Part 28 (1/2)
”Ah, very well!” thought I to myself, ”I shall no longer be alone;” then I said to Bezzuoli,--”Thank you for the part you have taken in my defence. I still think if my colleagues only had an idea how I have been taken by surprise when I engaged to do this work, and how the originality of the head excited a desire in me, and if they felt how imperious the impulse born of that little capricious demon Art is--they would, I think, be more indulgent with me; and not only indulgent, but they would even praise me when they knew that I had refused to make a statue of Haynau for himself. And _apropos_ of this statue, which I shall not make, I will tell you about it presently; but first permit me to ask a question. I understood you to say that if this gentleman had gone to you and asked you to paint his portrait, you would have accepted the commission--did I understand right?”
[Sidenote: BEZZUOLI PAINTS HAYNAU'S PORTRAIT.]
”You understood perfectly.”
”I then add that he will come. He wants a full-sized portrait of himself on horseback. A large picture, an attack in battle, or something of that kind; and later, after mid-day, he will go to you for this purpose.
Should you like it?”
”I should like it very much; but how can you speak to me with so much a.s.surance about this?”
Then I told him what the reader already knows. That morning the Marshal went with a note from me to Professor Bezzuoli. In a few words all was arranged; the picture was finished in a short time, and had a great deal of deserved praise as far as work went, and bitter censure for the rest, which he divided and bore in company with me--with less resignation, however, than could have been desired from so old an artist who had thought over and discussed the importance of the engagement he had taken. This was the character of Bezzuoli, who preserved even as an old man all the vivacity and impetuosity of open, gay-hearted youth; but at the same time, he was mistrustful and touchy in the extreme. When I remember him, full of vivacity and _bonhomie_, the friend of young men, with his frank, open-hearted, sincere advice, and at the same time full of sensitiveness about the merest nothings, and with childish and ridiculous ambitions, such as not to be willing to be beaten at billiards, it makes me smile to think of the weakness of our poor human nature. He liked to invite a certain number of friends every Sunday to his villa near Fiesole, and after dinner to play at billiards. He who was unfortunate enough to beat Bezzuoli, was sure to find him cold and set against him for some time; and those who knew this, either for pastime and amus.e.m.e.nt, or for fear and interestedness, bravely lost, and the poor professor was full of joy, more even than if he had found some new striking effect in art.
[Sidenote: BEZZUOLI'S CHARACTER.]
Here ends the anecdote of that famous portrait. Further on I will speak of others that I had the order for and could not make, and why I could not make them.
CHAPTER XVIII.
ONE OF MY COLLEAGUES--A MYSTERIOUS VOICE--THE GROUP OF THE ”PIETa”--VERY CLEAR LATIN--A PROFESSOR WHO IGNORES THE 'DIVINA COMMEDIA'--COMPOSITION OF THE GROUP OF THE ”PIETa”--DIGRESSION--A GOOD LESSON AND NERVOUS ATTACK--MANCINELLI AND CELENTANO.
But if some of my very dear colleagues set themselves against me on account of the great Haynau portrait, not knowing that I had refused to make his statue, others were alienated from me, I do not know for what reason. I will speak of one of them, to show how a most respectable artist and colleague of mine, having been led into error, chose strenuously to abide by it, and thus broke up a relation that one might call friends.h.i.+p; for esteem is the first bond that draws one together and creates love, and I esteemed this colleague of mine, and pitied him for the error into which he had fallen.
When Augusto Rivalta came from the school at Genoa (his birthplace) to complete his studies in sculpture in Florence, his masters, and he himself, had great faith in my school, and I was, with him as with all my scholars, an open and free expounder of those principles that I believe to be good, and to lead directly towards the beautiful, under the guidance of truth. Rivalta was always confiding and studious with me; and as by nature he is endowed with no common genius, he is to-day a professor and active master at our Academy of Fine Arts. Now it happened one day, during the early days that he was under my direction, that I saw hanging on his studio walls a bas-relief of a Madonna by that above-mentioned colleague of mine, and the head of Bartolini's ”Fiducia in Dio.” I thought it wise to warn my pupil of the error into which too often even tried artists have fallen, which is that of looking at and reproducing in their own works reminiscences of such originals hanging in their studios to attract poor artists. Therefore that morning my lesson consisted of the following words:--
[Sidenote: HOW TO PRESERVE ONE'S ORIGINALITY.]
”When the idea comes to you to make a statue, it forms itself naturally in your mind, and takes a movement and character all its own, be it ever so undecided and vague, as an idea always is, until it has been fixed materially into shape; but the idea is there (for him who has it), and is original. Then begins attentive study, and sometimes a long research to be able to find a live model who approaches nearest the idea that you have formed to yourself, and that you have already in your mind in embryo, or have indicated in your sketch. From the moment, however, that you have found the model or models, you must remain alone with them and your idea; no extraneous images must come between you and your work. I am afraid that those casts there facing me, will in some way take from the originality of the character and expression that you wish to give to your statue, and you will do well not to look at them. Let us understand, however, that I say not to look at them whilst you are at work on your statue: afterwards you may look at them and study them as much as you wish.”
Rivalta a.s.sured me that he did not look at them, for he understood very well, that instead of being of help to him they would have confused him, and that he found himself more free and unhampered when trusting himself only to working from the live model. Having established this most essential point in art, I left him, well pleased with both myself and him. But in the meantime, this obvious, clear, and easy lesson of mine created at first an angry feeling, and afterwards a rupture, between me and my colleague, the author of the bas-relief; and this happened because a youth in Rivalta's studio reported that I had said to my scholar, ”Do not look at those casts, for they are rubbish.” I heard this from Professor de Fabris, to whom our friend made a clean breast of it. It was not enough for him that this friend of ours took up my defence, saying that he knew me thoroughly well, and that I was incapable of saying such things, adding, that he ought himself to know well enough that I was averse to giving offence to any one, and so might feel sure there was some misunderstanding. But all this was useless, so that our friend De Fabris, for the sake of peace, thought best to speak to me of it. It can be imagined how astonished and how pained I was. I at once told him how the matter really stood, and begged that he would a.s.sure the professor of my affection and esteem for him as a friend and as an artist. It was all in vain, and he insisted in believing in a boy who had listened badly and reported still worse, rather than in me, or even Rivalta's testimony that I offered to bring forward.
[Sidenote: HOW A FRIENDs.h.i.+P WAS BROKEN UP.]
I should not have mentioned this small matter had it not been to explain the sort of sensitiveness and obstinacy that one observes generally in the artist cla.s.s, and most specially amongst us sculptors, although, to speak the truth, those defects showed themselves oftener, and to a greater degree, amongst artists of the past, or who are now old. The young men of to-day are more frank, more tolerant, and more friendly amongst each other, and sometimes they even go to the excess of these virtues by being frank even unto insolence, tolerant even to scepticism, and careless, thoughtless, frivolous, and even worse, in their friends.h.i.+p. Who ignores the little bursts of temper and cutting words bandied between Pampaloni and Bartolini, between Benvenuti and Sabatelli, and between Bezzuoli and Gazzarrini? I shall not write a record of them, out of respect for their names, and for Death, who, under his broad mantle, has enshrouded them in solemn silence. Sleep in peace, pilgrim souls,--within a short time even we shall join you; and when we are awakened at the _dies irae_, we shall smile at our little outbursts of temper in this most foolish life, and become for ever really brothers. We shall be happy if we have nothing besides the remembrance of these little sins, already forgiven us by G.o.d, if we have forgiven others! If by chance there be any one who thinks that I have offended him by excess of vivacity of temperament or otherwise, even though it be involuntary, as might happen easily, I beg his pardon.
[Sidenote: JEALOUSIES OF ARTISTS.]
This little war of words, sarcasms, and what is worse, reticences, I have always deplored; and to succeed in being less tiresome to my colleagues, and for want of occasion to induce them to temperance, I have always kept myself aloof, and have spoken of them as I could wish them to speak of me. To be just, however, I must declare that I have seldom been (openly, I mean) exposed to the sting of their words; and if, as it happened, I was once attacked with certain insistence in the newspapers on the occasion when my three scholars, Pazzi, Sarrocchi, and Majoli, exhibited their works in the Academy, my friend Luigi Mussini, who handles the pen in the same masterly way as he does the brush, reduced to silence with one single article the poor writer who had been put up to say evil of the works of my scholars in order to do injury to the master. These injurious words have been forgotten and amply pardoned, but the beautiful and generous defence of my friend I have never forgotten. I repeat, however, that these little annoyances are much less nowadays than they were, or at least they have changed form.
To-day, instead of suggesting in undertones and mellifluous words the defects of a work to some poor writer, adding many that do not exist, and being silent as to its merits, it is rather the custom to come out frankly and openly before your face with a criticism which, if it has not the merit of temperance, does at least not bear that ugly stain of hypocrisy as a mask to truth. To this school, although he be numbered amongst the old and the dead, Bartolini did not belong; and although one of the elect in spirit and strength, yet he sometimes allowed himself to give way to pa.s.sion. While he was a young man in Paris, Canova was there making the portrait of the Emperor Napoleon I. Bartolini demanded and obtained help from that great and beneficent artist; but being asked if he would return with him to his studio in Rome, he refused: but to say, as he did openly to me and to others, that Canova wished to take him with him to put an end to his studies, was not in conformity with the truth, or with Canova's well-known and benevolent character. To the sculptor Wolf, who one day brought him a note from Rauch, he said, without even opening it--
[Sidenote: BARTOLINI.]
”How is Rauch?”
”He is very well, and sends you his greetings, as you will see from the letter I have given you.”
[Sidenote: I CHANGE MY STUDIO.]
”Rauch,” began Bartolini, ... but I have said above that the dead sleep in peace, and the portraits of Bartolini and Rauch are also at peace with each other, for in my house, at the villa of Lampeggi, they look each other in the face, and smile good-naturedly. _Evviva!_ So, perhaps, they smile in the true life eternal at the littlenesses of our brief life here.