multitude of torches, and after these there appeared
an armed attendant clad in his coat of mail, and
after him two knights clad in long velvet robes
furred with sable, with no covering to the head, each
one bearing in his hand a gay hood of flowers;" after
them, on a palfrey caparisoned in blue silk, "a most
beautiful lady appeared, young, of the age of twelve
years, attired in a robe of violet silk, richly embroi
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
251
dered and padded with gold," she is "the princess
of joy." Three squires clothed in vermilion silk lead
her up to the duke, singing a song as they intro-
duce her. She descends, and kneeling on the table
she places on his brow a crown of flowers. At this
moment the joust is proclaimed, the drums beat, a
pursuivant-at-arms appears in a mailed suit covered
with swans, and then enters the Duke of Clèves,
Knight of the Swan, richly armed, seated on a horse
caparisoned in white damask and fringed with gold;
he leads by a gold chain a large swan accompanied
by two mounted archers; behind him march children
on horseback, grooms, knights armed with lances,
all, like himself, in white damask fringed with gold.
Toison d'Or, the herald, presents them to the duch-
ess. The other knights then defile before her on
their horses, decked with gray and crimson cloth of
gold, cloth decked with small golden bells, crimson
velvet trimmed with sable, violet velvet fringed with
gold and silk, and black velvet studded with golden
tear-drops. Suppose that the great personages of
state of the present day should amuse themselves
with dressing up like actors at the opera and in
252
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
making passes like circus-riders! The oddity of
such a supposition enables you to appreciate the
liveliness of the picturesque instinct at that day, as
well as the taste for outward display and the feeble-
ness of both at present.
These, however, were only preludes. Eight days
after the tourney the Duke of Burgundy gave his fes-
tival, which surpassed all the others. A vast hall,
hung with tapestry representing the career of Her-
cules, had five doors, guarded by archers dressed in
robes of gray and black cloth. Around the sides.
extended five platforms or galleries, occupied by for-
eign spectators, noble personages and ladies, most
of these being disguised. In their midst arose "a
lofty buffet, loaded with vessels of gold and silver,
and crystal vases garnished with gold and precious
stones." And erect, in the centre of the hall, stood
a great pillar, bearing "a female image with hair
falling to her loins, her head covered with a very rich
hat, and her breast spouting hypocras so long as the
supp er lasted." Three gigantic tables were arranged,
each one being adorned with several "entremets,”
so many huge machines reminding one, on a grand
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
253
con-
scale, of the toy presents given nowadays to the
children of the wealthy. The men of this time, in-
'eed, in curiosity and in flights of the imagination
are nothing but children; their strongest desire is
to amuse the eye; they sport with life as with a
magic lantern. The two principal "entremets"
sist of a monstrous pie, containing twenty-eight per-
sons, "alive," playing on musical instruments, also a
"church with windows and glass, provided with four
choristers and a ringing bell." Besides these there.
were twenty more,—a great castle, its fosses filled
with orange-water, and on a tower the fairy Melu-
sina; a windmill with archers and cross-bowmen fir-
ing at mark; a cask in a vineyard with two fluids,
one bitter and the other sweet; a vast desert with a
lion and serpent contending; a savage on a camel; a
clown prancing on a bear amidst rocks and glaciers;
a lake surrounded by cities and castles; a carrack at
anchor, bearing rigging, masts and seamen; a beau
tiful fountain of earth and lead, with small trees of
glass in leaf and blooming, and a St. Andrew with
his cross; a fountain of rose-water, representing a
naked infant in the attitude of the "Mannekenpiss
"1
254
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
+
of Brussels. You would imagine yourself in a var
iety store at New Year time. This pêle-mêle of mo
tionless decoration did not suffice; over and above
this an active parade was necessary; we see defiling
in turn a dozen of interludes, and in the intervals the
church and the pie keep busy the ears at the same
time as the eyes of the guests; the bell rings with
all its might; a shepherd plays on a bag-pipe; little
children sing a song; organs, German cornets, trum-
pets, glees, flutes, a lute with voices, drums, hunting
horns and the yelping of hounds succeed each other.
Meanwhile a rearing horse appears, richly covered
with vermilion silk, mounted by two trumpeters
"seated backward and without saddle," led by six-
teen knights in long robes; then a hobgoblin, half
man, half griffon, who, mounted on a boar and car-
rying a man, advances with a target and two darts;
then a large white mechanical stag, harnessed in
silk, with golden horns, and bearing on his back a
child in a short dress of crimson velvet, who sings
while the stag performs the bass. All these figures
make the circuit of the table, while the last invention
especially delights the company. A flying dragon
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
255
passes through the air, his fiery scales lighting up
the recesses of the gothic ceiling. A heron and
two falcons are loosed, and the vanquished bird is
presented to the Duke. Trumpets sound a blast
behind a curtain, which curtain being withdrawn
discloses Jason reading a letter from Medea, then
combating the bulls, then killing the serpent, then
ploughing the ground and sowing the monster's teeth
from which arises a crop of armed men. At this
point the interest of the fête deepens. It becomes
a romance of chivalry, a scene from Amadis, or one
of Don Quixote's dreams in action. A giant arrives
bearing a pike and turban and leading an elephant
caparisoned in silk with a castle on his back,
and in this castle a lady attired as a nun and repre-
senting the Holy Church; she orders a halt, pro-
claims her name, and summons the company to the
crusade. Thereupon Toison d'Or, with his officers
of arms, fetches a live pheasant wearing a golden
collar decked with precious stones; the Duke swears
upon the pheasant to succor Christendom against
the Turk, and all the knights do likewise, each ir
a document of the style of Galaor, and this is the
256
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
pheasant's vow. The fête terminates with a mystio
and moral ball. At the sound of instruments and
by the light of torches a lady in white, bearing the
name of the "Grace of God" on her shoulder, ap-
proaches the Duke, recites a stanza and, on retir-
ing, leaves with him the twelve virtues-Faith,
Charity, Justice, Reason, Temperance, Strength,
Truth, Liberality, Diligence, Hope and Valor-each
led by a knight in a crimson pourpoint, the sleeves
of which are of satin embroidered with foliage and
jewelry. They betake themselves to dancing with
their knights, crowning the Count of Charolais the
victor in the lists, and, upon the announcement of
a new tourney, the ball ends at three o'clock in the
morning. Really there is too much of it; the mind
and the senses both flag; these people in the
way of diversions are gluttons and not epicureans.
This uproar and this profusion of quaint conceits
shows us a rude society, a race of the North, an
incipient civilization still infantile and barbarous;
the grandeur and simplicity of Italian taste is
wanting in these contemporaries of the Medicis.
And yet the groundwork of their habits and imag
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
257
ination is the same; here, as with the chariots and
pomp of the Florentine carnival, the legends, his
tory and philosophy of the middle ages take shape
moral abstractions assume visible form; the vir
tues become actual women; they are accordingly
tempted to paint and sculpture them; all decoration,
in effect, consists of reliefs and paintings.
symbolic age gives way to the picturesque age;
the intellect is no longer content with a scholastic
entity; it seeks to contemplate a living form, the
human mind finding it necessary for its complete-
ness to be translated to the eye by a work of art.
The
But this work of art bears no resemblance to that
of Italy for the reason that the culture and direction
of the intellect are different; this is evident in read-
ing the simple and dull verses recited by the "Holy
Church" and the "Virtues," an empty, senile poetry,
the worn-out babble of the trouvères, a rattle of
rhymed phrases in which the rythm is as flimsy as
the idea. The Netherlands never had a Dante, a
Petrarch, a Boccaccio, a Villani. The mind, less
precocious and further removed from Latin tradi-
tions, remained a longer time subject to medieval
258
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
discipline and inertia. There were no sceptical
Averrhöeists and physicians like those described by
Petrarch; there were no humanist restorers of
ancient literature, almost pagans, like those who sur
rounded Lorenzo de Medici. Christian faith and
sentiment are much more active and tenacious here
than in Venice or in Florence. They continue to
subsist under the sensual pomp of the Burgundian
court. If there are epicureans in social matters there
are none in theory; the most gallant serve religion,
as the ladies, through a principle of honor. In 1396
seven hundred seigniors of Burgundy and France
enlist in the crusade; all, save twenty-seven die at
Nicopolis, and Boucicaut calls them "blessed and
happy martyrs." You have just witnessed the buf-
foonery of Lille which ended in a solemn vow to war
with the infidels. Here and there scattered traits
show the persistency of the primitive devotion. In
1477, in the neighboring town of Nuremburg, Mar-
tin Katzel, a pilgrim in Palestine, counts the steps
between Golgotha and the house of Pilate, that he
may, on his return, build seven stations and a cal-
vary between his own house and the cemetery of his
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
259
native town; losing his measure he repeats the jour
ney, and this time has the work executed by the
sculptor, Adam Kraft. In the Low Countries, as in
Germany, the middle class, a sedate and somewhat
dull people, restricted to their own narrow circle and
attached to ancient usages, preserve much better
than court-seigniors the faith and the fervor of the
middle ages. Their literature bears witness to this.
The moment it takes an original turn, that is to say
from the end of the thirteenth century, it furnishes
ample testimony to the practical, civic and bourgeois
spirit, with abundant evidences of pious fervor; on
the one hand appear moral maxims, pictures of do-
mestic life, and historic and political poems relating
to recent and true occurences; on the other, lyric
laudation of the Virgin, and mystic and tender poetic
effusions.* In fine, the national genius, which is
Germanic, inclines much more to faith than to incre-
dulity. Through the Lollards and the mystics of
the middle ages, also through the iconoclasts and
the innumerable martyrs of the sixteenth century, it
turns in the direction of Protestant ideas. Left to
*Iloræ Belgica.
260
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
itself it would have developed not, as in Italy, into
a pagan renaissance, but, as in Germany, into a
recrudescence of Christianity. The art, moreover,
which, of all the others, best reveals the cravings
of the popular imagination, architecture, remains
gothic and Christian up to the end of the sixteenth
century; Italian and classic importations do not
affect it; the style gets to be complicated and effem-
inate, but the art does not change. It prevails not
only in the churches but in laic edifices; the town-
halls of Bruges, Louvain, Brussels, Liege and Au-
denarde show to what extent it was cherished not
only by the priesthood but by the nation; the
people remained faithful to it to the end: the town-
hall of Audenarde was begun seven years after the
death of Raphael. In 1536, in the hands of a Flem-
ish woman, Margaret of Austria, the church of
Brou, the latest and prettiest flower of gothic art,
bloomed out in its perfection. Sum up all these
indications and consider, in the protraiture of the
day, the personages themselves,* the donors, abbés,
*See in the Musées of Antwerp, Brussels and Bruges, the triptychs
whose doors present entire families of the period.
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
261
burgomasters, townspeople and matrons, so grave
and so simple in their Sunday clothes and spotless
linen, with their rigid air and their expression of
deep and settled faith, and you will recognize that
here the sixteenth century renaissance took placc
within religious limits, that man in making the pres-
"ent life more attractive never lost sight of that to
come, and that his picturesque invention is the man-
ifestation of a vivacious Christianity instead of ex-
pressing, as in Italy, a restored paganism.
A Flemish renaissance underneath Christian ideas,
such, in effect, is the two-fold nature of art under
Hubert and John Van Eyck, Roger Van der Weyde,
Hemling and Quintin Matsys; and from these two
characteristics proceed all the others. On the one
hand, artists take interest in actual life; their figures
are no longer symbols like the illuminations of
ancient missals, nor purified spirits like the Madon-
nas of the school of Cologne, but living beings and
bodies. They attend to anatomy, the perspective is
exact, the minutest details are rendered of stuffs, of
architecture, of accessories and of landscape; the
relief is strong, and the entire scene stamps itself on
262
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
the eye and on the mind with extraordinary force
and sense of stability; the greatest masters of com-
ing times are not to surpass them in all this, nor
even go so far. Nature evidently is now discovered
by them. The scales fall from their eyes; they have
just mastered, almost in a flash, the proportions, the
structure and the coloring of visible realities; and
moreover, they delight in them. Consider the superb
copes wrought in gold and decked with diamonds,
the embroidered silks, the flowered and dazzling
diadems with which they ornament their saints and
divine personages,* all of which represents the pomp
of the Burgundian court. Look at the calm and
transparent water, the bright meadows, the red and
white flowers, the blooming trees, the sunny distan-
ces of their admirable landscapes.† Observe their
coloring-the strongest and richest ever seen, the
pure and full tones side by side as in a Persian car-
pet, and united solely through their harmony, the
*"God the Father, and the Virgin," by Hubert van Eyck. "The Vir
gin, St. Barbara and St. Catherine," by Memling, and "The Entomb.
ment," by Quintin Matsys.
แ
+ St. Christopher," "The Baptism of Jesus," by Memling and his
school. "The Adoration of the Lamb," by the Van Eycks.
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
263
superb breaks in the folds of purple mantles, the
azure recesses of long falling robes, the green dra-
peries like a summer field permeated with sunshine,
the display of gold skirts trimmed with black, the
strong light which warms and enlivens the whole
scene; you have a concert in which each instrument
sounds its proper note, and the more true because
the more sonorous. They see the world on the
bright side and make a holiday of it, a genuine fête,
similar to those of this day, glowing under a more
bounteous sunlight and not a heavenly Jerusalem
suffused with supernatural radiance such as Fra
Angelico painted. They are Flemings, and they
stick to the earth. They copy the real with scrupu-
lous accuracy, and all that is real-the ornaments of
armor, the polished glass of a window, the scrolls of
a carpet, the hairs of fur,* the undraped body of an
Adam and an Eve, a canon's massive, wrinkled and
obese features, a burgomaster's or soldier's broad
shoulders, projecting chin and prominent nose, the
*See "The Madonna and St. George," by Jan Van Eyck, the An-
twerp triptych of Quintin Matsys, etc. The " Adam and Eve,” of IIuber
Van Eyck at Brussels, and "The Adoration of the Lamb."
264
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
same scenes.
spindling shanks of a hangman, the over large head
and diminutive limbs of a child, the costumes and
furniture of the age; their entire work being a glori
fication of this present life. But, on the other hand,
it is a glorification of Christian belief. Not only are
their subjects almost all of a religious order, but
again they are imbued with a religious sentiment
which, in the following age, is not to be found in the
Their best pictures represent no actual
event in sacred history but a verity of faith, a sum-
mary
of doctrine. Hubert Van Eyck regards paint-
ing in the same light as Simone Memmi, or Taddeo
Gaddi, that is to say, as an exposition of higher the-
ology; his figures and his accessories may be realis-
tic, but they are likewise symbolic. The cathedral
in which Roger Van der Weyde portrays the seven
sacraments is at once a material church and a spir-
itual church; Christ appears bleeding on his cross,
while at the same time the priest is performing mass
at the altar. The chamber or portico in which John
Van Eyck and Memling place their kneeling saints
is an illusion in its detail and finish, but the Virgin
on her throne and the angels who crown her show
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
265
the believer that he is in a superior realm. A hie-
rarchical symmetry groups personages and stiffens
attitudes. With Hubert Van Eyck the eye is fixed
and the face impassible; it is the eternal immobility
of divine life; in heaven all is fulfilled and time is
no more. In other instances, as with Memling, there
is the quietude of absolute faith, the peace of mind
preserved in the cloister as in a sleeping forest, the
immaculate purity, mournful sweetness, the infinite
trust of the truly pious nun absorbed with her own
reveries, and whose large open eyes look out upon
vacancy. These paintings, in turn, are subjects for
the altar or private chapel; they do not appeal like
those of later ages to grand seigniors whose church-
going consists of mere routine, and who crave, even
in religious history, pagan pomp and the torsos of
wrestlers; they appeal to the faithful, in order to
suggest to them the form of the supernatural world
or the emotions of fervid piety, to show them the im-
mutable serenity of beatified saints and the tender
humility of the elect; Ruysbroeck, Eckart, Tauler
and Henry de Suzo, the theological mystics of Ger-
many antecedent to Luther, might here resort. It is
12
266
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
a strange sight, and one which does not seem to
accord with the sensuous parade of the court and the
sumptuous entries of the cities. We find a similar
contrast between the profound religious sentiment
of the Madonnas of Albert Dürer and the worldly
splendor of his "House of Maximilian." The reason
is, we are in a Germanic country; the renaissance
of general prosperity and the emancipation of the
intellect which results from it here revive Christian-
ity instead of destroying it as in a Latin country.
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
267
II.
When a great change is effected in human affairs
it brings on by degrees a corresponding change in
human conceptions. After the discovery of the In-
dies and of America, after the invention of printing
and the multiplication of books, after the restoration
of classic antiquity and the Reformation of Luther,
any conception of the world then formed could no
longer remain monastic and mystic. The tender and
melancholy aspiration of a soul sighing for the celes-
tial kingdom and humbly subjecting its conduct to the
authority of an undisputed Church gave way to free
inquiry nourished on so many fresh conceptions, and
disappeared at the admirable spectacle of this real
world which man now began to comprehend and to
conquer. The rhetorical academies which, at first,
were composed of a clerical body passed into the
hands of the laity; they had preached the payment of
tithes and submission to the Church; they now ridi.
culed the clergy and combated ecclesiastical abuses
268
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
In 1533 nine citizens of Amsterdam were condemned
to a pilgrimage to Rome for having represented one
of these satirical, pieces. In 1539, at Ghent, the
question having been proposed of: Who are the
greatest fools in the world? eleven out of nineteen
academies reply: The monks. "A few poor monks
and nuns," says a contemporary, "always appear in
the comedies; it seems as if people could not enjoy
themselves without making sport of God and the
Church." Philip II. had decreed the punishment of
death against authors and actors whose pieces were
not authorized or were impious. But they were per-
formed, nevertheless, even in the villages. "The
word of God," says the same author, "first found its
way into these countries through plays, and for this
reason they are forbidden much more rigidly than
the writings of Martin Luther." It is evident that
the mind had become emancipated from ancient
tutelage, and that people and burghers, artizans and
* In 1539 Louvain proposes this question: “What is the greatest con-
solation to a dying man?" The responses all have a Lutheran cast. The
Academy of St. Wynockberge, bearing off the second prize, answers,
according to the doctrine of pure grace: "The faith that Christ and his
Spirit have been given to us.”
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
269
merchants began to think for themselves on matters
of salvation and morality.
The extraordinary wealth and prosperity of the
country lead to picturesque and sensuous customs;
here, as in England at the same epoch, a renais-
sance pomp overlays a silent Protestant fermenta-
tion. When Charles V., in 1520, made his entry
into the city of Antwerp, Albert Dürer saw four
hundred triumphal arches, two stories high and forty
feet long, decorated with paintings on which alle-
gorical representations were given. The performers
consisted of young girls belonging to the best bour-
geois class, clothed simply in thin gauze, "almost
naked," says the honest German artist,-"I have
rarely seen more beautiful. I gazed at them very
attentively, and even passionately, inasmuch as I am
a painter." The festivals of the belle-lettre acade-
mies become magnificent; cities and communities
rival each other in luxurious allegorical creations. At
the invitation of the violinists of Antwerp fourteen
academies, in 1562, send their "triumphs," and the
academy called the Guirlande de Marie, at Brussels,
obtains the prize. "For," says Van Meteren, "there
270
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
were full three hundred and forty men on horseback,
all dressed in velvet and in dark purple silk, with
long Polish cassocks embroidered with silver lace,
and wearing red hats fashioned like antique hel-
mets; their pourpoints, plumes and bootees were
white. They wore belts of silver tocque, very in-
geniously woven with yellow, red, blue and white.
They had seven chariots made after the antique
pattern, with divers personages borne thereon.
They had, beside, seventy-eight ordinary chariots
with torches; the said chariots were covered with
red cloth bordered with white. The charioteers all
wore red mantles, and on these chariots were divers
personages representing a number of beautiful an-
tique figures, all of which goes to show how people
will assemble in friendship to share in amity." La
Pione de Malines provides a parade almost equal to
this consisting of three hundred and twenty men on
horseback, attired in a flesh-colored material em-
broidered with gold, seven antique chariots embla-
zoned and flaming with all sorts of lights. Add to
this the entry of twelve other processions, and then
enumerate the plays, pantomines, fireworks and ban-
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
271
quets which follow after.
"There were several simi-
lar games given during the peace in other cities.....
I have deemed it proper to narrate all this," says Van
Meteren, "for the purpose of showing the happy
union and prosperity of those countries in those
days." After the departure of Philip II., "instead of
one court there seemed to be a hundred and fifty."
The nobles vied with each other in magnificence,
maintaining free tables and spending without stint.
On one occasion the Prince of Orange, wishing to
diminish his train, discharged in a body twenty-
eight head cooks. Lordly mansions swarmed with
pages and gentlemen and superb liveries; the full
tide of the renaissance overflowed in folly and
extravagance, as under Elizabeth in England, in
pompous array, cavalcades, games and good cheer.
The Count of Brederode drank so much at one of
St. Martin's feasts that he came near dying; the
rhinegrave's brother did actually die at the table
through too great fondness of Malvoisie wine. Never
did life seem more bright or beautiful. Like Flor-
ence under the Medicis in the preceding century, it
ceased to be tragic; man had expanded; murderous
272
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
revolts and sanguinary wars between city and city
and corporation and corporation quietly subsided;
only one sedition takes place in Ghent in 1536 which
is easily quelled without much bloodshed, the last
and a feeble convulsion, not to be compared with
the formidable insurrections of the fifteenth century.
Margaret of Austria, Mary of Hungary, and Mar-
garet of Parma, the three rulers, are popular;
Charles V. is a national prince, speaking Flemish,
boasting of his nativity in Ghent, and protecting, by
treaties, the manufactures and trade of the country.
IIe fosters and nourishes it; Flanders, in return,
supplies him with the half of his entire revenue;
in his herd of states she is the fat milch cow which
is milked constantly without being dried up. Thus,
while the mind is expanding, the temperature around
it becomes modified and establishes the conditions
of a new growth; we see the dawn of it in the festi-
vals of the belle-lettre academies, which are classic
representations precisely like those of the Florence
carnival and quite different from the quaint conceits
accumulated at the banquets of the Dukes of Bur
*Two million of crowns of gold out of five million.
*
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
273
gundy. "The Violet,' 'Olive' and 'Thought'
academies of Antwerp," says Guiccardini, "give
public performances of comedies, tragedies and other
histories in imitation of the Greeks and Romans.'
Society, ideas and tastes have undergone a transfor
mation, and there is room for a new art.
Already in the preceding epoch we see premon-
itory symptoms of the coming change. From
Hubert Van Eyck to Quintin Matsys the grandeur
and gravity of religious conceptions have dimin-
ished. Nobody now dreams of portraying the
whole of Christian faith and doctrine in a single
picture; scenes are selected from the Gospel and
from history-annunciations, shepherd adorations,
last judgments, martyrdoms and moral legends.
Painting, which is epic in the hands of Hubert Van
Eyck, becomes idyllic in those of Hemling and
almost worldly in those of Quintin Matsys. It
gets to be pathetic, interesting and pleasing. The
charming saints, the beautiful Herodias and the
ithe Salome of Quintin Matsys are richly attired
noble dames and already laic; the artist loves the
world as it is and for itself, and does not subordinate
12*
274
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
it to the representation of the supernatural world
he does not employ it as a means but as an end,
Scenes of profane life multiply; he paints towns-
people in their shops; money - changers, amorous
couples, and the attenuated features and stealthy
smiles of a miser. Lucas of Leyden, his contempo-
rary, is an ancestor of the painters whom we call
the lesser Flemings; his "Presentation of Christ"
and "The Magdalen's Dance" have nothing relig
ious about them but their titles; the evangelical
subject is lost in the accessories; that which the
picture truly presents is a rural Flemish festival, or
a gathering of Flemings on an open field. Jerome
Bosch, of the same period, paints grotesque, infernal
scenes. Art, it is clear, falls from heaven to earth,
and is no longer to treat divine but human incidents.
Artists, in other respects, lack no process and no
preparation; they understand perspective, they
know the use of oil, and are masters of modelling
and relief; they have studied actual types; they
know how to paint dresses, accessories, architecture
and landscape with wonderful accuracy and finish;
their manipulative skill is admirable. One defect
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
275
only still chains them to hieratic art, which is the
immobility of their faces and the rigid folds of their
stuffs. They have but to observe the rapid play of
physiognomies and the easy movement of loose dra-
pery, and the renaissance is complete; the breeze
of the age is behind them and already fills their
sails. On looking at their portraits, their interiors,
and even their sacred personages, as in the "En-
tombment" of Quintin Matsys, one is tempted to
address them thus: "You are alive-one effort
more! Come, bestir yourselves! Shake off the
middle age entirely! Depict the modern man for
us as you find him within you and outside of you.
Paint him vigorous, healthy and content with exis-
Forget the meagre, ascetic and pensive
spirit, dreaming in the chapels of Hemling. If you
choose a religious scene for the motive of your pic-
ture, compose it, like the Italians, of active and
healthy figures, only let these figures proceed from
your national and personal taste. You have a soul
of your own, which is Flemish and not Italian ; let
the flower bloom; judging by the bud it will be a
beautiful one." And, indeed, when we regard the
tence.
276
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
sculptures of the time, such as the chimney of the
Palais de Justice' and the tomb of Charles the Bold
at Bruges, the church and monuments of Brou,
we see the promise of an original and complete art,
less sculptural and less refined than the Italian, but
more varied, more expressive and closer to nature,
less subject to rule but nearer to the real, more
capable of manifesting spirit and personality, the
impulses, the unpremeditated, the diversities, the
lights and darks of education, temperament and
age of the individual; in short, a Germanic art
which indicates remote successors to the Van Eycks
and remote predecessors of Rubens.
They never appeared, or at all events, they imper-
fectly fulfilled their task. No nation, it must be
noted, lives alone in the world; alongside of the
Flemish renaissance there existed the Italian renais-
sance, and the large tree stifled the small plant. It
flourished and grew for a century; the literature,
the ideas and the masterpieces of precocious Italy
imposed themselves on sluggish Europe, and the
Flemish cities, through their commerce, and the Aus
trian dynasty, through its possessions and its Italian
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
277
affairs, introduced into the North the tastes and mod
els of the new civilization. Towards 1520 the Flem
ish painters began to borrow from the artists of
Florence and Rome. John of Mabuse is the first one
who, in 1513, on returning from Italy, introduced
the Italian into the old style, and the rest followed.
It is so natural in advancing into an unexplored
country to take the path already marked out! This
path, however, is not made for those who follow it;
the long line of Flemish carts is to be delayed and
stuck fast in the disproportionate ruts which another
set of wheels have worn. There are two traits char-
acteristic of Italian art, both of which run counter to
the Flemish imagination. On the one hand Italian
art centres on the natural body, healthy, active and
vigorous, endowed with every athletic aptitude, that
is to say, naked or semi-draped, frankly pagan, en-
joying freely and nobly in full sunshine every limb,
instinct and animal faculty, the same as an ancient
Greek in his city or palestrum, or, as at this very
epoch, a Cellini on the Italian streets and highways.
Now a Fleming does not easily enter into this con-
ception. He belongs to a cold and humid climate; a
278
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
/
man there in a state of nudity shivers. The human
form here does not display the fine proportions nor
the easy attitudes required by classic art; it is often
dumpy or too gross; the white, soft, yielding flesh,
easily flushed, requires to be clothed. When the
painter returns from Rome and strives to pursue Ital-
ian art, his surroundings oppose his education; his
sentiment being no longer renewed through his con-
tact with living nature, he is reduced to his souvenirs.
Moreover, he is of Germanic race; in other terms he
is organically a morally good-natured man, and even
modest; he has difficulty in appreciating the pagan
idea of nudity, and still greater difficulty in compre-
hending the fatal and magnificent idea* which gov-
erns civilization and stimulates the arts beyond the
Alps, namely, that of the complete and sovereign
individual, emancipated from every law, subordina-
ting the rest, men and things, to the development of
his own nature and the growth of his own faculties.
Our painter is related, although distantly, to Martin
|
* Burckhardt's "Die Cultur der Renaissance in Italien," an admirable
work, the most complete and most philosophic yet written on the Italian
Renaissance.
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
279
Schoen and Albert Dürer; he is a bourgeois, almost
docile and staid, a lover of the comfortable and the
decent, and adapted to family and domestic life. His
biographer, Karl Van Mander, at the beginning of
his book, furnishes him with moral precepts. Read
this patriarchal treatise, and imagine the distance
between a Rosso, a Giulio Romano, a Titian and a
Giorgione, and their pupils of Leyden or Antwerp.
"All vices," says the good Fleming, "bring their
own punishment. Distrust the maxim that the best
painter is he who is the most dissipated. Unworthy
of the name of artist is he who leads an evil life.
Painters should never dispute or enter into strife with
each other. To squander one's property is not a mer-
itorious art. Avoid paying court to women in your
youthful days. Shun the society of frivolous women,
who corrupt so many painters. Reflect before you
depart for Rome, for the opportunities to spend.
money there are great, and none are there for earn-
ing it. Ever be thankful to God for His bounties."
Special recommendations follow concerning Italian
inns, bed linen and fleas. It is evident that pupils
of this class, even with great labor, will produce but
280
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
1
little more than academic figures; man, according
to their conceptions, is a draped body; when, fol-
lowing the example of the Italian masters, they at-
tempt the nude, they render it without freedom,
without spirit, without vivacity of invention; their
pictures, in fact, are simply cold and meagre imita-
tion; their motive is pedantic; they execute ser-
vilely and badly that which, in Italy, is done nat-
urally and well. On the other hand, Italian art, like
Greek art, and, in general, all classic art, simplifies
in order to embellish; it eliminates, effaces, and re-
duces detail; by this means it gives greater value to
grander features. Michael Angelo and the admira-
ble Florentine school subordinate or suppress acces-
sories, landscape, fabrics and costume; with them.
the essential consists of the noble and the grandiose
type, the anatomical and muscular structure, the
nude or lightly draped form taken by itself, ab-
stractly, through the retrenchment of particulars con-
stituting the individual and denoting his profession,
education and condition; you have man in general
represented, and not a special man. Their person-
ages are in a superior world, because they are of a
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
281
world which is not; the peculiar feature of the scene
they depict is the nullity of time and space. Noth-
ing is more opposed to Germanic and Flemish genius,
which sees things as they are in their entirety and
complexity; which, in man, takes in, besides man in
general, the contemporary, the citizen, the peasant,
the laborer, this citizen, that laborer, that peasant;
which attaches as much importance to the accesso-
ries of a man as to the man himself; which loves
not merely human nature but all nature, animate and
inanimate cattle, horses, plants, landscape, sky, and
even the atmosphere-its broader sympathies fore-
stalling any neglect of objects, and its more minute
observation requiring the fullest expression. You can
comprehend how, in subjecting itself to a discipline
so contrary, it loses the qualities it had without ac-
quiring those it had not; how, in order that it may
arrogate the ideal, it reduces color, loses the senti-
ment of light and atmosphere, obliterates the true
details of costume and of interiors, deprives figures
of original diversities peculiar to portrait and person,
and is led to moderate the suddenness of motion
constituting the impulsiveness of nature's activity,
282
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
and thereby impairing ideal symmetry. It finds
difficulty, however, in making all these sacrifices;
its instinct only partially yields to its education.
Flemish reminiscences may be traced underneath
Italian velleity; both in turn predominate in the
same picture; each prevents the other from having
their full effect; their painting, consequently, uncer-
tain, imperfect and diverted by two tendencies, fur-
nishing us with historical documents and not beauti-
ful works of art.
Such is the spectacle presented in Flanders dur
ing the last three quarters of the sixteenth century.
Like a small river receiving a large stream, the min-
gled waters of which are disturbed until the foreign
affluent imposes its more powerful tint on the entire
current, so do we find the national style, invaded by
the Italian, dappled irregularly and in places, gradu-
ally disappearing, only rarely rising to the surface,
and at last sinking into obscure depths, whilst the
other displays itself in the light and attracts univer-
sal attention. It is interesting to trace in the public
galleries this conflict of the two currents and the
peculiar effects of their commingling. The first Ital-
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
283
ian influx takes place with John de Mabuse, Ber-
nard Van Orley, Lambert Lombard, John Mostaert,
John Schorel, and Launcelot Blondel. They import
in their pictures classic architecture, veined marble
pilasters, medallions, shell niches, sometimes trium
phal arches and cariatides, sometimes also noble and
vigorous female figures in antique drapery, a sound
nude form, well proportioned and vitalized, of the
fine pagan stock, and healthy; their imitation re-
duces itself to this, while in other respects they follow
national traditions. They still paint small pictures,
suitable for genre subjects; they almost always pre-
serve the strong and rich coloring of the preceding
age, the mountains and blue distances of John Van
Eyck, the clear skies vaguely tinged with emerald
on the horizon, the magnificent stuffs covered with
gold and jewels, the powerful relief, the minute pre-
cision of detail, and the solid honest heads of the
bourgeoisie. But as they are no longer restrained by
hieratic gravity they fall, in attempting to emanci-
pate themselves, into simple awkwardness and ridic-
ulous inconsistencies. The children of Job, crushed
by their falling palace, sprawl about grimacing and
284
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
X
writhing as if possessed; on the other panel of the
triptych is the devil in the air mounting upward like
a bat towards the petty Christ of a missal. Long
feet and lean ascetic hands form the odd appurte
nances of a shapely body. A "Last Supper" by
Lambert Lombard mingles together Flemish clumsi-
ness and vulgarity with the composition of Da Vinci.
A "Last Judgment" by Bernard Van Orley intro-
duces demons by Martin Schoen amidst the academic
figures of Raphael. In the next generation the ris-
ing flood begins to engulph all; Michael Van Cox-
cyen, Heemskerk, Franz Floris, Martin de Vos, the
Franckens, Van Mander, Spranger, Pourbus the elder,
and later, Goltzius, besides many others, resemble
people ambitious of speaking Italian but who do so
laboriously, with an accent and some barbarisms.
The canvas is enlarged and approaches the usual
dimensions of an historical subject; the manner of
painting is less simple; Karl Van Mander reproaches
his contemporaries with "overloading their brushes,"
which was not formerly done, and with carrying im
pusto to excess. Coloring dies out; it becomes more
and more white, chalky and pallid. Painters enter
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
285
}
passionately into the study of anatomy, foreshorten-
ings and muscular development; their drawing be
⚫omes dry and hard, reminding one at once of the
goldsmiths contemporary with Pollaiolo and the ex-
aggerating disciples of Michael Angelo; they lay
great or violent stress on their science, they insist on
proving their ability to manipulate the skeleton and
produce action; you will find Adams and Eves,
Saint Sebastians, Massacres of the Innocents, and
Horatii resembling grotesque forms of living and
bare muscles; their personages look as if casting
their skins. When they show more moderation, and
the painter, like Franz Floris in his "Fall of the An-
gels," discreetly copies good classic models, his nudi-
ties are scarcely any better; realistic sentiment and
the quaint Germanic imagination peer out among
ideal forms; demons with the heads of cats, fishes
and swine, and with horns, claws and humps, and
blowing fire from their jaws, introduce bestial com-
edy and a fantastic sabbat into the midst of the noble
Olympus; we have one of Teniers' buffooneries in-
serted in a poem by Raphael. Others, like Martin
Vos, strain themselves to produce the great sacred
286
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
picture, figures imitated from the antique, cuirasses,
draperies.and tunics, studied correctness in composi
tion, gestures indicative of noble action and stage
heads and head gear, while they are substantially
genre painters and lovers of reality and accessories.
They constantly fall back to their Flemish types and
their domestic details; their pictures seem to be
enlarged colored engravings; they would be much
better were they of small size. We feel in the artist
a perverted talent, a natural disposition thwarted,
an instinct working against the grain, a prose-writer
born for narrating social incidents of whom the pub-
lic commands epics in sounding Alexandrines.* Still
another wave, and the remains of national genius seem
wholly submerged. A painter of noble family, well
brought up, instructed by an erudite, a man of the
world and a courtier, a favorite of the great Italian
and Spanish leaders who manage matters in the
Netherlands, Otto Venius, after passing seven years.
in Italy, brings from that country noble and pure
* This period of Flemish art is analogous to that of English literature
after the Restoration. In both cases a Germanic art attempts to be clas-
sic; in both cases the contrast between education and nature produces
hybrid works and multiplied failures.
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
287
antique types, beautiful Venetian color, melting and
subtly graduated tones, shadows permeated with
light, and the vague purples of flesh and of ruddy
foliage. Excepting his native stimulus he is Italian,
and no longer belongs to his race; scarcely more
than a fragment of costume or the simple attitude of
a stooping old man connects him with his country.
Nothing remains to the painter but to abandon it
entirely. Denis Calvaert establishes himself at Bo-
logna, enters into competition with the Caraccis, and
is the master of Guido. Flemish art accordingly
seems, through its own course, to suppress itself for
the advantage of another.
And yet it still subsists underneath the other. In
vain does the genius of a people yield to foreign in-
fluences. It always recovers. These are temporary,
while that is eternal; it belongs to the flesh and the
blood, the atmosphere and the soil, the structure and
degree of activity of brain and senses; all are ani-
mating forces incessantly renewed and everywhere
present, and which the transient applause of a supe
rior civilization neither undermines nor destroys.
This is apparent in the preservation of two styles.
288
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
which continue pure amidst the growing transforma
tion of the others. Mabuse, Morstaert, Van Orley,
the two Pourbus, John Van Cleve, Antonis Moor, the
two Mierevelts and Paul Moreelze produce excellent
portraits; often, in the triptychs, the faces of the
donataires, arranged in rows on the shutters, form a
contrast in their homely sincerity, calm gravity and
profound simplicity of expression with the frigidity
and artificial composition of the principal subject ;
spectator feels himself quite re-animated; instead
of manikins he finds men. On the other hand there
arises the painting of genre subjects, landscapes and
interiors. After Quintin Matsys, and Lucas of Ley-
den, we see it developing with John Matsys, Van
Hemessen, the Breughels, Vinckenbooms, the three
Valkenburgs, Peter Neefs and Paul Bril, and espe-
cially in the multitude of engravers and illustrators
who reproduce, on scattered sheets or in books, the
moralities, social incidents, professions, conditions
and events of the day. They are, undoubtedly, to
remain for a long time fantastic and humorous.
This art mixes up nature promiscuously, according
to its own disordered fancies; it is unconscious of the
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
289
true forms and the true tint of trees and mountains;
it makes its figures howling, and introduces amidst
the costumes of the period grotesque monsters sim
ilar to those promenading through the kermesses.
But all these intermediary objects are natural, and
insensibly lead on to its final state, which is the
knowledge and love of actual life, as the eye con-
templates it. Here, as in the painting of portraits,
the chain is complete; the metal of all its links is
national; through Breughel, Paul Bril and Peter
Neefs, through Antonis Moor, the Pourbus and the
Mierevelts, it joins on to the Flemish and Dutch
masters of the seventeenth century. The rigidity of
ancient figures is relaxed; a mystic landscape be-
comes real; the transition from the divine to the
human age is accomplished. This spontaneous and
regular development shows that national instincts
are maintained under the empire of foreign fashions;
let a crisis intervene to arouse them, and they re-
cover their ascendancy, while art is transformed ac-
cording to the public taste. This crisis is the great
revolution commencing in 1572, the long and terrible
War of Independence, as grand in its events and as
13
290
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
fecund of results as our French Revolution. Here,
as with us, the renewal of the moral world is the
renewal of the ideal world; the Flemish and Duten
art of the seventeenth century, like the French art
and literature of the nineteenth century, is the reac-
tion of a vast tragedy performed for thirty years at
the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives. Here,
however, the scaffolds and battles, having divided the
nation, form two peoples; one Catholic and legiti-
mist in Belgium, and the other Protestant and repub-
lican in Holland. While both were combined there
was but one spirit; divided and opposed there were
two. Antwerp and Amsterdam held different con-
´ceptions of life, and, accordingly, display different
schools of painting; the same political crisis which
divided their country divided their art.
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
291
III.
We must look closely into the formation of Bel-
gium* in order to comprehend the rise of the school
which bears the name of Rubens. Previous to the
War of Independence the Southern provinces seemed
to tend to the Reformation as well as the provinces
of the North. In 1566 bands of iconoclasts had
devastated the cathedrals of Antwerp, Ghent and
Tournay, and broken everywhere, in the churches
and the abbeys, all images and ornaments deemed
idolatrous. In the environs of Ghent thousands of
armed Calvinists flocked to the preachings of Her-
mann Stricker. Crowds gathered around the stake,
sang psalms, sometimes stoned the executioners and
set the condemned free. Death penalties had to be
enacted in order to suppress the satires of the belle-
lettre academies, and when the Duke of Alba began
* All are aware that this name dates from the French Revolution. I
employ it here as the most convenient term. The historic designation
of Belgium is "The Spanish Low Countries," and of Holland "The
United Provinces.'
292
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
his massacres the whole country rushed to arms.
The resistance, however, was not the same in the
South as in the North; in the South the Germanic
race, the independent and Protestant race, was not
pure; the Walloons, a mixed population speaking
French, constituted one half of the inhabitants.
The soil, moreover, being richer, and living easier,
there was less energy and greater sensuality; man
was less resolved to suffer and more inclined to
enjoy. Finally, almost all the Walloons, besides the
families of the great, being attached to court senti-
ment through a court life, were Catholic. Hence it
is that the Southern provinces did not contend with
the indomitable stubbornness of the Northern prov-
inces. There is nothing in them like the sieges of
Maestricht, Harlem, Alkmaar and Leyden, where
women enlisted, fought, and were slaughtered in
the breach. After the taking of Antwerp by the
Duke of Parma the ten provinces returned to their
allegiance, and began apart a new existence. The
most spirited citizens and the most fervent Calvin-
ists had perished in battle and on the scaffold, or had
fled to the North in the seven free provinces. The
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
293
belle-lettre academies exiled themselves there in a
body. On the termination of the Duke of Alva's
administration it was estimated that sixty thousand
families had emigrated; after the capture of Ghent
eleven thousand more departed, and after the capit-
ulation of Antwerp four thousand weavers betook
themselves to London. Antwerp lost the half of
its inhabitants, and Ghent and Bruges two-thirds;
whole streets were empty; in the principal street of
Ghent a couple of horses cropped the grass. A
mighty surgical operation had relieved the nation
of what the Spaniards called its bad blood; at all
events that which remained was the most quiescent.
There is a great substratum of docility in the
Germanic races; think of the German regiments.
exported to America and sold there to die by their
petty absolute princes: the sovereign once accepted,
they are faithful to him; with guaranteed rights
he seems legitimate; they are inclined to respect
the established order of things. The continued con-
Braint, moreover, of irremediable necessity produces
its effect; man accommodates himself to things
when he is satisfied that he cannot change them
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THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
certain portions of his character which cannot be
developed languish, and others expand the more.
There are moments in the history of a nation when
it bears some resemblance to Christ taken to the
top of a high mountain by Satan, and there bid
to choose between a heroic and a common life;
here the tempter is Philip II., with his armies and
executioners; the people of the North and the
South, both subject to the same trial, decide dif
ferently according to the petty diversities of their
composition and character. The choice made these
diversities grow, and are exaggerated by the effects
of the situation they themselves have produced.
Both people being two almost indeterminate varie-
ties of one species become two distinct species. It
is with moral types as with organic types; they
issue at the beginning from a common origin, but as
they complete their development they grow wider
apart and are thus formed through their divergen-
cies. The Southern provinces henceforth become
Belgium. The dominant trait is the craving for
peace and comfort, the disposition to take life on the
jovial and pleasant side, in brief, the sentiment of
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
295
Teniers. In fact, even in a dilapidated cabin or in
a bare tavern on a wooden bench a man may laugh,
sing, smoke a good pipe and swallow deep draughts
of beer; it is not disagreeable to attend mass as
a fine ceremony, nor to recount one's sins to an
accommodating Jesuit. After the capture of An-
twerp, Philip II. is delighted to hear that commu-
nions have become more and more frequent. Con-
vents are founded twenty at a time. "It is a mat-
ter worthy of remark," says a contemporary, “that
since the happy advent of the archdukes more new
establishments have arisen than in two hundred
years and before that "-Franciscans, reformed Car-
melites, friars of St. Francis de Paule, Carmelites,
annunciada, and especially the Jesuits; the latter in
fact bring with them a new Christianity, the most
appropriate to the state of the country, and which
seems manufactured purposely to contrast with that
of the Protestants. Be docile in mind and in heart,
and all the rest is tolerance and indulgence; in this
connection see the portraits of the day, and among
others, the gay fellow who was confessor to Rubens.
Casuistry is shaped to and serves for difficult cases;
296
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
under its empire there is scope enough for all cur-
rent peccadilloes. Worship, moreover, is exempt
from prudery, and winds up by being amusing. To
this epoch belongs the worldly and sensualistic
internal decoration of the grave and venerable
cathedral, the multiplied and contorted ornaments-
flames, lyres, trinkets and scrolls, the veneerings of
veined marbles, altars resembling theatre façades,
and the quaint diverting pulpits overlaid with a men-
agerie of carved birds and brutes. As respects the
new churches, the outside suits the inside. That
of the Jesuits, built in Antwerp at the beginning of
the seventeenth century, is instructive, it being a
saloon filled with étagères. Its thirty-six ceilings
were executed by Rubens, and it is curious to see
here as elsewhere an ascetic and mystic faith accept
as edifying subjects the most blooming and the
most exposed nudities, buxom Magdalens, plump St.
Sebastians and Madonnas whom the negro magi are
devouring with all the lust of their eyes, a display
of flesh and fabrics unequalled by the Florentine
carnival in luxurious temptation and in triumphant
sensuality.
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
297
Meanwhile the altered political situation contrib
utes to the transformation of the intellectual world.
The old despotism becomes relaxed; to the rigors
of the Duke of Alva succeeds the liberal policy of
the Duke of Parma. After an amputation, a man
who has bled profusely must be restored by soothing
and strengthening treatment; hence it is that, after
the pacification of Ghent, the Spaniards let their ter-
rible edicts against heresy lie dormant. Executions
are at an end. The latest martyr is a poor sewing
woman, buried alive in 1597. In the following cen-
tury Jordaens, with his wife and her family, become
Protestants without being annoyed, and even with-
out losing any of his commissions. The archdukes
permit towns and corporations to govern themselves
according to ancient usages, to collect imposts and
attend to their own business; when they desire
to have Breughel de Velours relieved of military
duty or of exactions, they make their appeal to the
The government becomes regular, semi-
liberal, and almost national; Spanish extortions, raz-
zias, and brutalities disappear. At length, in order
to keep possession of the country, Philip II. is com
commune.
13*
298
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
pelled to let it remain Flemish, and exist as a separate
state. In 1599 he detaches it from Spain, and cedes
it in full possession to Albert and Isabella. "The
Spaniards never did a better thing," writes the
French ambassador; "it would be impossible to keep
the country without giving it this new system, as it
was ripe for revolution." The States-General meet
in 1600, and decide for reforms. We see in Guic-
cardini, and other travellers, that the old constitu-
tion arises almost intact out of the rubbish under
which it had been buried by military violence. "At
Bruges," M. de Monconys writes in 1653, "each trade
has a house in common, where those of the profes-
sion meet to transact the business of the community,
or for recreation; and all the trades are distributed
into four divisions, under the control of four burgo-
masters, who have charge of the keys of the city,
the Governor exercising no jurisdiction or power
over any but the military force." The archdukes
are wise and solicitous of the public welfare. In
1609 they make peace with Holland; in 1611 their
perpetual edict completes the restoration of the coun
try. They either are or render themselves power-
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
299
ful; Isabella, with her own hand, strikes down, on
the Place de Sablon, the bird which sanctifies the
cross-bowman's pledge; Albert attends at Louvain
the lectures of Justus Lepsius. They love, cherish,
and attach themselves to famous artists-Otto Ve-
nius, Rubens, Teniers, and Breughel de Velours.
The belle-lettre institutions flourish again, and the
universities are favored; in the Catholic world, un-
der the Jesuits and often by their side, is a kind of
intellectual renaissance; a number of theologians,
controversialists, casuists, erudites, geographers, phy-
sicians, and even historians, arise--Mercator, Orte-
lius, Van Helmont, Jansenius, Lepsius, all of whom
are Flemings of this epoch. The "Description of
Flanders," by Sander, a vast work completed after
so many trials, is a monument of national zeal and
patriotic pride. If, in turn, we wish to form an idea
of the state of the country, take one of the tranquil
and fallen cities to-day like Bruges. Sir Dudley
Carleton, passing through Antwerp in 1616, finds it
a handsome place, although nearly empty; he may
have seen no more than "forty persons in the entire
street," not a carriage, not a horseman, not a cus
300
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
tomer in the shops; but the houses are well main-
tained, everything being clean and cared for: the
peasant has rebuilt his burnt cabin and is at work
in the field; the housewife is attending to her duties;
security has returned, and is about to be followed
by plenty; there are shooting matches, processions,
fairs and magnificent entries of princes; people are
getting back to old comforts beyond which they do
not aspire; religion is left to the Church, and gov-
ernment to the princes: here, as at Venice, the
course of events has brought man down to the quest
of enjoyment—the effort to obtain it being the more
strenuous in proportion to the strong contrast with
their previous misery.
And, in truth, what a contrast! It is necessary
to have read the details of the war in order to ap-
preciate it. Fifty thousand martys had perished
under Charles V., eighteen thousand persons had
been executed by the Duke of Alva, and the re-
volted country had maintained the war for thirteen
years. The Spaniards had reconquered the large
cities only by famine after protracted sieges. In
the beginning Antwerp was sacked for three days;
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
301
seven thousand of her citizens were slain, and five
hundred houses were burnt. The soldier lived on
the country, and we see him in the engravings of
the day plundering and robbing dwellings, torturing
the husband, violating the wife, and bearing away
chests and furniture in carts. When his pay was
withheld too long he took up his quarters in a town,
and this led to a republic of brigands; under an
eletto of their own choice they ravaged the environs
at their convenience. Karl Van Mander, the his-
torian of the painters, on returning one day to his
village, found his house pillaged along with the
rest; the soldiers had even taken the bed and bed-
clothes of his old sick father. Karl was driven out
naked, and they were already fixing a rope to his
neck to hang him when he was saved by a cavalier
whom he had known in Italy. Another time, as he
was on the road with his wife and an infant child,
they took his money, baggage and clothes, his wife's
and those of the infant; the mother could only
secure a small petticoat, the infant a tattered net,
and Karl an old worn-out piece of cloth in which
he wrapped himself up, and in which guise he
$
803
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
reached Bruges. Under this regime a country
ceases to exist; soldiers themselves finally die of
starvation; the Duke of Parma writes to Philip II.
that if he fails to send relief the army is lost, "for
nobody can live without eating." On emerging
from such calamities, peace seems a paradise; it is
not merely the good at which man rejoices, but the
better, and here the better is stupendous. A man
can now sleep in his own bed, store up provisions,
enjoy the fruits of his labor, travel about and as-
semble and converse with his fellows without fear;
he has a home, a country and a future. All the
ordinary occurrences of life get to be interesting
and attractive; he revives, and for the first time
seems to live. It is circumstances like these out of
which always springs a spontaneous literature and
an original art. The great crisis through which the
nation has passed serves to remove the monotonous
varnish with which tradition and custom have over-
spread things. We find out what man is; we seize
on the fundamental points of his renewed and trans-
formed nature; we see its depth, its secret instincts,
the master forces which denote his race and are
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
303
about to control his history; half a century later
and we see them no more, because during a half
century they have been constantly visible. In the
meantime, however, the new order of things be-
comes complete; the mind confronts it like Adam
on his first awakening; it is only later that con-
ceptions get to be over-refined and weakened; they
are now broad and simple. Man is qualified for this
through his birth in a crumbling society and an
education in the midst of veritable tragedies; like
Victor Hugo and George Sand, the child Rubens, in
exile, alongside of his imprisoned father, hears, in
his home and all around him, the roar of tempest
and of wreck. After an active generation which
has suffered and created, comes the poetic gener-
ation which writes, paints or models. It expresses
and amplifies the energies and desires of a society
founded by its fathers. Hence it is that Flemish
art proceeds to glorify in heroic types the sensual
instincts, the grand and gross joyousness, the rude
energy of surrounding mortals, and to find in the
alehouse of Teniers the Olympus of Rubens.
Among these painters there is one who seems to
304
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
efface the rest; indeed no name in the history of art
is greater, and there are only three or four as great.
But Rubens is not an isolated genius, the number
as well as the resemblance of surrounding talents
showing that the efflorescence of which he is the
most beautiful emanation is the product of his
time and people. Before him there was Adam Van
Noort, his master,* and the master of Jordaens;
around him are his contemporaries, educated in other
studios, and whose invention is as spontaneous as his
own-Jordaens, Crayer, Gerard Zeghers, Rombouts,
Abraham Janssens, and Van Roose; after him come
his pupils-Van Thulden, Diepenbecke, Van den
Hoeck, Corneille Schut, Boyermans, Van Dyck, the
greatest of all, and Van Oost of Bruges; alongside
of him are the great animal, flower and still-life
painters Snyders, John Fyt, the Jesuit Seghers, and
an entire school of famous engravers-Soutman, Vor-
sterman, Bolswert, Pontius and Vischer; the same
sap fructifies all these branches, the lesser as well as
the greater, while we must add, again, the perva
See the admirable “Miraculous Draft," by Van Noort, in St. Jameŋ
at Antwerp.
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
305
ding sympathies and the national admiration. It is
plain that an art like this is not the effect of one acci-
dental cause but of a general development, and of
this we have full assurance when, considering the
work itself, we remark the concordances which
assimilate it with its milieu.
On the one side it resumes or follows the tradi-
tions of Italy, and is seen at a glance to be pagan
and Catholic. It is supported by churches and con-
vents; it represents Biblical and evangelical scenes;
the subject is edifying; and the engraver deliber-
ately places at the bottom of his engravings pious
maxims and moral problems. And yet, in fact,
there is nothing Christian about it but its name; all
mystic or ascetic sentiment is banished; its Madon-
nas, martyrs and confessors, its Christs and apostles
are superb florid bodies restricted to the life of
the flesh; its paradise is an Olympus of well-fed
Flemish deities revelling in muscular activity; they
are large, vigorous, plump and content, and make a
jovial and magnificent display as in a national festi
val or at a princely entry. The Church, it is true,
baptizes this last flower of the old mythology with
306
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
becoming forms, but it is only baptism, and this
is frequently wanting. Apollos, Jupiters, Castors,
Pollux and Venus, all the ancient divinities, revive
under their veritable names in the palaces of the
kings and the great which they decorate. This is
owing to religion, here as in Italy, consisting of
rites. Rubens goes to mass every morning, and pre-
sents a picture in order to obtain indulgences; after
which he falls back upon his own poetic feeling for
natural life and, in the same style, paints a lusty
Magdalen and a plump Siren; under the Catholic
varnish the heart and the intellect, all social ways
and observances are pagan. On the other side, this
art is truly Flemish; everything issues from and
centres on a mother idea which is new and national;
it is harmonious, spontaneous and original; in this
respect it contrasts with the foregoing which is only
a discordant imitation. From Greece to Florence
from Florence to Venice, from Venice to Antwerp,
every step of the passage can be traced. The con-
ception of man and of life goes on decreasing in
nobleness and increasing in breadth. Rubens is to
Titian what Titian was to Raphael, and Raphael to
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
307
Phidias. Never did artistic sympathy clasp nature
in such an open and universal embrace. Ancient
boundaries, already often extended, seem removed
purposely to expose an infinite career. There is no
respect for historic proprieties; he groups together
allegoric with real figures, and cardinals with a
naked Mercury. There is no deference to the moral
order; he fills the ideal heaven of mythology and
of the gospel with coarse or mischievous char-
acters; a Magdalen resembling a nurse, and a Ceres
whispering some pleasant gossip in her neighbor's
ear. There is no dread of exciting physical sensi-
bility; he pushes the horrible to extremes, athwart
all the tortures for the punishment of the flesh and
all the contortions of howling agony. There is no
fear of offending moral delicacy; his Minerva is a
shrew who can fight, his Judith a butcher's wife
familiar with blood, and his Paris a jocose expert
and a dainty amateur. To translate into words the
ideas vociferously proclaimed by his Suzannas, his
Magdalens, his St. Sebastians, his Graces and his
Sirens, in all his kermesses, divine and human, ideal
or real, Christian or pagan, would require the terms
308
า
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
of Rabelais. Through him all the animal instincts
of human nature appear on the stage; those which
had been excluded as gross he reproduces as true,
and in him as in nature they encounter the others.
Nothing is wanting but the pure and the noble; the
whole of human nature is in his grasp, save the
loftiest heights. Hence it is that his creativeness
is the vastest we have seen, comprehending as it
does all types, Italian cardinals, Roman emperors,
contemporary citizens, peasants and cowherds, along
with the innumerable diversities stamped on human-
ity by the play of natural forces and which more
than fifteen hundred pictures did not suffice to
exhaust.
For the same reason, in the representation of the
| body, he comprehended more profoundly than any
one the essential characteristic of organic life; he
surpasses in this the Venetians, as they surpass the
Florentines; he feels still better than they that flesh
is a changeable substance in a constant state of
renewal; and such, more than any other, is the
Flemish body, lympathic, sanguine and voracious,
more fluid, more rapidly tending to accretion and
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
309
waste than those whose dry fibre and radical temper.
ance preserve permanent tissues. Hence it is that
nobody has depicted its contrasts in stronger relief,
nor as visibly shown the decay and bloom of life—at
one time the dull flabby corpse, a genuine clinical
mass, empty of blood and substance, livid, blue and
mottled through suffering, a clot of blood on the
mouth, the eye glassy and the feet and hands clay-
ish, swollen and deformed because death seized them
first; at another the freshness of living carnations,
the handsome, blooming and smiling athlete, the
mellow suppleness of a yielding torso in the form of
a well-fed adolescent, the soft rosy cheeks and placid
candor of a girl whose blood was never quickened
or eyes bedimmed by thought, flocks of dimpled
cherubs and merry cupids, the delicacy, the folds,
the exquisite melting rosiness of infantile skin, seem-
ingly the petal of a flower moistened with dew and
impregnated with morning light. In like manner in
the representation of soul and action he appreciated
more keenly than any one the essential feature of
animal and moral life, that is to say the instantaneous
movement which it is the aim of the plastic arts to
310
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
1
}
seize on the wing. In this again he surpasses the Vene-
tians as they surpassed the Florentines. Nobody
has endowed figures with such spirit, with a gesture
so impulsive, with an impetuosity so abandoned and
furious, such an universal commotion and tempest
of swollen and writhing muscles in one single effort.
His personages speak; their repose itself is suspen-
ded on the verge of action; we feel what they have
just accomplished and what they are about to do.
The present with them is impregnated with the past
and big with the future; not only the whole face but
the entire attitude conspires to manifest the flowing
stream of their thought, feeling and complete being;
we hear the inward utterance of their emotion; we
might repeat the words to which they give expres-
sion. The most fleeting and most subtle shades of
sentiment belong to Rubens; in this respect he is a
treasure for novelist and psychologist; he took note
of the passing refinements of moral expression as well
as of the soft volume of sanguine flesh; no one has
gone beyond him in knowledge of the living organ-
ism and of the animal man. Endowed with this sen-
timent and skill he was capable, in conformity with
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
311
the aspirations and needs of his restored nation, of
amplifying the forces he found around and within
himself, all that underlie, preserve and manifest the
overflow and triumph of existence; on the one hand
gigantic joints, herculean shapes and shoulders, red
and colossal muscles, bearded and truculent heads,
over-nourished bodies teeming with succulence, the
luxurious display of white and rosy flesh; on the
other, the rude instincts which impel human nature.
to seek food, drink, strife and pleasure, the savage
fury of the combatant, the enormity of the big-bel-
lied Silenus, the sensual joviality of the Faun, the
abandonment of that lovely creature without con-
science and" fat with sin," the boldness, the energy,
the broad joyousness, the native goodness, the or-
ganic serenity of the national type. He heightens
these effects again through their composition and
the accessories with which he surrounds them-mag-
nificence of lustrous silks, embroidered simarres and
golden brocades, groups of naked figures, modern
costumes and antique draperies, an inexhaustible
accumulation of arms, standards, colonnades, Vene-
tian stairways, temples, canopies, ships, animals, and
312
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
ever novel and imposing scenery, as if outside of
ordinary nature he possessed the key of a thousand
times richer nature, whereon his magician's hand
could forever draw without the freedom of his imag
ination ending in confusion, but on the contrary
with a jet so vigorous and a prodigality so national
that his most complicated productions seem like the
irresistible outflow of a surfeited brain. Like an
Indian deity at leisure he relieves his fecundity by
reating worlds, and from the matchless folds and
aues of his tossed simarres to the snowy whites of
his flesh, or the pale silkiness of his blonde tresses,
there is no tone in any of his canvasses which does
not appear there purposely to afford him delight.
There is only one Rubens in Flanders, as there
is only one Shakespeare in England. Great as the
others are, they are deficient in some one clement of
his genius. Crayer has not his audacity nor his
excess; he paints beauty calm,* sympathetic and
content along with requisite effects of bright and
mellow color. Jordaens has not his regal grandeur
*See at Ghent his "St. Rosalie," at Bruges his " Adoration of the
Shepherds," and at Rennes his "Lazarus."
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
313
and his heroic poetic feeling; he paints with vinous
color stunted colossi, crowded groups and turbulent
plebeians. Van Dyck has not, like him, the love of
power and of life for life itself; more refined, more
chivalric, born with a sensitive and even melan-
choly nature, elegiac in his sacred subjects, aristo-
cratic in his portraits, he depicts with less glowing
and more sympathetic color noble, tender and
charming figures whose generous and delicate souls
are filled with sweet and sad emotions unknown to
his master. * His works are the first indication of
the coming change. After 1660 he is already prom-
inent. The generation whose energy and aspira-
tions had inspired the grand picturesque revery,
faded away man by man; Crayer and Jordaens
alone, by merely living, kept art up for twenty years.
The nation, reviving for a moment, falls backward;
its renaissance never perfects itself. The archducal
sovereigns, through whom it had become an indepen-
dent state, ended in 1633; it reverts back to a Span-
ish province under a governor sent from Madrid. The
treaty of 1648 closes the Scheldt to it, and completes
See, especially, his sacred works at Malines and Antwerp.
14
314
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
the ruin of her commerce. Louis XIV. dismembers
her, and on three occasions deprives her of portions
of her territory. Four successive wars trample over
her for thirty years; friends and enemies, Spaniards,
French, English and Hollanders live upon her; the
treaties of 1715 convert the Dutch into her purvey、
ors and tax-gatherers. At this moment, become Aus-
trian, she refuses the subsidy; but the elders of the
states are imprisoned, and the chief one, Anneessens,
dies on the scaffold; this is the last and a feeble
echo of the mighty voice of Van Artevelde. Hence-
forth the country subsides into a simple province in
which people keep soul and body together and only
care to live. At the same time, and through a reac-
tion, the national imagination declines. The school
of Rubens degenerates; with Beyermans, Van Herp,
John Erasmus Quellin, the second Van Oost, Deys-
ter and John Van Orley we see originality and
energy disappearing; coloring grows weak or be-
comes affected; attenuated types incline to pretti-
ness; expression is either sentimental or mawkish;
the personages occupying the great canvas, instead of
filling it are dispersed, the intervals being supplied
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
315
with architecture; the vein is exhausted; painting
is mere routine or a mannered imitation of the
Italian school. Many betake themselves to foreign
countries. Philippe de Champagne is director of the
Academy of the Fine Arts at Paris and becomes
French in mind and country; still more, a spiritualist
and Jansenist, a conscientious and skilful painter of
grave and thoughtful spirit. Gerard de Lairesse
becomes a disciple of the Italians-a classic, aca-
demic and erudite painter of costume and historic
and mythologic resemblances. The logical reason
assumes empire in the arts, having already obtained
it in social matters. Two pictures in the Musée of
Ghent equally display the change in painting and
the change in society. Both represent princely
entrêes, one in 1666 and the other in 1717. The
first, of a beautiful ruddy tone, shows the last of the
men of the grand epoch, their cavalier air, their
powerful frame, their capacity for physical endeavor,
their rich decorative costumes, their horses with
with flowing manes-here nobles related to Van
Dyck's scigniors, and there pikemen in buff and
cuirass kindred to the soldiers of Wallestein-in
316
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
short, the last remains of the heroic and picturesque
age. The second, cold and pale in tone, shows
highly refined, softened, Frenchified beings-gentle
men clever at salutation, women of fashion con
scious of their appearance, in brief, the imported
drawing-room system and foreign modes of de-
meanor. During the fifty years separating the
former from the latter both the national art and
the national spirit vanished.
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
317
IV.
Whilst the Southern provinces, henceforth subject
and Catholic, followed the Italian road in art, and
represented on their canvasses the mythological epos
of the grand and heroic nude figure, the provinces
of the North, becoming free and Protestant, devel-
oped their life and art in another direction. The
climate is more rainy and colder, and for this reason
the presence of the nude is a rarer and less sym-
pathetic thing. The Germanic race is chaster, and
through this quality the mind is less inclined to
appreciate classic art, as it was conceived of by
the Italian renaissance. Life is more difficult, more
laborious, and more economic; man, therefore, ac-
customed to effort, to forethought and to a method-
ical self-government, has more trouble in compre-
hending the fascinating dream of a sensuous and
full-blown existence. We can imagine the Dutch
citizen in his home after the day's toil at his business.
His dwelling consists of small apartments, some-
318
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
what resembling the state-rooms of a ship; it would
be a troublesome matter to suspend on the walls the
large pictures decorating the saloons of an Italian
palace; its owner's chief requirements are cleanliness.
and comfort; with these he is content and does not
insist on decoration. According to the Venetian
ambassadors, "they are so moderate that, even with
the richest, one sees no unusual pomp or luxury.
They make no use of retainers or silken habits, very
little silver-ware, and no tapestry in their houses;
the household numbers a very few and is very
limited. Outside and inside, in dress and in other
matters, all maintain the true moderation of small
fortunes, nothing superfluous being perceptible." *
When the Earl of Leicester came to take command
in Holland in the name of Elizabeth, and Spinola
arrived to negotiate peace for the King of Spain,
their regal magnificence formed a striking contrast
and even provoked scandal. The head of the re-
public, William the Taciturn, the hero of the age,
wore an old mantle which a student would have pro-
*Motley's "United Netherlands," Vol. IV. p. 551. Report of Con
tarini, 1609,
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
319
nounced threadbare, with a pourpoint like it, unbut
toned, and a woollen waistcoat resembling that of a
bargeman. In the next century the adversary of
Louis XIV., the grand pensioner John de Witt kept
only one domestic; everybody could approach him;
he imitated his illustrious predecessor, who lived
cheek-by-jowl with "brewers and bourgeois." We
find yet at the present day, in their social ways,
many an indication of ancient sobriety. It is clear
that with such characters there is but little room for
the decorative and voluptuous instincts which else-
where in Europe fashioned aristocratic show, and
rendered comprehensible the pagan poesy of beauti-
ful bodies.
The opposite instincts, in effect, predominate.
Relieved of the drawback of the Southern provinces,
Holland, at the end of the sixteenth century, sud-
denly and with extraordinary energy turns in the
direction of its natural proclivities. Primitive incli-
nations and faculties appear with the most strik-
ing results; they are not a new birth, but simply
a revelation. Good observers had detected them
a hundred and fifty years before. "Friesland is
3
320
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
free," said Pope Eneas Sylvius,*"lives in her own
fashion, will not endure foreign empire, and has no
desire to dominate over others. The Frieslander
does not hesitate to face death in behalf of liberty.
This spirited people, used to arms, of large and
robust frames, calm and intrepid in disposition,
glories in her freedom notwithstanding that Philip,
Duke of Burgundy, proclaims himself lord of the
country. They detest military and feudal arro-
gance, and tolerate no man who seeks to raise his
head above his fellows. Their magistrates are
elected annually by themselves, and are obliged to
administer public matters with equity. . . . They
severely punish licentiousness among women ...
They scarcely admit an unmarried priest lest he
should corrupt the wife of another, regarding con-
tinence as a difficult thing and beyond the natural
powers." Every Gerinanic conception of state, mar-
riage and religion are here visible in germ, and
forecast the final flowering of the republic and of
Protestantism. Subjected to trial by Philip II.
they offer to sacrifice beforehand "their lives and
* Cosmographia, p: 421
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
321
their property." A small population of traders,
lost on a mud-heap at the extremity of an empire
more vast and more feared than that of Napoleon
resisted, subsisted and increased under the weight
of the colossus who tried to crush her. Their sieges
are all admirable; citizens and women, supported
by a few hundreds of soldiers, arrest an entire army
before ruined ramparts, the best troops in Europe,
the greatest generals and the most skilful engin-
eers ; and this remnant of emaciated people, after
feeding on rats, boiled leaves and leather for
months, determine, rather than surrender, to place
the infirm in the centre of a square and go forth to
die in the intrenchments of the enemy. The details
of this war must be read in order to realize the
extent to which man's patience, coolness and energy
may be carried.*
On the sea a Dutch vessel is
blown up rather than strike its flag, while their voy-
ages of discovery, colonization and conquest, in
Nova Zembla, India and Brazil, by the way of the
Straits of Magellan, are as magnificent as their
* Among others the capture of Bois-le-Duc by Héraugière and sixty.
nine volunteers.
14*
322
1
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
combats. The more we demand of human nature
the more she gives; her faculties are exalted in
their exercise, while the limits to her power of
doing and suffering are no longer perceptible.
Finally, in 1609, after thirty years warfare, the cause.
is won. Spain recognizes their independence, and
during the whole of the seventeenth century they
are to play a most prominent part in the affairs of
Europe. No power can make them yield, neither
Spain during a second war of twenty-seven years,
nor Cromwell, nor Charles II., nor England com-
bined with France, nor the fresh and formidable
power of Louis XIV.; after three wars their am-
bassadors are all to be seen in humble and fruit-
less entreaty at Gertruydenberg, and the grand-
pensioner Heinsius, is to become one of the three
potentates to control the destinies of Europe.
Internally their government is as good as their
external position is exalted. For the first time in
the world conscience is free and the rights of the cit-
izens are respected. Their state consists of a com-
munity of provinces voluntarily united, which, each
within its own borders, maintains with a degree of
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
323
perfection unknown till then the security of the pub-
lic and the liberty of the individual. "They all love
liberty," says Parival in 1660; "no one among them
is allowed to beat or abuse another, while the women
servants have so many privileges their masters,
even, dare not strike them." Full of his admiration,
he repeatedly insists on this wonderful respect for
human personality. "There is not to-day a prov-
ince in the world which enjoys so much liberty as
Holland, with so just a harmony that the little can-
not be imposed upon by the great, nor the poor by
the rich and opulent . . . The moment a seignior
brings into this country any serfs or slaves they are
free; yes, and the money he laid out in their pur-
chase is lost... The inhabitants of a village having
paid what they owe are as free as the inhabitants of
a city... And above all each is king in his own
house, it being a very serious crime to have done.
violence to a bourgeois in his own domicile." Every-
body can leave the country when he pleases, and take
all the money he pleases with him. The roads are
safe day and night even for a man traveling alone.
The master is not allowed to retain a domestic
324
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
against his will. Nobody is troubled on account of
his religion. One is free to say what he chooses
66
even of the magistrates," and to denounce them.
Equality is fundamental. "Those who hold office
obtain consideration rather through fair dealing than
advance themselves over others by a proud bearing."
A nation like this cannot fail to be prosperous; when
man is both just and energetic the rest comes to him
as surplus. At the beginning of the War of Inde
pendence the population of Amsterdam was 70,000;
in 1618 it was 300,000. The Venetian ambassadors
reported that people swarmed in the streets every
hour of the day as at a fair. The city increased two-
thirds; a surface equal to the size of a man's foot
was worth a gold ducat. The country is as good as
the city. Nowhere is the peasant so rich and so
able to derive advantage from the soil; one village
possesses four thousand cows; an ox weighs two
thousand pounds. A farmer offers his daughter to
Prince Maurice with a dowry of one hundred thou-
sand florins. Nowhere are industrial pursuits and
manufactures so perfect; cloths, mirrors, sugar-refin-
eries, porcelain, pottery, rich stuffs of silk, satin and
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
325
brocade, iron-ware and ship-rigging. They supply
Europe with half of its luxuries and nearly all its
transportation. A thousand vessels traverse the
Baltic in quest of raw material. Eight hundred
boats are engaged in the herring fishery. Vast com-
panies monopolize trade with India, China and
Japan; Batavia is the centre of a Dutch empire; at
this moment, 1609, Holland on the sea and in the
world is what England was in the time of Napoleon.
She has a marine of one hundred thousand sailors; in
war time she can man two thousand vessels; fifty
years after she maintains herself against the com-
bined fleets of France and England; year after year
the great stream of her success and prosperity is
seen to increase. But its source is yet more bounti
ful than the stream itself; that which sustains her is
an excess of courage, reason, abnegation, will and
genius; "this people," say the Venetian ambassa-
dors, "are inclined to labor and industry to such a
degree that no enterprise is too difficult for them to
succeed in . . . They are born for work and for priva-
tion, and all are doing something, some one way and
some another." Much production and light con-
326
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
sumption is the mode of growth of public prosperity
The poorest, "in their small and humble habita
tions," have all necessary things. The richest in
their fine houses avoid the superfluous and ostenta-
tion; nobody is in want, and nobody abuses; every
one is employed with his hands or his mind.
“All
things are made profitable," says Parival; "there are
none, even to those who gather ordure out of the
canals who do not earn half-a-crown a day. Chil-
dren even who are learning their trades almost earn
their bread at the start. They are so inimical to bad
government and to indolence that they have places
in which the magistrates imprison idlers and vaga-
bonds, also those who do not properly attend to
their business-the complaints of wives or family
relations being a sufficient warrant, and in these
places they are obliged to work and earn their sub-
sistence whether they will or not." The convents
are transformed into hospitals, asylums and homes
for orphans, the former revenues of lazy monks sup-
porting invalids, the aged, and widows and children
of soldiers and sailors lost in war. The army is so
efficient that any of its soldiers might serve as
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
327
captain in an Italian army, while no Italian captain
would be admitted in it as a common soldier. In
culture and instruction, as well as in the arts of or-
ganization and of government, the Dutch are two
centuries ahead of the rest of Europe. Scarcely a
man, woman or child can be found who does not
know how to read and write (1609). Every village
has a public school. In a bourgeois family all the
boys read Latin and all the girls French. Many
people write and converse in several foreign lan-
guages. It is not owing to simple precaution, to
habits of laying up and calculations of utility, but
they appreciate the dignity of science. Leyden, to
which the States-General propose a recompense, after
its heroic defense, demands a University; no pains are
spared to attract to it the greatest savans of Europe.
The States themselves unite, and through Henry IV.
cause letters to be sent to Scaliger, who is poor and
a professor, begging him to honor the city with his
presence; no lessons will be required of him; they
merely wish him to come and converse with the eru-
dites, direct their efforts, and allow the nation to
participate in the fame of his writings. Under this
328
TIIE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
regime Leyden becomes the most renowned schoo.
in Europe; she has two thousand students; philoso-
phy hunted out of France finds refuge there; during
the seventeenth century Holland is the first of
thoughtful countries. The positive sciences here
find their native soil, or the land of their adoption.
Scaliger, Justus Lepsius, Saumaisius, Meursius, the
two Heinsius, the two Dousa, Marnix de Ste-Alde-
gonde, Hugo Grotius and Snellius preside over
learning, laws, physics and mathematics. The Elze-
virs carry on printing. Lindshoten and Mercator
furnish instruction to travellers and develop geo-
graphical science. Hooft, Bor and Meteren write
the history of the nation. Jacob Cats provides
its poetry. Theology, which is the philosophy of
the day, takes up, with Arminius and Gomar, the
question of grace, and, even in the smallest villages,
agitates the minds of peasants and bourgeois. The
Synod of Dordrecht at length in 1609 constitutes
the œcumenical council of the Reformation.
this primacy of speculative intellect add that of
practical genius: from Barnevelt to De Witt, from
William the Taciturn to William III., from Heems
To
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
329
kerck the admiral to Von Tromp and De Ruyter,
a sequence of superior men are at the head of art
and business matters. It is under these circum-
stances that the national art appears. All the
great original painters are born in the first thirty
years of the seventeenth century, after grave danger
had passed away, when the final victory was assured,
when man, sensible of great things accomplished,
points out to his children the onward path which
has been cleared by his vigorous arm and stout
heart. Here, as elsewhere, the artist is the offspring
of the hero. The faculties employed in the creation
of a real world, now that the work is accomplished,
reach beyond and are employed in the creation of
an imaginary world. Man has done too much to
go back to school; the field spread out before him
and around him has been peopled by his activity;
it is so glorious and so fecund he can long dwell
upon and admire it; he need no longer subdue his
own thought to a foreign thought; he seeks and dis-
covers his own peculiar sentiment; he dares to con-
fide himself to it, to pursue it to the end, to imitate
nobody, to derive all from himself, to invent with no
330
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
other guide but the voiceless preferences of his own
senses and his own affections. His inner forces, his
fundamental aptitudes, his primitive and hereditary
instincts drawn out and fortified by experience con-
tinue to operate after his experience, and, when they
have formed a nation they form an art.
Let us consider this art. It manifests through col-
ors and forms all the instincts that have just ap-
peared in actions and in works. So long as the
seven provinces of the North and the ten provinces
of the South formed but one nation they had but one
school of art. Engelbrecht, Lucas of Leyden, John
Schoreel, the elder Heemskerck, Corneille of Harlem,
Bloemaert and Goltzius paint in the same style as
their contemporaries of Bruges and Antwerp. There
is not as yet a distinct Dutch school, because there is
not as yet a distinct Belgian school. At the time
when the War of Independence begins the painters
of the North are laboring to convert themselves
into Italians like the painters of the South. After
the year 1600, however, there is a complete change
in painting as in other things. The rising sap of the
nation gives predominance to the national instincts,
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
331
When
Nudities are no longer visible; the ideal figure, the
beautiful human animal living in full sunshine, the
noble symmetry of limbs and attitude, the grand al-
legoric or mythological picture is no longer adapted
to Germanic taste. Calvanism, moreover, which now
rules, excludes it from its temples, and amidst this
population of earnest and economic laborers there is
no seigneurial display, no widespread and grandiose
epicureanism which, elsewhere, in the palaces and in
proximity to luxurious silver, liveries and furniture,
demands the sensual and pagan canvas.
Amelia of Solm desires to raise a monument in this
style to her husband, the stadtholder Frederic Henry,
she is obliged to send to Orangesaal for the Flemish
artists Van Thulden and Jordaens. To these real-
istic imaginations and amidst these republican cus-
toms, in this land where a shoemaking privateer can
become vice-admiral, the most interesting figure is
one of its own citizens, a man of flesh and blood, not
draped or undraped like a Greek, but in his own cos-
tume and ordinary attitude, some good magistrate
or valiant officer. The heroic style is suited to but
one thing, the great portraits which decorate the
332
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
town-halls and public institutions in commemoration
of services rendered. We see, in fact, a new kind of
picture make its appearance here, the vast canvas on
which are displayed five, ten, twenty and thirty full-
length portraits as large as life, hospital directors,
arquebusiers on target excursions, syndics assembled
around a table, officers offering toasts at a banquet,
professors giving clinical lectures, all grouped ac-
cording to their pursuits, and all presented to view
with the costume, arms, banners, accessories and
surroundings belonging to their actual life; it is a
veritable historical picture, the most instructive and
most impressive of all, where Franz Hals, Rembrandt,
Govaert Flinck, Ferdinand Bol, Theodore de Keyser
and John Ravenstein depict the heroic age of their
nation, where sensible, energetic and loyal heads
possess the nobleness of power and of conscience,
where the fine costume of the renaissance, the scarfs,
the buff vests, the frills, the lace collars, the pour-
points and the black mantles throw their gravity
and brilliancy around the solid portliness of the stout
forms and frank expressions of the faces, where the
artist, now through the virile simplicity of his
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
333
means, now through the strength of his convictions,
becomes the equal of his heroes.
Such is painting for the public; there now remains
painting for private life, that which decorates the
houses of individuals, and which, in its dimensions
as well as subjects, conforms to the condition and
character of its purchasers. "There is no bourgeois.
so poor," says Parival, "who does not liberally in-
dulge his taste this way." A baker pays six hun-
dred florins for a single figure by Van der Meer of
Delft. This, along with a neat and agreeable inte-
rior, constitutes their luxury; "they do not grudge
money in this direction, which they rather save on
their stomachs." The national instinct re-appears
here the same as revealed in the first epoch with
John Van Eyck, Quintin Matsys, and Lucas of Ley-
den; and it is emphatically the national instinct, for
it is so deep and so active that, even in Belgium, in
close proximity to mythological and decorative art,
it runs through the Breughels and Teniers like a
small brook alongside of a broad river. It exacts
and provokes the representation of man as he is and
life as it is, both as the eye encounters them, citizens,
334
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
peasants, cattle, shops, taverns, rooms, streets and
landscapes. There is no need to transform them in
order to ennoble them; they are satisfied if they are
worthy of interest. Nature, in herself, whatever she
may be, whether human, animal, vegetable or inani-
mate, with all her irregularities, minutiae and omis-
sions, is inherently right, and, when comprehended,
people love and delight to contemplate her. The
object of art is not to change her, but to interpret
her; through sympathy it renders her beautiful.
Thus understood, painting may represent the house-
keeper spinning in her rural cot, the carpenter plan-
ing on his work-bench, the surgeon dressing a rustic's
arm, the cook spitting a chicken, the rich dame
washing herself; all sorts of interiors, from the hovel
to the drawing-room; all sorts of types, from the
rubicund visage of the deep drinker to the placid
smile of the well-bred damsel; every scene of refined
or rustic life-a card-party in a gilded saloon, a peas
ant's carouse in a bare tavern, skaters on a frozen
canal, cows drinking from a trough, vessels at sea,
the entire and infinite diversities of sky, earth, water,
darkness and daylight. Terburg, Metzu, Gerard
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
335
When
Dow, Van der Meer of Delft, Adrian Brouwer,
Schalcken, Franz Mieris, Jan Steen, Wouverman,
the two Ostades, Wynants, Cuyp, Van der Neer,
Ruysdael, Hobbema, Paul Potter, Backhuysen, the
two Vanderveldes, Philip of Koenig, Van der Heyden,
and how many more! There is no school in which
artists of original talent are so numerous.
the domain of art consists, not of a small summit,
but of the wide expanse of life, it offers to cach mind
a distinct field; the ideal is narrow, and inhabited
only by two or three geniuses; the real is immense,
and provides places for fifty men of talent. A tran-
quil and pleasing harmony emanates from all these
performances. We are conscious of repose in look-
ing at them. The spirit of the artist, like that of his
figures, is in equilibrium; we should be quite content
and comfortable in his picture. We realize that his
imagination does not go beyond. It seems as if he,
like his personages, were satisfied with mere living.
Nature appears to him excellent; all he cares for is
to add some arrangement, some tone side by side
with another, some effect of light, some choice of
attitude. In her presence he is like a happy-wedded
336
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
2
Hollander in the presence of his spouse; he would
not wish her otherwise; he loves her through affec
tionate routine and innate concordance; at the ut
most his chief requirement of her will be to wear
at some festival her red frock instead of the blue
one. He bears no resemblance to our painters, ex-
pert observers taught by æsthetic and philosophic
books and journals, who depict the peasant and the
laborer the same as the Turk and the Arab, that is
to say, as curious animals and interesting specimens ;
who charge their landscapes with the subtleties, re-
finements and emotions of poets and civilians in order
to rid themselves of the mute and dreamy revery
of life. He is of a more näive order; he is not dis-
located or over-excited by excessive cerebral activ-
ity; as compared to us he is an artizan; when he
takes up painting he has none other than picturesque
intentions; he is less affected by unforeseen and
striking detail than by simple and leading general
traits. His work, on this account, healthier and less
poignant, appeals to less cultivated natures, and
pleases the greater number. Among all these paint-
ers, two only-Ruysdael, in spiritual finesse and
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
337
marked superiority of education, and Rembrandt
especially, in a peculiar structure of the eye and a
wonderfully wild genius-developed, beyond their
age and nation, up to the common instincts which
bind the Germanic nations together and pave the
way for modern sentiments. The latter, constantly
collecting his materials, living in solitude and borne
along by the growth of an extraordinary faculty,
lived, like our Balzac, a magician and a visionary in
a world fashioned by his own hand and of which he
alone possessed the key. Superior to all painters in
the native delicacy and keenness of his optical per-
ceptions, he comprehended this truth and adhered to
it in all its consequences that, to the eye, the essence
of a visible object consists of the spot (tache), that
the simplest color is infinitely complex, that every
visual sensation is the product of its elements
coupled with its surroundings, that each object on
the field of sight is but a single spot modified by
others, and that, in this wise, the principal feature
of a picture is the ever-present, tremulous, colored
atmosphere into which figures are plunged like fishes
in the sea.
He rendered this atmosphere palpable,
15
338
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
and revealed to us its mysterious and thronging pop
ulation; he impregnated it with the light of his own.
country-a feeble, yellow illumination like that of a
lamp in a cellar; he felt the mournful struggle
between it and shadow, the weakness of vanishing
rays dying away in gloom, the tremulousness of re-
flections vainly clinging to gleaming walls, the sum
of that vague multitude of half-darks which, invisible
to ordinary gaze, seem in his paintings and etchings.
to form a submarine world dimly visible through an
abyss of waters. On emerging from this obscurity
the full light, to his eyes, proved a dazzling shower;
he felt as if it were flashes of lightning, or some
magical effulgence, or as myriads of beaming darts.
He found accordingly, in the inanimate world the
completest and most expressive drama, all contrasts
and all conflicts, whatever is overwhelming and pain-
fully lugubrious in night, whatever is most flecting
and saddest in ambiguous shadow, whatever is most
violent and most irresistible in the irruption of day-
light. This done, all that remained was to impose
the human drama on the natural drama; a stago
thus fashioned indicates of itself its own characters.
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
339
The Greeks and Italians had known of man and
of life only the straightest and tallest stems, the
healthy flower blooming in sunshine; he saw the
root, everything which crawls and moulders in
shadow, the stunted and deformed sprouts, the
obscure crowd of the poor, the Jewry of Amster-
dam, the slimy, suffering populace of a large city
and unfavorable climate, the bandy-legged beggar,
the bloated idiot, the bald skull of an exhausted
craftsman, the pallid features of the sick, the whole
of that grovelling array of evil passions and hideous.
miseries which infest our various civilizations like
worms in a rotten plank. Once on this road he
could comprehend the religion of grief, the genuine
Christianity; he could interpret the Bible as if he
were a Lollard; he could recognize the eternal Christ
as present now as formerly, as living in a cellar or
tavern of Holland as beneath a Jerusalem sun; the
healer and consoler of the miserable, alone capable
of saving them because as poor and as miserable as
themselves. He too, through a reaction, was con-
scious of pity; by the side of others who seem
painters of the aristocracy he is of the people; he
340
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
is, at least, the most humane; his broader sympa.
thies embrace more of nature fundamentally; no
ugliness repels him, no craving for joyousness or
#
nobleness hides from him the lowest depths of truth.
Hence it is that, free of all trammels and guided by
the keen sensibility of his organs, he has succeeded
in portraying in man not merely the general struc-
ture and the abstract type which answers for classic
art, but again that which is peculiar and profound
in the individual, the infinite and indefinable com-
plications of the moral being, the whole of that
changeable imprint which concentrates instantane-
ously on a face the entire history of a soul and
which Shakespeare alone saw with an equally prodi-
gious lucidity. In this respect he is the most origi-
nal of modern artists, and forges one end of the
chain of which the Greeks forged the other; the V
rest of the masters, Florentine, Venetian and Flem-
ish, stand between them; and when, nowadays, our
over-excited sensibility, our extravagant curiosity in
the pursuit of subtleties, our unsparing search of
the true, our divination of the remote and the
obscure in human nature, secks for predecessors and
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
341
masters, it is in him and in Shakespeare that Balzac
and Delacroix are able to find them.
A blooming period like this is transient for the
reason that the sap which produces it is exhausted
by its production. Towards 1667, after the naval
defeats of England, slight indications show the
growing change in the manners, customs and senti-
ments which had stimulated the national art. The
prosperity is too great. Already, in 1660, Parival,
speaking of this, grows ecstatic in every chapter;
the companies of the East and West Indies declare
dividends to their stockholders of forty and fifty per
cent. Heroes become citizens; Parival notices the
thirst for gain among those of the highest class.
And more, "they detest duels, contentions and quar-
rels, and commonly assert that well-off people never
fight." They want to enjoy themselves, and the
houses of the great, which the Venetian ambassadors
early in the century find so bare and so simple, be-
come luxurious; among the leading citizens there
are found tapestries, high-priced pictures and "gold
and silver-plate." The rich interiors of Terburg and
Metzu show us the new-found elegance-the light
342
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
silk dresses, velvet bodices, the gems, the pearls,
the hangings honey-combed with gold, and the lofty
chimneys with marble columns. Ancient energy
relaxes. When Louis XIV. invades the country in
1672 he finds no resistance. The army has been
neglected; their troops are disbanded; their towns
surrender at the first blow; four French cavaliers
take Muyden which is the key to the floodgates; the
States-General implore peace on any terms. The
national sentiment degenerates, at the same time, in
the arts. Taste becomes transformed. Rembrandt
in 1669 dies poor, almost without anybody's knowl-
edge; the new-found luxury is satisfied with foreign
models obtained from France and Italy. Already,
during the most flourishing epoch, a number of paint-
ers had gone to Rome to paint small figures and
landscapes; Jan Both, Berghem, Karl Dujardin, and
many others-Wouvermans himself-form a half-Ital-
ian school alongside of the national school. But
this school was spontaneous and natural; amid the
mountains, ruins, structures and rags of the South
the vapory whiteness of the atmosphere, the genial.
ity of the figures, the mellow carnations, the gayety
IN TIIE NETHERLANDS.
343
and good humor of the painter denote the persist
ency and freedom of the Dutch instinct. On the
other hand, we see at this moment this instinct be-
coming enfeebled under the invasion of fashion. Ou
the Kaisergracht and the Heeregracht rise grand
hotels in the style of Louis XIV., while the Flemish
painter who founded the academic school, Gerard de
Lairesse, comes to decorate them with his learned
allegories and hybrid mythologies. The national
art, it is true, does not at once surrender; it is pro-
longed by a succession of masterpieces up to the
first years of the eighteenth century; at the same
time the national sentiment, aroused by humiliation
and danger, excites a popular revolution, heroic
sacrifices, the inundation of the country, and all the
successes which afterwards ensue.
But these very
successes complete the ruin of the energy and enthu-
siasm which this temporary revival had stimulated.
During the whole of the war of the Spanish succes-
sion, Holland, whose stadtholder became King of
England, is sacrificed to its ally; after the treaty of
1713 she loses her maritime supremacy, falls to the
second rank of powers, and, finally, still lower
344
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART
Frederic the Great is soon able to say that she is
dragged in the wake of England like a sloop behind
a man-of-war. France tramples on her during the
war of the Austrian succession; later, England im-
poses on her the right of search and deprives her of
the coast of Coromandel. Finally, Prussia steps in,
overwhelms the republican party and establishes the
stadtholdership. Like all the weak she is hustled
by the strong, and, after 1789, conquered and recon-
quered. What is worse she gives up and is content
to remain a good commercial banking-house. Al-
ready in 1723 her historian, John Leclerc, a refugee,
openly ridicules the valiant seamen who, during the
War of Independence, blew themselves up rather
than strike their flag.* In 1732, another historian de-
clares that "the Dutch think of nothing but the ac-
cumulation of riches." After 1748 both the army
and the fleet are allowed to decline. In 1787 the
Duke of Brunswick brings the country under subjec-
tion almost without striking a blow. What a dis-
tance between sentiments of this cast and those of
"This good captain belonged to those who die for fear of dying. If
God forgives such people it is because they are out of their mind.'
IN THE NETHERLANDS.
345
the companions of William the Taciturn, De Ruyter
and Von Tromp! Hence it is that, through an ad-
mirable concordance, we see picturesque invention
terminating with practical energy. In ten years
after the commencement of the eighteenth century
all the great painters are dead. Already for a gen-
eration a decline is manifest in the impoverished
style, in the more limited imagination and in more
minute finish of Franz Mieris, Schalcken, and the rest.
One of these, Adrian Van der Werf, in his cold and
polished painting, his mythologies and nudities, his
ivory carnations, his impotent return to the Italian
style, bears witness to the Dutch oblivion of native
tastes and its own peculiar genius. His successors
resemble men who attempt to speak with nothing
to say; brought up by masters or famous parents,
Peter Van der Werf, Henry Van Limborch, Philip
Van Dyck, Mieris the younger, and another the
grandson, Nicholas Verkolie, and Constantine Nets-
cher repeat sentences they have heard, but like au-
tomatons. Talent survives only among painters of
accessories and flowers-Jacques de Witt, Rachel
Ruysch and Van Huysum-in a small way, which
15*
346
ART IN THE NETHERLANDS.
}
requires less invention and which still lasts a few
years, similar to a tenacious clump of bushes on a
dry soil whereon all the great trees have died. This
dies in its turn, and the ground remains vacant. It
is the last evidence of the dependence which attaches
individual originality to social life, and proportions
the inventive faculties of the artist to the active
energies of the nation.
ART
IN
GREECE
ΤΟ
HENRI LEHMANN.
PAINTER.
Ի
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
The translator has to express his grateful ac-
knowledgments to Mr. Bryant for translations of
the several passages quoted by the author from
the Odyssey, kindly furnished by him in advance
of the publication of his version of that poem ;
also for the translation of an Olympic chorus from
the original Greek on page 497
SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION.
SCULPTURE in Greece. Its remains, their insufficiency.
-Necessity of studying the milieu.
RACE.
359
Influence of physical conditions on the early settlers of
a country.-Relationship of the Greek and the Latin 362
§ I. Circumstances causing the diversity of the two
characters.-Climate.-Its mild effects.-The soil
poor and mountainous.-Temperance of the inhabi
tants.- Universal presence of the Sea.- Induce-
ments for the coasting trade.-The Greeks seamen
and navigators.-Their natural finesse and precocious
education.
§ II. Evidences of this character in their history.-
Ulysses.-The Græculus.-Taste for mathematics
and abstractions.-Invention in the sciences.-Phi-
losophic theories.-Sophists and Disputants.-The
Attic taste.
§ III. Lack of vastness in their landscape.-Mountains,
rivers and sea.-Clearness of relief and transpar-
ency of the atmosphere.-Analogous effect in their
political organization.-Small dimensions of the
State in Greece.-The acquired aptitude of the
Greek mind for positive and clear conceptions.-
Evidences of this trait in their history.-Religion.-
364
376
354
SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS.
The sentiment of the universal feeble.-Idea of the
Cosmos.-Their gods human and limited.—The
Greek finally sports with them.-Government.--
Independence of the Colonies.-Cities unable to
federate.-Limit and fragility of the Grecian State.
Integrity and growth of human nature.-Concep-
tion, complete and circumscribed, of human nature
and of its destiny.
385
§ IV. Beauty of land and sky.-Natural gayety of the
race.-Evidences of this trait in their history.-
Aristophanes. Their idea of the happiness of the
Gods.-Religion a festivity.-Opposite purposes of
the Greek and the Roman State.-Athenian expedi-
tions, democracy and amusements.-The State be-
comes a spectacular enterprise.-Earnestness in sci-
ence and philosophy not perfect.-Adventurous taste
in theories.-Dialectical subtleties.
§ V. Consequences of these qualities and defects.-They
are genuine artists.-Sensitiveness to delicate rela-
tionships, propriety and clearness of conception and
love of beauty.-Evidences of this in their art.
-The Temple.-Its position.-Its proportions.—
Its construction.-Its refinements.-Its ornamenta-
tion.-Its paintings.-Its sculptures.-The impres-
sion it leaves on the mind
401
415
THE PERIOD.
Difference between an ancient and a modern.-Life and
intellect more simple among the ancients than among
ourselves
§ I. Influence of climate on modern civilizations.-Man
has greater wants.-The Costume, Dwelling and
Public Edifice of Greece and of our time.-Social
organization, including public business, military
art and navigation formerly and to-day
427
429
SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS.
355
§ II. Influence of the past on modern civilization.—
Dante and Homer.-The idea of death and futurity
in Greece.-Difference of conception and sentiment
in the modern.-Difference between modern lan-
guages and the ancient Greek.-Ancient culture and
education compared with the modern.-Contrast
between a fresh and precocious civilization and an
elaborate and complicated civilization
§ III. Effects of these differences on the intellect and on
art.-Mediaval, Renaissance and contemporary sen-
timents, figures and characters.-Antique taste op-
posed to modern taste.-In Literature.-In Sculpture.
-Inherent value of the body.-Love of gymnastic
perfection. The Head.—Slight importance of physi-
ogonomy.-Interest in physical action and in inex-
pressive repose.-Suitableness of the moral condi-
tion to this form of art
440
455
鬣
​INSTITUTIONS.
§ I. The Orchestral system.-Simultaneous development
of institutions which shape the Body and of the arts
which shape the Statue.-Comparison of Greece in
the VIIth century with the Greece of Homer.-
Greek lyric poesy compared with the modern.—Mu-
sical pantomime and declamation.—Their universal
application. Their use in private as well as public
education, and their use in public and political af-
fairs. Their use in worship.-Pindar's odes.-Mod-
els furnished to sculpture by the orchestral system 471
§ II. The Gymnastic system.-What it was in Homer's
time.-Revised and changed by the Dorians.-Prin-
ciple of the State, of Education and of Gymnastics
at Sparta.-Imitation or importation of Dorian cus
toms by other Greek communities.-Revival and
growth of the games.-Gymnasia.—Athletes.—Im
•
356
SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS.
?!
portance of gymnastic education in Greece.-Its effect
on the Body.-Perfection of forms and attitudes.--
Taste for physical beauty.-The statue follows the
model.
491
§ III. Religion.-Religious sentiment in the Vth cen-
tury.-Analogies between this and the epoch of
Lorenzo de Medici.-Influence of the early philoso-
phers and physicists.-Man is still sensible of the
divine life of natural objects.-Man still distin-
guishes the natural source of divine personages.—
Sentiments of an Athenian at the great Panathenaic
festival.-Choruses and Games.-The Procession.-
The Acropolis.-The Erectheum, and the legends of
Erectheus, Cecrops and Triptolemus.-The Parthe-
nons and the legends of Pallas and Poseidon.-The
Pallas of Phidias.-Character of the statue, impres-
sion on the spectator, and idea of the sculptor...... 514
RACE.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART IN
GREECE.
INTRODUCTION.
GENTLEMEN :—In preceding years I have pre-
sented to you the history of the two great original
schools which, in modern times, have treated the
human form, those of Italy and the Netherlands.
I have now to complete this study by familiarizing
you with the greatest and most original of all, the
ancient Greek school. This time I shall not dis-
course on painting. Excepting a few vases, some
mosaics and the small mural decorations at Pompeii
and Herculaneum, the antique monuments of painting
have all perished; we cannot speak of them with
certainty. Besides, in the display of the human
form, there was in Greece a more national art, one
better adapted to their social ways and public spirit,
and probably more cultivated and more perfect, that
360
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
of sculpture; Greek sculpture, accordingly, will be
the subject of this course.
Unfortunately, in this, as in all other directions,
antiquity is simply a ruin. The remains that have
come down to us of antique statuary are almost
nothing alongside of what has perished. We are re-
duced to two heads,* by which to conjecture the
colossal divinities in whom the great century had
expressed its thought and whose majesty filled the
temples. We have no authentic work by Phidias;
we know nothing of Myron, Polycleitus, Praxitiles,
Scopas and Lysippus except through copies and
more or less remote and doubtful imitations. The
beautiful statues of our museums belong, generally,
to the Roman era, or, at most, date from the succes-
sors of Alexander. The best, moreover, are mutila-
ted. Your collection of casts,† composed of scatter-
ed torsos, heads and limbs, resembles that of a bat-
tle-field after a combat. Add to this, finally, the ab-
sence of any biography of the Greek masters.
The
* The head of Juno in the Villa Ludovisi and that of Jupiter of
Otricole.
+ That of the Ecole des Beaux Arts studied by the students forming
the author's audience.
ART IN GREECE.
361
most ingenious and most patient researches of the
erudites* have been required to discover in the half
of one of Pliny's chapters, in a few meagre descrip-
tions by Pausanias and some isolated phrases of Cic-
ero, Lucian and Quintillian, the chronology of artists,
the affiliation of schools, the nature of talents and
the gradual development and changes in art. We
have but one way to supply these deficiencies; in
default of a detailed history there is general history;
in order to comprehend this work we are more than
ever obliged to consider the people who executed it,
the social habits which stimulated it, and the milieu
out of which it sprung.
*Geschichte der griechischen Plastik, von J. Overbeck, and Kunstler
-Geschichte, von Brunn.
16
•
362
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
RACE.
LET us first try to obtain a clear idea of the
race, and to do this we will study the country. A
people always receives an impression from the coun-
try it occupies, but the impression is the stronger
proportionately to the more uncivilized and infan-
tile condition of the people at the time of its estab-
lishment. When the French set out to colonize the
Island of Bourbon or Martinique, and the English
to settle North America and Australia, they carried
along with them arms, implements, arts, manufac-
tures, institutions and ideas, in short, an old and
complete civilization which served to maintain their
acquired type and to resist the influence of their
new surroundings. But when the fresh and de-
fenceless man abandons himself to nature, she devel-
opes, shapes and moulds him, the moral clay, as yet
quite soft and pliant, yielding to and being fash-
ioned by the physical pressure against which the
past provides him with no support. Philologists
show us a primitive epoch where Indians, Persians
ART IN GREECE.
363
Germans, Celts, Latins and Greeks had a language
in common and the same degree of culture; another
epoch, less ancient, when the Latins and the Greeks,
already separated from their brethren, were still
united,* acquainted with wine, living on tillage and
grazing, possessing row-boats and having added to
their old Vedic gods the new one of Hestia or Ves-
ta, the domestic fireside. These are but little more
than the rudiments of progress; if they are no long-
er savages they are still barbarians. From this
time forth the two branches that have issued from
the same stock, begin to diverge; on encountering
them later we find that their structure and fruit in-
stead of being alike are different, one, meanwhile,
having grown up in Italy and the other in Greece,
and we are led to regard the environment of the
Greek plant in order to ascertain whether the soil
and atmosphere which have nourished do not ex-
plain the peculiarities of its form and the direction
of its development.
*Mommsen, Romische Geschichte, Vol. I., p. 21.
364
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
I.
Let us examine a map. Greece is a peninsula
in the shape of a triangle, with its base resting on
Turkey in Europe, extending towards the south,
burying itself in the sea and narrowing at the Isth-
mus of Corinth to form another peninsula beyond,
the Peloponnesus, still more southern, and a sort of
mulberry leaf attached by a slender stalk to the
main land. Add to this a hundred islands with the
Asiatic coast opposite; a fringe of small countries
stitched fast to the great barbaric continent and a
sprinkling of scattered islands on the blue sea
which the fringe surrounds-such is the land that
has formed and maintained this highly intelligent
and precocious people. It was singularly adapted to
the work. To the north of the Egean Sea the cli-
mate is still severe, like that of the centre of Ger-
many; southern fruits are not known in Roumelia,
and its coast produces no myrtles. Descending to-
wards the south, and on entering Greece, the con-
*
८
* Curtius, Grieschesche Geschichte, Vol. I., p. 4
ART IN GREECE.
365
trast becomes striking. Forests always green be
gin in Thessaly, at the 40th degree; at the 39th, in
Phthiotis, in the mild atmosphere of the sea and the
coast, rice, cotton and the olive grow. In Eubœa
and Attica the palm-tree appears, and almonds in
the Cyclades; on the eastern coast of Argolis we
find thick groves of the orange and the lemon; the
African date lives in one corner of Crete. At Ath-
ens, which is the centre of Greek civilization, the
finest fruits of the South grow without cultivation.
Frost is scarcely seen more than once in twenty
years; the extreme heats of the summer are modi-
fied by the sea-breeze, and, save a few gales in
Thrace and the blasts of the sirocco, the tempera-
ture is delightful. Nowadays "the people are ac-
customed to sleeping in the streets from the middle
of May to the end of September, while the women
sleep on the roofs."* In such a country everybody
lives out of doors. The ancients themselves regard-
ed their climate as a gift of the gods. "Mild and
clement," said Euripides, "is our atmosphere; the
cold of winter is for us without rigor and the ar
* About: La Grèce contemporaine, p. 345.
366
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
rows of Phœbus do not wound us." And elsewhere
he adds: "The Athenians happy of old, and the de-
scendants of the Blessed gods, feeding on the most
exalted wisdom of a country sacred and uncon-
quered, always tripping elegantly through the pur-
est atmosphere, where they say that of old the
golden-haired Harmonia gave birth to the chaste
nine Pierian muses. And they report also that
Venus, drawing in her breath from the stream of
the fair-flowing Cephisus, breathed over this country
gentle, sweetly breathing gales of air; and always
entwining in her hair the fragrant wreath of roses,
sends the loves as accessory to wisdom; the assist-
ants to every virtue."* These are the fine expres-
sions of a poet, but through the ode we see the
truth. A people formed by such a climate develops
faster and more harmoniously than any other; man
is neither prostrated nor enervated by excessive heat,
nor chilled or indurated by severe cold. He is
neither condemned to dreamy inactivity, nor to per-
petual labor; he does not lag behind in mystic con-
* Medea (Buckley's translation). See also the celebrated chorus in
the Elipus at Colonus of Sophocles.
ART IN GREECE.
367
templation nor in brutal barbarism. Compare a
Neapolitan or a Provençal with a man of Brittany
a Hollander or a Hindoo, and you will recognize how
the mildness and moderation of physical nature en-
dow the soul with vivacity and so balance it as to
lead the mind thus disposed and alert to thought
and to action.
Two characteristics of the soil operate alike in
this sense.
In the first place, Greece is a net-work
of mountains. Pindus, its central summit, extend-
ing towards the south with Othrys, Eta, Parnassus,
Helicon, Citharon and their bastions, form a chain
the multiplied links of which cross the isthmus, rise
up again and intermingle in the Peloponnesus; be-
yond are the islands consisting of emergent spines
and the tops of mountains. This territory, thus em-
bossed, has scarcely any plains; rock abounds every-
where as in our Provence; three-fifths of the surface
of it is unfit for cultivation. "Look at the Views"
and "Landscapes" by M. de Stackelberg,-every
where barren stones, small rivers or mountain tor
rents leaving between their half-dried beds and the
sterile rock a narrow strip of productive ground.
368.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
Herodotus already contrasts Sicily and Southern
Italy, those fat nurses, with meagre Greece, "which
at its birth had poverty for its foster-sister." In At-
tica, especially, the soil is lighter and thinner than
anywhere else; the olive, the vine, barley and a little
wheat are all that it provided man with. In these
beautiful islands of marble, sparkling on the azure of
the Egean Sea, is found now and then a sacred
grove, the cypress, the laurel and the palm, some.
bouquet of rich verdure, scattered vines on rocky
slopes, fine fruits in the gardens and a few scanty
crops in the hollows or on a declivity; but all this
was more calculated for the eye and for a delicate
sensibility than for the stomach and merely physical
wants. Such a country forms lithe, active, scber
mountaincers fed on the purity of its atmosphere.
At the present day "the food of an English laborer
would suffice in Greece for a family of six persons
The rich are quite content with a dish of vegetables
for one of their repasts; the poor with a handful of
olives or a bit of salt fish. The people at large eat
meat at Easter for the whole year. It is interest-
""*
* About: La Grèce contemporaine, p. 41.
ART IN GREECE.
369
ing in this respect to see them at Athens in summer.
"Epicures in a group of seven or eight persons are
dividing up a sheep's head which cost six cents.
These temperate men buy a slice of water-melon or
a big cucumber which they eat like an apple.”
There are no drunkards among them; they are great
drinkers but always of pure water. "If they enter a
cabaret, it is to gossip." In a café "they call for a
penny cup of coffee, a glass of water, a light for their
cigarettes, a newspaper, and a set of dominoes.”
Such a regimen is not calculated to make the mind
torpid; in lessening the wants of the stomach it in-
creases those of the understanding. The ancients
themselves noticed similar contrasts between Bocotia
and Attica, and the Baotian and the Athenian. One
fed amidst fertile plains and in a dense atmosphere,
accustomed to gross food and the ecls of Lake Co-
païs, was a great eater and drinker and of a sluggish
intellect; the other, born on the poorest soil in Greece,
contented with the head of a fish, an onion and a few
olives, growing up in a light transparent and lu-
minous atmosphere, displayed from his birth a sin-
gular keenness and vivacity of intellect, cease-
16*
370
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
lessly inventive and enterprising, sensitive and ap
preciative regardless of all other things, and “pos-
sessing, apparently, nothing peculiar to himself but
thought."*
In the second place, if Greece is a land of moun-
tains it is likewise a land of sea-coasts. Although
smaller than Portugal it has more of these than all
Spain. The sea penetrates the country through an
infinity of gulfs, indentations, fissures and cavities;
in the various views brought back by travellers you
will observe, every other one, even in the interior,
some blue band, triangle, or luminous semi-circle on
the horizon. Generally it is framed in by project-
ng rocks or by islands which approach each other
and form a natural harbor. A situation like this
fosters a maritime life, especially where a poor soil
and a rocky shore do not suffice to support the in-
habitants. In primitive times there is but one spe-
cies of navigation, and that is coasting, and no sea
is better adapted to invite a border trade. Every
morning a north wind springs up to waft vessels
from Athens to the Cyclades; every evening a con-
* Thucydides, Book I., Chap. LXX.
ART IN GREECE.
371
trary breeze rises to carry them back.
Between
Greece and Asia Minor, islands occur like the stones
of a ford; in clear weather a ship on this track in
always in sight of land. From Corcyra Italy is
visible, from Cape Malea the peaks of Crete, from
Crete the mountains of Rhodes, from Rhodes, Asia
Minor; two days' sail suffice to carry one from
Crete to Cyrene, and only three are required to go
from Crete to Egypt. Still to-day "there is the
stuff of a sailor in every Greek you meet.”* In this
* About: La Grèce contemporaine, p. 146. Two islanders chance to
meet in the port of Syra, and the following dialogue ensues:
"Good-day, brother, how are you?"
“Very well, thank you; what is the news?”
"Demitri, the son of Nicholas, has got back from Marseilles.'
"Did he make any money?"
"Twenty-three thousand drachmæ, they say. That's a good deal."
"I made up my mind long ago that I ought to go to Marseilles. But
I have no boat.”
"We two will make one if you say so. Have you any timber ?"
"A little."
"Everybody has enough for a boat. I have some canvas and my
cousin John has enough rigging; we will put all this together.”
66
'Who will be captain ?"
"John, for he has already sailed there."
"We must have a boy to help us.'
66
"There is my little godson, Basil.'
"A child only eight years old! He's too small.”
"Anybody is big enough to go to sca."
372
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
country, with a population of only 900,000, there
were, in 1840, 30,000 sailors and 4,000 vessels; they
do nearly the whole of the coasting business of the
Mediterranean. We find the same ways and habits
in the time of Homer; they are constantly launch-
ing a ship on the sea; Ulysses builds one with his
own hands; they cruise all over, trading and pil-
. laging the surrounding coasts. The Greeks were
merchants, travellers, pirates, courtiers, and adven-
turers at the start and throughout their history;
employing skill or force they set out to drain the
great Oriental kingdoms or the barbaric populations
of the west, bringing back gold, silver, ivory, slaves,
ship-timber, all kinds of precious merchandise
bought above and below the market, other people's
ideas and inventions, those of Egypt, of Phoenicia,
"But what cargo shall we take ?”
“Our neighbor Petros has some bark (for tanning); daddy has got
a few casks of wine, and I know a man in Tinos who has some cotton.
We will stop at Smyrna, if you say so, for a freight of silk.'
The vessel is built well or ill as it happens; the crew is obtained in
one or two families, and, from friends and neighbors, whatever merchan-
dise they may choose to offer. They set out for Marscilles by the way
of Smyrna or even Alexandria, sell the cargo and take another; on re-
turning to Syra, the freight is found to pay for the vessel and the part-
ners divide the profits out of a few drachmæ left over.
ART IN GREECE.
373
of Chaldea, of Persia,* and of Etruria. A regime
of this kind quickens and sharpens the intellect to
a remarkable degree. Proof of it lies in the fact
that the most precocious, the most civilized and most
ingenious people of ancient Greece were mariners;
the Ionians of Asia Minor, the Colonists of Magna
Græcia, the Corinthians, Æginetans, Sicyonians and
Athenians. The Arcadians, confined to their moun-
tains, remained rural and simple; and likewise the
Acarnanians, the Epirots and the Locrians who, with
their outlet on a less favorable sea, and not being
sea-faring, remain semi-barbarous to the last; their
neighbors, the Etolians, at the time of the Roman
conquest possessed bourgs only, without walls, and
were simply rude pillagers. The spur which stimu-
lated the others did not reach them. Such are the
physical circumstances which, from the first, served
to arouse the Greek intellect. This people may be
compared to a swarm of bees born under a mild sky
but on a meagre soil, turning to account the routes
open to it through the air, foraging everywhere,
*Alceus extols his brother for having fought in Babylon and for
bringing therefrom an ivory-handled sword.
i
374
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
U
gathering supplies, swarming, relying on its own
stings and dexterity for protection, building deli-
cate edifices, compounding delicious honey, excited
and humming amidst the huge creatures surrounding
it, clashing haphazard and knowing but one master
under whom to support itself.
Even in our days, fallen as they are, "they have
as much mind as any people in the world; there is
no intellectual effort of which they are not capable.
They comprehend well and quickly; they acquire
with wonderful facility every thing they wish to
learn. Young merchants soon qualify themselves
to speak five or six languages."* Mechanics are
able in a few months to work at a somewhat diffi-
cult trade. A whole village, with its chief at the
head of it, will interrogate and attentively listen to
travellers. "A most remarkable thing is the inde-
fatigable application of school-children," little and
big; hired persons find time while fulfilling their
engagements to pass examinations as lawyers or
physicians. "You meet at Athens every kind of
student except the student who don't study." In
*About: La Grèce contemporaine.
ART IN GREECE.
375
this respect no race has been so well endowed by
nature, all circumstances apparently having con-
curred to unfetter the mind and sharpen the facul
ties.
376
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
*
II.
Let us follow out this feature in their history
Whether we consider it practically or speculatively, it
is always keenness of mind, adroitness and ingenuity,
which manifest themselves. It is a strange thing, at
the dawn of civilization, when man elsewhere is excit-
able, rude and childish, to see one of their two heroes,
the wise Ulysses, cautious, prudent and crafty, fer-
tile in expedients, inexhaustible in falsehood, the´
able navigator, always attentive to his own interests.
Returning home in disguise, he counsels his wife to
get from her suitors presents of necklaces and brace-
lets, and he does not slay them until they have en-
riched his mansion. When Circe surrenders herself
to him, or when Calypso proposes his departure, he
takes the precaution of binding them by an oath.
Ask him his name and he has always ready some
fresh and appropriate story and genealogy. Pallas
herself, to whom, without knowing her, he relates
his stories, praises and admires him:
Full shrewd were he and practised in deceit,
Who should surpass thee in the ways of craft,
ART IN GREECE.
377
Even though he were a god,-thou unabashed
And prompt with shifts, and measureless in wiles.*
And the sons are worthy of their sire. At the
end, as at the beginning of civilization, the intellect
predominates; it was always the stamp of the char-
acter, and now it survives them. Greece once subju-
gated, we see the Greek a paid dilettant, sophist, rhe-
torician, scribe, critic and philosopher; then the
Græculus of the Roman dominion, the parasite, buf-
foon and pander, ever alert, sprightly and useful; the
complacent Protean who, good in every line, adapts
himself to all characters, and gets out of all
infinite in dexterity, the first ancestor of the Scapins
Mascarilles and other clever rogues, who, with no
other heritage but their art, live upon it at other peo-
ple's expense.
scrapes;
Let us return to their most brilliant era and con-
sider their master work, science, that which best
commends them to the admiration of humanity and
which, if founded by them, is owing to the same in-
stinct and the same necessities. The Phenician, who
is a merchant, employs arithmetical rules in adjust-
*The Odyssey, translated by W. C. Bryant.
378
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
ing his accounts. The Egyptian, surveyor and
stone-cutter, has geometrical processes by which to
pile up his blocks, and estimate the area of his field
annually inundated by the Nile. The Greek re-
ceives from them these technical systems, but they
do not suffice him; he is not content with applying
them commercially and industrially; he is investiga-
tive and speculative; he wants to know the why,
the cause of things;* he seeks abstract proof and fol-
lows the delicate thread of ideas which leads from one
theorem to another. Thales, more than six hundred
years before Christ, devotes himself to the demon-
stration of the equality of the angles of the isosceles
triangle. The ancients relate that Pythagoras, trans-
ported with joy on solving the problem of the square
of the hypotenuse, promised the gods a hecatomb.
✓ They are interested in abstract truth. Plato, on see-
* Plato's "Theætetus." Take the whole of the part of Theætetus and
the comparison he makes between figures and numbers.-See likewise the
opening of the "Rivals." Herodotus (Book II., 29) is very instructive in
this connection. Among the Egyptians no one could reply to him when
he demanded the cause of the periodical rise of the Nile. Neither the
priests nor the laymen had made this matter, which affected them so close-
ly, a subject of inquiry or of hypothesis.-The Greeks, on the contrary,
had already suggested three explanations of the phenomenon. Herodotus
discusses these and suggests a fourth.
ART IN GREECE.
379
ing the Sicilian mathematicians apply their discover
ies to machinery, reproaches them with degrading
science; in his view of it they ought to confine them-
selves to the study of ideal lines. In fact they al
ways promoted it without concerning themselves
about its utility. For example, their researches on
the properties of conic sections found no application
until seventeen centuries later, when Kepler discov-
ered the laws which control the movements of the
planets. In this work, which constitutes the basis
of all our exact sciences, their analysis is so rigid
that in England Euclid's geometry still serves as the
student's text-book. To decompose ideas and note
their dependencies; to form a chain of them in such
a way as to leave no link missing, the whole chain
being fastened on to some incontestable axiom or
group of familiar experiences; to delight in forging,
attaching, multiplying and testing all these chains
with no motive but that of a desire to find them al-
ways more numerous and more certain, is the especial
endowment of the Greek mind. The Greeks think
for the purpose of thinking, and hence their organiza-
tion of the sciences. We do not establish one to-day
}
380
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
which does not rest on the foundations they laid; we
are frequently indebted to them for its first story and
sometimes an entire wing;* a series of inventors suc-
ceed each other in mathematics from Pythagoras to
Archimedes; in astronomy from Thales and Pythag
oras to Hipparchus and Ptolemy; in the natural
sciences from Hippocrates to Aristotle and the Alex-
andrian anatomists; in history from Herodotus to
Thucydides and Polybius; in logic, politics, morality
and æsthetics from Plato, Xenophon and Aristotle
to the Stoics and neo-platonicians.-Men so thorough-
ly absorbed by ideas could not fail to admire the
most beautiful of all, the university of ideas. For
eleven centuries, from Thales to Justinian, their phi-
losophy never ceased to grow; always some new sys-
tem arose blooming above or alongside of the old
systems; even when speculation is imprisoned by
Christian orthodoxy it makes its way and presses
through the crevices; "the Greek language," says
one of the Fathers of the Church, "is the mother of
horesies." We of to-day still find in this vast store-
*Euclid, Aristotle's theory of the Syllogism and the Morality of the
Stoics.
ART IN GREECE.
381
house Jur most fecund hypotheses;* thinking so
much and with such a sound mind their conjectures
are frequently found in accordance with the truth.
In this respect their performance has only been
surpassed by their zeal. Two occupations, in their
eyes, distinguished man from the brute and the
Greek from the barbarian-a devotion to public af-
fairs and the study of philosophy. We have only
to read Plato's Theages and Protagoras to see the
steady enthusiasm with which the youngest pursued
ideas through the briars and brambles of dialectics
Their taste for dialectics itself is still more striking
they never weary in its circuitous course; they are
as fond of the chase as the game; they enjoy the
journey as much as the journey's end. The Greek
is much more a reasoner than a metaphysician or sa-
vant; he delights . delicate distinctions and subtle
analysis; he revels in the weaving and super-refine-
ment of spiders' webs. His dexterity in this re-
•
*Plato's ideal types, Aristotle's Final causes, the Atomic theory of
Epicurus and the classifications of the Stoics.
+ Sec, in Aristotle, "Theory of Model Syllogisms," and in Plato,
the "Parmenides" and "Sophistes." There is nothing more ingenious
and more fragile than the whole of Aristotle's Physics and Physiology,
382
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
spect is unequalled; it is of little consequence to him
whether this over-complicated and attenuated web
is of any use in theory or in practice; it satisfies
him to see the threads spun out and crossing each
other in imperceptible and symmetrical meshes.
r
Herein does the national weakness manifest the na-
tional talent. Greece is the mother of disputants,
rhetoricians and sophists. Nowhere else has a
group of eminent and popular men been seen teach-
ing with the same success and fame as Gorgias,
Protagoras and Polus, the art of making the worse
appear the better cause, and of plausibly maintain-
mg a foolish proposition however absurd.* It is
Greek rhetoricians who are the eulogists of pesti-
lence, fever, bugs, Polyphemus and Thersites; a
Greek philosopher asserted that a wise man could
be happy in the brazen bull of Phalaris. Schools
existed, like that of Carneades, in which pleadings
could be made on both sides; others, like that of
Enesidemus, to establish that no proposition is
truer than that of the contrary proposition. In the
as may be seen in his "Problems." The waste of mental power and
sagacity by these schools is enormous.
The "Euthydemus" of Plato.
ART IN GREECE.
383
legacy bequeathed to us by antiquity a collection is
found, the richest we have, of captious arguments
and paradoxes; their subtleties would have been
confined to a narrow field could they not have pushed
their way as well on the side of error as on that of
truth.
Such is the intellectual finesse which, trans-
ferred from reasoning to literature, fashioned the
"Attic" taste, that is to say, an appreciation of
niceties, a sportive grace, delicate irony, simplicity
of style, ease of discourse and beauty of demonstra-
tion. It is said that Apelles went to see Proto-
genes, and, not caring to leave his name, took a pen-
cil and drew a fine curved line on a panel ready at
hand. Protogenes, on returning, looked at the
mark and exclaimed, "No one but Apelles could
have traced that !" then, seizing the pencil, he drew
around it a second line still more refined and extend-
ed, and ordered it to be shown to the stranger.
Apelles came back, and, mortified to see himself sur-
passed, intersectel the first two contours by a third,
the delicacy of which exceeded both. When Pro
togenes saw it, he exclaimed: "I am vanquished, let
384
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
me embrace my master!" This legend furnishes us
with the least imperfect idea of the Greek mind.
We have the subtle line within which it circum-
scribes the contours of things, and the native dex-
terity, precision and agility with which it circulates
amidst ideas to distinguish and bind them together.
ART IN GREECE.
385
III.
This, however, is but one feature; there is an-
other. Let us revert back to the soil and we shall
see the second added to the first. This time, again,
it is the physical structure of the country which has
stamped the intellect of the race with that which
we find in its labors and in its history. There is in
this country nothing of the vast or gigantic; out-
ward objects possess no disproportionate, over-
whelming dimensions. We see nothing there like
the huge Himalaya, nothing like those boundless en-
tanglements of rank vegetation, those enormous riv
ers described in Indian poems; there is nothing like
the interminable forests, limitless plains and the
wild and shoreless ocean of Northern Europe.
The eye there seizes the forms of objects without
difficulty and retains a precise image of them;
every object is medial, proportioned, easily and
clearly perceptible to the senses. The mountains of
Corinth, Attica, Boeotia and the Peloponnesus are
17
386
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
from three to four thousand feet high; only a few
reach six thousand; you must go to the extreme
north of Greece to find a summit like those of the
Alps and the Pyrenees, and then it is Olympus, of
which they make the home of the gods. The Pc-
neus and the Achelous, the largest rivers, aro, at
most, but thirty or forty leagues long; the others,
usually, are mere brooks and torrents. The sea it-
self, so terrible and threatening at the north, is here
a sort of lake; we have no feeling of the solitude
of immensity; some waste or island is always in
✓ sight; it does not leave on the mind a sinister im-
pression; it does not appear like a ferocious and
destructive being; it has no leaden, pallid and ca-
daverous bue; the coasts are not ravaged by it and
it has no tides strewing them with mire and stony
fragments. It is lustrous, and according to an ex-
pression of Homer, "dazzling, wine-colored, violet-
colored;" the ruddy rocks of its shores enclose
its bright surface within a fretted border which
seems like the frame to a picture. Imagine fresh
and primitive natures having such phenomena for
their cultivation and constant education. Through
ART IN GREECE.
387
these they obtain the habit of clear and defined im-
agery and avoid the vague tumult, the impetuous
revery, the anxious apprehension of the "beyond."
Thus is a mental mould formed out of which, later,
all ideas are to issue in relief. Countless circum-
stances of soil and climate combine to perfect it.
In this country the mineral character of the ground
is visible and appears much stronger than in our own
Provence; it is not weakened or effaced, as in our
northern moist countries, by the universally diffused
strata of arable soil and verdant vegetation. The
skeleton of the earth, the geologic bonework, the
purplish-gray marble peers out in jutting rocks, pro-
longs itself in naked crags, cuts its sharp profile
against the sky, encloses valleys with peaks and
crests so that the landscape, furrowed with bold
fractures and gashed everywhere with sudden
breaches and angles, looks as if sketched by a
vigorous hand whose caprices and fancy in no respect
impair the certainty and precision of its touch. The
quality of the atmosphere increases likewise this
saliency of objects. That of Attica, especially, is
of extraordinary transparency. On turning Capo
388
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
Sunium the helmet of Pallas on the Acropolis could
be seen at a distance of several leagues. Mount
Hymettus, two leagues off from Athens, seems to a
European just landed a walk before breakfast. The
vapory mist with which our atmosphere is always
filled does not arise to soften distant contours; they
are not uncertain, half-commingled and blotted out,
but are detached from their background like the fig-
ures on antique vases. Add, finally, the exquisite
brilliancy of the sun which pushes to extremes the
contrast between light parts and shadows and
which gives an opposition of masses to precision
of lines. Thus does Nature, through the forms
with which she peoples the mind, directly incline the
Greek to fixed and precise conceptions. She again
inclines him to them indirectly through the order
of political association to which she leads and re-
strains him.
Greece, indeed, is a small country compared with
its fame, and it will seem to you still smaller if you
observe how divided it is. The principal chains on
one side of the sea and the lateral chains on the
other separate a number of distinct provinces form-
ART IN GREECE.
389
ing so many circumscribed districts-Thessaly, Boe-
otia, Argos, Messenia, Laconia and all the islands. It
is difficult to traverse the sea in barbarous ages, while
mountain defiles are always available for defense.
The populations of Greece accordingly could easily
protect themselves against invasion and exist along
side of each other in small independent communities.
Homer enumerates thirty,* and, on the establishment
and multiplication of colonies, these get to be several
hundred. To modern eyes a Greck State seems in
miniature. Argos is from eight to ten miles long
and four or five wide; Laconia is of about the same
size; Achaia is a narrow strip of land on the flank
of a mountain which descends to the sea. The
whole of Attica does not equal the half of one of our
departments; the territories of Corinth, Sicyon and
Megara dwindle to a town suburb; generally speak-
ing, and especially in the islands and colonies, the
State is simply a town with a beach or a surround-
ing border of farms. Standing on one acropolis the
eye can take in the acropolis or mountains of its
neighbor. In so limited a circuit the mind embraces
*Book II. The Enumeration of warriors and vessels.
390
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
all distinctly; the moral patrimony possesses no ele
ment of the gigantic, abstract or vague as with us
the senses can take it all in; it is compounded with
the physical patrimony; both are fixed in the citizen's
mind by definite formations. In a mental conception
of Athens, Corinth, Argos or Sparta he imagines
the configuration of his valley or the silhouette
of his city. The citizens belonging to it rise in his
mind the same as its natural features; the contracted
sphere of his political domain, like the form of his
natural domain, provides for him beforehand the av-
erage and fixed type in which all his conceptions are
to be included. In this respect consider their reli-
gion; they have no sentiment of this infinite universe
in which a generation of people, every conditioned
being, however great, is but an atom in time and
place. Eternity does not set up before them its pyr-
amid of myriads of ages like a vast mountain by the
side of which a little life is simply a mole-hill or
grain of sand; they do not concern themselves as
others do,—the Indians, the Egyptians, the Semites
and the Germans-with the ever-renewed circle of
metempsychoses, with the still and lasting slumber
ART IN GREECE.
391
of the grave; with the formless and bottomless abyss
from which issue beings like passing vapor; with the
one God, absorbing and terrible, in whom all forces
of nature are concentrated, and for whom heaven and
earth are simply a tabernacle and a footstool; with
that august, mysterious, invisible power which the
heart's worship discovers through and beyond all
things.* Their ideas are too clear and constructed
on too narrow a model. The universal escapes them,
or, at least, half occupies them; they do not form a
God of it and much less a person; it remains in their
religion in the back-ground, being the Moira, the
Aisa, the Eimarmene, in other terms, the part as-
signed to each. It is fixed; no being, whether man
or god, can escape the circumstances of his lot; fun- ✔
damentally, this is an abstract truth; if the Moira
of Homer are goddesses, it is but little more than fic-
tion; under the poetic expression, as under a transpa-
rent sheet of water, we see appearing the indissolu-
ble chain of facts and the indestructible demarcation
of things. Our sciences of to-day admit these con
* Tacitus: "De Moribus Germanorum."-Deorum nominibus appel-
lant secretum illud, quod sola reverentia vident.
392
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
ceptions; the Greek idea of destiny is nothing more
than our modern idea of law. Every thing is deter
mined, which is what our formulæ assert and which
has been forecast in their divinations.
When they develope this idea it is to still more
strengthen the limits imposed on beings. Out of
the mute force which unfolds and assigns destinics
they fashion their Nemesis,* who humbles the ex-
alted and represses all excesses. One of the grand
Guardi
sentences of the oracle is "Not too much."
against inordinate desire, dread complete prosper-
ity, fortify yourself against intoxication, always
preserve moderation, is the counsel which every
poet and every thinker of the great epoch enun-
ciates. Instinct and the spontaneous reason have
nowhere been so lucid; when, at the first awakening
of reflection, they try to conceive the world they
form it in the image of their own mind. It is a sys-
tem of order, a Kosmos, a harmony, an admirable
and regular arrangement of things self-subsistent
and self-transforming. At a later period the Stoics
compare it to a vast city governed by the best laws.
* See Tournier's "Nemesis ou la Jalousie des Dieux.”
ART IN GREECE.
393
There is no place here for mystic and incomprehen
sible gods, nor for destructive and despotic gods.
The religious vertigo did not enter into the sound
and well-balanced minds which conceived a world
like this. Their divinities soon become human be-
ings; they have parents, children, a genealogy, a
history, drapery, palaces and a physical frame like
ours; they are wounded and suffer; the greatest,
Zeus himself, beheld their advent and some day per-
haps will see the end of their reign.*
On the shield of Achilles, which represents an
army, “men marched led by Ares and Athera, both
in gold, in golden vestments, tall and beautiful, as is
proper for gods, for men were much
were much smaller."
There is indeed but little difference besides this
between them and ourselves. Often, in the Odys-
sey, when Ulysses or Telemachus encounter una-
wares any tall or fine-looking personage, they ask if
he is a god. Human divinities of this stamp do not
disturb the minds which conceive them; Homer
manages them his own way; he is constantly bring-
ing in Athena for slight offices, such as indicating
* The Prometheus of Eschylus.
17*
394
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
to Ulysses the dwelling of Alcinous and marking
spot where his discus fell. The theological poet
moves about in his divine world with the freedom
and serenity of a playful child. We see him there
laughing and enjoying himself; on exhibiting to us
Ares surprised in the arms of Aphrodite Apollo in
dulges his merriment and asks Hermes if he would
not like to be in Ares' place:
I would that it were so,
Oh archer-king Apollo; I could bear
Chains thrice as many and of infinite strength,
And all the gods and all the goddesses
Might come to look upon me; I would keep
My place with golden Venus at my side.*
Read the hymn in which Aphrodite offers herself
to Anchises, and especially the hymn to Hermes, who,
the very day of his birth, shows himself a contriving,
robbing, mendacious Greck, but with so much grace
that the poet's narrative seems to be the badinage of
a sculptor. In the hands of Aristophanes, in the
"Frogs" and the "Clouds," Hercules and Bacchus
are treated with still greater freedom. All this
smooths the way for the decorative gods of Pompeii,
*The Odyssey, translated by W. C. Bryaut.
ART IN GREECE.
395
the pretty and sinister pleasantries of Lucian, and the
entire Olympic circle of the agreeable the social and
the dramatic. Gods so closely resembling man soon
become his companions, and later his sport. The
clear mind which, to bring them within its reach, de-
prives them of mystery and infinity, regards them as
its own creations and delights in the myths of its
own formation.
Let us now glance at their ordinary life. Here,
again, they are wanting in veneration. The Greek
cannot subordinate himself, like the Roman, to one
grand unity, a vast conceivable but invisible patri-
mony. He has not progressed beyond that form of
association in which the State consists of the City.
His colonies are their own masters; they receive a
pontiff from the metropolis and regard him with sen-
timents of filial affection; but there their dependence
rests.
They are emancipated children, similar to
the young Athenian who, on reaching manhood, is
dependent on nobody and is his own master; whilst
the Roman colonies are only military posts, similar
to the young Roman who, though married, a magis-
trate and even consul, always feels on his shoulder
396
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
*
the weight of a father's hand, a despotic authority
from which nothing, save a triple sale can set him
free. To forego self-control; to submit to distant ru-
lers, never seen by them; to consider themselves part
of a vast whole; to lose sight of themselves for a
great national benefit, is what the Greeks never could
do with any persistency. They shut themselves up
and indulged in mutual jealousies; even when Darius
and Xerxes invaded their country they could scarce-
ly unite; Syracuse refuses assistance because she is
not given the command; Thebes sides with the
Medes. When Alexander combines the Greek forces
to conquer Asia, the Lacedemonians do not respond
to the summons. No city succeeds in forming a
confederation of the others under its lead; Sparta,
Athens, Thebes, all in turn fail; rather than yield to
their compatriots the vanquished apply for money
to Persia and make concessions to the Great King.
Factions in each city exile each other, and the ban-
ished, as in the Italian Republics, attempt to return
through violence with the aid of the foreigner.
Thus divided, Greece is conquered by a semi-barbar-
ous but disciplined people, the independence of sep
ART IN GREECE.
397
arate cities ending in the servitude of the nation.
This downfall is not accidental, but fatal. The State,
as the Greeks conceived it, was too small; it was
incapable of resisting the shock of heavy external
masses; it is an ingenious and perfect work of art,
but fragile. Their greatest thinkers, Plato and
Aristotle, limit the city to a community of five or
ten thousand free men. Athens had twenty thou-
sand, beyond which, according to them, it was sim-
ply a mob. They cannot conceive of the good or-
ganization of a larger community. An acropolis
covered with temples, hallowed by the bones of the
heroes who founded it and by the images of nation
al gods, an agora, a theatre, a gymnasium, a few
thousands of temperate, brave, free and handsome.
men, devoted to "philosophy or public business,"
served by slave cultivators of the soil and slave arti-
sans, is the city which they conceive, an admirable
work of art, daily established and perfected under
their own eyes, in Thrace, on the shores of the Eux-
ine, of Italy and of Sicily, outside of which every
form of society seems to them confusion and barbar-
ism, but whose perfection, nevertheless, denotes lit
898
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
tleness, and which, amidst the rude shocks of hunan
encounter, lasts only for a day.
These drawbacks are accompanied by corre
sponding advantages. If their religious conceptions
are wanting in gravity and in grandeur; if their po
litical organization lacks stability and endurance,
they are exempt from the moral deformities which
the greatness of a religion or of a State imposes on
humanity. Civilization, everywhere else, has dis-
turbed the natural equilibrium of the faculties; it
has diminished some to exaggerate the others; it
has sacrificed the present to the future life, man to
the Divinity, the individual to the State; it has pro-
duced the Indian fakir, the Egyptian and Chinese
functionary, the Roman legist and official, the medi
æval monk, the subject, administré and bourgeois of
modern times. Man, under this pressure, has in
turn simultaneously exalted and debased himself;
he becomes a wheel in a vast machine, or con-
siders himself naught before the infinite. In Greece
he subjected his institutions to himself instead of
subjecting himself to them; he made of them a
meaus and not an end. He used them for a com
ART IN GREECE.
399
plete and harmonious self-development; he could be
at once poet, philosopher, critic, magistrate, pontiff,
judge, citizen, and athlete; exercise his limbs, his
taste and his intellect; combine in himself twenty
sorts of talent without one impairing the other; he
could be a soldier without being an automaton, a
dancer and singer without becoming a dramatic buf-
foon, a thoughtful and cultivated man without find-
ing himself a book-worm; he could decide on public
matters without delegating his authority to others,
honor his gods without the restrictions of dogmatic
formulas, without bowing to the tyranny of a super-
human might, without losing himself in the contem-
plation of a vague and universal being. It seems
that, having designated the visible and accurate con-
tour of man and of life, they omitted the rest and
thus expressed themselves: "Behold the true man,
an active and sensitive body, possessing mind and
will, the true life of sixty or seventy years between
the whining infant and the silent tomb! Let us
strive to render this body as agile, strong, healthy, ✓
and beautiful as possible; to display this mind and
will in every circle of virile activity; to deck this life
400
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
""
with every beauty which delicate senses, quick com
prehension and a proud and animated consciousness
can create and appreciate. Beyond this they
sce nothing; or, if there is a "beyond," it is for them
like that Cimmerian land of which Homer speaks,
the dim and sunless region of the dead, enshrouded
with mournful vapors where, like winged bats, flock
helpless phantoms with bitter cries to fill and refresh
their veins from its channels, drinking the red gore
of victims. The constitution of their mind limited
their desires and efforts to a circumscribed sphere,
lit up in the full blaze of sunshine, and to this arena,
as glowing and as restricted as their stadium, we
must resort to see them exercise.
ART IN GREECE.
401
IV.
To do this we have to look at the country once
more and draw together our impression of the
whole. It is a beautiful land, inspiring one with a
joyous sentiment and tending to make man re-
gard life as a holiday. Scarcely more than its skeleton
exists to-day. Like our Provence, and still more
than it, it has been shorn and despoiled, scraped, so
to say; the ground has sunk away and vegetation
is rare; bare, rugged rock, here and there spotted
with meagre bushes, absorbs the expanse and occu-
pies three-fourths of the horizon. You may, never-
theless, form an idea of what it was by following
the still intact coasts of the Mediterranean from
Toulon to Hyères and from Naples to Sorrento and
Amalfi, except that you must imagine a bluer sky, a
more transparent atmosphere and more clearly de-
fined and more harmonious mountain forms. It
seems as if there was no winter in this country.
Evergreen oaks, the olive, the orange, the lemon, and
the cypress form, in the valleys and on the sides of
402
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
the gorges, an eternal summer landscape; they
even extend down to the margin of the sea; in
February, at certain places, oranges drop from their
stems and fall into the water. There is no haze and
but little rain; the atmosphere is balmy and the
sun mild and beneficent. Man here is not obliged,
as in our northern climates, to protect himself
against inclemencies by complicated contrivances,
and to employ gas, stoves, double, triple and quad-
ruple garments, sidewalks, street-sweepers and the
rest to render habitable the muddy and cold sewer
through which, without his police and his energy,
he would have to paddle. He has no need to invent
spectacular halls and operatic scenery; he has only
to look around him and find that nature furnishes
more beautiful ones than any which his art could
devise. At Hyères, in January, I saw the sun rise
behind an island; the light increased and filled the
atmosphere; suddenly, at the top of a rock, a flame
burst forth; the vast crystal sky expanded its
arch over the immense watery plain while the in-
numerable crests of the waves and the deep blue
of the uniform surface were traversed with ripples:
ART IN GREECE.
403
of gold; at evening the distant mountains assumed
the delicate hues of the rose and the lilac. In sum-
mer this sunny illumination diffuses through the at-
mosphere and over the sea such splendor that the
surcharged senses and imagination seem to be car-
ried away in triumph and glory; every wave
sparkles; the water takes the hues of precious
stones, turquoises, amethysts, sapphires, lapis-lazuli,
all in motion and undulating beneath the universal
and immaculate celestial brightness. It is in this in-
undation of luminousness that we have to imagine
the coasts of Greece like so many marble ewers
and fountains scattered here and there through
the field of azure.
We need not be surprised if we find in the Greek
character that fund of gayety and vivacity, that
need of vital and conscious energy which we meet
even now among the Provençals, the Neapolitans,
and, generally, in southern populations.* Man ever
* "These races are lively, quiet and gay. The infirm man there is
not cast down; he calmly awaits the approach of death; every thing
smiles around him. Here is the secret of that divine complacency of
the Homeric poems and of Plato; the narrative of the death of Soc-
rates in the "Phædon" scarcely shows a tinge of sadness. To live is
404
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
}
continues to move as nature first directs him, for the
aptitudes and tendencies which she firmly implants
in him are precisely the aptitudes and tenden-
cies which she daily satisfies. A few lines from
to flower and then to give fruit-could it be more? If, as scme may
contend, the pre-occupation with death is the distinguishing trait of
Christianity and of the modern religious sentiment, the Greek race
is the least religious of all. It is a superficial race, regarding life
as a thing void of the supernatural or a hereafter. Such simplicity of
conception belongs, in great part, to the climate and to the purity of the
atmosphere, to the wonderful joyousness which one experiences there,
but much more to the instincts of the Hellenic race so adorably idealis-
tic. Any trifle-a tree, a flower, a lizzard, or a tortoise-brings to mind
thousands of metamorphoses, sung by the pocts; a stream of water, a
little crevice in a rock are designated as the abode of nymphs; a well
with a cup on its margin, an inlet of the sea so narrow that the butter-
flies cross it and yet navigable for the largest vessels as at Paros; orange
and cypress trees extending their shadows over the water, a small pine
grove amid the rocks suflice, in Greece, to produce that contentment
which awakens beauty. To stroll in the gardens at night listening to the
cicada, and to sit in the moonlight playing the flute; to go and imbibe
water from the mountain source, with a piece of bread, a fish and a flask
of wine to be drank while singing; to suspend, at family festivals, a
crown of leaves over the portal, and to go with chaplets of flowers; to
carry to public festivities a thyrsus decked with verdure; to pass whole
days in dancing and to play with tame goats, are Greek enjoyments-the
enjoyments of a poor, economical, eternally youthful race, inhabiting a
charming country, finding its well-being in itself and in the gifts which
the gods have bestowed upon it. The pasteral model of Theocritus was
a truth in Hellenic countries; Greece always delighted in this minor
kind of refined and pleasing poetry, one of the most characteristic of
its literature, a mirror of its own life almost everywhere else silly and af-
fected. The pleasure of living and sprightliness of humor are pre-emi-
ART IN GREECE.
405
Aristophanes will portray to you this frank, spright
ly and radiant sensuousness. Some Athenian peas
ants are celebrating the return of peace.
"I am delighted! I am delighted at being rid
of helmet, and cheese, and onions; for I find no
pleasure in battles, but to continue drinking beside
the fire with my dear companions, having kindled
whatever is the driest of firewood which has been
sawn up in summer, and roasting some chick-peas,
and putting on the fire the esculent acorn, and at
the same time kissing my Thracian maid while my
wife is washing herself. For there is not any thing
A
nently Grecian traits. The foliage of youth was always peculiar to that
racc; for it indulgere genio is not the stolid intoxication of the English
nor the vulgar pastime of tho French; it is rather simply to think that
nature is gracious and that one may and ought to yield to her. To the
Greck, in fine, nature is the suggestor of elegance, a mistress of recti- ✓
tude and virtue. 'Concupiscence,' the idea that nature incites us to do
evil, has no mcaning for him. The taste for ornamentation which dis-
tinguishes the Greek palikary and shows itself so innocently in the Greck
maiden, is not the pompous vanity of the city damsel inflated with the
ridiculous conceit of a parvenue; it is the pure and simple sentiment of
unaffected youth conscious of being the legitimate offspring of the true
parents of beauty.", ["Saint Paul," by E. Renan, p. 202.] A friend who
has travelled some time in Greece tells me that the horse-drivers and
guides will often pluck some attractive shrub and carry it carefully in
their hand during the day, put it safely by in the evening on going to
bed and resume it in the morning for farther pleasure in it.
406
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
more agreeable than for the seed to be already
sown, and the god to rain upon it, and some neigh
bor to say: 'Tell me, O Comarchides, what shall
we do at this time of day ?' I've a mind to drink,
since the god acts so favorably. Come, wife, wash
three chenixes of kidney-beans and mix some wheat
with them, and bring out some figs, for it is in no
wise possible to strip off the vine leaves to-day, or
to grub round the roots, since the ground is so wet.
And let some one bring forth from my house the
thrush and the two finches. And there were also
within some beestings and four pieces of hare. ***
Bring in three pieces, boy, and give one to my
father, and beg some fruit-bearing myrtles from
Æschineades, and at the same time let some one
call on Charniades that he may drink with us, since
the god benefits and aids our crops.
* Most
august goddess queen, venerable Peace, mistress of
choral dances, mistress of nuptials, receive our sacri-
fice! *** Grant that our market be filled with
multifarious good things; with garlic, early cucum-
bers, apples and pomegranates; *** and that we
may see people bringing from the Bootians geese,
*
ART IN GREECE.
407
ducks, wood-pigeons and sand-pipers, and that bas-
kets of Copaïc eels come, and that we, collected
in crowds around them, buying fish, may jostle
with Morychus and Teleas and other gourmands.
*** Come quick, Dicæopolis, for the priest of
Bacchus sends for you. Make haste, all things are
in readiness-couches, tables, cushions for the head,
chaplets, ointments, sweetmeats; the courtesans are
there, cakes of fine flour, honey-cakes, lovely danc-
ing girls, Harmodius' delights." I stop the quota-
tion which becomes too free; antique sensuality and
southern sensuality make use of bold gestures and
very precise language.
Such a cast of mind leads man to regard life as a
continuous holiday. The most serious ideas and insti-
tutions in the hands of the Greek become gay;
his
divinities ar "the happy gods that never die." They
dwell on the summits of Olympus, "which the winds
do not shake; which are never wet by rain or visited
by snow; where the cloudless ether is disclosed and
where the bright light nimbly dances." Here in a
glittering palace, seated on golden thrones, they
drink nectar and eat ambrosia while the muses
408
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
sing with their beautiful voices." Heaven to the
Greek, is eternal festivity in broad daylight, and
consequently the most beautiful life is that which
most resembles the life of the gods. With Homer
the happy man is he who can "revel in the bloom of
his youth and reach the threshold of old age." Re
ligious ceremonies are joyous banquets at which the
gods are content because they obtain their share of
wine and meat. The most imposing festivals are
operatic representations. Tragedy, comedy, dancing
choruses and gymnastic games form a part of their
worship. In honoring the gods it never occurs to
them that it is necessary to fast, mortify the flesh,
pray in fear and trembling, and prostrate one's self de-
ploring one's sins; but on the contrary, to take part
in their enjoyments, to display before them the most
beautiful nude forms, to deck the city in their behalf,
and, abstracting man for a moment from his mortal
condition, elevate him to theirs by every magnifi-
cence which art and poesy can furnish. This " en.
thusiasm" to them is piety; and, after giving vent in
tragedy to their grand and solemn emotions, they
again seek in comedy an outlet for their extravagant
ART IN GREECE
409
buffooneries and their voluptuous license. One must
have read Aristophanes' "Lysistrata" and "Thesmo-
phoriazusæ❞ to imagine these transports of animal
life, to comprehend a public celebration of the Dio-
nysia and the dramatic dance of the cordax, to com-
prehend that, at Corinth, a thousand courtesans per-
formed the service of the temple of Aphrodite, and
that religion consecrated all the scandal and infatu-
ation of a kermess and a carnival.
The Greeks partook of social life as thoughtless-
ly as the religious life. The conquest of the Roman
is for acquisition; he utilizes vanquished nations as
he would so many farms, methodically and continu
ously, with the spirit of an administrator and busi
ness man; the Athenian explores the sea, disembarks
and fights without establishing any thing, at irregu-
lar times, according to the impulse of the hour, the
necessity of action and to gratify a freak of the im-
agination; through a spirit of enterprise, a love of
glory and for the satisfaction of being first among
the Greeks. The people, with the funds of their al-
lies, adorn their city and, commanding their artists
to produce temples, theatres, statues, decorations
18
410
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
and processions, avail themselves daily, and in
every sense, of the public wealth. Aristophanes
amuses them with caricatures of their magistrates
and politicians. The theatres are open free of ex-
pense; at the end of the Dionysia the money on
hand in the treasury, contributed by their allies, is
distributed. They soon demand pay for their ser-
vices as dicasts and in the public assemblies. Every
thing is for the people. They oblige the rich to de-
fray the expense of choruses, actors, the representa-
tions and all the finest spectacles. However poor
they may be, they have baths and gymnasia, sup-
ported by the treasury, as pleasant as those of the
knights.* Towards the last they give themselves no
further care; they hire mercenaries to carry on their
wars; if they concern themselves with politics, it is
simply for discussion; they listen to their orators as
dilettanti and attend to their debates, recriminations
and eloquent assaults as they would a performance
in a cock-pit. They sit in judgment upon talent and
applaud judiciously. The main thing with them is
to ensure perfect festivals; they decree the penalty
* Xenophon: "The Athenian Repablic."
ART IN GREECE.
411
66
of death against whosoever shall propose to divert
any portion of the money set aside for them to war
purposes. Their generals bear witness to this:
'Except one alone whom you send to battle," says
Demosthenes, "the others follow the sacrifices in the
adornment of your festivals." In the equipment and
despatch of a fleet they do not act, or else act too
late; while, on the contrary, for processions and
public performances, every thing is foreseen, arranged,
and exactly fulfilled as it ought to be and at the ap-
pointed hour. Little by little, under the dominion
of primitive sensuality, the State becomes reduced to
a spectacular enterprise, whose business it is to pro-
vide poetic enjoyment for people of taste.
Likewise, finally, in philosophy and in science,
they aimed only to cull the flower of things; they
possessed none of the abnegation of the modern sa-
vant, who devotes his genius to the elucidation of an
obscure point; who gives up years of observation to
some species of animal; who incessantly multiplies
and verifies his experiments; who, abandoning him-
self voluntarily to thankless labor, passes his life in
patiently hewing two or three stones for an immense
412
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
?
?
تو
edifice which he cannot see completed, but which is
to be of vast service to generations to come. Phi-
losophy, here, is talk; it is born in the gymnasia, un-
der porticoes, and in groves of sycamore; the master
converses as he walks, and his pupils follow him.
All, at the outset, rush on to lofty conclusions; to
generalize is their pleasure; they delight in it and
care but little for constructing a good, solid founda-
tion; their proofs dwindle down most frequently to
the mere resemblance of truths. They are, in short,
speculators, fond of flying over the summit of things,
of traversing in three paces, like Homer's gods, a
vast new realm, of embracing the entire universe in
a single glance. A system is a sort of sublime opera,
the opera
of comprehensive and inquisitive minds.
Their philosophy, from Thales to Proclus, has, likę
their tragedy, entwined itself around thirty or forty
principal themes, and with a multitude of varia-
tions, amplification and admixtures. The philo,
sophic imagination manipulated ideas and hypothe-
ses, just as the mythologic imagination manipulated
legend and divinity.
Passing from their works to their methods we see
ART IN GREECE.
413
the same intellectual efforts. They are as much
sophists as they are philosophers; they exercise the ?
mind for the mind's sake. A subtle distinction, a
long and refined analysis, a captious argument of
difficult elaboration, attracts and absorbs them.
They amuse themselves with and linger over dialec-
tics, quibbles and paradoxes;* they are not suffi
ciently in earnest; if they undertake any research
it is not with a view to obtain a fixed and definite
acquisition; they do not love truth wholly and ab-
solutely, forgetful of and indifferent to the rest. She
Is game which they often run down, but, to see their
reasoning, we soon recognize that, without acknowl-
edging it to themselves, they prefer the chase, the
chase with its manoeuvrings, its artifices, its cir-
cuits, its inspiration and that sentiment of free dis-
cursive and victorious action with which it stimulates
the nerves and imagination of the hunter.
* See logical methods in Plato and Aristotle, and especially the
proofs of the immortality of the soul in the "Phædon." In all this
philosophy the faculties are superior to the work in hand. Aristotle
wrote a treatise on Homeric problems following the example of the
rhetoricians who sought to ascertain whether, when Aphrodite was
wounded by Diomed, the wound was in the right hand or in the left.
>
414
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
Greeks! Greeks!" said an Egyptian priest to Solon,
"what children ye are!" They played, in fact,
with life, and all life's gravest things, with religion
and the gods, with government and law, with phi-
losophy and truth.
J
ART IN GREECE.
415
V.
Hence their position as the greatest artists of the
world. They possessed the charming freedom of
mind, the superabundance of inventive gayety, the
gracious intoxication of invention which leads the
child to constantly form and arrange little poems
with no object but that of giving full play to new
and over lively faculties suddenly awakened. The
three leading traits that we have distinguished in
their character are just those which constitute the
artistic soul and intellect. Delicacy of perception,
an aptitude at seizing nice relationships, the sense
of gradation, is what allows the artist to construct
a totality of forms, colors, sounds and incidents, in
short, elements and details, so closely united among
themselves by inward dependencies, that their or-
ganization constitutes a living thing, surpassing in
the imaginary world the profound harmony of the
actual world. The necessity of clearness, a feeling
for proportion, dislike of the vague and the ab-
stract, contempt for the monstrous and exaggerated,
416
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
レ
​and a taste for accurate and defined contours, is
what leads him to give his conceptions a shape which
the imagination and senses can easily grasp, and,
consequently, to execute works comprehensible to
every race and all ages, and which, being human, are
eternal. The love and worship of this life, the sen-
timent of human energy and the necessity of calm-
ness and gayety, is what leads him to avoid depicting
physical infirmity and moral ills, to represent the
ncalth of the spirit and perfection of the body, and
to complete the acquired beauty of expression by
the fundamental beauty of the subject. These are
the distinct traits of their entire art. A glance at
their literature compared with that of the Orient,
of the middle ages and of modern times; a perusal
of Homer compared with that of the Divine Com-
edy, of Faust or of the Indian epics; a study of their
prose compared with the prose of every other age
and country, will soon furnish convincing proof of it.
Every literary style relatively to theirs is pompous,
heavy, forced and obscure; every moral type rela-
tively to theirs is overstrained, mournful and mor-
vid; every oratorical and poetic model, every model
ART IN GREECE.
417
in fact which has not been borrowed from them, is
disproportioned, distorted and badly put together
by the work which it contains.
Our space is limited, and among a hundred ex-
amples we can choose but one. Let us take an ob-
ject exposed to the eye, and that which first attracts
attention on entering the city. I refer to the temple.
It stands usually on a height called the Acropolis,
on a substructure of rocks, as at Syracuse, or on a
small eminence which, as at Athens, was the first
place of refuge and the original site of the city. It
is visible from every point on the plain and from the
neighboring hills; vessels greet it at a distance on
approaching the port. It stands out in clear and
bold relief in the limpid atmosphere.* It is not,
like our medieval cathedrals, crowded and smoth-
ered by rows of houses, secreted, half-concealed, in-
accessible to the eye save in its details and its up-
per section. Its base, sides, entire mass and full
proportions appear at a glance.
You are not
obliged to divine the whole from a part; its situa-
*Sce the restorations, accompanied with memoirs, by Tetaz, Pac-
card Boitte and Garnier.
V
18*
418
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
tion renders it proportionate to man's senses. Ir
order that there may be no lack of distinctness of
impression, they give it medium or small dimensions.
There are only two or three of the Grecian temples
as large as the Madeleine. They bear no resem-
blance to the vast monuments of India, Babylon and
Egypt, the storied and crowded palaces, the mazes
of avenues, enclosures, halls and colossi, so numer-
ous that the mind at last becomes disturbed and be-:
wildered. They do not resemble the gigantic cathe
drals whose naves contain the entire population of a
city; which the eye, even if they were placed on a
height, could not wholly embrace; whose profiles
are lost and the total harmony of which cannot be
appreciated except on a perspective plan. The
Greek temple is not a place of assembly but the
special habitation of a god, a shrine for his effigy, a
marble monstrance enclosing an unique statue. At
a hundred paces off from the sacred precincts you
can seize the direction and harmony of the principal
lines. They are, moreover, so simple that a glance
suffices to comprehend the whole. This edifice has
nothing complicated, quaint or elaborate about it ·
ART IN GREECE.
419
it is a rectangle bordered by a peristyle of columns;
three or four of the elementary forms of geometry
suffice for the whole, the symmetry of their ar
rangement setting them forth through their repeti-
tions and contrasts. The crowning of the pediment,
the fluting of the pillars, the abacus of the capital,
all the accessories and all details contribute yet
more to show in stronger relief the special character
of each member, while the diversity of polychromy
serves to mark and define their respective values.
You have recognized in these different character-
istics the fundamental need of pure and fixed forms.
A series of other characters shows the subtlety of
their tact and the exquisite delicacy of their percep-
tions. There is a close tie between all the forms
and dimensions of a temple as there is between all
the organs of a living organism, and this tie they
discovered; they established the architectural module
which according to the diameter of a column, deter-
mines its height, next its shape, next its base and
capital, and next the distance between the columns
and the general economy of the edifice. They in
tentionally modified the clumsy strictness of math
سد
420
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
I
ematical forms; they adapted them to the secret
exigencies of the eye; they gave a swell to the col-
umn by a skilful curve two-thirds its height; they
gave convexity to all the horizontal, and inclined to
the centre all the vertical lines of the Parthenon ;
they discarded all the fetters of mechanical sym-
metry; they gave unequal wings to their Propylaa
and different levels to the two sanctuaries of their
Ereotheum; they intersected, varied and inflected
their plans and angles in such a manner as to endow
architectural geometry with the grace, the diversity,
the unforeseen, the fleeting suppleness of a living
thing, without diminishing the effect of the masses;
and they decked its surface with the most elegant
series of painted and sculptured ornaments. Nothing
in all this equals the originality of their taste un-
less it be its correctness; they combined two quali-
ties apparently excluding each other, extreme rich-
ness and extreme gravity. Our modern perceptions
do not reach this point; we only half succeed, and
by degrees, in divining the perfection of their inven-
tion. The exhuming of Pompeii was necessary to
enable us to conjecture the charming vivacity and
ART IN GREECE.
421
harmony of decoration with which they clothed
their walls; and in our own day, an English archi-
itect has measured the imperceptible inflexion of the
swollen horizontal lines and the convergent perpen-
dicular lines which give to their most beautiful tem-
ple its supreme beauty. We, in their presence, are
like an ordinary listener to a musician born and
brought up to music; there are in his performance
delicacies of execution, purity of tone, fulness of
chords and achievements of expression which the
listener, partially endowed and badly prepared for
it, only seizes in gross and from time to time. We
retain only the total impression, and this impres-
sion, conformable to the genius of the race, is that √
of a gay and nvigorating fête. The architectural
structure is of itself healthy and viable; it does not
require, like the Gothic cathedral, a colony of masons
at its feet to keep restoring its constant decay; it
does not borrow support for its arches from out-
ward buttresses; it needs no iron frame to sustain a
prodigious scaffolding of fretted and elaborated pin-
nacles, to fasten to its walls its marvellously intricate
lacework and its fragile stone filagree. It is not the
422
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
Those
product of an exalted imagination but of a lucid
reason. It is so made as to endure by itself and
without help. Almost every temple in Greece
would be still intact if the brutality or fanaticism of
man had not supervened to destroy them.
of Pæstum remain erect after twenty-three centu-
ries; it is the explosion of a powder magazine which
cut the Parthenon in two. Left to itself the Greek
temple stands and continues to stand; we realize
this in its great solidity; its mass is consolidated in-
stead of being weighed down. We are sensible of
the stable equilibrium of its diverse members; for
the architect reveals the inner through the outer
structure, the lines which flatter the eye with their
harmonious proportions being just the lines which
satisfy the understanding with assurances of eter
nity.* Add to this appearance of power an air of
case and elegance; mere endurance is not the aim
of the Greek edifice as with the Egyptian edifice.
It is not crushed down by a weight of matter like
our obstinate and ungainly Atlas; it unfolds, ex
*In this connection the reader is referred to "La Philosophie de
l'architecture en Grèce," by M. E. Boutmy, a work of a very accurate and
delicate spirit.
ART IN GREECE.
423
pands, and rises up like the beautiful figure of an
athlete in whom vigor accords with delicacy and re-
pose. Consider again its adornment, the golden
bucklers starring its architrave, its golden acro-
teria, the lions' heads gleaming in sunshine, the
threads of gold and sometimes of enamel which en-
twine the capitals, the covering of vermilion min-
ium, blue, light ochre and green, every bright or
quiet tone, which, united and opposed as at Pom-
peii, affords the eye a sensation of healthy and
hearty southern joyousness. Finally, take into ac-
count the bas-reliefs, the statues of the pediments,
metopes and frise, especially the colossal effigy of
the inner cell, the sculptures of ivory, marble and
gold, those heroic or divine bodies which place be-
fore men's eyes perfect images of manly force, of
athletic perfection, of militant virtue, of unaffected ✓
nobility, of unalterable serenity and you will arrive
at the first conception of their genius and their art.
THE PERIOD.
ART IN GREECE.
427
THE PERIOD.
We have now to take another step and consider
a new characteristic of Greek civilization. The
Greek of ancient Greece is not only Greek but again
he is antique; he does not differ from the English-
man or Spaniard, because, being of another race, he
has other aptitudes and inclinations; he differs from
the Englishman, the Spaniard and the modern Greek
in this, that, placed at an anterior epoch of history,
he entertains other ideas and other sentiments. He
precedes us and we follow him. He did not build
his civilization on ours; we built our civilization on
his, and on many others. He is on the lower floor
while we are on the second or third story. Hence
certain results which are infinite in number and im-
portance. What can differ more than two lives, one
on a level with the ground with all the doors open-
ing on the country, and the other perched aloft and
confined to the small compartments of a modern
dwelling-houso? The contrast may be expressed in
428
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
two words: their life, mental and physical, is simple;
ours is complicated. Their art, therefore, is simpler
than ours, and the conception they form of man's
body and soul provides material for works which our
civilization no longer warrants.
ART IN GREECE.
429
A
་
I.
A glance at the outward features of their life suf-
fices to show how simple it is. Civilization, in mi-
grating towards the north, had to provide for all
sorts of wants which it was not obliged to satisfy in
its early condition at the south. In a moist or cold
climate, like that of Gaul, Germany, England and
North America, man consumes more; he requires
closer and more substantial houses, thicker and
warmer clothes, a greater amount of fire and light,
more shelter and food, more implements and occupa-
tions. He necessarily becomes manufacturing, and,
as his demands grow with their gratification, he de-
votes three quarters of his energy to the accumula-
tion of comforts. The conveniences he provides for
himself, however, are so many restraints and embar-
rassments to him, the machinery of his self-gratifica-
tion keeping him in bondage. How many things are
essential nowadays in the dress of an ordinary man!
How many more in the toilette of a woman even of
كا
430
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
an average station! Two or three wardrobes are not
sufficient. You are aware that to-day the women of
Naples and Athens borrow our fashions. The ac-
coutrement of a pallikare is as ample as our own.
Our northern civilizations, in flowing back upon the
unprogressive people of the south, bear to them a
foreign costume unnecessarily complicated; we have
to go to remote districts, or descend to the poorest
class, to find, as at Naples, lazzaroni clad in a kilt,
and women, as in Arcadia, wearing but one garment,
in short, people who reduce and adapt their dress to
their slight climatic exigencies. In ancient Greece
a short tunic, without sleeves, for the male, and, for
the female, a long tunic, reaching to the feet and
brought upward over the shoulders, falling down to
the waist, constituted all that was essential in their
costume; add to this a large square mantle, and for
the woman a veil when she went out, together with
sandals, which were often worn,-Socrates only put
them on on festival occasions, people frequently
going barefoot and likewise bareheaded. All these
habiliments could be removed with a turn of the
hand; there is no restraint upon the figure; its forms
ART IN GREECE.
431
are indicated and the nude is apparent through their
openings and in the movements of the body. They
were wholly taken off in the gymnasia, in the stadi-
um and in many of the religious dances; "It is a
Greek peculiarity," says Pliny, "to conceal nothing."
Dress, with them, is simply a loose accessory which
leaves full play to the body, and which can be thrown
aside in a moment. There is the same simplicity in
man's second envelop, that is to say, his dwelling.
Compare a house of St. Germain or Fontainebleau
with a house in Pompeii or Herculaneum, two hand-
some provincial cities which, in relation to Rome,
stand in the same position as St. Germain or Fon-
tainebleau do to Paris; sum up all that composes a
passable dwelling of the present time, a tall struct-
ure of hewn stone two or three stories high, glazed
windows, wall-paper, hangings, blinds, double and
triple curtains, stoves, chimneys, carpets, beds,
chairs, all kinds of furniture, innumerable luxurious
trifles and household implements, and contemplate
these alongside of the frail walls of a Pompeian
house, with its ten or twelve closets ranged around
a small court in which bubbles a stream of water, its
432
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
delicate painting and its small bronzes; it is a slight
簸
​shelter to sleep under at night, and for a siesta during
the day; in which to enjoy the fresh air and contem-
plate delicate arabesques and beautiful harmonies of
color. The climate requires nothing more.* White-
washed walls which a robber could enter and still
barren of paintings in the time of Pericles; a bed
with a few coverings, a chest, some beautiful paint-
ed vases, weapons hung up and a lamp of a primi-
tive shape; a house of very small dimensions, some-
times only one story high, sufficed for a noble
Athenian. He lived out of doors, in the open air,
under porticoes, in the Agora, in the gymnasia, while
the public edifices which protect him in public life
are as indifferently furnished as his own home. In-
stead of a palace like that of the Corps Legislatif or
the Houses of Parliament in London, with its internal
arrangement, seats, lights, library and refreshment
hall, every kind of apartment and service provided
for, he possesses an empty space, the Pnyx, and a
few steps of stone serving the speaker as a tribune.
See for the details of private life the "Charicles” of Becker, and
especially the Excursus.
ART IN GREECE.
433
We are now erecting an opera-house, and we demand
a spacious front, four or five vast pavilions, recep-
tion-rooms, saloons and passages of every descrip-
tion, a wide circle for the attendants, an enormous
stage, a gigantic receptacle overhead for scenery and
an infinity of boxes and rooms for actors and mana-
gers; we expend forty millions, and the house is to
hold two thousand spectators. In Greece a theatre
contained from thirty to forty thousand spectators,
and cost twenty times less than with us; the means
are furnished by nature; a hillside in which circular
rows of benches are cut, an altar at the foot, and in
the centre, a high sculptured wall like that at Orange,
to give a reverberation to the actor's voice, the sun
for a chandelier, and, for distant scenery, sometimes
the sparkling sea and, again, groups of mountains
softened in light. They obtain magnificence through
economy, their amusements as well as public busi-
ness being provided for with a degree of perfection
unattainable through our profuse expenditure.
Let us pass to moral organizations. A State of
the present day comprises thirty or forty million men
spread over a territory consisting of thousands of
19
434
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
square miles. It is for this reason more stable than
an antique city. On the other hand, however, it is
much more complicated, and for a man to perform
any duty in it he must be a specialist. Public func-
tions consequently are specific like the rest. The
mass take part in general matters only from time to
time and through elections; it lives, or contrives to
live, in the provinces, unable to form any personal or
precise opinions, reduced to vague impressions and
blind emotions, compelled to entrust itself to better
informed persons whom it despatches to the capital
and who act for it in making war and peace and in
imposing taxes. The same substitution takes place
in relation to religion, justice, the army and the navy.
In each of these services we have a body of special
agonts; a long apprenticeship is necessary to do
duty in them; they are beyond the reach of a ma-
jority of the citizens. We have nothing to do with
them; we have delegates who, appointed by each
other or chosen by the State, combat, navigate, judge
or pray for us. We cannot do otherwise; the duty
is too complicated to be performed hap-hazard by
the first comer; the priest must have passed through
ART IN GREECE.
435
a seminary, the magistrate through a law school, the
officer through the preparatory schools of the bar-
racks and the navy, and the civil administrator
through examinations and clerkships. In a small
State, on the contrary, like the Greek city, the com
mon man is on a level with every public requirement;
society is not divided up into governed and govern-
ors; there is no retired class, everybody being an act-
ive citizen. The Athenian decides for himself on
common interests; five or six thousand citizens lis-
ten to orators and vote on the public square; it is
the market-place; people resort to it to pass laws
and decrees as well as to sell their wine and olives;
the national territory being simply a suburb, the
rustic travels but a short distance farther than the
citizen. The business that brings him, moreover, is
within his capacity, for it is no more than parish in-
terests, inasmuch as the city is merely a township.
He has no difficulty in knowing what course to pur-
sue with Megara or Corinth; his personal experience
and daily impressions are adequate to this end; he
has no need to be a professional politician, versed in
geography, history, statistics and the like. In a sim
436
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
ilar manner, he is priest in his own house, and from
time to time the pontiff of his phratry or tribe; for
his faith is a beautiful fairy tale, the ceremony he
performs consisting of a dance or chant familiar to
him from his infancy, and of a banquet at which he
presides in a certain garment.-Again, he is judge in
the civil, criminal, and religious dicasterion, an advo-
cate, and obliged to plead in his own suit. A man
of the South, a Greek, is naturally of a vivacious in-
tellect and a fluent and fine speaker; laws are not yet
multiplied and jumbled together in a code and in
confusion; he knows them in a mass; pleaders cite
them to him, and, moreover, custom allows him to
consult his instincts, his common sense, his feeling,
his passions, to as great an extent, at least, as the
strict letter and legal arguments.-If he is rich he is
an impresario. You are aware of their theatre being
less complicated than ours, and that a Greek, an
Athenian, always has a taste for seeing dancers, sing-
ers, and actors.-Rich or poor he is a soldier; mili-
tary art being still primitive and the machinery of
war unknown, the national militia forms the army,
There was no better one up to the appearance of the
ART IN GREECE.
437
Romans. In order to organize it and form the per-
fect soldier, two conditions are requisite, and these
two conditions are provided by the common educa-
tion, without special instruction, drill, discipline or
exercise in the barracks. They require, on the one
hand, that each soldier shall be as good a gladiator
as possible, with the most robust, supple and agile
body, the best calculated to strike, ward off blows
and run; the gymnasia suffice for this purpose; they
are the youths' colleges; whole days and long years
are devoted to teaching them wrestling, jumping,
running, and throwing the discus, and, methodical-
ly, every limb and every muscle is exercised and for-
tified. On the other hand, they require the soldiery
to march, run and perform their evolutions in regu-
lar order; the orchestra suffices for this purpose; all
their national and religious festivals teach children
and young people the art of forming and separating
groups; at Sparta, the chorus of the public dance and
of the military company* are arranged on the same
plan. Thus prepared for it by their social arrange-
rit
ments, we can comprehend how the citizen becomes
Choros and Lochos.
438
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
a soldier without an effort and from the very begin.
ning. He gets to be a mariner without much great-
er apprenticeship. A ship of war in those days was
only a coasting vessel, and contained, at most, two
hundred men, and never lost sight of land. In a city
with a port, and which is supported by a maritime
trade, there is no one who cannot manœuvre a ves-
sel of this description, and who cannot judge of, or
soon learn, the signs of the weather, the chances of
the wind, positions and distances, the technics in full,
and every accessory, which our sailors and marine
officers acquire only after ten years' study and prac-
tice. All these peculiarities of antique life proceed
from the same cause, which is the simplicity of a
civilization without any precedent; and all end ir.
the same effect, which is the simplicity of a well-bal-
anced mind, no group of aptitudes and inclinations
being developed at the expense of others, free of
any exclusive direction, and not deformed by any
special function. We have at the present day the
cultivated and the uncultivated man, the citizen and
the peasant, the provincial and the Parisian, besides
as many distinct species as there are classes, profes
ART IN GREECE.
439
sions and trades; the individual everywhere penned
up in compartments of his own making and fettered
with innumerable self-assigned necessities. Less ar-
tificial, less special, less remote from the primitive
condition of things, the Greek acted in a political cir-
cle better proportioned to human faculties, amidst
social ways more favorable to the maintenance of
the animal faculties. Nearer to a natural life and
less bound down by a superadded civilization he
was more emphatically man.
440
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
II.
These are but the surroundings and the exterior
moulds which shape the individual. Let us look into
the individual himself, his sentiments and his ideas;
we shall be yet more impressed with the distance
between these and our own. Two kinds of culture
fashion them in every age and in every land, relig
ious culture and secular culture, both operating in
the same sense, formerly to maintain them simple,
now to render them complex. Modern people are
Christian, and Christianity is a religion of second
growth which opposes natural instinct. We may
liken it to a violent contraction which has inflected the
primitive attitude of the human mind. It proclaims,
in effect, that the world is sinful, and that man is de-
praved-which certainly is indisputable in the cen-
tury in which it was born. According to it, man
must change his ways. Life here below is simply an
exile;
let us turn our eyes upward to our celestial
ART IN GREECE.
441
home. Our natural character is vicious; let us stifle
natural desires and mortify the flesh. The experi-
ence of our senses and the knowledge of the wise are
inadequate and delusive; let us accept the light of
revelation, faith and divine illumination. Through
penitence, renunciation and meditation let us devel-
op within ourselves the spiritual man; let our life be
an ardent awaiting of deliverance, a constant sacri-
fice of will, an undying yearning for God, a revery
of sublime love, occasionally rewarded with ecstasy
and a vision of the infinite. For fourteen centuries
the ideal of this life was the anchorite or monk. If
you would estimate the power of such a conception
and the grandeur of the transformation it imposes on
human faculties and habits, read, in turn, the great
Christian poem and the great pagan poem, one the
Divine Comedy and the other the Odyssey and the
Iliad. Dante has a vision and is transported out of our
little ephemeral sphere into eternal regions; he be
holds its tortures, its expiations and its felicities; he
is affected by superhuman anguish and horror; all
that the infuriate and subtle imagination of the lover
of justice and the executioner can conceive of he sees,
19*
442
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
suffers and sinks under. He then ascends into light;
his body loses its gravity; he floats involuntarily,
led by the smile of a radiant woman; he listens to souls
in the shape of voices and to passing melodies; he
sees choirs of angels, a vast rose of living brightness
representing the virtues and the celestial powers;
sacred utterances and the dogmas of truth reverber-
ate in ethereal space. At this fervid height, where
reason melts like wax, both symbol and apparition,
one effacing the other, merge into mystic bewilder-
ment, the entire poem, infernal or divine, being a
dream which begins with horrors and ends in ravish-
ment. How much more natural and healthy is the
spectacle which Homer presents! We have the
Troad, the isle of Ithaca and the coasts of Greece;
still at the present day we follow in his track; we rec-
ognize the forms of mountains, the color of the sea,
the jutting fountains, the cypress and the alders in
which the sea-birds perched; he copied a steadfast
and persistent nature; with him throughout we plant
our feet on the firm ground of truth. His book is a
historical document; the manners and customs of his
contemporaries were such as he describes; his Olym
ART IN GREECE.
443
pus itself is a Greek family. We are not obliged to
strain and exalt ourselves to ascertain if we possess
the sentiments he utters, nor to imagine the world
he paints the combats, voyages, banquets, public
discourses, and private conversations, the various
scenes of real life, of friendships, of paternal and con
jugal affection, the craving for fame and action, the
quarrels and reconciliations, the love of festivals, the
relish of existence, every emotion and every passion
of the natural man. He confines himself to the visi-
ble circle realized by every generation of human ex-
perience; he does not travel out of it; this world suf
fices for him; it alone is important, the beyond being
simply the vague habitation of dissatisfied spectres
when Ulysses encounters Achilles in IIades and con-
gratulates him on being first among the dead, the
latter replies:
Noble Ulysses, speak not thus of death
As if thou could'st console me. I would be
A laborer on earth and serve for hire
Some man of mean estate who makes scant chcer,
Rather than reign o'er all who have gone down
To death. Speak rather of my noble son;
Whether or not he joined the war to take
A place among the foremost in the fight.
444
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
Thus beyond the grave he is still most concerned
with this present life. Then,
-the soul of swift acides
Over the meadows thick with asphodel
Departed with long strides, well-pleased to hear
From me the story of his son's renown.*
Different shades of the same sentiment reappear
at every epoch of Greek civilization; theirs is the
world lit up by sunshine; the hope and consolation
of the dying parent is the survival in bright day
of his son, his glory, his tomb, and his patrimony.
"The happiest man I have seen," said Solon to Crœ-
sus, "is Tellus of Athens; for his country was flour-
ishing in his day, and he himself had sons both
beautiful and good, and he lived to see children born
to each of them, and these children all grow up; and
farther, because after a life spent in what our people
look upon as comfort, his end was surpassingly glo-
rious. In a battle between the Athenians and their
neighbors, near Eleusis, he came to the assistance of
his countrymen, routed the foe, and died upon the
field most gallantly. The Athenians gave him a
* The Odyssey, translated by W. C. Bryant.
ART IN GREECE.
445
public funeral on the spot where he fell, and paid
him the highest honors."*
When philosophical reflection comes to dwell up-
on it the beyond does not appear terrible, infinite, dis-
proportioned to this present life, as certain as it, ex-
haustless in torments and delights, and like a fright-
ful gulf or an angelic elysium.—“One of two things,"
said Socrates to his judges, "either death is a state
of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or, as men
say, there is a change and migration of the soul from
this world to another. Now if you suppose that
there is no consciousness, but a sleep like the sleep
of him who is undisturbed even by the sight of
dreams, and were to compare with this the other
days and nights of his life, and then were to tell us
how many days and nights he had passed in the
course of his life better and more pleasantly than this
one, I think that any man, I will not say a private
but even the great king, will not find many such
days or nights, when compared with the others.
Now if death is like this, I say that to die is gain;
for eternity is then only a single night. But if death
man,
* Rawlinson's Herodotus.
446
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
is the journey to another place, and there, as men say
all the dead are, what good, oh my friends and judges,
can be greater than this? If, indeed, when the pilgrim
arrives in the world below, he is delivered from the
professors of justice in this world, and finds the true
judges who are said to give judgment there, Minos
and Rhadamanthus and acus and Triptolemus,
and other sons of God who were righteous in their
own life, that pilgrimage will be worth making.
What would not a man give if he might conversc
with Orpheus and Musæus and Hesiod and Homer?
Nay, if this be true, let me die again and again.”*
In both cases, then, we "should nourish good hope on
the subject of death." Twenty centuries later, Pas-
cal, taking up the same question and the same doubt,
could see for the incredulous no other hope but "the
horrible alternative of utter annihilation or eternal
misery." A contrast like this shows the turmoil which
for eighteen hundred years has disordered the human
mind. The prospect of a happy or miserable eterni
ty destroyed its balance; up to the close of the mid-
dle ages, with this incalculable weight upon it, it was
*The Dialogues of Plato, translated by Jowett.
ART IN GREECE.
447
like uncertain and disjointed scales, now up to the
highest point, now down to the lowest, and always
in extremes. When, toward the Renaissance, man's
oppressed nature recovered itself and assumed the
ascendant, the old ascetic and monastic doctrine
stood there to confront and to beat it back, not only
with its traditions and institutions, maintained or
revived, but again with the enduring unrest with
which it had infected dolorous souls and over-excited
imaginations. This discord subsists at the present
day; there are in us and about us two moral theories,
two ideas of nature and of life, whose constant
antagonism makes us feel the harmonious case of a
young society where natural instincts displayed
themselves intact and loyal under a religion that
favored instead of repressed their outgrowth.
If religious culture, with us, has grafted incon-
gruous sentiments on spontaneous tendencies, secular
culture has confused our mind with a maze of clab-
orated and foreign notions. Compare the first and
most powerful of educations, that which language
gives, in Greece and among ourselves. Our modern
tongues, Italian, Spanish, French, and English are
448
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
dialects, the shapeless remains of a beautiful idiom
impaired by a long decadence and which importa-
tions and intermixtures have still further tended to
change and obscure. They resemble those edifices
built with the ruins of an ancient temple and with
other materials picked up at random; the result of
which is that, with Latin stones, mutilated and com-
bined in another style, along with pebbles gathered
in the street and other rubbish, we have constructed
the building in which we live, once a gothic castle
and nowadays the modern mansion. Our mind
dwells in it because it has become domiciliated; but
how much more freely did that of the Grecks move in
theirs! We do not readily comprehend our some-
what generalized terms; they are not transparent;
they do not expose their root, the evident fact from
which they are derived; words have to be explained
to us which formerly man understood without an ef
fort through the sole virtue of analogy,-genus, spe-
cies, grammar, calculus, economy, law, thought, con-
ception, and the rest. Even in German, where this
obstacle is slighter, the conducting thread is want
ing. Almost the whole of our philosophic and scien
ART IN GREECE.
449
tific vocabulary is foreign; we are obliged to know
Greek and Latin to make use of it properly, and,
most frequently, employ it badly. Innumerable
terms find their way out of this technical vocabulary
into common conversation and literary style, and
hence it is that we now speak and think with words
cumbersome and difficult to manage. We adopt
them ready made and conjoined, we repeat them ac-
cording to routine; we make use of them without
considering their scope and without a nice apprecia-
tion of their sense; we only approximate to that
which we would like to express. Fifteen years are
necessary for an author to learn to write, not with ge-
nius, for that is not to be acquired, but with clearness,
sequence, propriety and precision. He finds himself
obliged to weigh and investigate ten or twelve thou-
sand words and diverse expressions, to note their ori-
gin, filiation and relationships, to rebuild on an orig.
inal plan, his ideas and his whole intellect. If he
has not done it, and he wishes to reason on rights,
duties, the beautiful, the State or any other of man's
important interests, he gropes about and stumbles;
he gets entangled in long, vague phrases, in sonorous
450
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
commonplaces, in crabbed and abstract formulas.
Look at the newspapers and the speeches of our pop-
ular orators. It is especially the case with workmen
who are intelligent but who have had no classical
education; they are not masters of words and, con-
sequently, of ideas; they use a refined language
which is not natural to them; it is a perplexity to
them and consequently confuses their minds; they
have had no time to filter it drop by drop. This is an
enormous disadvantage, from which the Greeks were
exempt. There was no break with them between
the language of concrete facts and that of abstract
reasoning, between the language spoken by the peo-
ple and that of the learned; the one was a counter-
part of the other; there was no term in any of Plato's
dialogues which a youth, leaving his gymnasia, could
not comprehend; there is not a phrase in any of De-
mosthenes' harangues which did not readily find a
lodging-place in the brain of an Athenian peasant or
blacksmith. Attempt to translate into Greek one of
Pitt's or Mirabeau's discourses, or an extract from
Addison or Nicole, and you will be obliged to recast
and transpose the thought; you will be led to find
1
ART IN GREECE.
451
for the same thoughts expressions more akin to facts
and to concrete experience;* a flood of light will
heighten the prominence of all the truths and of all
the errors; that which you were wont to call natural
and clear will seem to you affected and semi-obscure,
and you will perceive by force of contrast why,
among the Greeks, the instrument of thought being
more simple, it did its office better and with less
effort.
We
On the other hand, the work with the instru-
ment, has become complicated, and out of all pro-
portion. Besides Greek ideas, we have all that have
accumulated for the past eighteen centuries.
have been overburdened, from the first, with our ac-
quisitions. On issuing from a brutal barbarism at
the dawn of the middle age, a simple intellect, which
could scarcely do more than stammer, had to be en-
*I would refer the reader to the writings of Paul-Louis Courier,
who formed his style on the Greek. Compare his translation of the first
chapters of Herodotus with those of Larcher. In "François le Champi,”
the "Maitres Sonneurs" and in the "Mare au Diable," George Sand at-
tains in a great degree to the simplicity, naturalness and admirable di-
rectness of the Greek style. The contrast is singular between this and
the modern style which she employs when she speaks in her own name
or when she gives the conversation of cultivated characters.
452
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
cumbered with the remains of classic antiquity and
an ancient ecclesiastical literature, with a cavilling
Byzantine theology, and the vast and subtle Aristo-
telian encyclopedia rendered still more obscure and
subtle by his Arabian commentators. Then, after
the Renaissance, came a revived antiquity to super-
add its conceptions to ours, frequently to confuse our
ideas and wrongfully impose on us its authority, doc-
trines and examples; to make us Latin and Greek in
mind and language like the Italian men of letters
of the fifteenth century; to prescribe to us its
dramatic forms and the style of the seventeenth cen-
tury; to suggest to us its political maxims and uto-
pias as in the time of Rousseau and during the Rev-
olution. The stream, nevertheless, greatly enlarged,
grew with the immense influx; with the daily increas-
ing volume of experimental science and human in-
vention; with the separate contributions of growing
civilizations, all of them spread over five or six grand
territories. Add, after another century, the knowl-
edge diffused among modern languages and litera-
tures, the discovery of Oriental and remote civiliza-
tions, the extraordinary progress of history, reviving
ART IN GREECE.
453
pefore our eyes the habits and sentiments of so many
races and so many ages; the current has become a
river as variegated as it is enormous; all this is what
a human mind is obliged to absorb, and it demands
the genius, long life and patience of a Goethe to
moderately appreciate it. How much more simple
and limpid was the primitive source! In the best
days of Greece a youth "learned to read, write, and
cipher,* play the lyre, wrestle and to perform all
other bodily exercises." Education was reduced to
this "for the children of the best families." Let us
add, however, that in the house of the music-master
he was taught how to sing a few national and relig
ious odes, how to repeat passages from Homer, He-
siod and the lyric poets, the pean to be sung in war
and the song of Harmodius to be recited at the table.
When he got to be older he listened in the Agora to
the discourses of orators, to the decrees and the pro-
mulgation of the laws. In the time of Socrates, if
inquisitive, he attended the disputes and dissertations
of the sophists; he tried to procure a book by Anax-
* Grammata. As letters served as ciphers, this term includes all three.
+ The "Theages" of Plato.
454
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
agoras, or by Zeno of Elea; a few interested them-
selves in geometrical problems; but, as a whole, ed-
ucation was entirely gymnastic and musical, while
the few hours that were devoted to a philosophical
discussion, between two spells of bodily exercise, can
no more be compared to our fifteen or twenty years
of study, than their twenty or thirty rolls of papyrus
manuscript to our libraries of three million volumes.
All these opposing conditions may be reduced to one,
that which separates a fresh and impulsive civiliza-
tion from an elaborate and complex civilization.
Fewer means and tools, fewer industrial implements
and social wheels, fewer words learnt and ideas ac-
quired; a smaller heritage and lighter baggage and
thus more easily managed; a single, straightfor
ward growth without moral crisis or disparity, and
consequently a freer play of the faculties, a healthier
conception of life, a less disturbed, less jaded, less
deformed spirit and intellect; this is the capital trait
of their existence and it will be found in their art.
ART IN GREECE.
455
III.
The ideal work, indeed, has ever been the summia-
ry of real life. Examine the modern spirit and you
will find modifications, inequalities, maladies, hyper-
trophies, so to say, of sentiments and faculties of
which its art is the verification.-In the middle ages
the exaggerated development of the inner and spirit-
ual man, the pursuit of tender and sublime revery,
the worship of sorrow and the contempt of the flesh,
lead the excited feelings and imagination on to vis-
ions and seraphic adoration. You are familiar with
those of the "Imitation" and the "Fioretti" those of
Dante and Petrarch, and with the subtle refinements
and extravagant follies of chivalry and the courts of
love. In painting and sculpture, consequently, the
figures are ugly or lacking in beauty, often out of
proportion and not viable, almost always meagre,-at-
tenuated, wasted and suffering; overcome and ab
sorbed by some conception which turns their thoughts
456
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
away from this nether world; transfixed in anticipa
tion or in ravishment; displaying the meek sadness
of the cloister or the radiance of ecstasy, too frail or
too impassioned to live and already belonging to par-
adise.—At the time of the Renaissance the universal
amelioration of the human condition, the example of
antiquity revived and understood, the transports of
the mind liberated and ennobled by its grand dis-
coveries, renew pagan sentiments and art. Media-
val institutions and rites however still subsist; in It-
aly as in Flanders, you see in the finest works the
disagreeable incongruity of figures and subjects;
there are martyrs who seem to have issued from an
antique gymnasium; Christs consisting of destroying
Jupiters or tranquil Apollos; Virgins worthy of pro-
fane love; angels with the archness of Cupids; Mag
dalens often the most blooming of sirens, and St. Se-
bastians only so many hale Hercules; in short, an aș-
sembly of male and female saints who, amidst the
implements of penance and passion, retain the vigor-
ous health, the lively carnations and the spirited at-
titudes common to the joyous fêtes of perfect athletes
and noble young Athenian virgins.-At the present
ART IN GREECE.
457
day, the accumulations of the human brain, the mul
tiplicity and discord of doctrines, the excesses of cer-
ebral application, sedentary habits, an artificial re-
gime and the feverish excitement of capitals have aug-
mented nervous agitation, extended the craving for
new and strong sensations, and developed morbid
melancholy, vague aspirations and illimitable lusts.
Man is no longer what he was, and what, perhaps,
he would have done well to remain, an animal of su
perior grade, happy in thinking and acting on the
earth which nourishes him and beneath the sun which
gives him light. On the contrary, he is a prodigious
brain, an infinite spirit of which his members are
only appendages and of which his senses are simply
servants; insatiable in his curiosity and ambition,
ever in quest and on conquest, with tremors and out-
bursts which rack his animal organization and ruin
his corporeal strength; led hither and thither within
the confines of the actual world and even into the
depths of the imaginary world; now exalted and now
overwhelmed with the immensity of his acquisitions.
and of his performances; raging after the impossible.
or buried in occupation; grand and intense like Beet
20
458
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
hoven, IIeine and the Faust of Goethe, or restrained
by the pressure within his social cell, or warped all
on one side by a specialty and monomania like the
characters of Balzac. For this spirit plastic art no
longer suffices; its interest in a figure centres not in
the members, the trunk and the entire animated frame-
work, but in the expressive head, the mobile physi-
ognomy, the transparent soul declared in gesture,
passion or incorporeal thought pulsating and over-
flowing through form and externalities; if it loves
the beautiful sculptural form that is owing to educa-
tion, after long preparatory culture, and through the
disciplined taste of the dilettant. Multiple and cos-
mopolite as it is it finds interest in all phases of art,
in every period of the past, in every grade of society,
and in all the situations of life; it can appreciate the
resurrections of foreign and ancient styles, incidents
of rustic, popular or barbarous customs, foreign and
remote landscapes, all that affords aliment for curi-
osity, documents for history and subjects for emo-
tion or instruction. Satiated and dissipated as it is
it demands of art powerful and strange sensations,
new effects of color, physiognomy and site, stimulants
ART IN GREECE.
459
which, at any cost, disturb, provoke, or amuse it, in
short, a style which depends on manner, theory, and
exaggeration.
In Greece, on the contrary, the sentiments are
sunple, and, consequently, taste. Consider Greek
dramatic works; there are no profound and compli
cated characters in them like those of Shakspeare;
no intrigue cleverly contrived and unravelled, no
surprises. The piece turns upon a heroic legend
with which people are familiar from their infancy;
they know beforehand its incidents and catastrophe.
The action can be described in a few words. Ajax,
seized with delirium, massacres the cattle of the camp,
thinking he is slaying his enemies; chagrined at his
folly, he bewails it and kills himself. Philoctetes,
wounded, is abandoned on an island with his weapons;
he is sought for and found because his arrows are
needed; he becomes exasperated, refuses, and, at the
command of Hercules, yields. The comedies of Me-
nander, which we know through those of Terence, aro
made, so to say, out of nothing; it takes two of them
to make one Roman piece; the richest scarcely con-
tains the matter of one scene in our comedies. Read
460
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
the opening of the "Republic," in Plato, the "Syra
cuse Women" of Theocritus, the "Dialogues" of Lu-
cian, the last Attic poet, or again, the "Cyropedia" and
"Economicus" of Xenophon; there is no aim at ef
fect, every thing being uniform; they are common,
every-day scenes, the merit of which lies in their
charming naturalness; there is no strong emphasis,
no vehement, piquant trait; you scarcely smile, and
yet are pleased just as when you stop before a wild
flower or a limpid brook. The characters sit
down and get up, look at each other and say the
simplest things with no more effort than the painted
figures on the walls of Pompeii. With our forced
and paralyzed taste, accustomed to strong drink, we
are inclined, at first, to pronounce this an insipid
beverage; but, after moistening our lips with it for
a few months, we are unwilling to imbibe any but
this pure water, and find other literature spice, ra-
gout or poison.-Trace this disposition in their art,
and especially in that we are now studying, sculpture.
It is owing to this turn of mind that they have
brought it to perfection, and that it is truly their na-
tional art, for there is no art which more demands a
ART IN GREECE
461
simplicity of mind, sentiment and taste. A statue is
a large piece of marble or bronze, and a large statue
generally stands isolated upon a pedestal; it could
not express too vehement action nor a too impassion-
ed air, such as painting admits of, and which is al-
lowable in a bas-relief, for this reason, that the figure
would seem affected, got up for effect, running the
risk of falling into the style of Bernini. A statue,
moreover, is solid; its limbs and torso are weighty;
the spectator moves around it and realizes its mate-
rial mass; it is, besides, generally nude, or almost
nude; the statuary, accordingly, is obliged to give
the trunk and members equal importance with the
head, and to appreciate animal life to as great an ex-
tent as moral life. Greek civilization is the only one
which has conformed to these two conditions. At
this stage of things, and in this form of culture, the
body is an interesting object; the spirit has not sub-
ordinated it and cast it in the background; it has its
own importance. The spectator attaches equal val-
ue to its different parts, noble or ignoble, to the
breast which breathes so freely, to the strong and
flexible neck, to the muscles rising and falling around
евре
462
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
the spine, to the arms which project the discus, to
the legs and feet whose energetic spring impel the
man ahead in racing and jumping. A youth in Plato
reproaches his rival for having a stiff body and a
slender neck. Aristophanes promises the young man
who will follow his advice the best of health and
gymnastic beauty: "You will ever have a stout chest,
a clear complexion, broad shoulders, large hips.. .You
shall spend your time in the gymnastic schools sleek
and blooming; you shall descend to the Academy
and run races beneath the sacred olives along with
some modest compeer, crowned with white reeds,
redolent of yew and careless ease, and of leaf-shed-
ding white poplar, rejoicing in the season of spring,
when the plane-tree whispers to the elm."* These
are the pleasures and perfections of a blood horse,
and Plato somewhere compares young men to fine
coursers dedicated to the gods, and which are allow-
ed to stray at will in their pasture-grounds with a
vicw to see if they will not through instinct obtain
wisdom and virtue. Such men have no need of study
to enable them to contemplate understandingly and
* Aristophanes, translated by Hickie; Bohn's Classical Library.
ART IN GREECE
463
with pleasure a form like the "Theseus" of the Par
thenon or the "Achilles" of the Louvre, the easy
position of the body on the pelvis, the suppleness
of the joints and limbs, the clean curve of the heel,
the network of moving and flowing muscles under-
neath the firm and transparent skin. They appre-
ciate its beauty the same as an English gentleman
fond of hunting appreciates the breed, structure and
fine points of the dogs and horses he raises. They
are not surprised to see it naked. Modesty has not
yet become prudery; the spirit, with them, does not
sit by itself enthroned at sublime heights to obscure
and degrade organs which fulfil less noble functions;
it does not blush at and does not hide them; they
excite no shame and provoke no smile. The terms
which designate them are neither offensive, provoca-
tive nor scientific; Homer's mention of them is the
same in tone as that of other portions of the body.
The thoughts they awaken are, in Aristophanes, joy-
ous without being filthy as in Rabelais. There is no
secret literature devoted to them which austere peo-
ple and delicate minds avoid. The idea occurs over
and over again, on the stage, before full audiences, at
464
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
the festivals in honor of the gods, in the presence of
magistrates, in the phallus borne by young virgins and
which of itself is invoked as å divinity.* In Greece
all the great natural forces are divine, the divorce
between the animal and the spirit not yet having
taken place.
Here, then, we have the living body, complete
and without a veil, admired and glorified, standing
on its pedestal without scandal and exposed to all
eyes. What is its purpose and what idea, through
sympathy, is the statue to convey to spectators? An
idea which, to us, is almost without meaning because
it belongs to another age and another epoch of the
human mind. The head is without significance; un-
like ours it is not a world of graduated conceptions,
excited passions and a medley of sentiments; the face
is not sunken, sharp and disturbed; it has not many
characteristics, scarcely any expression, and is gener
ally in repose. IIence its suitableness for the statu-
ary; fashioned as it is to-day and as we now see it,
its importance would be out of proportion to and a
sacrifice of the rest; we would cease to look at the
* Aristophanes, in the "Acharnians.
ART IN GREECE.
465
trunk and limbs or would be tempted to clothe them
On the contrary, in the Greek statue, the head ex-
cites no more interest than the trunk and other por-
tions of the figure; its lines and its planes are simply
continuations of other lines and other planes; its
physiognomy is not meditative, but calm and almost
dull; you detect no habitude, no aspiration, no ambi-
tion transcending present physical existence, the gen-
eral attitude, like the entire action, conspiring in the
same sense. When a figure displays energetic action
for a given purpose, like the "Discobulus" at Rome,
the "Fighting Gladiator" in the Louvre, or the
"Dancing Fawn" of Pompeii, the effect, entirely
physical, exhausts every idea and every desire within
its capacity; so long as the discus is well launched,
the blow well bestowed or parried, the dance anima-
ted and in good tune, it is satisfied, the mind making
no further effort. Generally speaking, however, the
attitude is a tranquil one; the figure does nothing,
and says nothing; it is not fixed, wholly concentrated
in a profound or eager expression; it is at rest, re-
laxed, without weariness; now standing, slightly
leaning on one or the other foot now half turning,
20*
466
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
now half reclining; a moment ago it was running
like the young Lacedemonian girl;* now, like the
Flora, it holds a crown; its action, almost always, is
one of indifference; the idea which animates it is so
indefinite and, for us, so far removed that we still,
after a dozen hypotheses, cannot precisely determine
what the Venus of Milo is doing. It lives, and that
suffices, and it sufficed for the spectator of antiquity.
The contemporaries of Pericles and Plato did not re
quire violent and surprising effects to stimulate wea
ry attention or to irritate an uncasy sensibility. A
blooming and healthy body, capable of all virile and
gymnastic actions, a man or woman of fine growth
and noble race, a serene form in full light, a simple
and natural harmony of lines happily commingled,
was the most animated spectacle they could dwell
on. They desired to contemplate man proportioned
to his organs and to his condition and endowed with
every perfection within these limits; they demanded
nothing more and nothing less; any thing besides
would have struck them as extravagance, deformity
* See the collection of casts by M. Ravaisson in the Ecole des Beaux
Arts.
ART IN GREECE.
467
or discase. Such is the circle within which the sim-
plicity of their culture kept them, and beyond which
the complexity of our culture has impelled us; here-
in they encountered the art, statuary, which is ap-
propriate to it; hence it is that we have left this art
behind us, we of to-day having to resort to them for
our models.
INSTITUTIONS
ART IN GREECE.
471
Г.
If ever the correspondence of art with life dis-
closed itself through visible traits, it is in the history
of Greek statuary. To produce man in marble or
bronze, the Greek first formed the living man, per-
fect sculpture with them being developed at the
same moment as the institution through which was
produced the perfect body. One accompanies the
other, like the Dioscuri, and, through a fortunate con
junction, the doubtful dawn of distant history is at
once lit up by their two growing rays.
The two appear together in the first half of the
seventh century (B. C.). At this epoch occur the
great technical discoveries of art. About 689 Buta-
des of Sicyon undertakes to model and bake figures
of clay, which leads him to decorate the tops of roofs
with masks. At the same time Rhoikos and Theo-
doros of Samos discover the process of casting bronze
in a mould. Towards 650 Malas of Chios executes
the first statues in marble, and, in successive olympi
472
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
ads, during the latter part of that century, and the
whole of the following century, we see statuary
blocked out to become finished and perfect after the
glorious Median wars. This is the period at which
orchestral and gymnastic institutions become regular
and fully developed. A social cycle terminates, that
of Homer and the epos, while another begins, that of
Archilochus, Callinus, Terpander and Olympus and
of lyric poesy. Between Homer and his followers,
who belong to the ninth and eighth centuries, and
the inventors of new metres and new music who be
long to the next century, there occurs a vast trans-
formation of social habits and organization.
Man's horizon becomes more and more extend-
ed every day. The Mediterranean is thoroughly ex-
plored; Sicily and Egypt, which Homer only knew
through storied reports, become well known. In 632
the Samians were the first to sail as far as Tartessus,
and, out of the tithes of their profits, they consecrated
to their goddess Hera a huge bronze cup decorated
with griffons and supported by three kneeling fig-
ures, eleven cubits high. Multiplied colonies ariso
to people and cultivate the coasts of Magna Græcia,
ART IN GREECE.
473
Sicily, Asia Minor and the Euxine. Industrial pur
suits of all kinds flourish; the fifty-oared boats of an
cient poems become galleys with two hundred rowers.
A native of Chios discovers the art of softening, tem-
pering and welding iron. The Dorian temple is erect
ed. Money, figures and writing, of which Homer was
ignorant, are known. There is a change in tactics;
men fight on foot and in line instead of combating in
chariots and without discipline. Human society, so
scattered in the Iliad and Odyssey, becomes more
closely united. Instead of an Ithaca where each family
lives apart under its independent head, where there.
is no public authority, where twenty years could pass
without convoking a public assembly, walled and
guarded cities, provided with magistrates and sub-
ject to a police, are founded and become republics of
equal citizens under elected chiefs.
At the same time, and in consequence of this, in-
tellectual culture is diversified, diffused and re-invig
orated. It unquestionably remains poetic as prose
does not appear until later, but the monotonous mel-
opcia which the epic hexameter sustains gives way
to a multitude of varied songs and different metres
474
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
The pentameter is added to the hexameter; the tro
chee, iambic and anapest are invented; new and old
metrical measures are combined in the distich, the
strophe and others of all descriptions. The cithern
which had but four strings receives seven; Terpander
establishes his modes and gives the nomes of music ;*
Olympus, and, next, Thales succeed in adapting the
rhythms of the cithern, flute and voice to the various
shades of poetic diction which they accompany. Let
us attempt to picture to ourselves this world, so re-
mote, and whose fragments are almost all lost; there
is none which differs so much from our own and
which, to be comprehended, demands so great an ef
fort of the imagination. It is nevertheless the prim
itive and enduring mould from which the Greek
world issued.
When we form a conception of lyric poetry we
recur at once to the odes of Victor Hugo or the
stanzas of Lamartine, a poesy which is read silently
or in a low voice, alongside of a friend in some
quiet and secluded spot; our civilization renders po-
*These nomes were simple tunes from which others could be de
rived by slight variations. Smith's Dictionary.
ART IN GREECE.
475
esy the confidential intercourse of two kindred spir-
its. That of the Greeks was uttered not only in a
loud tone but it was declaimed and chanted to the
sound of instruments and, again, accompanied with
pantomime and dance. Suppose Delsarte or Mad
ame Viardot singing a recitative from "Iphigenia"
or “Orpheus,” Rouget de l'Isle or Rachel declaim-
ing the "Marseillaise" or a chorus from Gluck's
(6
Alceste," such as we see on the stage, with a cor-
ypheus, orchestra and groups moving about before the
steps of a temple, not as nowadays before the foot-
lights and surrounded by painted scenery, but on a
public square and beneath the splendor of sunshine,
and you will have the least imperfect idea of Gre-
cian fêtes and customs. The entire man, body and
soul, is in commotion; the verses that remain to us
are simply the detached leaves of an opera libretto.
At a funeral in a Corsican village the “vocératrice”
improvises and declaims songs of vengeance over the
corpse of a murdered man; also wailing-songs over
the coffin of a young girl who has died before her
maturity. In the Calabrian mountains and in Sicily
the young people, on days given up to dancing, rep
476
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
resent in their postures and gestures petty dramas
and amatory scenes. Imagine, in a similar climate,
under a still finer sky, in small cities where every-
body is well acquainted with each other, equally
gesticulative and imaginative men, as quick in emo-
tion and expression, with a still more animated and
fresher impulse, more creative and ingenious mental-
ly, and much more inclined to embellish every ac-
tion and moment of human existence. This musical
pantomime, which we only encounter in isolated
fragments and in out-of-the-way places, is that which
is to develope and branch out in a hundred different
directions and furnish the matter for a complete lit-
erature; there is no sentiment that it will not ex-
press, no scene of public or private life which it will
not adorn, no motive or situation to which it will
not suffice. It becomes the natural language, as uni-
versal and of as common usage as our written or
printed prose; the latter is a sort of dry notation by
which nowadays one pure intellect communicates
with another pure intellect; when compared with the
wholly imitative and material language of the for
mer it is nothing more than algebra and a residue.
ART IN GREECE.
477
The accent of the French language is uniform;
it has no rhythmical modulation; its long and short
syllables are slightly marked and scarcely distin-
guishable. One must have heard a musical tongue,
the prolonged melody of a beautiful voice reciting
one of Tasso's stanzas, to appreciate the effect or au-
ricular sensation on inward emotion; to know what
power sound and rhythm exercise over the entire
being; how contagious their influence is throughout
our nervous machinery. Such was that Greek lan-
guage of which we have simply the skeleton. We
see by the commentators and scholiasts that sound
and measure were of equal importance with idea and
image. The poet inventor of a species of metre in-
vented a species of sensation. This or that group
of long and short syllables is necessarily an allegro,
another a largo, another a scherzo, and not only af
fects the thought, but likewise the action and music,
its inflections and character. Thus did the age which
produced a vast system of lyric poesy produce at the
same stroke the no less vast orchestral system. We
are familiar with the names of two hundred Greek
dances. Up to sixteen years of age, at Athens, edu
478
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
cation was entirely orchestral. "In those days,"
says Aristophanes," the youth of the same quarter
of the town marched together through the streets to
the school of the Harp-master, in good order and
with bare feet, even if it were to snow as thick as
meal. There they had their places without sitting
cross-legged, and were taught the hymn 'Mighty
Pallas, devastator of cities,' or 'The shout heard
afar,' raising their voices to a higher pitch with the
strong and rugged harmony transmitted by their
fathers."
A young man named Hippocleides, belonging to
one of the first families, came to Sicyon to the court
of the tyrant Cleisthenes and, being skilled in all phys-
ical exercises, was desirous of exhibiting his good ed-
ucation.* Ordering a flute-player to play an appro-
priate air, he danced it accordingly, and, soon after,
causing a table to be brought, he got upon it and
danced the Lacedemonian and Athenian figures.-
Thus disciplined, they were both "singers and
dancers," all furnishing all with noble, picturesque
and poetic spectacles, and which at a later period
* Herodotus, VI. ch. cxix.
+ Lucian.
ART IN GREECE.
179
were obtained for hire. In the banquets of the
clubs,* after the repast, they made libations and sang
the pæon in honor of Apollo; and then came the fête
properly so called (Komos), the pantomimic decla-
mation, the lyric recitation to the sound of the cith-
ern or flute, a solo followed by a refrain, as subse-
quently the song of Harmodius and Aristogiton, or
a duett sung and danced, like, at a later period, in
the banquet of Xenophon, the meeting of Bacchus
and Ariadne. When a citizen constituted himself a
tyrant, and wished to enjoy his position, he extend-
ed festivities of this kind around him and perma-
nently established them. Polycrates of Samos had
two poets, Ibycos and Anacreon, to superintend
their arrangement and to compose for them music
and verses. The actors of these poetic compositions
consisted of the handsomest youths that could be
found; Bathyll who played the flute and sang in
the Ionian manner, Cleobulus with the beautiful vir-
gin eyes, Simalos who wielded the pectis in the cho-
rus, and Smerdis with the flowing locks whom they
went in quest of among the Cicones of Thrace. It
* Philities, societies of friends.
480
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
(6
was an operatic entertainment in private. The lyric
poets of this epoch are, in a similar manner, chorus,
masters; their dwelling is a species of conservatory,*
a House of the Muses:" there were several of
them at Lesbos, besides that of Sappho, and which
were conducted by women; they had pupils from
the neighboring islands and coasts, from Miletus
Colophon, Salamis and Pamphylia; here, during
long years were taught music, recitation and the art
of beautiful posture; they ridiculed the ignorant
"peasant girls who did not know how to raise their
dress above the ankle;" a corypheus was furnished
by these establishments and choruses drilled for fu-
neral lamentations and wedding pomps. Thus did
private life throughout, in its ceremonies as well as
amusements, contribute to make of man-in the best
sense of the term, however, and with perfect dignity
-what we designate as a singer, a figurant, a model
and an actor.
Public life contributed to the same end. In
Greece the orchestral system enters into religion and
* Simonides of Ceos usually occupied the "choregion" near the tem
ple of Apollo
ART IN GREECE.
481
politics, during peace and during war, in honor of
the dead and to glorify victors. At the Ionian fête
of Thargelia Mimnermus the poet and his mistress
Nanno led the procession playing the flute. Calli-
nos, Alcæus and Theognis exhorted their fellow-citi-
zens or their party, in verses which they themselves
sung. When the Athenians, repeatedly vanquished,
had decreed the penalty of death against whoever
should propose to recover Salamis, Solon, in a her-
ald's costume, with Mercury's cap on his head, ap-
peared suddenly in the assembly, mounted the her-
ald's stone, and recited an elegy with so much power
that the young men set out immediately "to deliver
the lovely island and relieve Athens of shame and
dishonor." The Spartans, on a campaign, recited
songs in their tents. At evening, after their repast,
each in turn arose to repeat and gesticulate the ele-
gy, while the polemarchus gave to the one who bore
away the prize a larger ration of meat. It was cer-
tainly a fine spectacle to see these tall young men,
the strongest and best formed in Greece, with their
long hair carefully fastened at the top of the head,
and in a red tunic, broad polished bucklers and with
21
482
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
an air of hero and athlete, arise and sing an ode like
this:-"With spirit let us fight for this land, and for
our children dic, being no longer chary of our lives.
Fight, then, young men, standing fast one by anoth
er, nor be beginners of cowardly flight or fear. But
rouse a great and valiant spirit in your breasts, and
love not life, when ye contend with men. And the
elders, whose limbs are no longer active, the old de-
sert not or forsake. For surely this were shameful,
that fallen amid the foremost champions, in front of
the youths, an older man should lie low, having his
head now white and his beard hoary, breathing out
a valiant spirit in the dust; whilst he covers with his
hands his gory loins.-Yet all this befits the young
whilst he enjoys the brilliant bloom of youth. To
mortal men and women he is lovely to look upon,
whilst he lives; and noble when he has fallen in the
foremost ranks.-Shameful too is a corpse lying low
in the dust, wounded behind in the back by the point
of a spear. Rather let every one with firm stride
await the enemy, having both feet fixed on the
ground biting his lip with his teeth, and having cov-
ered with the hollow of his broad shield thighs and
ART IN GREECE.
483
shins below and breast and shoulders. Then let him
learn war by doing bold deeds, nor let him stand
with his shield out of the range of weapons. But let
each drawing nigh in close fray, hit his foe, wound-
ing him with long lance and sword. Having set
foot beside foot, and having fixed shield against
shield and crest on crest, and helmet on helmet,
and breast against breast struggle in fight with his
man."*
There were similar songs for every circumstance
of military life, and, among others, anapests for at-
tacks to the sound of flutes. A spectacle of this kind
occurred during the early enthusiasm of our Revolu
tion, the day when Dumouriez, placing his hat on the
end of his sword, and, scaling the parapet of Jem-
mapes, burst forth with the "Chant du Départ," the
soldiers, on a run, singing it with him. In this great
discordant clamor we can imagine a regular battle-
chorus, an antique musical march. There was one
of these after the victory of Salamis, when Sophocles,
fifteen years old, and the handsomest youth in
Athens, stripped himself as the ceremony prescribed
Tyrtacus. Bohn's classical library.
484
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
and danced a pæon in honor of Apollo in the midst
of the military parade and before the trophy.
Worship, however, furnished a much larger contri-
bution to the orchestral system than war or politics.
According to the Greeks, the most gratifying spec-
tacle to the gods was that afforded by fine, blooming,
fully developed bodies in every attitude that could
display health and strength. Hence it is that their
most sacred festivals were operatic processions and
grave ballets. Chosen citizens, and sometimes as at
Sparta, the whole city* formed choruses in honor of
the gods; each important town had its poets who
composed music and verse, arranged the groups and
evolutions, taught postures, drilled the actors a long
time and regulated the costumes; we have but one
instance of the kind at the present day to suggest
the ceremony, that of the series of performances still
given, every ten years, at Ober-Ammergau in Bava-
ria, where, since the middle ages, the inhabitants of
the village, some five or six hundred persons, educa-
ted for it from infancy, solemnly perform Christ's
Passion. In these fêtes, Alcman and Stesichorus,
* The Gymnopædia.
ART IN GREECE.
485
were at the same time poets, cnapel-masters, and bal-
let directors; sometimes officiating themselves and as
leaders in the great compositions wherein choruses
of young men and women publicly appeared in hero-
ic or divine legends. One of these sacred ballets,
the dithyrambus, became, at a later period, Greek
tragedy. This in itself, is at first simply a religious
festival, reduced and perfected, and transported from
the public square to the enclosure of a theatre; a
succession of choruses broken by recitation and by
the melopoeia of a principal personage analogous to
an "Evangile" by Sebastian Bach, the "Seven
Works" of Haydn, an oratorio, or a Sixtine-chapel
mass in which the same personages would sing the
parts and constitute the groups.
Among all these poetic works, the most popular
and the best adapted to making us comprehend these
remote customs, are the cantatas which honor the
victors in the four great games. l'eople came to
Pindar for these from all parts of Greece, Sicily and
the islands. He went or sent his friend, Æneas of
Stymphalus, to teach to the chorus the dance, the
music, and the verses of his song. The festival began
486
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
with a procession and a sacrifice; afterwards the
friends of the athlete, with his relatives and the
principal men of the city, took their places at a ban-
quet. Sometimes the cantata was sung during the
procession and the line halted to recite the epode;
again, after the feast, in a grand hall decked with
cuirasses, lances, and swords.* The actors were
companions of the athlete and performed their part
with that southern energy which we encounter in
Italy in the "Comedia dell 'Arte." They did not
play, however, a comedy; their part was a serious
one, or rather it was not a part; their pleasure' was
the noblest and deepest which it is given to man to
experience, that of feeling himself beautiful and ex-
alted, raised above vulgar existence, borne aloft to
Olympic heights and radiance by remembrance of
national heroes, by the invocation of mighty divini-
ties, by the commemoration of ancestors, and by the
applause of the country. For the victory of the ath-
lete was a public triumph, and the poet's verses as-
sociated with it the city and all its divine protectors.
Surrounded by these grand images, and exalted by
* See the verses of Alcæus on his own dwelling.
ART IN GREECE.
487
their own action, they attained to that supreme state
which they called enthusiasm, indicating by this term
that the god was in them; and, in effect, he was, for
he enters into man when man feels his force and no-
bleness grow beyond all bounds through the concord-
ant energy and sympathetic joyousness of the group
with which he acts.
We of to-day no longer comprehend the poesy of
Pindar; it is too local and too special; too full of
occult meaning, too desultory, too closely adapted to
Greek athletes of the sixth century; the verses that
have come down to us are simply fragments; the ac
cent, the pantomime, the chant, the sounds of instru
ments, the stage, the dance, and the procession, and
other accessories which equal these in importance,
have perished. It is only with extreme difficulty
that we can figure to ourselves fresh minds that nev
er read any thing, entertaining no abstract ideas
thinking only with imagery, in which every word
aroused colored forms, souvenirs of stadium and gym.
nasia, temples, landscape, lustrous seacoasts, a popu
lation of figures animated and divine as in the days
of Homer, and, perhaps still more divine. And yet
488
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
we catch from time to time an accent of these vibra
ting tones; we see as in a flash the grandiose atti-
tude of the crowned youth, advancing out of the
chorus to utter the words of Jason or the vow of
Hercules; we divine the quick gesticulation, the
outstretched arms, the large muscles swelling his
breast; we encounter here and there a fragment of
the poetic hue as brilliant as a lately disinterred
painting in Pompeii.
Now it is the corypheus who advances: "As
when a man takes and gives out of his wealthy hand
a drinking-cup, frothing within with the dew of the
grape, presenting it to a youthful son-in-law on his
passing from one house to another, *** so I now in
sending liquid nectar, the gift of the Muses and the
sweet fruit of my mind, to men who have carried off
prizes from the contest, compliment them as victors.
at Olympia and Pytho."*
Now the chorus ceases and then the alternating
half-chorus developes in crescendo the superb sonor-
ousness of the rolling and triumphant ode. "What-
ever Zeus loveth not flies in alarm on hearing the
* The Odes of Pindar, translated by Paley.
ART IN GREECE.
489
loud call of the Pierides both on earth and in the
raging sea; and he who lies in the awful hell, that
cnemy of the gods, Typhous with his hundred heads,
whom erst the Cilician cave of many names did rear,
but now the sea-enclosing cliffs beyond Cuma (do
hold), while Sicily presses down his shaggy breast,
and that pillar of heaven keeps him fast, the snowy
Ætna, all the year through the nurse of bright daz-
zling snow. From it are belched forth out of its in-
most depths the purest jets of unapproachable fire.
In the daytime the streams (of lava) pour forth a
lurid torrent of smoke, but in the dark ruddy flame
rolling in volumes carries rocks into the deep level
sea with a horrible clatter. "Tis that snake-formed
monster that sends up from beneath these most dread-
ful founts of fire, a prodigy marvellous to behold,
and a wonder even to hear of from passers-by, how
that he lies imprisoned between the dark-leaved
heights of Ætna and the plain below, and his rocky
bed, furrowing all his back, galls him as he lies upon
it.*
The bubbling flow of images increases broken at
* The Odes of Pindar, translated by Paley.
21*
490
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
each step by sudden jets, refluxes and leaps whose
boldness and enormity permit no translation. It is
plain that these Greeks, so lucid and calm in their
prose, become intoxicated and are thrown off their
balance by lyric inspiration and madness. These are
excesses out of all harmony with our blunted organs
and our circumspect civilization. Nevertheless we
can divine enough of them to comprehend what such
a culture contributes to the arts which represent the
human form. It shapes man through the chorus; it
teaches him attitudes and gestures, the sculptural
action; it places him in a group which is a moving
bas-relief; it is wholly directed to making him a
spontaneous actor, one who performs fervidly and
for his own pleasure, who sets himself up as a spec
tacle to himself, who carries the gravity, freedom
dignity and spirit of a citizen into the evolutions of
the figurant and the mimicry of the dancer. The or
chestral system provided sculpture with its postures,
action, draperies, and groupings; the motive of the
Parthenon frieze is the Panathenaic procession, while
the Pyrrhica suggests the sculptures of Phigalia and
of Budrum.
ART IN GREECE.
491
LL.
Alongside of the orchestra there was, in Greece,
an institution still more national and which formed
the second half of education, the gymnasium. We
already meet with it in Homer; his heroes wrestle,
launch the discus, and hold foot and chariot races;
he who is not skilled in bodily exercises passes for a
man of a low class;
A mere trader, looking out
For freight and watching o'er the wares that form
The cargo.*
The institution, however, is not yet either regular,
pure or complete. There are no fixed localities or
epochs for the games. They are celebrated as the
opportunity offers, on the death of a hero or in honor
of a stranger. Many of the exercises which serve
to increase vigor and agility are unknown in them;
on the other hand, they add exercises with weapons,
*The Odysscy, translated by W. C. Bryant.
1
492
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
the duel even to blood, and practise with the bow
and pike. It is only in the following period, as with
the orchestral system and lyric poesy, that we see
them develope, take root and assume the final shape
and importance with which we are familiar. The
signal was given by the Dorians, a new population
of pure Greek race, who, issuing from the mountains,
invaded the Pelopommesus, and, like the Neustrian
Franks, introduced their tactics, imposed their rule
and renewed the national life with their intact spirit.
They were rude and energetic men bearing some re-
semblance to the medieval Swiss; not so lively as
and much less brilliant than the Ionians; possessing
a fondness for tradition, a sentiment of reverence, the
instinct of discipline, a calm, virile, and elevated
spirit, and whose genius showed its imprint in the
rigid severity of their worship, as in the heroic and
moral character of their gods. The principal section,
that of the Spartans, established itself in Laconia
amidst the ancient inhabitants either subdued or un-
der servile dominion; nine thousand families of proud
and hard masters in a city without walls, to keep
obedient one hundred and twenty thousand farmers
ART IN GREECE.
493
and two hundred thousand slaves, constituted an
army immovably encamped amidst enemies ten times
more numerous.
On this leading trait all the others depend. The
regime, prescribed by the situation, gradually be-
came fixed, and, towards the epoch of the restora-
tion of the Olympic games, it was complete. Indi-
vidual interests and caprices had disappeared before
the idea of public safety. The discipline is that of
a regiment threatened with constant danger. The
Spartan is forbidden to trade, to follow any pursuit,
to alienate his land, and to increase its rent; he is to
think of nothing but of being a soldier. If he trav-
els, he may use the horse, slave and provisions of his
neighbor; service among comrades is a matter of
right, while proprietorship is not strict. The new-
born child is brought before a council of elders, and
if it is too feeble or deformed, it is put to death;
none but sound men are admitted into the army, in
which all, from the cradle, are conscripts. An old
man past begetting children selects a young man
whom he takes to his home, because each household
must furnish recruits. Perfect men interchange
(
494
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
wives in order to be better friends; in a camp there
is no scrupulousness about family matters, many
things being held in common. People eat together
in squads, like a mess which has its own regulations
and in which each furnishes a part in money or its
equivalent. Military duty takes precedence of ev-
ery thing. It is a reproach to linger at home; bar-
rack life is superior to domestic life. A young
bridegroom seeks his wife in secret and passes the
day as usual in the drilling-school or on the parade-
ground. Children, for the same reason, are military
pupils (agelai), brought up in common, and, after sev-
en years of age, distributed into companies. In re-
lation to them every perfected adult is an elder, an
officer (Paidonomos), and can punish them without
paternal interference. Barefoot, clothed with a sin-
gle garment, and with the same dress in winter as in
summer, they march through the streets, silently
and with downcast eyes, like so many youthful con-
scripts to the recruiting-station. Costume is a uni-
form, and habits, like the gait, are prescribed. The
young sleep on a heap of rushes, bathe daily in the
cool waters of the Eurotas. eat little and fast, and
ART IN GREECE.
495
live worse in the city than in the camp, because the
future soldier must be hardened. Divided into
troops of a hundred, each under a young chief, they
fight together with fists and feet, which is the ap-
prenticeship for war. If they wish to add any thing
to their ordinarily meagre diet, they must steal it
from the dwellings or the farms: a soldier must know
how to keep himself alive by marauding. Now and
then they are let loose in ambush on the highways,
and, at evening, they kill belated Helots: a sight
of blood is a good thing, and it is well to get the
hand in early.
As to the arts, these consist of those suitable for
an army. The Dorians brought along with them a
special type of music, the Dorian mode, the only one,
perhaps, whose origin is purely Grecian.* It is of a
grave, manly, elevated character, very simple and
even harsh, admirable for inspiring patience and en-
ergy. It is not left to individual caprice; the law
prohibits the introduction of the variations, enerva-
tions and fancies of the foreign style; it is a public
* Plato, in the "Theages," says, speaking of the good man who dis-
courses on virtue, "In the wonderful harmony of action and speech we
recognize the Dorian mode the only one which is truly Greck.”
496
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
and moral institution; as with the drum and the bu
gle-call in our regiments, it regulates marches and
parades; there are hereditary flute-players similar to
the bagpipers of the Scottish clans.* The dance it-
self is a drill or a procession. Boys, after five years
of age, are instructed in the Pyrrhica, a pantomime
of armed combatants, who imitate manœuvres of de-
fense and attack, every attitude taken and every move-
ment made with a view to strike, ward off, draw back,
spring forward, stoop, bend the bow and launch the
pike. There is another named "anapale," in which
young boys simulate wrestling and the pancratium.
There are others for young men; others for young
girls, in which there is violent jumping, "leaps of the
stag," and headlong races where, "like colts and with
streaming hair, they make the dust fly." The prin-
cipal ones, however, are the gymnopædia, grand re-
views, in which the whole nation figures distributed in
choruses. That of the old men sang, "Once were we
young men filled with strength;" that of the young
men responded, "We of to-day are thus endowed;
* See the "Fair Maid of Perth," by Walter Scott; and the combat of
the Clan Clhele and Clan Chattan
↑ Aristophanes.
ART IN GREECE.
497
let him who is so disposed make trial of us;" that of
the children added; "And we, at some future day,
will be still more valiant."* All, from infancy, had
learnt and rehearsed the step, the evolutions, the tone
and the action; nowhere did choral poesy form vast-
er and better regulated ensembles. If nowadays we
would find a spectacle very remotely resembling this,
but still analogous, St. Cyr, with its parades and
drills and, still better, the military gymnastic school,
where soldiers learn to sing in chorus, might perhaps,
suffice.
There is nothing surprising in a city of this kind
CHORUS OF OLD MEN.
We are old and feeble now;
Feeble hands to age belong;
But when o'er our youthful brow
Fell the dark hair, we were strong.
CHORUS OF YOUNG MEN.
Though your youthful strength departs
With your children it endures;
In our arms and in our hearts
Lives the valor that was yours.
CHORUS OF BOYS.
We shall soon that strength attain;
Deeds like yours shall make us known,
And the glory we shall gain
Haply may surpass your own.
BRYANT: translated from the Greek,
498
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
organizing and perfecting gymnastics. At the cost
of his life a Spartan had to be equal to ten Helots;
as he was hoplite and foot-soldier and had to fight
man to man, in line and resolutely, a perfect educa-
tion consisted of that which formed the most agile
and most robust gladiator. In order to obtain this it
began previous to birth; quite the opposite of other
Greeks the Spartans not only prepared the male but
likewise the female, in order that the child which in-
herited both bloods should receive courage and vig-
or from his mother as well as from his father.* Girls
have their gymnasia and are exercised like boys,
nude or in a short tunic, in running, leaping, and
throwing the discus and lance; they have their own
choruses; they figure in the gymnopædia along with
the men. Aristophanes, with a tinge of Athenian
raillery, admires their fresh carnation, their blooming
health and their somewhat brutal vigor. The law,
moreover, fixes the age of marriages, and allots the
most favorable time and circumstances for generating
good progeny. There is some chance for parents of
* Xenophon, The Lacedemonian Republic.
+ The part of Lampito in the "Lysistrata."
ART IN GREECE.
499
this description producing strong and handsome
children; it is the system of horse-trainers, and is ful-
ly carried out, since all defective products are reject-
ed.—As soon as the infant begins to walk they not
only harden and train it, but again they methodical-
ly render it supple and powerful; Xenophon says
that they alone among the Greeks exercised equally
all parts of the body, the neck, the arms, the shoul-
ders, the legs and, not merely in youth but through-
out life and every day, and in camp twice a day.
The effect of this discipline is soon apparent. “The
Spartans," says Xenophon, "are the healthiest of all
the Greeks, and among them are found the finest
men and the handsomest women in Greece." They
overcame the Messenians who fought with the disor-
der and impetuosity of Homeric times; they became
the moderators and chiefs of Greece, and at the time
of the Median wars their ascendancy was so well es-
tablished that, not only on land but at sea, when
they had scarcely any vessels, all the Greeks, and
even the Athenians, received generals from them
without a murmur.
When a people becomes first in statesmanship
500
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
and in war its neighbors closely or remotely imitate
the institutions that have given it the supremacy.
The Greeks gradually borrow from the Spartans,
and, in general, from the Dorians, the important char-
acteristics of their habits, regime and art; the Dori-
an harmony, the exalted choral poesy, many of the
ceremonies of the dance, the style of architecture,
the simpler and more manly dress, the more rigid
military discipline, the complete nudity of the ath-
lete, gymnastics worked up into a system. Many
of the terms of military art, of music and of the pa-
lestra, are of Doric origin or belong to the Dorian
dialect. Already in the ninth century (B.C.) the
growing importance of gymnastics had shown itself
in the restoration of games, which had been inter-
rupted, while innumerable facts show, evidently, that
they annually became more popular. Those of
Olympia in 776 serve as an era and a chronological
starting-point for a series of years. During the two
subsequent centuries those of Pytho, of the Corin-
thian Isthmus and of Nemea are established.
are at first confined to the simple race of the stadi
um; to this is added in succession the double race of
They
ART IN GREECE.
501
the stadium, wrestling, the pentathlon, pugilism, the
chariot race, the pancratium and the horse race;
and next, for children, the foot race, wrestling, the
pancratium, boxing, and other games, in all twenty-
four exercises. Lacedemonian customs overcome
Homeric traditions; the victor no longer obtains
some prized object but a simple crown of leaves; he
ceases to wear the ancient girdle, and, at the four-
teenth Olympiad, strips himself entirely. The
names of the victors show that they come from all
parts of Greece, from Magna Græcia, the islands.
and the most distant colonies. Henceforth there is
no city without its gymnasium; it is one of the signs
by which we recognize a Grecian town.* The first
one at Athens dates from about the year 700. Un-
der Solon there were already three large public
gymnasia and a number of smaller ones. The youth
of sixteen or eighteen years passed his hours there
as in a lycée of day-scholars arranged, not for the
culture of the mind, but for the perfect development
of the body. The study of grammar and music
seems indeed to have ceased in order that the young
* An expression by Pausanias,
502
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
嬷
​man might enter a higher and more special class,
The gymnasium consisted of a great square with
porticoes and avenues of plane-trees, generally near a
fountain or a stream, and decorated with numerous
statues of gods and crowned athletes. It had its
master, its monitors, its special tutors and its fête in
honor of Hermes; the pupils had a playspell in the
intervals between the exercises; citizens visited it
when they pleased; there were numerous seats
around the race course; people came there to prom-
enade and to look at the young folks; it was a place
for gossip; philosophy was born there at a later pe-
riod. In this school, which resulted in a steady com-
petition, emulation led to excesses and prodigies;
men were seen exercising there their whole life.
The laws of the Games required those who entered
the arena to swear that they had exercised at least
ten consecutive months without interruption and
with the greatest care. But the men do much more
than this; the impulse lasts for entire years and
even into maturity; they follow a regimen; they eat
a great deal and at certain hours; they harden their
muscles by using the strigil and cold water; they
ART IN GREECE.
503
abstain from pleasures and excitements; they con-
demn themselves to continence. Some among them
renew the exploits of fabulous heroes. Milo, it is
said, bore a bull on his shoulders, and seizing the
rear of a harnessed chariot, stopped its advance.
An inscription placed beneath the statue of Phayllos,
the Crotonian, stated that he leaped across a space
fifty-five feet in width and cast the discus, weighing
eight pounds, ninety-five feet. Among Pindar's ath-
letes there are some who are giants.
You will observe that, in the Greek civilization,
these admirable bodies are not rarities, so many
products of luxury, and, as nowadays, useless pop-
pies in a field of grain; on the contrary, we must
liken them to the tallest stems of a magnificent
harvest. They are a necessity of the State and a
demand of society. The Hercules I have cited
were not merely for parade purposes. Milo led his
fellow-citizens to combat, and Phayllos was the
chief of the Crotonians who came to aid the
Greeks against the Medes. A general of those days
was not a strategist with a map and spy-glass occupy-
ing an elevation; he fought, pike in hand, at the
504
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
head of his forces, body to body, and as a soldier
Miltiades, Aristides, Pericles, and at a much later
period, even Agesilaus, Pelopidas and Pyrrhus use
their arms, and not merely their intellect, to strike,
parry and assault, on foot and on horseback, in the
thickest of the fight; Epaminondas, a statesman and
philosopher, being mortally wounded, consoles him-
self like a simple hoplite for having saved his shield.
A victor at the penthalon, Aratus, and the last Gre
cian leader, found his advantage in his agility and
strength on scaling walls and in surprises. Alexan-
der, at the Granicus, charged like a hussar and was
the first to spring, like a tumbler, into a city of
the Oxydracae. A bodily and personal mode
of warfare like this requires the first citizens, and
even princes, to be complete athletes. Add to
the exigencies of danger the stimulants of festivals.
Ceremonies, like battles, demanded trained bodies;
no one could figure in the choruses without having
passed through the gymnasia. I have stated how
the poet Sophocles danced the pæan naked after the
victory of Salamis; at the end of the fourth century
the same customs still subsisted. Alexander, on
ART IN GREECE.
505
reaching the Troad, threw aside his clothes that he
and his companions might honor Achilles by racing
around the pillar which marked the hero's grave.
A little farther on, at Phasélis, on seeing a statue of
the philosopher Theodectes in the public square, he
returned after his repast to dance around it and
cover it with crowns. To provide for tastes and
necessities of this sort, the gymnasium was the only
school. It resembles the academies of our later cen-
turies, to which all young nobles resorted to learn
fencing, dancing and riding. Free citizens were the
nobles of antiquity; there was, consequently, no free
citizen who had not frequented the gymnasium; on
this condition only could a man be well educated;
otherwise he sank to the class of tradesmen and peo-
ple of a low origin. Plato, Chrysippus and the poet
Timocreon were at one time athletes; Pythagoras
passed for having taken the prize for boxing; Eurip-
ides was crowned as an athlete at the Eleusinian
games. Cleisthenes, tyrant of Sicyon, entertaining
the suitors of his daughter, provided them with an
exercising ground, "in order that," says IIerodotus,
"he might test their race and education." The body,
22
506
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
in fine, preserved to the end the traces of its gym-
nastic or servile education; it could be appreciated at
a glance, through its bearing, gait, action and mode
of dress, the same as, formerly, the gentleman, polish-
ed and ennobled by the academies, could be distin-
guished from the rustic clown or the impoverished
laborer.
Even when nude and motionless, the body testi-
fied to its exercise by the beauty of its forms. The
skin, embrowned and rendered firm by the sun, oil,
dust, the strigil and cold baths, did not seem uncov-
ered; it was accustomed to the air; one felt on look-
ing at it that it was in its element; it certainly did
not shiver or present a mottled or goose-skin aspect;
it was a healthy tissue, of a beautiful tone, indicative
of a free and vigorous existence. Agesilaus, to en-
courage his soldiers, one day caused his Persian pris-
oners to be stripped; at the sight of their soft white.
skin the Greeks broke into a laugh and marched on-
ward, full of contempt for their enemies. The mus
cles were rendered strong and supple; nothing was
neglected; the diverse parts of the body balanced
each other; the upper section of the arm, which is
ART IN GREECE.
507
now so meagre, and the stiff and poorly-furnished
omoplates were filled out and formed a pendant in
proportion with the hips and thighs; the masters,
like veritable artists, exercised the body so that it
might not only possess vigor, resistance and speed,
but likewise symmetry and elegance. The "Dying
Gaul," which belongs to the Pergamenian school,
shows, on comparing it with the statues of athletes,
the distance which separates a rude from a cultivated
body; on the one hand, there is the hair scattered in
coarse meshes like a mane, a peasant's feet and hands,
a thick skin, inflexible muscles, sharp elbows, swollen
veins, angular contours, and harsh lines-nothing
but the animal body of a robust savage; on the
other hand, all the forms ennobled; at first the heel
flabby and weak,t now enclosed in a clean oval; at
first the foot too much displayed and betraying its
simian origin, now arched and more elastic for the
leap; at first the knee-pan articulations and entire
skeleton prominent, now half effaced and simply in-
* The author thus designates the statue commonly known under the
title of the "Dying Gladiator." Tr.
+ See the small bronze archaic Apollo in the Louvre, also the Ægine
tan statues.
508
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
dicated; at first the line of the shoulders horizontal
and hard, now inclining and softened-everywhere
the harmony of parts which continue and flow into
each other, the youth and freshness of a fluid exist-
ence as natural and as simple as that of a tree or a
flower. Numerous passages could be pointed out in
"Menexenus," the "Rivals" and the "Charmides” of
Plato, which seize some one of these postures on the
wing; a young man thus reared uses his limbs well
and naturally; he knows how to bend his body,
stand erect, rest with his shoulder against a column,
and, in all these attitudes, remain as beautiful as a
statue; the same as a gentleman, before the Revolu-
tion, had, when bowing, taking snuff or listening, the
cavalier grace and ease observable in old portraits
and in engravings. It was not the courtier, however,
that was apparent in the ways, action and pose of the
Greek, but the man of the palæstra. Plato depicts him
as hereditary gymnastics fashioned him among a se
lect race: "Charmides, I think that you ought to
excel others in all good qualities; for, if I am not mis-
taken, there is no one present who could easily point
out ten Athenian houses the alliance of which was
ART IN GREECE.
509
likely to produce a better or nobler son than the two
from which you are sprung. There is your father's
house, which is descended from Critias, the son of
Dropidas, whose family has been commemorated in
the panegyrical verses of Anacreon, Solon, and
many other poets as famous for beauty and virtue
and all other high fortune: and your mother's house
is equally distinguished; for your maternal uncle
Pyrilampes, never met with his equal in Persia at the
court of the great king or on the whole continent in
all the places to which he went as ambassador, for
stature and beauty; that whole family is not a whit
inferior to the other. Having such ancestry you
ought to be first in all things, and as far as I can see,
sweet son of Glaucon, your outward form is no dis-
honor to them."*
In this scene, which takes us back much farther
than its date, even to the best period of the nude
form, all is precious and significant. We find in t
the traditions of the blood, the result of education,
the popular and universal taste for beauty, all the
original sources of perfect sculpture. Homer had
*The Dialogues of Plato, "Charmides," translated by Jowett.
510
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
mentioned Achilles and Nereus as the most beauti
ful among the Greeks assembled against Troy; He
rodotus named Callicrates, the Spartan, as the hand-
somest of the Greeks in arms against Mardonius.
All the fêtes of the gods and all great ceremonies
brought together competitors in beauty. The finest
old men of Athens were selected to carry branches
in the Panathenaic procession, and the handsomest
men at Elis to bear the offerings to the goddess.
At Sparta, in the gymnopædia, the generals and
prominent men whose figure and external nobility
were not sufficiently marked were consigned to the
lower ranks in the choral defile. The Lacedemoni-
ans, according to Theophrastus, imposed a fine on
their king, Archidamus, because he married a woman
of short stature, pretending that she would give them
kinglets and not kings. Pausanias found competi-
tions of beauty in Arcadia in which women were ri-
vals, and which had lasted for nine centuries.
Persian, related to Xerxes, and a grandee of his
army, dying at Achantus, the inhabitants sacrificed
to him as a hero. The Segestans had erected a
small temple over the grave of Philip, a Crotonian
A
ART IN GREECE.
511
refugee among them and a victor in the Olympic
games, the most beautiful Greek of his day, and to
whom during the lifetime of Herodotus, sacrifices
were still offered. Such is the sentiment which edu-
cation had nourished and which in its turn, reacting
thereon, made the formation of beauty its end. The
race, certainly, was a fine one, but it was rendered
still finer through system; will had improved nature,
and the statuary set about finishing what nature,
even cultivated, only half completed.
We have thus seen during two centuries the two
institutions which form the human body, the orches-
trai and gymnastic systems, born, developed, and
diffused around the centres of their origin; spreading
throughout the Greek world, furnishing the instru
ments of war, the decorations of worship, the era of
chronology; presenting corporeal perfection as the
principal aim of human life and pushing admiration
of completed form even to vice.* Slowly, by de-
grees and at intervals, the art which fashions the
statue of metal, wood, ivory or marble, accompanies
* Grecian vice, unknown in the time of IIomer, begins, according to
all appearances, with the institution of gymnasia. See Becker, “Chari-
cles" (Excursus).
512
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
the education which fashions the living statue. It
does not progress at the same pace; although con-
temporary, it remains for these two centuries inferior
and simply imitative. The Greeks were concerned
about truth before they were concerned about copy-
ing it; they were interested in veritable bodies be-
fore being interested in simulated bodies; they de-
voted themselves to forming a chorus before at-
tempting to sculpture a chorister. The physical or
moral model always precedes the work which repre-
sents it; but it is only slightly in advance; it is ne-
cessary that it be still present in all memories the mo-
ment that the work is done. Art is an expanded
and harmonious echo; it acquires its fulness and
completeness when the life, of which it is the echo,
begins to decline. Such is the case with Greek stat-
uary; it becomes adult just at the moment the lyric
age ends in the period of fifty years following the
battle of Salamis, when, along with prose, the dra-
ma and the first researches in philosophy, a new cul-
ture begins. We see art suddenly passing from ex-
act imitation to beautiful invention. Aristocles, the
Æginetan sculptors, Onatas, Canachus, Pythagoras
ART IN GREECE.
513
of Rhegium, Calamis and Ageladas still closely
copied the real form as Verocchio, Pollaiolo, Ghir
landaijo, Fra Filippo and Perugino himself; but in
the hands of their pupils, Myro, Polycleitus and
Phidias the ideal form is set free as in the hands of
Leonardo, Michael Angelo and Raphael
514
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
III.
It is not merely men, the most beautiful of all,
that Greek statuary has produced; it has likewise
produced gods, and, in the united judgment of an-
tiquity, its gods were its masterpieces. To the pro-
found sentiment of corporeal and athletic perfection
found
was added, with the public and with the masters, an
original religious sentiment, a conception of the
world now lost, a peculiar mode of apprehending,
venerating and adoring natural and divine powers.
One must figure to himself this particular class of
emotions and kind of faith if one would penetrate
a little deeper into the soul and genius of Polycleitus,
Agoracritus or of Phidias.
It is sufficient to read IIerodotus* to see how
lively faith still was in the first half of the fifth centu-
ry. Not only is Herodotus pious, so devout even as
*Herodotus was still living at the epoch of the Peloponnesian war.
He alludes to it in Book VII. 137, and in Book IX. 73.
ART IN GREECE.
515
not to presume to give utterance to certain sacred
names, or reveal certain legends, but again the entire
nation brings to its worship the impassioned and
grandiose seriousness simultaneously expressed in
the poetry of Eschylus and Pindar. The gods are
living and present; they speak; they have been seen
like the Virgin and the saints in the thirteenth cen-
tury. The heralds of Xerxes having been slain by
the Spartans, the entrails of the victims become un-
favorable, because the murder offended the dead
Talthybios, Agamemnon's glorious herald, whom the
Spartans worshipped. In order to appease him two
rich and noble citizens go to Asia and offer them-
selves to Xerxes.-On the arrival of the Persians the
cities consult the oracle; the Athenians are ordered
to summon their son-in-law to their aid; they remem-
ber that Boreas carried off Orythia, the daughter of
Erectheus, their first ancestor, and they erect a chap-
el to him near the Ilyssus. At Delphi the god de-
clares that he will defend himself; thunder-bolts fall
on the barbarians, rocks fall and crush them, whilst
from the temple of Pallas Pronea issue voices and
war-cries, and two heroes of the country of superhu
516
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
man stature, Phylacos and Autonoos, succeed in put-
ting the terrified Persians to flight.-Before the bat
tle of Salamis, the Athenians import from Ægeria
the statues of the acides to combat with them.
During the fight some travellers near Eleusis see a
great cloud of dust and hear the voice of the mysti-
cal Iacchus approaching to aid the Grecians. After
the battle they offer the gods, as first-fruits, three
captive ships; one of them is for Ajax, while they de-
duct from the booty the money required for a statue
of him twelve cubits high at Delphi.-I should never
stop if I were to enumerate all the evidences of pub-
lic piety; it was still fervid among the people fifty
years later. "Diopeithes," says Plutarch, "passed a
law directing those who did not recognize the exist-
ence of the gods or who put forth new doctrines on
celestial phenomena to be denounced." Aspasia,
Anaxagoras, and Euripides were annoyed or accused,
Alcibiades condemned to death, and Socrates put to
death for the assumed or established crime of impi-
ety; popular indignation proved terrible against
those who had counterfeited or violated the mysteries
of Hermes. We see unquestionably in these details,
ART IN GREECE.
517
along with the persistency of the antique faith, the
advent of free thought; there was around Pericles,
as around Lorenzo de Mcdici, a small cluster of phi-
losophers and dialecticians; Phidias, like Michael
Angelo at a later period, was admitted among them.
But in both epochs, legend and tradition filled and
had supreme control of the imagination and conduct.
When the echo of philosophic discourse reached the
soul filled with picturesque forms and made it vibrate,
it was to aggrandize and purify divine forms. The
new wisdom did not destroy religion; she interpret-
ed it, she brought it back to its foundation, to the
poetic sentiment of natural forces. The grandiose
conceptions of early physicists left the world as ani-
mated and rendered it more august. It is owing,
perhaps, to Phidias having heard Anaxagoras dis-
course on the vous that he conceived his Jupiter, his
Pallas, his heavenly Venus, and completed, as the
Greeks said, the majesty of the gods.
In order to possess the sentiment.of the divine it
is necessary to be capable of distinguishing, through
the precise form of the legendary god, the great, per
manent and general forces of which it is the issue.
518
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
One remains a cold and prejudiced idolater if, he
yond the personal form, he does not detect, in a sort
of half-light, the physical or moral power of which
the figure is the symbol. This was still perceptible in
the time of Cimon and Pericles. Studies in compar
ative mythology have recently shown that Grecian
myths, related to Sanscrit myths, originally express-
ed the play of natural forces only, and that lan-
guage had gradually formed divinities from the diver-
sity, fecundity and beauty of physical elements and
phenomena. Polytheism, fundamentally, is the senti-
ment of animated, immortal and creative nature,
and this sentiment lasts for eternity. The divine im-
pregnated all things: these were invoked; often in
Eschylus and Sophocles do we see man addressing
the elements as if they were sacred beings with
whom he is associated to conduct the great chorus
of life. Philoctetes, on his departure, salutes “ye
watery nymphs of the meadows, and thou manly
roar of ocean dashing onwards. Farewell, thou sea-
girt plain of Lemnos, and waft me safely with fair
voyage thither, whither mighty fate conveys me.
*The Tragedies of Sophocles: Oxford translation.
****
ART IN GREECE.
519
Prometheus, bound to his crag, calls on all the
mighty beings who people space:-"O divine æther
and ye swift-winged breezes, and ye fountains of riv
ers, and countless dimpling of the waves of the deep;
and thou Earth, mother of all,-and to the all-seeing
orb of the Sun, I appeal! Look upon me what
treatment I, a God, am enduring at the hand of the
Gods!"*
The spectators simply let lyric emotion lead
them on in order to obtain primitive metaphors,
which, without being conscious of it, were the germs
of their faith. "The serene sky," says Aphrodite,
in one of the
lost pieces of Eschylus, "delights
to embrace the Earth, and Love espouses her; the
rain which falls from the life-giving Sky fecundates
the Earth who then brings forth for mortals pastur
age for cattle and the corn of Demeter." To com-
prehend this language we have only to leave behind
us our artificial towns and formal culture. The soli-
tary wanderer among mountains or by the seaside.
who surrenders himself wholly to the aspects of an
intact nature soon holds communion with her; she
*Eschylus: translated by Buckley. Bohn's Classical Library.
520
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
becomes animated for him like a physiognomy
mountains, threatening and motionless, become bald
headed giants or crouching monsters; the waves
which toss and gleam become laughing and playful
creatures; the grand silent pines resemble serious
virgins; and on contemplating the radiant blue
southern sea, adorned as if for a festival, wearing
the universal smile of which Eschylus speaks, he is
at once led, in expressing the voluptuous beauty
whose infinity penetrates and surrounds him, to
name that goddess born of sea-foam who, rising
above the waves, comes to ravish the hearts of mor-
tals and of gods.
When a people is conscious of the divine life of
natural objects it has no trouble in distinguishing
the natural origin of divine personages. In the
golden centuries of statuary this underlying condi-
tion of things still peered out beneath the human
and definite figure by which legend translated it.
Certain divinities, especially those of running
streams, mountains and forests, have always remain-
ed transparent. The näiad or the oread was simply
a young girl like her we see scated on a rock in the
ART IN GREECE.
521
metopes of Olympia,*-at least the figurative and
sculptural imagination so expressed it: but in giv
ing it a name people detected the mysterious gravi-
ty of the calm forest or the coolness of the spouting
fountain. In Homer, whose poems formed the Bi-
ble of the Greek, the shipwrecked Ulysses, after
swimming a couple of days,
Had reached the mouth
Of a soft flowing river.
He felt
The current's flow and thus devoutly prayed;
"Hear me, oh sovereign power, whoe'er thou art,
To thee, the long desired, I come. I seck
Escape from Neptune's threatenings on the sea;
To thy stream I come
And to thy knees from many a hardship past
Oh thou that here art ruler, I declare
Myself thy suppliant. Be thou merciful."
He ceased; the river stayed his current, checked
The billows, smoothed them to a calm, and gave
The swimmer a safe landing at his mouth!
It is evident that the divinity here is not a bearded
personage concealed in a cavern, but the flowing
river itself, the great tranquil and hospitable current.
Likewise the river, angered at Achilles:
*In the Louvre.
522
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
-Spake, and wrathfully he rose against
Achilles,-rose with turbid waves, and noise,
And foam, and blood, and bodies of the dead.
One purple billow of the Jove-born stream
Swelled high and whelmed Achilles. Juno saw
And trembled lest the hero should be whirled
Downward by the great river, and in haste
She called to Vulcan, her beloved son;-
Then the god
Seized on the river with his glittering fires.
The clms, the willows, and the tamarisks
Fell, scorched to cinders, and the lotus-herbs,
Rushes, and reeds that richly fringed the banks
Of that fair-flowing current were consumed.
The cels and fishes, that were wont to glide
Hither and thither through the pleasant depths
And eddies, languished in the fiery breath
Of Vulcan, mighty artisan. The strength
Of the great river withered, and he spake:-
"O Vulcan, there is none of all the gods
Who may contend with thee. I combat not
With fires like thine. Cease then."*
Six centuries later, Alexander, embarking on the
Hydaspes and standing on the prow, offered libations.
to the river, to the other river its sister, and to the
Indus who received both and who was about to bear
him. To a simple and healthy mind, a river, especi-
ally if it is unknown, is in itself a divine power; man,
before it, feels himself in the presence of one, eternal
*The Iliad, Book XVI: translated by W. C. Bryant
ART IN GREECE.
523
being, always active, by turns supporter and destroy
er, and with countless forms and aspects; an inex
haustible and regular flow gives him an idea of a
calm and virile existence but majestic and superhu-
man. In ages of decadence, in statues like those of the
Tiber and the Nile, ancient sculptors still remember-
ed the primitive impressions, the large torso, the at-
titude of repose, the vague gaze of the statue, showing
that, through the human form, they were always
mindful of and expressing the magnificent, uniform
and indifferent expansion of the mighty current.
At other times the name disclosed the nature of
the god. Hestia signifies the hearthstone; the god-
dess never could be wholly separated from the sa-
cred flame which served as the nucleus of domestic
life. Demeter signifies the mother earth; ritualistic
epithets call her a divinity of darkness, of the pro-
found and subterranean, the nurse of the young, the
bearor of fruits, the verdant. The sun, in Homer, is
another god than Apollo, the moral personage be-
ing confounded in him with physical light. Numer-
ous other divinities, "Horae," the Seasons, "Dice,"
Justice, "Nemesis," Repression, bear their sense
524
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
along with their name into the soul of the worship.
per. I will cite but one of these, "Eros," Love, to
show how the Greek, intellectually free and acute,
united in the same emotion the worship of a divine
personage and the divination of a natural force.
Love," says Sophocles, "invincible in strife; Love,
who overcomest all powers and fortunes, thou dwell-
est on the delicate cheeks of the young maiden; and
thou crossest the sea and entereth rustic cabins, and
there are none among the immortals nor among pass-
ing men that can escape thee." A little later, in the
hands of the convivialists of the Symposiun, the na
ture of the god varies according to diverse interpre-
tations of the title. For some, since love signifies
sympathy and concord, Love is the most universal
of the gods, and, as Hesiod has it, the author of or-
der and harmony in the world. According to oth-
ers he is the youngest of the gods, for age excludes
love: he is the most delicate for he moves and rests
on hearts, the tenderest objects and only on those
which are tender; he is of a subtle, fluid essence, be-
cause he enters into souls and leaves them without
their being aware of it; he has the tint of a flower
ART IN GREECE.
525
because he lives among perfumes and flowers. Ac
cording to others, finally, Love being desire and,
therefore, the lack of something, is the child of Pov-
erty-meagre, slovenly and barefoot, sleeping in
beautiful starlight, athirst for beauty and therefore
bold, active, industrious, persevering and a philoso-
pher. The myth revives of itself and passes through
more than a dozen forms in the hands of Plato.-In
the hands of Aristophanes we see the clouds becom-
ing, for a moment, almost counterpart divinities ;
and if, in the Theogony of Hesiod, we follow the
half considered, half involuntary confusion which he
establishes between divine personages and physical
elements;* if we remark that he enumerates "thirty
thousand guardian gods of the nursing earth;" if we
remember that Thales, the first physicist and the
first philosopher said every thing is born of water,
and, at the same time, that every thing is full of
gods, we can comprehend the profound sentiment
which then sustained Greek religion; the sublime
emotion, the admiration, the veneration with which
* Sco especially the generation of diverse gods in the Theogony
His mind throughout floats between cosmology and mythology.
1
f
526
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
the Greek divined the infinite forces of animated na
ture under the images of his divinities.
All, indeed, were not incorporated with objects
to the same extent. Some there were, and they were
the most popular, which the more energetic labor
of legend had detached and erected into distinct per-
sonages. The Greek Olympus may be likened to ar
olive tree towards the end of the summer. The fruit,
according to the height and position of the branches,
is more or less advanced; some of it, scarcely formed,
is little else than a swollen pistil and belongs strictly
to the tree; some again, already ripe, is still fast to
the branch; some, finally, is thoroughly matured and
fallen, and it requires no little attention to recognize
the peduncle which bore it. So, the Greek Olympus,
according to the degree of transformation which hu-
manizes natural forces, presents, in its different stages,
divinities in which physical character prevails over
personal configuration; others in which the two
phases are equal; others, at length, in which the god,
become human, is only attached by a few threads,
one thread only being sometimes visible, to the elc-
mentary phenomenon from which it issues. To this,
ART IN GREECE.
527
We
nevertheless, it is attached. Zeus, who in the Iliad
is the head of an imperious family, and in "Prome
theus" an usurping and tyrannical king, ever remains
in many points, what he was at first, a rainy and
thunder-striking sky: consecrated epithets and an-
cient locutions indicate his original nature; the
streams "flow from him," "Zeus rains." In Crete
his name signifies day; Ennius, at Rome, will tell you
later that he is that "sublime, glowing brightness
which all invoke under the name of Jupiter."
see in Aristophanes that for the peasantry, rural peo-
ple, simple minded and somewhat antique, he is al-
ways Him who "waters the ground and causes the
growth of the corn." On being told by a sophist
that there is no Zeus, they are surprised and demand
who it is that bursts forth in flashes of lightning or
descends in the showers? He struck down the Ti-
tans, the monster Typhoes with a hundred dragons'
heads, the black exhalations which, born of the earth,
interlace like serpents and invade the celestial cano-
py. He dwells on mountain summits touching
the heavens, where clouds gather, and from which
the thunder descends; he is the Zeus of Olympus,
528
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
1
#
the Zeus of Ithome, the Zeus of IIymettus. Like all
the gods he is, in substance, multiple, connected with
various places in which man's heart is most sensible
of his presence, with diverse cities and even diverse
families, which, having embraced him within their
horizons, appropriated him to themselves and sacri-
ficed to him. "I conjure thee," says Tecmessa, "by
the Zeus of thy hearthstone." To form an exact im-
pression of the religious sentiment of a Greek we
must, imagine a valley, à coast, the whole primitive
landscape in which a people fixed itself; it is not the
firmament in general, nor the universal earth which it
appreciates as divine beings, but its own firmament
with its own horizon of undulating mountains, the
soil it inhabits, the woods and the flowing streams in
the midst of which it lives; it has its own Zeus, its
own Poseidon, its own Hera, its own Apollo the same
as its own woodland and water nymphs. At Rome,
in a religion which had better preserved the primitive
spirit, Camillus said; "There is not a place in this
city that is not impregnated with religion and which
is not inhabited by some divinity." "I do not fear
the gods of your country, for I owe them nothing,"
ART IN GREECE.
529
says one of the characters of Æschylus. Properly
speaking, the god is local ;* he is, through his origin,
the country itself; hence it is that in the eyes of the
Greek his city is sacred, his divinities being one with
that city. When, on his return, he hails it, it is not,
as with Tancred, a poetic compliment; he is not
merely glad, like a modern, again to see familiar ob-
jects and to return to his home; his beach, his moun-
tains, the walled enclosure harboring his countrymen,
the highway with its tombs preserving the bones and
manes of its hero-founders, all that surrounds it is for
him a species of temple. "Argos, and ye its native
gods," says Agamemnon, "I first salute the, ye who
have aided me in my return and in the vengeance I
have taken of the city of Priam!" The closer we
examine it the more do we find their sentiment earn-
est, their religion justifiable, their worship well-
founded; only later, in times of frivolity and decline,
did they become idolatrous. "If we represent the
gods by human figures," they said, "it is because no
other form is more beautiful." But beyond the ex-
pressive form, they saw floating, as in a dream, the
* "La Cité Antique," by Fustel de Coulanges.
23
530
1HE PHILOSOPHY OF
universal powers which govern the soul and the uni
verse.
Let us follow one of their processions, that of the
great Panathenæa, and try to define the thoughts
and emotions of an Athenian who, taking part in the
solemn cortege, came to visit his gods. It was held
at the beginning of the month of September. For
three days the whole city witnessed the games, first,
at the Odeon, the pompous orchestral series, the re-
citation of Homer's poems, competitions for voice,
cithern and flute, choruses of nude youths dancing
the pyrrhica, and others, clothed, forming a cyclic
chorus; next, in the stadium, every exercise of the
naked body-wrestling, boxing, the pancratium and
the pentathlon for men and for children; the simple
and double race for naked and armed men; the foot-
race with flambeaux; the race with horses and the
chariot race with two and four horses in the ordinary
chariot and that of war with two men, one of whom
jumping down, followed alongside running and then
remounted at a bound. Pindar says that "the gods
were the friends of games," and that they could not
be better honored than by such spectacles.-On the
ART IN GREECE.
531
fourth day the procession occurred of which the Par
thenon frieze has preserved the image; at the head
marched the pontiffs, aged men selected among the
handsomest, virgins of noble families, the deputations
of allied cities with offerings, then the bearers of
chased gold and silver vases and utensils, athletes on
foot or on horseback or on their chariots, a long line
of sacrificers and their victims, and finally the people
in their festal attire. The sacred galley was put in
motion bearing on its mast the peplus or veil for the
statue of Pallas which young girls, supported in the
Erectheion, had embroidered. Setting out from the
Ceramicus it marched to Eleusis,* making the circuit
of the temple, passed along the northern and eastern
sides of the Acropolis and halted near the Areopagus
There the veil was taken down to be borne to the
goddess, while the cortege mounted the immense
marble flight of steps, one hundred feet long by sev-
enty wide, leading to the Propylæa and the vesti
bule of the Acropolis. Like the corner of ancient
Pisa in which the Cathedral, the Leaning Tower, the
Campo-Santo and the Baptistery are crowded togeth-
* Beule, "L'Acropole d'Athènes.”
532
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
er, this abrupt plateau, wholly devoted to the gods,
disappeared under sacred monuments, temples, chap
els, colossi and statues; but with its four hundred
feet of elevation it commanded the entire country;
between the columns and angles of the edifices, in
profile against the sky, the Athenians could embrace
the half of their Attica-a circle of barren mountains
scorched by the summer sun, the sparkling sea fram-
ed in by the dull prominence of its coasts, all the
grand eternal existences in which the gods were
rooted; Pentelica with its altars and the distant stat-
ue of Pallas Athena; Hymettus and Anchesmus
where the colossal effigies of Zous still marked the
primitive relationship between lofty summits and the
thunder-riven sky.
They bore the veil onward to the Erechtheum,
the most imposing of their temples, a veritable
shrine where the palladium, fallen from heaven, was
kept, the tomb of Cecrops and the sacred olive, the
parent of all the rest. There, the whole legend, all
its ceremonies and all its divine names, exalted the
mind with a vague and grandiose souvenir of the
carly struggles and first steps taken in human civili
ART IN GREECE.
533
zation; man, in the half-light of the myth, obtained
a glimpse of the antique and fecund strife of water,
earth and fire; the earth emerging from the waters,
becoming productive, overspread with kindly plants
and nutritive grains and trees, growing in popula
tion and getting humanized in the hands of secret
powers, who contend with savage elements and
gradually, athwart their chaos, establish the ascen-
dancy of mind. Cecrops, the founder, is symbol-
ized by a creature of the same name as his own, the
grasshopper (Kerkops), which was believed to be
born of the earth, an Athenian insect if he was of it,
a melodious and meagre inhabitant of the arid hills,
and of which old Athenians bore the image in their
hair. Alongside of him, the first inventor, Triptole-
mus, the thresher of grain, had Dysaules, the double
furrow, for his father and Gordys, barley, for his
daughter. Still more significant was the legend of
Erectheus, the great ancestor. Among the crudities
of an infantile imagination, which näively and oddly
expresses his birth, his name, signifying the fertile
soil, the name of his daughters pure Air, the Dew
and the Rain, manifest the idea of the dry earth fe
534
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
1
cundated by nocturnal humidity. Numerous details
of the worship serve to demonstrate its sense.
Maidens who embroidered the veil are called Ar-
rhephores, the bearers of dew; they are symbols of
the dew which they go for at night in a cave near the
temple of Aphrodite. Thallo, the season of flowers,
and Karpo, the season of fruits, honored near by,
are, again, names of agricultural gods. The sense
of all these expressive titles is buried in the Athen-
ian mind; he feels in them, contained by them and
indistinct, the history of his race; satisfied that the
manes of his founders and ancestors continued to
live around the tomb, extending their protection.
over those who honored their graves, he supplied
them with cakes, honey and wine, and, depositing his
offerings, embraced in one look, behind and before
him, the long prosperity of his city and hopefully
associated its future with its past.
On leaving the ancient sanctuary where the prim-
itive Pallas sat beneath the same roof as Erechtheus
he saw, almost facing him, the new temple built by
Ictinus in which she dwelt alone, and where every
thing declared her glory. What she was in early
ART IN GREECE.
535
days he scarcely felt; her physical origin had vanish-
ed under the development of her moral personality
but enthusiasm is of searching insight, and fragments
of legends, hallowed attributes and traditional epi-
thets led the mind towards the remote sources
from which she had issued. She was known to be
the daughter of Zeus, the thunder-striking sky, and
born of him alone; she had sprung from his brow
amidst lightning and the tumult of the elements; He-
lios had stood still, the Earth and Olympus had trem-
bled, the sea had arisen, a golden shower and luminous
rays had overspread the Earth. Primeval men proba-
bly had first worshipped, under her name, the serenity
of the illuminated atmosphere; they had prostrated
themselves on their knees before this sudden virginal
brightness, possessed with the invigorating coolness
which follows the storm; they had compared her to a
young, energetic* girl, and had named her Pallas. But
in this Attica, where the glory and transparency of the
immaculate ether are purer than elsewhere, she had
become Athenæ, the Athenian. Another of her ear-
liest surnames, Tritogeneia, born of water, also re-
*The primitive meaning, probably, of the word Pallas.
536
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
minded them that she was born of celestial rains or
waves.
made them imagine the luminous reflections of the
Other traces of her origin were the color of
her sea-green eyes and the choice of her bird, the
owl, whose eyeballs at night are clairvoyant lights.
Her figure, by degrees, had become distinct and her
history expanded. Her convulsive birth had made.
of her an armed and terrible warrior, the companion
of Zeus in his conflicts with the rebellious Titans.
As virgin and pure light she had gradually become
thought and intelligence, and she was called indus-
trious because she had invented the arts; the rider
because she had bridled the horse; the benefactor
because she removed maladies. Her good deeds and
ner victories were all figured on the walls, and the
eyes which, from the façade of the temple, were di-
rected to the immense landscape, embraced simulta-
neously the two moments of religion, one explained
by the other and united in the soul through the sub-
lime sensation of perfect beauty. To the south, on
the horizon, they gazed on the infinite sea, Poseidon,
who embraces and shakes the carth, the azure god
whose arins eucircle the coast and the isles, and, with
ART IN GREECE
537
out turning the eye, they beheld him again under the
western crown of the Parthenon, erect and turbulent,
rearing his muscular torso and powerful nude body
with the indignant air of an angered god, whilst be
hind him Amphitrite, the almost naked Aphrodite on
the knees of Thalassa, Latona with her two children,
Leucothea, IIalirrhothius and Eurytus disclosed in
the waving inflection of their infantile or feminine
forms, the grace and play, the freedom and eternal
smile of the sea. On the same marble front Pallas,
victorious, subdued the horses which Poseidon, with
a blow of his trident caused to spring from the
ground, driving them towards the divinities of the
soil, to Cecrops the founder, to their first ancestor
Erechtheus, the man of the earth, to his three dangh-
ters who moisten the parched ground, to Callirhoe the
Deautiful fountain and to Ilissus the shaded rivulet;
the eye had only to turn downward after having con-
templated their images to discern them in real signif
icance beneath the plateau.
But Pallas herself radiated throughout the entire
space. There was no need of reflection or of science;
it needed only the eyes and heart of a poet or an artist
23*
538
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
to arrive at the affinity of the goddess with natural
objects, to feel her present in the splendor of the
bright atmosphere, in the glow of the agile light, in
the purity of that delicate atmosphere to which the
Athenians attributed the vivacity of their invention
and their genius; she herself was the genius of the
territory, the spirit itself of the nation; it was her
benefactions, her inspiration, her work which they
beheld everywhere displayed as far as the eye could
sce; in the olive groves and on the diapered slopes
of tillage, in the three harbors swarming with
arsenals and crowded with vessels, in the long and
strong walls by which the city joined the sea; in the
beautiful city itself, which, with its temples, its gym-
nasia, its Pnyx, all its rebuilt monuments and its re-
cent habitations, covered the back and declivities of
the hills and which through its arts, its industries, its
festivals, its invention, its indefatigable courage, be
coming the "school of Greece," spread its empire
over the sea and its ascendancy over the entire na-
tion.
At this moment the gates of the Parthenon
might open and display among offerings, vases,
ART IN GREECE.
539
crowns, armor, casques, and silver masks, the colos
sal effigy, the Protectress, the Virgin, the Victorious,
erect and motionless, her lance resting against her
shoulder, her buckler standing by her side, holding a
Victory of ivory and gold in her right hand, the
golden ægis on her breast, a narrow casque of gold
on her head, in a grand gold robe of diverse tints; her
face, feet, hands and arms relieving against the
splendor of her weapons and drapery with the warm
and vital whiteness of ivory; her clear eyes of pre-
cious stones gleaming with fixed brilliancy in the
semi-obscurity of the painted cella. In imagining
her serene and sublime expression, Phidias, certain-
ly, had conceived a power which surpassed every
human standard-one of those universal forces which
direct the course of things, the active intelligence
which, at Athens, was the soul of the country.
He heeded, perhaps, in his breast, the reverberating
echo of the new physical system and philosophy
which, still confounding spirit and matter, con-
sidered thought as the purest and most subtle
of substances," a sort of ether everywhere diffused
(6
to produce and maintain the order of the uni-
}
540
ART IN GREECE.
verse;* in his mind was thus formed a still higher
conception than that of the people; his Pallas
surpassed that of Ægina, already so grave, in all
the majesty of the things of eternity.
Through a long circuit, and in gradually approx-
imating circles, we have traced the original sources
of the statue, and we have now reached the vacant
space, still recognizable, where its pedestal for
merly stood, and from which its august form has
disappeared.
* According to the text of Anaxagoras, Phidias had listened to
Anaxagoras in the house of Pericles the same as Michael Angelo lis-
tened to the Platonists of the Renaissance in the domicile of Lorenzo de
Medici.
THE END.

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