Part 21 (1/2)
Whoever is familiar with the Roman people will have observed a notable difference between the figures of the common people, and especially those of the Trasteverini and the Monti, and those of the higher cla.s.ses who are in better circ.u.mstances. The latter are more slender, with a fine and white skin, and often with chestnut hair; while the former have dark eyes, skin, and hair, are harsh and short in their ways and voices, and for a mere nothing throw up their barricades, and blood runs without much lamentation over it. You can easily see in these people their uninterrupted derivation from those fierce legions who planted their eagles over all the then known earth. Nor is the blood in the women different from that in the men; and if the men carry their knives in their pockets (they certainly did then), the women carried, thrust across their ma.s.sive knots of ebon hair with much taste, a sharp dagger with a silver handle, which was in every way capable of sending any poor unfortunate devil into the other world. One day (it was Sunday towards evening) I was, as usual, dreaming about those busts or necks of Minerva and Polymnia, and the Venus of Milo, and I know not how many other antique statues, which seemed to me to give a solemn contradiction to all my little models of pastry that I had left in Florence, and I fixed my eyes on the neck of every woman that I pa.s.sed. This examination induced me to modify in measure my opinion as to the conventionalism of the necks of the antique statues; and I should have been satisfied, and have changed my mind entirely, even had I not purely by chance gone on into the Trastevere. Here there was a great number of young persons, both male and female,--the men either in the pot-houses, or gathered around the doors, or standing in groups, and the girls in companies of three or four walking up and down the street of the Longaretta. Among these I saw one who, if she had been made on purpose to prove that the necks of the antique statues were not conventional, could not have here offered a more absolute proof. There were three girls, two small, and one large who was between them. She walked along with a slow and majestic step, talking with her companions. A sportsman who spies a hare, a creditor who meets a debtor, a friend who finds another friend whom he thought to be far away or dead, these give a weak notion of my surprise in beholding this girl. My dear reader, I do not in the least exaggerate when I say that I seemed to look on the Venus of Milo. Her head and neck, which alone were exposed to view, were as like that statue as two drops of water. I was astounded. I turned back to look at her again, and it would have been well for me had I contented myself with this; but I wished to see her yet once more. The girl, who had not an idea within a thousand miles of what I was pondering, nor of the corrections that I was formulating on an aesthetical opinion of such great importance, suddenly stopped, and taking the dagger from her hair, advanced towards me, and with a strong and almost masculine voice, said to me, ”Well, Mr Dandy, does your life stink in your nostrils?” I shot off home directly, looking neither to the right nor left; and when I arrived I told my wife what had happened, and she reproved me gently for making my studies so out of time and place. Now I ask, why this disdain?
Had I been guilty of anything improper in looking at the girl? Is it possible that she could have really been offended? I do not believe it.
I know something about women, and I know that it is their weakness to try to attract attention. It is more probable that there was some one near her to whom the girl wished to show that in respect to anything touching her honour she was too fierce to allow any other person even to look at her. Leonardo none the less counsels us to study from nature, in the open air, not only by looking, but also by taking notes; and he makes no exception as to the Trasteverini. For the benefit of young artists, I propose to add a note on this subject to all new editions of Leonardo.
[Sidenote: GREEK LIFE AND MODELS.]
The discovery of this beautiful head and neck of the antique style and character set upon a living girl (and what a complexion!) led me to consider how many other parts of incontestable beauty which we find in the antique statues, and so readily believe to be born of the imagination of the Greek sculptors, are really to be found in nature; and the Greeks only selected them for imitation. But if this be so, how can the absolute deficiency of such models in our day be explained? Then I considered the different education of this people, their warlike lives, their games, and prizes at throwing the disc, racing, boxing, and the esteem in which physical beauty was held. If, indeed, for these reasons there is in our day a deficiency of fine models, we are not absolutely without them, as this spirited and beautiful girl clearly proves; and I firmly believe she must have been in respect to all the rest of her body an excellent model. Hence the necessity of carefully selecting our models. In this respect, however, we find ourselves in a much more difficult position than the ancients. First, because, as I have said, their education lent itself more efficaciously to the development of the body; and then, because the public games afforded far greater opportunities to see and select among them.
[Sidenote: A BEAUTIFUL NUDE MODEL.]
The first thing which a.s.sures a good result to a work is the selection of good models; and after taking great heed of this, good imitation is of absolute necessity. I have observed that he who exercises little or no selection, and contents himself with the first model he sees, belongs to that cla.s.s of conventional artists who allow themselves such an infinity of additions and subtractions, and corrections of the model, that generally only the remnants of nature are to be found in their works; while those who follow the opposite school copy the model minutely just as it is, and even with all its imperfections. If the former remain cold and false, the latter are vulgar and tasteless; for they carry their love for truth to such an excess, that they do not distinguish the beautiful from the ugly. Nay, they prefer the ugly, because to them it seems more true because it is more common. It happened to me once to be in the studio of one of these young artists, who was engaged on I do not remember what work. When the model was stripped he was beautiful to see: a small head, squared breast, an elegant pelvis, delicate knees and ankles, and, in a word, seemed the ”Idolino” itself, living and speaking. Will you believe it?--he was set aside.
”But what are you doing?” said I. ”Don't you see how beautiful this boy is? Copy him fearlessly. He is beautiful as Idolino himself.”
”That is exactly why I do not want him as a model. I am afraid it will be said that I have copied my Idolino.”
[Sidenote: CONVENTIONAL IMITATION.]
To such a point did their aberration arrive. But at the same time, I am sure that if this model had fallen into the hands of one of the idealistic reformers of nature, he would have been corrected (that is, ruined) in every part, according to the suggestions of his stupid conventionalism. This mania of correcting nature is in itself extremely injurious, and the young artist must be constantly on his guard against it. A finished artist may sometimes do this, because in his skill and experience he finds the limits and the measure of the liberty which are permissible. Indeed he is not aware of the corrections that he is making, and believes that he sees it so; but this depends on the habit of seeing and portraying beautiful nature. But a youth who once is set going on this incline never stops; for he finds it far easier to draw freely on his memory than to keep within the proper bounds of imitation.
I repeat, then, that he who does not select from beautiful nature with studious love shows little faith in her beauty, and thence come carelessness and unwillingness to portray her, and then a headlong fall into the conventional. He, however, who finds the beautiful in everything, or rather, he who despises antique art and calls it conventional, even though it be by Phidias, is quite as conventional himself in his realism. His wish is to be considered naturalistic and realistic at all hazards, even to denying nature itself, in case it reminds him of anything cla.s.sic (as we have already seen), and at last he goes so far as to puzzle his brains and struggle to arrange the model and draperies so as to make them appear naturalistic.
I have seen an artist get into a rage because his draperies would not come upon the natural model just as he wished, and who kept tossing them about and disarranging them so that they should not seem to be artificially disposed. I observed to him that he was really arranging them artificially, so that they should not appear to be so arranged. He was making a seated figure in a cloak. After the model had seated himself, and thrown the cloak about him in folds which were perfectly natural, and fell beautifully about his body and knees, the artist kept foolishly changing them, putting them out of their proper place, because, he said, that as they came naturally, they looked as if they had been artificially disposed.
[Sidenote: ARRANGEMENT OF DRAPERIES.]
”But that is not so,” said I. ”They arrange themselves naturally, and you keep disarranging them exactly like those artists whom you blame for being imitators of the antique and conventionalists, and you are in this neither more nor less than a conventionalist like them, and even worse, for they always strive to put the folds in their proper place, in a certain number and a certain disposition; and though this is detestable and tiresome pedantry, because it destroys that variety which is the first attribute of nature, still they are not renegades to it as you are, when you thus obstinately insist on placing the folds where they cannot possibly be, with the pretence that otherwise they would seem adjusted. You, even more than they, are an illogical conventionalist.”
But to be just, I must say that at this time the neophytes of the new school were few and scattered. The school, indeed, is new only in so far as it has carried us into the excessive, the negative, and the illogical; for the school of the _veristi_ is as old as art itself, and its principles are correct. Indeed, strictly speaking, it has one single principle, the imitation of nature; but what the ancients meant was imitation of life in its perfection, while the moderns (at least some of them) mean all life, all nature, even though it be ugly. More than this, they prefer the ugly and deformed, not perceiving that the deformity of nature is outside of true nature, since any defect alters the essential character of nature, which consists of a harmony of parts answering to beauty. In a word, the deformed, which is the same thing as the ugly, is nature debased, and thus ceases to be nature. I am well aware that the _veristi_ deny that they prefer vulgar and ugly nature; and if their denial were justified by their works, I should entirely agree with them, and my discourse on this subject would be entirely futile. But saying is not the same as doing.
[Sidenote: RETURN TO FLORENCE WITH A FRESH MIND.]
I returned to Florence quite restored in health, strengthened by the example of the works of art in Rome, and inspirited by the brotherly words of those old and venerated artists, who, alas! now sleep the eternal sleep, or rather, who have waked from the brief sleep of life to one eternal day. The discovery of the famous head and neck of that Trasteverina had cured me of my prejudiced belief that the ancients corrected nature according to their completely ideal mode of looking at it--a belief which induces in the mind of the artist a weak faith, slight esteem of nature, and thence an unwillingness to imitate it, and an effrontery in correcting it.
Before going to work in my studio I wished again to see and study, in view of my new convictions, our own monuments. I made the tour of the churches, palaces, and public and private galleries, just as if I was a stranger. To many things indeed I might call myself really a stranger, for I had either never seen them, or but slightly and superficially.
From this examination I came to the conclusion that the artists of all times studied their predecessors, and only imitated nature after having studiously selected what was conformable to the idea which first rose in their minds. Henceforth the way was clear, the light shone upon it, and the objects of art which I examined came out distinctly and really in their true aspect. Never to my intellect had the veil which covers the subtle and recondite reasons of the beautiful seemed so clear and transparent; and I felt tranquil, satisfied, strong, and ready to devote myself to my new works in the studio. One incident, however, did momentarily disturb this peace and security of mine.
[Sidenote: AN ADVENTURE IN THE PITTI.]
One day I was in the Pitti Gallery, and pa.s.sing through the room where the two statues of Cain and Abel are placed, I saw a youth who was drawing from the latter. He seemed from his aspect to be a foreigner. I spoke to him not only to a.s.sure myself of this fact, but also (I confess) because it gave me pleasure to see him copying my statue, and I wished by exchanging a few words with him to taste still more strongly this pleasure, which, for the rest, is excusable in a young author.
Approaching him I said--
”Do you like this statue?”
”Yes, very much; and that is the reason I am copying it.”
”It seems,” I said, as I saw he did not recognise me, ”to be a modern work, does it not?”