Volume Ii Part 10 (1/2)

The name Sixtine is derived from Sixtus the Fourth, as has been said, and is usually, but not correctly, spelled 'Sistine.' The library was founded by Nicholas the Fifth, whose love of books was almost equal to his pa.s.sion for building. The galleries are representative of Raphael's work, which predominates to such an extent that the paintings of almost all other artists are of secondary importance, precisely as Michelangelo filled the Sixtine Chapel with himself. As for the museums, the objects they contain have been acc.u.mulated by many popes, but their existence ought, perhaps, to be chiefly attributed to Julius the Second and Leo the Tenth, the princ.i.p.al representatives of the Rovere and Medici families.

On the walls of the Sixtine Chapel there are paintings by such men as Perugino, Luca Signorelli, Botticelli, and Ghirlandajo, as well as by a number of others; but Michelangelo overshadows them all with his ceiling and his 'Last Judgment.' There is something overpowering about him, and there is no escaping from his influence. He not only covers great s.p.a.ces with his brush, but he fills them with his masterful drawing, and makes them alive with a life at once profound and restless. One does not feel, as with other painters, that a vision has been projected upon a flat surface; one rather has the impression that a mysterious reality of life has been called up out of senseless material. What we see is not imaginary motion represented, but real motion arrested, as it were, in its very act, and ready to move again. Many have said that the man's work was monstrous. It was monstrously alive, monstrously vigorous; at times over-strong and over-vital, exaggerative of nature, but never really unnatural, and he never once overreached himself in an effort. No matter how enormous the conception might be, he never lacked the means of carrying it to the concrete. No giantism of limb and feature was beyond the ability of his brush; no astounding foreshortening was too much for his unerring point; no vast perspective was too deep for his knowledge and strength. His production was limited only by the length of his life. Great genius means before all things great and constant creative power; it means wealth of resource and invention; it means quant.i.ty as well as quality. No truly great genius, unless cut short by early death, has left little of itself. Besides a man's one great masterpiece, there are always a hundred works of the same hand, far beyond the powers of ordinary men; and the men of Michelangelo's day worked harder than we work. Perhaps they thought harder, too, being more occupied with creation, at a time when there was little, than we are with the difficult task of avoiding the unintentional reinvention of things already invented, now that there is so much. The latter is a real difficulty in our century, when almost every mine of thought has been worked to a normal depth by minds of normal power, and it needs all the ruthless strength of original genius to go deeper, and hew and blast a way through the bedrock of men's limitations to new veins of treasure below.

It has been said of t.i.tian by a great French critic that 'he absorbed his predecessors and ruined his successors.' Michelangelo absorbed no one and ruined no one; for no painter, sculptor or architect ever attempted what he accomplished, either before him or after him. No sane person ever tried to produce anything like the 'Last Judgment,' the marble 'Moses,' or the dome of Saint Peter's. Michelangelo stood alone as a creator, as he lived a lonely man throughout the eighty-nine years of his life. He had envy but not compet.i.tion to deal with. There is no rivalry between his paintings in the Sixtine Chapel and those of the many great artists who have left their work beside his on the same walls.

The chapel is a beautiful place in itself, by its simple and n.o.ble proportions, as well as by the wonderful architectural decorations of the ceiling, conceived by Michelangelo as a series of frames for his paintings. Beautiful beyond description, too, is the exquisite marble screen. No one can say certainly who made it; it was perhaps designed by the architect of the chapel himself, Baccio Pintelli. There are a few such marvels of unknown hands in the world, and a sort of romance clings to them, with an element of mystery that stirs the imagination, in a dreamy way, far more than the gilded oak tree in the arms of Sixtus the Fourth, by which the name of Rovere is symbolized. Sixtus commanded, and the chapel was built. But who knows where Baccio Pintelli lies? Or who shall find the grave where the hand that carved the lovely marble screen is laid at rest?

[Ill.u.s.tration: SIXTINE CHAPEL]

It is often dark in the Sixtine Chapel. The tourist can rarely choose his day, and not often his hour, and, in the weary traveller's hard-driven appreciation, Michelangelo may lose his effect by the accident of a thunder shower. Yet of all sights in Rome, the Sixtine Chapel most needs suns.h.i.+ne. If in any way possible, go there at noon on a bright winter's day, when the sun is streaming in through the high windows at the left of the 'Last Judgment.' Everyone has heard of the picture before seeing it, and almost everybody is surprised or disappointed on seeing it for the first time. Then, too, the world's ideas about the terrific subject of the painting have changed since Michelangelo's day. Religious belief can no more be judged by the standard of realism. It is wiser to look at the fresco as a work of art alone, as the most surprising masterpiece of a master draughtsman, and as a marvellous piece of composition.

In the lower part of the picture, there is a woman rising from her grave in a shroud. It has been suggested that Michelangelo meant to represent by this figure the Renascence of Italy, still struggling with darkness.

The whole work brings the times before us. There is the Christian Heaven above, and the heathen Styx below. Charon ferries the souls across the dark stream; they are first judged by Minos, and Minos is a portrait of a cardinal who had ventured to judge the rest of the picture before it was finished. There is in the picture all the whirling confusion of ideas which made that age terrible and beautiful by turns, devout and unbelieving, strong and weak, scholarly upon a foundation of barbarism, and most realistic when most religious. You may see the reflected confusion in the puzzled faces of most tourists who look at the 'Last Judgment' for the first time. A young American girl smiles vaguely at it; an Englishman glares, expressionless, at it through an eyegla.s.s, with a sort of cold inquiry--'Oh! is that all?' he might say; a German begins at Paradise at the upper left-hand corner, and works his way through the details to h.e.l.l below, at the right. But all are inwardly disturbed, or puzzled, or profoundly interested, and when they go away this is the great picture which, of all they have seen, they remember with the most clearness.

And as Michelangelo set his great mark upon the Sixtine, so Raphael took the Stanze and the Loggie for himself--and some of the halls of the picture-galleries too. Raphael represented the feminine element in contrast with Michelangelo's rude masculinity. There hangs the great 'Transfiguration,' which, all but finished, was set up by the young painter's body when he lay in state--a picture too large for the sentiment it should express, while far too small for the subject it presents--yet, in its way, a masterpiece of composition. For in a measure Raphael succeeded in detaching the transfigured Christ from the crowded foreground, and in creating two distinct centres of interest.

The frescoes in the Stanze represent subjects of less artistic impossibility, and in painting them Raphael expended in beauty of design the genius which, in the 'Transfiguration,' he squandered in attempting to overcome insuperable difficulties. Watch the faces of your fellow-tourists now, and you will see that the puzzled expression is gone. They are less interested than they were before the 'Last Judgment,' but they are infinitely better pleased.

Follow them on, to the library. They will enter with a look of expectation, and presently you will see disappointment and weariness in their eyes. Libraries are for the learned, and there are but a handful of scholars in a million. Besides, the most interesting rooms, the Borgia apartments, have been closed for many years and have only recently been opened again after being wisely and well restored under the direction of Leo the Thirteenth.

Two or three bad men are responsible for almost all the evil that has been said and written against the characters of the Popes in the Middle Age. John the Twelfth, of the race of Theodora Senatrix, Farnese of Naples and Rodrigo Borgia, a Spaniard, who was Alexander the Sixth, are the chief instances. There were, indeed, many popes who were not perfect, who were more or less ambitious, avaricious, warlike, timid, headstrong, weak, according to their several characters; but it can hardly be said that any of them were, like those I have mentioned, really bad men through and through, vicious, unscrupulous and daringly criminal.

According to Guicciardini, Alexander the Sixth knew nothing of Caesar Borgia's intention of poisoning their rich friend, the Cardinal of Corneto, with whom they were both to sup in a villa on August 17, 1503.

The Pope arrived at the place first, was thirsty, asked for drink, and by a mistake was given wine from a flask prepared and sent by Caesar for the Cardinal. Caesar himself came in next, and drank likewise. The Pope died the next day, but Caesar recovered, though badly poisoned, to find himself a ruined man and ultimately a fugitive. The Cardinal did not touch the wine. This event ended an epoch and a reign of terror, and it pilloried the name of Borgia for ever. Alexander expired in the third room of the Borgia apartments, in the raving of a terrible delirium, during which the superst.i.tious bystanders believed that he was conversing with Satan, to whom he had sold his soul for the papacy, and some were ready to swear that they actually saw seven devils in the room when he was dying. The fact that these witnesses were able to count the fiends speaks well for their coolness, and for the credibility of their testimony.

It has been much the fas.h.i.+on of late years to cry down the Vatican collection of statues, and to say that, with the exception of the 'Torso' it does not contain a single one of the few great masterpieces known to exist, such as the 'Hermes of Olympia,' the 'Venus of Medici,'

the 'Borghese Gladiator,' the 'Dying Gaul.' We are told that the 'Apollo' of the Belvedere is a bad copy, and that the 'Laoc.o.o.n' is no better, in spite of the signatures of the three Greek artists, one on each of the figures; that the 'Antinous' is a bad Hermes; and so on to the end of the collection, it being an easy matter to demolish the more insignificant statues after proving the worthlessness of the princ.i.p.al ones. Much of this criticism comes to us from Germany. But a German can criticise and yet admire, whereas an Anglo-Saxon usually despises what he criticises at all. Isaac D'Israeli says somewhere that certain opinions, like certain statues, require to be regarded from a proper distance. Probably none of the statues in the Vatican is placed as the sculptor would have placed it to be seen to advantage. Michelangelo believed in the 'Laoc.o.o.n,' and he was at least as good a judge as most modern critics, and he roughed out the arm that was missing,--his sketch lies on the floor in the corner,--and devoted much time to studying the group. It is true that he is said to have preferred the torso of the 'Hercules,' but he did not withhold his admiration of the other good things. Of the 'Apollo' it is argued that it is insufficiently modelled.

Possibly it stood in a very high place and did not need much modelling, for the ancients never wasted work, nor bestowed it where it could not be seen. However that may be, it is a far better statue, excepting the bad restorations, than it is now generally admitted to be, though it is not so good as people used to believe that it was. Apparently there are two ways of looking at objects of art. The one way is to look for the faults; the other way is to look for the beauties. It is plain that it must be the discovery of the beauty which gives pleasure, while the criticism of shortcomings can only flatter the individual's vanity.

There cannot be much doubt but that Alcibiades got more enjoyment out of life than Diogenes.

The oldest decorated walls in the palace are those by Fra Angelico in the Chapel of Nicholas. For some reason or other this chapel at one time ceased to be used, the door was walled up and the very existence of the place was forgotten. In the last century Bottari, having read about it in Vasari, set to work to find it, and at last got into it through the window which looks upon the roof of the Sixtine Chapel. The story, which is undoubtedly true, gives an idea of the vastness of the palace, and certainly suggests the probability of more forgotten treasures of art shut up in forgotten rooms.

One other such at least there is. High up in the Borgia Tower, above the Stanze of Raphael, is a suite of rooms once inhabited by Cardinal Bibbiena, of the Chigi family, and used since then by more than one a.s.sistant Secretary of State. There is a small chapel there, with a window looking upon an inner court. This was once the luxurious cardinal's bath-room, and was beautifully painted by Raphael in fresco, with mythological subjects. In 1835, according to Crowe and Cavalcaselle, Pa.s.savant saw it as it had originally been, with frescoes still beautiful, though much damaged, and the marble bath still in its place in a niche painted with river G.o.ds. In one of the Vatican's periodical fits of prudery the frescoes were completely hidden with a wooden wainscot, the bath-tub was taken away and the room was turned into a chapel. It is believed, however, that the paintings still exist behind their present covering.

The walk through the Museum is certainly one of the most wonderful in the world. There are more masterpieces, perhaps, in Florence; possibly objects of greater value may be acc.u.mulated in the British Museum; but nowhere in the world are statues and antiquities so well arranged as in the Vatican, and perhaps the orderly beauty of arrangement has as much to do as anything else with the charm which pervades the whole. One is brought into direct communication with Rome at its best, brilliant with the last reflections of h.e.l.lenic light; and again one is brought into contact with Rome at its worst, and beyond its worst, in its decay and destruction. Amid the ruin, too, there is the visible sign of a new growth in the beginnings of Christianity, from which a new power, a new history, a new literature and a new art were to spring up and blossom, and in the rude sculpture of the Shepherd, the Lamb and the Fishes lies the origin of Michelangelo's 'Moses' and 'Pieta.' There, too, one may read, as in a book, the whole history of death in Rome, graven in the long lines of ancient inscriptions, the tale of death when there was no hope, and its story when hope had begun in the belief in the resurrection of the dead. There the sadness of the sorrowing Roman contrasts with the gentle hopefulness of the bereaved Christian, and the sentiment and sentimentality of mankind during the greatest of the world's developments are told in the very words which men and women dictated to the stone-cutter. To those who can read the inscriptions the impression of direct communication with antiquity is very strong. For those who cannot there is still a special charm in the long succession of corridors, in the occasional glimpses of the gardens, in the magnificence of the decorations, as well as in the statues and fragments which line the endless straight walls. One returns at last to the outer chambers, one lingers here and there, to look again at something one has liked, and in the end one goes out remembering the place rather than the objects it contains, and desiring to return again for the sake of the whole sensation one has had rather than for any defined purpose.

At the last, opposite the iron turnstile by which visitors are counted, there is the closed gate of the garden. It is very hard to get admission to it now, for the Pope himself is often there when the weather is fine.

In the Italian manner of gardening, the grounds are well laid out, and produce the effect of being much larger than they really are. They are not, perhaps, very remarkable, and Leo the Thirteenth must sometimes long for the hills of Carpineto and the freer air of the mountains, as he drives round and round in the narrow limits of his small domain, or walks a little under the shade of the ilex trees, conversing with his gardener or his architect. Yet those who love Italy love its old-fas.h.i.+oned gardens, the shady walks, the deep box-hedges, the stiff little summer-houses, the fragments of old statues at the corners, and even the 'scherzi d'acqua,' which are little surprises of fine water-jets that unexpectedly send a shower of spray into the face of the unwary. There was always an element of childishness in the practical jesting of the last century.

When all is seen, the tourist gets into his cab and drives down the empty paved way by the wall of the library, along the basilica, and out once more to the great square before the church. Or, if he be too strong to be tired, he will get out at the steps and go in for a few minutes to breathe the quiet air before going home, to get the impression of unity, after the impressions of variety which he has received in the Vatican, and to take away with him something of the peace which fills the cathedral of Christendom.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

SAINT PETER'S

We have an involuntary reverence for all witnesses of history, be they animate or inanimate, men, animals, or stones. The desire to leave a work behind is in every man and man-child, from the strong leader who plants his fame in a nation's marrow, and teaches unborn generations to call him glorious, to the boy who carves his initials upon his desk at school. Few women have it. Perhaps the wish to be remembered is what fills that one ounce or so of matter by which modern statisticians a.s.sert that the average man's brain is heavier than the average woman's.

The wish in ourselves makes us respect the satisfaction of it which the few obtain. Probably few men have not secretly longed to see their names set up for ages, like the 'Paulus V. Borghesius' over the middle of the portico of Saint Peter's, high above the entrance to the most vast monument of human hands in existence. Modesty commands the respect of a few, but it is open success that appeals to almost all mankind. Pasquin laughed:--