Such men are more common in Italy than is believed. There is a
fresco of the Crucifixion outside the Campo Santo at Fusio, in the
Canton Ticino, done by a local artist, which, though far inferior
to the work of Dedomenici, is still remarkable. The painter
evidently knows nothing of the rules of his art, but he has made
Christ on the cross bowing His head towards the souls in purgatory,
instead of in the conventional fine frenzy to which we are
accustomed. There is a storm which has caught and is sweeping the
drapery round Christ's body. The angel's wings are no longer
white, but many coloured as in old times, and there is a touch of
humour in the fact that of the six souls in purgatory, four are
women and only two men. The expression on Christ's face is very
fine, but otherwise the drawing could not well be more imperfect
than it is.
CHAPTER XII - Considerations on the Decline of Italian Art
Those who know the Italians will see no sign of decay about them.
They are the quickest witted people in the world, and at the same
time have much more of the old Roman steadiness than they are
generally credited with. Not only is there no sign of
degeneration, but, as regards practical matters, there is every
sign of health and vigorous development. The North Italians are
more like Englishmen, both in body and mind, than any other people
whom I know; I am continually meeting Italians whom I should take
for Englishmen if I did not know their nationality. They have all
our strong points, but they have more grace and elasticity of mind
than we have.
Priggishness is the sin which doth most easily beset middle-class
and so-called educated Englishmen: we call it purity and culture,
but it does not much matter what we call it. It is the almost
inevitable outcome of a university education, and will last as long
as Oxford and Cambridge do, but not much longer.
Lord Beaconsfield sent Lothair to Oxford; it is with great pleasure
that I see he did not send Endymion. My friend Jones called my
attention to this, and we noted that the growth observable
throughout Lord Beaconsfield's life was continued to the end. He
was one of those who, no matter how long he lived, would have been
always growing: this is what makes his later novels so much better
than those of Thackeray or Dickens. There was something of the
child about him to the last. Earnestness was his greatest danger,
but if he did not quite overcome it (as who indeed can? It is the
last enemy that shall be subdued), he managed to veil it with a
fair amount of success. As for Endymion, of course if Lord
Beaconsfield had thought Oxford would be good for him, he could, as
Jones pointed out to me, just as well have killed Mr. Ferrars a
year or two later. We feel satisfied, therefore, that Endymion's
exclusion from a university was carefully considered, and are glad.
I will not say that priggishness is absolutely unknown among the
North Italians; sometimes one comes upon a young Italian who wants
to learn German, but not often. Priggism, or whatever the
substantive is, is as essentially a Teutonic vice as holiness is a
Semitic characteristic; and if an Italian happens to be a prig, he
will, like Tacitus, invariably show a hankering after German
institutions. The idea, however, that the Italians were ever a
finer people than they are now, will not pass muster with those who
know them.
At the same time, there can be no doubt that modern Italian art is
in many respects as bad as it was once good. I will confine myself
to painting only. The modern Italian painters, with very few
exceptions, paint as badly as we do, or even worse, and their
motives are as poor as is their painting. At an exhibition of
modern Italian pictures, I generally feel that there is hardly a
picture on the walls but is a sham - that is to say, painted not
from love of this particular subject and an irresistible desire to
paint it, but from a wish to paint an academy picture, and win
money or applause.
The same holds good in England, and in all other countries that I
know of. There is very little tolerable painting anywhere. In
some kinds, indeed, of black and white work the present age is
strong. The illustrations to "Punch," for example, are often as
good as anything that can be imagined. We know of nothing like
them in any past age or country. This is the one kind of art - and
it is a very good one - in which we excel as distinctly as the age
of Phidias excelled in sculpture. Leonardo da Vinci would never
have succeeded in getting his drawings accepted at 85 Fleet Street,
any more than one of the artists on the staff of "Punch" could
paint a fresco which should hold its own against Da Vinci's Last
Supper. Michael Angelo again and Titian would have failed
disastrously at modern illustration. They had no more sense of
humour than a Hebrew prophet; they had no eye for the more trivial
side of anything round about them. This aspect went in at one eye
and out at the other - and they lost more than ever poor Peter Bell
lost in the matter of primroses. I never can see what there was to
find fault with in that young man.
Fancy a street-Arab by Michael Angelo. Fancy even the result which
would have ensued if he had tried to put the figures into the
illustrations of this book.
