II. THE RENASCENCE. 'HE last great sculptors of the Classic period were THE Agesander, Polydorus, and Athenodorus. They must have been engaged upon the famous statue of Laocöon about the time when St. John, driven to the isle of Patmos, was writing the glorious visions of the Apocalypse. Then came a thousand years of darkness. to the painter, and of silence to the poet, with nothing seen but blood, with nothing heard but the rush of armed feet that would tread down the new message, the message more divine, the message of love. The story may be told in few words. Augustus, for whom Virgil wrote, and Vespasian, for whom the sculptors wrought, have passed away with the mighty empire of Rome. Ten times the Christians have been persecuted with cruel torments indescribable. War after war has deluged the world with blood: and yet steadily, with a power irresistible because divine, Christianity is marching to its triumph, like Christ upon the waters, storm and tempest before, peace where its steps have been. At last out of the darkness we hear the voice of Dante; we see the quaint devices of the early Italian painters. It is like daybreak in a cathedral church,— When the first arrow from Apollo's bow Doth pierce the narrow casement of the east, Transfixed upon the walls, saint, king, or priest; and the first great Christian poem is like a burst of solemn music rolling in mighty waves through transept, nave, and choir, heard in the distant chapels, reverberating through the vaulted roof. Since then many voices have joined in-Chaucer, and Shakespeare, and Milton-like the singing of a choir, each taking his part right nobly; but it was a grand thing for these men to awake the world to Poetry and Art. They had no great school from which to learn. The buried statues of Greece and Rome, with their serene beauty, had not been discovered. The wonderful pictures of Angelo and Raphael, Titian, Correggio, and Da Vinci had not been painted. They stood alone, with nothing to consecrate the past, nothing to make the future glorious, except the great, loving, living aspirations of their own hearts. But the great flame of such love as theirs cannot be quenched. They were architects, and built churches; they were sculptors, and adorned them with They statues; they were painters, and covered the walls with legends of the saints-quaint figures wrought upon a golden ground, half-picture and half-symbol. How little was known of Art when these men lived. A painting by Cimabue was viewed with such astonishment that it was taken from his house and carried in solemn pomp and procession to the Church of the Virgin at Florence, attended by a number of performers on musical instruments, and amidst the loudest acclamations of the citizens. We look at the works of these men with wonder and delight, seeing in them the passionate outburst of a love of Art which led onwards to the full splendour of the school of Raphael.* Marga * Can it be necessary to say anything in justification of this high estimate of the genius of Raphael? That there should be such a thing as fashion in Art amongst the uneducated is to be expected; but that writers of eminence should differ so widely as they have done upon this question seems something like a satire upon Art criticism. The Abbé du Bos, in commenting upon the cartoons, describes how, in the "Miraculous Draught of Fishes," the painter has given to every head a different character, corresponding closely with the known characteristics of the Apostles. One head in particular he points out as a marvellous impersonation of Judas. "The expression," he says, "is sullen and confused, as though the traitor was consumed with black jealousy." But this figure which the Abbé supposes to be Judas, another critic not less learned, the Rev. Matthew Pilkington, claims as that of one of the faithful disciples; urging the impossibility of supposing Raphael to have been guilty of so gross an anachronism as "to have introduced so infamous a wretch at such a point of time, or to have grouped such a person amongst the apostles; who, as he was dead before, could not associate with them." And he adds, "The best apology that can be made for this mistake of ritone may indeed be called the forerunner-Cimabue, Giotto, the Van Eycks, and Massaccio the evangelists -and the great masters of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the apostles of Christian Art. For what was their theme but Christ? The ruling thought still visible in their works-the one central figure that in the splendour of its divine beauty has consecrated Art for ever-was it not that of the Master? Art had become once more a language as surely as it had been with the Greek, but how much more it had to tell, and how differently it told it! The Classic and Mediæval schools agree in that they take the human form as the exponent Du Bos, is that he was much better acquainted with the works of Raphael than with the works of the Evangelists.” This coming from one Churchman to another-is sufficiently severe. But what shall we say of the painter? How much either of his critics had read of the sacred narrative I do not know; but the miracle is there described as having occurred twice; and everything in the picture indicates that Raphael intended to represent the first of these, before Judas was even numbered with the twelve. Thus the criticism that begins with a sort of apotheosis of the thing criticised, ends with a disputed claim as to whether the same face is a splendid realisation of the evil passions of the arch-traitor, or an equally splendid realisation of the tender affection and awestruck reverence of a faithful disciple greeting his risen Lord. But see the rebound from such criticism as this. Before Raphael stands the iconoclast instead of the worshipper; the hammer has taken the place of the thurible; and the dust which goes up to heaven, as the works of the great painter are smitten to the ground, veil from us their splendour as effectually as did the incense of their apotheosis. To Mr. Ruskin it is but a small matter to have of what they have to express, but they differ in that through the human form they express sentiments wide as the poles asunder. The religion of the Greek was a cold abstraction, coldly expressed; the religion of Christ is a living flame, and Art must express it pas 66 demolished such painters as Claude, and Cuyp, and Poussin, and Salvator Rosa, Ruysdael, and Teniers, and Paul Potter, "Vandervelde, Backhuysen, and the various other Van-somethings and Back-somethings who more especially and malignantly have libelled the sea." But having committed these to the flames, he passes to the one painter of whom it is not too much to say that from him every artist born into the world for three hundred years has learned his Art. "Raphael," says Mr. Ruskin, could think of the Madonna only as an available subject for the display of skilful tints, transparent shadows, and clever foreshortenings-as a fair woman forming a pleasant piece of furniture for the corner of a boudoir." And then, after describing with exquisite pathos the apparition of Jesus to the disciples at the Lake of Galilee, he contrasts Raphael's painting of it with the actual occurrence. He says, "Note the handsomely curled hair, and neatly tied sandals of the men who had been out all night in the sea mists and on the slimy decks. Note the convenient dresses for going a-fishing, with trains that lie a yard along the ground, and the goodly fringes all made to match-an apostolic fishing costume. Note how St. Peter especially, whose chief glory was his wet coat girt about his naked limbs, is enveloped in folds and fringes so as to hold the keys with grace. And the apostles are not around Christ, as they would have been, but straggling away in a line that they may all be shown. Beyond is a pleasant Italian landscape, full of villas and churches. The whole thing is a mere absurdity and faded decoction of fringes, muscular arms, and curly heads, and the wild, strange, infinitely stern, infinitely tender, infinitely varied veracities of the life of Christ are blotted out by the vapid fineries of Raphael." This then is the judgment of a thoughtful, earnest, and accom |