Part 30 (1/2)
In another place I have said that, in the enumeration of my works, I should not make mention of the portraits. I was obliged, however, to deviate from that promise to speak of one that had occasioned a great deal of talk and false reports about me. I must now speak of another that I was to have made, and did not--that is to say, the portrait of his Majesty King Victor Emmanuel. Why I never made it I cannot say myself, and perhaps the reader himself will not know after he has read the following account, unless he is satisfied with the explanation that I shall presently give.
The Superintendent of the Archives, Commendatore Frances...o...b..naini, after having put in order and nearly reconstructed the archives of Pisa, wished to put in the main hall a marble bust, of almost colossal size, of Victor Emmanuel; and in order to determine the size and study the light, I went with him to Pisa to see the place itself where the bust of the King was to stand. Having seen it and fixed upon the size of the bust, I made one condition, agreeing to all arrangements as to price and time for making it. The condition that I made--a most natural one--was that his Majesty should concede to me the sittings required, that I might model him from life and not from photograph. The syndic of the day (Cavaliere Senatore Ruschi, if my memory serves me) went to Florence, accompanied by some of the _a.s.sessori_, to ask the King, first for the permission of placing his portrait in the Great Hall of the Pisan Archives, and then to grant the necessary sittings to the artist, and settle the place, the time, and the length of the sittings, according to his Majesty's pleasure. Both the one request and the other were granted most graciously by the King with his usual affability, and he added that he knew the artist and was well satisfied, and that, in the meanwhile, they were to wait for notice to communicate to me that I might begin my work. Months pa.s.sed, and this notice never came; Bonaini was pressing me, being in a hurry to have the archives inaugurated, and I appealed to his Excellency Marchese di Breme, Minister of the Royal House, to beg the King to let me have the required sittings, but my request met with no good result. Later, after the death of Di Breme, I made the same appeal to the Marchese Filippo Gualterio, who succeeded him in that office; but this appeal not only had no good result, but did not even receive an answer. As the affair of the inauguration of the Pisan Archives had boiled over, Bonaini did not speak of it again, and naturally neither did I. Here there would be some observations to be made on this favour having been asked for and granted, and then given up. As for me, I resolve the question in a few simple words and say, that as it is a most boring thing to all to stand as model, for a king it must be excessively so and insufferable, and therefore the notice to begin this boring business never came from the person who was to undergo it; and it is reasonable enough, and even satisfies me, who have posed as model two or three times.
[Sidenote: JURY OF ARTISTS ON CAVOUR'S MONUMENT.]
About this time the Syndic of Turin invited me to form part of a commission of artists to pa.s.s judgment on the models sent up for Cavour's monument. I was then at Leghorn with my family, as my little girls were in need of sea-bathing. I had no need for it myself, and, in fact, I think that the damp salt air was not good for me, and I stayed there most unwillingly, so that when the invitation to go to Turin came I instantly accepted it with pleasure as a fortunate opportunity to change the air and have something to occupy my mind; and leaving my wife with the two youngest little girls, I took Amalia with me.
This compet.i.tion, of which we were to judge, was a second trial, as the first had failed; the compet.i.tors were many, and some of them praiseworthy. My colleagues in the jury were, if I remember right, the Professors Santo Varni of Genoa, Innocenzo Fraccaroli of Milan, Ceppi of Turin, and another whose name I cannot recall. The examination was a long one, and the discussion, although opinions differed, was a quiet one: the majority p.r.o.nounced itself favourable to a project of the architect Cipolla, which was in drawing; my vote had been for one of the two designs in relief by Vela. The reporter of our decision was Professor Ceppi. I returned to Leghorn to my family, and from there to Florence, where I again took up my work.
Signor Ferdinando Filippi di Buti, whom I had met at Leghorn, showed himself desirous of having a statue of mine to put in the mortuary chapel that he had built from its very foundation close to one of his villas on the pleasant hill that rises above the town. The subject was a beautiful one, and, after the ”Dead Christ,” I could not have desired anything better to make than ”Christ after the Resurrection,” and this was the very subject that Signor Filippi wanted of me.
[Sidenote: IMPORTANCE OF RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT.]
The ”Triumph of the Cross,” the ”Madonna Addolorata” that I spoke of further back, the ”Pieta,” and this ”Christ after the Resurrection,” are the strictly religious subjects that I have made--rather, that I have had the good fortune to make, because I believe that such subjects, always beautiful in themselves, when they find the soul of the artist disposed to feel them and comprehend them, are also capable of high serene inspiration, and secret efficacy to the soul of those who behold them, be they in spirit even thousands of miles distant from the number of believers.
Let the truth prevail. Religious sentiment has its root in the heart, in the intellect, in the imagination, and, in a word, in all the impulses of the soul. A heart without G.o.d is a heart without love, and will not love woman but for the brutal pleasure she procures, and, in consequence, not even the children that are the fruit of, and also a burden upon, his selfishness. He will not love his country except for the honours and the gain that can be got out of it, and will sacrifice it carelessly for a single moment of pleasure or interest, because a heart without G.o.d is a heart without love. An intelligence without the knowledge of G.o.d is wanting in a basis as starting-point for all its reasoning--it is without the light that should illumine the objects it takes hold of to examine. Such an intellect is circ.u.mscribed within the narrow circle of things perceptible to the senses, where, finding nothing but aridness wherein to quench its burning thirst, which is always insatiate for goodness and truth, it ends either in a fierce desire of suicide, or as a vengeance of nature's own in that saddest of nights, madness. An imagination deprived of the splendid visions of the supersensible, loses even its true functions, because, not seeing or divining through time and s.p.a.ce, through life and death, in the stars and in the atoms, anything but a casual mechanism, it is cruelly condemned to inertia, and with clipped wings can no longer sustain its flight--those wings which so potently upheld Dante as he pa.s.sed from planet to planet, leaving the earth down in depths far beneath him. The eye accustomed to matter is besmeared with mud, and can no longer bear the bright light of the sun and the planets, which seem as if they were the eyes of G.o.d.
[Sidenote: RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT.]
Religious sentiment has existed in all times, amongst all people, and it exists in the conscience of man independent of all education and example. The immense vault of the heavens; the innumerable planets resplendent in light; the sun that illuminates, warms, and fertilises the earth; the expanse of the waters of the sea; the prodigious variety and beauty of animals, plants, and fruits; the loveliness of colours, harmony of sounds from everywhere, and for all our senses,--come to us as the proof of G.o.d. But more even than from exterior things we feel it within ourselves. The blood shed by the martyrs fighting for the faith; life given in large profusion for the defence of country, liberty, and honour, or our women and children; active indignation against tyranny, cowardliness, and injustice; the tender charm we feel for innocence, admiration for virtue, and charity towards the poor, orphans, and those in trouble,--all these are signs that G.o.d has placed within us a part of His very nature. We feel within us the impulses of charity, and in prayer we feel our heart expand with hope; out of frailty we fall, and faith renews in us the strength to rise again. Religious sentiment makes the heart glow, illuminates the intellect, fertilises the imagination, and creates not only the good citizen and good father, but also the artist.
[Sidenote: VISIT OF MANZONI.]
Our hundred basilicas, the paintings and statues of our Christian artists that Italy and the world is so rich in, bear witness to this tribunal of truth to which anxious humanity, even from its earliest days, appeals. Phidias, Homer, Dante and Michael Angelo, Brunellesco and Orgagna, Raphael and Leonardo, Donatello and Ghiberti, and a hundred others, prove that religious inspiration is of so large a source that one can always draw from it; and although in the application of it the form may in a measure vary, yet it will always be great and admirable, because the mind that lifts itself up, though it may deviate more or less salient in curves, will always remain elevated. Correggio and Bernini, Guido Reni and the Caracci, were under the bad influence of their time as to method, but the intention was always good. And coming down to our recent fathers, and speaking always of artists, were Canova, Rossini, and Manzoni not great, for the very reason that they took their inspiration from religious subjects?
As the venerated name of Manzoni has fallen from my pen, I shall describe the visit that he made to my studio. When his visit was announced to me, I had but just finished the bas-relief for Santa Croce and the ”Pieta.” He was in company with the Marchese Gino Capponi, Aleardi, and Professor Giovan Battista Giorgini. After having seen several of my works, he stopped before the model in plaster of the bas-relief for Santa Croce, and said--
[Sidenote: THE POWER OF FAITH.]
”I see here a vast subject that speaks to me of lofty things; it seems to me that in parts I can divine its meaning, but I should wish to hear the artist himself speak and explain his entire intention.”
It is always unwillingly that I act as cicerone to my very poor works--and to say the truth, I only do so most rarely with my intimate friends in order to ask some advice; but the abrupt request made by such a man as he was did not displease me, and I began my explanation. But after I had been talking a few minutes, Marchese Gino Capponi began to stammer out something full of emotion in his sorrow not to be able to see the things I was explaining, and had to go out accompanied by Giorgini, if I mistake not. And here was another of those great souls that warmed itself in the rays of that faith which broke asunder the chains of the slave--opened the mind and softened the heart of the savage--restrained the flights of fancy within the beaten road of truth and good--willed that power, justice, and charity should be friends with each other, and made one taste of peace and happiness in poverty--and that enlarged and extended the confines of the intellect, of morality, and of civilisation.
I beg pardon if I have enlarged too much on this subject, but I do not think it can be superfluous to endeavour to correct the tendency of the day, when from every side one hears repeated that, for the future, in art the study of religious subjects is at an end, as if society of to-day was entirely composed of unbelievers or free-thinkers, who, by way of parenthesis, amongst other fine things have never thought that thought itself is not at all free. It seems to me that thought is an attribute of the soul that is moved with marvellous rapidity by means of a strength and impulse superior to itself, which depend upon physical const.i.tution, education, and example. Thought, with all its freedom, all its flights, is subject, dependent, and, as one might say, formed by those forces and those impulses.
[Sidenote: GUARDIAN ANGEL FOR THE GRAND DUKE.]
In the infinite scale of human thoughts there are some good, but a great many more are bad. In the moral order of things, those contrary to good are evil; as in the intellectual, those contrary to truth--and in the ideal, those contrary to the beautiful.
Now thought moves inconstantly from the beautiful to the ugly, from the true to the false, from good to evil, until our will, which is really free, either repulses it or takes possession of it according to the power, more or less, that reason has over the will. It is clear, therefore, that thought is not free, but, on the contrary, is subservient to laws independent of and superior to itself. How this happens is quite another pair of sleeves; but the fact is this, our thought is moved, and so to speak, subject to this power. Will comes and accepts it, weds it and makes it its own, good or bad though it be, with or without register of baptism, and snaps its fingers at the syndic or the priest. Once stirred, thought moves the will, and the will a.s.senting, commands it as with a rod. And now, for the second time, let me really beg pardon.
After my ”Christ,” his Imperial Highness the Grand Duke Constantine of Russia gave me an order for an angel that he wanted as a present for a German prince, whose name I do not remember. This angel was to be the Guardian Angel; the subject was determined upon, and I don't know if, in the mind of the giver, it was to guard the prince or the princ.i.p.ality.
If it was the prince, I hope my poor angel will have done the best he could; if the princ.i.p.ality, I am afraid that he has been overcome by cunning and force. His head is crowned with olives, and his lifted right hand points to heaven. Will the prince feel any consolation looking at the statue? I hope so; and in any way, he will be persuaded that true peace is not of this world.
[Sidenote: CIPOLLA AND THE MONUMENT TO CAVOUR.]
It is now the time and place to speak of Cavour's monument. As I before mentioned, I was one of the judges on that committee. My vote had been for Professor Vela's design, but the prize was obtained by the architect Professor Cipolla; and as he was an architect, he naturally could not carry his work into execution: he therefore went the rounds, and it was not difficult for him to find several sculptors who a.s.sumed, each and all of them, certain parts, either a statue or bas-relief. For the princ.i.p.al statue of Cavour, it was the intention, I know not whether of Cipolla or the Giunta Comunale, that I should make it, but their reiterated request I did not think well to accept.
In the meantime, in Turin there began to be a sort of persistent, dull warfare against Cipolla's design. All sorts of possible and imaginable doubts were raised as to its general character, meaning, proportions, and effect. That excellent artist, Professor Cipolla, proposed to put an end to all this talk by setting up in relief, in largish proportions, a model of his so-much-contested design. Would that he had never done so!