He did not care for it, and had
therefore no eye for it. If the reader will turn to the copy of a
fresco of St. Christopher on p. 209, he will see the conventional
treatment of the rocks on either side the saint. This was the best
thing the artist could do, and probably cost him no little trouble.
Yet there were rocks all around him - little, in fact, else than
rock in those days; and the artist could have drawn them well
enough if it had occurred to him to try and do so. If he could
draw St. Christopher, he could have drawn a rock; but he had an
interest in the one, and saw nothing in the other which made him
think it worth while to pay attention to it. What rocks were to
him, the common occurrences of everyday life were to those who are
generally held to be the giants of painting. The result of this
neglect to kiss the soil - of this attempt to be always soaring - is
that these giants are for the most part now very uninteresting,
while the smaller men who preceded them grow fresher and more
delightful yearly. It was not so with Handel and Shakespeare.
Handel's
"Ploughman near at hand, whistling o'er the furrowed land,"
is intensely sympathetic, and his humour is admirable whenever he
has occasion for it.
Leonardo da Vinci is the only one of the giant Italian masters who
ever tried to be humorous, and he failed completely: so, indeed,
must any one if he tries to be humorous. We do not want this; we
only want them not to shut their eyes to by-play when it comes in
their way, and if they are giving us an account of what they have
seen, to tell us something about this too. I believe the older the
world grows, the better it enjoys a joke. The mediaeval joke
generally was a heavy, lumbering old thing, only a little better
than the classical one. Perhaps in those days life was harder than
it is now, and people if they looked at it at all closely dwelt
upon its soberer side. Certainly in humorous art, we may claim to
be not only principes, but facile principes. Nevertheless, the
Italian comic journals are, some of them, admirably illustrated,
though in a style quite different from our own; sometimes, also,
they are beautifully coloured.
As regards painting, the last rays of the sunset of genuine art are
to be found in the votive pictures at Locarno or Oropa, and in many
a wayside chapel. In these, religious art still lingers as a
living language, however rudely spoken. In these alone is the
story told, not as in the Latin and Greek verses of the scholar,
who thinks he has succeeded best when he has most concealed his
natural manner of expressing himself, but by one who knows what he
wants to say, and says it in his mother-tongue, shortly, and
without caring whether or not his words are in accordance with
academic rules. I regret to see photography being introduced for
votive purposes, and also to detect in some places a disposition on
the part of the authorities to be a little ashamed of these
pictures and to place them rather out of sight.
Sometimes in a little country village, as at Doera near Mesocco,
there is a modern fresco on a chapel in which the old spirit
appears, with its absolute indifference as to whether it was
ridiculous or no, but such examples are rare.
Sometimes, again, I have even thought I have detected a ray of
sunset upon a milkman's window-blind in London, and once upon an
undertaker's, but it was too faint a ray to read by. The best
thing of the kind that I have seen in London is the picture of the
lady who is cleaning knives with Mr. Spong's patent knife-cleaner,
in his shop window nearly opposite Day & Martin's in Holborn. It
falls a long way short, however, of a good Italian votive picture:
but it has the advantage of moving.
I knew of a little girl once, rather less than four years old,
whose uncle had promised to take her for a drive in a carriage with
him, and had failed to do so. The child was found soon afterwards
on the stairs weeping, and being asked what was the matter,
replied, "Mans is all alike." This is Giottesque. I often think
of it as I look upon Italian votive pictures. The meaning is so
sound in spite of the expression being so defective - if, indeed,
expression can be defective when it has so well conveyed the
meaning.
I knew, again, an old lady whose education had been neglected in
her youth. She came into a large fortune, and at some forty years
of age put herself under the best masters. She once said to me as
follows, speaking very slowly and allowing a long time between each
part of the sentence; - "You see," she said, "the world, and all
that it contains, is wrapped up in such curious forms, that it is
only by a knowledge of human nature, that we can rightly tell what
to say, to do, or to admire." I copied the sentence into my
notebook immediately on taking my leave. It is like an academy
picture.
But to return to the Italians. The question is, how has the
deplorable falling-off in Italian painting been caused? And by
doing what may we again get Bellinis and Andrea Mantegnas as in old
time? The fault does not lie in any want of raw material: the
drawings I have already given prove this. Nor, again, does it lie
in want of taking pains. The modern Italian painter frets himself
to the full as much as his predecessor did - if the truth were
known, probably a great deal more.
