Part 20 (2/2)
The church of Gesu Nuovo was at that time under the ordinance of the Jesuit Fathers, and one of these fathers, who was devoted to the church, set on foot a work which did him much honour. Though the church was beautiful in its design and decorations and rich in marbles, the high altar was of wood, and this was quite out of keeping with the general effect. Padre Grossi, who was as learned as he was zealous in his religion and a lover of art, made the resolve that this altar should be entirely renewed and reconstructed of precious marble, and he succeeded in carrying this into effect. Everybody contributed--the Court, the n.o.bility, the people, owners of marble, and artists. It was not, however, yet finished; some ornaments were still wanting, and among these the panels of the pyx. I was asked by Padre Grossi to make a model for this to be cast in silver, and I cheerfully accepted the commission.
The subject, which was singular and unusual, but extremely pleasing, was suggested to me by the Padre himself. It represented a youthful female figure, accompanied by an angel, at the foot of the altar, who came to partake of the mystic bread. As soon as I had finished the model, I sent it to Padre Grossi, who expressed his satisfaction with it. Not so the superior and the other fathers, to whom the subject seemed to be too unusual. The superior wrote me a very courteous letter of thanks, the substance of which, stripped of all its sweet and useless phrases, was that he could not give his approval to the work. I then took back my model and presented it to Professor Tommaso Aloysio Juvara, who kept it as a pleasant memorial of me; and thus this work also, which was intended as a present, fell through.
[Sidenote: MY MENTAL CONDITION.]
The time for my return to Florence now drew near, for my health could now be considered as quite restored, save that a slight melancholy still hung about me, induced by an importunate and persistent feeling that made me doubt my own powers to overcome the difficulties of art, and of that art upon which I had at first entered, as it were, in triumph. I was oppressed by a torpor or indecision, a sense of something vague and undefined, resembling that state of moral weakness which shows itself in sudden impulses and as sudden prostrations--all indications of lively fancy and active sensibility, together with a great weakness of judgment and will. In a word, I had become a coward. In my excited imagination I felt the beauty of art, but I could not bring myself to lay hold of it, and express it, and reproduce it. I desired to go back to my first steps, and so felt my vanity offended. The _bello ideale_, ill defined and ill understood, smiled upon me with all its flattering and illusory charms. At slight intervals I seemed to feel these allurements, and then again I suddenly fell into uncertainty.
”E quale e quei, che disvuol ci che volle E per novi pensier cangia proposta;”[8]
[8] ”And like to one who unwills what he wills, And changes for new thoughts his purposes.”
--DANTE: _Inferno_, Canto ii.
this was my state, and it afflicted me.
[Sidenote: STATUE OF POPE REZZONICO.]
The decision which was to overcome all my uncertainty came to me from an idealist, or rather from an imitator of Greek art, Canova, and from one of his works not drawn from the ideal, but from life. I was about to return from Rome to Florence, when, as I stood looking vaguely about one morning in St Peter's, a prey to fleeting and changeable thoughts, my eyes were arrested by the statue of Pope Rezzonico. How often I had looked at that grandiose monument and pa.s.sed on! This time the movement and expression of concentrated feeling in this statue, united with a sentiment of imitation so strong, and yet so free from minute and servile detail, made a great impression on me; and this was all the more vivid, because I could confront it with the other statues of the same monument, all of which are characterised by mannerism and imitation of the antique. This comparison stood me in stead of the most powerful of reasonings and criticism, and I seemed to hear a voice issue from those marbles which said, ”See the great affection and study that Canova has given to these statues, and still they do not speak to your heart like that praying figure of the Pope. Why is this? Reflect!” And, in fact, I know no subject more worthy of consideration than to seek among the statues of Canova for the reasons of his oscillation between the imitation of nature and the imitation of the antique; for exactly here is the knot of that grave question which even to-day keeps artists divided into two schools--that of the Academicians and that of the _veristi_.
[Sidenote: CANOVA AND THE BELLO IDEALE.]
Doubtless nature is the foundation of art, as beauty is its object; and to forget either one or the other is to fall into error. If we kept these two cardinal points in our mind, and made them both subjects of study in our works, all our discussions and disputes would cease. But it too often happens that the Academicians, holding too strongly to the beautiful as the end to be attained, forget that its foundation is in the truth or nature; while the Realists, blindly trusting to nature, which when it is not subjected to selection is a bad foundation, lose sight of the true end, which is beauty. Now in the works of Canova we see a constant endeavour to harmonise the beautiful with nature; but as the cry of _bello ideale_ (a magic phrase invented at that time) was then loved, with the painter David leading the chorus, and the imperial cannon sounding the accompaniment, the interior voices and protests of the Christian artificers were either drowned or lifted to the hundred pagan deities whom the epicurean philosophy of the time demanded, and to whom they burned their incense. But the genius which nature had given to this great artist triumphed over the tendencies of his time, over the cry of pedants and the imperial favours; and the Pope Rezzonico, and Pius VI., and the Magdalen, are there to demonstrate the singular force of that genius which alone battled against the torrent of the schools and the tyranny and customs of his age. These works of his are rays of that light which first illuminated the mind of this great artist, when, still young and free in his inspirations, and unbia.s.sed by rules, counsel, and praise, he conceived and executed that wonderful group of Icarus.
In this careful spirit of examination and reasoning I again reviewed and studied the masterpieces of ancient and modern art, and many of the judgments which had been distorted by my poor brain during my first visit were afterwards rectified. I became attached with reverent friends.h.i.+p to Minardi, Tenerani, and Overbeck; and although all three followed the school of the mystical ideal, which was far from conformable to the rich and inexhaustible variety of nature, I admired in them their profound conviction in the excellence of their school; and although Tenerani united to his mysticism the graces of antique form, still it seemed to me that precisely on this account he was often a timid friend to nature. When, however, he was not dominated by a preconceived idea--I mean in his portraits--he was really and incontestably true to nature. His Count Orloff, though inspired by the statues of the philosophers in the Vatican, is not inconsistent with this opinion; and his Pellegrino Rossi and his Maria of Russia are perfectly original, and show no preoccupation of his mind except with nature. And it then seemed to me strange, as it still seems, that an artist, in portraying a fact or a personage, however ideal, should attempt to draw it purely from an idea, and not from living nature; for his idea is for the most part only a remembrance of what he has seen.
The two processes are quite different; for the idea reaches out for the source of truth or nature, which is infinitely varied, while the memory retains types and figures of other works of so small a scale in variety that its extreme ends soon meet each other.
[Sidenote: TENERANI AND OVERBECK.]
Overbeck was more ideal and mystical than Tenerani. He placed all the charm of art in the conception alone, and rarely or never used a model.
One day he said to me, in a tone of the most absolute conviction, that models (or nature) destroyed the idea. This theory, which is eminently false as a general proposition, has a certain truth when applied to sacred subjects and representations of divinity, and specially in regard to those artists who in painting a Madonna make a portrait of a model.
The imitation of life is certainly necessary even in sacred subjects; but it is difficult so to select and portray them that the religious idea does not become obscured, as well on account of the vulgarity as of the excessive realism and expression of the model. The expression it is absolutely necessary that the artist should create, if he has it in him,--and only so far as this Overbeck was right. Then, indeed, is the opportunity for the _bello ideale_, which is so ill understood and ill treated; for the ideal is in substance nothing else but the idea of the truth in nature, and diffused over all creation, as well in the material as in the intellectual world. And every artist of heart and just perceptions feels it and sees it, and recomposes its scattered parts by means of long study and great love.
[Sidenote: MINARDI AND HIS SCHOOL.]
Minardi, the father, so to speak, of all the artistic youths of his day, strove to reform them in taste and composition, founding himself on the works and the canons of the _Cinquecentisti_. This recognition is all the more due to him when we remember that precisely at this time, when he was endeavouring to carry out this reform, he had before him Camuccini and all his school in full vigour, and that now Minardi's school is flouris.h.i.+ng and strengthened as much by the conquests he has made in variety of imitation from nature as in mastery of colour. I have said that Minardi was like a father; and so he was. He treated his young pupils as if they were his children, kept them in his own studio, and I have seen three--Consoni, Mariani, Marianecci--and many others around him gaily jesting with their venerable master. His portfolios and alb.u.ms were always open to all, and he delighted to show them, and, while looking over their studies and compositions, to add those words of explanation, counsel, and warning which are so useful to young artists.
I seem to see him now in that great studio of his, which was somewhat in disorder, and enc.u.mbered with easels, drawings, cartoons, books, prints, and antique furniture--the air filled with clouds of tobacco-smoke which issued from the pipe he had always in his mouth, and he himself always working or talking, reading or writing. He was affable, gracious, and eloquent, and, with those little eyes looking through his spectacles, he seemed to read into your soul; and if he found it sad, he threw out a word, and awakened it again to life and courage. One day, seeing me more than ordinarily melancholy, he rose from his work, took me by the hands, and puffing from his pipe a larger volume of smoke than usual, asked what was troubling me; and when I had made a clean breast of it to him, he laid his pipe down, and embracing me, said, ”Cheer up, my son! drive away from your head all those whims: go back to Florence, take up your work again with courage, and have more faith in yourself and in your powers. It is an old man who is speaking to you, who neither can nor will deceive you.” The words of the excellent master went straight to my heart, and filled it with courage, hope, and peace.
[Sidenote: ROMAN AND FLORENTINE MODELS.]
In this way, with studying the ancient monuments, and going about among the living artists, I pa.s.sed several days in Rome. The models, and particularly those of the artists I have named, I found more robust and rounded than our Florentine models, which are for the most part slender and lymphatic. Among our girls you will not find, though you should pay a million, such necks, so firm and robust, and at the same time so soft and flexible, and like the examples which Greek and Roman art has left us. So it seems that, without seeking for the cause of the contradiction between the living nature I had found in Florence, and that which was represented in antique art, I had come to the conclusion that the Greeks and Romans worked purely from ideas, and corrected nature according to that established rule which we call convention. Nothing is more erroneous than this notion, and the proof of it I found in Rome itself, as I shall now tell.
[Sidenote: A ROMAN MODEL.]
[Sidenote: AN ADVENTURE WITH A TRASTEVERE GIRL.]
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