Curiously Enough, The Date Of
The Opening Of The Bolognese Academy Coincides As Nearly As May Be
With The Complete Decadence Of Italian Painting.
This is an example of the way in which Italian boys begin their art
education now.
The drawing which I reproduce here was given me by
the eminent sculptor, Professor Vela, as the work of a lad of
twelve years old, and as doing credit alike to the school where the
lad was taught and to the pupil himself. {22}
So it undoubtedly does. It shows as plainly the receptiveness and
docility of the modern Italian, as the illustrations given above
show his freshness and naivete when left to himself. The drawing
is just such as we try to get our own young people to do, and few
English elementary schools in a small country town would succeed in
turning out so good a one. I have nothing, therefore, but praise
both for the pupil and the teacher; but about the system which
makes such teachers and such pupils commendable, I am more
sceptical. That system trains boys to study other people's works
rather than nature, and, as Leonardo da Vinci so well says, it
makes them nature's grandchildren and not her children. The boy
who did the drawing given above is not likely to produce good work
in later life. He has been taught to see nature with an old man's
eyes at once, without going through the embryonic stages. He has
never said his "mans is all alike," and by twenty will be painting
like my old friend's long academic sentence. All his individuality
has been crushed out of him.
I will now give a reproduction of the frontispiece to Avogadro's
work on the sanctuary of S. Michele, from which I have already
quoted; it is a very pretty and effective piece of work, but those
who are good enough to turn back to p. 93, and to believe that I
have drawn carefully, will see how disappointing Avogadro's
frontispiece must be to those who hold, as most of us will, that a
draughtsman's first business is to put down what he sees, and to
let prettiness take care of itself. The main features, indeed, can
still be traced, but they have become as transformed and lifeless
as rudimentary organs. Such a frontispiece, however, is the almost
inevitable consequence of the system of training that will make
boys of twelve do drawings like the one given on p. 147.
If half a dozen young Italians could be got together with a taste
for drawing like that shown by the authors of the sketches on pp.
136, 137, 138; if they had power to add to their number; if they
were allowed to see paintings and drawings done up to the year A.D.
1510, and votive pictures and the comic papers; if they were left
with no other assistance than this, absolutely free to please
themselves, and could be persuaded not to try and please any one
else, I believe that in fifty years we should have all that was
ever done repeated with fresh naivete, and as much more
delightfully than even by the best old masters, as these are more
delightful than anything we know of in classic painting.
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