Part 4 (1/2)

Before thee to be Christian; afterwards, too carnal to be Christian

Too savage to be Christian? I will justify that assertion hereafter; but you will find that the European art of 1200 includes all the most developed and characteristic conditions of the style in the north which you have probably been accustomed to think of as NORMAN, and which you may always most conveniently call so; and the most developed conditions of the style in the south, which, formed out of effete Greek, Persian, and Roman tradition, you may, in like manner, most conveniently express by the familiar word BYZANTINE Whatever you call thein adverse in temper, and remain so up to the year 1200 Then an influence appears, seely that of one man, Nicholas the Pisan, (our first MASTER, observe,) and a new spirit adopts what is best in each, and gives to what it adopts a new energy of its own; namely, this conscientious and didactic pohich is the speciality of its progressive existence And just as the new-born and natural art of Athens collects and reani their worshi+p, and perfecting their work, into the living heathen faith of the world, so this new-born and natural art of Florence collects and animates the Norman and Byzantine tradition, and forms out of the perfected worshi+p and work of both, the honest Christian faith, and vital craftsmanshi+p, of the world

67 Get this first summary, therefore, well into your hly, but advisedly I e that you can think of, except Saxon (I have a reason for that exception; never e I call NORMAN, all south-savage I call BYZANTINE; this latter including dead native Greek prin Greek, in Rome;--then Arabian--Persian--Phoenician--Indian--all you can think of, in art of hot countries, up to this year 1200, I rank under the one term Byzantine Now all this cold art--Norman, and all this hot art--Byzantine, is virtually dead, till 1200 It has no conscience, no didactic power;[M] it is devoid of both, in the sense that dreams are

Then in the thirteenth century, h the whole vault of heaven, and true huain, and the cradle of this life is the Val d'Arno There the northern and southern nations meet; there they lay down their enmities; there they are first baptized unto John's baptism for the reht faithless, for breaking the font of baptis, in his 'bel San Giovanni,'--the greatest of Christian poets; he who had pity even for the lost

68 Now, therefore, ins with this Baptistery of Florence, and with its associated Cathedral Arnolfo brought the one into the form in which you now see it; he laid the foundation of the other, and that to purpose, and he is therefore the CAPTAIN of our first school

For this Florentine Baptistery[N] is the great one of the world Here is the center of Christian knowledge and power

And it is one piece of large _engraving_ White substance, cut into, and filled with black, and dark-green

No rasp the idea of this building clearly and irrevocably,--first, in order (as I told you in a previous lecture) to quit yourselves thoroughly of the idea that ornament should be decorated construction; and, secondly, as the noblest type of the intaglio ornamentation, which developed itself into all

69 That it should do so first at Florence, was the natural sequence, and the just reward, of the ancient skill of Etruria in chasedor engraving, were the directinterest to his surfaces at the command of the 'auri faber,' or orfevre: and every conceivable artifice of studding, chiseling, and interlacing was exhausted by the artists in gold, ere at the head of the metal-workers, and from whom the ranks of the sculptors were reinforced

The old French word 'orfroiz,' (aurifrigia,) expresses essentially e call 'frosted' work in gold; that which reseia' cous To chase, or enchase, is not properly said of the gold; but of the jehich it secures with hoops or ridges, (French, _en_chasser[O]) Then the armorer, or cup and casket maker, added to this kind of decoration that of flat inlaid enaree (still a staple at Genoa) only attracted tarnish, or got crushed, early sought to decorate a surface which would bear external friction, with labyrinths of safe incision

70 Of the _security_ of incision as a , here is a beautiful instance in the base of one of the external shafts of the Cathedral of Lucca; thirteenth-century work, which by this time, had it been carved in relief, would have been a shapeless remnant of indecipherable bosses But it is still as safe as if it had been cut yesterday, because the smooth round mass of the pillar is entirely undisturbed; into that, furrows are cut with a chisel as much under con is trusted entirely to the depth of these incisions--here dying out and expiring in the light of the marble, there deepened, by drill holes, into as definitely a black line as if it were draith ink; and describing the outline of the leafage with a delicacy of touch and of perception which no man will ever surpass, and which very few have rivaled, in the proudest days of design

71 This security, in silver plates, was co the furroith the black paste which at once exhibited and preserved theraving is one of no real moment: my object is to make you understand the qualities which constitute the _ed with niello or ink And this I hope ulti with you sona in the south, Durer and Holbein in the north, whose na, above and beneath those of the three ino the captain, Bellini on one side--Luini on the other

The four following lectures[P] will contain data necessary for such study: you er before I can place before you those by which I can justify what iven Perugino the captain's place a the three painters

72 But I do so, at least prin is indeed the true rereat architectural symmetry which was soon to be lost, and which makes him the true follower of Arnolfo and Brunelleschi; and because he is a sound craftsracious, and quiet laborer from youth to death,--never weary, never impatient, never untender, never untrue Not Tintoret in power, not Raphael in flexibility, not Holbein in veracity, not Luini in love,--their gathered gifts he has, in balanced and fruitful uide, and impulse, and father of all

FOOTNOTES:

[D] Compare ”Aratra Pentelici,” - 154

[E] ”Holbein and His Time,” 4to, Bentley, 1872, (a very valuable book,) p 17 Italics mine

[F] See Carlyle, ”Frederick,” Book III, chap viii

[G] I believe I a these lectures

This sentence, - 44, has cost me, I suppose, first and last, about as many hours as there are lines in it;--and my choice of these tords, faith and death, as representatives of poill perhaps, after all, only puzzle the reader

[H] He is said by Vasari to have called Francia the like Francia is a child cooldsmith and ornamental painter nevertheless; and one of the very last offo,' except by unparalleled insolence

[I] The diagrae 30; the reader had better draw it larger for himself, as it had to be made inconveniently small for this size of leaf

[J] 'Ascertained,' scarcely any date ever is, quite satisfactorily The diagram only represents what is practically and broadly true I reatly in detail