Part 10 (2/2)
Monstrous, you think, in i hi has ever ence nobody wants to kno ridiron has, so long as the one can breathe, and the other broil; and still less, when the breath and the fire are both out
169 But is it only of the bones, think you, that Holbein is careless?[AP] Nay, incredible though it may seem to you,--but, to me, explanatory at once of much of his excellence,--he did not know anatomy at all! I told you in my Preface,[AQ] already quoted, Holbein studies the face first, the body secondarily; but I had no idea, myself, how completely he had refused the venomous science of his day I showed you a dead Christ of his, long ago Can you s, think you? And yet he did not, and would not, know anatomy
_He_ would not; but Durer would, and did:--went hotly into it--wrote books upon it, and upon 'proportions of the human body,' etc, etc, and all yourflesh How did his studies prosper his art?
People are always talking of his Knight and Death, and his Melancholia, as if those were his principal works They are his characteristic ones, and shohat he ht have been _without_ his anatomy; but they were mere by-play compared to his Greater Fortune, and Aday displayed; here are both e of their bones and estion,--and I hope you are pleased
But it is not anatomy only that Master Albert studies He has a taste for optics also; and knows all about refraction and reflection What with his knowledge of the skull inside, and the vitreous lens outside, if any man in the world is to draw an eye, here's the ive lessons to John Bellini, and a care which would fain do all so that it can't be done better, and acquaintance with every crack in the cranium, and every humor in the lens,--if we can't draw an eye, we should just like to knoho can!
thinks Albert
So having to engrave the portrait of Melanchthon, instead of looking at Melanchthon as ignorant Holbein would have been obliged to do,--wise Albert looks at the room ; and finds it has four cross-bars in it, and knows scientifically that the light on Melanchthon's eye raves it so, accordingly; and who shall dare to say, now, it isn't like Melanchthon?
Unfortunately, however, it isn't, nor like any other person in his senses; but like aat so of Holbein's, where a diray shadow leaves a mere crumb of white paper,--accidentally it seems, for all the fine scientific reflection,--behold, it is an eye indeed, and of a noble creature
170 What is the reason? do you ask eneralization of details true, then?
No; not a syllable of it is true Holbein is right, not because he draws enerally, but more truly, than Durer Durer drahat he knows is there; but Holbein, only what he sees And, as I have told you often before, the really scientific artist is he who not only asserts bravely what he _does_ see, but confesses honestly what he does _not_ You must not draw all the hairs in an eyelash; not because it is sublieneralize them, but because it is in painter or anatomist may count; but ho of them you can see, it is only the utmost masters, Carpaccio, Tintoret, Reynolds, and Velasquez, who count, or know
171 Such was the effect, then, of his science upon Durer's ideal of beauty, and skill in portraiture What effect had it on the tenorant Holbein's! You have only three portraits, by Durer, of the great men of his time, and those bad ones; while he toils his soul out to draw the hoofs of satyrs, the bristles of swine, and the distorted aspects of base wonorant Holbein done for you? Shakespeare and he divide between theland under Henry and Elizabeth
172 Of the effect of science on the art of Mantegna and Marc Antonio, (far more deadly than on Durer's,) I must tell you in a future lecture;--the effect of it on theirto the third head of y For Durer and Mantegna, chiefly because of their science, forfeited their place, not only as painters of men, but as servants of God Neither of them has left one completely noble or completely didactic picture; while Holbein and Botticelli, in consummate pieces of art, led the way before the eyes of all men, to the purification of their Church and land
173 III But the need of reformation presented itself to these two men last named on entirely different terms
To Holbein, when the word of the Catholic Church proved false, and its deeds bloody; when he saw it selling per the ashes of its enee was there for _hiain, and mourn over the death of Balder? He reads Nature in her desolate and narrow truth, and she teaches hirand Gods are old, are iht falsely the story of the Virgin;--did they not also lie, in the name of Artemis, at Ephesus;--in the name of Aphrodite, at Cyprus?--but shall, therefore, Chastity or Love be dead, or the full moon paler over Arno? Saints of Heaven and Gods of Earth!--shall _these_ perish because vain rave, as on the rock, for ages to colory of Beauty, and the triumph of Faith
174 Holbein had bitterer task
Of old, the one duty of the painter had been to exhibit the virtues of this life, and hopes of the life to come Holbein had to show the vices of this life, and to obscure the hope of the future ”Yes, alk through the valley of the shadow of death, and fear all evil, for Thou art not with us, and Thy rod and Thy staff comfort us not” He does not choose this task It is thrust upon hiue-struck city These are the things he sees, and must speak He will not beco of supres, will be possible to hi else, nor can we praise hi this It is his fate; the fate of all the bravest in that day
[Illustration: THE CHILD'S BEDTIME
(Fig 5) Facsimile from Holbein's woodcut]
175 For instance, there is no scene about which a shallow and feeble painter would have been more sure to adopt the commonplaces of the creed of his time than the death of a child,--chiefly, andfresh froels ait by its sick bed, and rejoice as they bear its soul away; and over its shroud floill be strewn, and the birds will sing by its grave So your common sentimentalist would think, and paint Holbein sees the facts, as they verily are, up to the point when vision ceases He speaks, then, nothrough its roof, the clay cruhted with a few chips and sticks on a raised piece of the mud floor,--such dais as can be contrived, for use, not for honor The dah the rain is not, coils round again, and down But the mother can war the pan by the long handle; and on h it be, they are happy,--she, and her child, and its brother,--if only they could be left so They shall not be left so: the young thing must leave them--will never need els--feels only an icy grip on its hand, and that it cannot stay Those who loved it shriek and tear their hair in vain, arief 'Oh, little one, must you lie out in the fields then, not even under this poor torn roof of thy ht?'
[Illustration: ”HE THAT HATH EARS TO HEAR, LET HIM HEAR”
(Fig 6) Facsiain: there was not in the old creed any subject more definitely and constantly insisted on than the death of a ht, till then: but his hour has come; and the black covetousness of hell is awake and watching; the sharp harpy claill clutch his soul out of his mouth, and scatter his treasure for others So the coht Not so Holbein
The devil want to snatch his soul, indeed! Nay, he never _had_ a soul, but of the devil's giving His in on his death-bed! Nay, he had never an unmiserable hour of life The fiend is with him now,--a paltry, abortive fiend, with no breath even to blow hot with He supplies the hell-blast _with a machine_ It is winter, and the rich ar, bare-headed to beseech hiether, touches his shoulder, but all in vain; there is other business in hand More haggard than the beggar hiers the gain of the years to come
But of those years, infinite that are to be, Holbein says nothing 'I know not; I see not This only I see, on this very winter's day, the low pale stuether by you unseen and forgotten Death You shall not pass _hiure in skin and bone, at last, that will stop you; and for all the hidden treasures of earth, here is your spade: dig now, and find them'