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THE-MIDSVMMEK OF* ITALIAN* ART

FRANK P. STEARNS

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YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

Bequest of
WILLIAM GEORGE SULLIVAN
Yale 1907

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APOLLO, by LEONARDO DA VINCI

The Midsummer
of Italian Art

BY
FRANK PRESTON STEARNS
The Authors' Club, London
Author of "The Real and Ideal in Literature," "The
Life of Tintoretto," etc.
REVISED EDITION

RICHARD G. BADGER
THE GORHAM PRESS
BOSTON

Copyright, 191 1 by Richard G. Badger
Copyright, 1895 and l899 by G. P. Putnam's Sons

All Rights Reserved

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A5 <395Sc

The Gorham Press, Boston

IN MEMORIAM

Laetitia Trelawney

Were not the eye itself a sun,
No sun for it would ever shine.
By nothing godlike could the heart be won,
Were not the heart of man divine. Goethe.

PREFACE TO REVISED EDITION
In the first edition of Midsummer I stated that my
object was to provide a comprehensive account of the
greatest Italian painters, which might serve both as a
bnnk of reference for American travellers in Europe,
and to revive the recollections of what they had seen
after their return. In revising my book I have consid
ered the request of my friends and critics for a more
thorough and complete analysis of the works of Raphael
and Michel Angelo, as the two artists in whom the pub
lic takes the liveliest interest. I have also amended the
account of Leonardo da Vinci so as to introduce a state
ment of every picture which can be ascribed to him on
reasonable grounds. Certain additions have also been
made to the account of Correggio, but. the similarity of
his designs makes a complete list of his paintings of less
importance than the others.
In order to make the book as perfect as possible, I
have compared my previous statements with those of the
most distinguished writers on the subject, and where I
became satisfied that I was formerly in error I have
made such changes as were necessary, giving credit to
the proper authority in a foot-note. This applies, how
ever, chiefly to the account of Raphael, and in a less
degree to Leonardo and Correggio. There is no thor
ough-going criticism of Michel Angelo's works that I
can hear of, in any language, and my own statement
would seem to be the first attempt in that direction.
I should like to call the reader's attention especially to
the likeness of Michel Angelo's Moses and his Slaves to
certain antique statues; to the progressive series of
Raphael's early Madonnas; and to the resemblance of
the Reading Magdalen to Correggio's Madonna della
Scala.

CONTENTS

Page
MEDIAEVAL ITALY  1
LEONARDO DA VINCI  26
The Last Supper  41
Mona Lisa  46
The Battle of the Standard  S3
St. John the Evangelist  SS
WORKS OF MICHEL ANGELO  61
The Pieta and the David  80
Victory and the Captives  92
The Sistine Chapel  95
The Chapel of the Medici  12S
The Last Judgment  139
The Paolina  1S4
Moses  155
Architecture  162
THE EVOLUTION OF RAPHAEL . .169
Lyric Pictures  174
Early Dawn  177
Portraits  192
Roman Madonnas  201
Prophets and Sibyls  207
Pure Ideals  211
Sistine Madonna  215
Later Portraits  220
The Farnesina  222
VII

Contents.

Page
RAPHAEL'S DRAMATIC PICTURES . . .224
Camera della Segnatura  233
Camera del' Eliodoro  243
Camera del' Incendio  249
The Cartoons  250
The Battle of the Milvian Bridge .... 260
The Transfiguration  265
The Hours  271
CORREGGIO  273
The Reading Magdalen  281
The Ecce Homo .  283
Parma  286
Il Giorno and La Notte  294
APPENDIX Morelli's Resartus  299
Rubens' Feast of Herod  305
The Aphrodite of Melos  323
Index  331

ILLUSTRATIONS

LEONARDO DA VINCI
Apollo .

Head of Medusa
His Own Portrait
Study of Christ .
Mona Lisa

MICHEL ANGELO
Madonna, National Gallery
David
Creation of Light
The Erythraean Sibyl
Il Penseros .
The Libyan Sib\l
Isaiah
The Last Judgment
Moses
RAPHAEL Madonna with the Book
St. George and the Dragon
Madonna of the Meadow
La Fornarina
^Eneas Group
Judgment of Solomon .
Violin Player

Page
Frontispiece
To face page
. 32
. 40
. 44
. 48

6274
80
96
104
120128144160
170
182
194206
216224 230

x Illustrations. Page
The Entombment  240
Leo X  248
Donna Velata  260
Transfiguration  270
CORREGGIO Reading Magdalen  278
Marriage of S. Catherine  282
Leda and the Swan  286
Madonna della Scala  292
Two Cupids  298
RUBENS The Feast of Herod  306
Venus of Melos  324
Dedrachma of Mallus  328

THE MIDSUMMER OF
ITALIAN ART

THE MIDSUMMER OF
ITALIAN ART

MEDIEVAL ITALY
WHO are the modern Italians ?
From the earliest dawn of tradition the
valley of the Po was occupied by various
Gallic tribes, who lived in a communal manner with
out any very definite or substantial form of govern
ment. They made little resistance to the supremac)'
of the Romans, and were organized into the province
of Cisalpine Gaul between the first and second Punic
wars. The southern extremity of the peninsula, to
gether with the larger part of Sicily, had been colo
nized by Greeks, and remains largely Hellenic to the
present day. Between the two were the Latin race
with their near kindred, the Samnites and the Lu-
canians ; and north of Latium were the Etruscans,
one of the most gifted, mysterious, and enigmatic of
all the tribes of men. Scientific research and specu
lative reasoning have equally failed to discover who

2 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
they were, and where they came from. Like the
Hungarians, they possessed the finest qualities of
the Aryan family, but their language has proved a
more severe puzzle than the cuneiform inscriptions
or Egyptian hieroglyphics. They may possibly have
been a colony from the original Iberian race before
the Gauls descended upon Spain and changed the
manners and language of its inhabitants. Their care
ful entombment of the dead, and taste for ornamental
pottery, suggest to us a finer mental endowment
than belonged to the other Italian tribes of their
time. The tradition that the last three kings of Rome
were of Etruscan origin may indicate a temporary
conquest of that city, and shows plainly enough that
there must have been a large Etruscan element in
its population. It may have served the same pur
pose that carbon does when united with iron in the
manufacture of steel. Whether the Romans finally
conquered the Etruscans or not, the latter became
absorbed in the Roman state, losing their own lan
guage and, to a certain extent, their individuality.
Many of them may still exist in the mountain cities
of Tuscany, where change is almost unknown, and
generations of men are born and pass away like the
rising and setting of the sun. During the dark ages,
however, the Romans entirely disappeared, and all
connecting links with the ancient world were broken
asunder. The importation of slave labor is known to have
had a very injurious effect on the population of
Italy. These slaves were chiefly Spaniards, Gauls,

Medieval Italy. 3
and Asiatic Greeks. They came from all countries
bordering on the Mediterranean, but the Gallic and
Grecian element preponderated among them. The
conflict between free and slave labor, or rather the
oppression of the free laborers by the slave system,
resulted in the succession of civil wars which finally
extinguished Roman liberty. Tiberius Gracchus,
returning from the siege of Numantia, was saddened
by seeing the fertile fields of Italy cultivated by
slaves, while the descendants of free Italian farmers
were driven to seek a scanty subsistence on the sides
of the mountains. Mommsen says of a later period :
" Italy was filled partly with gangs of slaves and
partly with awful silence." In this way the country
became denuded of its original inhabitants. During
the Roman Empire the population of Italy steadily
decreased. Every proconsul who went out to take
charge of a province and every merchant who
established a trading-house in a foreign city carried
with him a number of young men, who were not
likely to return unless they accumulated sufficient
wealth to live in a patrician manner. This accounts
for the rapid civilization of Gaul and Britain. Eng
land was more civilized in the fourth century than
in the tenth ; and in the seventh century Ireland
contained the only civilization that still remained in
western Europe. When the Goths (or Swedes) in
vaded Germany, the Romans left Britain in a body,
fearing that all chance of return would be cut off for
them ; but it is not likely that they proceeded farther
than the southern part of France.
What happened while the Goths were in Italy will

4 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
never be known, but they remained there long
enough to change the structure of the language after
the German fashion. Machiavelli said of it : " The
fearful events of those times were portrayed on the
faces of men ; when they not only changed their
customs and government but their religion and their
language ; the thought of either of these being
enough to strike terror into the stoutest heart."
The Goths were magnificent raw material, and we
feel it a shame that the kingdom of Theodoric
should not have endured like that of the Franks, and
a powerful nation been established in Italy sufficient
to resist all foreign aggression ; but this would have
retarded civilization, and was not written in the book
of fate. After their defeat by Narses, only a small
band escaped through the Brenner pass, and what
became of them afterwards remains a mystery.
They came and went, leaving nothing behind them
but disintegration.
The slave population of Italy no doubt profited by
this, for they had everything to gain from civil dis
turbances and nothing to lose except their lives —
and human life was of small value in the sixth cen
tury. The frequency of manumission lessened the
rigor of servitude in ancient times, as the serfdom of
the middle ages was mitigated by the intercession
of the clergy.
The invasion of the Lombards had a more sub
stantial effect and really laid the foundation of
modern Italy. Instead of spreading themselves
over the whole country, which proved to be the ruin
of the Goths, they took possession of the valley of

Mediceval Italy. 5
the Po, appropriating two thirds of the lands and
leaving the rest to its former inhabitants. This
must have caused quite an exodus. Cisalpine Gaul
had not suffered to the same extent as central Italy
from slavery and the exportation of free men, partly
on account of its distance from Rome and partly
from the difference of race. We know what hap
pened in England at the time of the Saxon invasion.
The Britons fled in all directions ; some crossed over
into Brittany, others went into Wales and Cornwall,
and others went to Ireland. The north of England
is largely Celtic at the present time. It is more
than probable that the same thing happened in
Lombardy. It was soon after this that we hear of
Florence, Pisa, and Genoa, cities built not like Rome
and Perugia on the hill-tops, but in the valleys.
We may safely conclude, therefore, that the mod
ern Italian is chiefly Gallic at the north and Grecian
in the south, with a slight mixture of German in
Lombardy and Etruscan in the central portion.
National customs and use of the same language have
given a certain uniformity to them all, but it is
nearly as easy to distinguish a Milanese from a Nea
politan as an Englishman from a Scotchman. There
is a tendency among emancipated slaves to flock to
large cities, for they feel safer where there are many
of them together, and we accordingly find in Rome
and Naples a large nondescript population, villainous
and servile, which does not appear to belong to any
particular race.
It would have been better if Boethius, instead of
writing the Consolations of Philosophy, had given us

6 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
an accurate description of what happened during
his lifetime ; for it is just these periods of history
we would most like to know about, — the transition
periods are the ones of which we have the least
information. Look at the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,
for instance. What a wretched failure that is, so
far as throwing light on early English history is con
cerned. The explanation would seem to be that in
epochs of change human nature suffers too much
from outside pressure for men to realize consciously
who and what they are. When a forest of pines is
cut down a growth of oaks will often app.ear in its
place. Did the reverse of this happen in Italy ?
When the great Roman oak was felled, did a more
tender and fragile plant spring up in its place ? Cer
tain it is that the Italians of the fifteenth century
were the very antipodes of Scipio's Romans. No
other country has had two such diverse civilizations ;
both nearly incommensurable. In fact, no other
country has produced more than one ; and South
America has not yet favored the world with any.
What were the characteristics of the ancient
Romans ? Everybody knows them ; they have
passed into a proverb. First, personal courage. In
this they were only equalled by the Spartans, and
have never been excelled. Catiline and " his hag
gard followers " fell in their places where they stood.
Even the basest and most corrupt Romans were not
lacking in martial valor.
Secondly, patriotic devotion. In their best days,
after the second Punic war, the whole Latin com
munity was like a drilled and disciplined army, in

Mediceval Italy. 7
which each person was consecrated religiously to a
certain object, and that object was the welfare of
the state. They had no existence as separate indi
viduals, but were satisfied to merge their identity in
the common good.
Thirdly, self-control ; in which they have never
been equalled, as a people. It was only through
this that their government was possible, — as the
British Parliament is ruled by a respect for parlia
mentary custom. From this were also derived their
firmness, constancy, and sobriety.
Fourthly, respect for women, not only in youth,
but in old age. Caesar delivered an oration at the
funeral of his Aunt Julia, and made it an occasion of
national importance. So Tacitus was of opinion
that Tiberius restrained himself, out of respect for
his mother, from those atrocious acts which he
committed after her death.
Fifthly, they were the most orderly, systematic,
and methodical of people ; and from this trait was
finally derived that most inestimable of blessings,
the civil law. They were not originally cruel, brutal,
or sensual, though they became so in the decadence
of the state. We do not hear in the annals of the
Republic of cruel punishments, or of the torture of
witnesses, except in the case of Jugurtha and one or
two others. They were not so humane as the Greeks,
but not half so ferocious as the Christians of mediaeval
Europe. Among modern nations the Prussians
most nearly resemble them, both in character and
history. Art, however, is wellnigh impossible in such a

8 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
people, so long as they retain their conventional
form and phalanx-like organization. For art re
quires, above all things, individual taste and origi
nal, independent, individual effort. The true artist
must separate himself from his neighbors, his family,
and even his friends. He must remain warm-hearted
and sympathetic, but cannot expect others to sym
pathize with him. His life must be isolated and
exceptional, " If you ask me what of Roman art,"
said Jarves. " I answer, nothing." This is not quite
correct. They possessed neither painting, sculpture,
nor music, but they had an architecture and litera
ture of their own. Roman literature, though suffi
ciently original, was in a measure the reflection of
Greek literature ; but the Roman arch, with its
manifold adaptations, was their original invention,
and nothing could express better, symbolically, the
organization of the Roman state than the phrase,
" a weaving of arches."
Horace was the most characteristic of the Roman
poets. He was born of one of the oldest Roman
families, and in the organic construction of his odes,
wrought so exquisitely and with unrivalled skill, —
in their pithy sense, devoted patriotism, or accurate
observation, — we find a still more sublimated sym
bol of the higher Roman life. Lucretius, however,
if not an Etruscan by descent, was at least one in
spirit, and it seems as if his tender feeling and pure
pathos were a prediction of Dante's verse and Giot
to's painting. Virgil came from Cisalpine Gaul and
was prophetic of a still later period. When we stand
before one of Raphael's Madonnas, we say, " What

Mediczval Italy. 9
can be more beautiful?" and when we read Virgil's
description of night In the third book of the JEneid,
we recognize the same style and manner. There is
an historic significance in Dante's saying : " It was
from Virgil that I learned the good style which does
me honor."
Roman life is everywhere simple and consistent,
but Italian mediaeval life is complex and contradic
tory. Nothing is more difficult to understand.
Everywhere we meet with the noblest virtues side
by side with the most terrible depravity. Refined
tastes, elevated thought, heroic self-devotion are
accompanied by fierce hatreds, wanton immorality,
and the most reckless crimes. These even appear
sometimes in the same person. Truly Lucretia
Borgia lived a wild kind of life in Rome, before
she retired among the Apennines to become an ex
emplary wife and mother, but apparently without re
pentance for her former transgressions. The inspired
monk of Florence, predicting that the Day of Judg
ment is at hand, exhorts his fellow-citizens to repent
ance, but does not scruple to further the execution
of his political opponents. Cardinal Vincola makes
use of his life-long reputation for veracity to obtain
the papacy by wholesale promises and unprincipled
deceptions. Bribery, murder, and even fratricide
were too common to attract much attention. Every
where there was intense passion, mental and physical
activity, animation, enterprise, great designs, and
wonderful achievements.
Their unstable politics and doubtful patriotism
were equally unlike the Romans. Civil war was

10 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
incessant for centuries. Not only was the whole
country divided into Guelfs and Ghibellines, but the
different states and cities were constantly at war with
each other, and in every city there were two factions,
who carried on violent and sanguinary struggles for
centuries. The leaders of the defeated party were
banished to prevent their organizing for a fresh cam
paign. There were the same factions among the
nobles, who poisoned and stabbed each other with
out remorse. He was a distinguished man who died
a natural death. Men were assassinated in the
market-place and the homicides escaped justice. It
will help our understanding of Italian politics to
remember that the Guelfs were the national party,
whose head was the Pope, and the Ghibellines those
who were disaffected. Dante was at first a Guelf
and afterwards became a Ghibelline from his disgust
at the atrocities of Pope Boniface, whom he has
represented on the summit of Purgatory being
scourged by a giant — that is, by King Philip the
Fair of France.
It is not easy to determine how much of this
should be attributed to the natural genius of the
people, and how much was caused by their lack of a
central government. Machiavelli attributes the dis
orders of his time to the temporal power of the pope,
which was indeed a fertile source of intrigue and
dissension. In Germany, after the death of Con-
radin, there was the same lack of political centraliza
tion, but it resulted in quite a different manner.
There was continual warfare, but of an honest sort.
The barons and their henchmen tilted continually

Mediceval Italy. 1 1

and ran each other through, by the right of private
feud ; but it was not like Italy. At the same time
the peasants were severely oppressed by the nobles,
while the lower class of Italians appear to have been
better off during the fifteenth century than at any
period before or since.
The pope could not very well be a pope and a king
also. It was not for the interest of the papacy that
any single power in Italy should surpass all others.
Still less was it for the pope's interest, and that of
civilization, that any foreign power should become
dominant in the country. The German emperor,
however, had a legal right to that authority ; and
though the Italians disputed this on the ground that
the emperor was not an hereditary, but an elective
sovereign, the Germans were not likely to trouble
themselves about so small a point. Frederic Bar-
barossa invaded Lombardy to prevent the Milanese
from tyrannizing over the smaller cities of which
they had already destroyed one or two. This, at
least, was his ostensible object. In 145 1 Frederick
the Third came there again and attempted to estab
lish a court of arbitration between the cities, and
issued a decree to have all the banished citizens re
called. This is said to have dissatisfied everybody
and filled the land with confusion ; in the midst of
which the good Frederick died, either poisoned or
worn out with care and vexation. Such politics have
always been characteristic of the Celtic races.
It is not safe to measure civilization by any single
rule. If we should judge of it by the safety of
human life and respect for property, Russia and

12 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
China would probably stand in advance of the United
States of America. The first and most important
test, however, is the test of superior work. Any
shoemaker who can satisfy his customers with a
thoroughly made article is more civilized than some
Wall Street stock gambler who exercises his rare in
genuity in cheating his neighbors. While a man is
doing good work, he must be good himself. It
steadies his life, quickens his observation, improves
his judgment, and balances his mind. His son, with
the advantage of an inherited tendency, will improve
on the work of his father. On the contrary, he who
does negligent, clumsy, and fraudulent work, injures
his own nature equally with the material which he
has in hand. It is thus that nations rise and fall.
Goethe preached the gospel of good work in the
eighteenth century, but all Italy celebrated it in the
fourteenth and fifteenth. From the time of Dante
to that of Raphael, we can trace through successive
generations a continual improvement, until it reached
that unrivalled excellence which is now looked upon
almost as the result of a supernatural gift. This was
not only the case in sculpture, painting, and archi
tecture, but in mason-work, ironwork, the manu
facture of cloth, and most of the smaller arts of
civilized life.
After Raphael there was an equally steady de
cline, interrupted only by a brief and brilliant reac
tion in the seventeenth century. When Matthew
Arnold regretted that there were nearly eight mil
lions of people in Italy who could neither read nor
write, Cardinal Antonelli replied : " Yes, but I think

Mediceval Italy. 1 3

you will find that they are generally correct in mat
ters of good taste." This may be true in a certain
way. The Italian peasants have excellent manners.
They are more polite than the French peasantry, and
more so than many English and American aristo
crats. They have a good deal of class pride, and
dress in a picturesque costume. Their fondness for
bright colors is well enough suited for their mode of
life. However, it is not probable that many of them
could appreciate a new public building or an ancient
picture. As soon as we rise above the peasantry, faulty
taste meets the eye everywhere. The skilful marble
workers, so indispensable to modern sculptors, can
not be trusted to copy a bust of Cicero or Trajan.
They invariably make it look pretty, and so spoil it.
The women of the middle classes, many of whom
are very beautiful, do not know how to dress as ele
gantly or as effectively as their French sisters ; and
the injury which has been done to great works of
art during the last hundred years by incapable re
storers tells a tale which implicates the highest gov
ernment officials. The celebration of Michel
Angelo's four hundredth birthday at Florence was
not unjustly criticised as an ineffectual effort to
regain national prestige.
It was not always so. On the flanks of the Alps
and Apennines, along the borders of the Rhine, and
scattered through France, Spain, and Germany are
substantial relics of the past— the castles of the
middle ages, which tell a different story. These and
the Gothic cathedrals are the monuments of an

14 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
architectural civilization; something of which we
can form to-day but a slight conception. Modern
palaces and churches are not to be compared with
them, either for grandeur, stateliness, or that human
element without which no work of art can penetrate
us. They were the result of the material and spirit
ual needs of their time, and these no longer exist.
Like the pyramids and Greek temples, they seem to
belong to the ground they stand on. How they
were built, with what means, by what co-operation,
and what power was evoked to obtain this, is
yet only partially known. Successive generations
worked upon them, and yet their construction was
developed according to an harmonious plan. The
castles were more substantial than Roman, the ca
thedrals more elegant than Grecian architecture.
One would say those old builders had an eye for
form. The Duomo of Florence is a finer work than
St. Peter's at Rome, though the latter has a more
elegant dome. St. Paul's, in London, is only a
smaller edition of St. Peter's, without its brightness
and lively ornamentation. Even the small parish
churches which have survived from that time possess
a grace and dignity which it is impossible to imitate.
Turin and Milan are now modern cities, adorned
with French architecture of the second empire; but
Pisa, Florence, Bologna, Parma, Siena have each a
characteristic architecture of its own, which gives
a distinction and seems to be peculiarly fitting to
it. Even in Pistoja, a small bankrupt city more like
a walled village, there is an old-fashioned elegance
that is very charming, although the grass grows in

Mediceval Italy. 1 5

its streets, and the doors of its cathedrals are boarded
up to prevent donkeys and goats from taking shelter
there. Yet the eye meets with nothing incongruous
in the way of architecture, and the dome of the
cathedral is admirably proportioned to the roofs of
the surrounding houses. The esplanade, or common,
in front of it is separated from the street by two or
three low terraces edged with a curbing of marble,
not more than four inches in height, the effect of
which is exceptionally pleasant and grateful to the
eye. Pistoja was never an important place and it is
now well-nigh deserted, but it has an architectural
dignity which still survives in its poverty and decay.
Compare the rectangular, monotonous blocks of
modern Florence, tasteful and quiet as they are, with
the narrow, winding streets of the old city How
much more interesting is the Via Tornabuoni than the
Via Vittorio Emanuele ; how much more restful and
refreshing in the dazzling sun of May and September.
So it is in Verona. We turn from the monuments
of the Scaligers to admire the flexible iron fence,
which surrounds them like a shirt of mail ; and from
that to the graceful ironwork balconies of the
houses ; and from that to the delicate columns of
the porch of San Zenone ; and are surprised that we
have never heard of them before. We are struck
with the purity of the fagade of the church at San
Miniato, and wonder why that of Santa Croce, which
has lately been rebuilt in the same style, could not
have been made equally beautiful. In Italy alone,
the art of man has fairly surpassed the best efforts
of nature.

1 6 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
Such refined taste could only be born of intellec
tual purity. It is the essence of disinterestedness.
Let us consider the case of a lady, who is arran
ging her toilet for an evening party. It is necessary
that she should appear to advantage, yet she cannot
indulge the slightest desire to appear conspicuous ;
for as soon as she does, she fails of the right effect.
She must subordinate her love of color, fine dress,
and jewelry to the relation which these will have
to her general appearance. If she takes too much
pains, the effect will be over-studied ; if she is
careless, she will appear negligent. To disregard
appearances entirely, is as bad as wearing a gaudy
costume. She must strive to be simple, elegant,
attractive, without intending to do so. She should
be self-respectful without pride, and conscious of
herself, without being self-conscious ; and the final
charm is not to be aware that she is well-dressed,
but only that she has done the best she can.
Goethe has given in Wilhelm Meister a description
of well-bred manners (and no one knew them better
than he) which comes to the same point. We will
quote it here, because Wilhelm Meister is a book
which every one stands in awe of, but comparatively
few have read.
"A well-bred carriage is difficult to imitate, for in
strictness it is negative, and it implies a long-contin,
ued previous training. You are not required to
exhibit in your manner anything that specially be^
tokens dignity, for by this means you are like to run
into formality and haughtiness ; you are rather to
avoid whatever is undignified and vulgar. You are

MedicBval Italy. 1 7

never to forget yourself ; you are to keep a constant
watch upon yourself and others ; to forgive nothing
that is faulty in your own conduct, in that of others
neither to forgive too little nor too much. Nothing
must appear to disturb you, nothing to agitate : you
must never appear to be in haste, must ever keep
yourself composed, retaining still an outward calm
ness, whatever storms may rage within. The noble
character at certain moments may resign himself to
his emotions ; the well-bred never. The latter is
like a man dressed out in fair and spotless clothes ;
he will not lean on anything ; every person will be
ware of rubbing against him."
What is this except "to be and not to be " at the
same time ?
An architect obtains the commission for a public
building. The ground and internal arrangements
are prescribed to him ; but the material, height, pro
portions of doors and windows, moulding, cornice,
and ornamentation he chooses according to his own
judgment. In doing this he must not only consider
what their relation will be to the structure as a
whole, and, what very few architects now consider,
the relation of that to the surrounding buildings ;
but at every moment he is obliged to decide how
each minor point will appear of itself. The differ
ence of an inch in the width of a moulding, or of half
as much in the mullion of a window, will give an ef
fect of heaviness ; the effort to obtain classical sim
plicity has frequently resulted in a dry, economic
look. He must avoid the unconscious imitation of
other noted buildings and restrain himself cautiously

1 8 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
in the use of architectural forms for which he has an
especial liking. Too free use of ornaments will give
the effect of ostentation.
Through this labyrinth of possible errors there is
no safe clue for him except one, and that is, purity
of feeling ; and how few buildings of the present
time have escaped from one or more of them. It is
the same with the coloring of a picture and the at
titude of a statue. If we compare the Perseus of
Canova with the one by Benvenuto Cellini, the ar
rogant, theatrical attitude of the former (as well as
its other faults) is brought into relief by the mod
est, dignified bearing of the latter. Now what his
statue appears to be, Cellini must have been himself.
If there had been no modest manliness in him — and
we do not forget the opening passage of his memoirs
— there would not have been the same qualities in his
work. Whence came this pure feeling for beauty, which
distinguished a whole nation for so long a period ?
It is always to be found in scattered individuals and
sometimes even in whole families, but then rarely
for more than a single generation. Was it, as Buckle
and the Positivists believe, a mental resultant from
the fine scenery of their native country, — the reflec
tion of their purple mountains, refulgent sunsets, and
deep azure seas ? These may have had some share
in it, as the fresh, dewy landscape of Holland may
have given its depth and vigor to Dutch coloring,
but this could only have been a small portion of the
whole. The sea, and mountains, and stone pines,
and gray olives are still there, and the sun shines up-

MedicBval Italy. 1 9

on them but not on Giottos and Cellinis any longer.
Quite as much to the point also is the fact that
Italian scenery was the one subject which the great
Italian masters never attempted to reproduce. The
Venetians finally succeeded in painting excellent
landscapes for background ; but this is a rare in
stance where an exception succeeds in proving the
rule ; for in Venice there were no landscapes. Who
could have perpetuated an Italian sunset so well as
Titian ; and next to Titian, Tintoretto ? They both
dwelt in the western quarter of the city where
they could look every evening on the dazzling golden
and crimson reflected upon the waters of the lagoon ;
but either it never occurred to them as a possible
subject, or they did not consider it worthy of their
art. Yet we find Aretino admiring the sunset from
his palace window and writing to Titian that it is
like his own beautiful coloring.
Nothing in history is more mysterious than the
manner in which national vitality enters into a
people, rises to a height, and then dies out again,
like some great conflagration, leaving the ashes of
civilization behind it. The Germans have a poetical
way of accounting for this, namely, that the world-
spirit takes up his abode first in one country and
then in another, appearing at one time in art and
again in politics or religion. This serves to express
the character of it, and may be nearer the truth
than is generally supposed ; but it is not a scientific
explanation. Something has never yet come out of nothing.
A great movement in humanity must have an active

20 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
cause at its origin, even if that cause be recondite or
invisible to us. A meteor revolving in space comes
in contact with the earth's atmosphere and is
ignited. Oxygen and hydrogen, both invisible as
air, come together and form visible liquid. England
is weak under Saxon rule ; the Normans come in
with their iron discipline and great designs, and the
two together form a mighty kingdom. It is the
correlation and conservation of historical forces.
Let it be noticed, however, that two elements are
always required for the production of a third. No
simple substance ever passes through a series of
changes in and of itself. The meteor does not be
come luminous until it strikes against the air. The
Normans have disappeared from Normandy and
Sicily, and Norway itself became a dependency of
Denmark. It was only when grafted on the sturdy
Saxon tree that they survived and extended their
branches. It is evident, also, that only such ele
ments can combine favorably which, like oxygen
and hydrogen, have a predestined affinity for each
other. Now, it has long since been noticed that the
origin of all art has a close relation with religious
observances. It is equally well known that the first
poems were hymns, the first architecture was a tem
ple, the earliest statues were idols, and for the first
century and a half Italian art was devoted almost
exclusively to the representation of Madonnas and
saints. For five hundred years before Dante, man
kind had been filled with such intense, fervid, reli
gious feeling as only the Puritans since then have

Mediceval Italy. 2 1

given a comparatively short-lived example of. It
was an epoch of deep-rooted faith ; such faith as
carries men over stupendous obstacles, makes hard
ship a luxury, and death the happiest consumma
tion. Never before or since has the Christian
church possessed such power over the minds of all
classes. The exhortations of priests, the stories of
saints and martyrs, fermented in men's heads until
they were ready for any desperate and incredible
action. When the people of a whole continent be
come agitated in this manner, great and surprising
developments are to be expected.
The Saracens must have been as much astonished
by the crusades as Louis XVI. was by the attack on
the Bastille. What could have stirred up those iron
clad Franks to descend upon them in a succession
of avalanches. No doubt many of the crusaders
went from love of adventure, and many from ex
pectation of spoil ; but, on the whole, it was the
most heroic, disinterested movement in humanity
that the world has seen. St. Louis of France and
Frederic Barbarossa were the typical characters of
it : two such just sovereigns, prudent statesmen, and
stainless men, if we are to believe their contempo
raries* that time has rarely equalled them since.
They both went on two expeditions to the Holy
Land (neglecting the interests of their subjects for
the cross), and lost their lives there. But the sepul
chre of Christ was empty, and the crusaders returned
dissatisfied. The attempt to realize spirituality by
fighting the infidels had not succeeded ; but the same
impulse now turned itself inward to produce from

22 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
the depths of man's consciousness Italian art and
the Gothic cathedrals, while the bird-like songs of
the troubadours and minnesingers gave notice that
the spring-time of modern Europe was near at
hand. The fable of Proserpine living half of the year
underground with Pluto, and the other half above
in the light of day, has its parallel also in the devel
opment of thought. Ideas may lie concealed in the
human mind, but the longer this happens, the more
certain it is that they will come to the surface when
circumstances are favorable, and appear in a tangi
ble shape. Art has therefore been correctly defined
as thought expressed in form. It was the deep reli
gious enthusiasm of the early Christians that kept
Italian taste pure and made Italian painting what
we now marvel at. The arts of painting and sculp
ture languish in our own time, because there is no
deep-rooted feeling in the community with regard
to them. The Florentines carried Cimabue's imma
ture Madonna in procession through the city ; but
Madonnas and Last Judgments are no longer possi
ble, for they have not the same meaning for us as
formerly. The world-spirit has gone in another
direction. Religious impulse then provided the motive
power, but how shall we account for the technical
skill ? Emotion dies out after a time and has to be
replaced by that steady perseverance, which alone
will keep eye and hand to the right mark, day after
day and year after year. " Influence," Washington
said, " is not government " ; and, though people may

Mediczval Italy. 23

be ever so full of noble sentiments, these can never
take the place of thorough and systematic training.
It is my belief that they obtained this through the
severe military discipline of the feudal period.
Hand-to-hand fighting requires a certain skill, of
which the modern soldier only knows by hearsay.
To stand in line and be shot at for a number of
hours will put a man's courage to the proof, even
more perhaps than the life or death concentration of
a few moments' fencing, but it does not develop the
same quickness of eye and steadiness of hand. In
the tournaments of the middle ages, corporeal
strength was of less value than skill in poising the
lance and good horsemanship. The lack of govern
ment protection compelled each individual to rely
more entirely on himself ; and this was as true of
the city burgher as for the knights and retainers of
the nobility. Whatever vocation a man might have,
he was obliged to be accomplished also in the use of
warlike weapons, while the more timid sort took
refuge in the monasteries or the priesthood. Such a
mode of life must have been invigorating, physically
and mentally. The nearest approach to it now is to
be found in the training of our college athletes and
the self-denial of the hospital surgeon. There is
no reason why we should return to it, but it is well
to recognize the peculiar value that it had.
We find the same background of military discipline
behind Greek sculpture. Too little attention has
been paid to the period of Hellenic history between
the first Olympiad and the Persian wars. The fact
that we know so little of it proves that it must have

24 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
been an era of unusual peace and prosperity. There
may have been a good deal of small fighting, but no
very serious wars, except the two Messenian wars,
or else Thucydides would have mentioned them.
We can judge of it fairly by its results. We know
what the Spartan military discipline was, and that
the Athenians were well-prepared for the battle of
Marathon. No doubt Sophocles and ^Eschylus
were better poets for having been good soldiers.
The military training of Italy lasted long after the
decline in religion had commenced. It is only in
this way that one can account for the prodigious
achievements of Raphael, Tintoretto, and Paul of
Verona. Michel Angelo took part in the siege of
Florence, and Cellini, who was a terrible fighter,
pointed the cannon in the defence of the Castle
of St. Angelo against the army of Bourbon and
Orange. However it may have happened, it is, at all events,
certain that, next to the Greeks, the mediaeval
Italians were the most gifted and versatile race that
has yet appeared. Prince Eugene said that a man
should have an Italian head, a German heart, and
French legs. Napoleon, Mirabeau, Montecuculi,
and many other great generals and statesmen of a
later date were of Italian descent. It will be noticed
that the first three discoverers of the western world
were all Italians, not because they were better sailors
than the English or Spanish, but more daring and
enterprising navigators.
It was remarkable how the mediaeval Italians
combined the most diverse and opposite qualities ;

Mediceval Italy. 25

like steel that is tempered both for hardness and
flexibility. They were not more courageous than
crafty, nor more bold than cautious, and while they
gave sufficient proof of their honest intentions they
were also capable of the darkest dissimulation.
Their gaiety of spirit was fully matched by their
keen sense of the tragic element in life ; nor were
they more quick-witted than profoundly contempla
tive. Their fierce outbursts of passion were varied
by instances of heroic self-control. No people were
ever more industrious or capable of more perfect
repose. They were not more tenacious in the
pursuit of their ends than ingenious in the methods
by which they obtained them. The force of Michel
Angelo is not more remarkable than the delicacy of
his feeling, and the stern severity of Dante is re
lieved by the feminine tenderness of his pity. A
people of bold and lively contrasts, but skilfully and
harmoniously blended.
There are more beautiful buildings, treasures of
art, interesting monuments, and fine scenery withal
in Italy than in the other countries of Europe taken
together. The Cornici road surpasses the Rhine-
land, and the Italian lakes are beyond all comparison.
There is nothing like the purple haze of the Medi
terranean, or the tender blue of the Italian sky.

LEONARDO DA VINCI
WHILE sailing through the Gulf Stream, the
door of a ship's cabin came floating by.
Its hinges had rusted off, and it had come
up from the bottom of the sea, perhaps after a hun
dred years. Who could tell where that ship lies, or
what men were on board of her, or what women
mourned for them in distant lands. If the ocean
could be drained what a spectacle the vessels that
have been lost in it would present ; what treasures
would be reclaimed ! Time is like an ocean on which
we float for a while and then disappear in it. What
tragedies, comedies, as well as biographies of un
known heroes have been lost in it ! Whole epochs
of history of which almost nothing remains to us
have been swallowed up by it. The Alexandrian
Library has not been the only intellectual loss that
mankind has suffered.
Among all the Italians, none offer a finer subject
for biography than Leonardo da Vinci ; but such a
book has not yet been written nor is it ever likely to
be. He remains to us almost as much of an enigma
as the strange heads he used to draw. He had no
family, and though he must have made friends in
26

Leonardo da Vtnci. 27
plenty, few of them are known to us. The Tuscans
had a happy faculty of preserving traditions about
their favorite artists ; but Leonardo left Florence at
the beginning of his career. He lived seventeen
years in Milan where his profession was not so much
venerated, and afterwards went to Paris to disap
pear there altogether from our view. His life must
have been rich in varied experiences, and a graphic
account of it would be as highly prized as his own
portrait. Vasari gives some amusing anecdotes of
him, but not a very substantial account.
From the height of Bellosguardo, looking down
the valley of the Arno, the spur of the mountain
can be seen far away, beyond which lies the castle
and hamlet of Vinci, where Leonardo was born.
The notion that illegitimate children are brighter
than others is not substantiated by the facts of
history, for Leonardo appears to have been the only
genius of the first rank who was born outside the
marriage tie. His mother was a servant girl, and
in this case the end would seem to justify the
means, for a more magnificent specimen of human
ity was never known on earth. There is no doubt
that he might have been equally great as an artist,
a poet, or a man of affairs. Never had such versatil
ity been combined with so much strength. He
was a compendium of all graces and forces. The
expression of his face, as we note it in his own por
trait, is rather severe, but of his manly beauty there
can be no question. In physical strength he sur
passed both Tintoret and Michel Angelo ; though
his figure was not so elegant as Tintoret's, for he

28 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
had the shoulders of a Hercules. He could bend
bars of iron with his hand, and yet his touch was so
soft, that no other artist has painted with such fine
ness and delicacy. As a boy, he soon outstripped
his instructors. He read arithmetic and geometry
as if they were stories for children, and whatever
others attempted to teach him he seemed to have
learned in some mysterious manner already ; he soon
became proficient in all the arts from music to archi
tecture as well as in practical engineering and all the
sciences that were known in his time. He was also
an admirable writer.
What is meant by a man's nature, as distinguished
from his character, is always revealed in an artist's
own works. A genre painter will have a nature of
the same kind, but an historical painter requires
breadth of vision and a comprehensive intellect.
He should be as ardent as an orator and as sympa
thetic as a woman. The most difficult thing in art
is to find a man who unites greatness of design with
delicacy of feeling.
At the foundation of Leonardo's nature there was
that profound religious faith which the engravings
of his Last Supper have celebrated all over the world.
We might know it otherwise from his Madonnas,
though they do not perhaps express it to the same
extent. This is indeed the fountain of all virtue,
and where it is also united with a strong will, you
maybe sure of a man who will cut out for himself an
independent path in life. If Leonardo had lived
three centuries earlier, he would have been a crusader
and a celebrated fighter. Of his sincerity and purity

Leonardo da Vinci. 29
of feeling, his own portrait bears witness again ; but
this is only a consequence of what has already been
stated ; for even if the religious devotion of Madame
de Maintenon or of James II. were wholly sincere it
could never have been other than of a superficial
kind. He had nothing of the austerity of Michel
Angelo, but could suit himself in an amiable manner
to persons of every rank without compromising his
own dignity. The story that he died in the arms of
the king of France is not incredible, for Francis was
an old-fashioned sovereign who could recognize in
Leonardo the true brotherhood of royalty.
Yet he was not without some peculiarities. His
dilatory method of working is not to be accounted
for so much from laziness or from being distracted
by a variety of interests, as from a whimsical turn of
mind in which he indulged himself too much, and
which led him into curious experiments from which
small good was derived. It is strange that he could
not have realized that the time he spent on music
and engineering, though far from being wasted,
would have been employed to better advantage on
works of art, which would last for centuries, instead
of for a day or a few years. The tedious manner
in which he elaborated his paintings has always
been a cause of wonder ; and so has his compara
tively early death at sixty-seven ; for with such a
constitution he ought to have lived to be a hun
dred and twenty.
It is a proof of the respect in which the arts were
held in Italy at that time, that Leonardo's father

30 The Midsummer of Italian Art.

should have educated him as a painter ; for a boy of
such ability would hardly be permitted to adopt that
profession at the present day if he had a father to
look after his interests. Ser Piero da Vinci placed
his son in charge of an artist with a most appropriate
name, Andrea del Verrocchio, or Andrew of the
True Eye, who was both painter and sculptor and
worker in terra-cotta; the last being an art which
requires a great deal of skill for a comparatively
small result. Here the same course of events fol
lowed as before, and Verrocchio soon found that
Leonardo learned faster than he was able to teach
him. The history of Italian art is full of poetic
legends, and Vasari says that Verrocchio was so
much disgusted at the superiority of an angel which
Leonardo painted in his Baptism of Christ, that he
relinquished painting altogether and confined him
self thereafter to sculpture and terra-cotta. A por
tion of this tale must be true, for Verrocchio's
Baptism of Christ is still to be seen in the Academy
at Florence, with the angel of young Da Vinci in it,
easily recognizable by the superior grace and strength
of its drawing, and sweetness of expression. No
quarrelling ensued, however, between master and
pupil, and the alliance between the two ultimately
bore more valuable fruit.
This happened about 1470, and in or about 1484
Verrocchio was invited to Venice to model the
equestrian statue of their deceased commander,
General Coleoni. This is the only one of Verroc
chio's works which has made him famous, though it
has not the noble simplicity of the statue of Marcus

Leonardo da Vinci. x\

Aurelius. Verrocchio has, however, conquered diffi
culties in the treatment of its details, which the un
known Greek sculptor of Aurelius never thought of.
The horse of Coleoni is represented as pacing, and
the general himself is rising in his stirrups. This
and the Cromwellian sternness of his face give an
expression of motion and force such as were never
united by Michel Angelo but once. It has the
highest distinction of style and character.
How did it happen that Verrocchio, whom Leo
nardo could excel in painting at the age of forty,
could create such a masterpiece at fifty-two ? The
conclusion is irresistible, that master and pupil had
changed places ; Leonardo had become the instruc
tor, and Andrea the learner.
There are other evidences of this. The treatment
of the horse's mane and tail, and of the horns of the
saddle, partakes of a peculiar ingenuity which is not
quite natural, and yet we cannot help liking it. The
same may be noticed in many of Leonardo's draw
ings, especially in the sketch of the old warrior with
the winged helmet. There never was such a tail as
this of Coleoni's horse. It has been arranged with
as much care as a lady's coiffeur; one whisk would
spoil the whole of it. Besides this, there is a stiff
ness observable in Leonardo's figures, as if the per
sons he represented had a good deal of backbone.
This is conspicuous in the statue of Coleoni, and
more appropriate there than in some of his Madon
nas. A professor in the school of design at Venice
warned an American lady who was learning to model
there not to look too much at the statue of Coleoni

32 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
for fear her own work would become affected by its
rigidity. Before Verrocchio had finished the statue,
for he was five or six years at work on it, Leonardo
went to Milan. It is more than probable that he
visited Venice during that time, and gave Andrea
the benefit of his judgment. It is possible, also,
that Andrea went to Milan to visit Leonardo. The
statue shows Leonardo's influence as plainly as the
Roman Raphael was influenced by Michel Angelo.
It has his force, his ingenuity, and his intense vital
ity. It seems as if the bronze general was going to
ride through the wall opposite, and that you could
hear the clanking of his armor. It is a wonderful
statue. There was a chord of mystery vibrating through
Leonardo's life from beginning to end. None of the
contemporary writers mention meeting him, or are
able to account for his mode of living. He came
and went in a mysterious manner. Vasari speaks of
his travelling with a retinue of servants. If this be
true, how did he obtain the funds for such extrava
gance ? It could not have been from the sale of
paintings; or if he obtained it so, the mystery is
what has become of them ? Of pictures that he
finished before his thirtieth year, less than half a
dozen are known to exist.
The earliest painting attributed to Leonardo ex
tant is a Madonna in the little old church of Sant'
Onofrio in Rome ; but its authenticity has lately been
disputed by Woltmann and others, and with excel
lent reason ; for we do not find any trace in it of
Leonardo's characteristic style, nor of the power and

HEAD OF MEDUSA, by LEONARDO DA VINCI
Jn Uffizzi Gallery, Florence

Leonardo da Vinci. 33
majesty of his later works. It shows, however, the
correct use of observation and a truthfulness to
nature, with a freedom from self-restraint, such as is
difficult to account for at the time this painting was
produced ; for it is evidently a work of the fifteenth
century. The donor is a half-length figure of a
square-built, elderly man, drawn in profile, and
holding his cap before him with both hands, as if he
were slightly embarrassed. The faces are evidently
portraits, though that of the Madonna may be
slightly idealized. Her hair is in the fashion of
thirty years ago ; two wrinkled plaits coming down
over her temples and in front of the ears. The
infant Jesus is full of life and energy, and it be
stowing a blessing on his visitor in the papal fashion.
His attitude is original and interesting, and the folds
of the Virgin's gown on which he rests are remark
able for their breadth and pliant softness. The
portrait of the worthy burgher describes the man
to us without a touch of flattery.
The unfinished painting of an Adoration of the
Magi in the Uffizi is more likely to be genuine,
though if so it must have been a very early work
(perhaps 1475), and suffers from overwrought action
as well as other faults. There is, however, an at
tractive Leonardesque manner in the pose of the
Madonna, and a daring freedom of attitude in the
drawing of the Three Kings. In the background
there is a weird landscape, including old Roman
ruins and figures in strange attitudes. We do not
discover in it the promise of his later development.
A genius of the first rank is almost inevitably a

34 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
reformer. Any man who is earnestly desirous of
seeing things done in the right way will become a
reformer in his own circle ; for there is always plenty
of correction and improvement to be made. It is
said that Leonardo anticipated Bacon in his state
ment of the inductive method of reasoning, though
he did not carry it to completeness. It is enough
that he understood it, and with its help he produced
a revolution in art like that which the inductive
method finally effected in science. The times were
favorable for this, but it required the right man to
point out the way. Otherwise Italian painting
might have degenerated into a servile imitation of
the Greek.
Leonardo did not go to the Greek but to Nature,
who, if applied to in the right spirit, gives both
wisdom and strength. Of all Italian artists of that
time he was the least affected by Hellenic art. It
required a man who could bend iron bars to turn
the course of Italian painting from that which it had
followed for two centuries. It was like changing
the bed of a river. Leonardo had a nature of such
unswerving veracity, that he could not paint until
he felt sure of the ground he stood on. He deter
mined to commence at the very beginning, and lay
a foundation of his own. He studied anatomy ;
made a thorough investigation of light and shade ;
and discovered aerial perspective. This must have
occupied a large portion of his time, which was
saved for Raphael, Titian, and all others since then.
It had lately been discovered that the earth was
round. Neither should we represent men as flat,

Leonardo da Vinci. 35

any longer, thought Leonardo. So he wrote down :
" The true artist is he who can give to an object
roundness and fulness."
His treatise on painting bears some resemblance
to Bacon's Novum Organum, especially in its general
structure. It is clearly and forcibly written, and so
concise that the first two pages will give a beginner
occupation sufficient for a year. On the second
page he says : " By equality is meant that you do
not blend the robust and firm muscles of man with
feminine softness." How many pupils in our draw
ing-schools, of one or two years' standing, would be
able to make this distinction ; or to indicate the dif
ference between various kinds of cloth ?
The book is a compendium of original observations.
It is remarkable not only how much he saw, but how
much he remembered. " Consider," he says, " at
tentively the measure of joints, in which Nature is
apt to vary a great deal, and imitate her example by
doing the same." He introduced the new element
into drawing, — namely, action. Previously Italian
painting, for the most part, like Greek sculpture, had
concerned itself with persons either in repose or in a
condition closely allied to it. If any form of activ
ity was introduced, as in the Stoning of Stephen,
they were drawn in an awkward and constrained
manner. Leonardo made a series of studies of the
human body, in almost every variety of action, with
explanations proving how the movement of one
member would affect the position of all the others.
He thus formed a set of rules by which artists could
instruct themselves, to see more correctly when

36 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
drawing from living models, and how to avoid mis
takes in drawing without them. The original charts
with which he illustrated each theorem are a small
treasury of art in themselves. To exemplify the
complex equipoise of bodies, he made a drawing of
Hercules lifting Anteus into the air, who is expiring
with a most unhappy expression. They are in the
Ambrosian Library at Milan, with twelve volumes
more of writings and studies. So in this direction,
at least, Leonardo was not lacking in application.
He proves his breadth of mind by admonishing
artists not to despise the opinions of those who,
though not being painters" themselves, are inter
ested in the fine arts (such as are now called critics).
" For," he says, " we know that, although a man be
not a painter, he may have just notions of the forms
of men — whether a man has a hump on his back, a
thick leg, or a large hand ; whether he be lame, or
have any other defect. Now, if we know that men
are able to judge of the works of Nature, should we
not think them more able to detect our errors? "
Some of his concluding remarks are very amusing.
He says that women are to be represented in modest
and reserved attitude, " their arms drawing near each
other, or folded about the body " ; but " children are
to be represented with quick and contorted motions,
when they are sitting ; but when standing, with fear
ful and timid motions." Such precepts are better
suited to religious pictures than they would be to
our illustrated periodicals. The following repre
sents a side of Leonardo's character which we shall
have occasion to notice again :

Leonardo da Vinci. %J

" If you wish, therefore, to make a chimera, or imagi
nary animal, appear natural (let us suppose a serpent),
take the head of a mastiff, the eyes of a cat, the ears of
a porcupine, the mouth of a hare, the brows of a lion,
the temples of an old cock, and the neck of a sea-tor
toise." I knew a landscape painter who did not believe in
making sketches except when the spirit inclined him
to do so, which was usually at ten in the morning,
or at four in the afternoon. Leonardo had a dif
ferent theory :
" When you are well instructed in perspective, and know
perfectly how to draw the anatomy and forms of differ
ent bodies or objects, it should be your delight to ob
serve and consider in your walks the different actions of
men ; when they are talking or quarrelling ; when they
laugh, and when they fight. Attend to their positions,
and to those of the spectators ; whether they are attempt
ing to separate those who fight, or merely lookers-on.
Be quick in sketching these with slight strokes in your
pocket-book, which should always be about you, and
made of stained paper, as you ought not to rub out.
. . . For that reason take care never to be without a
little book, for the purpose of sketching those various
motions, and also groups of people standing by. This
will teach you how to compose history."
He considers it a favorable sign in a young painter,
that his judgment should be better than his work,
for then he will be more likely to improve through
continual self-criticism ; and concludes with an ex
hortation to study nature continually:

38 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
" Whoever flatters himself that he can retain in his
memory all the effects of Nature is deceived, for our
memory is not so capacious : therefore consult Nature
for everything."
The only two of Leonardo's pictures which have
preserved their original coloring, are the Head of
Medusa, in the Uffizi at Florence, and his own
portrait, in the room devoted to the portraits of
artists. It is a pleasant natural coloring, inclining to
yellow rather than to red, and very deep and rich
in the shadows.
The authenticity of the Head of Medusa has been
doubted, but on what ground I do not know. It is
a question like the authenticity of Shakespeare,
for if Leonardo did not paint it, who could have?
Titian's, Veronese's, Raphael's Madonnas, all must
yield to it in technical perfection. The story cf his
youthful trick of the rotella, on which he painted a
composite monster more terrific than this, proves
his inclination for such subjects. Vasari attributes
it to him, but adds that he left it unfinished. This
may refer to the background, which it is somewhat
difficult to make out, and perhaps to Leonardo's
extravagant idea of perfection. As to the head
itself, it could not be more perfectly finished if
nature had made it.
It is certainly a fearful subject ; the severed head
with livid face, and the snarled wreath of snakes for
hair. It must have required strong nerves to work
on such a subject day after day. Few men could
do it. If the sight of such a monster were possible,
we should not look at it twice whether we were

Leonardo da Vinci. 39

turned to stone by it or not ; but art, like distance,
lends enchantment, and such art as Leonardo's
makes even a Medusa attractive. The face seems
familiar to us. We fancy that like Heine's devil,
we have met her somewhere in society : at Mount
Desert, perhaps, or other fashionable resort. That
she did not quite freeze our blood was owing to the
fine summer weather. The picture holds its own
against all others in the room.
Leonardo's portrait looks like a man of forty,
though he was probably younger when it was
painted. His long yellow hair and full beard give
him an appearance of age beyond his years. His
hair is very light for an Italian, and this with his
powerful physique suggests that he may have been
descended from the Goths or Lombards. What na
tionality his mother belonged to is not known. His
artist's cap is graceful and becoming, but we wish
he would take it off and permit us to see the shape
of his head. His features are all strong and finely
cut. He has not the scrutinizing look of Titian, or
the tender sensibility of Tintoretto, nor Cellini's
fearless independence ; but is calm, dignified, ma
jestic. He looks like a king among the painters
about him.
As a portrait it has not the atmosphere of some
of Titian's, but for all that it surpasses them in
vitality, as it does all other paintings except the
Mona Lisa. The subject, too, is of importance ; for
what ideal is superior to one of the greatest of men.
The microscopic fineness with which it is painted
would seem like a waste of time, but perhaps it was

40 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
only in this manner that he could give such vitality.
It was not till twenty years later that Titian and
Raphael discovered the advantage of a more vigor
ous handling on the accessories of a picture. The
eyes of this portrait are like intelligent diamonds.
Only an eye such as Leonardo's could have painted
them. With Michel Angelo's Fates and Raphael's
Madonna of the Goldfinch, it constitutes an invalu
able trio.
Leonardo spent the best portion of his life at the
Milan court, — from thirty to forty-five. That his
time there was not better expended was owing
largely to the character of the Duke. Ludovico was
more amiable and indulgent than Julius II., but not
nearly so intelligent. He preferred his brother's
glory to his own, but he knew not how to make
good use of the treasure which fortune had placed
in his way. How did it happen that he permitted
Leonardo to paint his Last Supper on the refectory
wall of a monastery, when it might have hung on
canvas in his own dining-hall, and have remained in
a well preserved condition till the present day? He
appreciated Leonardo's music, his poetry, and his
fine conversation. Leonardo was a rare ornament
at his court, a privileged guest, whom everybody
honored and delighted in ; but what he gained in
temporary pleasure he lost in posthumous fame.
If Michel Angelo was eighteen months at work
on the heroic statue of Julius II. , four years would
not be too much to allow Leonardo for the statue
of Francesco Sforza. There can be little doubt

PORTRAIT OF LEONARDO DA VINCI (by himself)
Uffizzi Gallery, Florence

Leonardo da Vinci. 41

that it was the finest equestrian statue, at least, of
modern times. Francesco was a great soldier, who
fought his way to a throne in an equally courageous
and irresponsible manner. Next to Carmagnola he
was the greatest of the Italian condottieri, and a
much better subject for art than Coleoni, whom he
defeated and captured ; but only to release him on
the following day, upon learning that his father-
in-law, the Duke Visconti, was dead, and that the
popular party had seized the government. This
gave Francesco a fair title to the dukedom, which
Coleoni assisted him in reclaiming; and peace was
established between Venice and Lombardy. The
parallel between the relations of these two captains
and the artists who modelled their statues is sur
prising enough. When the French captured Milan
in 1498 they made a target of the statue of Sforza:
a piece of wanton vandalism unequalled since the
fall of Rome.* THE LAST SUPPER.
The Last Supper was painted in the priory of
Santa Maria della Grazie, which is itself of import
ance in the history of architecture. A few steps
from the street brings us within those precincts, twice
sanctified by religion and art. There is little enough
left of it. The faces are mostly blank, and only the
outlines and attitudes tell us of its former magnifi-
* Vasari thinks that the statue was never cast in bronze, and that
it was the model that the French soldiers destroyed : but how could
it happen that the model was left in the open air, or any place where
it might serve as a target ? The matter rests in obscurity.

42 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
cence. The greatness of its design is still apparent.
The shape of those heads is much in itself, and the
tenderly inclining figure of Christ is more affecting
than words. It is a ruin as noble as the Parthenon,
as pathetic as Melrose Abbey. Beyond this the
original painting cannot help us. We are obliged to
resort to Leonardo's sketches and to Raphael
Morghen's engraving.
Vasari writes of Leonardo with enthusiasm, but
evidently was not well informed with regard to the
Last Supper. His story of the prior who complained
to Ludovico that the work remained too long unfin
ished, is not likely to have been an invention, but
his statement that Leonardo never painted the head
of Christ in the picture is a long way from the mark.
That he was reluctant to represent the divine person
in human form is significant and credible, from the
fact that in his earliest rude sketch of the subject he
has represented Christ with his head bowed sorrow
fully over the table, while St. John, next to him,
seems wholly unnerved at the revelation, and the
other apostles express their surprise and indignation
in a variety of ways. Judas, also, is left out of this
design apparently, for there are only twelve persons
seated at the table, and the second space on the
right of John is vacant. This tends to corroborate
the anecdote of the Prior and Duke Ludovico, as
well as the reasons alleged by Leonardo for not com
pleting his work. The two apostles at the extreme
right in this preliminary study are more carefully
finished than the others, and both very fine. One is
an elderly man with intellectual forehead and wavy

Leonardo da Vinci. 43

patriarchal hair, like a Protestant clergyman of su
perior quality ; the other is a spiritual-minded youth
such as Raphael was fond of drawing, but of a more
vigorous type than Raphael's.
Leonardo seems to have felt the same aversion
that Protestants do now to the representation of in
carnated deity. He might portray Christ as a boy,
or even as a religious teacher, but not in the hour of
divine martyrdom. How far apart this places him
from Michel Angelo, who painted Jehovah again
and again. Leonardo is reported to have informed
the Duke that he could not hope to find on earth a
model that would answer for the Saviour of man
kind, nor yet had he attained the power of present
ing it to himself in imagination, with all that perfec
tion of beauty and celestial grace which appeared
to him to be demanded for the due representation
of the Divinity incarnate. We do not look at a head
of Christ by Diirer or Perugino with the same feel
ing that we regard one painted in our own time.
People do not like such subjects any longer. Hol-
man Hunt's fine picture, The Shadow of the Cross,
in which Jesus is represented at a carpenter's bench,
created no interest in London except as an illustra
tion of technical skill, — that is, simply as a work of
art. The final excellence of mediaeval painting is
that the technical skill was always subordinated in it
to the expression of an idea. That is the reason why
it goes to our hearts.
Leonardo's study of Christ which Braun has made
familiar to us, is similar to, but not the same as the
one he finally adopted in the Last Supper, and it is a

44 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
lofty conception of a man who has been worn to a
shadow with commiseration for the sins and suffer
ings of mankind. It is too fragile and feminine a
type for the manly heads that would have sur
rounded it. It represents the Christ who said, " If
a man smite thee on one cheek, turn to him the
other also " ; not the Christ of the tribute money,
nor of the sermon on the mount. We require to
have all three comprehended in the ideal Saviour.
The Christ in Morghen's engraving is handsomer
and something more majestic, yet without express
ing dissatisfaction there would seem to be more
humility in him than would be required for one sent
with authority and on a divine mission.
In the Albertina collection at Vienna, there is a
small head of Christ by Leonardo, most delicately
and gracefully drawn, which may have been one of
his experiments for the Last Supper. Its features
are more classic and its expression less pathetic than
in the drawing of the Brera gallery, but it would not
seem to be the design that he finally adopted. In
this sketch the hair is exquisitely arranged in points
so as to give the suggestion of a crown of thorns.
In its original condition it must have been the
greatest picture ever painted. The Sistine Madonna
may be compared with it, or Tintoretto's Crucifixion ;
and the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, as a whole, is
supposed to be without a rival ; but I think we
could have better spared Michel Angelo's Last
Judgment than Leonardo's Last Supper. In what
painting, or convocation of living persons, could you
find such an assemblage of noble heads ? Notice

HEAD OF CHRIST, by LEONARDO DA VINCI
(taken from "the last supper")
Milan

Leonardo da Vinci. 45

also the classic simplicity of its details ; the oblong,
cross-legged table with its cloth tied into knots at
the corners ; a custom which still prevails in Italy.
Vasari refers to the skilful manner in which the
texture of the cloth was represented, as if it were a
proverbial saying. From the texture of the table
cloth to the sublimated beauty of Christ there was
only perfection on perfection. Its dramatic action
is without a fault, and altogether we feel that here
the best qualities of Raphael and of all great artists
have been united.
It is the fourth act of a tragedy. Christ and his
disciples have met to eat together for the last time.
He is aware of this, and though they are ignorant
of it their minds are already full of apprehension.
They have become endeared to one another by
mutual sympathy of the highest kind, by co-opera
tion and spiritual association, but they have never
felt this so much as now when danger is imminent.
Christ makes the fatal disclosure, and in a moment
all is excitement. Though he feels apprehensive of
his own fate, this is overmatched by his grief at the
perfidy of Judas. It is a feeling not easily to be
described, — that painful sinking in the breast,
when we realize that our confidence has been fatally
misplaced. Leonardo knew it, and how to represent
it. St. John is the only one of the disciples whose
face repeats the expression of Christ. With him,
however, it is chiefly solicitude for the fate of his
master. The similarity and the difference between
the two are remarkable, and it is no wonder that
Leonardo found difficulty with this portion of his

46 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
painting. Peter is a splendid contrast to John.
True man of action, and in appearance not unlike
Leonardo himself, he has risen to his feet with the
idea of taking energetic measures. The traitor is
to be expelled at once. It does not occur to either
John or Peter that any one will accuse them of
perfidy ; but the other apostles are not so self-forget
ful. They are full of indignation, but they also
wish to prove their own innocence. Judas, whose
guilt is indicated by the darkness of his face, sits
shut up within himself. In no other painting is
such grandeur of design united with intellectual
power and spiritual loveliness. The head of the
Apollo Belvedere has been called superhuman.
What then shall we say of a head like Leonardo's
St. Peter.
The popularity of a picture has a deeper signifi
cance than that of a book. We may be entertained
by a mediocre novel, but we do not return to it
again and again, as we do to Shakspeare and
Thackeray. When we hang a picture on our walls
we want one that we shall never become tired of.
It is for this reason that Leonardo's Last Supper,
Correggio's Magdalen, the Sistine Madonna, and
Madonna della Sedia have become the household
gods of modern civilization. MONA LISA.
Where could M. Taine, the literary critic, have
acquired the notion that the Mona Lisa was the
portrait at once of a nun and a courtesan? Truly,

Leonardo da Vinci. 47
it was a French imagination, like that of the special
correspondents to our newspapers, particularly in
time of war. She was an honest Florentine lady
named Lisa Giacondo, and her husband was Leo
nardo's most devoted friend. It was only for friend
ship that he would have undertaken to paint her, for
he could have obtained orders without number if he
had been willing to work for money. Even Louis
XII. could not obtain a portrait from him. Tinto
retto painted an excellent portrait of a King of
France in three days, but Leonardo was four years
working on the Mona Lisa ; off and on, according to
his fashion. This seems to have been an idiosyn
crasy of the man's nature for which there was no
remedy. We may suppose that he spent so much
time on it in order to give it vitality.
Faded as it now is to a dull olive brown, this por
trait is more lifelike than any other painting in the
Louvre, or perhaps anywhere else. The other paint
ings in the great hall are like pictures compared to
it, and the people who look at it become vitalized by
its presence. Opposite to it is Paul of Verona's great
est work, but there is not the life in it that there is
in Mona Lisa. What must it have been when the
coloring was in good condition. Vasari writes with
enthusiasm of the freshness and transparency of her
complexion, and the exquisite manner in which the
hair and even the eyelashes were painted. To judge
from this in color and chiaroscuro it may have been
not unlike a Correggio. However, it has long since
ceased to be considered a portrait, and has become
an ideal. She is the smiling woman of the Louvre ;

48 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
but what is the meaning of her smile ? That, no one
has fathomed yet. Is she smiling over a secret which
is never to be revealed ? Whether it be so or not,
the kernel of the composition is involved in a mys
tery. We have observed before that there was a mysteri
ous side to Leonardo's character, and here we find it
expressed without reservation in his work. So much
the greater the man and his painting. It is from
this sense of mystery that the purest religious feel
ing is evolved. The religions of all races have origi
nated in mystery, and no philosophy is of much
value that is not founded on it.
The Brahmans believe, or formerly did, that the
earth rests on a tortoise ; but what does the tortoise
rest on ? That they do not dare to contemplate.
All the discoveries of science have not solved the
enigma that is conveyed in this legend. The earth
it is true is held in position by gravity ; but how did
gravity originate ? Beyond the solar system are the
stars ; but what is beyond the stars ? Space can
have no limit. All the greatest minds have shared
largely in this element. Homer was no less a mys
tery than Shakspeare. Goethe's writings are full
of it. Napoleon never explained himself, and was
an enigma to his nearest friends. Aristotle expressed
it when he said that the ultimate reality was self-ac
tivity. I think Leonardo owned a larger share of
mystery than Michel Angelo. It gives an excep
tional charm to his work and makes his drawings
perpetually interesting.

"MONA LISA," by LEONARDO DA VINCI
{In Salon Carre) Louvre Gallery, Paris

Leonardo da Vinci. 49
LA VIERGE AU BAS-RELIEF.
The painting in the Louvre by this title, and the
duplicate in the possession of the Earl of Warwick,
are clearly the work of Luini, for they have his scale
of coloring — and very beautiful it is but wholly dif
ferent from Leonardo's, either in his own portrait
or in the faded condition of the Mona Lisa — and it is
only necessary to compare their painting with those
of the genuine Leonardos to recognize them as the
product of an inferior though eminent artist. A cer
tain magnificence of design which underlies the paint
ing suggests to us, however, that Leonardo probably
made a cartoon from which they were both derived,
— as in the case of the Madonna with St. Anna.
The beautiful hands of the Madonna, the exquisite
drawing of her sleeves, and the lines of the mantle
over her head, so much like the Mona Lisa, are also
substantial indications. The long nose and pointed
chin of Leonardo's women were largely imitated by
Luini, but the ease and elegance of his drapery could
not be imitated. The head of Joseph is particularly
Leonardesque ; a lean, long cranium with features
to match ; wrinkled, experienced, and intelligent.
Even more so is his right hand with its awkwardly
contorted fingers. There is no other Holy Family
in which the Christ-child shows such an affection for
the infant John. He holds him by the chin with
one hand, while the delighted young saint seeks to
clasp him about the neck. The attitudes of both
are full of grace and animation ; but the Christ-child
shows his superiority by a quieter, more dignified
manner; while the Madonna looks down on them

50 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
with a pleased motherly expression. It is in her
face that we chiefly feel the difference between the
design of Leonardo and the finish of Luini. The
pose of her head is slightly formal and preraphaelite.
There are a number of other paintings by Luini
which bear evidence of Leonardo's assistance, espe
cially La Vierge aux Rocher, of which there are
several replicas, but all in a less measure and to a
degree rather difficult to determine. Luini was one
of the most charming colorists of his time, but his
drawing lacks the animation of his master, and his
paintings make the impression of tone and tempera
ment rather than of intellectual vigor.
In the Ambrosian gallery at Milan there is the
portrait of a man with light hair covered by a red
cap and dressed in black, which may safely be at
tributed to Leonardo's own hand. From his dress
we presume him to have been an artist. It is a
masterpiece of fine expression, delicate modelling,
and microscopic finish. Leonardo painted his shad
ows one over the other, fusing them together as he
did so ; a method which requires much more pains
than the commoner system of using an opaque
dead color, which can be modified but will not fuse
with other tints.
La Belle Ferronie're in the Louvre is supposed to
be the portrait of a favorite of Ludovico Sforza,
named Lucrezia Crivelli and mentioned by Vasari.
Whether she was so or not, it is an undoubted por
trait by Leonardo and highly interesting, though
without that peculiar charm which has transferred
the Mona Lisa into the region of ideal art.

Leonardo da Vinci. 5 1
THE MADONNA AND ST. ANNA.
The devotion of the Florentines to art was like
patriotism. They felt that the advancement of
painting and sculpture was part of the fortune of
their city. When Leonardo returned to Florence in
or about the year 1500, he found Filippino Lippi
had been commissioned to paint a Holy Family for
the Church of the Annunciation. He expressed a
desire to do some such work himself ; and when Fil
ippino heard of this, he immediately withdrew in
Leonardo's favor, and obtained as much commenda
tion by doing so as he might have for his finished
picture. All Florence urged Leonardo to undertake
it, and waited with great expectation for nearly a
year, when he indeed produced a cartoon that filled
the measure of their admiration. More than this
they could not persuade him to do ; and the picture
which hangs in the Louvre was afterward completed
by his pupils, and whether he painted any portion of
it would be difficult to determine. The coloring is
hard, and the drawing somewhat rigid so that it
looks rather like the copy of a bronze statue than a
study from real life. Its technical inferiority to the
Mona Lisa is very decided.
Two studies in red chalk of the heads of St. Anna
and the Holy Virgin still indicate what this cartoon
must have been. Grandeur in Italian painting dates
from the Last Supper at Milan, but comparatively
few Florentine citizens had seen that. In Florence,
therefore, it was this group which created the revo
lution in painting. Here again Leonardo broke
through all conventional restraint. He was led to

52 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
introduce a genre incident in his historical subject,
and thereby improved its poetic quality. It was
like the introduction of reason by Abelard in the
University of Paris. The subject becomes more
sacred by being made more natural. He represented
the infant Jesus playing with a lamb, while his
mother bends over him, smiling with infinite tender
ness. The dignified grandmother rises behind her,
sharing gravely in her daughter's joy. The Madonna
is seated crosswise, and the freedom of attitude
(which does not remind you of Michel Angelo)
gives additional strength to the composition.
There is a lack of simplicity, an overwrought ap
pearance in the finished painting, which the two red
studies of the heads of St. Anna and the Madonna
do not suffer from. These may indeed be called
perfect, if perfection be possible. St. Anna would
seem to have been taken from the same model as the
Madonna in the Church of St. Onofrio thirty years
earlier, though her features are more regular. She
is the ideal grandmother: prudent, circumspect,
kindly, and contented, though all the joys of life are
passed for her. How much grace there is, mingled
with the dignified pose of her head. Her large
drooping eyelids are the mask of a rare intelligence.
The drawing of the Madonna is not only more
beautiful than the finished picture, but it makes her
appear nearly ten years younger. Her features too
are more refined. She is smiling, as only a young
mother can smile ; and her eyes have that appear
ance of fulness which is caused by strong affection.
Her head-dress is inimitable, and her face is thrown

Leonardo da Vinci. 53

into relief by the shadow of her veil which floats off
with exquisite grace. She is the very expression of
maternal love ; but it is love without weakness. Her
lips meet as lightly as rose petals ; but their draw
ing indicates character, and all her features suggest
firmness. THE BATTLE OF THE STANDARD.
In regard to the competition between Leonardo
and Michel Angelo there are several points to be
considered. Michel Angelo was thirty years old at
the time but had not yet proved his superiority as a
painter. Leonardo was more than fifty and had
lately finished a painting at Milan over which all Italy
was in a glow of admiration. He was also an excel
lent colorist, while Michel Angelo's coloring was
never highly esteemed. Then the subject he selected
was more dignified, and more likely to arouse popu
lar enthusiasm. It is doubtful, however, even at
this time if Leonardo was considered Michel Angelo's
superior, and Soderini and his council clearly made
a mistake in deciding against the latter ; for if they
had given the work to Michel Angelo they would
have obtained their painting for the city hall;
whereas Leonardo, according to his usual custom,
experimented on the surface of the wall with some
kind of a liquid which caused the paint to sink into
the plaster, and after finishing a portion of it he
became dissatisfied with his work and abandoned it
altogether. In consequence of this failure he never
succeeded in obtaining another important commis
sion in Italy.

54 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
The cartoon by itself was of inestimable value:
but there came a realistic age in Italy, like the pres
ent one in America, when ideal work was no longer
appreciated. Its disappearance I believe has never
been accounted for; but it was still in existence
when Rubens came on his pious pilgrimage to the
Sistine Chapel a hundred years later. Rubens'
sketch is the most spirited reproduction we now
have of it, and therefore perhaps the best ; though
the drawing in the Dresden collection attributed to
Raphael probably comes nearer to the literal truth.
Rubens' florid personality appears in his work ; even
where with profound respect he copied the drawing
of Michel Angelo, — thus producing a highly flavored
and not very pleasant mixture of the two styles. In
his study of the battle scene we do not notice the
style of Leonardo so much as the vigor of his design.
War is the acme of human concentration ; and
Leonardo has alone succeeded in giving the effect of
this. Four horsemen have rushed together and are
struggling in a confused group of arms and legs and
bodies. One of them has seized the standard with
both hands, while another is struggling desperately
to tear the staff away from him. Two more have
lifted their scimetars for a decisive blow. Between
the legs of the horses a soldier is lying apparently
wounded, and another is stretched across his body
threatening his life with upraised arm, quite uncon
scious of his own peril ; while a third, leaning on his
elbow, lifts a heavy shield to protect himself from
the impending hoofs. The faces of the combatants
are distorted with such rage as excludes all sense of

Leonardo da Vinci. 55

fear or humanity. The horses also partake of the
fury of their riders. Two of them have locked their
forelegs together, and are tearing at each other with
their teeth ; but the expression of their eyes is the
one bright glimpse of intelligence in the whole scene.
Leonardo's liking for grotesque forms appears on
the armor of the standard-bearer, whose helmet is
wrought into the likeness of a huge corrugated conch-
shell, with similar ornaments for his shoulders, and
the skull and horns of a ram to decorate his breast
plate. His face is in keeping with the rest. The ac
tion of the horses is most vigorous, and nowhere
overdrawn. The picture is as perfect as the Venus
of Milo or Titian's Death of Peter Martyr.
ST. JOHN THE EVANGELIST.
We now come to the last of Leonardo's paintings,
and in some respects the most characteristic of them.
In the room adjoining the great hall of the Louvre,
to which all the choicest small pictures are consigned,
his John the Evangelist reigns supreme among Titians
and Raphaels. Of all his designs it is the most mys
terious, and unites with this the caprice which we
have noticed in his own character. It is also his
finest study in light and shade. The figure is nude,
but mostly in such deep shadow that only the face,
right shoulder, and arm are distinctly visible. These
are illuminated as if by a spiritual radiance. We
may suppose that the coloring originally was what
the Mona Lisa is described to have been, but, faded
as it now is, we can yet say fairly that no other

56 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
painting gives the texture of flesh as this does. Its
tenderness is exceptional.
The features of the Evangelist, though large and
impressive, are so delicately moulded that his face
might easily be mistaken at first sight for that of a
woman. He is smiling in a religious rhapsody ; but
there is also something weird and elfin-like in his ex
pression. We take him to be a person from another
world ; yet there is no mistaking the heavenly indi
cation of his forefinger. It is an expression of im
mortality, — as if to say, " Only there above does life
begin." If all other paintings by Leonardo were
destroyed and this hand only remained, we should
know still that he was an artist without superior.
The most beautiful feet are to be found on Tinto
retto's Ariadne, but even the Mona Lisa has not
such a hand as this. After you have compared it
with the hands in La Belle Jardiniere, or those of
Correggio's Antiope, or those in Paul's Wedding
Feast at Cana, or with any others in the whole gal
lery, you will begin to appreciate the art of Leo
nardo. The eyes are not less remarkable. You can
look into them as you would look into clear water,
and at the same time they seem to be looking into
yours. Their expression is ingenuous and yet in
scrutable. In one of the last paragraphs in his treatise on
painting, Leonardo says of the young painter who is
severely critical of himself : " He will produce few
works, but they will be such as to fix the admiration
of every beholder." This is not generally true, but
it is certainly true of the master himself.

Leonardo da Vinci. 5^

It is pleasant to have one's opinion confirmed
across the gulf of time by a good authority. I have
always believed that Leonardo's drawings were the
finest ever made, and I find that Vasari says the
same of them. What Michel Angelo desired to ex
press by outline, Leonardo affected by skilful shad
ing ; and he is now considered the true artist who is
best able to do this. In St. John the Evangelist there
are no outlines at all, yet the sense of form that it
gives is complete in itself. Leonardo thus became
the precursor of Correggio, Murillo, and Rembrandt.
Neither was he wanting in correctness of delineation.
He is more true to life than Raphael, and drew with
a finer grace. We have the testimony of his con
temporaries that his cartoon of the Battle of the
Standard could not be excelled for vigorous and
truthful outlines. Some of his studies, like his sketch
for the Last Supper, were hastily and roughly made ;
but the greater number of them were finished with
extreme care and delicacy. The two heads of St.
Anna and the Virgin, already described, are among
the finest of them.
Of Mona Lisa Giacondo he made drawings from
various points of view, as if to discover what was the
best position in which to paint her portrait. There
is a profile study of her, exquisitely finished, in the
passage-way which leads from the Pitti Palace to the
Uffizi, and few people pass through there without
taking notice of it. It has a calm, sphinx-like repose
that is very impressive.
There is a small study of a youthful head about
two inches square, with luxuriant hair, and a face

58 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
handsomer and more intelligent than any Apollo.
Another with a wreath of leaves about the brow,
less carefully finished, would seem to have been sug
gested by the Apollo Belvedere.
He drew the head of a warrior, a homely, hardened,
stoical, and storm-beaten face, like one of Wallen-
stein's troopers, wearing a helmet of ingenious con
formation ornamented with griffins' wings ; which
carries out the idea of truculency expressed in his
visage. This was probably one of his studies for
the Battle of the Standard.
He also drew gentle, pious, and amiable faces:
one of a lady with drooping curls, and an air of
comfortable resignation ; and another with head in
clined, and almost too modest to raise her gentle
eyelids, but with such beautiful hair, wavy, rippling,
twining about her ears, and falling upon her neck
in playful luxuriance.
The noblest of them is the head of a woman,
whose face is nearly in profile. It is not a beautiful
face though her features are regular ; but something
better. It is a face which shows firmness and solidity
of character, and is at the same time, kind, womanly,
and pre-eminently religious. We do not know
whether this is an ideal, or a study from life. If
there was such a woman, and Leonardo had painted
her portrait, it would have been equal to the best.
However, it is the artist more often than his subject
who gives tone and character to the portrait.
There are also some strange and curious heads ;
especially one of an old man with little if any hair,
and a look of tremendous energy in his face. Leo-

Leonardo da Vinci. 59
nardo says somewhere that the imagination of the
painter ought to see faces in the holes of fences,
and one would suppose that quite a number of Leo
nardo's studies had originated in that manner.
Most mysterious is the drawing of a mantle, or
some large piece of cloth, thrown over — what ? After
looking at it for some time we recognize a pair of
boots behind the cloth. Whether there is also a
man in the boots we cannot tell ; and so it remains.
All later artists might have taken lessons from this
piece of drapery.
Continual improvements are being made in pho
tography, but a camera will never paint a portrait,
nor represent a building correctly. Certain pictures,
like Tintoretto's Three Graces and Raphael's Madonna
of the Fish, it imitates in a more satisfactory manner,
but drawings on a flat surface can be photographed
with perfect accuracy. It may be counted one of
the advantages of our time that Braun of Dornach
has supplied us with copies of Leonardo's drawings
which cannot be distinguished from the originals,
except by the paper on which they are printed ; and
these treasures, intrinsically more valuable than
the finest engravings, have come within the reach of
persons who are not able to cross the Atlantic and
have never entered the Pitti Palace.
Those who look at Leonardo's own portrait and
are susceptible to delicate impressions, may notice
the appearance of extreme sensitiveness in his face.
In spite of his grand physique, this man looks as if
the touch of a feather would cause him pain. We
remember the story, also, of Michel Angelo who

60 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
felt a stone bridge shaking under his horse's feet ;
and not long afterward its arches fell into the Tiber.
He could feel through the hoofs of his horse what
others would scarcely have noticed with their own
feet. It was only with the help of such sensitive
nerves that these great artists could create their illu
sions on canvas and in marble. They united the
strength of gladiators with the tenderness of a young
child. What Leonardo surpassed all other artists in since
time began, was vitality. No one else has come so
near the imitation of life itself; and this may ac
count for the length of time which he worked over
his pictures.
We wonder what became of Leonardo's mother,
and if she had her share also in the prosperity and
honor of her marvellous child.

THE WORKS OF MICHEL ANGELO
AMONG the Aryan races there have been six
men who are rightly supposed to tower above
all others — Homer, Caesar, Michel Angelo,
Shakspeare, Goethe, and Napoleon. There is one
for the Greek, and one for the Roman, one for
modern Italy, and one for England, France, and
Germany. Beethoven might perhaps be added as
a seventh ; but the indeterminate character of
musical sounds has hardly an equal value with the
definite statements of language, the clearness of
artistic forms, or the important results of practical
action. Beethoven, besides, would seem to have been
lacking in dignity of character, and no one, how
ever wonderful his genius may be, can attain the
highest place in the opinions of men without that
requisite. These six, then, stand before aU others,
and are equalled only by one another, each in his
own way. Dante may approach Homer, Frederick
Napoleon, and Tintoret Michel Angelo ; but it does
not require a critical estimate of their abilities to de
cide between them.
The fact that Michel Angelo was nursed by the
wife of a stone-cutter would indicate that the Buo-
narotti family belonged to the landed gentry of Tus-
61

62 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
cany, approaching the nobility in social position ; for
then, as now, it was only among aristocratic families
that wet nurses were obtained for children ; and it
has often been surmised that he acquired in this way
his predilection for sculpture rather than painting.
He also drank in an excellent constitution, which,
joined with his thickset frame and constant exercise
with hammer and chisel, made him one of the strong
est men of that vigorous age. Mental force, if
rightly applied, will always increase corporeal power ;
and it was thus that Caesar, Michel Angelo, and
Napoleon were able to extend the limits of physical
endurance. The terrible energy with which the old
sculptor attacked his marble bore witness to the
cumulative temperance and industry of his youth.
His sturdy figure, though not graceful, was sym
metrical, and gave an impression of character, even
at a distance.
If we place a head of Napoleon beside portraits of
Wellington, Washington, Blucher, Moreau, and other
great leaders of his time, even a boy will perceive
at once that he is superior to all of them ; so the
head of Michel Angelo surpasses in distinction all the
other great artists of Italy, and we recognize him as
an exceptional man, even by the contour of his head.
Like his features, it was strong and massive, and yet
refined as the head of an Apollo. The Italians still
delight to carve it on gems and cameos. His eyes
were remarkably large, dark, and lustrous ; but full
of tenderness and commiseration. They tell us of
long suffering, unrequited affection, and patient en
durance.

MADONNA WITH TWO ATTENDANT ANGELS
by MICHELANGELO
National Gallery

The Works of Michel Angelo. 63
He possessed all those qualities which are called
virtues, and, in addition, was reserved, taciturn, and
even haughty. All great artists have to be sincere ;
for sincerity is the essence of art : but Michel Angelo
gave forth his sincerity like an old Hebrew prophet,
without regard to the temporary mischief it might
occasion either to himself or others. His correcting
the drawing of his excellent master, Ghirlandajo, was
neither considerate nor in good manners ; but it was
done in the interest of truth, and there was some
thing wholesome in this, which inclined his contem
poraries to approve of it. He was fortunate to live
in an age when intellectual veracity was more re
spected than it is in Italy at present.
He was much more like Dante than Shakspeare :
not so inexorable as Dante, but the tragical side of
life made so deep and abiding an impression on him
as to overcloud the joyous and comic side. Of merri
ment and jests he knew nothing ; he never jested
himself, nor more than to smile slightly at the jests
of others. He had no pleasures outside of his work ;
nor was he ever acquainted with love, courtship, and
marriage. The only friend who was really dear to
him appears to have been the Countess Colonna.
Perhaps the fervid exhortations of Savonarola
may have been impressed too powerfully on his
youthful imagination ; and he must have been sad
dened by the premature death of Lorenzo dei
Medici, who had been more than a counsellor and
guide to him. The loss of Lorenzo, who was pre
sumably poisoned, produced a confusion in Italian
politics like the assassination of Garfield in America,

64 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
which they never wholly recovered from. Michel
Angelo's patriotism was deeply affected by the mis
fortunes of his country ; and even greater was his
commiseration for the sufferings of humanity, which
are common to all ages, and for which there seems
to be no avail.
We miss in his works a representation of the
bright side of life ; and yet their effect upon us is
neither gloomy nor depressing. We find rest in the
strength of his mighty creations, and we follow him
with such confidence as we would an experienced
and untiring Alpine guide. The power of his draw
ing invigorates us, and his elevated conceptions lift
us to a higher plane, where we feel exhilarated as if
by mountain air. We return to them with satisfac
tion after we have had enough of the summer glory
of Correggio and the brilliant pageantry of Paul
of Verona.
How was it then that this man came to surpass
all others?
All the deepest minds have perceived that behind
character and beyond intellect there was a self-
sustaining, inscrutable something which determined
their destiny in life.* It is like the invisible germ
in the egg which decides color, form, and other
attributes of the bird that is to be. It cannot be
described any more than it is possible to define love
or beauty. We can, however, approach it respect
fully by taking observations of human nature from
different points, as in a geometrical survey ; and in
* This fact is certainly not explained by the word soul, which, as
commonly used, merely indicates faith in a spiritual existence.

The Works of Michel Angelo. 65
this way we also realize more clearly the character
of the individual.
In the first place then, such a man must be wholly
free from weakness. He must be without a flaw
either mentally or physically. The driving-wheel of
a locomotive is equal and of equal strength at every
point of 'its rim ; but men are not made like that.
We find out very early that there are soft places in
us which will not bear any strain, and that there are
many things which we must avoid attempting in
consequence. A young scholar can perhaps talk
very fluently on the subject of his studies, but when
he rises to make a speech he finds the total person
ality of his audience a pressure upon him which he
has not the force to resist. Hawthorne possessed a
fine genius, but he never was able to understand
politics, although he was too liberal not to desire to
do so. The accomplishment of a really great work
requires the exertion of every faculty in turn ; and
if a man has a weak place anywhere it will continu
ally come to the surface, and his efficiency is always
impaired at that point. If we compare Caesar with
other great Romans it will be noticed that he was
the only complete one, who never was obliged to
depend on the advice or assistance of others. He
could make his own speeches, draught his own laws,
and manage the finances of his army. Leonardo da
Vinci might have been the rival of Michel Angelo
but for his capricious nature and desultory methods
of working.
Next we come to single-mindedness ; which is
really the quintessence of sincerity. In a large

66 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
school there will perhaps be ten boys who are good
scholars. Among these, three may be spurred by a
spirit of emulation ; three more from an ambition to
succeed in whatever they do ; three learn their les
sons because they are praised for it ; while only one
studies from pure love of knowledge and self-
improvement. In the end this last will surpass all
the rest ; for after a time the others will become
tired of praise and success, but he will always con
tinue to learn and to improve so long as he remains
true to himself. His work will always be a pleasure
to him, and for that reason also he will succeed the
better in it. This is the true artist spirit, and when
we apply the principle to such work as requires
mental ingenuity or skill of hand, instead of mere
mechanical study, the disproportion between it and
all other forms of activity is increased tenfold.
While the ambitious artist stops to congratulate
himself on what he has done, the single-minded
artist goes onward and leaves the other behind. But
one boy in two hundred of this sort is a large aver
age, and human nature is so misunderstood that he
will usually be considered the most ambitious of
them all.
It is possible, however, for single-minded persons
to be also very narrow, and thus their lives become
sterile in spite of their purity. There can be no
great accomplishment without greatness of design ;
and how is this attained except by a long-continued
process of mental selection between such things as
are important and elevated and those which are
small, trivial, and mean ; a constant winnowing of

The Works of Michel Angelo. 67
wheat from the chaff ; a perpetual sublimation and
classification of ideas.

' ' Noble souls alone can know
How the giants live and grow. "
Greatness of design in Caesar and Napoleon may
be readily mistaken for personal ambition, but this
could not possibly happen with regard to Michel
Angelo's drawing. He had the grand manner such
as Homer and Shakspeare had ; but, unlike Homer
and Shakspeare, he never descended from it. It is
visible in his earliest and in his latest work. It be
comes strikingly evident by comparison with even
such artists as Titian and Raphael ; but in and of it
self it is plain enough to those who are accustomed
to converting ideas into form.
What can the last element in our alembic be ex
cept heroism ? How shall we define it unless as man
rising superior to his physical conditions ? It is only
with the help of this that we can surmount the most
difficult obstacles and achieve results of the highest
kind. It despises death ; it is superior to stoicism,
courage, fortitude, and determination. A man who
would discover a new continent, lead a social revolu
tion, or translate the Vedas, carries his life in his
hands. The danger of the hero-artist or poet is not
so apparent as that of the soldier or statesman, but
it is none the less real. When Michel Angelo un
dertook to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel he
knew not how it might end, for such a work had
never been attempted before. It is said that for a

68 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
long time afterward he could not read a book or let
ter except by holding it above his head.
The heroism of performance is superior to the
heroism of endurance. By constantly rising above
physical conditions the hero ascends one summit
after another until those who behold him become
dizzy with apprehension. He thus elevates himself
at last above humanity ; becomes sublime ; and if
his mission is to stem the tide of religious bigotry
he may perhaps be worshipped as a god.
Genius is a composite attribute, and differs widely
with different men. The genius of Michel Angelo
was composed of strength, single-mindedness, great
ness of design, and heroism, with the addition of
that unfathomable inclination which led him into
the walks of sculpture and painting.
He was a pitiless critic for the mistakes of other
artists, giving his opinion of them apparently with
out considering whether they wished to hear it. In
this way he brought on the collision with Torrigiano,
who told Cellini that he struck Michel Angelo's nose
with his fist, but others say, what is more likely, with
his mallet. Torrigiano made liberal offers to Cellini
to go to the English court with him, but the latter
declined them, nor could he endure any further ac
quaintance with a man who had treated the divine
Buonarotti in such a manner. I believe no French
man, Englishman, or German has been so venerated
by his countrymen as Michel Angelo was even while
he still lived.
All traces of Michel Angelo's apprentice work has
disappeared like the snow image which he made for

The Works of Michel Angelo. 69
Lorenzo dei Medici in the Boboli gardens ; and con
sidering the temperament of the man it is more than
likely that he destroyed his early studies himself,
although his genius manifested itself in a decided
manner from the very beginning. The first years
of his manhood were not prolific in their accomplish
ment. Previous to the opening of the sixteenth
century, his first really great work was the Pieta in
St. Peter's at Rome ; and before that he had carved
a square bas-relief of struggling figures, a youthful
St. John, a Bacchus, two round reliefs representing
the Holy Family, and the Cupid at Kensington.
We follow the evolution of that quality in his youth
ful efforts which gives genius its special character
with absorbing interest.
The square relief referred to is now in the Casa
Buonarotti at Florence, and is so enigmatical as
to defy all analysis. Michel Angelo's contem
poraries speak of it as the conflict of heroes and
centaurs; but there is no trace of a centaur in it,
except what appears to be the unfinished termina
tion of a horse. A dozen or fifteen youths are
struggling together in every variety of graceful atti
tude, their limbs so entangled as to give the effect
of a human arabesque. A youth raised above his
fellows (evidently supported in their arms), forms
the central figure; and on his right, two young
women are apparently being carried off in the same
manner. In the left-hand corner an older man ap
pears holding a large stone in his hands, and beneath
him another is seated in a grievous attitude ap
parently suffering from a blow on his head. The

jo The Midsummer of Italian Art.
youth in the centre has his arm raised as if to strike
some one. It reminds us of the Greek reliefs rep
resenting the conflict over the invulnerable Capa-
neus ; but here man struggles against man, and all is
confusion. Michel Angelo never explained himself, and the
enigmatical element in him seems to have formed
the key-note of his life. The problems he places
before us are all the more puzzling because uninten
tional. It requires study to make out the action of
this relief ; but who can ever tell the meaning of it ?
It is this mystery which constitutes his greatest
charm to the minds of his admirers; but the relief
has also an artistic charm of the highest order from
the harmonious disposition of the several figures;
and their vigorous and elastic modelling, combined
with such freedom of attitude as Italian art never
had seen before. It was indeed a small revolution in
Florentine relief work such as would have astonished
Ghiberti, and probably did astonish Donatello. Al
though powerfully vitalized the action is nowhere
extravagant, and to judge from the half-defined ex
pression of their faces, the combatants engaged are
taking their hard knocks with as much equanimity
as if they were occupied with athletic amusements.
It is doubtful if Michel Angelo intended to give the
relief a high degree of finish. He had developed
his idea in it, and did not care to go farther in that
direction. It seems as if he wished to show how
much more he could include in the same space than
the Greeks did in the reliefs on their temples, —
which this relief resembles in form. The manner

The Works of Michel Angelo. 71
in which the various figures are superimposed indi
cates already a high degree of technical skill.
Whether the statue of a youthful Saint John,
which Michel Angelo made for the younger Lorenzo
dei Medici in 1495, is the same as the statue dis
covered at Pisa in 1874, still remains in doubt.
Grimm and other German critics have opposed the
probability of this on the ground that the motive
was not sufficiently original, and for other technical
reasons. The question is whether Michel Angelo,
whose tendency was always toward a grandiose
physical development, would have been likely to
have designed so slender a figure. The expression
of the face also is weak even to the lackadaisical;
whereas Michel Angelo is always strong. The atti
tude and features, especially the upward pointing
brow and obtuse angle of the nose, remind me of the
Saint George of Donatello, although the Saint George
is rigid with moral energy, and this Saint John suffers
from the opposite extreme. Still it is a beautiful
statue in its way, full of graceful flowing lines, such
as Michel Angelo might have chiselled at twenty-
two under Donatello's influence. It is original
enough as a design of John the Baptist, and it is
possible that Michel Angelo designed to represent a
tender, effeminate youth, who nevertheless contained
within himself the germ of an heroic nature.* The
face is a reflective one ; and to the boy who thinks,
the future unfolds distinction.
The Bacchus in the Bargello at Florence is not so
* This statue is now in the Berlin museum.

72 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
purely Greek as Condivi supposed, and yet it con
tains Hellenic elements, which may have been de
rived by studying the subject from Greek models.
There is a slight stiffness in the attitude which
reminds us among other resemblances of the Cassell
Apollo, a rather archaic work of the fifth century B.C.
The feet are almost an imitation of the Cassell
statue ; while the heaviness of the thighs, the model
ling of the right arm, nose, mouth, and decoration of
the hair also resemble it. There is an expression
of levity in the face, especially in the slightly parted
lips, which is very like that of the Apollo ; yet the
statue is strongly original and Michelangelesque.
His attitude is at once nonchalant, easy, and digni
fied ; the face sensual, but serene and intelligent.
The manner in which he holds a cup in his right
hand on a level with his mouth, and the tiger skin
in his left, is charming. Also, observe the pose of his
head, the grace of the collar-bones, and the beauty
of the left hand, which alone would designate it as a
work of genius. We notice here in contrast with
the Cassell Apollo the absence of well-defined glute-
ous muscles— which unite the hips to the abdomen
— so prominent in all Greek statues.
The Cupid in the Kensington museum is the earli
est work by Michel Angelo which really shows the
fulness of his genius. He made a sleeping Cupid
somewhere between 1493 and 1495, which we hear of
from Condivi, but of which no trace has since been
discovered. His conception of the subject four
years later was not unlike that of the time of Praxi-

The Works of Michel Angelo. 73
tiles; not an exuberant amoretto eight years old,
but a well grown youth of sixteen. The attitude is
original and surprising. Cupid kneels down to draw
his arrow to the head, by an upward motion of the
arm, and while his glance is directed to the head of
the arrow he is evidently reflecting on the direction
in which he shall discharge it ; and in this way the
covert nature of the boy-god is cleverly indicated.
The modelling is Greek, with a slight admixture of
mediaeval individuality. This appears especially in
the position of the left leg, which is folded closely
together in a favorite attitude of Michel Angelo's,
such as no Greek sculptor would have thought of
for a moment. The raised arm drawing the bow
string is a most beautiful piece of modelling and the
whole figure is full of grace, strength, and elasticity.
If we compare it with the Eros of Praxitiles we find
the figure more robust, the face more intelligent,
but the attitude by no means so decorous; nor is
the hair treated with equal delicacy and considera
tion ; but the Eros at Naples is a copy, and Michel
Angelo's Cupid an. original. In this instance, in the
square relief of the Casa Buonarotti, and in his
David, Michel Angelo represented hair in the mass,
only dividing the terminal locks so as to form a
fringe about the head, and slightly indicating the
separate strands. It was only late in life that he
succeeded in sculpturing hair equal to the finest
Greek work.
In the Bargello there is a round unfinished relief
of a Madonna and Child by Michel Angelo, which

74 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
seems related to the Bruges Madonna both in motive
and treatment. According to Michel Angelo's
method of liberating his statues from the marble,
by cutting in successive planes, it is possible that he
may have given up this work, like so many others,
before the final cutting was made; or it may have
occurred to him that the rough condition of the in
termediate spaces would serve as an excellent back
ground to display the smooth limbs and clear-cut
drapery of his figures. The perfect realism of their
attitudes is supplemented by a rythmic grace of
outline; and those who only know Michel Angelo's
art from the David, the Moses, and his great fres
cos, should study these earlier and less ambitious
designs in order to realize the wide range of his
sympathies. The relief is modern in conception
but Hellenic in execution. PAINTING.
Michel Angelo made some attempts in the use of
color at this time, but not altogether with satisfac
tory results. Of his surviving efforts the Entomb
ment in the National Gallery may perhaps have pre
ceded the Doni Holy Family. It was pronounced
a Michel Angelo by Cornelius, and a glance at it is
sufficient to confirm this opinion. If it is a failure
— and we may suppose that Michel Angelo thought
so himself and consequently left it unfinished — it is
nevertheless a most impressive study. The manner
in which Christ's hair is painted connects it closely
with the Holy Family painted for Angelo Doni, and

STATUE OF DAVID by MICHELANGELO

The Works of Michel Angelo. 75
the stalwart figure of Nicodemus is a forethought of
the Sistine Chapel.
The body of Christ is being carried over a flight
of steps by Nicodemus, Mary Magdalen, and Joseph
of Arimathea. His posture is an awkward one, but
there is great beauty and truthfulness to nature in
his form, especially the lower limbs. A strange fact
noticed by Grimm in Raphael's Entombment, is that
the face evidently shows that Christ is not dead but
only in a trance. The figure of Nicodemus is mag
nificent, and is the first indication of that grandeur
of design in which Michel Angelo has never been
equalled. The body of Christ is supported on a
stout scarf, the ends of which are held by Nicode
mus and Mary Magdalen ; and the manner in which
the former grasps this with his left hand is a mas
terly piece of painting. So also the foreshortening
of his right leg — the pose of the head, throat, and
shoulders; all wonderful. Mary Magdalen is bent
backward like a bow with her exertion, and her
figure is still unfinished. Another Mary is seated
in the left corner, remarkable for her fine drapery,
but her motive remains undecided. The mother of
Christ turns her head aside and holds forth her hands
in anguish. Her unfinished face is nevertheless ex
pressive of great suffering. Joseph, though slightly
sketched, has a finely developed head and noble
countenance. Mr. Symonds doubts the authen
ticity of the picture and finds it discordant and
feelingless, but there is really a spiritual tenderness
expressed in it of the highest order, though rather
imperfectly. The sidelong glance of Nicodemus

76 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
might easily be mistaken for a suspicious look, but
it is true to the conditions of the situation. As a
composition the painting is academic*
Michel Angelo never learned the mystery of
chiaroscuro ; and, though it seems as if he might
have painted a landscape background with sufficient
facility, the Deluge in the Sistine was his only at
tempt. Without one or the other of these it is impos
sible to give depth or distance to a painting, and his
pictures have therefore the appearance of figures
relieved against a wall or flat surface ; — that is, his
pictures resemble bas-relief work, although full of
life, and delineated with a softness and delicacy
which no sculpture can equal. Although he never
studied the art to its full extent he is really greater
as a painter than as a sculptor, and expressed himself
more fully with the brush than with the chisel.
With his wonderful facility for overcoming obstacles
we may believe that he would have rivalled the
chiaroscuro of Coreggio if he had only attempted
to do so.
Though Michel Angelo sometimes submitted to
conventionality we more frequently find him leading
a crusade against it. In the Holy Family painted
for Angelo Doni he has avenged a long course of
pictorial injustice toward the much slighted Joseph.
He has made him appear the most important per
sonage in the group ; a rather anxious-looking man,
* Not only do I feel assured that this painting is by Michel Angelo,
but that Raphael studied it for his picture of the Entombment, or at
least designed that under its influence.

The Works of Michel Angelo. yy
but with a strong face, keenly penetrating eye, and
finely shaped head. The Madonna, on the con
trary, is plebeian, and her chief beauty consists in
the upward look of her large Florentine eyes, and
her finely modelled arm, strongly developed and yet
feminine. The Christ-child is being transferred
from the arms of Joseph to his mother's shoulder, —
a motive which does not lack originality, — but his
face is not impressive and his dark hair painted in
twisted sculpture-like tufts does not harmonize well.
The coloring is cold and hard ; the general effect
unprepossessing. In lieu of a background Michel
Angelo has introduced a row of nude antique figures,
after the fashion of Signorelli, as may be seen in
one of his paintings in the Uffizi Gallery. It is the
least interesting of Michel Angelo's works ; and yet
it has a profound meaning for those who can under
stand it.
The Madonna in the National Gallery with two
attendant angels * is so perfect in shading and
drapery that we should suppose it to have been
painted during or after Michel Angelo's work in the
Sistine Chapel, but in general conception it claims
a close affinity with the marble Madonna at Bruges,
which was produced between 1502 and 1504. It
lacks the maturity of his work in the Sistine Chapel,
and yet he has nowhere given proof of more perfect
drawing, greater delicacy of facial expression, or a
more admirable treatment of drapery.
The face of the Virgin resembles the Bruges
* Painted like the preceding in dry tempera.

78 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
Madonna, but her expression is less severe. She
seems like a twin sister to the Nicodemus in the
Entombment, and is looking down on her child with
half-shut eyes and a slightly Leonardesque smile.
There is no look of maternal tenderness in her face,
for Michel Angelo never painted such. One would
suppose that he had never known the sweetness of
domestic life, even in his father's family. The more
we gaze at her, however, the more we are attracted
by the grave dignity of her countenance, which is
slightly sculpturesque but with a reserved depth of
feeling. The superb ease of her attitude, and the
infallible folds of her drapery are beyond the domain
of criticism. The same may be predicated of the
infant Christ and Saint John, of whom the latter is
much the more interesting on account of his position
in full face, by which we can see the soulful expres
sion of his eyes ; also from the exquisite manner in
which his fur garment is wrapped about one of the
loveliest of childlike forms. The Christ-child is
not inferior in design but his face is in profile, and
he looks upward to the book which his mother ap
pears to have been instructing him in.
The two angels on the Madonna's left are char
acteristic of Michel Angelo, so much so that it has
been doubted whether they were intended for angels
or genii ; but Michel Angelo evidently believed that
the angelic nature could be indicated without the
aid of wings, and here he has succeeded.* He
afterwards painted angels in his Last Judgment, but
* The only creation I know of to which Michel Angelo supplied
wings was a demon in the Last yudgment.

The Works of Michel Angelo. 79
not with the same delicacy and grace. The manner
in which one rests his arm on the shoulder of the
other is full of loving tenderness, and their faces
express a spirituality unmixed with earthly stain.
Their limbs are beauty itself, and their drapery is
distinguished by a finer quality of stuff than that of
the Madonna. Two more figures are outlined with
ground color alone, on the Madonna's right, but we
can only distinguish a finely cut profile with a hand
some arm and leg. There is a kind of anticlimax in
the composition, for the angels and the little Baptist
are more interesting than the Madonna and Christ-
child. The Three Fates, which hangs in the Tribuna at
Florence, is the most perfect of Michel Angelo's
early paintings, and the manner in which the figures
are relieved on one another gives it almost a chia
roscuro. They are three wonderful, weird old
women, evidently sisters, and united by a bond
which seems more than fate. Their coloring in
shades of brown and grey reminds one of dry
autumn leaves ; not bright colored but such as one
sees in Europe. Their faces are parched and
wrinkled, but full of keen intelligence.
" Spin, spin, Clotho, spin,
Lachesis, twist, and Atropos, sever."
The eyes of Lachesis are full of prophetic light and
her face is the feminine counterpart of Goethe's,
—showing again the close relationship which exists
between minds of the highest order.

80 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
Critics have lately doubted the authenticity of this
picture, without explaining, however, how it could
have come into existence. It is a work which pre
supposes a genius of the very first rank ; and it could
not have been painted by Raphael, Andrea del
Sarto, Titian, or any lesser artist. Only Michel
Angelo or Leonardo could have drawn those in
evitable lines, and, of the two, Michel Angelo is
much the more probable. The perfect ease and
correctness of their drapery suggests Michel Angelo
at once; and the expression of their faces, if not
exactly sibylline, is closely akin to it. The Fates
are grouped in the most natural manner and without
any appearance of design.
THE PIETA AND THE DAVID.
The Pieta has something of the plain and uncon
scious sincerity of Albert Diirer. In the broad
dramatic range of Michel Angelo's works this is the
most devotional, and it is one of the few subjects
which he has taken from the New Testament. It
represents the fulness of Christianity. The calm
resignation in Christ's face covers, like a veil, the
pain and agony which he has undergone. The ex
pression of the Virgin is most affecting ; for it is not
only in her face, but in her whole attitude, and even
in the posture of her hands that we perceive the
sorrow which only a mother can feel, and the infinite
longing that can never be gratified on earth. Yet
it is not a hopeless grief like that of the Niobe in the
Florentine Gallery, whose face is swollen and made

'CREATION OF LIGHT" by MICHELANGELO
Sistine Chapel, Rome

The Works of Michel Angelo. 81
heavy with affliction. There is a moral exaltation
in the mother of Christ which shows that here we
have the true reconcilation between spirit and mat
ter. Her grief is excessive, but it is still subordinate
to her faith in God. Thus we discover already
Michel Angelo's advance over Greek and Roman
art. After Niobe's suffering had worn itself out
she was finally comforted by a piece of bread. The
mother of Christ will never descend to sackcloth and
ashes, but neither will her sorrows cease so long as
she lives.
The technical perfection of the statue is illustrated
by the fact that criticism of it always takes the form
of some complaint against the motive. It is true
enough that Christ and his mother appear to be
nearly of the same age, and the position in which she
holds his body is not a comfortable one. That she
is a " strong, stalwart woman " has also been made
an objection. Michel Angelo professed to have a
reason for the first of these points, but it is quite as
likely that the reason occurred to him afterwards —
without intending to impugn his sincerity. The
idea that the Madonna should be unchangeable, in
corruptible in essential quality, and so perpetually
youthful is a noble one ; but is it necessary for an
explanation of this group ? We only have to say
how young she looks, and the problem is solved.
Neither is it necessary to suppose that she should
hold her son in the most comfortable position —
rather the reverse. Her figure is Michelangelesque
but not obtrusively so. Her attitude expresses
much, but her face is too grave and stoical to con-

82 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
vey the keenest sense of sorrow, and in this respect
the statue does not satisfy our ideal. The posture
of Christ made a strong impression on the artists of
that time, and was imitated by Raphael in his En
tombment* It presents a pathetic exhibition of life
less inertia, but we do not find either in form or
feature the suggestion of a divine or transcendant
man. The physiognomy is one which is supposed
to indicate generosity and self-denial, but further
than that we cannot see into it.
Michel Angelo was at work on the Pieta during
the last year of the fifteenth century, and it is now
to be seen in the first chapel on the right as you
enter St. Peter's Church. Unfortunately it has
been placed on too high a base.
There are some experiences which are written in
the book of life with indelible ink. To drive from
Naples to Pompeii ; to watch the changing colors of
the Jungfrau in the evening sun, as its snows change
from rose-pink to the ashes of violet, and its glaciers
flame and flash with an ethereal fire ; or on an April
morning to take your first walk through the city of
Florence: he who has enjoyed all these may well
feel compensated for numerous troubles.
The central portion of Florence is like a mosaic
of magnificent pattern. Even the streets have a
mosaic pavement, and there is a narrow band of
mosaic between the mouldings which surround the
windows of the cathedral. One of those windows is
a study for a day. The soft brown, box-like church
* Grimm's Raphal, pp. 62, 63.

The Works of Michel Angelo. 83
of Orsanmichele, with the statue of Donatello's St.
George looking fiercely down from its wall ; the
modest little Baptistery and its famous gates of
bronze; the Duomo itself rising high up into the
luminous sky; Giotto's matchless Campanile; the
Palazzo Vecchio, with its frowning cornice; the
graceful arches of the Loggia di Lanzi ; the eques
trian statue of Cosmo the Great, the colossal Neptune,
Cellini's Perseus, and John of Bologna's Rape of the
Sabines, — such are the principal figures in it. For
merly also, close by the door of the Palazzo Vecchio,
stood the colossal David of Michel Angelo, the
wonder of the world.

Vasari does not trouble us with many dates in
the lives of his illustrious artists, but it is well to re
member that Michel Angelo was in his nineteenth
year when Lorenzo the Magnificent died and Amer
ica was discovered ; that four years later he visited
Rome for the first time, and was there again in 1501,
when his friends in Florence advised him * that the
Gonfalonia had given notice that a huge block of
marble, which had lain in the workshop at Santa
Maria del Fiore ever since the death of Lorenzo,
was to be made use of for the glory of the city.
After the expulsion of the Medici, and the religious
frenzy and delirium of Savonarola, the people of
Florence very sensibly chose for their chief magis-
* Condivi denies that he went to Florence for this purpose, but
nothing could be more certain than that Michel Angelo would be in
formed of such an opportunity.

84 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
trate Piero Soderini, who was a worthy successor of
Lorenzo, and might be called the last of the Floren
tine statesmen. He was not only a judicious patron
of art, but a wise administrator, and being supported
by Pope Julius, restored for a time peace and pros
perity to the distracted little republic.
The block of marble was nearly eighteen feet in
length, but had been so much injured by the at
tempts of Simone da Fiesole to carve something out
of it, that doubts were entertained if it could now be
used for anything better than a Doric column. It
is an illustration of the manner in which great events
sometimes come to pass, that it was neither from a
desire of Soderini, nor the inspiration of Michel
Angelo, that the David was chiselled out of it. On
the contrary, Michel Angelo concluded that it
would serve better for the slender figure of a youth
than for one more fully developed. So he made a
small model of wax, and proved to the seignory by
measurements how the thing could be done. Such
is the practical character of true genius. Thus the
commission was awarded to him, though the young
est of the competitors.
Mannerism may be accomplished amid any amount
of noise and confusion, but great thoughts require
the sanctity of silence. It is highly amusing to
think of the sort of fortification with which young
Buonarotti surrounded his precious block of marble
in order to keep out inquisitive people. Even So-
dorini judiciously abstained from interfering with
him ; and in a little more than two years this stu
pendous work — the most difficult of Michel Angelo's

The Works of Michel Angelo. 85
life — was completed. The small model of wax was
his only guide ; and it is not known certainly that he
used the sculptor's points. His eye was infallible,
and it seemed impossible for him to make a mistake.
Conveying the statue to its destination was found to
be a difficult matter, and the manner in which it was
done was considered very ingenious even in those
ingenious times.
About twenty years ago the David was removed
from its position in front of the Palazzo Vecchio,
and placed within the Academia dei Belle Arti for
its better preservation, while a bronze copy was
made of it and set on the hill of San Miniato, where
it may be seen at almost any distance from the road
to Rome and down the valley of the Arno. This
copy proves the superiority of marble over bronze
as an art material; as one may perceive, also, from
the copy of the Apollo Belvedere in the gardens of
the Tuileries. A work like John of Bologna's Mer
cury could not, of course, be executed in marble.
Vasari refers to the Dioscuri on the Quirinal in
comparison with the David, and though the Dioscuri
are generally despised by Roman artists as bad copies
of the Antonine period, they have nevertheless the
most finely proportioned figures of any male statues
in Rome, and were evidently copied from models of
the time of Phidias, if not by that sculptor's own
hand. We agree with Crowe and Cavalcaselle that
Vasari's criticism is commonly not far from the mark ;
and though the David and the Dioscuri are sepa
rated by a wide gulf of technical workmanship, they
are closely united by that grandeur and purity of

86 Tho Midsummer of Italian Art.
design which only belongs to the age of Pericles and
the age of Julius II. Its immense size makes the
youthfulness of David all the more conspicuous.
The form is not slender nor fragile, but gives a truth
ful appearance of tenderness and immaturity. We
know that his joints are supple and his limbs flexible.
Michel Angelo was more realistic than the Greeks,
but he atoned for the lack of ideality in form by a
superior ideality of expression. The figure is abso
lutely faultless and the face wears the stamp of hero
ism. I think its size prevents a general appreciation
of the beauty of his head. His luxuriant hair falls
over his temples like a wreath. The features are
strong and finely cut, without being sharp or too
mature. His eyes are slightly dilated ; looking in
tently. The sling hangs over his left shoulder; the
right hand is slightly curled as if the fingers held a
small pebble. He is watching Goliath and concen
trating himself for the supreme moment of action.
His life or death will depend on a single cast of the
die. For purity of conception wrought out with
an ideal accuracy of detail, the David takes its place
beside the grandest works of modern art. Michel
Angelo's Night or his Moses may have a more pro
found significance for us, but they also have peculiar
ities which interfere with an unreserved admiration.
The weight of the statue was found to be full nine
tons. The Madonna and Child in the Cathedral at Bruges
is closely allied and of similar workmanship to the
Pieta. The Madonna in both instances appears to

The Works of Michel Angelo. 87
be the very same person, and her head-dress is
nearly identical. There is the same long nose,
delicate mouth, slightly curved brow, and especially
the long, tapering fingers — of Raphael's Dresden
Madonna. The eyes, however, are different, and
the expressions are as different as the artists them
selves. It is possible that there may be some rela
tion between the statue and the painting, though
the difference in time, full sixteen years, between
the execution of the two works would seem to pre
clude the possibility of their being taken from the
same model ; if we are to suppose that Michel Angelo
made use of a model on this occasion. There are
still to be seen in the streets of Rome majestic-
looking peasant women, who walk with erect heads
and as firm a step as the women of ancient Rome
are supposed to have done.
The Bruges group is not religious, as Holbein's
and other Madonnas are religious ; nor is the motive
easy to penetrate. The Madonna holds her boy
affectionately by the hand while she thinks of other
matters. Her face is beautiful and interesting, but
without sentiment. She has a grave, almost austere
expression ; but her head-dress is a marvel of beauty,
more Hellenic than the Greeks ; and how so much
tenderness of feature and limb as are in the child
Jesus could be wrought out of marble will always
be a mystery. The dimpled softness of his face
is beyond comparison, and I believe we could
have another Moses and another David before an
other such boy is sculptured. Intellectually he
gives the impression of completeness, but of a

88 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
nature more human than divine. He is the child
of genius.
The competition with Leonardo followed soon
after the statue of David had been placed in posi
tion. This was a grand idea of Soderini's, but the
subject, as already stated, was not chosen to Michel
Angelo's advantage. Both of those celebrated car
toons ought to have been painted on the walls of the
grand council chamber, for they certainly both de
served it. The solid men of Florence were much to
blame for neglecting such a glorious opportunity, —
a chance in a thousand years. Lorenzo de' Medici
would have supplied the expense from his own
purse; but Soderini had not such a good account at
the bankers. Michel Angelo selected the bathing-
scene, no doubt because it gave him a chance to
bring his knowledge of anatomy into play; but
groups of half-dressed men are not an altogether
pleasant spectacle. So far as art is concerned,
people should either have their clothes properly on
or properly off. Otherwise the drawing could not
be surpassed for truthfulness, purity, strength, and
all varied forms of action. The figures of the
soldiers are robust and muscular, as they should be,
but not too much so, as has often been complained
of in Michel Angelo's later work. The ambitious
young artists who are reported to have made such
devoted study of these two cartoons, with the ex
ception of Benvenuto Cellini, do not appear to have
profited much from them.
The election of Julius II. to the Papacy was an

The Works of Michel Angelo. 89
antidote against the poison of the Borgias. He was
a sort of sixteenth-century Bismarck ; a man of in
domitable will, and, though capable of dissimula
tion, a perfectly sound and healthy character. He
was more than a match for Caesar Borgia, whom he
played with as a cat does with a mouse. Caesar
must have discovered this ere long, but found him
self unable to escape. Julius foresaw the danger
to Italy from the internal consolidation of France
and Spain, and wished to provide against it; but
life was too short for him. Machiavelli says:
" Julius II. , who was of a fiery and violent disposi
tion, succeeded in all his enterprises; doubtless,
because a prince of such a character was best adapted
to the circumstances under which the church was
then governed by this pontiff. Witness the first
invasion of the territory of Bologna, in the life of
John Bentivoglio, which gave great umbrage to the
Venetians and the kings of France and Spain ; but
none of them dared to interfere. He displayed in
all his enterprises the same character, and his suc
cesses have, in that respect, fully justified him ; but
perhaps he did not live long enough to experience
the inconstancy of fortune."
As a patron of art Julius II. can only be compared
with Pericles. The finest and grandest of all works
of art were executed under his directions. Men of
action, if they are enlightened and possessed of sensi
bility, have an excellent influence on poets and art
ists. Their energy stimulates, and their knowledge of
the world brings the artist out of his retirement and
enlarges his view of life. Julius was a man of grand

90 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
ideas, and Michel Angelo could not long escape his
notice. He is supposed to have been more influ
enced by him than by any of his contemporaries.
Certain it is that the paintings of the Sistine Chapel
are of a more experienced character than those
pictures and statues which we have been consider
ing. Rome is a funereal city. It is in itself the monu
ment of two civilizations, and is now commencing
again upon a third. Its three hundred and more
churches are full to repletion of the monuments of
popes, cardinals, and bishops; and the Appian Way
is lined with tombs of the more heroic race who pre
ceded them. The pyramid of Cestius, the Castle of
St. Angelo, and the tomb of Cecilia Metella are
substantial memorials of the vanity and emptiness
of human life. Drive out on the Appian Way, and
descend into the tomb of the Scipios; examine by
the glimmering light of your guide's candle those
plain slabs of marble carved only with the letters
of that type whose plainness has made it the most
useful to mankind. Is the Coliseum itself or the
baths of Caracalla a more impressive sight than
this ? There is no attempt at ornament ; nor is
there need of any. The finest sculpture could add
nothing to the fame of that noblest of Roman fami
lies. Nor would any marble be more enduring than
the recollection of their virtues.
Such was pagan Rome. How different is the
outward presentation of Christian Rome, — of that
Church which began in meekness of spirit and con
tempt for worldly splendor. During the sixteenth

The Works of Michel Angelo. 91
and seventeenth centuries the coasts of the Medi
terranean were ransacked for precious marbles with
which to adorn the sepulchres of Italian prelates,
and every device of architecture and sculpture re
sorted to in order to make them attractive to the
public eye. We soon become satiated, however,
with this meaningless magnificence, and find only
too surely that no names are connected with it that
we care for, or have ever heard of; unless they
be notorious, like the cardinal whom Guido has
placed in the image of Satan under the feet of the
Archangel. Protestant Christianity teaches us to live for one
another; and this translated into practical politics
means that we are to live for the good of the com
munity, and for ourselves as part of the community.
This and " every man to his trade," are the two
cardinal doctrines of Plato's Republic. Antagonis
tic to them is the theory that every man has a right
to do as he pleases so long as he does not interfere
with the rights of other people. The former is the
principle of national growth, and the latter of national
decline; and it was this individualism which was
dominant in Italy in the year 1500. Julius II. was
an exception to his time. He was sincere, sound at
heart, and, in his way, disinterested. He wished
for a monument to himself because other popes had
them ; and he would attend to it in his lifetime, be
cause he knew after he was dead no one would care
for him, any more than for a dead ox.
In Michel Angelo he first met with a man of ideas
grander than his own, and of a performance that

92 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
even exceeded expectation. Amid the thousand
and one cases of partial fulfilment, what a satisfac
tion to discover such an exceptional personage!
Between them they designed a monument almost
beyond imagination. It was to have contained
three tiers of statues, — more than twenty in num
ber, and many of them of heroic size. Such a work
would have required at least fifteen years for its
completion, and as the Pope's hair was already
white, there seemed little chance that it would be
finished in his lifetime ; but neither of them
thought of this.
The first year was consumed by Michel Angelo
at Carrara in order to make sure that the blocks of
marble were of the right size and without flaw in
any part of them. They were transported to Civita
Vecchia by sea, and thence to the open space be
tween the Vatican and the Castle of St. Angelo;
which has ever since been considered consecrated
ground, because Michel Angelo had his studio there.
VICTORY AND THE CAPTIVES.
In the second and third year he designed and par
tially finished for the mausoleum a Victory and four
statues of Captives over whom the Victory was in
tended to preside. Two of the Captives were after
wards completed, and in some mysterious manner
found their way to the sculpture gallery of the
Louvre; two others were never more than partially
blocked out, and are now to be found in a grotto in
the Boboli Gardens at Florence. The Victory also

The Works of Michel Angelo. 93
finally travelled to Florence, and was placed in the
Palazzo Vecchio, where it suffers in a way by its
separation from the others. If we did not know by
authentic records that it was intended for a Victory
it is not likely that the fact would ever have been
discovered. The lower portion of the block is un
finished, and it is not certain what Michel Angelo
proposed to develop out of it. Above this irregular
mass of marble, the figure of a youth is kneeling
with his head stretched forward and turned over the
right shoulder, while his right arm is doubled so
that it seems as if he intended to rest his chin upon
his hand, — though he does not as yet. No one but
Michel Angelo could have imagined such an atti
tude, and if we are to explain its meaning, how can
we do it otherwise than as a representation of the
conflicting emotions which crowd upon an heroic
nature in the hour of triumph. The features recall
Michel Angelo's David, and are fully as noble.
The far-seeing eye glancing from beneath a con
tracted brow, and the slight pressure of the lips in
dicate a nature in which ambitious impulses are
happily blended with self-command. The head is
crowned with a rich mass of wavy locks treated
much after the manner of the David ; and it is
probable that this was the first work which Michel
Angelo undertook in the service of Pope Julius. It
has a depth of meaning which is almost inscrutable ;
and it is only those to whom this appeals who can
ever appreciate it. Those who love art for its ex
ternal charm — as in the Venus de' Medici — will
always be repelled by its peculiar attitude.

94 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
The two Captives, miscalled Slaves, are both
creations of the same motive, though differing in
attitude ; and the hopeless despair expressed in their
faces is of such a depth as only Michel Angelo
might have conceived. They are not only excep
tional for this, but for the softness of their limbs
and the absence of all muscularity. Although such
modelling would seem to contradict the idea that
they were prisoners captured in battle it harmonizes
with the pathetic aspect of their faces, as a more
vigorous physique could not do so well. They
seem rather like spirits of captivity ; ideal creations,
representative of Pope Julius' success in war.
The Captive with the arm raised above his head is
not unlike, in pose, expression, and modelling, the
Amazon in the Vatican commonly attributed to Po-
lycleitus, but more probably the work of Cresilas;
but whether this was a coincidence or an unconscious
imitation it is no longer possible to determine.
There are, however, several duplicates of this Ama
zon in existence, and Michel Angelo may have seen
one of them.
This group of statues closes Michel Angelo's first
or virginal period, which lasted into his thirty-fourth
or thirty-fifth year. Without being in any sense
imitative of the Greek, they are more Hellenic than
those which came after them. In purity of feeling
they are equalled by their perfect execution. They
are surpassed only by a few of the best antique
statues. To the lover of simple beauty they are
more attractive than the grander and more mysteri
ous creations of Michel Angelo's later years.

The Works of Michel Angelo. 95
THE SISTINE CHAPEL.
Thus we perceive already that the materials for
the Pope's monument have been scattered to the
winds. How did it happen that Julius should have
postponed the completion of it after 1507 ? The
explanation that has been given, and which Mr.
Tyrwhitt accepted, that it was the result of an in
trigue in Raphael's favor, and Bramante's suggestion
that it was a bad omen to prepare a tomb in one's
lifetime, is not sufficient to account for it. The
man who had outwitted Caesar Borgia was not the
sort of a person to be scared by such an idle notion ;
rather a dangerous man to attempt to lead by the
nose. As a lawyer, also, Julius must have known
many examples to the contrary. It is more likely
that during the interruption of the work by Michel
Angelo's hegira to Florence the Pope lost his in
terest in it, and his thoughts became occupied with
other projects. It may even have occurred to him
that decorating the house of God would be an under
taking more worthy of Michel Angelo's skill, and
more creditable to himself than building a mauso
leum to his own fame.
There is nothing surprising in the quarrel between
these two great men. Michel Angelo also had an
indomitable will, and, among other divine qualities,
was no respecter of persons. It was only through
his perfect independence of conventionality that his
drawing could acquire such freedom. When he
and Julius were together there were two popes in
the room. Michel Angelo, of course, was uncon-

96 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
scious of this, but Julius must sometimes have been
severely tried by it. The abstracted ways of an
artist and thinker also interfered with his success
ful performance of court etiquette. Michel Angelo
himself refers to this absent-mindedness of artists,
in a conversation which took place at the house of
Vittoria Colonna long afterward.
Michel Angelo, having paid for a cargo of marble
from Carrara with his own funds, called on the Pope
to obtain a liquidation, but was refused admittance
to his Holiness. This occurred three times in suc
cession, when at last Michel Angelo discovered that
the guards had received orders not to admit him
any more. Such unjust treatment, as he deemed
it, produced a strong revulsion of feeling, and he
left Rome for Florence that evening. Couriers
were sent after him, but with no effect. Neither
could Soderini persuade '.. ti to return to the Pope's
service. There are two possible explanations for the Pope's
action. In the first place, he was on the eve of his
expedition to Bologna: the other, that Michel An
gelo had offended him at a previous interview, and
the Pope employed this method of correcting his
behavior. The latter view was the more probable
one, and gives this affair the character of a quarrel
between lovers. The message which Michel Angelo
returned to Julius, that he might seek for some one
who would serve him better, carries out this view of
it to perfection. What strikes one rather curiously
is that Michel Angelo should have applied to the
Pope to have his accounts audited, instead of to the

'THE ERYTHRAEAN SIBYL," by MICHELANGELO
Sistine Chapel, Rome

The Works of Michel Angelo. 97
Treasurer of the Vatican ; also that he should have
been able to leave Rome, though so well known to
the Pope's officers, without special permission.
Everybody was afraid of Julius; even Machiavelli
was. Michel Angelo's friends in Florence were
anxious as to what might happen to him if he
placed himself again in the power of the Pope.
Soderini, therefore, commissioned him in the sacred
character of an envoy from the Florentine state, and
Julius, being now at Bologna, and having succeeded
in his enterprise, Michel Angelo went thither to
meet him, and a reconciliation was effected, it is
said, not without some electrical explosion, such as
takes place when there is a sudden change in the
elements. The immediate result of it was a bronze
statue of the Pope, six cubits in height, which oc
cupied Michel Angelo all of the following year. As
already remarked, this statue was destroyed by the
Bentivogli soon after it was placed in position, and
the Pope's query as to whether Michel Angelo had
represented him as blessing or cursing is the only
hint we now have of its character.
What shall we say on entering the Sistine Chapel
except, " The inexpressible is here accomplished! "
On his return to Rome, Michel Angelo wished to
continue the work on the mausoleum, especially as
he had already begun on the figure of Moses, which
was only finished thirty years later, as well as two
or three other statues which were never finished at
all. Pope Julius, however, would hear nothing of
it, and insisted on his painting the ceiling of the

98 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
Sistine Chapel. We may thank the Pope for this ;
for the drudgery of sculpture is so great that four or
five pictures of equal merit may be painted while
one statue is being carved; and though we have
altogether more than two hundred works from
Michel Angelo's hand (if the Last Judgment be
divided into groups), there can hardly be said to be
too many of them.
The Sistine Chapel is like a very tall box, without
any architectural beauty, or even elegance. The
height of the ceiling above the floor is seventy feet,
and only a painter of such great force and breadth
of drawing could ever have made use of it success
fully. Such groups of saints as Perugino drew
would have appeared from beneath it like a row of
paper dolls. Even such a composition as Raphael's
Fire in the Borgo would not appear to advantage
there. It was needful there should be figures of
grand outlines and colored in broad masses to pro
duce a satisfactory effect. Whether the choice of
subjects was decided by the Pope or in a conference
between him and Michel Angelo is not known ; but
those wondrous, primeval forms of the world's crea
tion were well suited to their position, as also to the
colossal structure of Michel Angelo's mind. They
stand against the wall with such power and distinct
ness, as if determined to make an everlasting impres
sion on the beholder.
It is difficult enough to obtain a satisfactory view
of them ; and, in fact, they can be better studied
now with the help of Braun photographs in a private
house than in the city of Rome. Still, in that way

The Works of Michel Angelo. 99
the coloring is lost, and it is also true that the model
of a cathedral can never give an impression equal to
the building itself. By taking a half-reclining posi
tion on the benches in different parts of the chapel
the whole series may finally be made out, and ap
propriated intellectually. Perhaps a quarter of the
ceiling may be studied in a morning. At first it
seems like a wild fantasy of flying figures, but gradu
ally the literal meaning of the different scenes dawns
upon us, and then we go onward from one depth of
significance to another; till at last, at the founda
tion of all, we come to Michel Angelo himself. He
was forty months at work on the ceiling, from the
spring of 1509 until the 1st of November, 1512; and
it is a satisfaction to know that this immense series
of paintings, equal in itself to a large picture gallery,
were wholly the work of Michel Angelo's hand, and
that we are not obliged to guess, as in Raphael's
frescos, what portion was painted by the master and
what by his assistants. The intermediate work on
a picture, which is always least interesting to the
artist, may very well be performed by a talented
beginner, but there is always danger of this being
carried too far. It was thus that Vandyke and
others assisted on the pictures of Rubens.
The Sistine Chapel is the source and origin of all
grandeur in modern painting. I can compare the
effect of it to nothing less than the circle of snowy
peaks which surround the Riffelberg at Zermatt.
The awful figure of the Eternal repeated four times
upon the ceiling ; the prehistoric events of creation
sketched out in broad and impressive masses; the

ioo The Midsummer of Italian Art.
terrible spectacle of the Deluge ; the inspired figures
of prophets and sibyls, seated as it were on cornices
in mid-air, combine to form an impression more in-
tense, elevating, and sublime than the poetry of
Dante or the music of Beethoven. The same effect
could not have been produced in rooms like the
Camere of Raphael. It is because we see these
mighty creations at such a distance, and especially
above us, as if we were looking into the sky, that we
seem to follow them into the heights of space, — as
if they were a celestial vision of the primeval world.
Although Michel Angelo disliked his work here, he
recognized the appropriateness of the situation for
this class of subjects, and took advantage of it with
a never-failing instinct.
Critics have vainly attempted to discover a rational
or theological sequence in the paintings of the Sis
tine Chapel ; but their only sequence is that which
we find in the book of Genesis. The addition of
the Last Judgment twenty years later was a fortunate
circumstance which could not have been anticipated,
and the choice of subject was Pope Adrian's and
not Michel Angelo's. To begin at the very com
mencement of all things and reveal that beginning
palpably and in pictorial form — this was clearly
Michel Angelo's intention, and beyond it there was
no occasion for his venturing, for this was sufficient
in and of itself. In painting the ceiling, however,
he did not commence with the division of the
Heavens from the Earth, which is immediately
above the altar of the chapel and could be most
easily seen by persons entering at the door, but

The Works of Michel Angelo. 101
with a representation of the Deluge at the farther
end of the ceiling. That he did so to try his hand
at this new work, and to gain practice before he ex
posed his art in a conspicuous position, cannot be
doubted. It is equally certain that these first ex
periments are not painted with quite the same ease
and grace as the later ones. The designs are ad
mirable, but there is a sharpness in the folds of the
draperies and in the contrasts of light and shadow
which is noticeable, especially in the Deluge and the
Sacrifice of Noah as compared with the figures of
genii who serve as corner ornaments to those paint
ings. The figures in the Deluge are on a smaller
scale from those in the other ceiling paintings, and
it has been supposed that this was owing also to in
experience ; but it is doubtful if Michel Angelo could
have represented the subject so effectively with fewer
figures, and the larger the number of figures of course
the smaller they would have to be.
It is a scene full of life and energy, but quite as
impressive from its moral effect and the sympathy it
awakens, as for its dramatic realism. The flood has
already risen to the mountain tops and the ark, a
plain box-like structure, appears floating in the
middle distance, to which a boat load of refugees
are being conducted under Noah's supervision from
the top of a mountain. Others are climbing up the
opposite side, a struggling, desperate crowd, mostly
naked, carrying children or primitive articles of fur
niture. The chief among them is the charming
figure of a young mother, with a child in her arms,
and an older one clinging to her left thigh — an

102 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
attitude beyond measure exquisite. A cowardly
man is clutching the trunk of a tree in order to raise
himself above the others, but his support is being
blown over by the wind. Noah, with a long white
beard, stands calm, collected, and dignified; but
the dramatic effect is rather in mass than between
individuals, the wild action, for instance, of those
in the boat, which is in danger of foundering from
the clutch of drowning swimmers.
The Sacrifice of Noah : Michel Angelo has pre
served the same type of the Patriarch in both these
frescos, which in vigor of design, variety of action,
and dramatic interest surpass any of Raphael's
cartoons. In the Sacrifice Noah appears behind
the altar, and therefore diminished in figure, but
in every line expressive of earnest, unconscious
piety. A beautiful woman with foreshortened face
stands at his right, and his aged wife leans forward
on the left to whisper something in his ear; a most
admirable group. In front the sacrificers are per
forming their office. One is carrying an armful of
wood ; another sits astride a ram that has just been
slain ; and the third drags forward another ram, with
an ox appearing behind him in the background:
occupations which afforded Michel Angelo the finest
opportunity for an unconscious display of his power
in delineating the human form.
Added to these, the Drunkenness of Noah serves
to indicate the frailty of mortal character. He ap
pears in the last fresco more venerable, but in con
trast with this in the wholly undignified posture of
a man overcome by wine. Ham has withdrawn the

The Works of Michel Angelo. 103
covering from his father's body in order to make
his disgrace more painfully apparent, but Shem or
Japhet rebukes his brother for this, while, the third
brother lifts up the garment to replace it. The
picture is full of brilliant contrasts — lines that break
like waves against one another and harmonize in
their breaking — all toned down by the sweet auster
ity of Michel Angelo's nature. The figure of Noah
is drawn in a grand manner without being in the
least grandiose, and painted with exceptional soft
ness and delicacy. Although drunken he is Noah
still; and the beauty of his left arm and torso is
" like sweet strains or pensive smiles." Ham is dis
tinguished by an inferior and not very pleasant phy
sique, surmounted by a round, bullet-shaped head.
The group is relieved against a rocky ledge, similar
to that which appears in the London Entombment ;
good additional proof that the unfinished Entomb
ment was painted by Michel Angelo himself. At
one side of this a husbandman is digging with a
spade, perhaps to indicate Noah's culture of the vine.
The Almighty appears four times on the ceiling
of the chapel in his transcendent power as ruler of
the universe, and a fifth time in more human guise
in direct relation with mankind, as the creator of
Mother Eve. This was the most ambitious of all
Michel Angelo's efforts, and it is far from being un
successful. The impersonation of a great beneficent
force floating in the pure ether by a volition of his
own, or riding on the wings of the wind is expressed
with sufficient adequacy to fill our minds with won
der and admiration. Never was Michel Angelo's

104 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
mind more pure, never was he more absolutely him
self in his devotion to his subject, than in this
series of frescos which fill the first half of the Sistine
ceiling. In the first scene God appears in the act of
creating heaven and earth, nearly covering with his
figure one of the smaller compartments immediately
above the altar. His face is turned upward and his
arms raised above his head, as if he were in the act
of spreading the blue vault of heaven across the
empyrean. His robes encircle his limbs in a majes
tic swirl which gives the impression of swift and
energetic movement. He is borne through the air
by a superhuman volition, requiring neither wings
nor feet for locomotion.
In the second, larger division appears the Creation
of Light, represented by a large white semicircle
which the Almighty touches with outstretched hand
as he flies swiftly through space. A figure attired
in fluttering drapery, probably representing dark
ness, disappears before him like a cloud after the
gale, and three youthful spirits are partially hidden
in his mantle. This is the grandest of the series,
and if the superhuman has been adequately repre
sented since the time of Phidias, it is in this fresco.
The meaning of the next division is uncertain,
but it may refer to the creation of the moon and
stars, or to the separation of land and water. The
Almighty appears flying toward the spectator; a
variation from the preceding more in attitude than
in motive. His attitude, however, has a signifi
cance, for it introduces us to the next scene, where
we find Adam just waking to life on the edge of a

"IL PENSERO," by MICHELANGELO
( In Medici Chapel) Church of S. Lorenzo, Florence

The Works of Michel Angelo. 105
cliff which represents the earth. He is still too
weak to hold out his arm, which rests upon his
bended knee, as the Almighty extends his hand to
endow him with vitality. The design in this in
stance is largely imitated from the doors of Ghiberti,
but amplified and filled with a potent energy which
Ghiberti knew not of. The Almighty is attended
by a host of youthful spirits, who crowd within his
mantle and look out from it with faces full of joyous
devotion. The contrast between this group, so full
of elevated power, and the dreamy lassitude of
Adam's condition, whose attitude is like that of one
awakening from prolonged slumber, is the more
effective from its perfect naturalness. The figure
of Adam is typical of a strong, vigorous man, mus
cular without exaggeration, but his features though
pleasing are more characteristic than regular.
In the fifth division the Almighty appears in an
attitude of benignant authority, evoking Mother
Eve from Adam's side. Here he is less majestic
and more human, more like the Heavenly Father
of Ghiberti. Eve does not correspond to Milton's
expression, " the fairest of her daughters " ; but an
elegant gazelle-like figure of a woman would not
harmonize here with her surroundings. She is a
substantial matron, the fitting progenitor of the
human race during primeval conditions; and her
attitude of grateful reverence to her Creator is
simply feminine and beautiful. The drawing of these
scenes is so forcible and expressive that it seems as
if Michel Angelo's hand must have been guided by
a metacarpal instinct.

106 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
In the next large division are represented both the
Temptation of the Serpent and the Expulsion from
Paradise, filling the field with a well balanced com
position, whose arrangement is nevertheless un
studied and informal. Raphael could give an
appearance of naturalness to a formal arrangement ;
but Michel Angelo was not obliged to do this, so
naturally and informally did the conception of a
subject enter his mind. The present instance is an
admirable illustration of a perfectly balanced design
without the least effort for counterpoise. Eve ap
pears at the extreme right of the scene and also at
the left, but at some distance from the margin.
The tree is not exactly in the centre of the field,
and its branches extend over the left-hand upper
corner. The angel with the sword is placed slightly
above the others ; and yet these inequalities would
seem to be adjusted by a few simple lines of back
ground. Eve plucks the fruit with the assistance of
the scaly tempter, and offers it to Adam, who re
clines in a luxurious attitude beneath. In the Ex
pulsion Adam and Eve have the very aspect of
unhappiness, to which the attitude of Eve adds an
expression of deep contrition. This fresco brings us
again to the Sacrifice of Noah.
The guardian genii which Michel Angelo painted
at the four corners of the smaller divisions are among
the rarest of his creations. In no other subject per
haps does he seem so perfectly at home ; in no other
does the mystic fantasy of his nature find such
free expression. They number twenty in all; yet
every one has a pronounced individuality, an atti-

The Works of Michel Angelo. 107
tude of his own, and an expression of countenance
so original that we know we have seen it for the
first time, and for the last. What are they thinking
of there, what emotions have they, seated on those
square blocks of marble from which they can never
move ? What was Michel Angelo dreaming of
when he created them ? They are the children of
his fancy, — of the imagination of the moment, a
thought never to be recalled, never to be explained.
So much the more interesting and valuable. At
tached to the Sacrifice of Noah there is a youth with
almost classic features, resting partly on his left hand,
his right wrist upon his knee, his legs from the knee
down turned almost at right angles ; yet his attitude
has an ease and elegance that is fascinating; his face
is expressive of the noblest contemplation. Oppo
site to him there is another genius, twisted about so
that he looks over his right shoulder, and his left
hand rests close to the right hip. His eyes are
turned as if he beheld some strange phenomenon,
like a meteor or a volcanic explosion. They seem
to be supporting a large mirror between them. The
third on this division has raised his right arm over
his brow as if to protect himself from some missile,
or perhaps in apprehension of the approach of a
spirit more powerful than himself. His attitude is
like one engaged in combat, but it is evidently not
a combat of physical forces. Attached to the Crea
tion of Eve there is a genius of heavier mould and
almost Ethiopian features, bent over so that one
hand touches his feet, and the other, holding the end
of a mantle, rests on the top of his head. He looks

108 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
across the Chapel with an expression which seems
to correspond with his attitude, but the meaning of
it is an insoluble problem. They are the guardians
of the work of Michel Angelo, to protect it from
century to century against all that is vicious and
profane. At one of the angles of the Expulsion from Para
dise there is a genius loci with a huge cornucopia
over his shoulder filled with oak leaves and acorns,
an emblem of the Rovere family. He is the incarna
tion of merriment, with a humorous nose, and eyes
full of mischief and laughter. His hair, twisted into
large tufts, stands out from his head. His attitude
is in harmony with the rest. He resembles Shake
speare's Puck, and may be intended for the genius
of comedy.
At the farther corner of the ceiling there is another
genius loci, the most perfect and elegant figure in
the Sistine Chapel. He is an Achilles in form, and
a poet in contemplative beauty. He will remind
you of Byron, but he is much too fine for Byron.
The Apollo Belvidere seems poor to him. His
features are classic, noble, and dignified. He is
seated on a mat of braided rushes which rests on a
block of marble ; his left hand rests on his knee and
his hair is confined in a fillet. Who or what he is
we know not; but he may be intended for the
genius of tragedy.
In the four spaces left by the arching of the vault
Michel Angelo represented three subjects celebrating
the triumph of the Jews over their enemies: David
beheading Goliath, Judith carrying off the head of

The Works of Michel Angelo. 109
Holofernes, the execution of Haman, — and also the
worship of the brazen serpent. Of these the second
and third are more interesting than the others from
the nature of their subjects. It would be impos
sible to introduce a gallows sixty cubits in height
in such a painting, so Michel Angelo has represented
Haman crucified on the trunk of a tree, with his
arms nailed to its branches ; a heavy, coarse figure
without any redeeming grace, significant of his base
nature. On one side Mordecai appears seated at
the king's gate, and Esther, a fine type of Hebrew
beauty, conversing with him ; on the other, Haman
appears at table with Esther and Ahasuerus, and
Esther accuses him of his conspiracy against the
Israelites. Thus the story is told as simply and
more powerfully than in the Esther of Racine. The
dramatic action of the scene in which Esther accuses
Haman could not be surpassed for its effective real
ism. There would seem to have been a fund of
dramatic characterization in Michel Angelo which
found no sufficient chance to develop itself, and
except for these scanty remnants it would have
remained wholly lost to the world.
In Judith with the Head of Holofernes Michel
Angelo shows his dramatic power in the fewest
figures and simplest lines. The huge form of Holo
fernes lies decapitated on his bed, almost concealed
by the deep shadows. Outside the chamber door
Judith stands, holding his head on a platter, so
that an assistant may cover it with a cloth. No
faces are visible: that of Judith is nearly covered
by her raised arm, and the other woman's is turned

i io The Midsummer of Italian Art.
from the spectator. Their attitude and movement
are indicative of most profound secrecy, but at the
same time calm and deliberate. The sharpness in the
folds of her drapery may also have its significance.
Even more interesting than these grand illustra
tions from the first chapters of Genesis is the range
of prophets and sibyls round the border of the ceil
ing; for they possess that intellectual quality which
is the chief glory of Florentine art. No one could
better understand their nature than Michel Angelo,
for, like them, he had separated himself from man
kind and lived in loneliness in order to instruct and
elevate mankind. He also had sought wisdom in
the desert, and kept watch for the coming of the
eternal spirit. Rome was his desert, and the old
Hebrew prophets were his companions there. He
knew every one of them, and represented them with
the same fidelity with which he would have painted
the portrait of a friend. He threw himself into this
work with the zeal of a devotee and the passion of
a lover. The more perfectly human nature is de
veloped the more sui generis it becomes; and each
of these twelve figures has an individuality which
strikes us like a sudden peal of organ music. Their
special character is contemplative depth, but their
several individualities are expressed not only in form
and feature, but in the greatest freedom and variety
of attitudes. They have nowhere any trace of con
ventionality. Each prophet and sibyl is attended
by two spirits of inspiration in the form of beautiful
boys, to whom, although invisible to them, they are
listening attentively.

The Works of Michel Angelo. 1 1 1
The sibyls are a Graeco-Roman graft on the tree
of mediaeval Christianity. One has only to read
Dante's Inferno to discover how many such grafts
there were. His Inferno was the same Hades into
which Ulysses descended to inquire of Teiresias
concerning his journey. It is full of the monsters
of Grecian mythology mixed up with Christian
devils, and Minos, son of Jupiter, is the judge who
presides over them all, — apparently much more
than Satan, the true king of the realm of shades.
There was need of the sibyls to represent the strong
feminine element in Christianity, for the Jews,
though some notable women appear in their history,
did not, as a rule, feel an equal respect for the weaker
sex. Witness Solomon and his five hundred wives
as compared with the household of Pericles or
Cicero. Either of these seems to have been foreign
enough to Michel Angelo's sense, but a noble virago
(for such are possible) was a woman after his own
heart. Isaias : A front face turned to the right. He is
seated like the others, but his attitude and mantle
indicate mental activity. His left elbow rests on
the Book of Prophecy, and he seizes its leaves with
his right hand. The book is bound evidently in
Roman vellum. His head is not large, but com
pressed, and his beardless face shows long endurance
and self-denial. He is listening to the spirit, on
whose face there is a bright gleam of light. His
mantle floats off in a zigzag line illuminated at the
edge, suggestive of a flash of lightning.
Joel : A front face turned to the left. There is

112 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
a spirit on each side of him, one of them giving
directions to the other, but Joel does not hear it;
he is reading from a scroll stretched out between
his hands. His head is finely rounded like that of
a judge or governor: the prophetic statesman, such
as Burke or Sumner.
Zacharias : Seen in profile reading a book similar
to the one Isaias carries; a bald-headed man with
long, flowing white beard, noble and dignified. The
two spirits stand behind his chair with their arms
affectionately entwined about each other's necks —
a very beautiful group. These boy-spirits would
seem to be ah invention of Michel Angelo's, for I
cannot recollect meeting with them elsewhere.
They are neither cherubs nor angels, but pages who
carry the divine message.
Daniel : Leaning forward to the right, the head
of heroic mould, equally great in thought or action,
with a mass of wavy hair. The book lies open in
front of him, but he pays no attention to it. A
small spirit supports it from beneath or it would fall
from his lap. He is absorbed in his ideas.
Jonas has the place of honor, for he is directly
above the altar of the Chapel, and also above the
Messiah in the Last Judgment, but if we are to dis
criminate where all are excellent, he and the two
others are hardly equal to the first four.
No one who has entered the Sistine Chapel ever
forgets the Cumean Sibyl. She is the most enigmatic
of all Michel Angelo's creations, and, except his
Moses, perhaps the grandest. Her white head-dress
is so arranged as to give the appearance of a steel

The Works of Michel Angelo. 113
casque with the visor drawn up; and underneath
this is her dark face furrowed with age, care, and
character ; but so attractive ! Let it not be said any
longer that only youth and comeliness are beautiful,
for here is an old hag who is more fascinating than
Titian's Flora. Her herculean arm matches the
face, — a wonderful piece of painting which causes
us to reflect whether any woman could have such
an arm or not ; while the two boys stand gazing at
her lovingly.
The Cumean Sibyl looks as if she might have been
grandmother to Romulus and Remus. The Libyan
and Delphic Sibyls are Grecian, as they should be ;
and sufficiently refute the argument, so often ad
vanced, that Michel Angelo despised beauty and
would have nothing to do with it. He always sub
ordinated beauty to character, and was sparing of
the use of it, but where he could suitably unite the
two it appears so much the more conspicuous. The
Libyan Sibyl* has turned herself half-way round,
and has lifted the Book of Prophecy so high that
her face is outlined against its pages. Such an atti
tude affords the finest opportunity to display her
bare arms and shoulders, which are painted with an
ease and smoothness that is almost incredible. Her
features remind one slightly of the statue of David,
but are more regular, and perfectly feminine. You
have seen sometimes on a bright day how beautiful
the landscape becomes when a light cloud passes
* The Libyan Sibyl was the daughter of Epiphus and Cassiopeia.
She lived in a cave between the Mediterranean and the Great Desert.
The Erythrean Sibyl lived in like manner by the Red Sea.

1 14 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
over the sun. Well, the expression of her face is
very much like that. Her exquisite feet, and the
two boy-spirits whispering together in a corner,
complete this unrivalled picture. It is all the more
charming from the mystery which attaches to the
sibyl's attitude. What mental condition is repre
sented by this we cannot tell, and perhaps Michel
Angelo himself would have been unable to explain
it ; a passing inspiration, — " a feeling deeper than all
thought," which he could not afterwards remember.
There can be no question as to the meaning of the
Delphic Sibyl. The spirit of prophecy is upon her;
her eyes gleam with it, and her oval face is full of
light. It is rather remarkable that she is looking
toward the centre of the Chapel, and yet does not
appear to be looking out from the picture ; as hap
pens so often in portraits and groups of figures.
Her left arm crosses her breast as if to tear some
thing away from her. Every stroke with which she
is painted is intelligent and vital.
The Erythrean Sibyl is Roman again, and has an
arm like a gladiator ; but she has been very much
admired, and engravings of her are common, — al
though the plastic ease of Michel Angelo seems to
defy the engraver's art. Her face is in profile, and
her features of heroic mould.
There are from twenty to thirty pictures of the
ancestors of Jesus in the lunettes, but few people
have time or strength to study them after looking
at the larger and more important works on the ceil
ing. Yet they deserve consideration, if for nothing
else, to see how much variety can be introduced into

The Works of Michel Angelo. 115
a subject so often repeated. In some instances
Michel Angelo has represented a husband, wife, and
child ; in others two of these, or only a single figure.
We know too little about the ancestors of Jesus to
give them a tangible personality, with the exception
of Solomon, David, and one or two others. A
thorough knowledge of the Bible is essential to an
understanding of Italian art, but it must be a spirit
ual knowledge, — not merely a formal understanding
of the text. In the present case, however, the
text is all that we have to depend on. Jacob with
Rachel and Joseph are a fine patriarchal group, and
David is recognized, as usual, from his harp; but
Solomon does not appear anywhere, and instead of
him we have a woman with a distaff. The group
of Josias with his wife and child, however, shines
forth from among the rest like a star of the first
magnitude. This famous painting discloses a side
of Michel Angelo's nature which we could not have
suspected from any of the prophets and sibyls : and
that is pure and simple loveliness. We perceive at
once that the picture is too good for its subject, that
instead of Josias it ought to represent Joseph and
Mary and Jesus; and it is well enough to make this
change in our own minds with regard to it.
Such a work could only be accomplished under
the most favorable physical and mental conditions :
when we are at peace with the world and well bal
anced in ourselves. It is so perfect that, so far as
drawing and shading are concerned, it might be
taken as a standard by which even Michel Angelo
would often be judged unequal.

1 1 6 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
It is the ideal type of a family. The round frame
of the Madonna della Sedia adds to the homelike
tone which pervades the whole picture, and a similar
effect is produced by enclosing the family of Josias
in a triangular space which resembles a tent. We
all know what pretty groups are often formed in
tents, because the occupants are obliged to arrange
themselves with due regard to one another. The
sensible plainness of Josias is contrasted here with
the lovely faces of his wife and child. She is bend
ing towards the boy, who stands at her knee per
fectly nude. There is the same classic beauty in his
form that appears in her face, so that if they were
separated by the whole length of the Chapel, it
would be perceived nevertheless that they belonged
together. Her head-dress is in itself a work of art,
and helps to carry out the idea. Their expression
is that of spiritual expectation. Like the Madonna
della Sedia, it is a classic romance, a lyric gem (also
like the Book of Ruth), and the only one that Michel
Angelo painted. If it were in an accessible gallery
instead of being so lost, as it were, among a multi
tude of objects, it would become one of the most
popular and widely known pictures; for there is
nothing the world prizes so much as this kind of
art. An enamelled figure of a woman dressed in the
latest fashion might for some moments be mistaken
for a living person, but a statue, although perfectly
true to nature, never could be. So it is with the
frescos in the Sistine Chapel. Michel Angelo was
not an imitative, but a representative artist; as

The Works of Michel Angelo. 117
sculptors always should be. We do not find in him
those wonderful illusions such as Murillo and the
great Venetians sometimes achieved. There is no
such solid ground under Adam and Eve as the car
riers of Tintoretto's Golden Calf walk upon. There
is no such depth to his skies as enchants us in Mur-
illo's Immaculate Conception. The naked shoulders
of his Libyan Sibyl are smooth and soft as satin,
but they have not the similitude of flesh like that in
Titian's Danae. Yet we would not desire that these
paintings should be other than they are.
Michel Angelo's coloring has often been con
demned, but it seems to me particularly well suited
to the class of subjects in which he dealt. We do
not want to come too close to Adam and the old
prophets. They seem far off to us, and it is better
they should retain their antiquated look. For
this purpose nothing could be more conducive than
Michel Angelo's drawing; and his dull grays and
russets, bronze draperies, and olive greens — like the
tints of faded leaves — are equally effective. His
coloring was subordinate to his design, and evi
dently intended to harmonize with the architecture.
The gorgeous chiaroscuro of Correggio would be
wasted on them, and Titian's warm, sensuous tones
would have been still more out of place.
It was in the Sistine Chapel that Michel Angelo
first acquired the grandiose style by which he is
generally known. Here his personality took pos
session of him, and carried him onward with a pow
er which his acquired judgment could not resist.
Henceforth he drew, not according to an idea of

1 1 8 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
how things ought to be, but by an irresistible im
pulse which carried him he knew not whither.
When Carlyle's brother complained to him of the
peculiar style in which his French Revolution was
written, he replied: " You may think what you
please, but no other is possible for me." I believe,
in Carlyle's case, and Emerson's also, that they
could not have written otherwise than as they did.
It was the same with Michel Angelo. We may
think what we please of this peculiarity of his, but
it was only through this that he attained his freest
and most complete development. It was only thus
that he could give full expression to the great pic
torial ideas within him. Isaias and the Cumean
Sibyl contain more than the David and the Pieta ;
they are the David and the Pieth with the addition
of an unknown quantity, and it is in the solution of
this new problem that we find the highest pleasure.
It is a part of the mystery which underlies the con
sciousness of mankind.
This grandiose style should be carefully distin
guished from the muscular mannerism into which
Michel Angelo frequently lapsed during the latter
part of his life, and which may be traced to a wholly
different cause. It is not necessary to suppose that
there is any exaggeration in it. I have seen a
Turkish porter whose arms were as large as those of
the Cumean Sibyl, though not nearly so handsome.
He said that there were many like him in Turkey.
The mediaeval custom of fighting in steel armor
had developed men physically to an extent of which
we now meet with few examples. Michel Angelo

The Works of Michel Angelo. 119
liked such powerful figures. They have the solidity
of sculpture, but not the coldness of marble: they
are warm and instinct with the pulsations of life.
There is one of the genii, with a strange-looking
cap on his head, whose eyes seem to follow the vis
itor from the time he comes in till he goes out again,
and will perhaps haunt him for days afterward.
No wonder the old Pope was impatient. He
was draining out the very dregs of life, and his
physicians thought that only his determined will
still carried him through the routine of his office.
In November, 15 12, he officiated in the newly
decorated Chapel for the first time, and we can im
agine what a dignified occasion it must have been
for him. In spite of all expectation, he still held
out for fifteen months longer; when Italy lost her
ablest defender and Michel Angelo his best patron,
— and, if he had known it, perhaps also his best
friend. The frigid neglect with which he was re
ceived at the court of Leo X. may have forced
Michel Angelo to this conclusion. The successor
of Julius was a luxurious dilettante, to whom Michel
Angelo's frankness and rugged sincerity were not so
pleasing as they might have been to a nobler nature.
The current had turned in another direction.
Raphael ruled everything during the reign of Leo
X., and Michel Angelo, after working for some time
on the monument of Julius II. (finishing the two
Captives at least), was relegated to Florence to
construct a facade for the Church of San Lorenzo,
and from thence to Carrara to superintend the quarry-

120 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
ing of marble for that purpose. His correspondence
with Sebastian del Piombo, in which the latter makes
some keen criticism of Raphael's work and proceed
ings, throws a brighter light over this period than
most other portions of his life. Sebastian wished
the Pope would allow them a camera in the Vatican,
for which Michel Angelo could draw the designs and
he himself would do the painting; but Leo was too
shrewd to permit this direct competition between
Michel Angelo and Raphael, which could only result
to the disadvantage of the latter, — for Sebastian was
also a better colorist than any of Raphael's assist
ants. He offered Sebastian one of the chambers
occupied by Alexander Borgia, and Sebastian de
clined it. This peculiar partnership, however, was
not without important consequences in the history
of Italian art. THE RAISING OF LAZARUS.
A somewhat faded picture in the National Gal-
ery records the friendship between Michel Angelo
and Sebastian del Piombo and their united opposi
tion to Raphael. It was painted at the height of
the Raphael craze and does not appear to have at
tracted the interest it deserved at the time it was
finished, though Sebastian wrote to Michel Angelo
that those who spoke with him concerning it es
teemed it superior to Raphael's cartoons. There
were, no doubt, cool-headed and sensible judges not
carried away in the general current of adulation for
' the Prince of the Synagogue." When in good

THE LIBYAN SIBYL," by MICHELANGELO
Sistine Chapel, Rome

The Works of Michel Angelo. 121
condition it must easily have surpassed any of the
cartoons. The traditional notion that it was painted
in direct competition with Raphael's Transfiguration
is one of the myths of Italian art history ; for the
Transfiguration still remained unfinished at Ra
phael's death and we may judge from Sebastian's
letters that the Raising of Lazarus was completed
before that was begun. The comparison with the
cartoons would seem to be sufficient evidence of
this. Michel Angelo's drawing was as much superior to
Raphael's as the skill of Raphael's brush was superior
to Sebastian's. Nevertheless Sebastian was a fine
colorist and had an excellent chiaroscuro. Although
he was unable to do full justice to Michel Angelo's
design, their composite picture in its pristine condi
tion must have been one of the most magnificent oil
paintings of the sixteenth century. The plain truth
fulness of Michel Angelo's drapery alone gives it
the advantage over the ill-suited grace of the group
of disciples and the epileptic boy in the Transfigura
tion ; but no design of Raphael's contains such
varied attitudes, such strongly characteristic faces,
animated, surprised, or serious, as the occasion re.
quired. Christ stands on a marble step and with a
majestic motion of his hand seems to raise Lazarus
from the earth by some inscrutable power; while
the father and mother still kneel in supplication be
fore him. Lazarus, still in a torpid condition, looks
dreamily toward the Saviour, and plucks at his
bandages. His figure is powerful enough for a Milo,
but not inappropriate. St John, with a spiritual

122 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
face, exchanges glances with another disciple at the
right hand of Jesus. The trunk of a giant tree, ap
parently an oak, rises up behind the group, and be
yond this there is an unrivalled Roman landscape
containing a river arched by a bridge, houses and
ruins, far-off hills, and a far-off roll of illumined
clouds in the sky. The contrast between the grand
physique of Lazarus and the spiritual majesty of
the Saviour is more than effective; as also that
between the man who presses eagerly to observe
the result of the miracle and the woman who starts
back in holy terror from the spectacle. Again we
revert to the magnetic figure of Christ, the noble
earnestness of his face, and the beautiful lines of
his drapery.
Of a wholly different character from the preced
ing, but most nearly related to the Captives of the
Louvre, is the Apollo made for Baccio Vallori and
now in the Bargello at Florence. Yet it is dis
tinguished from them by a well denned though
graceful accentuation of the muscles; for in the
Captives the muscular system is barely perceptible.
The statue is less than the size of life, Hellenic with
out being godlike, and the head still remains un
finished. He is in the act of drawing an arrow from
over his right shoulder, and his head is turned to
the left in order to favor this movement. The right
foot is raised upon a stone and the centre of gravity
falls under the left heel; as in the Venus of Melos.
His limbs are beautifully modelled, and the attitude
is easy, graceful, and charming; but there does not

The Works of Michel Angelo. 123
appear to be any further intellectual depth of motive.
The statue is allied in the naivete" and unconscious
grace of its action to the Diadumenos of Polycleitus.
It is slightly feminine in figure and might easily be
mistaken for an overgrown Eros.
Grimm speaks of the Christ Triumphant in the
Church of Sta. Maria sopra Minerva at Rome as the
first of Michel Angelo's statues or paintings which
suffers from mannerism. It suffers more perhaps
from the clumsy elaboration of his assistants, to
whom he entrusted it, after finishing the head and
leaving the limbs fairly blocked out. This was
Raphael's common method of procedure, and per
haps Michel Angelo thought, if all the world was
cheating, he might do a little also. At all events it
is the only instance we know of in which he adopted
this method. If we are to believe Sebastian del
Piombo, Michel Angelo placed the work in charge
of an untrustworthy fellow who attempted to im
prove on his master's design after the statue had
been transported to Rome. Having accomplished
this mischief the sculptor, whose name was Frizzi,
took to gambling, so Sebastian states, and went
very shortly to the devil.* Exactly in what way
Frizzi modified the statue we do not know, but it
would be hardly fair to class it among Michel
Angelo's genuine works, especially as he offered the
Roman gentleman who donated it something better
in its place. It is interesting, however, as the first
instance of a type of Christ which he afterwards
* Symonds' Life of Michel Angelo, i., 363.

124 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
adopted in the Last Judgment. It is a develop
ment of the pagan rather than the Christian idea of
spiritual power; and the face, at least as we have it
now, certainly does not wear a religious expression.
What Michel Angelo seemed to have attempted in
this instance was the incarnation of an irresistible
will. MICHEL ANGELO'S " SLEEP."
The Dream of Life by Michel Angelo, a black-and-
white study in the National Gallery, would seem
like an afterpiece to the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
It is so strongly saturated with the personality of
the man, and also so enigmatic as to produce some
thing like a feeling of repulsion. A naked woman
of sibylline aspect is seated on a box containing a
collection of masks. Her hands are extended to
her left side, and rest upon a large globe which ap
pears to represent the earth. An angel descending
from above in a rather grotesque attitude applies a
trumpet to her ear, and her face wears an expression
as of one listening to important information, — admir
ably portrayed. The background is filled with clouds
in which various scenes from human life are repre
sented in a partial and dreamy manner. A man is
seated behind a table as one might see him at a
tavern. Above him another is drinking out of a
flask. Another, more shadowy, has his arms about
the neck of a shadowy woman : others are fight
ing and struggling together. One is bent over, with
his bald head almost between his knees. Faces

The Works of Michel Angelo. 125
and heads appear amid the clouds with various
expressions. This composition has been miscalled. The naked
woman in it is intended for a goddess, and her name
is, — Sleep. She rests her arms upon the globe be
cause sleep takes possession of all things that have
life ; and she is seated on a box of masks because
the hypocritical faces which people wear in the day
time have to be laid aside when they go to rest.
The clouds and dreams are her attendants, though
she does not cause them, and though she makes
others unconscious she is thoroughly awake herself.
If she were not awake there would be no rest, and
mankind would perish. By the angel with the trum
pet, Michel Angelo would seem to indicate his belief
that divine messages come to us in our dreams, and
his figure is twisted because these messages take an
indirect or enigmatic form. The originality of this
allegory is not exceeded by that of the design in
which it is expressed, and the perfection of its details,
even to the mantle of Sleep which lies upon the box
of masks, is in harmony with the general conception.

THE CHAPEL OF THE MEDICI.
The Emperor Charles Fifth has received credit
for a great deal of magnificence which did not belong
to him. He inherited, by the fortunate decease of
relatives in the families with which he was connected,
a vast political possession, which was increased by
the skill and good fortune of his regents while he

126 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
'was still in early years. Afterwards, when he under
took the direct management of affairs, he made
numerous blunders, and showed himself as unskilful
a diplomat as he was a superficial statesman. He
possessed certain personal virtues which seem in
tended by nature to cover such deficiencies.
The battle of Pavia made him master of Upper
Italy, although it was a success gained by German
troops while he was in Madrid. This induced him
to revive the ancient Ghibelline claim to the sov
ereignty of the whole country. The Pope, of
course, attempted to resist this. It was now Cle
ment VII. who was in the chair; another Medici,
but not more judicious than Charles himself. It
was a desperate position for Clement to be placed
in, for material forces he had none, and the German
heresy had shorn him of his spiritual terrors; so he
concluded an alliance with Francis I. and Henry
VIIL, who were both at odds with Charles, but
equally unable to render assistance. The sacking
of Rome by a Protestant and Spanish army followed
soon after; Clement was humiliated, and after a
siege of nine months in the Castle of St. Angelo, he
acknowledged the imperial pretensions on condition
that the Medici should be forcibly restored to Flor
ence and become hereditary dukes of Tuscany.
This plan agreed well with the emperor's political
notions. Wherever Charles set his foot, it was to
crush out local independence; and the mischief he
did in this way is incalculable. Like many another
narrow-minded ruler he supposed he was increasing
the royal authority by centralization. So he did,

The Works of Michel Angelo. 12 J
for the time being; but true political force, like all
other forms of strength, requires exercise, and in
order to have healthy exercise there must be some
object of resistance. The government of Charles
and his son Philip might be compared to a man who
is stimulated by brandy. It showed surprising vigor
for a time, but in less than a century collapsed most
pitifully, and not only ruined Spain and Italy, but
the royal family also.
It will be remembered, moreover, that those
countries in which the arts have flourished most
luxuriantly — that is, Greece, Italy, and the Nether
lands — have enjoyed the maximum of local inde
pendence ; and that when they have lost this their
art declined also. Charles V., however, for a man
of active intelligence, cared little for art and litera
ture. After having admired Giotto's Campanile
and having his portrait painted by Titian, he
troubled himself no further in regard to either of
them. The restoration of the Medici as a line of
hereditary dukes brought the school of Florentine
art to an untimely end. The coincidence at least is
a suspicious one.
Such was the political background while Michel
Angelo was carving the. statues for the Medici
Chapel in the Church of San Lorenzo. That it
appeared to him, as it does to us, we may feel sure
from his active participation in the defence of Flor
ence, and from the verse which he afterwards at
tached to his statue of Night : " Sleep is grateful
to me, and it is better to be of stone, so long as
shame and dishonor continue with us." This was

128 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
the most unsatisfactory portion of Michel Angelo's
life ; so much so that it affected his physical condi
tion, and his friends in Florence became anxious lest
his health should give way beneath the strain. The
Duke of Urbino was justly indignant for the delay
in completing the monument of his uncle Julius II. ,
and yet it was not in Michel Angelo's power to
help this.
Superintending the excavation of marble in the
Apennines was not suitable work for such a man,
though he must have enjoyed some wonderful sun
sets there with those tender, all-perceiving eyes of
his. Leo X. ought to have appointed him architect
of St. Peter's; but Leo evidently disliked him, and
the building progressed little during his papacy.
The great block of marble in Florence, a companion
piece to the David, which Michel Angelo wished to
carve into a Samson, was awarded to Bendinelli,
whose Hercules and Caicus is at the same time its
own criticism and that of the sculptor who made it ;
if we had not already Cellini's satirical commentary
on both of them. Altogether it was the most dis
couraging period of Michel Angelo's life, and it was
unavoidable that the works he produced at this time
should have a notably subjective cast.
The statues for the Medici Chapel were not yet
finished when the siege of Florence came to disturb
the customary avocations of its citizens, and make
a wide breach between their past and their future
lives. It is well known that the Day and Evening
have never been completed, and various reasons
have been suggested for this. Some have supposed

¦ISAIAH," by MICHELANGELO
Sistine Chapel, Rome

The Works of Michel Angelo. 129
that he left them unfinished because he knew not
what the day would bring forth to Florence ; whether
it would be a day of rejoicing or of servitude. This
is not in accord with the prodigious fertility of
Michel Angelo's invention, and his faculty for
creating new forms and faces. It would seem more
likely that after the catastrophe of the siege he lost
his interest in the work. It is true he returned to
it for a time, but not long after peace had been
established he went to Rome and never saw Flor
ence again. There is a sentence in Condivi's biog
raphy of Michel Angelo from which we may judge
that he feared the resentment of the Duke Alessan
dro, who was an illegitimate Medici, well known to
be cruel and vindictive.
Before considering these noblest works of modern
sculpture, I feel how inadequate must be anything
that I can say of them.
In order to enter into their conception from the
very germ, we should remember that in Italian day
and evening are masculine, night and morning
feminine. To Anglo-Saxon ears night and day are
now scientific abstractions, but to the mediaeval
Italian they possessed a personality such as a ship
does to a sailor, and the moon has for our poets.
We immediately recognize Thorwaldsen's concep
tion of Night as a winged angel with a sleeping child
at her breast, and an owl flying at some little dis
tance; but Michel Angelo's figure of a sleeping
woman is a sleeping enigma to the general traveller,
and she is nothing more. " What a profound slum-

130 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
ber she is in!" said a cultivated lady, standing
before the two heroic figures. This in itself is won
derful enough, for it is not in the least like the sleep
of death, and the statue seems alive from her brow
to her feet. As the modulation of the limbs of the
Venus dei Medici shows that she is standing on the
ground by an act of her own will, so the statue of
La Notte expresses her own mental condition, and
every muscle in her body and limbs has an activity
which corresponds to that. She sleeps, she dreams,
but it is not a dream of innocence and peace. It is
the sleep of sorrow which Michel Angelo has given
us here, and it is that which impresses us so pow
erfully — as realism never could.
Similarly in his Morning he has represented the
awakening of grief. Her limbs and body express
the languor of the first few minutes of consciousness ;
but her face is a tragedy. Admirers of Michel
Angelo have condemned this statue as being too
realistic, but it is only the realistic basis, here as
in the Night and the 77 Penseros above, on which
he raises a superstructure of Shakspearian sentiment.
This might be Roman Lucretia awakening to the
last sad day of life. In Calderon's Alcade of Zal-
amea, Isabella, the worthy compeer of Desdemona,
says: " Oh, never might the light of day arise and
disclose to me my shame ! O fleeting morning star,
would thou mightst never yield to the dawn that
now presses on thy azure skirts! " Such may have
been the conception of a goddess mourning for the
woes of her favorite people, — the children of the
morning land.

The Works of Michel A ngelo. 1 3 1
The features of Night and Morning are sufficiently
alike to carry out the supposition that they were
intended for sisters. The Medici, of course, under
stood the suffering and sorrow — if any of them were
capable of appreciating it — as a tribute to the un
timely death of their relatives Lorenzo and Juliano.
So also Michel Angelo may at first have intended
it, but as events developed he and his fellow-citizens
associated it more and more with the subjugation of
Italy. The two statues may even have represented
to him the fate of Florence and Milan.
How is it that these statues, which are not much
larger than life, appear so grandiose ? They are
not men and women, but gods and goddesses. If we
should stand on the shore of a desert island and see
far out a boat approaching, rowed by a single per
son, whose regular energetic strokes seem to be
those of a man, and yet on nearer approach we dis
covered that it was a woman, and on still closer ob
servation we discovered that she was of unusual size,
and that her features, though large, were refined
and regular, we should certainly believe that she
came from an unknown land, and feel the same sen
sation, though of course more vividly, that we do
when we enter the Medici Chapel, and find ourselves
in the presence of the Night and Morning.
How has Michel Angelo succeeded in producing
this effect ? Why is it that the gigantic David
looks to us like a youth, while the Night and Day
seem almost colossal ?
Complaint has been made that the statues are too
large for the sarcophagi on which they rest, but I

132 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
believe this is exactly the effect which Michel Angelo
intended for them. There is something in their atti
tudes as if they were accustomed to ample spaces.
We might even fancy them reclining on the roof of
St. Peter's. Then they are devoid of anything like
prettiness. If we compare the Morning, for in
stance, with the Venus of Milo or the Venus of the
Capitol, we perceive instantly a wide difference be
tween her proportions and the conventional standard
of feminine beauty. The breasts of the Venus of
Milo have a graceful curve, but those of the Night
are more like rude hillocks, and yet the statue is
finished everywhere with incomparable nicety.
There is an expression also in the brow suggestive
of unusual force. No man ever fell in love with a
woman of such an aspect. The Greek sculptor who
became enamored of the statue he had made would
not have had such a thought in the presence of
Michel Angelo's Night.
Their nudity is becoming to them and adds to the
sense of their grandeur. They have no need of
clothes as a protection from either heat, cold,
modesty, or deformity.
The unfinished Day tempts our curiosity to know
what lies beyond his owlish countenance. He is
rising up as if he would tear the building into pieces
in his might. This movement throws the muscles
of his side, especially the serratus magnus, into relief
and produces an undulation on the marble which re
sembles ripple marks on a sea-beach. His twin-
brother Evening is more nearly finished, and is like
an enigma to us, which we know we could guess if

The Works of Michel Angelo. 133
we only had more light concerning it. He seems
to be enjoying that relaxation after exercise which
only the strong can know.
The house of Medici has been extinct for an hun
dred and fifty years, but it was not until the spring
of i860, about the same time as the nomination of
President Lincoln, that a new day dawned for Flor
ence as the capital of United Italy. It was a short
and by no means glorious day, however, for it came
to an end with the occupation of Rome ten years
later. If Michel Angelo made answer to the man who
complained that his statues of Juliano and Lorenzo
de' Medici were not good portraits, that in one or
two hundred years nobody would care how those
two Medici looked, he proved himself a prophet.
We do not care a straw how they looked. The
statue of Juliano, at least, called // Penseros has
long since passed out of the region of portraiture.
It has become the ideal of contemplation, and so
completely is this effect forced upon us that we
begin to feel dreamy from gazing upon it a few
minutes. His suit of plain mediaeval armor increases
this effect. He is a soldier who is resting himself
after battle, to reflect on the mystery of life and
death. There are few works of art which so impress
their mood on the spectator.
Before the publication of Grimm's Life of Michel
Angelo it was supposed, even by Italians, that this
statue represented Lorenzo the Magnificent, and the
one opposite, his brother Juliano, who was killed in

134 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
the conspiracy of the Pazzi. An American writer, *
who looked upon the old Lorenzo as the betrayer of
Florentine liberty, thought he discovered something
dark and sinister in the expression of his face. How
gratuitous this was may be judged from the fact
that the face still remains unfinished, but few people
discover this, because it is so much overshadowed
by his helmet ; and in addition this particular Juliano
(for there were three or more of them) was a most
harmless and inoffensive person, who suffered much
from ill-health, and perhaps deserved this monument
for his quiet heroism. No less improbable is the
tradition of Savonarola adjuring the old Lorenzo on
his death-bed to restore their liberty to the Floren
tines. Lorenzo could not very well restore what he
had never deprived them of, and Savonarola knew
politics too well to enact such an absurdity. Lor
enzo was the Florentine Pericles, who held the first
place in the republic by general consent; and if he
had lived to finish his career he might have rivalled
Pericles in fame, who was more distinguished in
peace than war. All the Medici were fairly good
men, with the exception of Alessandro, who was of
doubtful extraction on both sides. There is scarcely
a crime or an act of injustice attributed to any other
member of the family, and they were, as a family,
the most munificent and intelligent patrons of art
that the world has seen. It would be an injustice
to attribute sinister motives to them, or wanton
ambition for power.
* Hillard's Six Months in Italy : an interesting and in many
respects excellent book.

The Works of Michel Angelo. 135
It is quite possible that the statue of Lorenzo the
younger was a true portrait of the man, for that
could be the only excuse why Michel Angelo should
have created such an ill-favored object. He is
adorned with a suit of Roman armor like that of
Augustus Ccesar in the Vatican, but more highly orna
mented. This, however, only makes his ill-shapen
head, sharp visage, and long sinewy neck more con
spicuous. He is reported to have been a brave
soldier, but a man of intellect he could not have
been. Yet his air of alertness is fine, and, taken as
a portrait, we cannot but admire it. Though in no
sense an ideal, it has a certain representative char
acter, and the two statues together might pass for
Action and Contemplation.
Unfortunately, it is also the first of Michel An
gelo's works which suffers from mannerism. The
muscles of Lorenzo's arms and chest are distended
like those of a man who is swinging on a bar. Not
even a pugilist in full training would have such
an appearance while in a sitting posture. What
he may have intended by this has never been
explained. Donatello, John of Bologna, Verrocchio, and other
Italian sculptors of the fifteenth century are equal,
if not superior, to their rivals of the brush and palette,
but they do not attract nearly so much attention;
and the reason for this is that their statues are too
closely draped. If you ask a party of tourists who
have just returned from their first visit to Italy what
mediaeval statues interested them, they will surely
reply, besides the Moses and Night of Michel An-

136 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
gelo, Cellini's Perseus and John of Bologna's Mer
cury, both of which are entirely naked. The beauty
of a statue is always more in the attitude than the
expression of the face, and clothes interfere with
this to a great degree. Michel Angelo fearlessly
broke through the prudish conventionality of his
predecessors, and it was thus that he accomplished
such grand results. No one could make better
clothes out of marble than he, but he always avoided
them, if possible.
What comparison shall we make between Michel
Angelo's sculpture and the finest Greek work ?
He certainly brought to his subject a deeper
philosophical consciousness, and a greatness of de
sign, only equalled by Phidias and Lysippus; but
in technical perfection, in the perfect command
over framework and muscle, he falls short of the
Aphridite of Melos, and when we come to the work
of Praxiteles a still deeper gulf yawns before us.
For the art which is nature and the nature which is
art, the modern world has nothing in sculpture
which can compare for a moment with the Hermes
of Olympia. In 1865 Grimm spoke of the Aphrodite
of Melos as the noblest statue ever created by man,
and yet the Hermes of Praxiteles surpasses it tech
nically by several degrees. This is so evident that
no one thinks of disputing the fact. The first prin
ciple of the Greek was to secure perfect symmetry
of design; and to that end he struggled and fought
with his subject until he obtained a pose which
agreed with this condition. Symmetry, however,
Michel Angelo cared for as little as he did for per-

The Works of Michel Angelo. 137
sonal beauty; and though his statues are never un
gainly or ill-proportioned, they lack that charm of
figure which in the Hermes, the Ares of Lysippus,
and many others seems almost to justify their exist
ence of itself. Neither did Michel Angelo with all
his study of anatomy, which often appears too much
upon the surface, possess such a command of the
external figure of man as the best Greek sculptors,
who are not supposed to have been acquainted with
anatomy in a scientific manner. They knew, how
ever, where all the muscles lay and the effect that
would be produced on them by different attitudes
and movements. Michel Angelo also knew this,
but it never seems to have become a second nature
to him as it did to Scopas, Praxiteles, and Agesan-
der. Whereas the paintings of the Sistine Chapel
were accomplished with great facility, his statues
bear evidence of having been wrought with labor
and difficulty.
This difference between ancient and mediaeval
sculpture, which is to the advantage of the Greek,
may be expressed by what we understand by the
word comeliness. The statue of Morning has beauty
of form, and the Night has a serious kind of grace,
but they are not comely as the sculptured youths
and maidens on the bas-reliefs of the Parthenon are
comely. To have made them so might have inter
fered with Michel Angelo's design for these mighty
creations; and yet it did not interefere with the
majesty of Pallas Athene, or the grandeur of the
Phidian Zeus. There is the same peculiarity in
the hair of his David, beautiful as a wreath of vine

138 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
leaves ; in the beard and arms of his Moses ; and if
there is an exception to this in his works it is the
child Jesus at Bruges. It is even lacking in the
kneeling Cupid at South Kensington, which was his
earliest statue. Two artists may draw the same
face so that it will excite our admiration, and yet
one drawing may possess a pleasantness which the
other does not. To imitate the Greek is impossible,
and it would have been the last thing Michel Angelo
would have thought of; but Cellini and John of
Bologna approximated more closely to it. The in
fluence of the monasteries on Italian art is just per
ceptible in Michel Angelo's work.
What he surpassed the sculptors of Hellas in was
maturity of consciousness. The " Know thyself "
of Socrates, enlarged under Christianity to the whole
human race, was ripened to thorough self-knowledge,
which is the basis of both Michel Angelo and Shak
speare. This gave them the superiority in elevation
of thought, depth of feeling, and genuine power.
Hellenic art is like a beautiful maiden unconsciously
rejoicing in her purity and loveliness. The art of
Michel Angelo has the charm and potency of a
mature woman, who attracts us more by her feminine
wisdom, wit, self-possession, and fine sympathies
than from her personal appearance.
The effect of the Sistine Chapel is plainly visible
in the Medici Chapel. Michel Angelo's statues be
come more and more pictorial. His David, for
instance, can be looked at with advantage, and its
action determined, from almost any point of view;
and Raphael sketched it, by preference, from a po-

The Works of Michel Angelo. 139
sition some thirty degrees behind the left shoulder ;
but the statues of Night and Morning can only be
seen favorably while we are standing in front of
them. The expression of the Aurora, particularly,
can only be made out within a range of perhaps
fifteen degrees from a certain point. 77 Penseroso
and the statue of Lorenzo, however, permit a much
wider field of observation. In fact, Michel Angelo
has here carried his attitudes to the very limit of
the sculptor's art, and even, like Goethe in the
second part of Faust, passed beyond them with suc
cess. While we admire his daring, we need not
condemn his method, for the position of the statues
against the wall renders them exempt from a wide
range of observation. Not that they appear in any
way defective, if viewed from all points of the
compass, but it is only in front that they become
quite intelligible to us. This is the reason why
Ruskin complains that Michel Angelo used his
chisel like a brush. THE LAST JUDGMENT.
Michel Angelo lived through the reigns of a dozen
or more popes, and yet among these only two,
Julius II. and Paul III., can be said to have fully
appreciated him. If it had not been for Julius and
Paul the works of Michel Angelo might not be as
scarce and widely scattered as those of Leonardo,
but they would certainly have been diminished in
extent ; and we should have had no Moses, no Sis
tine Chapel, nor probably such a magnificent dome

140 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
on St. Peter's Church. The selection of a pope
also depends on chances which are no more to be
calculated than the appearance of a comet, and in
the present case Paul obtained his appointment as
cardinal through a scandalous intrigue of Alexander
Borgia's, and his election to the papacy by a shame
less deception.
Paul belonged to the Farnese family, and had
long cherished the purpose of having a Last Judg
ment painted above the altar in the Sistine Chapel.
Such a design does him great honor, though other
proceedings during his pontifical career cover him
with an equal degree of shame. He was one of
those strange moral productions of the time, vibrat
ing continually between elevated thoughts and the
basest actions.
It was some centuries since the papal chair had
proved a comfortable seat for a virtuous man.
There had come to be a contradiction in the nature
of the office which required a person of dubious char
acter to correspond to it. The best of the cardi
nals rarely aspired to the position. Julius II. was
an exception, but even of him we do not think
with the same feeling that we do of Gustavus Adol
phus or William the Silent. Paul III. was the typi
cal pontiff of the century, much more than Julius or
Leo ; an able administrator, and magnificent patron
of art, but crafty, avaricious, indulgent to his favor
ites, and wholly unscrupulous ; a strange mixture of
the epicure and Jesuit. Though not religious in his
own nature, he respected religion, and wished to
maintain the dignity of the Church.

The Works of Michel Angelo. 141
When we speak of Italians with elevated inter
ests and great conceptions leading immoral lives,
it is the Romans chiefly that we refer to. They
were, in fact, the same they always have been
since the days of Catiline and Clodius. Whoever
has read Cicero's oration for Aulus Cluentius, with
its long catalogue of social enormities, will recognize
its similarity to the life in Rome of the sixteenth
century. The few touches which Dante gives us of
it in the thirteenth century come to the same effect.
In the carriages that drive to the Pamphili gardens
you may still notice faces that will horrify you, as
we are horrified at the marble busts of Agrippina,
Vitellius, and Caracalla at the Capitol. In all coun
tries there are people who lead a double life, who
are full of noble sentiments, and commit base actions,
but nowhere does this take place on the grand scale
as formerly in Rome.
Michel Angelo was now sixty years of age. A
strong man is in his prime at fifty, and at sixty his
vigor will not be very much diminished ; and yet we
cannot expect of him to possess the freshness and
spontaneity of youth. Our best American critic
said in apology for Froude's Life of Carlyle, that it
rarely happened that the style of a writer was so
good at sixty, as it might have been ten years earlier.
Habit, which is the safeguard of old age, is also its
weakness, tending always to a mechanical mode of
thought and action. Of the other Italian masters
Titian painted some great pictures late in life, but,
with one exception, they were destroyed by fire,
and those by which he is generally known were pro-

142 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
duced before he was forty-five. Tintoretto's Para-
disc, painted after he was seventy, cannot, however,
be surpassed for freshness, vigor, and originality.
Michel Angelo's Last Judgment is also a chef-d'
oeuvre of the highest class, in spite of some deficien
cies, and perhaps the greater of the two.
Every one knows the torso of Hercules in the
centre of the Belvedere, which has been called
Michel Angelo's master. In point of workmanship
it is scarcely inferior to the Venus dei Medici, and
belongs to the same class of statues as the Apollo
Belvedere and the Laocoo'71 ; not the purest Hellenic
art, and yet like the plays of Euripides it contains a
prophecy of the modern world. It has the sort of
self-consciousness of a school-boy who knows he is
making a good declamation. We have already no
ticed Michel Angelo's predilection for massive
figures ; and he had himself a herculean mind. We
can readily believe that this torso attracted him
strongly. He was always studying anatomy, and
for that purpose it was almost equal to a human
body. Its influence on his drawing in the Last Judg
ment is undeniable ; and it may possibly account for
the unnatural muscularity in his statue of Lorenzo.
Besides this mannerism of the pencil there is also a
business-like way of shading the figures in portions
of the Last Judgment, which betrays mannerism of
the brush. Sometimes these two are found together,
as in the figure of St. Bartholomew, and in other
places they appear separately. They need not,
however, disturb our enjoyment of the picture,
which is simply a grand composition. The lack of

The Works of Michel A ngelo. 1 43
comeliness in it can hardly be considered a fault,
any more than the lack of elegance in some of
Shakspeare 's plays.
I once saw a flock of sea-birds so large that they
obscured the sun, which was then about an hour from
setting. If we imagine an early spring morning, when
we think the sun has been obscured by clouds, and
find instead of clouds or sea-birds, that it is avast con
gregation of human figures, we shall realize the effect
which I think Michel Angelo intended to produce
here. How far he succeeded in this it is now impos
sible to know, for the lower portion has been badly
smoked with candles and frankincense, and the whole
coloring has become dull and dingy. Michel Angelo
was never a master of chiaroscuro ; and yet when the
colors were new and fresh, and harmonized with the
ultramarine which is now so discordant, the effect
must have been much more vivid and nearer to an illu
sion. The Saviour and many others about him are
seated or standing on clouds, and the light comes
from beneath, where the earth is represented by an
irregular ledge, as in the Creation of Adam. The gen
eral effect now is like a storm-tossed sea of men and
women in every possible or conceivable attitude.
The effect of the painting as a whole is different
from that which results from a study of its separate
parts. Many of the figures taken by themselves
are ungainly in appearance and grotesque in attitude,
but at the same time they serve to prevent a too
monotonous and regimental aspect in the assembled
multitude. The grouping is very remarkable, for it
repudiates all suspicion of preconceived design ; and

1 44 The Midsummer of Italian A rt.
those who have attempted to plant trees so that they
will seem to have grown up naturally know that this
is not an easy matter.
The more incredible an event might be the better
the mediaeval Christians liked to believe in it. The
early founders of Christianity were not prudent in
this respect, for what is accepted dogmatically, even
for centuries, is sure to be questioned at last, and
then if it is not found to be logical it vitiates with
suspicion whatever is directly connected with it. A
belief in the immortality of the soul necessitates an
immediate judgment in every human being after
death. If this judgment is divinely just it must also
be irrevocable. Why therefore should there be
another judgment at a later time, for which souls
are summoned even from Heaven, and compelled to
rehabilitate themselves in their ancient bodies, which
have long since disappeared and been transformed
through a hundred chemical processes. It might
happen in this way that parts of the same body had
come into the possession of different individuals. A
knowledge of the physical sciences is not required to
reason this out, but that did not occur to the Alex
andrian doctors. They satisfied themselves, as
Dante tells us we should be satisfied, and not trouble
ourselves too much about what we cannot under
stand. We wonder what Paul III. and his wicked old
cardinals thought of the matter ; what sensations
they had when they first ranged themselves before
Michel Angelo's awful picture, and if they really
feared that they might be called to account some

LAST JUDGMENT, by MICHELANGELO
Sistine Chapel

The Works of Michel Angelo. 145
time in that manner. Did Michel Angelo himself
believe in it ? and what were his reflections on religion
and immortality during the seven long years that he
spent on this work ? That would be worth knowing
if we could only discover it ; but he went his way in
silence, and the grave does not give up its secrets.
It evidently seemed veritable to his imagination.
The wall being a parallelogram has two loci or
centres, and in the upper one Christ is seated on a
cloudy throne, contrasted from all other figures by
his majesty and power. The light seems to come
through the cloud behind him, as if the sun were
hidden there. This effect is not so decided as it
might have been, and probably was formerly, but
there can be little doubt of it, for the light breaks
out above under the two round arches, and also at
the extreme right, exposing a group of figures of the
elect in the strangest attitudes. A choir of angels
sounding the clang of doom with long slender trum
pets occupy very nearly the lower centre ; a group
as animated as that of the bathers in the cartoon of
the Palazzo Vecchio. One of them is resounding
in the ear of a sinner who is falling from above.
Realism itself is put to shame on the left side,
where the graves are yawning, and skeletons sitting
up seeking for their dissipated flesh. One of them,
who may be intended for Orpheus, has already seized
a lyre, although his bones are not yet covered.
Others lie on the ground in a lethargic condition,
not able as yet to disengage themselves from
mortality. As you will see a flock of birds rise from a field

146 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
and after wheeling in the air settle upon a tree, so
the resuscitated bodies go upward in a mighty con
course, and after circling about light on the clouds
on either side of the judgment-seat. This move
ment carries them out of the picture on the left hand,
but they reappear above in great numbers. The
ascending movement is unmistakable : they do not
look like falling bodies. Some go up in a slanting
position as if their feet were lighter than their heads.
Others are being assisted by angels, and others still
cling to those next them as people do when they are
afraid of falling. Never before did Michel Angelo
reap such a harvest of interesting attitudes.
Every age and condition of life is represented
here. There is no distinction of place or rank ; for
the lack of clothing reduces all to the same level.
Those on Christ's right hand (the spectator's left)
would seem to be waiting their turn for judgment,
while the group on Christ's left, in which there is a
number of well-known saints, evidently contains
those who have received a favorable verdict. In the
two round arches above angels carry aloft the cross,
the column, the scourge, and crown of thorns. They
cling to these instruments of the martyrdom with a
tender and loving devotion, rejoicing in their holy
association. Their faces are full of rapture and
earnestness. They are not so beautiful as Tin
toretto's angels, but have a nobler and more mascu
line expression. They are boldly drawn, and yet
with much dignity. The marble column seems so
heavy and solid that we are apprehensive lest it fall
on the heads of those below.

The Works of Michel Angelo. 147
Michel Angelo, like Professor Agassiz, evidently
considered the wings of an angel as an anatomical
absurdity. There is no fall of the damned like that in Rubens's
magnificent picture at Munich ; but below the
assembly of the elect there are seven personages,
representing the seven cardinal sins, being dragged
down by demons with cloven feet and urged down
ward by angels from above. In the lower right-hand
corner is seen the river Styx, and Charon with a
boat-load of sinners, whom he is landing on that joy
less shore whence hope departs forever. Demons
with rams' horns and very large teeth assist Charon
in emptying the boat, while Minos, the infernal
judge, in the likeness of the unfortunate Biagio da
Cesena, stands grinning to receive them.
The attitude of the Saviour is a conventional one,
and is supposed to have been taken from the Last
Judgment at Orvieto by Fra Angelico. The use of a
conventional form by Michel Angelo was like pour
ing " new wine into old bottles," and here he has
infused such life and energy into the figure as often
leads to a misunderstanding of the action personified.
The right hand upraised to show the print of the
nail has been mistaken for a gesture of wrathful con
demnation, and his left arm pointing to the wound
in his side suggests a motion as if to repel the
anxious spirits who crowd around him.
That the attitude might be interpreted in this
manner is not to be doubted, but a glance at the
face of Christ dispels the illusion. He has not the
aspect of an angry judge, but of calm, dispassionate

148 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
majesty, and his face is turned with royal recogni
tion to the group of disciples and martyrs who press
eagerly toward him as if they were saying, " Behold,
Lord, it is we who salute Thee " ; and Christ replies,
"You see also by these tokens that it is I." This is
the more elevated explanation, and more after the
manner of Michel Angelo. Although the most
notable of reformers in art, he could not always
escape from conventionality.
If he adopted the attitude of Angelico's Saviour,
the face and figure are at least his own, and no artist
since has dared to imitate them.
The prevailing types of the Saviour, at the present
time, do not vary so widely but that we readily dis
cover who they are intended for, without even a halo
or a crown of thorns. In the sixteenth century it
was quite otherwise. The Christ in Titian's Tribute
Money, that in Raphael's Transfiguration, and the
one in Michel Angelo's Pieta could not well be classed
together. Superior to all of them is the glorious
head of Christ in Leonardo's Last Supper, as we
know it from his studies and Morghen's engraving;
but that half-feminine, spiritually submissive, and
sympathetically suffering face would hardly serve for
the enthroned Messiah in the judgment-seat of
Heaven. At least Michel Angelo thought so, and
the result has justified his opinion.
His Saviour vies in figure with both Hercules and
Apollo. It is slightly mannered and may be con
sidered too muscular, but it is a magnificent concep
tion. The head is the noblest ever imagined by
artist, ancient or modern ; a Napoleonic face crowned

The Works of Michel Angelo. 149
by a wreath of hair in graceful and luxuriant fes
toons, almost like a wreath of vine leaves, and an ex
pression in which all passion and suffering have been
subdued to a majestic calmness, — not the calmness
of indifference, but of eternal love. " Nothing,"
said an eminent thinker and theological scholar,
" ever gave me such an insight into the mind of
Michel Angelo as the Christ in his Last Judgment.
I know from that what kind of a man he was."
Omniscient in wisdom he judges the multitude
assembled before him, and by an effort of the will
assigns his place to each. The Olympian Zeus
seems weak in comparison with him.
The figure of the Virgin looks slight beside her
mighty son, and her face seems rather narrow, but
that is owing to the turn of her head, and the way in
which her kerchief is tied over it. It is a more
feminine face than the Delphic, as beautiful as the
Libyan sibyl ; a face very tenderly human, and of
one too long acquainted with sorrow to exult in the
hour of triumph. She is looking down at the swarm
of resurrected souls, and shrinking back in a human
and natural manner from their near approach.
Not far from Christ, on his right hand, there is a
huge, ungainly figure with pointed nose and beard,
his eye rolled up at the Saviour with awe and expecta
tion ; behind him is a woman seizing his arm as if to
draw him out of the way. He is almost too realistic
for a sacred picture, and who he can be intended for,
unless St. Christopher, I cannot imagine, but the
greatest writers also introduce such unpleasant
characters in their works. He may have a favora-

150 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
ble effect on the whole composition, but he is not
required for contrast.
The St. Christopher of Jan Van Eyck in Berlin
would appear to advantage in its place.
Just at the feet of the Virgin there is a plain-look
ing fellow with a short ladder in his hand ; his dull
expression and narrow brow nevertheless bespeak
courage and fidelity. We suppose that he is the Ro
man soldier who offered Christ the sponge of vinegar.
The group of saints and apostles on the Saviour's
left have not a decidedly saintly aspect, but look
much more like strong men of affairs. Michel
Angelo may have been near the mark in this, for if
Luther and Servetus had been painted among them
they would not have appeared out of keeping with
the rest. St. Bartholomew sitting astride of a small
cloud at Christ's feet looks as if he might have once
been an Archbishop of Canterbury. St. Peter is
conspicuous before all others ; a great figure and
powerful head, to balance St. Christopher on the
other side, but much more interesting. Close beside
him there is another noble head, more thoughtful
and refined, which Michel Angelo's Scotch biographer
thinks must be St. Andrew, but it is evidently in
tended for St. John the Evangelist. Above these
two, holding out his hand in a gesture of admiration,
is an ideal face of Roman type which must be in
tended for St. Paul. He has the grace and charm of
an orator, expressed in form. Below, St. Catherine
is seen with a section of her wheel, St. Simeon
Gelotes with his saw, and St. Sebastian with his fist
full of arrows. Here the postures become more and

The Works of Michel Angelo. 1 5 1
more original, and all that one can say is that saints
have a genius for remarkable attitudes. Yet their
positions are easy, if not graceful, and they do not
appear theatrical or affected.
Above this group an assemblage of the elect
stretches far away out of the picture. Here we feel
indeed the reality of Paradise, and can say, with
truth, " Blessed are the pure in heart." The princi
pal light falls on the figure of a woman whose face is
not beautiful according to the classic standard, but
she is like that character in Dickens's Christmas story
who made people happy wherever she went. On
one side of her a wife hastens to kiss the husband
whom she lost so very young ; and on the other
Damon and Pythias fall into each other's arms. A
noble, philosophic head, much like Fra Angelico's
St. Paul, is listening to the earnest discussion of a
young man too much concealed for our recognition.
Perhaps this is intended for Plato, for, as Dante says,
the Saviour took many with him when he went to the
Inferno after his crucifixion.* Nearly in front are
two servant girls painted to the life, who are looking
at Christ with such expressions of astonishment as
are customary with persons of their class. Beyond
and above the line of heads a pair of hands is raised
in prayer; and near by a leper, or some unfortunate
creature to whom life on earth has been a curse,
is timidly raising his eyes to see whether he is
really in Paradise or not. In the arch above two
* Though Dante also mentions meeting Plato in the first circle of
Hades, Michel Angelo would not hesitate to resurrect him if he
thought Plato deserving of it.

152 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
childlike figures are flying so close to each other as
to seem almost like one person. I think they may be
intended for Francesca da Rimini and her lover; for
it says in the Inferno, that their condition after the
judgment shall be better than before.
When we reach the top of a mountain we like to
recognize those objects on the horizon with which
we are acquainted ; and so it is in studying the char
acters of a great historical painting. We recognize
them as if they were old friends.
Charon's boat-load and the Seven Cardinal Sins
are the best painted portion of this immense work,
and are so represented as not to be especially re
pulsive. Some of the cardinal sinners are descending head
first, and others turning over and over in an inex
tricable whirl of bodies and limbs, with the demons
who are clutching them. The one nearest the Sav
iour is being dragged by her feet and has covered
one eye with her hand, and her face has such a woe
begone expression as no actor could excel upon the
stage. Anger is the first cardinal sin, and this may
have been some woman who brought about great
misfortunes by her bad temper. Another is seen
falling at quite a distance with a most lifelike
expression of hopeless dismay.
With Charon's boat we come upon Dante's ground,
and find that Michel Angelo has adhered closely to
the legends of the poet. In the third canto he says :
" Charon the demon, with eyes of glowing coal
beckoning the shades, collects them all; smites with
his oar whoever lingers." He does indeed smite

The Works of Michel Angelo. 153
them as if he would reduce them to powder. He is
a world-terrible demon, and is the first object that
attracts attention on entering the chapel. His eyes
are lurid ; and his lips are leather. Those in the
front of the boat are forced out of it by the others
pushing behind. They are seized and hurried off
by demons. A demon with wings (the only instance
of this anomaly) and with a skull like an iron pot, is
flying off with a sinner on his back. Here we have
every example of turpitude, not too forcibly ex
pressed. We recognize the bad companions whom
we could not escape from at school and in college,
and who have long since disappeared in the state
prison or other congenial abode. The foremost one
is a young city fop, with banged hair, such as one
might have seen a few years since on Fifth Avenue
or the Boulevards.
During the middle of the last century when Eng
lish travellers were obliged to purchase their own
carriages at Calais to cross the continent in, some
marvellous tales were brought back from Rome and
Venice, and among them that Michel Angelo had
painted the portrait of a cardinal of dissolute life in
his Last Judgment, and represented him in the coils
of a huge serpent ; that the cardinal had appealed
to the pope for redress, and that the pope considered
it too good a joke to be interfered with. This anec
dote is referred to by Sterne in Tristram Shandy, and
on my first visit to Rome I heard it myself from
persons who had recently visited the Sistine Chapel.
The true explanation of it may be found in the fifth
canto of the Inferno, where Dante says :

154 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
" There Minos sits horrific, and grins ; examines the
crimes upon their entrance ; judges, and sends according
as he girds himself. I say that when the ill-born spirit
comes before him, it confesses all ; and that sin-discerner
sees what place in hell is for it, and with his tail makes
as many circles round himself as the degrees he will have
it to descend." *
It is the tail of Satan's judge that has been mis
taken for the folds of a serpent, but the least accu
racy of observation would have discovered from his
pointed ears that he was a demon and not a sinner.
Minos, it will be observed, was part of the Hellenic
element introduced into Catholic Christianity. In
the present instance his tail is wrapped twice about
him to show that the city fop is destined for the
circle of carnal sinners ; which is what we would
expect. It was Biagio da Cesena, the master of
ceremonies, whose physiognomy Michel Angelo in
troduced here, because he condemned the Last
Judgment as an indecent painting.
In this vast composition there is nothing acci
dental, nothing superfluous. It is a mighty cataract,
a Niagara of pictorial ideas, and almost overwhelms
the observer. Measure it we cannot, and after study
ing it we leave the Vatican as much fatigued as if
we had walked the circuit of Rome under the walls
of Aurelian and Honorius. THE PAOLINA.
Few persons enter this musty old chamber which
contains Michel Angelo's two last paintings, the Con-
* Dr. John Carlyle's translation.

The Works of Michel A ngelo. 1 5 5
version of St. Paul and the Martyrdom of St. Peter.
They were magnificent subjects for him, and we can
only regret that they were not consigned to him
earlier in life. They were painted when he was over
seventy, and his advanced age is supposed to have
occasioned the extreme severity of their treatment.
Michel Angelo never smiled ; but here he approaches
nearly to the lugubrious. The concourse of heav
enly spirits, which is gathered above the riderless
horse of St. Paul, reminds one of the speech of
Fabius Maximus : " Let us leave to the Tarentines
their angry deities." Yet they deserve more con
sideration than they often receive, even from the
admirers of Buonarotti ; although they do not add
much to our previous knowledge of him.
MOSES.
The Esquiline Hill is one of the seven hills of
ancient Rome which were all included within the
walls of Servius Tullius. It is still the oldest portion
of the city, for there may be seen, cropping out in
places, the diamond-patterned brickwork of the
Roman republic, which was removed from the
greater portion of Rome by the improvements of
Augustus and the conflagration which happened in
Nero's reign. After we have passed the palace of
the Quirinal and the Rospigliosi, the houses become
continually smaller, meaner, and more dilapidated,
and their inhabitants more unkempt and banditti
like; until at length we see the stupendous wall of
the Coliseum looming up in the valley beneath us,
and know that we have reached the limit which

156 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
divides the city of to-day from the ruins of the past.
There, just at the top of the Esquiline, is a small,
antiquated church in the basilica style, plain enough
without, but beautiful within, from the simple state
liness of its two rows of gray marble columns; and
on the right hand, just before we reach the altar,
suddenly, with astonishment, we come upon the
Moses of Michel Angelo. Of all works of art this
produces the strongest impression, and although we
may try to resist it, and disparage and condemn it,
we cannot help feeling the effect of it. It is super
human ; and if no such personage existed in primi
tive ages he is at least in accordance with our ideas
of that time, and we are confident that such a man
might have been. He is so much alive that the
statues in the Vatican seem spellbound in com
parison. As we gaze on it all the wonders of the world are
suggested to us. The grandest events in history
float before the mind. We think not only of the
Pyramids and Mount Horeb, but of Salam is, Socrates
in his cell, Hannibal crossing the Alps, the Roman
law, the victory of Constantine, Strasburg Cathedral,
the death of Gustavus, Rossbach, and Washington
at Valley Forge. For all heroes and heroism are
akin to this eldest of heroes, whose laws were the
foundation of all law, and whose influence is as
keenly felt to-day as Shakspeare's or Luther's.
This is what Michel Angelo desired to represent.
The David was the youthful hero, wrought in his
own youth; Moses, the mature hero of his later
years. He was forty years at work upon this statue,

The Works of Michel Angelo. 157
and though he was blamed in his own time, and
even now by some writers, for not keeping his con
tract with the Duke of Urbino with regard to it, we
may rest assured that it was not from indifference
that he neglected the work, but because the inspira
tion did not come to him, — that is, he did not see
his way clearly how to finish it. Neither should
we blame him for his unwillingness to relinquish an
undertaking in which he felt so profound an interest.
He could have well afforded to return the ten thou
sand florins which had been paid him in advance ;
but in that case we should never have had the
Moses, nor Julius II. a worthy monument. On the
whole, Michel Angelo seems to have acted in this
matter like an honest and sensible man, who con.
siders the interest of his patrons better than they
know it themselves. He was, beside, continually
interrupted by the commissions of different popes,
who looked on the genius of Michel Angelo as part
of the papal inheritance.
Here we stand before the primeval man ; and if
we penetrate to Michel Angelo's radical conception
of the subject we shall find it based on a solid
foundation. Moses is the earliest authentic charac
ter in history, and he lived in an age when only
physical force was respected, or moral force when it
was supported by physical. Yet, morally and intel
lectually, he was the peer of Schiller and Emerson,
or even their superior. The early Hebrews were
not like those savage tribes that now encumber the
earth, and among whom there is no civilizing pro
gress. Neither was Moses like the Sultan of Turkey,

158 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
who has some external cultivation but is a barbarian
at heart. Now is not this the idea which Michel
Angelo has attempted to express ? We have a face
of the noblest intelligence united with the highest
degree of physical force.
Yet we do not trace the influence here of the torso
in the Belvedere. It is no statue of Hercules, but a
wholly different form of strength. Moses led the
Hebrews through the Red Sea and across the
deserts of Syria. He was a great pedestrian ; and his
lower limbs, like those of the Alpine climbers in
our own day, were developed somewhat at the ex
pense of the rest of his physique. The same may
be noticed in the graceful statue of a runner scrap
ing his arm with the strigil, which is in the first
camera of statuary in the Vatican. It has been
complained that the calf of the leg of Moses is
nearly as large as his head ; but if this be an exag
geration, it is only a slight one, as any one who
visits Chamounix in summer will readily discover.
A statue in a sitting posture requires that the limbs
should be developed to the full limit to prevent
their looking insignificant. It was customary among
painters to draw their seated figures somewhat longer
in proportion than those who were standing about
them. So, also, the arms of Moses are not like
those of an athlete, but have a style of their own,
which is repeated again in the folds of the mantle
thrown across his lap. The erectness of his head,
the power of his eye, the firm position of the feet,
and resolute air indicate the lawgiver and shepherd
of his people.

The Works of Michel Angelo. 159
It says in Exodus, chap, xxxiv., that when Moses
descended from Mount Sinai with the tables of the
law, his face shone so brightly that the children of
Israel were afraid of him, and he was obliged to put
on a veil before they would come near him again.
We, too, have seen men whose faces were illumi
nated after communing with the Lord, but not to
the same extent. A curious piece of mediaeval
mythology arose from this circumstance. In Exo
dus, chap, xxxiv., the Hebrew word qaran, which
meant originally horned or pointed (and it is uncer
tain which was the earlier use of it), came after
wards to be applied to the darting beams of light at
sunrise and sunset, and so finally to mean radiant
or shining, and was translated by St. Jerome in the
Vulgate, or Latin Catholic Bible, as cornuta ; so
that the 29th and 30th verses ran thus =29. " When
Moses came down from Mount Sinai he held the
two tables of the law, and knew not that his face
was horned " * ; 30. " Aaron and the Children of
Israel, looking on the face of Moses, saw that it was
horned and feared to approach him." f
Moses was accordingly represented in this man
ner, even in the time of Tintoretto's Paradise;
though it would seem as if a suspicion of its incor
rectness had already taken root in the fifteenth
century, for the Moses in Fra Angelico's Trans-
* 29. Cumque descenderet Moyses de monte Sinai, tenebat duas
tabulas testimonii et ignorabat quod cornuta esset fades sua ex con-
sortio sermonis domini.
f 30. Videntes autem Aaron et filii Israel cornutam Moysi faciem
timuerunt prope accedere.

160 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
figuration has something above his ears very much
like painters' brushes, more likely to have been
intended for rays of light than for solid horns.
Tintoretto has represented him in the same manner.
Michel Angelo could not, of course, represent this
in marble, and therefore returned to the earlier
tradition. In this case the horns have had a deter
mining effect on the whole physiognomy, and it
may be suspected that Michel Angelo moulded the
features of his Moses from an unconscious recollec
tion of some Greek divinity with horns, probably a
statue or bust of the god Pan. It is this that gives
a slightly faun-like expression to the countenance,
noticeable in the full sensuous lips and the contour
of the eyebrows.
The beard of Moses is the one enigma of Christian
art. Such long silky curls might have grown on the
head of a woman, but never on the face of a man.
Vasari praises the softness and fineness of the hair,
but neither he nor Grimm makes any attempt to solve
the mystery. Was it some strange imagination
which came upon the artist and took possession of
him like a prophetic rapture ? There are Roman
representations of Jupiter with a beard divided
into thirteen curls or ringlets, and this has an arti
ficial appearance, and is not much like the natural
growth on the chin of Moses. Here Michel Angelo
has certainly surpassed himself in boldness and
originality. The hair on his head is not less remarkable for its
fineness and the gracefully vigorous disposition of
its locks. It is only in the Moses that Michel An-

'MOSES," by MICHELANGELO
In Church of S. Pietro in Vincolo, Rome

The Works of Michel Angelo. 161
gelo has equalled the finest Greek treatment of hair.
Notice especially its arrangement about the right
ear, and where it comes in contact with the beard.
This of itself is a marvel of artistic skill. So this
artist, who disliked to make use of clothes, could be
the most admirable of tailors when the occasion re
quired. The way in which he has wrought the
sandals and leggings is inimitable; yet he could
only approach and not equal the drapery of the
Hermes of Praxiteles. What firmness there is in
that marble knee; and his right foot planted on
the ground as if an earthquake could not move
it !
All else yields, however, to the expression of the
face, which is radiant with moral power. Moses
has descended from the mount with the tables of
the law in his hand, and sees before him the proces
sion of the Golden Calf. The unknown writer of
Exodus says " he waxed hot with wrath," and this
is the moment which Michel Angelo has chosen for
his statue. Yet it is not any conventional type of
indignation, but one sublimated by religious enthu
siasm. The difficulty of giving a work in marble a
decided facial expression is well known. That of
the Hermes and of the Ares Ludovisi and a few
others are exceptional among antiques; but here
we have one that could not have been excelled on
canvas by Titian or Raphael.
To him who has been forty years in the wilder
ness, or even ten or twelve, the Moses of Michel
Angelo is a consolation beyond all speech; and I
envy not any one, either as a man or an artist, who

1 62 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
can stand before it now and talk of the weakness of
exaggeration. ARCHITECTURE.
It is a mistake to suppose that Michel Angelo was
the originator of Roman Renaissance, though he
gave it the most complete development, and it de
serves to be associated with his name. He paid
little attention to architecture until after middle life,
and his first work, the sacristy of San Lorenzo at
Florence has never been greatly admired. The
Farnese palace at Rome was begun by San Gallo
and completed by Michel Angelo with slight devia
tion from the former's plans. His two principal
works in this line are, therefore, the dome of St.
Peter's Church, and the Capitol (on the same spot
where Caesar was assassinated), with the two palaces
on either side of it. If the origination of Roman
Renaissance belongs to any one man, it is Bramante,
who was older than Michel Angelo, and set his mark
on St. Peter's while the latter was chiselling on the
statue of David.
Michel Angelo's architecture is chaste, dignified,
and impressive, but also somewhat dry and unin
viting. This last quality is not to be laid to his
charge, but to the time in which he lived. The re
vival of classic forms in architecture was a great
advantage, but it brought with it the conventional
Greek and Roman ornamentation to the exclusion
of the more vital and diversified mediaeval forms.
The charm of Greek and Roman architecture con-

The Works of Michel Angelo. 163
sists in its fine proportions and simplicity, which
were suited to that time, but when we apply the
same principles to the more elaborate conditions of
modern life, they are not always sufficient to cover
the subject. It is like the difference between sculp
ture and painting. That color and the imitation of
natural forms, after having once been introduced
into architecture, should have been excluded from
it again, was like returning to the mask and cothur
nus of the ancient actor. If Shakspeare had pre
scribed for his plays the law of the four dramatic
unities, he could not have done himself a more
serious injury than the builder who limits himself to
the five orders of architecture. The world had
already seen enough of triglyphs, Ionic volutes, and
fluted pilasters ; and people came to that conclusion
not long after Michel Angelo's death.
It is partly for this reason and partly because it
has been so extensively imitated that his architec
ture seems to lack originality. When we stand on
the Capitoline Hill beside the equestrian statue of
Marcus Aurelius, we are reminded of Trafalgar
Square in London. The woodwork in the hall of
the Grand Council at Venice is evidently imitated
from the Medici Chapel at Florence ; and the im
aginary architecture painted on the ceiling of the
Sistine Chapel has been developed to noble propor
tions in the hall of a railway depot at Boston.
The library of San Lorenzo long remained un
finished from the hope of the Medici family that
Michel Angelo would return to Florence and com
plete his work there. At length, being pressed for

164 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
an explanation of his plans in regard to it, Michel
Angelo wrote to Vasari as follows :
" There is a certain stair that comes into my thoughts
like a dream ; but I do not think it is exactly the one
which 1 had planned at that time, seeing that it appears
to be but a clumsy affair; I will describe it for you here
nevertheless. I took a number of oval boxes, each about
one palm deep, but not of equal length and breadth.
The first and largest I placed on the pavement at such
distance from the wall of the door, as seemed to be re
quired by the greater or lesser degree of steepness you
may wish to give to the stair. Over this was placed
another, smaller in all directions, and leaving sufficient
room on that beneath for the foot to rest on in ascend
ing, thus diminishing each step as it gradually retires
towards the door; the uppermost step being exactly of
the width required for the door itself. This part of the
oval steps must have two wings, one right, the other left.
The steps of the wings to rise by similar degrees, but
not to be oval in form."
These are the words of Michel Angelo ; and how
close they bring us to him and his methods of think
ing. His plan in this instance was not adopted,
but such staircases are now to be seen in all parts
of the world.
It was as appropriate that Michel Angelo should
design the dome of St. Peter's as that Napoleon
should make an end of the French Revolution. It
is not only the largest of all domes, but also the
most elegant. Michel Angelo might declare that
he was unable to surpass the work of Brunelleschi,

The Works of Michel Angelo. 165
but the dome of the cathedral in Florence seems
almost rude and antiquated compared with St.
Peter's dome. The difficulty is to find a suitable
point from which to view it. The dome of St.
Paul's, seen from Temple Bar or Aldersgate Street,
looms up grandly through the London fog, and the
dome of La Salute in Venice, an inferior work in
itself, owes much to its fortunate position ; but you
may drive from the Piazza Espagna to St. Peter's
Church without seeing hardly a glimpse of its dome
at all, so narrow are the streets and lofty the inter
mediate buildings. The Pincion Hill is too far away
from it for us to fully realize its size, and the view
of that side of the church is much injured by the
proximity of the Vatican, — a huge, amorphous
building, whose sole artistic merit is the beautiful
yellow travertine of which it is constructed. The
best places to see it are from the vicinity of the
Doria Pamphili gardens, and from near Words
worth's stone pine; but it is also worth the effort
to climb to the roof of the church, where the fine
proportions of the dome, the cornice, and its mould
ings can be studied to advantage. Many years ago
a frail and spirituelle American lady was wont to
ascend to the roof of St. Peter's several times every
winter, as she said, to behold the work of Michel
Angelo. The interior effect is not so impressive as it might
have been if this world-genius could have lived to
complete the whole building. In fact, the ornamen
tation of the facade of St. Peter's would seem to
have been calculated to make the church look as

1 66 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
small as possible. It is not to be compared with
the simple grandeur of the Pantheon, which after
nineteen centuries still continues to be the noblest
piece of architecture that Rome contains.
The Piazza del Popolo is as homelike and interest
ing as the Piazza of St. Peter's is dreary and grand
iose. The Egyptian lions spouting water in the
centre of the square, with the donkeys drinking at
the fountain; the ox-teams, with their picturesque
drivers; the pretty contadinas; the orange-woman
with her golden hoard ; the gracefully terraced as
cent to the Pincion ; the dignified entrance to the
Corso; and the gate of Michel Angelo with its twin
churches on either side, — what is the elegance of
Paris or Vienna compared with such a picture as
that ?
Michel Angelo designed the Porta del Popolo and
it has his massive strength and originality, but it
would not attract much attention without the dis
tinction of his name. While it is appropriate to its
surroundings and faultless in detail, it lacks some
thing essential to give it a charm, and we feel that
Michel Angelo might have imagined a better de
sign. It cannot be compared with San Michele's
marble gate at Verona, and the old turreted gate by
the pyramid of Cestius is more impressive, — perhaps
on account of its warlike character. The two yellow
travertine churches are not gems of architecture,
but their proportions are admirable and they deserve
to be remembered.
Drive through the Corso and observe the palaces
on either side : then stand in the quadrangle of the

The Works of Michel Angelo. 167
Capitol and consider if any of them surpass the
work of Michel Angelo. The Farnese Palace may
and perhaps others. The Barberini certainly excites
more admiration; and so do the Strozzi and Pitti in
Florence. It was a bold architect, and a successful
one, who designed the Pitti Palace. I think the
front of the Doge's Palace, with its glorious stair
case, surpasses them all. The two palaces on the
Capitoline have nothing like its beauty ; but of this
we may be assured, that they will never grow old
and out of style, and if we could return to Rome
fifteen hundred years hence we should like them as
well as we do now. It is their universality which
makes them admirable.
We wonder also if it was Michel Angelo's design
that placed the statue of Aurelius there, and if he
knew what sort of a man Aurelius was. Thus do
the really great shake hands across the centuries;
sometimes without knowing whose palm it is they
grasp. 1 ' Ever the wise of all ages and nations
Nod to each other, and smile, and agree."
All the great virtues, such as sincerity, fidelity,
chastity, forbearance, and self-devotion, as well as
some smaller ones, may be learned of Michel An
gelo, but especially this, — in what manner attitude
is explanatory of character. A skilful diplomat
will detect the insincerity of his opponent by the
inclination of the head, or some movement of the
hands, while the face is composed to an open and
innocent expression. Much more important is it

1 68 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
to be able to recognize true greatness when we
chance to meet with it, and distinguish it from that
false coinage of pretension which circulates so readily
in this heedless world. To recognize the hero and
prophet when they come ; to learn to distinguish the
man through the disguises of gentleman or peasant,
— that is the lesson which Michel Angelo has left to
us to study.

THE EVOLUTION OF RAPHAEL
IT would seem as if Nature, dissatisfied with the
caprice of Leonardo and the wilfulness of Michel
Angelo, wished to try her hand again, and
moulded an image in some respects superior to
either. Few travellers visit the city of Raphael's birth,
and yet there is no more enchanting portion of Italy.
It is a peaceful country, and the clouds drift lazily
across the sky, casting shadows upon the low Um-
brian mountains as they did when Tityrus reclined
under the spreading beech, and tuned his slender
pipe for a serenade to the gentle Amaryllis. The
hills seem to sleep in the sunshine, and man is so
contented that he thinks not of life or death. One
would suppose that in his youth Raphael had drunk
in the aspect of this country until he became the
living expression of its tranquillity and repose.
If character predominated in Michel Angelo, and
intellect in Leonardo, temperament was the corner
stone of Raphael's nature. His disposition was so
pleasant that it captivated every one that came near
him, as we sometimes notice among women who
169

170 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
nevertheless are not remarkable for their beauty.
Such attractive persons tread a dangerous path,
until experience has instructed them to avoid the
allurements of their fellow-mortals; but Raphael
was not more amiable than generous and self-forget
ful. He had that true disposition of the poet which
" loves another's song more than its own singing."
Admiration and flattery might rumble round his ears
but they never touched his heart. In his master's
studio at Perugia, in the most distinguished society
of Florence, and in the noontide splendor of the
papal court, Raphael was always the same modest,
unpretending, and self-possessed person. This was
a quality which neither self-denial nor self-control
could have given him. It must be born in a man
once for all.
Susceptible as an artist always must be, he seemed
to possess a talisman to distinguish those influences
which were beneficial from those which were in
jurious. Impassioned and ardent as few men have
ever been, he always loved with moderation and
selected his friends with good judgment. He loved
his art so well that even the most refined pleasures
could not distract him from it; neither was he so
ambitious as to endanger his health by over-exertion.
His moral nature was so finely balanced that ambi
tion and duty were almost the same to him. Michel
Angelo may be said to have lived in his work; but
Raphael both lived in it and out of it, and was all
the better for this, — more human, tender, and
sympathetic. He was slender, fragile-looking, and half-feminine,

MADONNA WITH THE BOOK (Diotalevi Madonna)
by RAPHAEL
Berlin Museum

The Evolution of Raphael. i y i
but never effeminate, and with plenty of masculine
good sense. It is doubtful if a more sensible person
ever existed. His tact was genius in itself. Women
live by tact, and when they are obliged to reason
they are generally found at fault ; while with men it
is just the reverse. It often happens that men who
possess a great deal of tact are indecisive and lack
good judgment in important affairs. But Raphael
was equally judicious in small matters and the great
est. He seemed to be infallible, and his tact and
judgment were so welded together that it was diffi
cult to say where one ended and the other began.
Few men so great as he have been so nearly faultless.
The feminine element in him may, on the whole,
be considered an advantage. No poets, except
Shakspeare and Goethe, have penetrated so deeply
into the nature of woman and the mystery of her
being; nor have any succeeded so well in reproduc
ing externally her internal life. This has made him
precious to the whole sex. His features in early
manhood were decidedly feminine, although they
afterwards grew stronger; and it is safe to presume
that he possessed the same grace of personal charm
which he transferred so easily to his pictures. Un
like all other great artists of his time, he never wore
a beard, and if the portrait of him in the Louvre is
to be trusted, a beard would not have been becoming
to him.
It would seem as if he required no self-control,
for his inclination was so closely in accord with uni
versal law that he felt no temptation to depart from
the normal course of things. He reminds us of what

172 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
an English poet has said of Shakspeare: " Others
abide our question; thou alone art free " ; and this
freedom also gave him great power over others.
In less than twelve years this innocent country lad
acquired an influence equal to any pope or emperor.
Everything in Rome, outside of the papal govern
ment, came under his authority ; painting, archi
tecture, the excavation of ruins, city improvements,
— even fashionable society. Nothing was done
without consulting Raphael, and his death left a
void in Italy that was never filled again. His
course in life may be compared to a mountain
stream, pure and sparkling, which, uniting others
to itself, descends to the plain by daring leaps, and
there, continually increasing in volume, rolls on to
the sea, carrying the largest vessels on its surface.
In addition to all this, we must admit that he pos
sessed an intellect of the first magnitude. It was
not an intellect like Leonardo's, who anticipated
Bacon's discovery, and who might, under different
influences, have equalled Bacon in law and phi
losophy. Raphael's intellect was not of the scien
tific order. Like a true artist, he perceived ideas
not abstractedly, but in form, and saw things always
in their relation to one another, and harmoniously
arranged. To recognize the true quality of mater
nal love shows finer skill than to comprehend the
most ingenious machine, or to solve the most diffi
cult problem. In the frescos of the Vatican and
his cartoons for the tapestries, he shows an appre
ciation of history, philosophy, and religion fully
equal to Milton and Dante. The intellectual char-

The Evolution of Raphael. i yx,
acter of his paintings, even when he represents an
epileptic boy, is strongly marked ; and the beings
he called into existence would seem to belong to a
better world than the one we inherit. His ideality
is always conspicuous.
Raphael finally developed an excellent chiaro
scuro, though he never became a distinguished
master of it, like Correggio or Tintoretto. His
landscapes give a fine effect of distance.
The true merit of Raphael lies in his delicacy of
expression and dramatic power. It was his delight
to represent continually the pride and affection with
which a mother regards her young child, — and the
manner in which he did this may be called incom
parable. The subject was a perennial one, but had
never before received its due. No other subject
requires such tenderness of feeling, such delicacy of
touch. It is by these qualities that his Madonnas
are to be distinguished rather than by the painting
of a hand or the shape of an ear. Especially he
endeavored to portray the expression of the eye in
those moments when the soul appears visibly to
speak through it. It is the best proof of the no
bility of his nature that he should have observed
and perpetuated those transitory gleams of the
divine element in man. If he had never painted
any other subject, his success in this would have
secured him an immortality on earth ; for that is
what it is. Thus he became a paragon to all women,
and created a bond which still unites him to all
civilized races.
Raphael's limitation as a dramatic painter was

1 74 The Midsummer of Italian A rt.
tragedy. Perhaps he thought that the monks had
provided crucifixions and martyrdoms enough for
the world already. He was of a sunny tempera
ment, naturally inclined to the cheerful side of life.
He succeeded with marvellous ease, and could have
known little of the sorrows or troubles of mankind
from personal experience. He was too serious to
be fond of much revelry, but he liked to dwell upon
that deeper kind of happiness which is found in
quiet places. Above all things, he loved to signal
ize the victory of good over evil. There was a
natural demand for this, after the intense seriousness
of Michel Angelo ; but when we consider that the
best plays of Shakspeare are all tragedies, that the
greatest of Titian's pictures was a tragedy, and so
are some of the best of Tintoretto's works, we see
that the limitation in this case is not a trifling one.
Pathos is the divine sentiment, for it leads men back
to justice ; and on this account Tintoretto's Cruci
fixion in San Rocco makes a deeper impression than
any of Raphael's frescos in the Vatican.
LVRIC PICTURES.
Wherefore do we speak of Titian's Flora, Correg
gio's Reading Magdalen, and Raphael's Saint Cecilia
as poetic ? We do not say the same of Titian's
Tribute Money, though it is a more noble painting
than the others.
The two principal divisions of poetry are lyric and
dramatic; and when we use the word " poetic," it
is the former to which we usually refer. The epic is

The Evolution of Raphael. 1 75
a combination of the two ; a transitory form between
the hymn and the drama. The essence of the
simple lyric is a single idea developed by illustration
to complete harmony. Goethe's song, The Wild
Rose on the Heather, is a typical instance of the lyric.
A heedless boy is charmed with the rose and plucks
it. By this rude act he ingrafts its beauty, in a
measure, on his own nature, and the rose dies a
sacrifice for the amelioration of mankind. The in
cident is trivial, but the poet perceives its significance
and applies this universally.
The essence of dramatic poetry consists in a con
flict of ideas, which are harmonized through the
mediation of the poet. If right prevails, they are
harmonized in life; otherwise they are harmonized
by death.
Raphael was endowed with both the lyric and
dramatic gifts. He cultivated the two side by side
nearly to the close of his life; and especially the
lyric in his youth, for that is the time when we sing.
Michel Angelo came like the storm, and Raphael
like the sunshine after it. The boldness with which
the former struck out into life, and the gradual
manner in which the latter emerged from the shadow
of Perugino, were characteristic of them both. If
Raphael had been abrupt or violent he would not
have been so graceful. He did not develop at first
originality of design, but made use of the composi
tions of Perugino and others, endeavoring to im
prove upon the execution of them. This was an
excellent plan even for a genius, for by correcting
the faults of his master he learned to avoid them

176 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
himself, and by perfecting himself in technical skill
he laid the foundation for universal excellence. An
endless discussion has arisen, however, in regard to
the authenticity of these rather youthful produc
tions, — a most fruitless discussion, for the value of
a work of art depends, as Vasari remarks, on its
own merit and not on the reputation of its author.
Do we value ancient statues the less because their
sculptors are unknown to us ? If a picture is good,
what is the difference whether it was painted by
Raphael or Perugino ? The only fact of importance
in the question is established by the doubt itself.
The transition-types have not the same value in art
as in natural history. We should estimate Raphael's
earliest pictures for what they are actually worth,
and not look at them under the glamour of his
celebrity. In considering these immature efforts we notice in
particular that they have an essentially youthful
quality. We scarcely discern an effort in them to
imitate more mature work; and though the influ
ence of Perugino is apparent in both drawing and
coloring, it is not the spirit of Perugino which ani
mates them, but a wholly different spirit. They are
the genuine expression of Raphael's own feeling.
He has thrown himself unreservedly into his work,
and his pure maidenly nature is apparent in almost
every line. Although in some instances this is quite
inappropriate to the subject, as in his two studies
of St. George and the Dragon, it nevertheless gives
them a peculiar charm and a real value, in spite of
their youthful limitations.

The Evolution of Raphael. lyy
THE EARLY DAWN.
The earliest known painting by Raphael is the Ma
donna with the Book * in the Berlin Museum, some
times called the Diotalevi Madonna, and it may have
been painted in his fifteenth year. The subject is a
simple one; a mother and child, — the one holding
the book, and the other clutching a goldfinch in his
chubby hand. The drawing is still unskilful, and
the attitudes Peruginesque ; and yet there is an in
timation of the mature Raphael in the perfect oval
of the Madonna's face and the peaceful repose of
her expression. The infant Christ is more realistic.
The Solly Madonna in the same gallery is a more
ambitious effort, and must have been painted a year
or two later. The Virgin is attended by two saints,
who have much of Perugino's strength of portrait
ure. The drawing is firmer and more truthful, the
coloring more vigorous, and the head-dress of the
Madonna more gracefully arranged. The folds of
her mantle on the left shoulder correspond closely
to the same folds on the Diotalevi Madonna.
The Conestabile Madonna in the Hermitage collec
tion is a later variation on the two Berlin Madonnas,
and the chief improvement we notice in it is the more
lifelike and spirited attitude of the infant Jesus.
To ambitious youths there usually comes a time
when their imagination is excited with thoughts of
military glory ; and Raphael has left a reflection of
this in three small paintings which are quite excep
tional in their way. * C. and C.'s Life of Raphael.

1 78 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
The Vision of a Knight in the National Gallery is
the first painting that indicates Raphael's faculty
for facial expression. The attitude of the young
knight, lying asleep on his shield at the foot of a
preraphaelite tree, is admirable; but his face is
maidenly even for a youth of seventeen, and its
contour suggests that it may have been an early
portrait of Raphael himself ; and considered in this
light, it is of inestimable value. The vision consists
of two damsels; one graceful and comely, who
holds out a flower to the knight ; and the other, of
graver aspect, carries a sword and a book. Both
regard him with a tender and pleased expression.
The subject may represent a choice between youth
ful love and those higher honors which can only be
purchased by self-denial. The whole painting is
filled with the glow of Raphael's youthful personal
ity. His St. George and the Dragon introduces us to
Raphael's love of elegance and taste for fine color
ing. The drawing of the saint's horse is not so
skilful as the terrified expression of the horse's face.
Raphael never made a study of animal life, and
there is many a realistic Dutchman who excels him
in its representation. Here we have again the same
maidenly face looking out from a steel helmet, and
the composition may have been emblematic of the
dragons which Raphael himself was contending with
in his onward progress as a painter. It may also
have been the first instance in which a white horse
has been made to serve as the principal light in a
painting.

The Evolution of Raphael. 1 79
The St. George and the Dragon in the Hermitage
collection is not a replica of the Louvre painting,
but a similar study, varying slightly in details. It
is in some respects an improvement, especially in
the drawing of the horse, a more slender animal and
in better proportion to his rider.
The Archangel Michael in the Louvre may have
been a companion piece to the St. George, and we
see in it the conflict between good and evil trans
ferred to supernatural regions. The resplendent
form of the angel in a blue tunic and golden armor
is relieved against a sulphurous smoke rising from
the infernal regions, together with demons horned
and hideous. It is a daring, successful, and brilliant
composition ; but the exceeding delicacy with which
it is painted is more remarkable than anything it
contains. The Apollo and Marsyas in the possession of
Morris Moore's family is peculiarly interesting on ac
count of the dispute concerning its authenticity.
Passavant attributed it to Francesco Francia, and
the American critic, James J. Jarves, was one of the
first to pronounce it an early and very fine Raphael.
This claim has also been supported by Crowe and
Cavalcaselle, and is now generally admitted. It is
difficult to decide whether it was painted before or
after Raphael's migration to Florence; but the in
troduction of nude figures indicates a new departure
in his art. We here encounter the influence of
Greek sculpture upon his genius, and perhaps even
of the Apollo Belvedere. Marsyas is seated on a

180 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
bank playing the flute, or a pipe, in competition
with Apollo, who, standing opposite, regards him
with a scornful expression. The contrast between
the ordinary-looking Marsyas and his idealized rival
is admirably expressed ; and the whole picture is
painted with a loving care and delicacy even to the
belladonna flower, symbolic of the fate of Marsyas.
The figures are fairly rounded, but lacking in chi
aroscuro. BEAUTIFUL LYRICS.
We now escape from the composite paintings done
under Perugino's influence, and come forth into the
clear sunlight of Raphael's own genius, as developed
in the free Florentine air and stimulated by the in
fluence of Filippino Lippi, Angelico, Ghirlandajo,
and Leonardo da Vinci. Powerfully influenced by
the works of genius which he saw around him and
the great minds with whom he came in contact,
Raphael nevertheless developed his own style with
a purity, simplicity, and exalted feeling, such that
many of his admirers have not hesitated to declare
his early Florentine paintings to be the most per
fect and interesting that he ever produced. They
certainly possess this advantage, that they were
wholly painted by his own hand, and though we
meet with the influence of other masters in the
drawing and grouping, they nowhere suffer from
direct imitation or the unconscious theft of pictorial
ideas. His work in this early dawn of his career
was essentially of a lyric character — each painting a
poetic gem, — and the world treasures every one of

The Evolution of Raphael. 181
them at a higher value than many other pictures
which are more perfectly painted and more free
from archaic limitations. Raphael was reluctant to
take leave of the limited and conventional Umbrian
art which still formed the basis of his more ambitious
efforts, and we find him in 1504 still far behind
Leonardo, Titian, and Giorgione in breadth of de
sign, depth of color, or effectiveness of light and
shade. Yet Raphael gave to his work a quality
peculiarly his own, which emanated from his lofty
personality, and which elevates even these early
products of his genius above the mature work of
any but the greatest masters; and this spiritual
grace is expressed with such delicacy as even the
greatest have not equalled.
Raphael's Florentine, or, as it is sometimes called,
his Nazarene period, produced a series of Madon
nas, a few portraits, and a number of allegorical
studies. His Madonnas are specially interesting
since they were all, or nearly all, taken from the
same models, evidently a Florentine lady of good
position, and her children ; who, though somewhat
idealized, appears at different ages during a space
of not less than four years. Her first child serves
usually as John the Baptist and her second as the
infant Saviour; while in the last representation,
called the Madonna of the Diadem, the second
child is omitted and his place supplied by a babe
only a few weeks old. The fact that the figures are
virtually portraits imparts to these paintings a vivid
sense of reality, which Raphael has finely harmonized
with the ideal expression he has given to their faces.

1 82 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
The Madonna del Gran Duca is the first purely
classic painting in Italian art. It possesses all the
charm of the finest Greek work, and yet it is Chris
tian and religious. It is the first of Raphael's
Madonnas which he imbued with his peculiar tran
quillizing tone, and it is the only one of his Nazarene
Madonnas which he painted without a background.
Whether it belongs to the series above referred to
is uncertain. The features of the Virgin are so
youthful as to excite a feeling of sympathy for her
premature condition, and it is not impossible that
the original of this tender mother afterwards de
veloped into the Madonna of the Goldfinch. In that
case the picture must have been designed in 1501 or
1502. It is impossible to conceive a simpler treatment of
the subject. The young mother stands before us
holding her child on her left hand, with the right
under his left shoulder. The drawing is slightly
Peruginesque, but with more grace and elegance.
Modest humility is its prevailing characteristic, but
the eyes of the infant Christ are keen and prophetic.
His feet also are skilfully drawn and so lifelike that
the toes almost appear to be in motion. The
drapery is simple, graceful, and disposed in broad
folds; the background a very dark green. The
Madonna del Gran Duca charms us from its perfect
harmony, its plainness, and from the ideality which
seems to be nascent in it, like the budding of a
flower. What a wide range of artistic sympathies is
already indicated by this painting and the Marsyas.
The small Garvagh Madonna in the National Gal-

ST. GEORGE AND THE DRAGON
by RAPHAEL
Gallery of the Louvre

The Evolution of Raphael. 183
lery is somewhat faded, but forms an important link
in this series. It is painted in quite a different
manner from the Gran' Duca; with less softness
and delicacy, but greater solidity. It has Raphael's
tranquillity, however, and the pained expression of
the Madonna, as she looks at the cross which St.
John offers to the infant Christ, marks a striving for
dramatic effect. The Saviour is a more idealized
type than that in the Gran Duca, and St. John is
easily recognized as the same child that figures in
the Madonna of the Goldfinch. The background is
architectural.* La Belle Jardiniere, so called, in the Louvre,
must have been designed from the same models as
the Madonna of the Goldfinch, and probably also
from the same as the preceding. The Madonna is
seated in a garden or meadow, and the Christ-child,
a perfect type of infant beauty, standing at her
knee looks into her face with an expression which
may be called loveliness itself. The young Baptist,
who crouches opposite, is also excellent in form, but
rather grotesque in attitude. The face of the
Madonna is beautiful, but without much depth of
* I do not understand why Crowe and Cavalcaselle should place
the Garvagh Madonna among Raphael's early Roman works. The
sharpness of the outlines, hardness of coloring, and conventional
expression of the Madonna are all indicative of an early effort. It
has neither the delicacy nor the facility of Raphael's mature per
formance. C. and C. say : " The clever way in which the landscape
of walled houses is tempered with grey to bring out the brightness
of the sunny air in the room, leaving the walls in gloom, is well
calculated to remind us of the lessons which Raphael took when he
first wandered to Florence." Probably it was painted at that time.

184 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
expression. The landscape background is pleasing,
but Peruginesque. The coloring has the clear trans
parent tones which remind us of Filippino Lippi;
and the composition is otherwise exceptional for the
brightness of its lights. The Christ-child is certainly
a marvel of beauty, only surpassed in the Madonna
of the Fish and the Sistine Madonna.
In the Holy Family at Munich,* St. Joseph and
St. Anna have been added to the preceding group.
It also shows the influence of Filippino Lippi ; and
the delicacy of its coloring, the clearness of its
lights, and transparency of its shadows distinguish
it from the Titians and Luinis in its neighborhood,
as the finest porcelain is distinguished from other
wares. The excellence of the design consists rather
in its perfection as a whole than in the superiority
of any particular figure. The personality of the in
dividual is here merged in the personality of the
group, which forms an irregular pyramid with Joseph
for its apex. The pyramid typefies the solidity of
the family structure ; on which cities and empires are
built. If Raphael had been conscious of this idea,
he might not have succeeded so well in giving it ex
pression. What he wished was to portray his subject
in the most typical manner. He succeeded, as no
one had done before him, because he understood the
mental attitude of each member of the group to
every other.
The Madonna of the Goldfinch is the finest jewel
in Raphael's Nazarene work, and must have been
painted a year before the Madonna of the Meadow,
* Called also the Canegiani Madonna.

The Evolution of Raphael. 185
which is fortunately dated 1506. This becomes
evident by a comparison of the two backgrounds,
which are Peruginesque in the former and Leonard-
esque in the latter. We meet here with a deeper
light and shade, and also more depth of expression
in the face of the Virgin than in any of the preced
ing pictures.
It is not so ideal in form or color as the Holy
Family at Munich, nor has it so good a landscape as
the Madonna of the Meadow, but it is much more
interesting. It fully exemplifies Wasson's precept,
that in art we should have the real, with the ideal
shining through it. Raphael would seem here to
have checked his ideality, and returned to real life
to gain vital force, as a grape grower cuts back his
vines. The ideality of the picture resides in the
spirit in which it was conceived, and issues from
it like an invisible influence which we neither see
nor feel. The word which best expresses it is love
liness. The child Jesus is not even elegant, but has a
large head, deep-set eyes, a sober expression, and is
generally old-looking. St. John, a fine, vigorous
boy, holds the goldfinch very carefully and tenderly,
so that the little Saviour may examine it. The
Virgin Mary looks down on her child and his friend,
smiling with love, modesty, and superior intelli
gence ; a smile once seen not to be forgotten again.
She is not exactly beautiful, but comely and very
pleasant. I suppose no one except Raphael could
have given such a pose to her head. There is no
mystery about her expression. We all understand

1 86 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
it, and only wish that she would look up once, so
that we could see what fine eyes she has.
One would like to know who this charming woman
was that favored Raphael with her portrait for his
composition. Clearly she was not a vulgar model,
but a lady in good society, cultivated and refined,
as was Titian's Venus, which hangs near in the
Tribuna (the same as his Bella in the Pitti Palace) ;
but too modest and conscientious to expose herself
in that manner. I have read in a German book,
that Raphael said he preferred to belong to all
women rather than that any one woman should be
long to him. He must have been attractive to the
other sex, with his quick intelligence, his ready wit,
and graceful, dreamy manner. Women gave him
their confidence readily, because he penetrated to
the depth of their nature and appreciated their finest
qualities. They perceived also that he was a man
to be trusted. This may have been the reason that
he never became married, because the circle of his
feminine acquaintance was too large to make a selec
tion from easily. The ones most interesting to him
would be those who were already married. There
is no rose without its thorn, and Raphael's reputa
tion has suffered, like some others who have been
favorites of the fair sex, from the thoughtless mis
chief of vicious tongues.
The Holy Family with the Lamb at Madrid is a
subject borrowed with some variations from Da
Vinci,* and must have been painted after the Holy
Family at Munich, if not after the Madonna of the
* See the account in C. and C.'s Life of Raphael.

The Evolution of Raphael. 187
Goldfinch. Raphael has introduced a vein of pleas
antry by placing the infant Jesus astride of the lamb,
who crouches respectfully for the purpose. This is
a new element, but harmonized skilfully with that
delicate fragrance of religious sentiment which is
never absent in Raphael's treatment of subjects
from the Bible. It is a small picture, not much
above a foot square, and painted with the nicety of
a miniature. The St. Catherine in the National Gallery is evi
dently studied from the same models as the Madonna
of the Goldfinch. She has the same softly rounded
features, the same gently rolling plaits of hair over
her temples; but her eyes are raised heavenward,
whence beams of light appear descending into them.
Her attitude and expression would seem to be a
forecast of the St. Cecilia, painted nine or ten years
later. Her left arm rests upon her wheel, which is
so gracefully subordinated to the whole design that
it attracts slight attention. Such a position pro
duces a fine tournure in her drapery, which Raphael
has taken advantage of in a masterly manner, — es
pecially in the roll of her mantle from the right
elbow to her left hand. We notice a technical im
provement over the Madonna of the Goldfinch in a
genuine landscape background, containing a river
with houses and poplars reflected in it; just as we
imagine the blue sky is reflected in the eyes of St.
Catherine. The Madonna of the Meadow, also sometimes
called the Madonna in Green, in the Albertina at
Vienna, is another exquisite variation of this oft-

1 88 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
repeated subject. The influence of Leonardo is
perceptible in the lengthened nose of the Virgin,
her short upper lip, narrow chin, and freedom of
attitude ; as well as in the depth of shadow, round
ness of form, and the aerial quality of the landscape.
Here the influence of Perugino would seem to have
wholly disappeared ; and yet the design is not so
Raphaelesque as La Belle Jardiniere or the Holy
Family at Munich. The attitude of the Virgin —
bending forward so as to give her child the protec
tion of her hands, without necessarily interfering
with his movements — is here the chief variation in
the theme. The expression of the child's eye and
the drawing of his mouth are its finest points.
The Madonna of the Meadow is adorned with one
of the best landscapes that Raphael ever painted.
A sky, full of filmy cloud and sunshine, is reflected
on a lake in the middle distance; beyond which
hillside towns and towers melt like a dream into the
horizon. The foreground is left intentionally dark
so as to bring out more prominently the light forms
of the children.
Not only the attitude of the Madonna, but her
long tapering fingers remind us of Leonardo, and
controvert Morelli's supposition that Raphael only
painted such hands after his introduction into
Roman society.
The Blenheim Madonna, or Madonna Ansidei, now
in the National Gallery, was also painted in 1506,
but is as different as possible from the Madonna of
the Meadow. In the latter we have a fresh, buoyant,
out-of-door life, wholly free from conventionality;

The Evolution of Raphael. 189
in the former, a grave and dignified court ceremonial ;
the light rustic cross of the Baptist in one is replaced
by a cross of rock crystal in the other. In the
Blenheim Madonna the Virgin is seated on a throne
wrapped in elaborate drapery, while the Christ-child
toys with her blue and white sash. St. Nicholas
stands before her in a well-bred attitude of respect,
wearing a jewelled mitre and holding an exquisitely
wrought golden crozier. The tone of such a paint
ing is well suited to English religious solemnity. It
is on wood, nine by five feet, and was purchased by
the British Government in 1885 for about $350,000.*
The Esterhazy Madonna at Pesth is not only ex
ceptional in its motive but does not appear to have
been finished by Raphael's own hand. In it the
Virgin is represented kneeling with the little Saviour
pressed against her heart, while the Baptist presents
a cross with his left hand and holds up a scroll with
the right, on which is written " Ecce Agnus Dei."
The composition is charming, but somewhat lacking
in simplicity, f
The Madonna of the Diadem in the Louvre forms
the last of this series, and in it we meet the same
mother as in La Belle Jardiniere, at least three years
older; with an older St. John and a much younger
Christ-child, whom we naturally suppose to be the
third in this highly favored family. The picture
cannot be dated earlier than 1507, and owing to the
ruins in its landscape background critics have gen
erally conjectured that it was painted after Raphael
had removed to Rome. This is possible, but it is
* Karolyi's Raphael. \ C. and C.'s Life of Raphael, l, 367.

190 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
unlikely that his lady model should also have gone
to Rome at the same time, especially with a new
born child. If he had painted the group from
memory he would not have represented them older,
but as they were when he last saw them. The qual
ity of the painting is essentially Florentine as well
as its design.
Technically considered the Madonna of the Diadem
is the most perfect of the Florentine group. The
teaching of Leonardo is evident in it, but there is no
trace of his personal influence. Raphael has not
yet acquired a genuine chiaroscuro, and we look at
the panel rather than into it ; but the limbs of the
children, the head and neck of the Madonna, are
rounded with an easier touch and a more practised
hand than in the Gran Duca; the drawing is not
only correct, but every line has the stamp of that
feminine grace which the world has never seen but
once; and the background, though not a difficult
subject, is admirably painted, and lends a romantic
influence to the scene.
It cannot be said that the work has too much art,
but rather too little genius. Raphael in the devo
tion to the technical side of his subject may have
lost a portion of his inspiration. A picture painted
in the full tide of feeling is more likely to produce a
magnetic impression even if it has its faults. The
effect of the inspired hand should be an instantan
eous transition. In this sense the Madonna of the
Diadem is rather a study for Raphael's own benefit,
the good results of which we meet with afterwards,
than an end unto itself.

The Evolution of Raphael. 1 9 1
The Cowper Madonna, at Panshanger, England, is
a link in the rapid transformation of Raphael's art
between 1507 and 1509. The mother holds her
child in her lap and gracefully refuses the nourish
ment for which he indicates a very plain desire; a
motive as far removed from the sweet sanctity of
the Gran Duca, as from the expression of deep
maternal fondness in the Cardellino.
The Madonna del Baldachino, still unfinished, was
the last link which bound Raphael to Florence, and
was in itself a prophecy of a wholly different class
of Madonnas which he was destined to paint at
Rome. It is probable that he worked upon it
during the winter of 1508. Besides the Holy
Family it contains full-length figures of St. James
and St. Augustine, as well as two boy angels whose
drawing denotes a progress in foreshortening, and
suggests the study of Michel Angelo. This and the
size of the painting — full twelve square yards of
canvas — may be accepted as the measure of Ra
phael's ambition at twenty-five. The heavy canopy,
under which the Madonna and Child are seated,
gives an air of state ceremonial to the painting, and
this is increased by the solemnity of the two saints.
The two cherubs could not be otherwise than grace
ful, and wherever the work is finished it is beauti
fully painted ; but there is an alien influence in it that
is difficult to account for. The head of St. James
has also a peculiar contour, which reminds one of
the statue of Lorenzo dei Medici the younger.
This Madonna is in the Pitti Palace.

192 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
PORTRAITS.
Between the Madonna of the Diadem and Raphael's
next group of Madonnas there intervenes a space of
about five years, during which he was occupied with
the Disputa, the School of Athens, the Parnassus, and
the Heliodorus in the Vatican, besides many other
works. During this period he improved his art in
breadth and vigor of drawing, with a richer, more
substantial coloring, a deeper chiaroscuro, and united
them with a more profound feeling and the most
magnificent designs. He discarded everything
heretofore conventional in Florentine art, and trans
planted its noble nature to the Roman soil, where it
could expand in the full freedom of a national life.
The influence of Michel Angelo on his drawing is
an oft-repeated tale, but it is no less certain that he
profited from Leonardo's treatise on painting, and
also somewhat from the coloring of Titian, if not
also Giorgione. He drew his inspiration from every
quarter of the heavens, and, like Tintoretto, sum
med up in himself all that had been done before him.
Raphael's portraits are not very numerous. Per
haps he considered portrait painting an inferior kind
of art, for which he could not afford the time. Cer
tain it is that even Titian's portraits, though our
admiration for them might never cease in a private
house, are not nearly so interesting as the historical
work of painters like Paris Bordone and Sodoma.
Raphael's portraits appear to have been either those
of personal friends, like the portrait in the Louvre
of a youth whose chin is resting in his hand, and the

The Evolution of Raphael. 1 93
one of Altoviti at Munich, or of popes and cardinals,
from whom he could not very well escape. There
are letters, however, of that time which show that he
not only painted the portraits of foreign ambassa
dors, but sometimes even of travellers coming to
Rome, as they go there now.
Raphael's early portraits were strongly subjective,
and correspond to the other paintings of his Nazar
ene period. The two mentioned above, though one
has a round face and the other a long one, have
both been mistaken for his own ; and no wonder, for
he so infused his own personality into them, that
the same pure spirit (like spring sunshine) beams in
every feature, which looks out upon us from the eyes
of his Madonnas. The authenticity of the Louvre
portrait has been questioned, but if style and ex
pression can go for anything, it is a genuine Raphael.
What many of his portraits lack, is breadth of treat
ment ; for a portrait requires this as well as a group
of figures. They are not equal to Titian's early
portraits, though the one in Munich of Altoviti has
a good reputation as a study of color.
There are four pictures in the Tribuna attributed
to Raphael hanging side by side. The Madonna
of the Goldfinch and Pope Julius we have already
considered. The Madonna del Pozzo is neither
drawn nor colored in the style of Raphael, and
though the composition reminds us of him, this is
something which any skilful painter can imitate.
We therefore leave it out of the account. There
remains the so-called Fornarina, whose color-tone
differs nearly as much from Pope Julius as that does

1 94 The Midsummer of Italian A rt.
from the Madonna of the Goldfinch. In pose and
attitude it bears a marked resemblance to the Greek
bust of Clytie.
Professor Liibke thinks the picture too excep
tional for Raphael, and attributes it to one of the
scholars of Giorgione, probably Sebastian del Piom
bo. This, I believe, is the general opinion of con
noisseurs. Morelli agrees with it, but cannot recover
from a first Raphaelesque impression which the por
trait gave him, and thinks it may have been painted
by Sebastian while under the influence of Raphael's
magnetism. Grimm, on the contrary, declares that
Sebastian never could have risen to so high a flight.
This much is certain. The woman represented
here could not possibly have been the Fornarina of
Italian social mythology. The absence of a good
chiaroscuro makes it evident that the portrait was
painted during the first decade of the sixteenth
century, and we know that Raphael's acquaintance
with the Fornarina did not begin for several years
later. It has none of the characteristics of the
Roman school of painting — especially its rounded
solidity. This woman, though perhaps not highly
educated, is evidently superior to the contadina
class. She might have been a member of the upper-
middle class, though perhaps not in fashionable so
ciety. The bearing is proud, and she seems to be
conscious of a stable position in the world ; wholly
different from the expression of the Fornarina in the
Barberini Palace.
Neither is it more likely that she could have
served as a model for the Sistine Madonna. The

MADONNA OF THE MEADOW
by RAPHAEL
Belvedere, Vienna

The Evolution of Raphael. 195
difference in the shape of their heads, as well as the
contour of their features, forbids us from supposing
this. She has not the long oval face of the enrapt
ured beauty at Dresden, and the height of her
forehead, the length of her nose, and the distance
between her nose and her chin are almost the same
(a proportion more common among men than
women), while the nose of the Sistine Madonna is
fully two fifths the length of her face, — her mouth
and chin being unusually small. The expression of
this portrait is of a bright, keen-witted person, fully
conscious of her advantages in life, and intending
to make good use of them ; not an elevated nature,
but a fine example of the more practical sort. She
may not be worldly herself, but she understands the
world and how to deal with it.
The portrait is beautiful in spite of its faults. It
has no chiaroscuro worth speaking of. The features
are drawn rather than painted, so as to give the
face a slight sculpturesque quality. The drawing is
graceful, but the composition is such as to give a
general effect of squareness ; caused I think by the
lines of the neck being perpendicular to those of the
forearm. Yet there is a sweetness of expression in
the eyes which is Raphael's own ; nor do I believe it
has ever been imitated ; nor could a mouth be more
beautifully and tenderly fe,minine. The execution
also shows a master hand. The lace on her neck is
represented by two curving white lines, which seem
to be one of the most difficult feats of art ; and,
what is remarkable, the line on the right side, where
the edge of the lace would be more exposed, is more

196 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
firmly drawn and slightly broader than that on the
left. The narrow band of embroidery around the
edge of her chemise, worked with curious little
figures, is such as only a painter who delights in his
skill would take the trouble to represent.
The shadows on her face and neck are like the
shadows on snow, and there is a sparkle like frost
in her eyes; yet she is warm, tender, and human.
If there is another such dazzling portrait of a woman
it is the Eve in Tintoretto's Paradise. She is won
derfully tempered between maidenly purity and
womanly love. The portrait resembles Giorgione's
style, and yet with a decided difference. Instead
of being lighted from within, the light comes from
its surface. Is it not more likely that Raphael
painted it under the influence of Giorgione, than
that Sebastian painted it under Raphael's influence ?
Even Titian's beautiful women do not possess such
intelligence and vitality. If, then, Titian could not
have painted it, what shall we say of Sebastian del
Piombo ? I cordially agree with Professor Grimm,
that it is much beyond Sebastian's power of the
brush, and if it be not the work of Raphael, I can
not imagine by whose agency such a portrait came
to exist.
Connoisseurs always go to the hands ; but in Ra
phael's case they would do better to consider how
the eyes are painted. Raphael nearly approached
Leonardo in his expression of intelligence, but no
hands that he ever painted can be compared to those
of the Mona Lisa ; and his hands vary greatly in
different pictures. If, however, the right hand of

The Evolution of Raphael. 197
the so-called Fornarina be compared with the left
hand of the Madonna of the Goldfinch, I think it
would be seen that they are closely allied in draw
ing, though the latter is more deeply shaded. If
we suppose this picture, then, to have been painted
about 1507 when Giorgione's fame was at its height,
we may safely conclude it was Raphael's first at
tempt in the Venetian style. The woman herself is
so thoroughly Florentine that she might have served
in the Carnival as an emblematic deity. The notion
that she was Raphael's mistress — for which there is
not the ghost of a probability — has given this pic
ture an unpleasant association, and prevented it
from being admired so much as it deserves.
Now we will return a year or more to Raphael's
own portrait in the portrait room of the Uffizi,
which looks like a man of twenty-two or -three, and
very likely was painted when he first began to be
famous. It would seem to have been the first por
trait that he painted. It has not the deep, rich color
ing of the so-called Fornarina, but resembles that
picture in its sharp contrasts of light and shade, —
like the sunshine and shadow in the streets of Flor
ence. There is, however, a more convincing point
of resemblance between them. If photographs of
the two are placed side by side, I think it will be
perceived that they must have been drawn by the
same hand. This is particularly noticeable in the
lines of the throat which have that slight tendency
to a double curve which constitutes the grace of
Raphael. The visual angle at which both portraits

198 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
are painted is also the same, though the face of one
is turned to the right and the other to the left.
Now Raphael's drawing has been copied with
some success, but it never has been imitated. Sas-
soferrato made some excellent copies from Raphael,
but he was unable to imitate his style, though he
would probably have liked much to do so. He
painted his own pictures in a wholly different man
ner. Raphael's drawing was an ideal.
Raphael's expression in the Uffizi portrait is
dreamy, observing, and maidenly pure. The face
is unique, but does not, like Leonardo's, bear the
stamp of greatness. He has an uncommonly long
neck, and also a very long nose. His hair is long,
but does not fall upon his shoulders. All of the
features are delicate, feminine, and finely cut. His
lips might have been carved upon a gem. His
artist's cap is picturesque, and sets off his face to
advantage. There is no tenderness in his eye, nor
anywhere a trace of emotion. The flesh tints must
have become lighter with time, or his complexion
was a very pale one. There is a duplicate of this
portrait in the Louvre whose authenticity has been
doubted. Raphael's pontifical portraits are quite another
affair, and fully equal to those by Titian or Ru
bens; though their excellence is of a somewhat dif
ferent kind. Titian's portraits take the precedence
in reality ; Raphael's in vitality. Next to Leo
nardo, no painter has ever put so much life into the
eyes as Raphael, and even Leonardo perhaps did
not have so clear a perception of the internal life.

The Evolution of Raphael. 199
He also surpassed Titian in delicacy of expression,
difficult as that might seem to be ; while he narrowly
approached him in depth and vigor of coloring.
From 1508 to 15 15 Raphael practised a wholly dif
ferent scale of coloring from what he had previously
done; and the influence of Titian and other Vene
tians is plainly traceable in this. In the external
presentation of human life Titian surpassed Raphael,
who might almost be called an intellectual specialist.
There are four portraits of Pope Julius II., gen
erally supposed to be by his hand : one in the
National Gallery, one in the Pitti Palace, another
in the Tribuna, and one in the Borghese Palace;
all representing him in a similar if not the same
identical position. It would be well if they could
all be brought together and compared, as Hol
bein's Dresden and Darmstadt Madonnas were some
time since, so that it might be decided which was
the original painting and what other differences
exist between them. As only the very finest works
of art are admitted to the Tribuna, it is presumable
that Italian judges consider that the original; al
though Grimm discovers a peculiar radiance in the
portrait of the Pitti, and until recently the London
portrait was considered equal to either. Crowe and
Cavalcaselle, however, have advanced the rather
surprising opinion that none of the portraits of
Julius are by Raphael's own hand. Anton Springer,
who provides the art criticism for Baedeker, be
lieves that the copy in the Uffizi is the original
work, but that Raphael also painted the head of the
portrait in the Pitti. Crowe and Cavalcaselle con-

200 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
sider the latter a copy by Giovanni da Udine. It
would not be prudent to accept Crowe and Caval-
caselle's judgment as final in this case. It is not
likely that Julius would neglect the opportunity of
having his portrait painted by Raphael ; nor would
Raphael be likely to deceive him in regard to his
own share in its authorship. After one portrait had
been finished others could be copied from it, to
which Raphael would give the finishing touches,
and which Julius would present to princes or pre
lates. This would explain the existence of replicas,
all of which possess a high degree of merit.
This, then, is the " violent and diabolical person "
of whom Machiavelli writes. Raphael has repre
sented him as simply as possible sitting for his por
trait in a dignified manner, while he revolves in his
mind those great plans which were the companions
of his life. He does not look like a diplomatic
Italian, but more like a New England judge or
orthodox clergyman of fifty years ago ; men abso
lute and domineering in their narrow circle, but
who yield at the same time faithful obedience to
certain prescribed rules of conduct. His face,
though severe, is not unattractive, and wins confi
dence. He was the best subject Raphael could
have had ; unless, indeed, he had painted Martin
Luther, who came to Rome not long afterward.
Julius II. was a political gladiator who vanquished
his opponents, not by main strength or dextrous
fencing, but by an unexpected, deadly thrust. The
Pope's own counsellors could never foresee what en
terprise he would undertake next. As we look at

The Evolution of Raphael. 20 1
him on Raphael's canvas he is in the perfect balance
between thought and action. He is resting, but it
is the repose of a panther; he may start to his feet
in a second and astonish mankind.
ROMAN MADONNAS.
Perugino was always the same ; but the perspec
tive in which we view him depends on the place
where he happened to be. In Perugia he appears
like a great man ; in Florence like a good artist ; and
in Rome we do not think of him. It was exactly
the reverse with Raphael : the grander his surround
ings the better he seemed to be adapted to them.
We need not be surprised at the effect of his life in
Rome on Raphael. In the fifteenth century the
greatness of the Papacy emulated that of the old
Roman Empire, and the magnificence of the papal
court in Raphael's time surpassed that of Louis
XIV. Religion was little better than a form, but
the prelates who surrounded Leo X. were not only
art critics, but philosophers, historians, and anti
quaries. They united to a life of worldly splendor
a genuine interest in the highest intellectual pur
suits. Raphael drank in wisdom from all these various
sources as if he had been a graduate of Berlin Uni
versity, instead of having spent his earlier years
over the drawing-board and pallet. He learned, as
Shakspeare learned afterwards. Genius does not
require to know Greek declensions in order to under
stand the spirit of Hellenic life, nor to study Sanskrit

202 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
in order to penetrate the mystery of the Vedic
hymns. No other painter has shown such a clear
penetration into the history of the subjects which
he represented ; and while Tintoretto painted a
Roman centurion in armor of the fifteenth century,
Raphael equipped the combatants in his Battle of
the Milvian Bridge with such standards and helmets
as were used by Brutus and Cassius. The single
story told of Raphael which illustrates his true
character is the leaving his manifold occupations to
take care of an old archaeologist, upwards of eighty,
in his last illness. Such was the return he made for
former benefits; and as an illustration of his own
nature it shows how generous and veracious the
man continued to be to the close of his life. More
beautiful even than the Transfiguration is this pic
ture of a world-genius subordinating himself to the
mean, physical needs of a dying friend. It is the
transfiguration of Raphael.
Between 1510 and 1514 he painted another group
of Madonnas, differing a good deal from his earlier
ones. Perhaps he felt the need of doing this. They
are not, however, conceived in so pure a spirit as
the earlier group. In this list are comprised the
Madonna of the Duke of Alba, at present in St.
Petersburg; the Madonna Impannata, in the Pitti
Palace ; the Madonna of Divine Love, at Naples ; the
Madonna under the Oak, in Madrid ; the Madonna di
Foligno, in the Vatican ; and the Madonna of the
Fish, in Madrid. They show, as might be expected,
more maturity of design, breadth of drawing, a more

The Evolution of Raphael. 203
skilful distribution of light and shade, and especially
a stronger, richer coloring, approaching the Vene
tian. And yet they are transition types which
represent the fulness of the painter's external devel
opment, without, however, this being harmonized
perfectly with the ideal consciousness of his spirit.
Not one of them is so much beloved as the Madonna
of the Goldfinch ; and the Madonna di Foligno, which
was painted in 1511, has a decided tone of aristo
cratic reserve, and in the adventitious quality of
its composition it is neither lyrical nor dramatic.
The Alba Madonna must have been painted at
Rome, but contains reminiscences of Florentine
study. It unites the attitude of the Virgin in the
Madonna of the Meadow with the foreboding expres
sion of the Gavargh Madonna. As it is now in the
Hermitage collection, few besides the unideal Rus
sians have an opportunity of seeing it.
The Madonna di Foligno has now an appropriate
place in the Vatican beside the Transfiguration.
It was painted for Sigismond Conti, as a votive
offering for a narrow escape he met with from a pro
jectile in the wars of Pope Julius ; and the projectile
is represented in it rushing across the sky. It was
the first of Raphael's Madonnas in which he repre
sented the Virgin Mary as a celestial being. She is
seated on the clouds with quite an elevated expres
sion ; and Conti himself, an admirable portrait, with
John the Baptist adoring her beneath. According
to Crowe and Cavalcaselle, only the Madonna and
Conti were finished by Raphael himself; yet the
Baptist is not only the most interesting figure in the

204 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
group, but perhaps the most original and romantic
of all Raphael's male creations. The expression of
the Madonna is too condescending to win our sym
pathy : Raphael had yet to learn that if we are to
be lifted up to the clouds, the clouds must also be
brought down to us.
The Madonna of Divine Love at Naples is an in
stance of an admirable design spoiled by an execu
tion of a different quality from the designer. If
Giulio Romano, or whoever painted it, had con
ceived the subject out of his own mind, it might
have been a more satisfactory picture than it is at
present ; although the name of Raphael gives it an
adventitious interest. Among the fifty excellent
artists whom Vasari speaks of in Raphael's service,
there does not appear to have been one who re
sembled him in temperament or equalled him in
delicacy of feeling. In this Madonna a Holy Family
is grouped within a Roman ruin, and St. Joseph is
seen approaching them through an archway.
The Madonna del' Impannata, now in the Pitti
Palace, is a repetition of the preceding with some
variations. The scene is laid in a cottage, and a
green screen serves as a background for the red
waist of the Madonna. The Baptist is seated on a
leopard-skin, and seems to be looking out of the
picture. Raphael's own touch is visible on it in
places; but the execution is unequal, and the atti
tude of the Baptist suggests that Raphael himself
had turned away from his work and was seeking
fresh interest in some new direction.
By far the finest of the Madonnas of this middle

The Evolution of Raphael. 205
period is the Madonna of the Fish, of which the
more important portion must have been painted by
Raphael's own hand. Nothing indicates this more
decisively than the smoothness of its surface — so
that it seems like the reflection of a picture in a
mirror — and the tranquil tone which he has infused
in it. By a happy anachronism Tobias and the
angel have come to pay a visit to the infant Christ,
before whom they bow in devout reverence, while
his mother clasps him to her left shoulder, and St.
Jerome balances the group with an open Bible in his
hand, and the lion at his feet. The face of the
Madonna is grave, and reminded me, in her expres
sion, of Michel Angelo's Madonna at Bruges. She
has the same fulness over the eyelid in the outer
corner of her brow that we have noticed in the so-
called Fornarina of the Tribuna. Her eyes are cast
down with humility, for she knows it is her divine
child, and not herself, to whom homage is being
paid. She does not even permit herself to exult in
his glory, but holds him so that he may appear be
fore the angel to the best advantage. A fine point
this, and worth recollecting.
Next observe Raphael's blending of the human
and divine in the action of the Christ-child. He
first looks down at the fish with juvenile curiosity,
but in the same instant recognizes the angel, and
his immortal birthright asserts itself in full force.
This is indicated in the expression of his eye while
his face is still turned toward Tobias. It is the
same eye that we see in the Sistine Jesus, — the eye
of eternity itself. No mortal child could ever have

206 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
had such an expression; not even such a child as
Raphael may have been himself. His look is so
surprising that we are inclined to forget the pure
plastic beauty of the child's figure. His form is an
ideal ; but this is gracefully concealed by the original
ity of his attitude. He has placed his left hand on
the book, to signify to St. Jerome that he should
desist from reading on account of the visitors, —
saints being proverbially oblivious to external events.
Yet the picture is not without its peculiarities.
The adoration of the angel borders closely on the
obsequious ; the aspect of the Madonna is quiet and
dignified, but with something of the hauteur already
noticed in the Madonna di Foligno ; and St. Jerome
is indeed a grand piece of realism, but one feels that
he is almost too rugged— his beetling brows and
shiny forehead — to be in perfect harmony with the
rest of the group. The folds of the Madonna's dress
are peculiar and give it an appearance of heaviness
too much in keeping with her own expression.
Tobias, whose chief ornament is his flowing golden
hair, is more in sympathy with the Christ-child, and
gives a ground-tone to the coloring. The lion is
not faithfully rendered, but has a dangerous gleam
in his eye such as only Raphael or Leonardo could
give. The Christ-child certainly in this picture is a dis
tinct advance from the Jesus in the Madonna of the
Goldfinch, with his large, premature head and serious
expression. The ideal form of the London Christ-
child has now been matched by an ideality of nature,
or rather of spirit. Those who prefer individuality

LA FORNERINA, by RAPHAEL
Uffizzi Gallery, Florence

The Evolution of Raphael. 207
in art to perfect symmetry of form, would therefore
consider this superior to the Sistine Christ-child, who
in the opinion of some approaches dangerously near
to the eclectic. As Raphael increased in years and
experience, his representations of Jesus became con
tinually younger.
The little Saviour in the Madonna of the Fish illus
trates Homer's description of Astyanax, the son of
Hector, " a beautiful boy that shone like a star."
PROPHETS AND SIBYLS.
Michel Angelo's influence over Raphael culmi
nated about 1 5 14, and from that time gradually di
minished until it quite disappeared, — except so far
as freedom of design and breadth of treatment may
be considered in that light. The most palpable in
stance of it is his fresco of Isaiah in the Church of
San Agostino, in which the imitative quality is so
strongly marked that a fable is related by Vasari,
evidently invented to account for it. This of course
subtracts from the work all the merit which we as
cribe to originality. It is only interesting as an
imitation, and is now in rather a ruinous condition.
The frescos of Prophets and Sibyls in the Church
of Santa Maria della Pace are also strongly Michel-
angelesque, and, though much admired, remind one
of the adage not to put new wine into old bottles.
The original mistake consisted in the banker Chigi's
forcing Raphael on to Michel Angelo's ground.
These were subjects in which Michel Angelo could
not compete with Raphael — feminine delicacy and

208 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
the elegance of cultivated life, — but Prophets and
Sibyls might be considered his specialty. Raphael
knew little of either personal or national misfortunes.
Prophetic power did not belong to him ; and in the
frescos of the Pace this is not less recognizable than
the imitative influence of the Sistine Chapel. Chigi
himself appears to have been dissatisfied with the
performance of his order ; and it is fair evidence of
the unconsciousness of Raphael's frequent plagiar
ism, that he should have invited Michel Angelo to
determine the value of the work for Chigi's benefit.
Michel Angelo must have smiled inwardly at be
holding this reflection of his own genius in the Urn-
brian mirror. Perhaps the best that can be said of
the frescos in the Pace now is that the architectural
effect of the whole series is admirable and that
they still possess an aroma of Raphael's grace and
loveliness. The young John the Baptist in the Wilderness is
somewhat Michelangelesque, but also a purely origi
nal composition. He is a mere boy, seated on a log,
with a small rustic cross in his hand ; but he is perfect
in form and feature, a youthful Apollo but a mod
ern Italian, and with a religious mission before him
which fills his soul. I find a resemblance between
him and the bronze praying boy which was fished
out of the Tiber and is now in Berlin. Raphael
is supposed to have painted it in or about 1515, and
if so this is the first picture in which he threw a
general color-tone over the whole canvas ; a sort of
neutral olive, very pleasant to the eye. The tender
age of St. John, the beauty of his form, and the

The Evolution of Raphael. 209
loneliness of his situation appeal irresistibly to the
poetic sense of the observer (if he has that in him).
Whether the original is in the Uffizi Gallery and a
duplicate in the Louvre, or vice versa, is uncertain,
but there is also an excellent copy in Berlin. Sas-
soferrato certainly copied Raphael with remarkable
success ; for which he is more distinguished than for
his own paintings. The best artists would not be
able to do it now, so far removed are we from the
methods of the Roman school.
In Greek sculpture an ideal form was everywhere
united with a moral principle. Thus Hercules was
an ideal of physical strength, but never of brute
force. It was strength applied to great and useful
undertakings, and the expression of his face indi
cates this. He looks like one who has toiled and
endured much : truly a very noble expression, as the
best statues of him bear witness. In like manner,
Mercury was an ideal of lightness and quickness;
but his swiftness was given him so that he might
carry the messages of the gods, — that is, important
tidings to mankind. Pallas was an ideal of intellect,
and she was represented in armor, because intelli
gence is always obliged to protect itself against the
numerical superiority of dulness and ignorance.
This, and not the mythology we hear so much of,
was the actual religion of the Greeks, and under its
influence they achieved successes which no other
nation has since surpassed. Their statues and
temples still exercise a powerful sway over the
minds of men, and help to determine the destinies

210 The Midsummer of Italian Art.

of the race. The Venus of Melos is still a goddess ;
and the Demosthenes of the Vatican is more elo
quent than any living orator.
The main effort of early Italian art was to repre
sent the spiritual unity as it appears incarnated in
different individualities. The lives of the Madonna
and the saints gave them ample opportunity for this,
and served in fact both as the subject and the ob
ject of their art. What they wished to express is
the divinity in man, — what we call holiness; and
two centuries were not wasted in the attempt to ac
complish this. Abstract types of virtue presented
allegorically, as we meet with them in Spenser's
Faerie Queene, were not in their thoughts. The faces
that they painted wear always the same spiritual ex
pression ; conditioned only by happiness, sorrow, or
suffering, and by the personality of the painter.
It was permitted Raphael alone to harmonize the
Christian and pagan spirit, the classic and the roman
tic in perfect unity; to give holiness in man, and
more especially in woman, a complete external
manifestation ; and at the same time to create types
of manliness and womanliness which might serve as
ideals to future generations.
Yet he indicated a tendency toward this from the
very beginning. The composition of his earliest
pictures, in the stately repose of their figures, their
harmonious disposition, the simple elegance of their
attire, and the ideality which seems like an atmos
phere about them, proves that the spirit of Phidias
or Apelles had again visited the earth. This was
the tendency of his time, but of all the Renaissance

The Evolution of Raphael. 2 1 1
artists, in Raphael alone it attained to ripe fruition ;
though he never studied Hellenic art with such de
votion as did Michel Angelo, who, nevertheless,
remained romantic both in sentiment and design til'.
the close of his life.
But Raphael was also a Christian to the backbone,
and as compact of religious feeling as Fra Angelico
himself. With his death the spirit of mediaeval holi
ness, as distinguished from the religious feeling of
modern times, disappeared forever.
PURE IDEALS.
We cannot prize too highly those few later paint
ings which were mostly by Raphael's own hand.
Much more than the immense frescos of the Vatican,
they show him to us as he actually was. The first
of these, painted, according to the German authori
ties, in 1 5 16, and coming next as a pure ideal after
his St. John in the Wilderness, is the famous Madonna
della Sedia. The circular frame of this picture serves
to give it the same appearance of home-like confi
dence as the triangular space in which Michel Angelo
represented the Family of Josias ; but the Madonna
della Sedia is an ideal of maternal happiness, so
tender that the presence of a man in it would seem
to be an intrusion. Joseph is only permitted to
look at the scene from a distance. The Madonna
clasps her child to her breast and knows of naught
beside. She looks away in dreamy forgetfulness of
all care and anxiety ; while the little St. John stand
ing at her knee, with child-like sympathy reflects

2 1 2 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
the same feeling. It is a dream of maternal bliss,
and fills one with a restful content. St. John's little
cross, almost out of sight, adds just a touch of re
ligious sentiment to it.
The Christ-child is purely human although an
ideal ; very different from the one in the Madonna
of the Fish. He is full of dimples and prettiness,
and seems to be beating time with his feet.* He
does not look premature, and his eyes, though full
of intelligence, give no suggestion of a divine origin.
They are the eyes of genius, and his lips have also
a distinguished expression, which we shall meet
with once again.
There are those who have condemned the whole
picture on account of the face of the Madonna,
which is a perfect oval and dangerously near eclec
ticism. Its outline is an unbroken curve, and her
cheek is shaded with a more perfect gradation of
color than any rose petal. Suspicious critics have
their doubts about this, while a keen-sighted young
woman will only discover rare beauty in it. It
lacks, as all such faces must, the strength of in
dividuality. I have seen the shadow on the profile of a girl
form a perfectly straight line from her hair to her
lips. That a face like that of the Madonna della
Sedia is not impossible, has been proved in the case
of the daughter of a sail-maker on the New England
coast. This girl, cradled by east winds and living
among the roughest people, grew up to be the most
beautiful woman of her time. At least those who
* See account of this painting in Grimm's Raphael,

The Evolution of Raphael. 213
beheld her in her youthful glory all agreed that they
had neither seen nor could they imagine a woman
who surpassed her. Everybody noticed that all her
features were perfect, but that her eyes were ex
ceptional even in so rare a face. There was a plastic
modulation to her face which is not to be found in
the Madonna della Sedia, — not at least in the Ma
donna herself, though more in the infant Christ.
Such is the effect of a palace on our sense of pro
portion that the Madonna della Sedia seems hardly
larger in the Pitti Gallery than the engravings of it
in our own parlors. It is painted with the delicacy
of a miniature, and the way in which Raphael has
harmonized the variety of tints with which the
Virgin's dress is adorned is no less remarkable; and
the folds of it are so simple and natural that it seems
as if they could not have been otherwise. It is a
gem, and deserves the setting of a gem. We notice
also that he has returned here to nearly the same
tone of color which he brought in his youth from
Perugia to Florence. Raphael has surrendered the
Venetian method, so far as it ever appertained to him.
A more elevated work and one of the most beauti
ful of Raphael's creations is his St. Margaret, in the
Louvre. In it a color tone more serious than that
of St. John in the Desert, and almost like a cloudy
twilight, is combined with an atmospheric effect,
which I do not think he achieved again. To place
a painting in the first great hall of the Louvre with
the Mona Lisa and Correggio's Antiope on one side,
and Paul's Wedding Feast at Cana on the other, is
a severe test even for a Raphael. But even amid

214 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
this Alpine group pale St. Margaret holds us by her
spell. Of all Raphael's female forms she is the
loveliest and the most beautiful, always excepting
the Sistine Madonna. She may have been a remin
iscence of the woman who gave her portrait to the
Madonna of the Goldfinch ; for she is evidently an
ideal, and as she comes forward, out of the shade,
with a smile of enchanting purity on her lips, we can
only think of Shakspeare's verse:
" So shines a good deed in this naughty world."
The dragon is repulsive ; all the more so for being
superbly drawn and painted. I confess that no
picture which contains a dragon or a large snake is
altogether pleasant to me; and I believe that any
first-rate engraver who would engrave the figure of
St. Margaret by itself (coming out of a mist) would
make his fortune, for it is only the dragon which
prevents this painting from being among the most
popular of all.
Raphael's inventive faculty shows itself continu
ally in small matters. Has it not been truly said
that Raphael created as Nature creates ? This
dragon is as much a veritable monster as a crocodile
or a zeuglodon. It is a physiological possibility.
One would know that Raphael designed it, from the
original pattern of its markings, which has his style
just as the sword has it, on which St. Paul is leaning
in the musical picture at Bologna. The pattern is
as lifelike as that on the back of a boa constrictor,
but it is not to be found on any living reptile.
More important is the chiaroscuro in which the tail

The Evolution of Raphael. 2 1 5
is represented. It seems to be full five yards long,
and yet is painted within the space of four square
feet. Foreshortening could never effect this with
out the finest light and shade.
Two other large pictures in the same hall, the
Holy Family of Francis I. , and the Archangel Michael
Overpowering Satan, are not of equal value. The
former is mannered both in drawing and coloring.
Grimm prefers Raphael's original drawing to the
finished picture; and it seems doubtful if Raphael
even touched the canvas with his chalk. It has his
breadth of design but little else to elevate it above
second-class work. Sebastian del Piombo wrote of
it to Michel Angelo as being " like polished steel,
the figures all dark and bright, ' ' — an excellent criti
cism of Julio Romano's method.
The Archangel and Satan was quite as evidently
painted by Giovanni da Udine. Its warm but
opaque coloring does not compare favorably with
the clear tones of the St. Margaret adjoining.
Neither is the design as felicitious as might have
been expected. The spear of Michael almost divides
the canvas longitudinally; an effect which every
artist is now instructed to avoid. Guido Reni con
ceived a much finer design of Michael and Satan, a
hundred years later. In both paintings, however,
the undercurrent of Raphael's genius is apparent.
ST. CECILIA AND THE SISTINE MADONNA.
These two celebrated paintings have a close spirit
ual relationship. The arrangement of the St. Cecilia

216 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
group at Bologna is a formal one, which places it.
out of sympathy with modern art, but it contains
an internal harmony which has vibrated through
the hearts of millions. What it was formerly can
now be best understood by Raphael Morghen's en
graving and the solitary figure of St. Cecilia in
the Pinacothek at Munich. Napoleon carried the
original to Paris, where, according to Morelli, it was
entirely repainted. It was for this and other similar
depredations that Pasquino coined the searching
witticism, " Francesi son ladroni ; non tutti, ma buona
parte." * In this picture Raphael has perpetuated
the different attitudes with which people are natu
rally affected while listening to music. St. Cecilia
has ceased playing herself, in order to listen to the
celestial choir who have caught up the refrain above.
Her face is turned upward with an expression of
pure enjoyment, elevated by a sense of angelic com
panionship. As an ideal of highly endowed intelli
gence, the figure of St. Paul leaning on his sword in
deep reverie comes next to Raphael's Plato in the
School of Athens ; and his drapery is equally remark
able for its freedom and breadth of drawing.
And now we approach Raphael's most magnetic
picture, the Madonna di San Sisto.
Of all works of art we may fancy this to have
been the nearest approach to an instantaneous crea
tion. It has the appearance of having been painted
very swiftly, but at the same time with exquisite
smoothness. We know how Goethe's songs and
ballads came to be. His mind was suddenly inspired
* The French are thieves ; not all, but a good part.

/ENEAS GROUP," from the "incendio del borgo'
by RAPHAEL
Vatiiart. Rome

The Evolution of Raphael. 2 1 7
with them, and he seized upon the nearest piece of
paper, sometimes writing upon it diagonally in his
haste to be delivered. So this picture must have
been painted. It is a divine creation, and so inevit
able that we feel it must always have existed, — as it
always will exist.
Its superiority was not appreciated in Raphael's
own time, or Leo X. would certainly never have
permitted it to leave Rome. Vasari refers to it in
some six or eight lines, and then writes nearly a
page concerning the St. Cecilia group. Perhaps he
never saw it. We wonder what Raphael thought
of it himself, and whether he was for once satisfied
with his own work.
The arrangement is a formal one, and it is painted
in rather a slight manner ; but its formality is con
sistent with perfect freedom, and its treatment is
equally well adapted to the subject. How different
is this almost translucent coloring from that of the
Madonna di Foligno, or the portraits of Pope Julius;
but Julius was a living person, and the forms before
us are those of spirits. The Madonna, her child,
and the two cherubs certainly are; and St. Sixtus
and St. Barbara would seem to be also; for they
have nothing but the clouds to rest on. The Pope
has placed his tiara on the broad plank, which may
be supposed to represent the sill of a window, and
the two famous cherubs cling to this also, as birds
perch upon a rail. They all have a reality which
satisfies us, but it is not the reality of Titian's por
traits. A line drawn through each one of them
would form the outline of a spear-head.

2 1 8 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
The beauty of the Madonna depends more on her
expression than her features, though she may be
considered in all respects as an ideal. It is only an
oval face that could represent such earnestness, and
only her large eyes and delicate mouth could ex
press such tenderness. People's faces when they
are serious not only appear longer, but actually are
so. A face like that of the Donna Velata in Flor
ence would have spoiled it all. How did Raphael
obtain this expression ? Did he imagine it ; or did
he notice it on the face of some young mother pray
ing for her child in a Roman church ? No engraver
has imitated it, — has imitated the look of those
eyes. Even Murillo could not have copied it.
In the Sistine Jesus the finest qualities of his pre
decessors are united. He has the symmetrical head
of the Christ-child in London, the eyes of the one
in Madrid, and the ideality in the Madonna della
Sedia, but in quite a different manner. There are
neither dimples nor prettiness about him, but his
lines are drawn with classic purity and vigor. He
has the eyes of the Jesus in Madrid, but developed
more completely. They intimate not only a future,
but a past immortality. An all-seeing beneficent
spirit appears in them, and the slight pressure of his
under lip is prophetic of the parables, the sermon
on the mount, and the agony in the garden. As he
rests on his mother's arm he looks as if he might
rule a kingdom or command an army. Every hair
on his head is numbered, and Raphael has at last
succeeded in creating a divine boy.
The simplicity of the Virgin's dress adds to her

The Evolution of Raphael. 2 1 9
grace and dignity. Every fold in it is a study in
proportion. Her naked feet tread the clouds as
lightly as moonbeams lie on the water. The clouded
background of cherubs' heads shows a Shakspearian
imagination. It sometimes happens where there is a genius in a
family, that he will also have a brother who re
sembles him in all respects except that. Such is
the relation between the two cherubs beneath, and
the infant Saviour. They are of the same nature
with him, but not, like him, exceptional.
The final excellence of this work consists in its
perfect harmony. As the grace of Raphael's draw
ing belonged to himself, so he possessed the faculty
of making all the people about him feel in accord
with one another ; and this was the more remarkable
because, as is well known, artists are of all men
the most jealous. This will appear more clearly
when we compare the Sistine Madonna with other
works of the same character, such as Correggio's
Notte in the Dresden Gallery, and with Titian's
Ascension of the Virgin. Correggio's pictures are
always harmonious, but it is too much the harmony
of similarity. All the faces in his Notte have nearly
the same expressions, varied only by age, sex, and
temperament. In the Ascension of the Virgin Titian
has succeeded in creating a truly noble harmony be
tween the Heavenly Father and the upward soaring
Madonna, but the cherubs who accompany her and
form a sort of fringe to the cloud (and some of them
have a superior beauty) are all separate individuali
ties without any definite relation to her or to one

220 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
another. The group of apostles below have a defi
nite relation among them, but they are separated
from the rest of the picture by their realistic atti
tudes and gestures. There is no one chord of feeling
running through the whole.
Now let us return from Venice to Dresden. How
different is the expression of the Sistine Virgin
from that of her child, and yet how strong is the
bond which unites them. As in all true artistic
contrasts, there is a deep undercurrent of agree
ment. In like manner the pious gravity of St.
Sixtus is contrasted with the blissful holiness of St.
Barbara. One of the cherubs is also grave, and the
other smiling. All are united in their reverence for
the divine will which Christ represents, but which
he also implicitly obeys.
There is a lofty harmony in Murillo's Madonnas,
hovering in those heavenly depths of sky, which
only he could paint ; but they are far off and unap
proachable. They affect us like distant strains of
music. The green curtains, as well as the friendli
ness of the two cherubs, bring the Sistine Madonna
very near to us ; — with the help of engravings and
photographs to our own firesides.
The Sistine Madonna is the only one of Raphael's
works in which he equals the depth of Michel An
gelo. PORTRAIT OF LEO X.
The finest of all Raphael's portraits, painted at
the zenith of his genius, is that of Leo X. in the
Pitti Palace. It is more skilfully painted than any
of the portraits of Julius II., although not so in-

The Evolution of Raphael. 221
teresting a subject. There were good reasons why
Raphael should exert all his talent to please this
munificent patron.* Perfectly real and lifelike,
without the least flattery of form or feature, he has
nevertheless bestowed on it an impression of deci
sive character and intellectual force, which belonged
more properly to Julius. In spite of his homely
features, he figures as the ideal pope, — every inch a
pope ; and the two cardinals, Rossi and Giulio dei
Medici, though admirable portraits, were perhaps
unconsciously subordinated to this fact. The latter,
afterwards Clement VII., has banged hair and wears
his red cap on the back of his head with the air of a
notable dandy. The coloring is clear, rich, and
luminous; nearly if not quite equal to Titian.
The Donna Velata is another very much admired
portrait in the Pitti Palace; and the expression of
her eyes proves it to have been painted by Raphael,
though perhaps not wholly by his own hand. Her
eyes remind us slightly of the Sistine Madonna, but
their form and the cast of her other featun s are so
different, that it is quite unlikely that she served as
a model for that wonderful creation. The relation
ship which Morelli thought he had discovered be
tween this portrait and the Roman Fornarina is still
more improbable.
It is a simply and exquisitely painted portrait of
a lady, without any effort for artistic effect. Ra
phael for once has rendered life as he saw it, and
the features of the Donna Velata, though quite
regular, are not of a high order of beauty.
* C. and C.'s Life of Raphael.

222 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
On the contrary, in the Violin Player of the Sciarra
Palace he has given his subject an air of the most
penetrating romance. It is a portrait and so much
more that we earnestly wish he had left behind him
an equally worthy likeness of himself. The face
has a dash of the gipsy in it, but is indicative of a
nature poetic and alive to fine influences. The
arrangement of his cap, the turn of his head, and
the expression of his eyes all have their effect in the
tout ensemble. The long dark hair on either side
of his neck brings the brightness of the face into
prominent relief, and for refined richness of coloring
it rivals the portrait of Leo X.
The Vision of Ezekiel in the Pitti Palace is a lofty
and imaginative design ; but if connoisseurs are to
be trusted (which they are not to be altogether),
Raphael never touched his brush to it.
FRESCOS IN THE FARNESINA.
The Triumph of Galatea in the Farnesina Palace
was painted in imitation of the antique. Raphael
had seen something of ancient mural paintings in
the baths of Titus and other Roman ruins, and, al
though these were not of a superior quality, he was
quick to seize the spirit of Greek painting, and to
reproduce it with the additional charm of his own
personality. His extensive fresco in the Farnesina
is a wild revel of nymphs and uncouth sea-monsters
assisted by aerial cupids; and yet the work has an
orderly arrangement, and its execution supplies a
sense of elegance which serves to reconcile the scene

The Evolution of Raphael. 223
to our modern ideas of propriety. In his Galatea
Raphael has dived into the spirit of classical an
tiquity as one bathes in the sea at Capri. We real
ize it in her contented smile, the fluttering of her
veil, the ripple of the water, and the evident enjoy
ment of the Tritons disporting themselves like seals
and dolphins. The whole scene breathes an atmos
phere of innocent sensuous delight.
The epicycle of Cupid and Psyche in the Farne
sina is designed in the same spirit as the Triumph of
Galatea, but executed with much less attention from
Raphael himself. The various episodes in this com
position are represented in spandrils and lunettes,
surrounded by graceful arabesques conceived with
a refined delicacy and in a spirit of charming play
fulness, which makes them attractive at the first
glance; but they only deserve study so far as is
necessary for the interpretation of the separate
scenes. We discover Venus directing Eros to per
secute Psyche with his love-darts; the intercession
of the Graces in favor of Psyche ; the complaint of
Venus to Jupiter; Mercury dispatched in search of
Psyche; the return of Psyche from Hades, borne
by the attendants of Eros ; the intercession of Eros
for Psyche with Jupiter; and in a larger painting on
the ceiling, Psyche drinks the cup of immortality in
presence of the assembled deities. It is all classic
and very pretty, but only valuable for its design.*
* C. and C.'s Life of Raphael.

RAPHAEL'S DRAMATIC PICTURES
THE short road of genius sometimes proves to
be quite a long one. Raphael did not de
velop his dramatic talent very rapidly, or at
equal intervals ; and it was not until the papacy of
Leo X. that he attained to the perfect bloom and
fruition of it. This may have been partly owing to
the class of paintings on which he was engaged, but
how far he was permitted to choose his own sub
jects or how often they were dictated to him, we
do not know.
The development of a drama either in poetry or
painting requires a capability of looking at a subject
from various points of view, and indicates not only
an exceptional breadth of vision, but an impartial
judgment, such as can deal with various discordant
elements, and yet do full justice to every one of
them. It is partially a gift which comes by nature,
but also requires experience far more than does the
lyric faculty.
There is a Crucifixion in the collection of Lord
Dudley which Crowe and Cavalcaselle attribute to
Raphael, but it is almost too immature a work to
224

THE JUDGMENT OF SOLOMON, by RAPHAEL
Camera della Segnatura

Raphael's Dramatic Pictures. 225

deserve a place in the history of his development.
It would seem to have been painted at the same
age as the Solly Madonna, and we may presume it
to have been little more than the reflection of the
various Crucifixions which he had an opportunity of
examining. The formality of its arrangement is
more conspicuous from its size and the number of its
figures than this would be in a simple Madonna.
The Coronation of the Virgin executed for the Oddi
family, and now in the Vatican, was really Raphael's
first dramatic painting. It is on wood, about nine
by five feet, and is divided into a Coronation above
and an Ascension beneath. There is, however, no
very tangible connection between these two scenes,
and the postures of the saints are decidedly aca
demic. The expression of affectionate humility on
the face of the Madonna seems more like Raphael,
and the head of the Saviour is noble and dignified.
Still more important are two cherubs resting on the
clouds beneath ; for their attitudes closely resemble
those of the cherubs in the Sistine Madonna. The
delicate painting of flowers and grasses about the
grave from which the Madonna has arisen, is an
early indication of Raphael's genuine love of nature.
The Sposalizio in the Brera at Milan was Raphael's
next opportunity in the way of a dramatic composi
tion. A marriage or a betrothal is not of itself a
dramatic incident, but it became so in this case by
the introduction of the disappointed suitors, one of
whom is seen in the foreground breaking his rod
across his knee, and others stand behind Joseph with
jealous or disappointed looks. Mary, a woman of

226 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
evident superiority, holds out her hand, with a
modest inclination of her head, while Joseph stands
with one foot at right angles to the other like a man
who is somewhat embarrassed. His attitude is
closely allied to that of Perugino's Joseph in the Spo
salizio at Caen. A retinue of ladies behind Mary
balances the suitors on the other side; but the
arrangement of all the figures is so easy and natural as
to prevent this from being apparent. The composi
tion has an atmosphere of youthful purity and blithe-
fulness. The figures are slight and lightly drawn.
In the background Raphael has constructed a
symmetrical building, in appearance like a baptis
try, which shows his talent for architecture, and
relationship to Bramante. This design might still
be made useful.
The Sposalizio was painted in Raphael's twenty-
second year and represents his coming of age, as
well as his emancipation from Perugino and the
traditions of the Umbrian school. This appears
notably in the figure of the Virgin, whose perfect
head and graceful attitude may almost be con
sidered an ideal, and the young man breaking the
wand over his knee, whose spirited action gives
force to the whole scene. It may be significant of
Raphael's breaking loose from the conventionalities
of religious painting. This, however, only came
gradually; and the coloring of the Sposalizio is in
the variegated style of the fifteenth century. If
Leonardo had been called in to give his opinion of
the picture, this at least would have received a severe
sentence from him. One can imagine the dreamy

Raphael's Dramatic Pictures. 227
smile with which Raphael may have regarded it ten
years later.
Nearly five years elapsed after this before the
painting of Raphael's Entombment, now in the
Borghese gallery. The number of studies he made
for it and the different changes in them, show the
thorough manner in which he prepared himself for
his work, and perhaps also a feeling that he was
treading on strange ground. With all his pains the
picture cannot be called wholly a success. There
are great elements in it, but they are not altogether
in accord.
Raphael has found out how to conjure up grand
ideas, but he has not learned how to dispose of
them. The contrast between the vigorous action
of the bearers of Christ and the classic repose of the
mourners is almost startling. Nicodemus, who lifts
the feet of the Saviour, is a youth of giant strength,
and does it with such an air ; as if he were about to
attack a fortress. His figure is not perfectly drawn
and yet it is magnificent. The body seems to be
borne along, however, with much difficulty, and
when we compare Tintoretto's more mature treat
ment of the subject, we perceive how unnecessary
this is. Joseph of Arimathea stands behind the
bearer at the head, in aspect like some Greek divin
ity, while the Madonna is fainting in the arms of
three beautiful Marys. There are six women alto
gether in the scene, and though there are marks of
grief on their faces, their beauty is more conspicuous
than their sorrow.

228 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
Christ himself, as Grimm has observed, does not
appear to be dead, nor even asleep, but like one in
a trance, who is conscious of what goes on around
him but unable to express himself in any way.
This is so evident that it is of no avail trying to
dispute it, and it is remarkable that Raphael at the
age of twenty-five should have conceived the subject
in such a manner. He was unacquainted with grief,
but he recognized the inscrutable nature of pure
spirit. This fact gives the work great importance,
in spite of its faults and peculiarities. If it is some
what academic, it does not fail in genius.
There is a sketch by Raphael in the Louvre of an
Entombment or a Pieta, which I judge to have been
made near the close of his stay in Florence, and
which is greatly superior in design to the painted
picture in the Borghese Palace. It may have been
drawn as a study in connection with that, and per
haps discarded for a fancied resemblance to the
marble Pieta of Michel Angelo ; though the posture
of Christ in the painting is much more like that.
I think the Christ also in this drawing is intended
to appear in a trance. His head is in the lap of
Mary, the mother of James, but the Madonna is
close beside her and close to his body, supported
tenderly by her aged mother, St. Anna. Above
these three stands Joseph of Arimathea in a turban,
an older and more dignified man than he appears
in the Entombment. Which of the two younger
women may be intended for the Magdalen, it is not
easy to decide. She is usually represented as the
most beautiful member of the group, and if so in

Raphael's Dramatic Pictures. 229
the present case, she would be the one leaning
towards St. Anna; but I would prefer to believe
that she is the one kneeling on the ground holding
the body of the Saviour in her lap, with her left
hand under his knee, and holding his left hand in
her right, while she looks up at the Virgin with
tender solicitude. I suppose this is the noblest atti
tude in which Raphael ever represented a woman, —
the most pathetic and human. At the right, St. John
is seen reverently approaching the group, with his
hands clasped under his chin. The composition is in
all respects harmonious, and its dramatic effect is fine.
Raphael certainly developed in Rome a genius,
hitherto unknown among men of his craft, for the
organization of industry. He enrolled under his
banner all the talented young painters in the city,
and led them forth like a young Alexander to con
quer empires. He must have had a cool head to
do this, for artists are commonly sensitive, excita
ble, and rather irritable persons, who much prefer
to be left to their own devices. It is only thus in
deed that they can concentrate themselves for their
peculiar kind of work. They hold business affairs
in contempt, and are very much annoyed by them.
People who displeased or interfered with Michel
Angelo found that they had better have stirred up
a hornet's nest; and Perugino also had a pretty
quick temper. But Raphael was very different.
The busiest man in Rome, he always had plenty of
time, and nothing seemed to annoy him. He was
never more himself than in a congregation of other

230 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
artists, or among the high dignitaries of the papal
court. He interested himself in his brother paint
ers, and liked to help them. Instead of being
jealous of him they loved him.
Vasari's statement that he had in his employ
fifty excellent and well-reputed painters must be an
exaggeration. No human faculty could devise plans
enough to keep such a number occupied. Neither
do we find the work performed that would justify
such a statement. It is more likely that he em
ployed fifty artists in all, at different times. Fifteen
or twenty would be the most that Raphael could
have given occupation to at once; and even these
were more than a just regard for honest art could
have warranted.
A wealthy Fleming, having learned that Rubens'
scholars assisted him in the execution of his pictures,
requested to have one painted wholly by his own
hand, offering to pay an unusual price for it on that
account. Rubens declined his offer, because he
considered it would be a waste of time, and explained
to the gentleman that there was an intermediate
stage in the painting of a picture which did not
require so much skill as its beginning and comple
tion ; and that his pictures would not be better if
he painted every stroke upon them. The Rubens
hall in the Pinacothek at Munich is a glorious place.
There is every variety of painting in it, from a small
genre picture to the largest historical composition ;
and it is difficult to decide which is the most perfectly
finished or best represents the style of the master.
If the same could be said of Raphael's work in

'THE VIOLIN PLAYER," by RAPHAEL
Galleria S. Luca, Rome

Raphael's Dramatic Pictures. 231
the Vatican, it would be more to the advantage of
his fame and to our enjoyment when we go there.
There can be no doubt that he employed too many
assistants and often gave insufficient attention to
what they were doing ; the second evil being a ne
cessary consequence of the first. Even the drawing
would not always seem to have been his own, and
while he finished some figures with a great deal of
care, others were only slightly touched by him, or
neglected altogether. While the general style of his
painting pervades the whole series, there is too much
of an inequality in the details. Sometimes his
pupils imitated him and sometimes Michel Angelo,
and their attempt to give his spiritual expression of
countenance often resulted in an anomaly which was
beyond the skill of Raphael to remedy. An in
stance of this may be noticed in the two angels who
support the robes of a pope, who is said to be Urban
IV. , but who looks remarkably like Julius II. Their
bodies are Raphaelesque but their arms in the style
of Michel Angelo, while their faces have a look
somewhat as if they had come out from a bath. It
may be for the same reason that Raphael's work
has not endured so well as that in the Sistine Chapel ;
for the Vatican has an atmosphere of its own which
is almost as dry as that of Colorado.
In this way Raphael accomplished more work
than Michel Angelo, but the quality was not so
good. The mountain stream has become a tide
river, valuable to commerce, but its water is no
longer pure. While Michel Angelo was lying on
his back in the Sistine Chapel with the paint from

232 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
his brush dropping on his face, Raphael was em
ployed with a similar work called the Disputa on the
ceiling of the Camera della Segnatura. Grimm has
given an admirable analysis of this immense paint
ing, and traced in it the course of Raphael's intel
lectual widening during his first two years in Rome.
It possesses a metaphysical quality, which only a
few are likely to perceive, but which gives it, for
those few, an exceptional value. Raphael interested
himself in philosophy at twenty-five, as Schiller did
at thirty, and the same must have been true at
nearly the same age for Shakspeare.
Philosophy is the capstone of a well-developed
mind, and the best kind of work in art or literature
cannot be accomplished without its help. What
we learn in the universities is not sufficient, and the
true scholar must go through an independent course
of study, and form his own opinions irrespective of
the professors. The fit properly comes upon him
like a fever, and he emerges from it quite another
man. The metaphysical discussions in Troilus and
Cressida may be irrelevant to the plot, but without
this preparatory effort we should not have had Ham
let, where Shakspeare's profound thoughts fall into
their proper places. The Disputa leads in a similar
manner to the School of Athens, which is the most
celebrated of Raphael's frescos. Neither of them
are properly dramatic pictures, for they contain no
dramatic action. They are contemplative works
which accord with Raphael's mental condition at
this time ; and they prepare the way for those which
follow, as fresh thought stimulates to action.

Raphael's Dramatic Pictures. 233
CAMERA DELLA SEGNATURA.
The manner in which Raphael laid out his work
in the Camera della Segnatura not only attests the
breadth of his mind, but rare confidence in his
ability to accomplish whatever he undertook. He
was barely twenty-six, and yet he suddenly rose
from small Florentine panel-work to frescos of the
grandest magnitude. As the chamber has two
walls larger and more unbroken than the others, on
one he designed the celebrated School of Athens
and opposite to it the Disputa, an immense re
ligious allegory containing nearly forty figures. On
the other sides Parnassus and Jurisprudence were
painted above and around the windows. Over these
larger works he designed smaller groups; respec
tively, Philosophy, Theology, Poetry, and Justice.
One would suppose that he might have spent a life
time on these subjects.
In the Disputa, which was Raphael's first design
here, we meet with those influences which we have
already recognized in his Tuscan work, and also a
new one which above all was most nearly akin to his
own nature, — the influence of Greek sculpture. We
discover in it, besides, the transition of Raphael's
mind from his narrower Florentine life to Roman
grandeur and magnificence. These different ele
ments could not of course be made to harmonize at
once, and resulted in a certain inequality of design,
a disproportion in the figures, which is only partially
atoned for by a skilful architectural arrangement.
The group surrounding Theology, who is represented

234 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
by a beautiful young woman with a book on her
lap seated on the clouds, is quite as Florentine in
character as the Madonna of the Meadow ; while the
figure of Christ in the upper centre of the Disputa
has a breadth of design and unclothed dignity
which denotes an escape from Florentine traditions,
just as his earnestness of expression suggests more
serious contemplation. A lapse of fifty years sepa
rates this figure from that of the Heavenly Father,
half enveloped in the clouds above.* Here Raphael
has returned to the traditions of the fifteenth cen
tury, and this is made more plainly apparent by the
bodiless cherubs which form a large circle about
Jehovah. The golden rays and the stars which
fill the adjoining spaces belong to the time of Fra
Angelico. In this heavenly assemblage Theology holds the
first place as a perfectly conceived ideal, and is even
more beautiful than any of Raphael's Florentine
Madonnas, f Of similar, if not of equal quality, are
the boy angels who hover about the central group
and in the starry empyrean above.
More original, and a more harmonious design, is
the concourse of apostles and other holy men on the
earth beneath. St. Peter and St. Paul stand forth
as conspicuous leaders of the two groups, while
Adam, Abraham, Moses, and David are readily dis
tinguished. A golden haze appears to descend
upon them from above, typifying the inspiration
which comes to spiritually gifted natures. Here
more vigor, freedom, and breadth of design are ap-
* C. and C.'s Life of Raphael. f See Grimm's description.

Raphael's Dramatic Pictures. 235
parent ; so that by following the course of Raphael's
work from the ceiling downward, his art almost
seems to develop and expand before our eyes.
On the clouds above Parnassus, presides a beauti
ful sibylline figure representing Poetry, with a book
on her knee and with her left hand resting on a
lyre. Her drawing is antique, as also that of the
two-winged spirits that accompany her. This is not
so decided, however, as to seem incongruous, and
the appearance of the model of Raphael's Nazarene
Madonnas among the Muses preserves the connec
tion with Florentine traditions.
Raphael painted a broad, semicircular arch across
the wall, through which we seem to be looking at
the poetic congregation. This suggests the effect
of a landscape seen through and under a rainbow.
The whole scene has an atmosphere of vernal fresh
ness, which, when the coloring was new, must have
been delightful and charming.
The finest group in this painting is formed by the
poets who surround Homer, especially the two at
his left hand, whom I take to be Virgil and Ariosto.
Homer himself, towering above all others, with up
raised face, has a good deal of majesty; but Dante
looks too short, and has not the refined, classic
profile of Giotto's portrait. The grouping of Par
nassus is much more natural than in the Disputa,
and this would suggest an intermediate position be
tween the Disputa and the School of Athens.
The drawing is no less worthy of Raphael ; atid

236 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
yet this painting suffers from a single incongruity
which it is impossible to overlook.
On the front frieze of the Parthenon the twelve
greater divinities were represented in a row, the male
nude and the female draped from shoulder to ankle ;
but this does not offend our sense of elegance, be
cause of their antique and simple costume and the
lack of everything like modern decoration. In his
Parnassus, however, Raphael has represented a
nearly nude Apollo surrounded by nine well-dressed
Muses, with coiffures in the style of his own time.
The ancient and the modern world here come too
sharply into collision, and we feel that the contrast
is not a pleasant one.
The architecture which Raphael designed for the
School of Athens impresses us with a delightful sense
of space, — much like the interior of Milan Cathedral.
If this was according to Bramante's plan for the
interior of St. Peter's, it is greatly to be regretted
that he did not live to carry it into effect. In addi
tion to breadth, it gives what St. Peter's does not, in
spite of its size, — a sense of loftiness and stately
elegance. This magnificent work has suffered so much from
repainting that in many instances the attitudes are
all that remains to us, even the outlines having been
spoiled by an unskilful use of the brush. Raphael's
faces seem to look at us appealingly from beneath
the paint with which they are covered ; only here
and there are we able to distinguish clearly their
noble lineaments. Among them all, none have

Raphael's Dramatic Pictures. 237
suffered more severely than the figures of Plato and
Aristotle. One has a magnificent leonine head,
suggestive of the Zeus of Otricoli, but his expres
sion is no longer visible. His drapery is remark
ably like St. Paul's, in the St. Cecilia group ; but,
for all that, I do not believe that he represents St.
Paul or Aristotle either, but Plato. He is not
beckoning with his hand, but pointing heavenward ;
while the person next him is holding his arm
straight forward, and level with the earth. This
must be Aristotle ; and what gestures could be more
characteristic of their respective schools of philos
ophy. Plato says it is self-consciousness which
indicates the divine origin of man, and Aristotle
replies: " Let us investigate also the origin of
things about us."* His face is even less distin
guishable than Plato's, but both were originally
ideals of the highest type.
At the right of Plato there is a small group of his
disciples in echelon ; and beyond these, Socrates,
somewhat idealized but unmistakably Socrates, is
explaining something to another small group in
which Alcibiades is easily recognized by his Grecian
helmet and voluptuous manner; a better Alcibiades
could not be imagined. At the extreme left there
is another group through which an almost naked,
poetic-looking youth is hurrying forward with a
book and a roll of parchment in his hand, while an
older person standing near him holds out his hand
in a gesture of moderation. The former may be a
* The opposition between these two philosophers is only in regard
to particular points. Aristotle was also an idealist.

238 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
messenger who has been sent to fetch some valuable
document. His action is very spirited, and by no
means overdrawn. He serves as a contrast to the
self-conscious dignity of Alcibiades, and also to a
stout gentleman seated in front, whose head (not
unlike Luther's) is crowned with a wreath of oak.
He is soberly reading a large quarto, with a hand
some boy-page on either side of him. Raphael
has bestowed all the repose of his own nature on
this sturdy thinker, who is sufficiently original in
himself, but whose situation recalls vividly the
prophets and their attendant spirits of the Sistine
Chapel. Since Michel Angelo's frescos were uncovered
for the first time in 15 10, it is safe to presume that
the School of Athens was not finished until 15 11 or
possibly later.
There are other figures in this painting which
plainly indicate the influence of Michel Angelo,
while there are none either in the Disputa or the
Parnassus ; for the Disputa at least was completed
before the Sistine Chapel was open to visitors.
Diogenes, scantily clad, is lying on the steps in front
of Plato in an appropriate attitude. Pythagoras
stands on the left, and Ptolemy on the right. Archi
medes stoops over to demonstrate a problem on the
floor, and is said to be painted in the image of
Bramante, but only his bald cranium with patches
of hair above the ears is visible. The philosopher
looking over the shoulder of Pythagoras is supposed
to be Boethius. Raphael has introduced a large num
ber of young men among the thinkers, and quite

Raphael's Dramatic Pictures. 239

correctly, for it is to the young that intellectual re
formers appeal, and among whom they find their
most zealous adherents; but many of these have
rather a sentimental expression, and an attitude as
if they were posing for their portraits. The beauti
ful youth beneath Socrates (he is looking out of the
picture) may be intended for Charmides, who is in
terrogated in Plato's first dialogue. Perhaps this
was Raphael's conception of the young Athenians
of whom Plato and Xenophon wrote. Still one
would think that he would have preferred more
manly types. That they should appear self-conscious
and not strictly attentive to the proceedings is nat
ural enough. Yet it is a magnificent work, and
marks an advance beyond the Disputa in its perfect
grouping and greatness of design. Plato, Aristotle,
Alcibiades, and a number more are drawn in the
grand manner.
In the right-hand lower corner there is a distin
guished group of four persons who appear to be
holding a separate conference by themselves. You
will frequently see such side groups at public meet
ings. One of them is easily recognized. There can
be no question as to his identity. He is Leonardo
da Vinci, reproduced from the Florentine portrait,
only with this difference, — his eyes are turned to
the left instead of to the right. He is in better pres
ervation than most of the figures in this fresco, but
by no means equal to the original ; nor do I believe
that a portrait in fresco can rival one in oil on equal
terms. The nearest face to Leonardo is supposed
to be Raphael himself, and he has the same profile

240 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
and bird-like expression of the eye as in the Uffizi
portrait. Close to Raphael's left shoulder stands a
man who has been recognized as Perugino, but the
profiles of the two are suspiciously alike. He is
much older, stouter, and has a rather more worldly,
practical look; but the family likeness is very de
cided. We do not hear that Raphael was nearly or
distantly related to Perugino, and this likeness may
have been the result of an ignorance of Perugino's
features seen from that point of view. His face, like
Leonardo's, was probably painted from memory.
Between him we call Perugino and Leonardo there
is an elegant, princely figure, with a spiked coronet
on his head. He cannot be identified, as only the
lower portion of his face is visible, and therefore
must have been introduced for artistic effect. His
neck is drawn with two curved lines of exquisite
grace, and some mathematician ought to examine
those curves and study their properties. It is possi
ble that a human being might have such a neck,
just as an oval face is possible; but this personage
is an ideal.
In the School of Athens the two most prominent
figures are described by Vasari as Plato and Aris
totle, and this statement is supported indirectly by
the female figure above the painting, who is labelled
Cognitio Causarum ; but some connoisseurs have
concluded that these two dramatis personce are in
tended for Peter and Paul, and that they are repre
sented here expounding the doctrines of Christianity
to the learned men of Greece and Rome. If this

"ENTOMBMENT," by RAPHAEL
Borghese Gallery, Rome

Raphael's Dramatic Pictures. 241
interpretation, however, be correct, in what way is
the motto Cognitio Causarum to be explained ?
Herman Grimm's argument for Peter and Paul is
that the persona formerly supposed to be Aristotle is
standing with his arm raised in a gesture like that
of an orator, and St. Paul was the great pleader of
the Christian cause, surpassing all the disciples of
Christ in eloquence and education. But how are
we to understand the names Etica and Fisico which
are inscribed on the two volumes held by these prom
inent individuals ? Ethics might bear some relation
to the teaching of Paul and Peter, but physics could
not possibly do so. These inscriptions apply accu
rately to the writings of Plato and Aristotle, one of
whom may be said to have founded modern ethics,
and the other, through his analysis of the reasoning
faculty, opened the highway to modern science.
This corresponds perfectly with the motto above
the picture, for the investigation of causes was the
special endeavor of Hellenic philosophy. Again we
are obliged to admire the breadth and catholicity of
Raphael's mind.
The appellation of Jurisprudence has been given
to the fourth important painting in the Camera della
Segnatura, on account of the figure of Justice which
presides above it ; but it is really an allegorical com
position containing a group of figures which repre
sent those virtues which are of especial service in
practical affairs. Prudence is seated on a marble
plinth beneath Justice, and on either side at her feet
are Strength and Moderation ; the one caressing the

242 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
head of a lion and holding an oak branch in her
other hand, both adequate symbols ; while the other
holds up a bridle to signify the control of our de
sires. Both are attended by small genii, which,
though Raphaelesque in drawing, remind us of the
Sistine Chapel. A naked child looking toward the
spectator is the most perfect figure in this group.
Not satisfied with such a wealth of decoration — if
decoration be not too weak a word — Raphael repre
sented on the ceiling four subjects appropriate to
the paintings on the walls : The Fall of Man, Mar
syas and Apollo, The Creation of the Planets, and The
Judgment of Solomon. Of these the last is much the
finest design ; and indeed it is rather unpleasant to
associate Raphael with his treatment of the Apollo
and Marsyas fable in this instance. Apollo is being
crowned with a wreath of victory by the shepherds,
while the naked Marsyas is fastened by his arms
and feet to a tree preparatory to the operation of
being flayed. It shows how far Raphael could have
been from having a realizing sense of the terrible
punishments that were inflicted in his time. They
were only too real and terrible to Michel Angelo's
mind : but Raphael was optimistic ; he avoided
melancholy thoughts and had never listened to the
fiery eloquence of Savonarola.
The Judgment of Solomon may be considered
Raphael's first entirely successful dramatic work.
It is so strictly classic that it might even be com
pared to the Alcestis of Euripides. Only four per
sons are represented in it besides the babe, and they

Raphael's Dramatic Pictures. 243

play their parts to perfection. Solomon's face is in
profile, so that we do not see its expression, but he
emphasizes his order by a vertical movement of the
hands. The executioner, a fully developed athlete,
holds the child at arm's length, and grasps with the
other hand a weapon which Raphael would seem to
have invented for the purpose. (We should know
Raphael had designed it if we discovered it in
Arabia.) His brutal face is turned from us, so that
we may better admire his fine physique. The
action of the mother is magnificent. She springs
forward to interpose herself before the threatened
blow, and turns to Solomon with a look of frenzied
entreaty. The false mother, kneeling on the ground,
holds out her hands with a gesture of pretended
unconcern. The composition reminds us of the ingenious ar
rangement of Raphael's early groups — especially of
the Holy Family at Munich. Solomon's face is in
profile, for he has not yet come to a decision. The
face of the good woman is turned toward us; that
of the wicked woman away from us. There is a
moment of terrible suspense, but we know it will be
followed by joy, and the consummation of justice.
The picture is not less remarkable in its perfect
balance of forces than for its powerful contrasts.
CAMERA DEL' ELIODORO.
There is a kind of anachronism in painting which
does no mischief to a picture, and may even be of
advantage ; but there is another sort which is highly

244 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
injurious. The representation of a young, intelli
gent mother in her everyday costume as a Madonna
(if she deserves the honor) does not conflict with
our sense of propriety. The simplicity of her attire
gives it a universal application to all times and
civilized countries, and we even prefer such pictures
to those modern studies that would restore the
mother of Christ to us as she actually appeared.
Very different is the effect produced by introducing
three Venetian senators with their robes of state in
the Adoration of the Magi. The antithesis is too
startling for us ; we fall from the pleasant cloudland
of the past on to the hard ground of the present;
all romance, all illusion, is dispelled by it.
Raphael would appear to have had his own way
in the Camera della Segnatura without interference.
The subjects there are characteristic of him, and are
wrought out in that spirit of classic repose which
was the keynote of his nature. Perhaps he had
carried this as far as it would go, and some external
pressure was necessary in order to divert the full
passion of his interest into a different channel. The
three paintings in the Segnatura have a universal
character; they now are and always will be; but
those in the Camera del' Eliodoro refer to particular
historic events, and are full of action and excitement.
In the Expulsion of Heliodorus from the temple and
the Miracle at Bolsena, Julius II. appears with a
number of church dignitaries living at that time;
and in the Exorcism ofAttila, Leo X. is represented
with the Swiss Guard in their well-known uniform.
Every one notices the discordance that arises from

Raphael's Dramatic Pictures. 245
the introduction of these celebrated men in scenes
which were enacted hundreds of years before their
time. The Expulsion of Heliodorus is the most dramatic
of Raphael's larger frescos, and next to the School
of Athens the most interesting. Its design is ad
mirable, but the painted picture suffers from two
serious evils. At the second glance we discover
that the group of Heliodorus and that of the af
frighted spectators were painted by different hands,
and though Raphael may have attempted to har
monize them, the discord could not be wholly
remedied. Quite as questionable is his introduction
of Pope Julius and his attendants in the temple at
Jerusalem. The occasion for this, and the vanity
which prompted it, occurs to us immediately.
Heliodorus, the satrap of Seleucus, in attempting
to rob the Jewish temple of its treasure, is said to
have been attacked by celestial warriors, who re
covered the gold and drove him and his attendants
forth. Raphael has represented one of the angelic
defenders on horseback in Roman armor, and two
others are on foot but walking on the air. Their
action is very spirited, and the prostrate attitude of
Heliodorus, holding up his right arm in defence
against the trampling horseman, is worthy of the
drawing of Leonardo, and one of the most difficult
positions that Raphael attempted. Near Julius II.
is a graceful group of women and children who have
taken refuge in the temple and are expressing their
astonishment by animated gestures. The foremost

246 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
woman, kneeling on the floor, is nearly repeated
again in the Transfiguration. The grand cavernous
architecture is well suited to our ideas of the Hebrew
house of worship, and Raphael has introduced the
seven-pronged candlestick of the Jews as it appears
on a bas-relief in the arch of Titus.
In the Expulsion of Heliodorus Raphael attempted
to harmonize the work of his assistants by a skilful
use of his own brush after they had finished. This,
however, was not wholly successful, and in the
Miracle at Bolsena he adopted a different method ;
evidently painting the central portion of the fresco
with its more important personages himself, and
leaving the surrounding portion to others.* The
miracle is nothing more than the trick of turning a
chemical substance into a liquid resembling blood,
— the miracle of St. Januarius.
Julius II. appears here again as the central figure,
and opposite to him Cardinal Medici, afterwards
Clement VII., with a number of attendant pages, —
all kneeling together. Never was Raphael's style
more pure, or his skill more perfectly sustained, than
we find it in this group. It is simply the finest art
in the whole series of the Camere, and the finest
portrait we have of Julius II. , who appears here
with a longer beard, older, and more benignant than
in the easel paintings. His expression is dramatic
and very remarkable; his eye has a surprised but
determined expression, as of a man who knew how
to be master in every emergency. Even the paint-
* C. and C.'s Life of Raphael.

Raphael's Dramatic Pictures. 247
ing of his sleeve seems miraculous. Neither is Car
dinal Medici, who holds the blood-stained wafer,
treated in a less deserving manner; and the attend
ant pages, kneeling in their white muslin vestments,
have that spiritual grace which seems almost super
natural. The remainder of the fresco might be
compared to the side scenes of a theatre, which serve
as a setting to the living persons who act between
them. It is a composition of fine, delicate contrasts,
of admirably balanced grouping, and possesses a
decided advantage in representing ecclesiastical life
as it appeared in Raphael's own time.
The fable of Attila's being driven out of Italy by
divine interposition is represented on the wall oppo
site the Expulsion of Heliodorus. The scene is laid
between the Ccelian and Palatine hills by the side
of the Tiber, though the event is supposed to have
taken place in northern Italy. Here Leo X. appears
instead of Julius II. , so that the painting must
have been finished after the winter of 15 13. It
is executed on similar lines to the preceding. The
figures of Leo, Attila, and of the two apostle spirits
threatening the infidel invader must have been
finished by Raphael himself ; while there can be no
less doubt that he left the Swiss Guards and other
generic personages entirely to his assistants. Leo
is certainly painted with all Raphael's skill. The
apostles hovering in the air above him are interest
ing as a prediction of Raphael's Moses and Elijah
in the Transfiguration. Attila wheels his horse with
a simple and effective gesture of alarm, and the con-

248 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
fusion in the Tartar horde is well expressed, though
by an inferior hand — the design, of course, being
Raphael's own.
The Deliverance of St. Peter is painted on the wall
above the windows, and is one of the most poetic
and restful of Raphael's Vatican frescos. The
saint appears in it twice, and Raphael has made a
success of this presentation, all rules of art to the
contrary. The moonlight streams in through a
doorway and is reflected on the armor of the guards,
who are spiritually hypnotized, while the radiant
angel awakes St. Peter in his cell. Then the two
appear again in a passageway, the angel leading
Peter, on whose face there is an expression of pious
joy. There are three noble presentations of Peter:
this one by Raphael, Leonardo's in his Last Supper,
and Tintoretto's in his great Crucifixion. Leo
nardo's is the genuine Peter, for he has the physiog
nomy of a Jew, and is moreover suggestive of the
saying, " On this rock will I found my Church";
but we can never forget the manly solicitude of
Tintoretto's Peter over the swooning Mary, or the
aspect of grave holiness in the face of Raphael's.
He is not an ideal, but more like the portrait of a
Roman senator, one of the Antonines perhaps. Yet
we admire him for his whole personality rather than
for any one quality or virtue.
It is said to be Raphael's best work in chiaroscuro,
the Disputa with its far-reaching landscape coming
next in order. The bright, awakening splendor of
the angel is contrasted with the peaceful rays of the

POPE LEO X, by RAPHAEL
Uffizzi Gallery, Florence

Raphael's Dramatic Pictures. 249
moon, which seem to invite the prisoner forth into
the fields and groves. It is Raphael's one perfect
fresco in the Vatican, and a companion to the un
finished cartoons.
Michel Angelo was not the first to endow the
divine image with an athletic figure, as may be seen
on the ceiling of the Eliodoro, where in Jacob' s
Dream the Almighty appears in a form like that of
an intellectual pancratiast. This, however, does not
recall the Sistine Chapel, as the same presence does
in Raphael's painting of the Burning Bush. The
appearance of God to Noah is treated in a pleasing
domestic manner; and the most interesting of this
series is the Sacrifice of Isaac, in which a beautiful
angel dashes down in full flight to present the sub
stitute of a lamb, while another angel quietly seizes
the upraised arm of Abraham. Here, as in the deliv
erance of Peter, Raphael was in his proper element.
CAMERA DEL' INCENDIO.
Generally the most satisfactory pictures are those
containing a moderate number of figures. After
the Camera Eliodoro, Raphael left all such prosaic,
overgrown subjects as the Oath of Leo III. and the
Coronation of Charlemagne to his well-trained corps
of assistants. They are not dramatic compositions
of the highest order — representing quantity rather
than quality of conception, with the poetic element
quite left out; and it is only the rarest technical
skill that can give such work an exceptional value.
His influence is discernible in them, and he must
have made the preparatory sketches, as well as

250 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
drawn some of the principal figures with his own
hand. The Fire in the Borgo, which gives its name
to this chamber, is more interesting to us, as every
thing must be which relates directly to human feel
ing and action, and evidently was so to Raphael.
It has the same dramatic character as the Miracle at
Bolsena. The group of women, who have escaped
from the flames and are imploring assistance from
the Pope, has an admirable arrangement — agitated
mothers and terrified daughters rendered with dignity
and true feminine grace. At the extreme left there
is a group which every reader of Virgil will recognize.
A stalwart-looking man, almost nude, is carrying
out his father, or some aged or infirm person, on his
back, while a boy of ten or twelve years runs by his
side, and a mysterious woman in Grecian costume
follows behind. The idea of course is taken from
the escape of ^Eneas with Anchises and the little
lulus from the sacking of Troy ; and it is another
tribute to the fine imagination of the Latin poet.
The drawing is not of the best, for the arms of the
boy are slightly too large for his body, and the
young man does not carry his burden so easily as a
strong person might ; but it is a poetic scene, and
the hand of Raphael is distinctly visible in it. The
firelight adds a romance of its own, and I think that
Raphael must also have painted the sidewalk under
their feet, so solid and real is its appearance.
THE CARTOONS.
Goethe considered the cartoons the only works of
Raphael which could be compared with those of

Raphael 's Dramatic Pictures. 2 5 1
Michel Angelo. The opinion of so rare a critic,
well versed in the knowledge of all arts, is of the
highest value to us ; but what did Goethe mean by
this ? The cartoons were then, as now, at Hampton
Court, and Goethe could never have seen them.
The tapestries that were made from them he must
have seen at Dresden, and perhaps also in the Vati
can, but they are now so much faded that it is no
less than a penance to investigate them, and they
could not have been in much better condition a
hundred years ago. It was the engravings from
these subjects that Goethe undoubtedly was think
ing of when he made the foregoing statement ; and
it proves the importance which he attached to the
design of a work of art, even when separated from
technical excellence.
Goethe was one of the world's great dramatists,
and he became interested in other arts by viewing
them from the standpoint of his own. It was the
dramatic character of the cartoons which appealed
to him so strongly, and led him to estimate them
more highly than Raphael's most skilfully finished
paintings. No one could judge of this so well, for
he was not only a poet but stage manager of the
Grand Duke's theatre, and he had practied the best
actors in their gestures and the positions they ought
to occupy on the stage at the critical moments of
the play. He knew the difficulty with which this
knowledge is acquired, and he respected Raphael as
his own equal in the dramatic art.
One especial advantage which the cartoons possess
consists in their being of the right dimensions. They

252 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
are not so large but that we can readily comprehend
the action that is represented on them. Where
more than ten or twelve figures are drawn together
the eye is obliged to separate them into different
groups, and in passing from one group to another
the sense of unity is lost. There are half a dozen
groups in Tintoretto's Paradise, which, if framed
separately, would attract universal admiration, but
it requires an effort of concentration to appreciate
them now, amid so great an assemblage. It is the
same in dramatic poetry. The best tragedies are
those in which the dramatis personce is limited and
the same characters constantly reappear.
There is a peculiar charm to these delicately tinted
pictures. They have an atmosphere similar to that
of Claude Lorraine. Though they are handled in a
slight manner, they seem more substantial than
some of Raphael's highly finished paintings. The
background is always delightful, whether it be a
landscape or fine architecture. They are all interest
ing studies, but here we have only time and space
to consider three of them, which are the most dis
similar in character.
Christ's Charge to Peter. A dramatic moment is
one which unites the future with the past and is re
lated significantly to both. It must result from the
collision of two forces, though these are not neces
sarily antagonistic. In this picture we have one of
the forces represented by the Saviour, and the other
by his disciples, who are gathered in a single group,
from which Christ stands somewhat apart. He

Raphael's Dramatic Pictures. 253
wishes to indicate to them what their future work
in the world shall be, and selects Peter as the
strongest character among them — the one on whom
he can best rely for the advancement of Christianity.
He therefore asks him three times: " Simon, dost
thou love me?" until Peter falls on his knees to
give earnestness to his assertion. Then says the
Saviour : " Feed my sheep " ; that is, be a shepherd
unto my people. This is the dramatic moment. It
confers on Peter the leadership of Christ's little
band, and proclaims him to the others as Christ's
successor. Raphael has, therefore, represented
Peter in the act of receiving the keys, though this
is not mentioned in the Bible.
Raphael introduced a flock of sheep in the middle
distance, and it has been inferred from this that he
interpreted the words of the Saviour too literally ;
but no one ever understood the meaning of this
passage better. There are too many fine symbol
isms invented by Raphael himself to permit us to
believe otherwise. The sheep are introduced to
identify the subject, which might otherwise remain
in doubt. Their animal indifference serves also as
an artistic contrast to the intelligent animation of
the group of disciples. The flock of sheep is itself
a symbol to represent the mass of mankind, who
follow after custom and tradition as sheep follow
the bell-wether ; while the apostles are the remnant
who think for themselves, and will save and enlighten
the world in Christ's name.
John and James press forward to urge the sincer
ity of their devotion, and they are almost imitated

254 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
in form and action by the two apostles behind them.
The others look on reflectively, or turn to inquire :
" What is the meaning of this, and why is Peter
distinguished from the rest?" Among the last
there is a powerful head, which is nearly identical
with Albert Diirer's St. Matthew in the Pinacothek
at Munich. It seems as if Raphael must have bor
rowed it, but how he could have done so is not clear.
The last is a dark-looking personage, whose face is
concealed, and may have been intended for Judas.
They are arranged nearly in two rows, so that ten
out of the twelve are distinctly visible. There was
no one like Raphael to give a formal arrangement a
natural appearance. They are a noble set of men,
and yet when we compare them with the faces in
the Last Supper at Milan, we are obliged to recog
nize in this line at least Leonardo's superiority.
His St. Peter may not be more earnest, or his St.
John more refined than Raphael's, but they are
more intellectual and highly developed.
Yet it is a powerful group, and to counterpoise it
the Saviour stands apart with grave classic dignity,
like the statue of Demosthenes in the Vatican. He
is slender and his face comparatively narrow and
beardless, his hair falling with rare grace upon his
shoulders. Nothing could indicate more plainly
how little consideration was paid by the Renais
sance artists to any particular type of Christ. If sep
arated from the picture, few would ever suspect for
whom this figure was intended. His head is not so
impressive as that of Matthew, nor are his features
so regular as John's, and yet Raphael has given his

Raphael's Dramatic Pictures. 255
face a decided superiority. We like this impersona
tion of Christ, because there is no apparent effort in
it to create something superhuman. His form is
relieved by a very deep shadow, a shadow like one
of Tintoretto's, which almost hides his right arm.
The attitude and drapery of Peter are also exceed
ingly fine. Nothing could be more perfect than the
way in which a fold of his mantle falls across his
back. Although there are so many figures the
shadows are divided into three principal masses,
which have a kind of beauty of their own.
The sheep are woolly and submissive, after the
nature of those animals ; and the grass and a cactus
in the foreground are painted with such accuracy
as modern artists would consider a waste of time.
The landscape stretches far away and fades gently
into the glimmering horizon. There is an elevation
in the distance rising above the heads of the dis
ciples, and its summit is directly above the Saviour.
Such a picture possesses an intrinsic superiority
over such works as the Parnassus, the Mass at Bol
sena, and the Fire in the Borgo.
The Miraculous Draught of Fishes is related to
Christ's Charge to Peter as the flower is to the fruit.
The scene is on the lake at Galilee ; a very peaceful
scene; — the opposite shore, which resembles the
banks of the Rhine, melting into the distance, with
two gulls flying overhead and a number of herons in
the immediate foreground.
The Saviour and five disciples fill two small boats,
which are also laden with fish. The face of the

256 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
Saviour is seen obliquely, and its expression is hid
den ; for here the dramatic action is centred in Peter,
whose appealing look and attitude is of the finest.
He is down on his knees among the fish, for he has
doubted his Master's prophetic power, and is deso
lated with remorse. Christ perceives in this the
spiritual depth of Peter's nature, — his quick con
science, as well as his self-reliance, — and recognizes
the depth and solidity of his nature as never before.
Otherwise it is a scene of rough and vigorous life.
James, with naked limbs and unkempt hair, is bal
ancing himself with his hands as he steps into the
Saviour's boat. In the second boat two young
men are bending over to haul in a net, and a third
is making good use of an oar or pole, apparently to
prevent the boat from drifting. As in the preceding
picture the action is increased by the-lively interest
of the disciples, so here it is thrown into relief by
their indifference.
The Draught of Fishes has the advantage of a
rarely beautiful landscape, but is not without some
peculiarities. The head of Christ is smaller than
the others, and being without definite expression is
rather disappointing. The disciple with the oar,
too, is naked to the waist, and reminds us again of
Michel Angelo's drawing. However, the attitude
of the two fishermen who are hauling at the net,
with their heads nearly touching the water and their
backs bent as far as possible, is very effective. As
for the attitude of James, balancing the boat and
himself at the same time, I think if I were to choose
between that and the Apollo Belvedere, I should

Raphael's Dramatic Pictures. 257
certainly prefer St. James the fisherman. Even
the herons are interesting in their attitudes and
familiarity. There are also curious artistic contrivances in this
cartoon. One of the herons is much shorter than
the other, and this is evidently to prevent his beak
from interfering with the hands of the saints on the
net. It can only be explained by supposing that
the bird is standing in a hole under the water. In
both pictures Raphael has represented Christ and
his disciples with a slight shadowy aureole, but he
has omitted it in the case of one of the two men at
the net; apparently because it would have to be
painted against the head next to him.
The smallness of the boats has often attracted
attention, and they are also too near the shore
for the business in hand. It is doubtful if three
men could float in a boat of that size, and they cer
tainly could not haul a net from it without the aid
of a miracle. The composition is so well balanced
that we do not observe this at first, but after we
have become conscious of it we cannot help think
ing of it. The case has been argued on the ground
that the scene could not be represented without
some sacrifice of realism, and that Raphael has
chosen the least among a number of evils. This
may be true ; but I always feel that Raphael would
have given a stronger, more virile tone to the picture
if he had adhered more closely to nature. The
shore might have been omitted, and this would
have given a sense of deeper water and of the loneli
ness of the sea. The boats might have been deeper

258 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
and, by turning one of them an angle of thirty de
grees, longer, without taking up more space; the
feet of the disciples would still be on a level with
the water.
The treatment of the cartoons throughout bears a
definite relation to bas-relief work, and they might
have been used as designs for bas-relief quite as well
as for tapestry. The Charge to Peter especially, if
reduced in size, might have served as a panel in the
gates of Ghiberti.
These two landscape cartoons illustrate the differ
ence between light and shade, and what is called
chiaroscuro. It is similar to the difference between
greatness and grandeur. They have aerial perspec
tive and the shadows are excellent, and yet the
figures are not separated one from another, and from
the background, as Correggio and Titian would have
separated them. The figures seem rather to be on
the surface as in bas-relief work. This is perhaps
because the cartoons were painted to be imitated in
tapestry. The best of the cartoons, and one which Emerson
particularly admired, is the Sacrifice at Lystra.
Here Raphael has invented his finest architectural
background, and one which gives a satisfactory
notion of the artistic civilization in Asia Minor,
which was wiped out by the Saracen conquest. The
scene is also representative of the time, costumes
and other details being reproduced with faithful
accuracy.

Raphael 's Dramatic Pictures. 259
The teachings of the Greek philosophers had
undermined the old order of religious belief, and
the faith of the people had become like a pent-up
stream seeking a new outlet. So when Paul has
cured the man who cannot walk, they cry out,
This must be a god who can perform a miracle,"
and bring in an ox to sacrifice to him. A fine
athletic fellow kneels down holding the ox by one
horn, while another sacrificer raises an axe to give
the deadly blow.
A motley crowd has collected, and among them
is just one spiritual-minded person who comprehends
the situation of affairs. Paul and Barnabas do not
at first understand what the good people are in
tending, but when the axe is raised they turn their
heads aside with dignified aversion. The intellec
tual young man perceives this, and springs forward
with outstretched arm to arrest the blow. This is
the dramatic moment that Raphael has selected for
his design.
This cartoon is full of noble contrasts. The grand
figures of Paul and Barnabas, between the columns
of a Greek porch, appear to better advantage from
the group of mysteriously shrouded augurs, who
represent a traditional spirituality from which the
vitality has departed. The intellectual superiority
of the young man who is endeavoring to prevent
the sacrifice, is as clearly distinguished from the vis
inertia of the crowd about him. One, in whom
curiosity prevails above passing events, is lifting up
the garment of the man who has been healed to
examine the change in his condition.

260 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
In the midst of all stands the great patient ox,
unconscious of the mortal danger that threatens
him. To every creature that Raphael cared for he
imparted in the drawing something of his own
nature, and he has given to this fine animal an affec
tionate treatment which has been denied to the
shadowy and sedate augurs. Two innocent chil
dren, playing on small pipes, stand by an elegantly
wrought altar and relieve the scene, with their pretty
faces, from a too severe tension.
No genius can create a great picture or poem from
a subject that is common or superficial. His plot
must have a deep significance, as the oak strikes its
roots far into the earth. One of the chief distinc
tions between Christianity and the more realistic
faith which it superseded was the abolition of animal
sacrifices. When the Christians at length obtained
control of the Roman empire, the pagans still formed
a powerful party, and in order to conciliate them
many pagan observances were adopted into the
ritual of Jesus, but animal sacrifices came to an end
forever. Next in importance to the divine unity,
and the precept of the golden rule, comes this re
lease of mankind from the influence of such brutal
izing observances. This is what Raphael represented
in the Sacrifice at Lystra.
THE BATTLE OF THE MILVIAN BRIDGE.
The fresco in the Vatican of the battle between
Constantine and Maxentius was painted by Giulio
Romano and Pierino del Vaga after Raphael's death ;

"DONNA VELATA," by RAPHAEL
Pitti Gallery, Florence

Raphael's Dramatic Pictures. 261
but as he was himself at work on the Transfigura
tion when the fatal illness seized him, it is presum
able that his sketches of the Battle of the Milvian
Bridge were made at some time previous. I think
we may consider the Transfiguration as Raphael's
last work on earth.
Raphael had obtained a commission from the Pope
to make systematic excavations among the Roman
ruins, evidently in the hope of discovering more
perfect treasures of Greek art than those which had
already been exhumed. It was in this way, ap
parently, that he caught the fever which proved
fatal to him.
The Pons Milvius, or Kite's Bridge, is familiarly
known to travellers as the Ponte Molle, over which
the highway runs from Rome to Florence. The
battle which took place there between Constantine
and Maxentius was one of the three most important
victories of ancient times, but it is rarely mentioned
because the history of the Roman empire is so little
studied in our schools and colleges. For three cen
turies after the crucifixion of Jesus the sect which
he founded endured humiliation and martyrdom,
till at length this single victory gave it a political
supremacy. It was an Austerlitz and a Gettys
burg in one. Who will not say that warfare is
glorious ?
In point of interest this picture comes next to the
Expulsion of Heliodorus among Raphael's frescos,
but we should carefully distinguish between the
spirited design of the master and the often faulty
execution of his pupils. m

262 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
The historical statement is that, after his defeat,
Maxentius was crowded off the Milvian Bridge in
the press of fugitives, and fell into the Tiber, and is
now lying in its mud with his gilded armor, a
fine specimen for some geologist in the distant
future. Raphael has deviated slightly from historical
truth, as he had a perfect right to do, in order to
give the scene a dramatic character. Crowe and
Cavalcaselle are mistaken in identifying Maxentius
in the gashed and lifeless corpse falling head down
wards from the bank. He is easily recognized by
his spiked crown, clinging desperately to his
horse in an attempt to swim the Tiber, a feat
never yet accomplished on horseback, so far as we
know. As a frame to the picture Raphael has designed
on each side the figure of a statue on a high pedes
tal, against which are leaning two allegorical women,
one of whom is designated as Justice, and the other
with upturned eyes and a Hebrew scroll is intended
for Religion. Whoever painted the latter did him
self much credit, for it is scarcely excelled in the
Vatican. There is a border of tapestry painted
above, and the edges of curtains at the sides,
which give the picture the effect of a scene at the
theatre. Raphael has designed this subject with consum
mate skill. He has not represented the battle,
which must have taken place at least half a mile
away, but the final triumph of Constantine and the
cross. At the extreme right is seen the bridge with

Raphael's Dramatic Pictures. 263

the Roman standards retreating across it. Others
are attempting to cross the Tiber in a boat, at the
same time defending themselves with their shields
against the Christian bowmen. Still nearer, Maxen
tius and others are struggling in the water. The
rear-guard of the pagans is making a desperate stand
to protect Maxentius and the passage over the
bridge. Constantine is in the very centre of the picture.
He is leading a flank movement to cut off the re
treating army, and with a number of his bravest
horsemen has broken through the pagan line and is
on the point of hurling his spear at Maxentius, whom
a centurion, with the face of a lion on his helmet, is
pointing out to him in the water. In the rear of
Constantine the Christian standards are seen with
crosses at the top, while in the air above, spirits of
Victory are flying in a group. Between the stand
ards and the bridge an obstinate struggle is going on,
and the ground is strewn with dead and wounded
warriors in pathetic attitudes.
Two or three different hands are visible in the draw
ing, which is generally good, but sometimes also
very defective. The design is everywhere spirited
and admirable, but the drawing does not equal it.
The fore legs of Constantine's horse are unendur
able ; they would do small credit to a rocking-horse.
Raphael composed a magnificent group of horses for
the centre of this fresco, but it is also spoiled by this
defect. The horse near Constantine, rearing back
on his haunches, must have been the work of Giulio
Romano, and though heavily outlined is much

264 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
more vigorous and lifelike.* Between these two
there is another horse in a different style, and better
than either of them.
Even where the action is fiercest the faces are
rather tame. The attempt to give Constantine a
calm, godlike expression, has not resulted favorably.
Calmness is a mental condition unknown on the
battle-field. Maxentius does not look nearly so
serious as men do when they are in danger of drown
ing. A little of Leonardo's energy might have
done good service here. The portraits of the two
emperors may have been copied from coins, but
Constantine resembles Marcus Aurelius, and we re
collect that the statue of Aurelius was preserved
during the fanatical period of Christianity, under
the impression that it was a statue of Constan
tine. Raphael's love of the purely beautiful is con
spicuous everywhere. Some of the soldiers are
equipped in Roman scale armor, but more of them
wear tight-fitting suits of leather, which show their
figures to better advantage. The helmets, shields,
and weapons have all a Raphaelesque character.
On the bank of the Tiber a shield is lying composed
of successive plates in whorls, like the petals of a
dahlia. In a half-seen boat near Maxentius there
is a most interesting group, especially the young
man looking downward across his right shoulder.
The spirits in the sky were evidently painted by
the same artist who spoiled the two angels support -
* This horse in form and attitude closely resembles one of those in
Leonardo's Battle of the Standard.

Raphael's Dramatic Pictures. 265
ing the robes of Pope Urban. The attempt to give
them a kind of radiance has resulted in a glistening
effect. However, they are airy and graceful.
Meanwhile the two figures oi Justice and Religion
sit on either side in undisturbed tranquillity.
THE TRANSFIGURATION.
Whether the last of Raphael's great works was
painted wholly by himself, or was finished after his
death by Giulio Romano, is of less importance than
its metaphysical character. It is the lyric and the
dramatic united in one, and it is the single instance
in the history of art where this has been accom
plished. When we first approach the picture our attention
is attracted by a large group of figures in many-
colored costumes which recall at once Raphael's
youthful Sposalizio. Before we can decipher the
meaning of this design we notice the mild planet
ary radiance in the upper portion, with Christ and
Moses and Elias hovering in it, as if it were their
natural element. There everything is peace and
harmony, while beneath there is discord and con
flict. The picture has a twofold character; and
we return again to the scene below for an explana
tion of this.
In the centre of the lower group is an epileptic
boy ; perfect in form and feature, but the machinery
within is deranged. There is no sadder spectacle
than this — the life of a human being spoiled in its
very beginning. It is worse than death or even

266 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
blindness. His parents have come in the hope that
he may be healed by Christ's miraculous power;
but the Saviour is not to be found. His disciples
express their sympathy for the case, and regret that
they are themselves unable to render assistance.
The disordered condition of the boy, the anxious
solicitude of his parents, the eagerness of their
friends, and the sympathetic regret of the disciples
are all rendered with vital power. The dramatic
effect is perfect.
Meanwhile the Saviour hovers in the sky, as if
sorrow and trouble were dissolved forever in his
radiance. What is it that Raphael has accomplished here ?
There is no anachronism in the picture. The
epileptic boy arrived while Christ was on the mount :
such is the plain Bible story. It may have been a
coincidence ; but the two facts are in close relation
ship, and are deeply representative. They contain
a problem and its solution. The problem is one
which has vexed sages and moralists since thinking
began. Why should evil exist for which there is
no remedy ? Good sometimes comes from evil, and
sometimes evil from good ; but there is unmitigated
evil from which there is no escape on earth. What
good, for instance, has resulted from the assassina
tion of Garfield, or of Alexander II. ? The one did
not advance the cause of civil-service reform in
America, nor the other that of constitutional govern
ment in Russia. What benefit will ever be derived
from the Bulgarian massacres in 1877 ?

Raphael's Dramatic Pictures. 267
A solution is to be found in the Transfiguration.
We may not be able to understand the wherefore
of such evils, but there is that in us which can rise
above them. Outwardly there is confusion and dis
cord, but, within, man can produce that sense of
harmony which leads us to associate a spiritual
heaven with the clear sky above us. It would even
seem that this internal unification was the true ob
ject of life. There is at least no stronger proof of
man's divine origin and his immortal destiny than
this vigorous self-assertion of his spiritual nature;
and Raphael has symbolized it by the mild radiance
which is suffused about the form of the Saviour.
As the noblest of singers once sang in Handel's
Messiah, " I know that my Redeemer liveth," so
that the whole audience felt a strong conviction of
the fact, Raphael also painted Christ, not as a man,
but as a spirit hovering in the air. It was the last
and most nearly adequate image of the Saviour that
Raphael created ; and with the help of his popular
ity it has endured as a type to the present day. He
would seem to have arrived at it as he attained his
faculty of dramatic composition — by a long course
of study and continued experiments. The face is
not of a grand type, but humanly noble, tender,
and elevated.
Neither are Moses and Elias inferior in their own
degree. They belong with the group of apostles in
the cartoon of the Charge to Peter. The drawing of
their drapery shows that they float in the air by a
volition that can accomplish whatever it desires.
Only imagination trained in the service of truth

268 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
could have done this. If it is not an inspired work,
like the Sistine Madonna, it comes very close to
being one. Raphael has given it all that genius, in
dustry, and earnest contemplation could give; and
it is as carefully painted as St. Margaret and the
Dragon. The lower portion is more studied, seems to have
required more effort, and the drawing is not so pure
as in Raphael's cartoons. The faces are bright and
interesting, and some of the attitudes, especially of
the woman kneeling in the foreground, are very
fine, but there would seem to be rather too much
elegance for such a company. A little of the strong
realism of John the Baptist in the Foligno painting,
close by, would not have been out of place here. It
was well to give the epileptic boy a fine physique,
for thus he appeals more strongly to our sympathy;
but there is no reason why the grace of a St. Cecilia
should have been wasted on him. The parti-colored
effect of the draperies may have arisen from the ne
cessity of bestowing all the chiaroscuro on the upper
portion, where an effect of distance was required
without the possibility of much perspective ; so that
only this device remained for separating the figures
from one another; but it also corresponds with the
idea of the perplexity occasioned by the disappear
ance of the Saviour.
It has been provided for," said the German
sage, " that trees shall not grow up to the sky."
Raphael had done his work, and his time had come.
If he accomplished so much in a short life, how
much would he have produced in a long one ? It

Raphael's Dramatic Pictures. 269
seems as if sooner or later the fertility of his inven
tion must have become exhausted. How appro
priate that the Transfiguration should have been his
last work on earth. It is thus we now think of him :
transfigured in the love and homage of posterity.
There was an artistic perfection to his life, and we
would not wish it to have been otherwise. He was
not equal to the representation of tragedy, and it is
admitted that to the last his compositions have a
somewhat youthful character; but he was a genius
of the highest order. No other artist, or poet, has
done equal justice to the sanctity of mother
hood. The Transfiguration is painted on a tavola com
posed of five pieces of wood between four and five
inches thick. The tavola is apparently of white
poplar. POSTSCRIPT.
The portrait of Johanna of Aragon in the Louvre
has always been classed as a Raphael, and often ad
mired for its own sake independently of that ; but it
does not bear decisive marks of Raphael's treatment.
It is rather a brilliant portrait, but too literal for a
work of genius. The expression of the face, espe
cially of the eyes, is prosaic. Even if Johanna may
have appeared like this, Raphael would not have
painted her so. Few women would have been so
dead to his personal magnetism. He would cer
tainly have drawn out something from her akin to
his own nature. I do not discover anywhere in her

270 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
drawing that delicate double curve which is so char
acteristic of Raphael. Neither is the position of
the right arm, resting on the elbow with the hand
raised toward the face and the fingers falling over,
though unconstrained, such as Raphael would have
been likely to adopt. It has the warm, ruddy color
ing of Giovanni da Udine, and a comparison with
Raphael's Michael and Satan, in the grand salon,
makes it evident that both were painted by the
same hand. Now Raphael's coloring after 15 15
was cool and transparent.
The portrait in the Barberini palace which passes
by the name of Raphael's Fornarina has great solid
ity and evidently belongs to the Roman school. It
even possesses certain characteristics, such as the
length of the nose, smallness of the mouth, and the
contour of the shoulders, which suggest a relation
ship to the Sistine Madonna. It may be a portrait
of the Fornarina of Italian artistic tradition; but
this can never be proven, and the best argument for
it is that she was evidently an uneducated person
whose portrait had only been painted for some very
exceptional reason. Her pose is similar to that of
the Venus dei Medici, and was perhaps imitated
from it. It is in bad taste, and we hesitate to assign
such a design to Raphael. Morelli thinks that it
was probably the work of Giulio Romano, and it
reminds me of his painting of The Lovers in the
Berlin Museum ; and yet connoisseurs do not find in
it the distinctive marks of Giulio's handling; and this
shows what uncertainty prevails in such matters.

'THE TRANSFIGURATION,
Vatican, Rome

by RAPHAEL

Raphael's Dramatic Pictures. 271
RAPHAEL'S "HOURS."
Engravings called by this name have circulated
freely during the present century, and much curios
ity has been excited to know about the paintings or
drawings from which they were taken. American
travellers explored Rome, however, without suc
ceeding in finding any trace of the originals. They
were said to be in the Vatican, and a gentleman of
my acquaintance, who is not often baffled by diffi
culties, searched the Vatican most thoroughly with
out being able to see or hear anything of them. A
report was circulated that the Hours were not by
Raphael at all, but engraved from some- ancient
mural paintings in Pompeii. At length an Ameri
can lady, Miss Mary Williams of Salem, traced out
the history of the engravings and the place where,
as she supposed, the original paintings were; — for
she was not permitted access to the rooms.
She found in the royal stamperia at Rome an old
engraving of the decorations on the ceiling of a room
in the Vatican, immediately under the Raphael
Stanze, and in the central square of this ceiling
were the well-known figures of Raphael's Hours.
The apartment in which the Hours were said to
have been painted was that formerly occupied by
Alexander Borgia, and within the last few years
it has been opened to the public, but the closest
scrutiny has not succeeded in discovering them
there; so that the original designs still remain as
much of a mystery as ever. Miss Williams has
given the result of her investigation to the world in
a handsome and interesting volume.

272 The Midsummer of Italian Art.

Certain of the Hours were engraved separately at
various times during the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, but the whole series was first given to the
public during the reign of Napoleon by three Italian
engravers of whom Fernando Mori is the only one
known to fame. Reproductions of their work have
been published by various French engravers.
There is a fine head in the museum at Buda Pesth,
which both Morelli and Berensen have concluded to be
a portrait of Raphael by Sebastian del Piombo. We
would like to believe this, for it has the strength, as well
as refinement, of expression which alone can account for
Raphael's superiority; and yet the proportions of the face
do not agree with the portrait of Raphael in his School
of Athens, and they do agree closely with those of the
Violin Player of the Sciarra Palace, feature for feature.
The wood-cut of Raphael made by Bonasone in 1519
represents him with a short, thin beard.

CORREGGIO
WORKS of art may not only be divided into the
ideal and realistic, the classic and romantic,
but there is another division, the objective
and subjective, which is independent of these. So far
as an artist merely imitates the object before him, his
work is objective ; so soon as he infuses in it his
own spirit, or personality, it becomes to that degree
subjective. It will thus be perceived that these
terms are only relative ; for absolute objectivity can
only exist through entire negation of style and char
acter. It might be represented by the formula of a
ship without sails on a motionless sea, — an idea most
repulsive to the imagination. The nearest approach
to it is found in the Dutch naval pictures and paint
ings of animal life. We admire Snyder's group of
lions in the Pinacothek at Munich, for it is painted
to perfection, but we pass by it quickly, attracted to
more sympathetic subjects. It would seem as if it
were to prove that this species of art could only rise
above a certain level that Rubens and Rembrandt,
who were developed out of it, are, of all great painters
perhaps, the most strongly characteristic.
There is still another sub-division. A group of
18 273

274 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
lions could only be painted in an objective manner,
but Rubens' Lion Hunt, though treated objectively,
arouses our sympathy from the danger which threat
ens one of the hunters ; and Giorgione's Concert, in
itself a trivial matter to us, becomes highly interest
ing from the spirit with which the artist has imbued it.
In art as in philosophy there is an objective-subjec
tive, and a subjective-objective: that is, the design
may be objective and the treatment subjective, as in
Giorgione's Concert ; or the reverse of this, as in
Rubens' Lion Hunt. It is difficult to explain the
difference between the subjective and objective
manner in painting ; it is more easily understood by
the different ways in which two persons may relate
the same story. One may tell it in a perfectly dis
passionate manner and yet excite the interest and
sympathy in his hearers by the fidelity of his de
scription ; and the other may accomplish this by
the tones of his voice and the use of such phrases
as appeal directly to them.
These two methods are well known in literature,
and the former is considered the better kind of art
and has always been practised by writers of the high
est order ; but the other is the more popular method,
because it requires less of a mental effort to com
prehend its meaning. Milton, Goldsmith, Emerson,
and Browning have used the objective manner:
Tennyson, Thackeray, Longfellow, and Whittier, the
subjective. Scott, Wordsworth, and Byron have
sometimes used one method and sometimes the
other. In music Bach and Handel are the most
strongly objective ; Schumann and Chopin are the

Correggio. 275
most subjective composers. From these instances
we perceive the tendency of the present age.
The spirituality of Tuscan art could only be ex
pressed subjectively, but the manner of Leonardo
and Michel Angelo was always objective. They
cast their great creations from them to live or die on
their own merits. Raphael, however, inclined to the
subjective manner of treatment, and this may be
observed more particularly in the School of Athens,
his Parnassus, the Fire in the Borgo, and the Madonna
della Sedia. His peculiar grace is itself a subjective
quality. But ten years after Raphael, a genius was
born in the plains of Lombardy who carried sub
jectivity in art to such a length as few have attempted
since, and no others have succeeded in.
We never visit the birthplaces of famous men ; we
go to Stratford-on-Avon not because Shakspeare
was born there but because he lies buried there ; and
yet the influence which immediate surroundings may
have on a susceptible nature, as in Raphael's case,
has heretofore been noticed, and his great rival also
attributed the energy in his own temperament to the
mountain air in which he was reared. * Certain it is
that no artist of the grand manner has ever appeared
between Venetia and the Apennines. Least of all
would such be expected from the little city of
Correggio, which Antonio Allegri has made famous
*An American lady, who lived much in Italy, had one daughter
born to her in Rome and another in Florence. Both were of a
romantic disposition ; but the first was possessed of a dreamy melan
choly, such as is often induced by the contemplation of a ruin, while
her sister was quick-witted and lively. Can this have been wholly
accidental?

2 76 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
for us, — situated, as it is, amid sluggish watercourses,
with the mountains like a blue rim on the south
western horizon.
Neither could young Antonio's mind be stimu
lated much by political events ; for the little duchy
of Modena lay outside of the arena of Italian poli
tics ; and peace and tranquillity reigned there, as in
the duchy of Weimar during the wars between Ger
many and France. Under such conditions an ardent
nature like Antonio's had no other resource but to
turn upon itself, to live in the affections and fine
emotions, and as a change from that to gaze into the
deep luminous ether of the Italian sky. He there
fore drew his inspiration from these two sources, and
being gifted with the very finest genius, he made
them the twofold subject of his splendid art.
A shy, sensitive, and tender-hearted youth we
may imagine him ; one whose safety consisted in a
retired mode of life, and whose inclinations also
favored this. The portrait which he has left us of
himself, and which was painted toward the close of
his life, for he died at nearly the same age as Byron,
is rather disappointing. The face is not a strong
one, though the aquiline line of his nose gives it a
certain character ; and we see too little of his eyes,
which must have been his finest feature. People
who live in the affections, without too much pres
sure from the outside world so that they can be at
peace with themselves, have an expression in their
eyes which reminds me of Dr. Channing's saying, that
heaven is in our own hearts. Correggio's face is re
fined, and the expression dreamy.

Correggio. 277
His art was the natural offspring of Leonardo's,
but it passed through a complete modification in
Correggio's hands. His faces are always smiling ;
but it is not the smile of Leonardo, so full of char
acter and intelligence, but rather the sympathetic
smile of a tender-hearted girl who is happy herself,
and cannot understand why others should not be so.
He has also adopted the narrow jowl and square
chin of the Lombardy school, for which Leonardo
himself should not be held responsible ; but the dig
nified reserve of Leonardo, which was part of his
strength and which he finally carried to the enig
matic degree, Correggio replaced by an open, child
like frankness which knows no evil and fears no dan
ger. This is, indeed, the most characteristic quality
in his designs, and attests the purity of his own na
ture. Raphael also lived much in the affections,
and represented in the most perfect manner the re
lation between a mother and her child ; but Raphael's
mothers were always wise and self-contained, whereas
Correggio's Madonnas are almost as ingenuous as his
children. He seized instinctively on Leonardo's theories of
light and shade and aerial perspective, and developed
them to a degree beyond anything their author an
ticipated. Chiaroscuro was Correggio's great con
tribution to art. He was the first painter to give
his pictures an atmosphere. Titian and Andrea del
Sarto had already effected something in that way,
but not to the extent of Correggio. He brought
down the summer skies of Italy onto his canvas, and
caused the air to circulate about his figures and

278 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
whisper in their ears. His light and shade is not
more remarkable for delicacy than boldness. His
transparent shadows lie one over another and serve to
reveal instead of hiding the objects on which they
rest. His reflections rival his shadows ; and both
serve to bring out the subject of his picture with
more truthfulness than the most correct outlines.
It is a web woven of cloud and sunshine.
If with Raphael the ideal sometimes overbalanced
the real, Correggio may be said to have been carried
fairly off his feet by it. He lived in a world of his
own creating, peopled with beings like himself;
where all was love, innocence, and purity. His
saints float upon clouds, in which cherubs play hide-
and-seek. Such creations would not stand the test
of practical life, and yet we contemplate them with
profound respect.
His coloring corresponds to this. It is not the
coloring of real life, but of an imaginary existence.
His tints are not those of earth, but of the sky ; and
when Tintoretto painted San Rocco in Heaven, he
adopted Correggio's coloring as the most suitable
for his subject. Many of his paintings resemble
sunsets ; some with a warm central glow of light,
and others gorgeous with bright prismatic hues.
Yet they are never too highly colored for a refined
taste, and though we may become tired of their re
fulgence as we do of long-continued sunshine, we
enjoy seeing them again after a brief interval. Cor
reggio's reflections of light are the most interesting
part of his coloring to a connoisseur, and give all
his pictures a technical value quite distinct from the

'READING MAGDALEN," by CORREGGIO
Dresden Museum

Correggio. 2 79
quality of their design. His Io in the Berlin museum
shows that he could give color even to darkness and
make it pleasant and attractive.
He was not one of the greatest masters of the
pencil, but his drawing is good ; I should say fully
equal to Titian's. His lines are pure, simple, and
graceful, and he understood how to give ideality to
form. The arms of his Diana vie with those of
Tintoretto's Ariadne, and yet in shape they are
quite different. The arms of the Diana are the
more finely modelled of the two. The nude figures
of his saints likewise have a style peculiarly their
own: rounded shoulders, with a round, compact
body, and limbs not too muscular — an admirable
style. There is a lack of variety among them, but
that is atoned for by the attitudes, of which Cor
reggio always had a store at his command. When
his drawing does not appear to advantage the fault
is always with the attitude and not from incorrect
outlines. Some of his postures are eccentric enough.
In his children, and especially in the youthful genii
at Palma, he shows a fine imagination for form nearly
equal to Raphael at his best, and quite surpassing
the infant Saviours of Raphael's early period.
Dresden is the place to study the earlier as well as
the latest work of Correggio, so far as either is now
accessible to the public. Of his amateur produc
tions nothing is known to be still existent, but there
is an altar-piece at Dresden, executed in his twenty-
first year for the monastery of the Minorites in his
native town, which surpasses in breadth of design

280 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
and especially in technical skill any work produced
at the same age by either Raphael or Giorgione. It
contains all the elements of his future greatness, and,
if these are not so happily disposed as in later works,
they are sufficiently prominent to impress us with
surprise and admiration.
The Madonna sits on an elevated throne, between
the columns of an Ionic porch, with a fine light in
the sky beyond, in which appears a sort of irregular
halo formed by the heads of cherubs. Two cherubs,
with bodies, float within the porch on a level with
the capitals ; one drawn lengthwise and the other at
a right angle, — both successfully rendered. Her
throne is an elaborate structure, supported by two
carved cherubs, in which Correggio already shows
his love for that elegant decoration in which he has
never been equalled. It is indeed too elegant, too
highly decorated, for the simplicity of the mother
of Jesus. It even reminds one slightly of an ex
pensive French clock. Four saints stand in adora
tion about this structure, among whom a full-grown
John the Baptist is the most dignified and impres
sive. The attitudes of the others, though fairly
well conceived, have rather too much sentimental
ity. St. Francis opposite to the Baptist bends his
knee to the infant Saviour, an action which the
Madonna gracefully recognizes by her outstretched
hand, and an inclination of her head full of sweet
ness and humility. The attitude of the Saviour is
admirable ; his whole figure seems to palpitate with
vitality. The painting has not the marvellous
chiaroscuro oi Correggio's later style; but the lights

Correggio. 281
and shadows are well disposed, and the figures
wrought into a deeper relief than in any of Raphael's
Florentine works. Where Correggio learned all this
it is impossible to say.
A Madonna in the Uffizi, ascribed to Titian, No.
1002, is now considered to have belonged to Cor
reggio's earlier period, and there are others in the
museums of Ferrara and Milan, besides the delight
ful Zingarella * at Naples.
THE READING MAGDALEN.
For similar reasons I believe that his Magdalen in
the Dresden gallery must have been the first of his
more celebrated paintings. Though it is of diminu
tive size it ranks third in honor in a museum which
contains so many masterpieces by Italian, German,
and Dutch painters. It is impossible to find fault
with it. Whether we consider the natural grace of
her attitude, the simplicity of her attire, the deep
tone of the background against which her figure is
relieved, the radiant glow of her arms and breast, or
the delicate shading of her gentle face, it is not easy
to imagine a better painting. There are few perfect
things in this world, but Correggio's Magdalen is
one of them.
The bright blue color of her mantle has been ob
jected to, but without this it would not be charac
teristic of Correggio. It has been previously noticed
that he lived in the sky rather than on the earth ;
* Sometimes called the Madonna of the Rabbit — an animal quite
characteristic of Correggio.

282 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
and the fact is represented here in this manner.
His pictures are always bright and cheerful. The
frame of a picture must be adapted to the subject,
and Mary's horizontal position required a low back
ground, so that little or no sky is visible in it. Gi
rolamo Battoni, who painted a reading Magdalen in
a similar attitude in the eighteenth century, was
obliged to adopt a similar expedient.
A doubt has been expressed as to the religious
character of Correggio's Magdalen ; and it has been
questioned whether it represents more than a young
woman in negligent costume reading in a sylvan
retreat. Public opinion has decided otherwise ; and
I think the sense of penitence is sufficiently ex
pressed by the shadow on her face and the rugged-
ness of the scenery; for she appears to be reclining
on stony ground. It is such contrition as Correggio
himself might have felt from his sensitive conscience,
in a life comparatively pure and blameless.
He is credited with having been the first to intro
duce the modern method of painting hair by a kind
of shorthand ; by which much labor is saved and a
soft and natural appearance attained without draw
ing too many fine lines. The hair of the Reading
Magdalen is an excellent example of this treatment.*
There is a noble head of St. John the Evangelist
attributed to Correggio, and formerly owned by
Mr. Jarves, the American Consul at Florence, which
resembles the Reading Magdalen in its vigorous and
healthful tone ; as it does also in the lack of his later
chiaroscuro. The face is turned upward with an ad-
* See Appendix for discussion of the authenticity of this picture.

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MARRIAGE OF S. CATHERINE, by CORREGGIO
Louvre Gallery, Paris
Correggio. 283
mirable expression of religious fervor, and the panel
is so nearly covered by it as to give the impression
of heroic size. THE ECCE HOMO.
One of the best examples of Correggio's coloring,
and as bright and fresh as if it were painted twenty
years ago, is his Ecce Homo in the National gallery.
The half-length figure of Christ nearly fills up the
canvas, and yet the Madonna, one of the Marys,
Pontius Pilate, and a Roman centurion are also in
troduced. Though we only see a small portion of
these last, the arrangement is so skilful that the
whole group seems to stand bodily before us. The
imagination easily supplies what Correggio has left
out, or had no space for. Its wonderful chiaroscuro
easily distinguishes it from all other paintings in the
room; yet the picture has faults of composition
which go far to neutralize its chromatic splendor.
If Raphael was not able to face tragedy, what can
we expect of the tender and fragile Correggio ? It
would seem as if painters feel much more than poets
the sufferings of those whose images they reproduce.
The aspect of endurance on the faces of the great
tragic artists is convincing evidence of this. Cor
reggio's Saviour has an expression of suffering, as if
from the toothache, but there is no moral power be
hind it, — no look of determination. As there is a
lack of manliness in his face so there is in his hands,
which are decidedly those of a woman. In fact,
there is a very slight difference between his hands
and those of his mother.

284 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
The expression of the Madonna and of her friend
is much more serious, though the two would seem
to have been painted from the same model. Pon
tius Pilate is the best head in the group ; a refulgent
piece of coloring, into which Correggio evidently
put his whole heart. His face is Greek, and rather
delicate for that, but still very handsome. The
hardened centurion on the other side is a pleasant
relief in so much physical tenderness.
Persons who have become acquainted with Cor
reggio through Toschi's engravings are often dis
appointed at the first sight of his Ecce Homo. There
is always more severity in a steel engraving than in
a painting (as there is also in sculpture), and with
Correggio this is sometimes an advantage. Toschi
gives to the frescos at Parma a more religious and
ethereal tone than really belongs to them. Correg
gio himself is always sensuous.
The Ecce Homo in London leads directly to a
peculiar mental characteristic of Correggio, which
might be called an attempt to represent the impos
sible in human nature, — apparently with perfect
faith in its reality. The earlier Italian painters
depicted the martyrdom of saints, sometimes in
agony and sometimes in bliss, but the latter does
not offend our senses because their art was so far
removed from nature that their work appeals to us
chiefly as an intellectual abstraction. Correggio,
however, in his Martyrdom of St. Placidus and St.
Flavia at Parma has brought to bear the full force
of his sensuous verisimilitude of actual life to portray
two human beings with smiling countenances in the

Correggio. 285
very act of execution. The impossibility of this
detracts at once from our admiration for the picture.
St. Flavia is looking to heaven with the happiest of
faces while the sword of the assassin is plunged
into her heart ; St. Placidus has already received
one cut on his neck and turns his head aside to
afford the executioner a fair opportunity, evidently
in the most tranquil mental condition. An angel
drawn with Correggio's peculiar grace hovers above
holding a lily in one hand and an aureole in the
other. Here the ideal is wholly disconnected from
the real, the palpable touches the impalpable, and
we find ourselves separated from the standpoint of
the painter by a gulf which no admiration for techni
cal skill will enable us to cross. There is the same
tendency in Correggio's Christ in the National gal
lery, but it is not carried there to its logical, or
illogical, conclusion.
The Marriage of St. Catherine, in the Louvre,
was a subject more in harmony with Correggio's
temperament, and his genius certainly shines forth
in it with splendid effect. Its drawing has not the
dignity of Raphael, but it is easy and graceful, and
the faces are quite as much idealized. At the same
time they are delightfully human. St. Catherine is
charming rather than beautiful, but she is attrac
tive, as some of Domenichino's heads are attractive.
Especially do we feel that Correggio enjoyed every
moment that he spent in painting it. One reason
for this may have been because, as is said, it was
painted as a wedding gift to his own sister Caterina.

286 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
PARMA.
No man can escape from the popular tendency of
his time. Even if he exert himself to oppose it, the
effort of resistance has an effect upon him, and
warps his life. It will be noticed that the period of
Correggio's activity very nearly coincides with what
we have called the false renaissance, — when the ad
miration for Greek and Roman antiquity threatened
to turn the course of modern civilization out of its
proper channel. It was fortunate for Raphael and
Titian that they were trained to their calling before
this period began, and for Paul and Tintoretto that
they came after it had ended. The gentle Correggio
had no idea of resisting its influence, but he allowed
the classic revival to percolate through him, like
water through a filter, leaving its impurities mostly
behind. He was invited to Parma almost at the
same time that Raphael was painting the Triumph
of Galatea, a work of similar character to the frescos
of Correggio in the convent of San Paolo.
Diana as the patron saint of a nunnery was a
novelty, but not inappropriate. She was the god
dess of celibacy to the Greeks, and why not allegori-
cally to Christians also ? What subject could serve
better to remind the inmates of their irrevocable
vows ? Neither are the frolicsome boys in the lu
nettes less in keeping with the sanctity of the place.
A happy innocent child is the very type of purity.
They must have served as an alleviation and a
cheerful relaxation to the lives of those unfortunate
women immured within the convent of San Paolo ;

"LEDA AND THE SWAN," by CORREGGIO
Berlin Gallery

Correggio. 287
but it was a luxury which could only have been per
mitted at this particular era, and the wonder is that
it was permitted at all.
Neither can I agree with the German critic who
considers Correggio immeasurably inferior to Ra
phael in intensity of expression. He does not equal
Raphael in depth of feeling, but in vividness of ex
pression there is no painting that surpasses Correg
gio's Diana, and few of Raphael's that equal it.
Her face gives forth moonlight ; and as a study of
light it is only rivalled by his other masterpiece
which Italians call the Day. The background is
formed of a cloudy sky so as to give an appearance
like that of the moon breaking through the clouds.
There is nowhere a more poetic or perfect painting.
In the midst of this splendor we discover a friendly,
human intelligence. She seems on the point of
recognizing the spectator, and yet does this without
looking out of the picture. Her frankness is charm
ing; her sympathy captivating; her beauty inex
pressible. She is at once purely Greek and perfectly
Christian ; Hellenic in her naive simplicity, and
modern in her intellectual consciousness. Her ex
quisite form is modestly revealed by the pliant folds
of her light drapery. Grander and more elevated
types of womanhood have been conceived, but none
more perfect than this. She represents not only
the romance of moonlight but its friendliness. She
is the very spirit of chastity.
This is the most objective in treatment of Correg
gio's paintings, except the Magdalen ; and I think
that is the reason why they excel the rest. They

288 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
possess a firmness of character which is too fre
quently lacking in his work.
Correggio, like Raphael, gave a peculiar elegance
to all inanimate objects. This is noticeable in the
car which carries Diana and which is fully worthy
of its occupant ; and also in the lattice-work which
surrounds the lunettes, — a trellis intertwined with
roses and morning-glories, a refined and classic
selection. Morning-glories especially seem appro
priate to Correggio ; the flowers born of morning
radiance, glowing with the freshness of opening
day, their delicate petals trembling with the slight
est breath of air, and touched with an aerial
grace. The frolicsome boys in the lunettes are very
charming. They are neither cupids, nor cherubs,
nor genii, but ideal children of heaven; an inven
tion of Correggio's own, on which no other artist
has infringed. They belong to a sensuous heaven
it is true, but their purity is not of this world.
Each of them has a distinct individuality. Now
one is rushing through the network of vines, as if
no time could be lost till the coveted aim was
reached ; now one pauses to caress a dog whose
clear, intelligent eyes reveal his share in the festiv
ity. Another is carrying a stone on his head of
such size that supernatural strength would seem to
be required for the exertion. The dreamy Raphael
could not have represented such blithesome activity.
The convent of San Paolo is one of the sanctuaries
of art.
We do not behold the frescos in the church of S.

Correggio. 289
Giovanni at Parma with equal satisfaction. Cor
reggio's well-known trick of foreshortening, a real
istic device altogether discordant with his ideal
temperament, injures the effect of his painting there
more, taken as a whole, than when we divide it into
separate groups. It indicates perhaps that his idea
of heaven was not an elevated one, but easily visible
from the surface of the earth.
It is a mistake to suppose that Correggio was not
religious. He had not the sublimated faith of Fra
Angelico, but one of his own, which was none the
less sincere. It resembled the English Episcopal
belief of the present time, which instructs us that
we can enjoy life on this earth without necessarily
disobeying the precepts of Jesus, — as in the Diana
he has united the intelligent naturalism of the Greek
with the supernaturalism of the Christian. It is not
the faith of Christ's disciples who went forth to con
quer a world immersed in sensuality and supersti
tion ; nor the faith of the Scotch Covenanters ; but,
such as we know it, it was sincere. It was not a
strong faith which could resist external pressure,
but rather the religion of domestic life, which feels
the need of a divine providence for its happy con
tinuation. The frescos in S. Giovanni are so much dimmed
by time that they ought to be taken in connection
with Toschi's engravings; and yet Correggio's
chiaroscuro is so remarkable that we seem to be
looking into the wall instead of on it, as we look
into water, and discover his graceful figures floating
there in an element of their own. The central com-

290 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
position of the Saviour in glory is not so interesting
as the smaller groups below, of the four evangelists
and the apostles discoursing on the clouds, because
these suffer less from Correggio's peculiar fore
shortening. Chief among them is the picture of John, the
patron saint of the church, seated under a low
Roman arch with his eagle (or rather a vulture)
with drooping wings, perched at his feet. He has
not the heroic energy of Fra Angelico's Evangelist
or the grand realism of Diirer's, but his refined
spirituality is beyond question. I do not know
another face which unites so much individuality
with a perfect ideal; and if Correggio has anywhere
escaped from a sensuous expression, it is here. St.
John's face is intellectual and of the highest order.
The right foot is exaggerated, just as it would
be in a photograph, and this is the only imperfec
tion that mars the grace and purity of Correggio's
drawing. Among the apostles on the clouds, St. Paul and
the apostle with him make the finest group ; though
St. Peter gesticulating with his keys is also a noble
figure. St. Paul looks upward slightly, as if to
appeal for confirmation to the heavenly host above,
and his arm is raised in the gesture of an orator,
while his companion is contrasted with him by
darker hair and beard, and a head inclined medita
tively. The two are representative of a preacher
and his audience, and both the face and attitude of
St. Paul are as eloquent as words could be. St.
Thomas the doubter may have been chosen as St.

Correggio. 291
Paul's companion, for his skeptical temperament;
and the contrast between his dark physique and
Paul's lighter complexion not only has its artistic
value but serves to explain the motive of the picture.
The wealth of Correggio's imagination is exempli
fied in the group of St. Thomas attended by five
maidenly youths of rare beauty, who cling to him
as he ascends on curling wreaths of vapor. The
only costume of this saint appears to be a mantle
and a pair of soft leather boots, one of which is too
much in focus ; and his face is more sensuous than
that of St. Paul, but its expression is elevated. His
delicately arched eyebrows are the type of all his
features, as well as of the treatment of his hair.
The exquisitely varied forms and faces of the youths
who accompany him surpass even the boys in the
lunettes of San Paolo. They have the purity of
fresh marble statues, and yet their radiant limbs
seem to have been moulded by summer breezes.
If Correggio has anywhere approached true gran
deur, it is in the church of St. John the Evangelist.
His St. Thomas has something of the majesty of the
Zeus oi Otricoli.
The Madonna della Scala, in the museum at
Parma, belongs to the noontide of Correggio's work.
It requires some minutes for the eye to become ac
customed to its present condition, and to discover
the beauty that is concealed beneath its surface ; but
it holds a place between the Madonna della Sedia
and the masterpiece at Dresden. The ineffable
tenderness of maternal affection is depicted with
equal affection and solicitude.

292 The Midsummer of Italian Art.

The Madonna herself was evidently painted from
the same model as the Reading Magdalen, only some
years later.
The ultimate goal of subjectivity is love ; which
may be called the sentiment of self in an ideal con
dition. Love may be selfish and coarse or noble
and elevated, according to the character of the in
dividual. No painter, except Michel Angelo, has
ventured so far in this direction as Correggio;
though Goethe, Shakspeare, and other poets have
been equally daring. It is less difficult to judge of
Correggio's motives in this instance, because such a
long series of works (as well as the evidence of
Vasari) tend to prove the purity of his nature ; yet
it was dangerous ground to tread on, and may pos
sibly have led to a decline in the quality of his art.
The best copy of Io is in the Albertina ; for the
one in Berlin was injured by the French nobleman,
its previous owner, who cut the canvas in pieces.
It resembles Leonardo's St. John in treatment, but
is even more of a nocturne. Its effect on a serious
mind is chastening; but only the pure in heart can
appreciate such a picture. In fact it requires single-
mindedness to understand any superior work of art.
It is much in lo's favor that she is greatly admired
by her own sex. A great many photographs of her
are sold to ladies ; very few to men. She is beauti
ful and painted with incomparable delicacy.
Michel Angelo painted his Leda from an interest
in human nature, but Correggio from a love of
girlish beauty. This at least is the effect he has
produced. He may have taken the scene from
Homer's pretty episode in the Odyssey. The king's

MADONNA DELLA SCALA, by CORREGGIO
Museum, Parma

Correggio. 293
daughter and her maidens are bathing in a secluded
part of the river, when they are frightened from the
water by the approach of swans. Leda alone is not
afraid of them, and waits to receive them. The
demure expression of the maid-servant, who is help
ing to attire one of the girls, shows what Correggio
might have accomplished as a dramatic painter.
As these two pictures hang close together in the
Berlin gallery, we may easily notice a decided dif
ference of treatment between them. In coloring
and manner the Leda most nearly resembles the
Reading Magdalen, and probably was painted at
about the same time.
If Correggio like Alcibiades profaned the Eleu-
sinian mysteries in the Antiope oi the Louvre, yet,
technically considered, this is the most magnificent
of his works. It is the perfection of gorgeous color
ing, and yet does not exceed the limits of a refined
taste. No one could represent the color of flesh
better than Titian, but Correggio surpasses him in
softness and the play of light. In the Antiope
we have the two united. Her resplendent figure
gleams from afar. She has also the advantage of
Titian's Venuses in ideality of form. Her realistic
attitude may prevent this from being readily noticed,
but her throat and shoulders, which were evidently
painted rather than drawn, are as finely modelled as
in the Meleager of the Vatican. Even in the Sleep-
ing Venus of Dresden, a conventional arrangement
of the hair detracts largely from the romance of the
subject ; but the long flowing hair of the Antiope has
a ripple in it of burnished gold, a glorious head of

294 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
hair. Her hands closely resemble those of the
Reading Magdalen, which would seem to be a link
between this painting and the Leda, though much
nearer to the latter. The background taken by
itself would make a landscape of the highest order.
The sunlight flashes between the trees and the rich
clusters of leaves, as it will in a grove on a July
afternoon. The Danae in the Borghese gallery is an equally
voluptuous subject, and cannot be praised to the
same extent as the Antiope. Her attitude, though
graceful, is too realistic; which of itself is plain
proof that Correggio has here transcended the proper
limits of his art. Neither has the coloring of the
Danae an equal depth and decisiveness of tone. In
painting the Antiope, Correggio seemed to have pos
sessed a certainty of judgment which gave that work
its easy superiority. There is a partial compensation,
however, in the two little cupids sharpening their
arrows, which some poor copyist is always at work
upon. Correggio has exactly caught the expression
of a young child when he is intent on some small
affair which seems to him of vital importance.
IL GIORNO AND LA NOTTE.
The Day and Night of Correggio at Dresden are
treated as companion pieces though they are painted
in a wholly different manner and many years must
have elapsed between their production. II Giorno
is closely allied to the Ecce Homo of the National
gallery, while La Notte, though remarkable for its

Correggio. 295
brilliant effects of light, belongs to the period of
Correggio's decline. The former is in fact one of
his finest easel-paintings, and unites noble spiritual
ity with a representation of the tenderest domestic
affection. It is the very essence of love ; and this
is portrayed without any admixture of sentimental-
ism. The face of the Madonna is beautiful, calm,
and dignified ; the infant Jesus, who is precociously
reading in a book held by an admiring angel, is
animated to his toes and finger-tips ; an almost naked
St. Jerome looks down upon him with joyous grav
ity ; while a beautiful and captivating anachronistic
Magdalen leans against the Madonna and nestles
her head close to the baby Saviour. A small Bap
tist, who appears to be examining a crystal glass,
skilfully balances the group. The picture has been
called Day from its refulgent light, which seems to
fill the canvas and gives the Madonna and her child
an almost supernatural radiance. The beauty of
the Magdalen is thrown into relief by placing her in
half shadow ; and a sunny Italian landscape fills the
background. The coloring though bright is not too
brilliant, and the harmonious distribution of the
various tints is a study of itself. St. Jerome's lion
is, however, a failure and would seem to have been
studied from an old Roman grotesque. The Virgin
resembles the Madonna della Scala, and the Mag
dalen is one of Correggio's most original and charac
teristic figures.
The wonderful atmosphere of Correggio's Notte,
which is really a Nativity, should not blind us to the
inequalities of its design. The expression of the

296 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
Madonna bending over her radiant child has an in
effable tenderness, which is reflected sympathetically
in the faces of the attendant angels ; but the angels
hovering above suffer from Correggio's peculiar
habit of foreshortening the proportions of their
bodies for the benefit of the extremities, and the
postures of the spectators present are so contorted
in the drawing as to suggest the presence of a slight
mental malady. The sturdy herdsman, or Baptist,
is so overpowered by the light that he has turned
his head sharply to one side, so that only the points
of an eyebrow, nose, and chin are visible. An angel
hovering above seems to be afflicted with an aerial
cramp. The manner in which the fingers of the
maid who is looking up to him are twisted is barely
capable of a rational explanation. Correggio may
have intended to express in this manner the ecstacy
with which they behold the infant Jesus, but we
have only to pass into the adjoining room and look
at the Sistine Madonna to recognize that ecstacy is
not inconsistent with self-possession.
A third altar-piece in this richly stored gallery,
painted 1525, is a Coronation of the Virgin, who ap
pears on a throne in the sky surrounded by a glory
of angels, and on the earth beneath St. Sebastian
and others stand with " looks of longing upward
gazing. ' ' In design it lies midway between 77 Giorno
and La Notte, which latter was painted five years
afterward.* A more self-contained and classic example of the
Madonna and her new-born child by Correggio is in
* Woltmann and Woermann, History of Painting, ii., 591.

Correggio. 297
the Uffizi at Florence, and is more domestic as well
as more poetic for being without attendant saints.
Strong men are always objective. Long-con
tinued subjectivity is weakening; and the greater
number of subjective poets and painters, like Byron,
Heine, Schiller, Giorgione, and Raphael, have met
with an early death. The mind and nerves require
external resistance for their sanitary condition quite
as much as the muscles. Raphael's broad, practi
cal activity might perhaps have saved him ; but Cor
reggio had neither the physique nor the ability for
that. There are several pictures of his which plainly
indicate an unfavorable change in his mental condi
tion, and they may be considered a prediction of his
untimely end.
The picture called Correggio's St. George, at
Dresden, indicates a further moral decline. The
background, with its pleasant open archway and
floral decoration, recalls the frescos of San Paolo,
but the Madonna and her saints would seem to be
in a most unhealthy condition of nervous excitabil
ity. The head of St. Peter Martyr is bent over in
certainly an extravagant, if not an affected, position ;
St. George, otherwise a fine figure, is looking out
with a self-conscious air; the youthful Baptist is
pointing towards the infant Saviour with gleeful
exultation ; and the whole group seem to be danger
ously near a spasmodic ebullition. The effect is so
disagreeable that no skill of the brush can compen
sate for it.
There can be no doubt that Correggio died of a

298 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
fever ; but the story that it resulted from his carry
ing home a heavy payment in copper is not gener
ally believed. If he suffered from poverty it was his
own fault, — if weakness in such a man is to be con
sidered a fault.
None of these celestial artists however were paid
one hundredth part of the value of their work. From
Apelles to Leonardo was two thousand years ; and
the earth may go round the sun as many times
before it will see their like again.

TWO CUPIDS
(detail from CORREGGIO'S danae)
Borghese Gallery

APPENDIX.
MORELLI RESARTUS.
" Italian Masters in German Galleries."
GIOVANNI MORELLI first appeared under the
Russian name of Ivan Sermoleff, and proved his
Russian proclivity in a fair degree by the real
istic manner in which he criticised notable paintings of the
ideal period of Italian art. He still remains sufficiently
Italian, however, to appreciate their beauty, although he
may have been unaware whence that beauty was derived.
He admires the Sistine Madonna calmly and consider
ately, which is good evidence that its superiority has
made a just impression on him. He is also susceptible
to the internal light of Giorgione, without, however,
recognizing the spiritual element which it represents.
He is rather a brilliant writer, and the conversations
which he reports as taking place in the picture-galleries
(worked up no doubt from actual occurrences), indicate
a dramatic talent little inferior to that of Count Tolstoi.
The object of his work, however, is to decide the authen
ticity of old paintings, and in discussing this theme he
displays an amount of erudition and a thorough study of
his subject which is fairly surprising. Neither does he
299

300 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
place it before the readers in a pedantic manner, but
in the form of a lively and interesting narrative. His
book is entertaining and yet has a serious character.
No amount of erudition will give a man accurate
judgment ; that is a matter of logic, a mental method,
and can only be attained by long experience and con
stant self-criticism. Morelli depends too much, in his
judgment of pictures, on subordinate peculiarities. There
is no single test for the authenticity of old paintings.
The drawing, the coloring, the expression of the face,
the chiaroscuro, the handling (which is the artist's chirog-
raphy), the background, and what are called accessories,
all have to be taken into consideration. Morelli pays
slight attention to either expression or chiaroscuro, and
places especial emphasis on tbe shape of the hands and
of the ear.
Now the hands have always been a favorite criterion
with connoisseurs, because they are just the point with
which a great painter will take pains, and which the
copyist will be likely to neglect. It is not their shape,
however, so much as their style and handling, that has
hitherto been considered. With the Pre-Raphaelites
who painted everything except the face in a mechanical
manner, the shape of the hands is indeed important, and
to a certain extent also, among later artists ; but good
painters since Michel Angelo have, with few exceptions,
drawn their hands to suit the style of their figures ; for in
a symmetrical person, — and no other should be intro
duced into imaginative art, — the hand will always bear
a resemblance to the individual. Thus a thick-set man
will have stout hands with short fingers, and a tall
graceful woman will have long slender fingers. Much the
same may be said of the ears ; but in a majority of pic
tures the ears are not visible at all, and if they are visi-

Appendix. 301

ble, they are often so much foreshortened that nothing
can be determined by them.
It will not be difficult to prove by a few illustrious
examples, that Morelli's judgment is by no means in
fallible. There is a portrait in the Pitti Palace Gallery called the
Donna Velata about which critics have long been in
doubt. Morelli, judging in his usual manner, is satis
fied that it was painted by Raphael, and thinks that he
has found in it the original from which the Sistine Ma
donna was derived. This, however, could only happen
by an extent of idealization which every realist would
at once repudiate. The face of the Sistine Madonna is
a long oval, with unusually large, tender eyes. The face
of the Donna Velata is not an oval at all, but, as one
might say, neither too long nor too broad, with regular
but rather crisp features, and an expression as of a
pleasant woman who has a good deal of snap in her. It
would have been quite as possible to have used James
Russell Lowell as a model for a portrait of Washington.
He says of the Sistine Madonna, vol. ii., p. 211 :
" The space seems to me much too narrow, and it is
my conviction that if it were hung higher, for instance
in one of the large saloons, this dreamy, heavenly vision
would make a more perfect impression on the spectator.
Here, unfortunately, one sees too much of the damage
the paintmg has received, chiefly from restoration. These
injuries are especially obvious in the infant Christ, and
on the forehead of the Madonna. But marred and
mottled as it is, it nevertheless produces an indescribable,
a magic effect."
I have gazed at the Sistine Madonna day after day
until I discovered that her eyes were painted in such a
manner that in cloudy weather they are scarcely visible.

302 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
This it is which gives such depth of expression to her
face. I never discovered that the picture had been re
touched anywhere, but it may have been, for I was not
looking for blemishes ; to say, however, that the Sistine
Madonna has a marred and mottled appearance, is pro
foundly absurd, and would give anyone who had never
seen it an erroneous impression. It is one of the best
preserved pictures of the sixteenth century, and so deli
cately painted that it seems as if nowhere one stroke of
the brush overlaid another. Grimm affirms that it is the
only one of Raphael's greater works that is worthily
located, and I think nine persons out of ten will
agree that it were" well if every such masterpiece
could have a room, or at least a wall, by itself. Certainly
to remove the Sistine Madonna to the outer hall, where it
might be placed between a Venus and a Leda, would be
no less than sacrilege. It would not only be an injury
to the paintings about it, but they would also have an
unfavorable effect upon the Madonna.
Morelli's most startling discovery is that the Reading
Magdalen which has always been attributed to Correggio,
must necessarily have been painted by Adrian Van der
Werff. He gives his argument for this in the form of a
colloquy with a German lady on page 132, vol. ii.
" I am sorry to say I am in sober earnest. Have the
goodness to examine the picture more narrowly. Look
at the dazzling ultramarine of the mantle. Why, that
is the Van der Werff color all over ; see the affected form
of the fingers, the long nails, with all that light thrown on
the cut edges, a thing no Italian ever did ; then observe
all those little stones in the foreground, how minutely
they are executed, exactly as in the picture No. 1643, by
Van der Werff ; so with the cold miniature-like glossy
vessel of ointment by the side of the Magdalen ; will you

Appendix. 303

also compare the foliage here with the foliage in Van
der Werff's pictures (Nos. 1640 and 1641), and lastly, the
cracks in this painting with the cracks in the paintings
of Van der Werff and his contemporaries."
I am pleased to learn that Raphael Mengs considered
this the finest of Correggio's works, for I have long held
the same opinion. The best proof of its authenticity
lies in the feminine tenderness of the woman's expression.
Correggio was the most subjective of all painters and
that may be the reason why he succeeded in painting the
best picture of a Magdalen, for penitence is the most
profoundly subjective of all emotions. It is the recoil
of human weakness upon itself. Van der Werff may not
have been the most phlegmatic of the Flemings, but even
Rubens would be considered phlegmatic compared with
Correggio. Next observe the softness and texture of her flesh, —
the arms and breast, — Titian and Raphael could not have
equalled it. Titian might render the color of flesh better,
but not the texture. The hair also is characteristic of
Correggio ; a succession of soft waves with a slight ripple
in them, broadly handled. Even the shape of the
hands give in their evidence ; for we have already noticed
that Correggio was exceptional among the very great
painters in not adapting the form of his hands to the
character of his figures. The left hand of the Magdalen,
which is the only one that can be seen plainly, has the
same delicate, rather attenuated, fingers and long nails,
as the hands of the Saviour in the Ecce Homo at London.
The edges of the nails are conspicuous because the light
strikes directly on them.
Another more decided mark of authenticity is the con
tour of her face. Correggio's faces have rather pointed
chins and a narrow jowl. His Magdalen is not an ex-

304 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
treme case of this, and the peculiarity is partly concealed
by the shadow of her arm, but her face is certainly not
an oval. Neither do I find the blue of her mantle glar
ing. It is in keeping with Correggio's general tone of
color, which belongs to heaven rather than to earth.
The stones in the foreground are essential to give the
effect of loneliness, on a canvas too small for trees. It
is not quite true that, as Morelli says, stones are never
to be met with in the foregrounds of Italian paintings;
for there are stones in the foreground of Tintoretto's
Golden Calf and in a number of others. As for the
cracks in the varnish, those may well be left to the
curious. Morelli attempts to prove too much when he describes
the Reading Magdalen as a cold picture. The universal
opinion of mankind, and especially of womankind, has
decided differently. It is safe to assert, that no coldly
painted picture could arouse the genuine enthusiasm
that this Magdalen has.
It seems more likely that Morelli is correct in regard
to the Sleeping Venus at Dresden, which has hitherto
been ascribed to Titian. It is too good a painting to be
a copy, and yet its coloring does not resemble that of
Titian's Venuses in the Uffizi. The close proximity of
a Venus by Palma Vecchio makes it plain enough that
he at least could not have painted it, and though it is
usually difficult to make out a negative, Morelli would
seem to have proved one in the present instance. He
explains the lack of Giorgione's internal light by suppos
ing the figure of Venus to have been repainted.
There can never be an authority in art criticism, such
as there are authorities in law, or medicine, or in any
other science, for among the best judges there will always
be a variety of opinions. We should read Morelli's work

Appendix. 305

therefore with the same suspicion, and also the same at
tention, with which a lawyer listens to the statement of
his client.

RUBENS' "FEAST OF HEROD"
PETER PAUL RUBENS was born in 1577 and died
in 1640.
Dr. Waagen says of him in his Handbook of Dutch
and Flemish Art that he was not only a great painter,
but a great man. He was a great painter because he was
a great man. Conversely, a really great man is always an
artist in his own line: witness Darwin and Webster.
The grandest characters in history are revolutionary
characters: Caesar, Michel Angelo, Luther, Shakespeare,
Napoleon, Goethe.
Rubens broke through the narrow restraints of Neth-
erland art, as Michel Angelo freed himself from the
yoke of Italian painting in the fifteenth century. In
fidelity to nature the art of the Netherlands was only
equalled by the greatest artists of Italy, Spain, and Ger
many; but this skill was expended on comparatively
trivial subjects. There are pictures by Dutch 'painters
of the sixteenth century which have a marvellous techni
cal excellence, but they convey no lesson to mankind,
afford no inspiration to the wistful mind. With such
solid foundation Rubens went to Italy and surveyed the
mighty works of Leonardo and Michel Angelo. A sav
age is strongly impressed by quantitative greatness, but
to appreciate qualitative greatness, or what is called
grandeur, requires a nature of similar kind. Yet with
all his admiration for these heroes of art, Rubens never
parted from his own individuality. Standing before the
frescoes of the Sistine Chapel he was still Peter Paul

306 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
Rubens, and the curious studies he made from them are
not more like Michel Angelo than himself. They are
the work of Rubens with the design of Michel Angelo
showing through them.
He recognized, however, that Venetian art, though
not so highly intellectualized as that of Florence, was
more true to nature, more human, and more animated.
This was in harmony with his own disposition, and he
took his own starting-point from Titian and Tintoretto.
He returned to Antwerp and gave Flemish art a
breadth of drawing, a greatness of design, and a his
toric depth such as it has never known before or since.
He excelled the realists in their own field, and taught
them to look for more elevated subjects. He covered
the whole region of painting, from the simplest genre
subjects to the grandest religious compositions. His
flesh tints were compared to Titian's, his chiaroscuro
was only surpassed by Correggio's, his drawing view
with that of the greatest of the Italians. Sir Joshua
Reynolds has said of Rubens that he possessed qualities
as a painter which no other artist has equalled. If his
coloring has not the peculiar charm of Murillo and Rem
brandt, or his drawing the plain ideality of Durer, he has
certainly excelled these masters in dramatic power and
the great variety of his compositions. No French
painter has ever approached him.
Rubens did not go to England until 1628, fifteen years
after Shakespeare's death, but he sojourned there at a
time when Shakespeare's plays were at the height of
their popularity, — before the Puritanic reaction set in, —
and it is a foregone conclusion that he must have seen
them acted and that they exercised a decided influence
on his own art.
The English school of Sir Joshua Reynolds and his

SALOME, RUBENS' "the feast of herod'
(SECTION FROM THE CENTRE)

Appendix. 307

successors was founded on the art of Rubens; and fronj
this was derived the American school of Copley, Trum
bull, and Allston; until William Morris Hunt introduced
the Millet vogue (with its expressionless faces) and the
Rembrandt chiaroscuro.
Max Rooses, Hermann Grimm, and other Continen
tal critics have compared Rubens to Shakespeare; but
this should not be taken too literally. The compari
son between a poet and a painter is at best a relative
one, and can only apply on certain lines which the
sister arts pursue in common. Raphael, Tintoretto,
and Rubens have been compared to Shakespeare, and the
natural reason is because they are the most dramatic of
painters. No one has thought of comparing Michel An
gelo to Shakespeare; they are as unlike as the cypress
and the oak; and yet he is the only artist that may be
said to have rivalled Shakespeare in originality and
fame. Rubens resembles Shakespeare in his blithesomeness,
his dramatic power, and the almost exuberant life which
he depicts. In his earlier coloring there is a dewy, ver
nal freshness which might remind one of Heine's lines:
The world is so bright and the heaven so blue,
Through garden and vineyard soft breezes are blowing;
And like little stars in the fresh morning dew
The flowers in the meadow are twinkling and glowing.
Such is the coloring of his Holy Trinity and the group
of children in the Munich gallery; and what could better
describe the spirit in which Shakespeare wrote his
earlier and happier plays, like As You Like It and
Twelfth Night? The redundant health and youthful
spirit which carried Shakespeare through so much were
also part of Rubens' heritage. These two geniuses have

308 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
each a fund of robust strength and good spirits, which
they could draw upon as a merchant does upon his bank.
Rubens' frequently high coloring and fullness of outline
might be compared with Shakespeare's double superla
tives and other fanciful conceits. They bound them
selves by no classic rules, and they cared as little for
public opinion. Shakespeare wrote recklessly, rejoic
ing in his strength; and Rubens painted with equal free
dom and confidence of success.
Out of this continual May-day developed, as a natural
growth of the brain, notable figures of charming women
and valiant men, no abstract types of character, but thor
oughly human personalities, who eat, sleep, love, and
reason like the rest of us. We see them not only on one
side, but many; and we know that the blood runs warm
in their veins. Of all poets Shakespeare is the best por
trait painter, and Rubens certainly was one of the best.
In his Fall of the Damned, at Munich, there is a corpu
lent figure of a man, spread out like a starfish, whom
one would take to be no other than the immortal Fal-
staff, on the way to his final destination. It is a coarse
figure, but Shakespearian. The whole composition is
penetrated by an undercurrent of good-humored satire on
the vices of humankind, — not unlike that in Henry IV.
To do a painting full justice, it ought to be seen under
the same conditions in which it was painted. The very
light and arrangement of the artist's studio have their
own effect. Titian should be seen in Venice and Ru
bens in Holland or Belgium. There, we understand much
better why he is as he is. In fact Dutch art has a more
local character, with the exception of Rubens and Van
Dyck, than any other national art. With advancing
years Rubens would, in any case, have acquired a more
serious tone, but his playing ambassador, as he termed
it, in England was almost as great an advantage to him

Appendix. 309

as his early journey to Rome. From that time his color
ing became more subdued and his drawing more chaste
and temperate. His St. Jerome and the Lion, in the
Dresden Museum, is an example of this, and perhaps the
most perfect painting in that collection.
Shakespeare was not exactly a religious poet. One
would not call him irreligious, but in the whole extent of
his dramas, there is no passage like that in which Faust
replies to Gretchen when she asks him if he be
lieves in God. He certainly was not a religious poet in
the sense that Dante, Milton and Racine are religious.
It is much the same with Rubens. His Holy Trinity, at
Munich, is an excellent subject for those critics who
consider technical skill everything and motive or design
of small account; and although his Descent from the
Cross, at Antwerp, is considered the grandest of his
works, this is more perhaps on account of its dramatic
than its religious quality. As a dramatic artist he cer
tainly has never been excelled ; but unfortunately his
religious pictures are many and his distinctly dramatic
works are few. One of the finest of the latter is his
Feast of Herod, in the collection of Mr. Hermann Linde.
The inquiry is often made, Why do not our artists rep
resent scenes from Shakespeare? and the answer is, Be
cause Shakespeare has developed his scenes with such
fullness and reality that he leaves little or nothing prac
tically for the imagination to work on. Freedom of imagi
nation is as necessary to the painter as to the poet, and
if he is constrained to follow the invention of another,
he becomes after a fashion a translator from one art to
another, and his designs serve as illustrations rather than
original creations. Freedom of imagination is as essen
tial for the true artists as freedom of action is to the
statesman. Scriptural subjects, on the contrary, possess the rare

310 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
advantage of presenting the deepest emotions and
strongest forces of human nature in a simple and con
centrated form; and thus they afford free scope to the
inventive faculty of the artist. The tragical death of
John the Baptist is a typical instance of this. We only
know that the Herods were hereditary rulers of Judea,
and that, for the double crime of taking away his brother's
wife and putting an innocent man to death, this, the last
of his race, was deposed from his throne by Tiberius
Caesar, and banished, together with Herodias, to Vienna
in Gaul. So says Josephus ; but in the four. Gospels they
appear upon the scene like vultures, seize their prey, and
vanish again.
Tragedy results from the subordination of a noble
nature to a base one, and what can express the essence
of tragedy more perfectly than placing the life of a high-
minded man as the stake of a frivolous feminine gam
bler who only knows one motive, the gratification of a
Nero-like vanity. This gives it a typical and universal
character. It is not, however, a religious tragedy, but
essentially moral and human. The religious element
serves as a background, for we recollect that it is as the
forerunner of Christianity that John the Baptist meets
his death to intensify the importance of one of the most
contemptible of her sex.
The Feast of Herod was painted in 1638, and appar
ently for the artist's own satisfaction. He had already
begun to feel that his life was ebbing, and that it was no
longer prudent for him to work on a large scale; but
qualitative greatness shows itself in small things as well
as large, and breadth of composition does not depend on
square yards of canvas. He perfected this work with a
deliberation and enjoyment which is apparent at the first
glance. The problem of seating ten or twelve persons at a

Appendix. 311

table is one that has vexed the most distinguished paint
ers. Leonardo solved it in his Last Supper by placing
them all on three sides of the table and leaving one long
side open for the benefit of the spectator. In his Wed
ding Feast at Cana, Veronese has, as the critics all say,
placed the figure of Christ too much in the background.
In the present instance, Rubens has solved the difficulty
in a very ingenious and quite satisfactory manner. He
has placed Herod at one end of the table under a canopy,
and then brought the circle of guests well round to the
side fronting the spectator, and has filled in the space
between with the figure of Salome carrying the head
of the Baptist and with a boy prince toying with a
monkey. Salome divides the guests from the mother of
Herodias, and the boy's head does not rise above the
level of the table; so that an effect of completeness is
produced without the least confusion. Every figure
stands out clearly and well defined.
Salome, the daughter of Herodias, must have been the
first figure that he drew; for the burden she carries is
the central focus of the piece, to which the action of all
the other figures is directly related. And here in the be
ginning he encountered a difficulty. The dish or charger
which she carries must be large enough to contain the
fearful burden, and yet the carrier must appear to hold
this without excessive exertion. A frightened young
girl in dancing costume would not have served Rubens'
purposes. He has therefore deviated from the account
of St. Matthew in representing the daughter of Herodias
as an older and more dignified person than we should
naturally suppose her to have been. He has also de
viated from Gospel tradition in making Salome present
the charger to Herod instead of to her mother. This
was absolutely necessary, for any other arrangement
would have placed the young woman on the opposite

312 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
side of the table, where she would not have been seen to
such advantage, and, what was worse, the face of Herod
would have been turned away from the spectator. The
single fault in the painting is the large arm of Salome.
It is more like the arm of a vigorous serving-woman than
what one would expect in a case like the present; and if
Rubens had been asked for an explanation of this, he
might have found it difficult to assign one.
He must have drawn the figure of Herod next in
order; for the chief antagonism of the piece lies between
these two; and this having been established in a satisfac
tory manner, he proceeded to conjure up Herodias and
the different guests in forms which permitted the great
est diversity of action consistent with the central motive.
He placed two guards and a slender waiting-woman be
hind Herodias ; and a shadowy group of half-nude musi
cians on a high, square plinth at the other end serve as a
make-weight or balance wheel to the composition. Near
est to Herodias a Moor, or negro servant, raises a dish
of fruit above his head. It is like the composition of a
piece of music.
The picture is painted in the Van Eyck manner like
Titian's Tribute Money ; and its coloring goes back to the
Van Eyck panels in the Berlin Museum, but is highly
sublimated even for Rubens. It resembles in tone his
ideal children in the Munich gallery ; but the tints are
disposed as if by a metacarpal instinct, and so harmo
niously that this tragical scene is enveloped in a pris
matic radiance, which also is not without its spiritual
effect. As Mr. Linde says, the painting has a "bouquet,"
and it is this incense of the rose and the violet which
purifies the subject and elevates it above the plain level
of dramatic realism.
Yet this effect has been accomplished with a sparing
use of bright colors. The dress of Salome is rose-red,

Appendix. 313

and so are the sleeves of Herod's tunic, but little is seen
of them. Herod wears a black velvet cloak with an er
mine cape. Herodias is dressed in white satin; two of
the guests are in dark blue, another in dark green, and
the rest wear mode-colored stuffs. The walls and floors
are a leaden gray, and for sober, restful coloring the
canopy and curtain above King Herod could not be ex
celled. The architecture of the room is in the simplest
Roman style, such as might be expected in the time of
Tiberius Caesar; but the costumes are modern.
The principal light falls directly on Herodias, as if to
mark her out as the mainspring of the tragedy, while
the profiles of Herod and Salome are outlined against it.
Such a light as this is can be found in few paintings; the
light in Correggio's Notte, although different in kind,
would be a fair match for it. The figures are all sep
arated from one another without the intervention of
dark shadows; and roundness of form has been attained
— notably in the case of Herodias — by means of the most
delicate shading.
Who now are the performers in this fifth act of a trag
edy? Three of them are not to be mistaken. King
Herod is a portrait of Rubens himself, — a mighty intel
lect enshrined in a wasting form. Salome is his first
wife, Isabella Brandt in her youthful loveliness and
splendor. Herodias is his second wife, Helen Fourment,
probably in her wedding dress, and, as we may judge
from other portraits, somewhat idealized. An old lady
next to Herodias is a copy of the portrait in the Munich
gallery, generally supposed to be Rubens' mother. The
boy prince is also said to be a likeness of his second son,
but his face recalls the groups of idealized children by
Rubens at Munich and Berlin. The faces of the guests
have also a kind of familiarity for us, like those of old

314 The Midsummer of Italian Art.

acquaintances whom we have not met for eight or ten
years. The figure at the opposite end of the table to Herod
gives us the key to the whole group. The close-fitting
skullcap, the Arab nose, and heavy mustaches can belong
to no one but Titian. It is almost a fac-simile of the por
trait of Titian by Veronese in his Wedding Feast at
Cana, which Rubens must have seen and perhaps copied
from in the refectory of San Giorgio at Venice.
The person at Titian's left hand is also evidently Tin
toretto; not so good a portrait and probably painted from
memory, but bearing a decided resemblance to the wood
cut of him in Ridolfi's Maraviglie. One would expect to
find Paolo Caliari on Titian's right hand, but the person
seated there has his back turned to us. All we can see
of his face is the nose and beard, and these also corre
spond to Ridolfi's engraving of him. There can be little
doubt that this figure is intended for Veronese.
Next to Tintoretto sits Raphael Sanzio leaning with his
arm on the table. Few will recognize him, because we
are accustomed to think of him as a maidenly, beardless
youth. This portrait is evidently painted from the wood
cut of Raphael made by Bonasone in 1519, on which it
says: "This is Raphael Sanzio of Urbino, in his thirty-
seventh year." It is in fact the only likeness of Raphael
of which we can be positive; although the features agree
as well as could be expected, considering the difference
of age, with the supposed portrait of Raphael in the
Uffizi and with the later self-portrait in the School of
Athens. It is apparent from Bonasone that toward the
close of his life Raphael wore a beard.
In front of Raphael rises the regal figure of Leonardo
da Vinci. It is a profile view and his head is bald, but
the powerful eye and the nose with its double curve could
not belong to any other. His whole profile, from the

Appendix. 315

forehead to the chin, corresponds closely with that of
the portrait in the Uffizi.
Next to Leonardo, we should expect to find Michel
Angelo, — and there he is, with his square forehead, high
cheek-bones, and deep-set eyes.
This likeness was also evidently taken from a woodcut
by Bonasone, made in Michel Angelo's seventy-second
year, and we are pleased to discover from it that the
flattened nose of Michel Angelo, which appears on
modern cameos, does not properly belong to him. That
his nose was injured by Torrigiano's fist is indubitable,
but not to the extent that is commonly supposed.* Bona-
sone's engraving is a profile view, but the hair and beard
correspond; and so do the height of the forehead, the
length of the nose, and the resolute mouth.
The figures of Herod, Herodias, and Salome are
painted with the greatest delicacy and precision, but these
artist likenesses have been treated more in the manner
of Tintoretto, or Titian's bolder style, — their features
indicated by swift, decisive strokes of the brush; and this
gives to the scene a more animated appearance. Never
theless they have all passed through the alembic of Ru
bens' Flemish genius; and it is quite possible that he did
not intend to have them recognized too easily. That
might have detracted from the harmony of the compo
sition. The two guardsmen on duty are Spanish soldiers, as
may be inferred from their twistified mustachios. Ru
bens saw enough and to spare of this gentry in his youth.
Now we return to the dramatic opposition between
Herod and the daughter of Herodias. Max Rooses thinks
*It is only fair to state that the present owner of this painting dis
agrees with my opinion in regard to this figure. He believes it to
have been intended for Vasari, who, with a glass of wine in his hand,
is introducing the other artists to Rubens.

31 6 The Midsummer of Italian Art.

that Salome cannot be conscious of the part she is per
forming; but this would hardly be possible, either by
Gospel tradition or the conditions of the case. Moreover,
she evidently appears conscious of it by her dilated eye,
half-opened mouth, and the slight blush upon her cheek.
She is supported in this trying situation by her maidenly
reserve, one of the strongest forces in human nature.
Moreover, she is before a king, and must preserve her
self-possession whatever may befall.
Her figure resembles the Venus of Praxiteles, but her
arms are more muscular. Rubens never reproduced the
form of Isabella Brandt more nobly and tenderly than
in this last reminiscence. Her face is beautiful, but the
poise of her head, the graceful lines of her neck, the dig
nified sweep of her figure, are equally admirable. The
slight trailing of her dress indicates the movement which
has only just been arrested.
The head which she carries also bears a resemblance
to Rubens. This may have been accidental, — like the
English sculptor who modeled the head of Satan in his
own likeness; or it may have been to prefigure the death
of the artist himself; or it may have been intended for a
miracle, — that is, Herod beholds his own face instead of
that of the Baptist. The last supposition is by no means
impossible, but it would indicate an exceptional boldness
of design.
St. Matthew says that Herod disliked to have John the
Baptist put to death, but did it in order to keep his
promise. Rubens has taken note of this piece of human
nature and made the most of it. He does not represent
Herod as an inhuman monster. The man is cruel because
he is weak and cowardly. He appears as the type of a
terror-stricken, conscience-smitten person; and how viv
idly this is delineated only those who have seen the paint
ing can know. He starts back from the uncovered head

Appendix. 317

of the Baptist, as if he saw a poisonous serpent, or his
own death-warrant. The movement of his legs, which
has disarranged the table cloth, is significant of the
wrench that is taking place within him. Even the folds
of the curtain behind him would seem to be affected by
it. Yet, the motion is not overdone, and there is a re
serve in the drawing such as belongs to a master-hand.
The back of Herod's chair is curiously wrought into
the form of an old Cremona violin. Is this to signify
that he was a man to be played upon? It would seem
likely. "Salome blushes and Herodias blanches." One can
imagine a three-fold motive in the partner of Herod's
crime. She points with her fork at the head of her
enemy; at the same time she feels an internal shrinking
which takes the blood from her face, and there is more
of surprise than exultation in the expression of her eyes.
Nothing could be more characteristic of her vulgar na
ture than the unconscious movement of her hand. As
Salome is sustained by her modesty, so is Herodias by
her vanity. She represents the heartless woman of
fashion raised by the rank of princess to the fortieth
power. What is the execution of a "vulgar fanatic" to
her? The technique of this figure is the most remarkable
part of the painting. To portray a beautiful young
woman is the highest feat of art for either painter or
sculptor, and only the greatest artists have succeeded in
it. Even Rembrandt and Velasquez would not seem to
have been equal to it; but here is a beautiful woman
painted under the full glare of a strong light, without a
shadow that the artist could take advantage of, yet her
features are clear and distinct, her expression well de
fined, and the silvery gloss of her dress is given to per
fection. Herodias has not a high order of beauty, but is

318 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
certainly very good looking. It is doubtful if this effect
could be produced in a life-size portrait.
The two guardsmen behind Herodias are treated in
a slight, sketchy manner, in order to give the effect of
distance, though only a few yards from her. They are
grinning with heartless vulgarity at the confusion of the
King and the embarrassed position of Salome. Close by
them is the slender figure of a serving-woman, who in
clines her head to one side in the attitude and expression
of true feminine pity.
The old lady who sits next to Herodias may be in
tended for Herod's mother, or her own. Otherwise it
would be difficult to account for her presence. Her head
also is inclined to one side, but she has lived too long at
court to feel much commiseration. She perhaps regrets
that the pleasant course of events has been interrupted
by this awkward circumstance.
The Moor with the dish of fruit and the boy playing
with the monkey are a reminiscence from the festal paint
ings of Veronese. The former is one of the poetic cre
ations of the seventeenth century. Shakespeare calls
Othello a Moor, and describes him as a negro; and this
figure would seem to have been imagined by Rubens in
a similar manner. He has the color of a negro, but his
features are too refined and his expression too intelligent
for a real negro. His face and arms are painted with
exactly the same color as the curtain above King Herod,
but being more in the background, the effect on the eye
is different. The action of the boy with the monkey has
a childlike ambiguity; and their position may be ac
counted for by the sudden entrance of Salome.
The resemblance of the guests to the great Italian
painters cannot have been accidental* They are not
*Mr. Hermann Linde appears to have been the first to make this
important discovery.

Appendix. 319

portraits in the strict sense of the word, and yet in a cer
tain way they are more interesting than common por
traits; for Rubens has given to each of them an expres
sion and action significant of their several characters.
We recognize the majestic manliness of Leonardo, the
tender spirituality of Raphael, the contemplative awe of
Tintoretto, the judicial energy of Titian, and the grand
activity of Veronese. The latter has seized the table
with both hands and stretches forth his head like a hound
that scents blood. Tintoretto looks at Titian and points
to the head of the Baptist. Leonardo's eye flashes with
the prophetic fire of retribution, — and great pains have
been taken to represent this. Raphael leans forward,
and a mark over his shoulder shows where the drapery
was originally painted, which was afterwards changed
to his upper arm. This may have been on account of the
background, but it also gives Raphael a more decided
appearance of self-forgetfulness.
What could be more characteristic of Raphael than
the manner in which he is here represented? He does
not rise from his chair, like the more impulsive natures
about him, but leans earnestly forward with the com
posure and moderation for which he was always distin
guished. Bonasone was a dry and literal artist, but Ru
bens has filled in his outlines with an expression of pro
found sympathy which it requires close observation to
realize. The expressions of the eyes in this masterpiece are a
study by themselves. The attitudes of Titian and Leon
ardo are very similar, but a line of light runs across the
eye of the former, while in the latter the light half sur
rounds the pupil, — which I interpret to mean that one is
external, and the other internal, observation. Rubens
has struck the fundamental chord of each of these

32 o The Midsummer of Italian Art.

geniuses; so that we know them better for his presenta
tion of them here.
Michel Angelo has the strongest face in the group,
and the only one which indicates neither surprise nor
agitation. In this Rubens shows a knowledge of human
nature which few would have expected of him. There
are anecdotes of Napoleon's youth which prove that he
was originally of a kind and amiable disposition, and if
it were not so he would not have been so much beloved.
Yet Napoleon could look at men dying on the battlefield
without any outward sign of emotion. A pebble will
cause a splash in a puddle, but dropped into the sea it
disappears with scarcely a ripple. Rubens has attributed
this same "heaven and hell temperament" to Michel An
gelo, who sees the spectacle before him, but it sinks into
him too deeply to find outward expression. Rubens also
recognizes the near kinship of nature between Michel
Angelo and Tintoretto, who, of all the other guests, in
dicates the strongest self-control.
Tintoretto and Veronese often introduced themselves
and their brother artists into their compositions, but here
it may have an exceptional significance. It is not only
the feast of Herod, but the feast of Rubens, and he has
invited his great Italian compeers to the entertainment.
There is good reason for supposing that this has an alle
gorical meaning.
In the Tempest, which would seem to have been the
last, and is the most perfect and poetic of Shakespeare's
plays, there are a number of passages which may be
taken to refer to the author himself. He will bury his
books and break his magic wand, — that is, he intends to
retire from public life. Both Lowell and Brandes have
taken note that Prospero was Shakespeare himself. Was
not his whole life passed on the enchanted island of po
etic fancies? Was he not isolated from mankind, even

Appendix. 32 1

in the heart of London, by the wide gulf of his genius?
He lived one life with his fellow-classmen, and another
amid the creations of his own lofty spirit. His real
companions were not Jonson and Fletcher and Kemp,
but Hamlet and Portia and Desdemona.
How could it have been otherwise with Rubens? He
was the one great man that Belgium has produced. In
his youth he beheld the most ferocious of religious wars
at the very gates of Antwerp. He grew up like a lofty
tree over the graves of martyrs. The feast of Herod
was always before his eyes; and his only escape from it
lay in his devotion to his art. It was a mean-spirited age
he lived in, both in Belgium and England ; and Rubens
was in it, but not of it. His real companions were the
old Italian masters, whom he had honored in his youth,
who had taught him the way to greatness, and with
whom he could now consider himself on an equality.
The question may be raised, Why should Rubens make
use of himself and his nearest relatives as models for
the Herod family? How did Shakespeare understand
Iago, except by the Iago in Shakespeare? Rubens may
have noticed traits in himself, his mother, and Helen
Fourment, which, if developed to the full, might have
brought them to such a pass. Otherwise than this it
would prove that there is no essential connection be
tween the model which the artist uses and the personality
he intends to portray.
The Feast of Herod is as unique as the Madonna della
Sedia. The sensuous admirer of Raphael's outlines or
Rembrandt's chiaroscuro will not find much satisfaction
in it; but the true connoisseur is astonished at its tech
nique, the art writer delights in the grandeur of its com
position, and even the dilettante is awed by the moral
lesson which it inculcates. As Max Rooses has said, it
rises above the average quality of Rubens' works, and

322 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
claims a distinction peculiarly its own. Never before or
since has such artistic force been concentrated within
equal limits. It is painted with a thick, viscous material
elaborated into a surface as smooth and hard as enamel ;
and its coloring has that mellow tone which only age can
give, and which Rubens himself could not have imitated.
It has a threefold value: as a study in color; for the
rare portraits it contains ; and as a dramatic scene equal
to Shakespeare's best.

MAX ROOSES' OPINION.
On page 12, vol. ii., of Max Rooses' biography of Ru
bens, we find the following statement concerning the
Feast of Herod:*
"The movement which impels the guests to gaze at
this spectacle is admirable in its unity and in its variety.
They form fine groups, and each assumes a different at
titude, according to their respective characters. The ac
cessory figures are not less remarkable; the negro espe
cially is depicted with extreme delicacy.
"This work is one of the most remarkable easel pic
tures which Rubens has produced. The figure of Herod
is incontrovertibly the most dramatic, the most Shake
spearian of Rubens' conceptions. This King, with glassy
eye, pale and unstrung countenance, with contracted eye
brows, with an attitude sombre and dreaming, at the
side of this buxom and smiling courtesan, who sports
with crime, and confirming the maxim of the moralist,
which says that sensuality breeds thirst for blood, forms
the most striking contrast that Rubens ever expressed.
"The gradation of light and tones is executed in a
masterly style. On the side of Herod the scene is lighted
by a calm light of day, but broken by the dais; Salome
* Translated by the present owner.

Appendtx. 323

stands forth in full light and brilliantly in the fore
ground; the figures of the guests, to the left, recede
gradually in the abundant brightness of full day.
"The face of Herod has a darker complexion, as be
comes his position and the condition of his spirit. He
rodias, Salome, and the guest who is rising are painted
as in enamel, scintillating with brilliancy. The guests
at the left are treated in a more vaporous manner. Their
heads are executed with small strokes of the brush,
placed with an admirable sureness of hand.
"The picture is one of those few which, on account of
its exceptional qualities, rises above the level of Rubens'
usual works, drawing apart from the mass of the mas
ter's creation by the character of its execution. These
extraordinary qualities place this picture in a rank ele
vated and distinct. Such a work surprises the general
public, routs the critics, and compels the recognition due
its rare value as a master-piece."
Prof. Max Rooses is not only one of the most eminent connois
seurs and art critics in Europe, but also highly distinguished as a
Shakespearian scholar. Perhaps there is no other person so compe
tent to express an opinion like the above.
THE APHRODITE OF MELOS.
Its Position and Restoration.
IT is ninety years since the statue of Aphrodite was
discovered in a walled-up grotto of Melos, and the
circumstances of its discovery have come to have a
mythological character. Endless and well-nigh fruitless
controversies have resulted from the broken plinth, the
inscription on it, the hermes or hermae which were found
with it, the broken arm, and the exceptional style of the
statue itself. As no satisfactory conclusion has yet been
derived from a 'consideration of the study of these circum-

324 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
stances, it does not seem probable that such ever will be.
When archaeologists begin to charge the lie direct, as
M. Reinach does in his letter concerning M. Brest, the
vice-consul at Melos, to which M. Brest can no longer
reply, it is evident that the subject has been overstudied,
and a solution of the problem is not to be found in the
direction in which it has hitherto been sought.
Professor Furtwangler anticipated his readers in con
fessing that his proposed restoration of the statue would
not add to, but rather detract from, its merit as a work
of art; and this is simply to confess that he has not yet
discovered the right explanation for it; for to suppose
that a sculptor who possessed a genius to model such a
statue would deliberately spoil it by a false motive in the
disposition of the arms is plainly a contradiction in
terms. After reading Furtwangler's elaborate and rather
hair-splitting argument, I came to the conclusion that
the only solution of this enigma was to be reached
through a comparative study of style and drapery; and,
acting on this principle, I obtained results which mutually
support one another and point to similar conclusions.
In regard to style, the relation of the Aphrodite of
Melos to the sculpture of the Parthenon is obvious
enough. Even Furtwangler, who places the statue some
where in the later Hellenistic period, or about 150 B. C,
without alleging very definite reasons for doing so, ad
mits that its sculptor must have lived, in spirit at least,
in the age of Phidias. Its largeness of limb and feature,
full-sized cranium, and general breadth of treatment in
dicate this, as well as that more subtle mystery of form
which defies description; but there are also essential dif
ferences. Statues of the fifth century have a generic
rather than an individualized character; and of all ideal
works of Greek sculpture, the Aphrodite of Melos is the
most highly individualized — so much so as to suggest in-

VENUS OF MELOS

Appendix. 325

fluence of the model on the hand of the master. This is
most strongly marked about the mouth and chin, in the
length of neck and the breadth of her waist. There is
a decided resemblance in her figure to the reliefs of
Wingless Victory on the Acropolis, and to the group
called the Moirai from the Parthenon, but her hair and
drapery are so different from these, or any known hair
and drapery of that period, as to force the conclusion
that no prominent sculptor of the Periclean age could
have modelled the Melian statue. The folds, at least of
heavy drapery, in the fifth century, have a downward ten
dency, — in many instances they are perpendicular, — but
the lines of the drapery of the Aphrodite of Melos are
more nearly horizontal, with a tendency to sharpness in
the principal folds. Her drapery has been complained
of by certain critics, but I find it very simple and natural,
— much more so than the drapery of the Parthenon
statues and reliefs. In the Fates and the Iris groups, the
drapery, though wonderful, is too artistic to be perfectly
natural.* The same might be said also in regard to the
position of the drapery about the waist of the Aphrodite.
We recollect, however, the right arms of Michel Ange
lo's Night, and conclude that effects are possible in mar
ble, which are not found in actual life, as there are po
sitions of the body which the sculptors can imitate.
Neither do we find similar drapery in the works of
Scopas and Praxiteles ; nor on other important statues
of the fourth century, with the single exception of the
Sophocles in the Lateran.
On statues of the third century B. C. there is little
drapery for man or woman; but the drapery of the Vic
tory of Samothrace has a flamboyant tendency which is
* Generally speaking, the drapery of the fifth century would seem
to have been evolved upon a particular plan or scheme, differing in
different cases.

326 The Midsummer of Italian Art.
quite contrary to the perfect composure of the Aphro
dite of Melos.* We naturally conclude, therefore, that
the position of the Aphrodite of Melos in Greek sculp
ture is between the artistic drapery of the fifth century
and the extravagant drapery of the third; that is, about
the middle of the fourth century. The finest, as well as
the most natural, of all drapery is on the Hermes of
Praxiteles. Studied from a different point of view, we come to a
similar conclusion. Statues of goddesses in the fifth cen
tury were all draped from shoulder to ankle. The Venus
Genetrix and the Irene of Kephisodotos first show a ten
dency to change in this respect. Then comes the Venus
d'Arles with her peplos securely fastened about the
waist; then the Townley Venus, who is more loosely at
tired; then the Aphrodite of Cuidos, whose peplos is laid
aside upon a water- jar; and finally the Venus dei Medici,
whose peplos has wholly disappeared. It can hardly be
doubted that these statues were produced in this order,
and it indicates a gradual change, in public taste, from
the closely-robed period of Pericles to the ultra freedom
of the age of Alexander. According to this scheme, the
Aphrodite of Melos finds her place, as above, about the
middle of the fourth century, contemporary with the
Townley Venus, or allowing for the conservatism of
island life, perhaps a little later.
Reinach associates the colossal Neptune at Athens
with the Melian statue, and the identity of their author
ship is by no means improbable; but it holds a much
closer relation to the Sophocles of the Lateran. When
I consider the noble aspect of both these statues, the
close resemblance of their drapery, their breadth of
modelling, the slight vibration in their attitudes, and even
*This is even more conspicuous in the reliefs from Pergamon in
Berlin.

Appendix. 327

the similarity in the positions of their feet, I cannot
avoid the conclusion that they were both made by the
same sculptor. Herman Grimm, in an essay on the Ve
nus of Melos, speaks of a slight movement or swing to
her lips, and this strikes me as the keynote to her model
ling, and to that of the Sophocles as well. Now Beuns-
dorf, Konger and the other critics are satisfied that the
Sophocles of the Lateran is a copy from the statue of
Sophocles which was set up in the new theatre built at
Athens during the third quarter of the fourth century.*
The hair of the Aphrodite of Melos is also an indica
tion that the statue belongs properly to the school of
Phidias. It is carved in parallel wavy lines like much of
the hair on the frieze of the Parthenon (as that of the
maiden on relief No. 21, and even that of the youth; and
of the manes of the horses), but treated with far greater
skill and delicacy of feeling. The loose knot at the back
of her head, however, has an artistic negligence unusual
in the fifth century, which illustrates Da Vinci's princi
ple, that the hair ought not to be carefully arranged, in
order to prevent a studied or mechanical effect. I be
lieve this union of artistic ingenuity with purity of feel
ing, this artistic naturalism, is peculiar to the fourth cen
tury. There is in the British Museum a silver dedrachma of
Mallus in Crete, which bears on it a group of Aphrodite
and Hermes, and the figure of the former corresponds
remarkably to the Aphrodite of Melos.t There is the
same long head with a knot of hair behind, the drapery
fastened at the waist, the weight resting on the right foot
with the left foot advanced, and the only important dif
ference is that Hermes is placed on her right hand, in-
*Antike Bildwerke der Lateranischen Museum V. — Beunsdorf
und Schone, No. 237.
t Gardner's Greek Coins, PI. X, No. 31.

328 The Midsummer of Italian Art.

stead of on her left; but this is not surprising when we
consider that the position on the die is reversed again on
the coin. It was one of the earlier suppositions in regard
to the Melian statue, that she formed a group with
either Ares or Hermes. This would explain the peculiar
turn of her body, as well as the expression of her face,
and the coin from Mallus makes it morally certain that
such a group existed at the middle of the fourth century ;
for, as Prof. Gardner states, with the conquest of Crete
by Alexander's successors, the right of Cretan cities to
an independent coinage came to an end.
It is well known that the school of Phidias continued
to flourish in the Ionian islands long after it had been
superseded at Athens by Scopas and Praxiteles. Thra-
symedes was its chief luminary, and who would have been
so likely to have modelled a noted group for the people
of Melos ! Yet we have no certain light in this direction.
The relief of his Asclepias at Epidaurus is too poor for
a copy to help us; though there is a head of Zeus, or
Asclepias, found at Melos, and now in the British Mu
seum, which may well have been from his hand, and re
calls in its noble simplicity the treatment of the Aphro
dite of Melos.
Her head bears a decided resemblance to the head of
Niobe in the Florentine group, allowing for the difference
of expression. This makes it possible that the Niobe
group was modeled by a son or pupil of our unknown
genius, — which also agrees with the time assigned to it,
from 340 to 330 B. C.
An American artist writing for the "Century" for Oc
tober, 1 881, made out a well-sustained argument (as ar
guments go) to prove that the Venus of Melos must have
been the original statue of Wingless Victory, which had
disappeared at the time of Pansanias' visit to Athens,
and had probably been carried over to Melos for security.

DIDRACHMA OF MALLUS
(ENLARGED)

Appendix. 329

It is certain, however, that Pansanias did see this statue
of Wingless Victory in its shrine, for he mentions the
fact in his visit to Sparta; in addition to which he
states that the statue was an xoanon* of wood. All the
more important statues of divinities in this century were
either of bronze or of gold and ivory.
The Aphrodite of Melos has borne a charmed exist
ence. During the bombardment of Paris, in 1871, the
statue was removed from the Louvre and placed in a cel
lar for better security, but during the Communist riots
this building was set on fire and the Aphrodite was only
saved from utter ruination by the bursting of a water
tank above. The warm water, however, loosened the
plaster between the upper and nether portions of the
statue, and disclosed a narrow wedge of marble between
the two which had not previously been noticed. We may
suppose that this was inserted originally because the
sculptor formed the attitude of his statue somewhat too
erect, and wished to give Aphrodite that slight forward
movement which adds so much to the graciousness of
her presence. With this wedge taken out, a line drawn
through the centre of the statue, as seen in profile, would
be perpendicular ; but from a front view it would describe
a double curve of exquisite grace and proportions.
•Pansanias, Book V, p. 356.

INDEX.

Adoration of Magi, by Leonardo, 33
Ancestors of Jesus, 114
Antiope, by Correggio, 293
Apollo and Marsyas, 79
Appleton, T. G., 182
Archangel Michael, by Raphael, 1 79
Aristotle, 237
Battle of the Milvian Bridge, 260
Battle of the Standard, 53
Biagio da Cesena and the demon, 154
Bruges Madonna, 87
Cassar Borgia, 89
Cellini's memoirs, 38
Charles V., 125
Christ, Different types of, 146
Christ's Charge to Peter, 251
Cicero, 13
Clement VII., portrait by Raphael, 246
Coleoni, Statue of, 31 33i

332 Index.
Conestabile Madonna, 177
Coronation of Charlemagne, 250
Coronation of the Virgin, by Raphael, 225
Corregio : his art, his coloring, 277, 278
his chiaroscuro, 277
his drawing, 279
his frescos in S. Giovanni, 288
his Giomo, 294
his Leda, 292
his lunettes, 288
his Madonna in the Uffizi, 281
his Magdalen, 281
his portrait of himself, 276
his St. George, 297
his St. "John the Evangelist, 290
Creation of Adam, 105
Creation of Light, by Michel Angelo, 104
Crowe and Cavalcaselle, 183
Cumean Sibyl, 113
Danae, by Correggio, 292
Dante, 63
Dante's Inferno, 154
David, by Michel Angelo, 84
Deliverance of St. Peter, 248
Delphic Sibyl, 113
Diana, by Correggio, 287
Diotalevi Madonna, 177
Donna Velata, 221, 301
Drunkenness of Noah, 102
Ecce Homo, 283
Entombment, by Raphael, 227
Ester hazy Madonna, 189

Index.
Esther and Haman, by M. Angelo, 109
Etruscans, 2
Exorcism of Attila, 247
Expulsion of Heliodorus, 245
Expulsion from Paradise, by M. Angelo, 106
Family of Josias, by M. Angelo, 115
Farnese palace, 164
Fire in the Borgo, 250
Florentine Fornarina, 193
Florence, Siege of, 128
Fornarina, 193, 196, 270
Francesco Sforza, Statue of, 40
Frederick Barbarossa, 11
Frescos in S. Giovanni, by Correggio, 288
Garvagh Madonna, 182
Ghiberti, Gates of, 105
Giuliano dei Medici, 133
Goethe, 16, 61, 250
Goths, 4
Greek sculpture, 136, 209
Hawthorne, 65
Head of Medusa, 38
Holy Family, at Munich, 184
Holy Family, by M. Angelo, 76
Holy Family, of Francis I., 215
Holy Family with the Lamb, 186
Hunt, Holman, 43
II Penseroso, 134
Io and "Jupiter, by Correggio, 91, 292

333

334 Index.
Johanna of Aragon, Portrait of, 269
J ' ohn the Baptist, by Raphael, 208
John the Evangelist, by Correggio, 290
Judgment of Solomon, by Raphael, 242
Judith and Holofernes, by M. Angelo, 109
Julius II., 88, 200, 246
La Belle Jardiniere, 183
Leonardo da Vinci : his Judas, 55
his Last Supper, 41
his portrait, 39, 239
his St. Anna, 51
his St. John, 55
his treatise on drawing, 35
his versatility, 27
Leo X., portrait of, 220
Lysippus, 137
Machiavelli, 89
Madonna and Child, by M. Angelo, 77, 86
Madonna at Bruges, Statue of, 86
Madonna, bas-relief, M. Angelo, 73
Madonna del Baldachino, 191
Madonna del Gran' Duca, 182
Madonna del Impannata, 204
Madonna della Scala, 291
Madonna della Sedia, 115, 211
Madonna del Pozzo, 1 93
Madonna di Foligno, 203
Madonna in St. Onofrio, 32
Madonna of Divine Love, 204
Madonna of the Fish, 205
Madonna of the Goldfinch, 184
Madonna of the Meadow, 187

Index. 335
Madonna under the Oak, 202
Madonna with the Book, 177
Madonna with the Diadem, 189
Marcus Aurelius, 163
Marriage of St. Catherine, 285
Marsyas and Apollo, 242
Martyrdom of St. Placidus, by Correggio, 285
Mediaeval castles, 13
Medici Chapel, 128
Medici, Character of the, 134
Michael and Satan, by Raphael, 215
Michel Angelo : and Leo X., 118
" " his absent-mindedness, 98
" " his Apollo, 122
" " his architecture, 162
" " his Bacchus, 71
" " his cartoons, 88
" " his character, 63
" his Christ Triumphant, 123
" " his coloring, 117
" " his Conversion of St. Paul, 154
" " his Cupid, 72
" " his Day, 132
" " his Deluge, 101
" his Dream of Life, 125
" " his Fates, 79
" " his Genii, 106
" " his grandiose style, 117
" " his Last Judgment, 139
" " his Madonna, bas-relief, 73
" " his Madonna in National Gallery, 77
" " his mannerisms, 131, 140
" " his Martyrdom of St. Peter, 155
" " his Morning, 130

336 Index.
Michel Angelo : his Night, 131
" his palaces, 167
his Pieta, 80
" his Prophets, in
" '• his quarrel with Julius II. , 98
" his Slave, 92
Miracle of Bolsena, 245
Miraculous Draught of Fishes, 255
Mona Lisa Giacondo, 47
Morelli's Authenticity of Painting, 299
Moses, 155
" his beard, 160
" his horns, 159
Mystery of Leonardo, 48
Napoleon, 61
Oath of Leo III., 250
Parma, 286
Parnassus, by Raphael, 235
Paul III., 139
Pistoja, 14
Plato, 91, 237
Porta del Popolo, 165
Praxiteles, 137
Purity of feeling, 18
Raising of Lazarus, 120
Raphael : as a colorist, 192
as an organizer, 229
" as a philosopher, 232
" his cartoons, 250
" his character, 171

Index. 337
Raphael : his Crucifixion, 224
" his Cupid and Psyche, 223
" his disposition, 170
" his Disputa, 233
" his dramatic pictures, 224
" his drawing, 192
" his Hours, 271
" his intellect, 172
" his Jurisprudence, 241
his portrait of Leonardo, 239
" his portraits, 197
" his Prophets and Sibyls, in La Pace, 207
" his Roman portraits, 239
" his St. Cecilia, 214
" his Violin Player, 195
Reading Magdalen, 279, 302
Relief in the Casa Buonarotti, 69
Roman immorality, 140
Roman literature, 8
Roman Renaissance, 161
Rome, The sacking of, 126
Rubens, 34
Rubens' Lion Hunt, 274
Sacrifice at Lystra, by Raphael, 258
Sacrifice of Noah, by Michel Angelo, 102
Saracens, 21
School of Athens, 236
Sebastian del Piombo, 120
Sistine Chapel, 95
Sleeping Venus at Dresden, 304
Socrates, 239
Soderini, 83
Solly Madonna, 177

338 Index.
Sophocles, 24
Sposalizio, by Raphael, 225
St. Catherine, by Raphael, 187
St. George and the Dragon, by Raphael, 178
St. John the Evangelist, by Leonardo, 55
St. Margaret and the Dragon, by Raphael, 213
St. Paul's Church in London, 164
St. Peter's Church, 87, 165
St. Thomas, by Correggio, 291
Tintoretto, 174
Torrigiano, 79
Torso of Hercules, 142
Transfiguration, by Raphael, 265
Triumph of Galatea, 222
Vasari, 57, 85, 237
Venus of Milo, 132
Verona, 15
Verrocchio, Andrea, 30
Victory and the Captives, by M. Angelo, 92
Vierge au Bas-relief, 49
Vision of Ezekiel, 222