Italy, the Magic Land Part 2

These five years in which Canova, Thorwaldsen, and Gibson lived and wrought together--although the youngest of this trio was still in his student life--form a definite period in the history of modern art in Rome. The dreams, the enthusiasm, the devotion to ideal beauty which characterized their work left its impress and its vitality of influence--a mystic power ready to incarnate itself again through the facility of expression of the artists yet to come. To the young men whose steps were turned toward Rome in these early years of the century just pa.s.sed, how great was the privilege of coming into close range of the influence of such artists as these; to study their methods; to hear the expression of their views on art in familiar meeting and conversation! These artists were closely in touch with that "lovely and faithful dream which came with Italian Renaissance in the works of Pisani, Mino di Fiesole, Donatello, Michael Angelo, and Giovanni da Bologna--all who caught the spirit of Greek art." Artistic truth was the keynote of the hour, and it is this truth which is the basis of the highest conception of life.

"Art's a service,--mark: A silver key is given to thy clasp And thou shalt stand unwearied night and day, And fix it in the hard, slow-turning wards To open, so that intermediate door Betwixt the different planes of sensuous form And form insensuous, that inferior men May learn to feel on still through these to those, And bless thy ministration. The world waits for help."

In their true relation art and ethics meet in their ministry to humanity, for only in their union can they best serve man. All the n.o.bler culture has its responsibility in service. "Many a man has a blind notion of stewards.h.i.+p about his property, but very few have it about their knowledge," said Bishop Phillips Brooks, and he added: "One grows tired of seeing cultivated people with all their culture cursed by selfishness." To the true idealist--as distinct from the mere emotionalist with aesthetic tastes--selfishness is an impossible prison.

The only spiritual freedom lies in the perpetual sharing of the fuller life. The gift shared is the gift doubled. Art is the spiritual glory of life; the supreme manifestation, the very influence of spiritual achievement. Mr. Stillman, discussing the revival of art, has questioned: "Does the world want art any longer? Has it, in the present state of human progress, any place which will justify devotion to it?"

He questions as to whether man is still

"Apparelled in celestial light,"

or whether he has lost "the glory and the freshness" of his dreams.

"No one can admit," continues Mr. Stillman, "that the human intellect is weaker than it was five or twenty centuries ago; but it is certain that if we take the pains to study what was done five centuries ago in painting, or twenty centuries ago in sculpture, and compare it with the best work of to-day, we shall find the latter trivial and 'prentice work compared with the ordinary work of men whose names are lost in the l.u.s.tre of a school.

"Then, little men inspired by the Zeitgeist, painted greatly; now, our great men fail to reach the technical achievement of the little men of them. There is only one living painter who can treat a portrait as a Venetian artist of 1550 A.D. would have done it, and how differently in the mastery of his material! If we go to the work of wider range, the Campo Santo of Pisa, the Stanze, the Sistine Chapel, the distance becomes an abyss; the simplest fragment of a Greek statue of 450 B.C. shows us that the best sculpture of this century, even the French, is only a happy child-work, not even to be put in sight of Donatello or Michael Angelo. The reason is simple, and already indicated. The early men grew up in a system in which the power of expression was taught from childhood; they acquired method as the musician does now, and the tendency of the opinion of their time was to keep them in the good method."

Is this not too narrow and sweeping a judgment? The art of portraiture certainly did not die with the Venetian painters of 1550, however great their work; and if there be but "one living painter" who can treat portrait art like the early Venetians, there are scores of artists who achieve signal success by other methods of treatment.

At all events, these three men, Canova, Thorwaldsen, and Gibson, worked with the conviction that art is service. With Victor Hugo, Canova could have said: "Genius is not made for genius; it is made for men.... Let him have wings for the infinite provided he has feet for the earth, and that, after having been seen flying, he is seen walking. After he has been seen an archangel, let him be still more a brother.... To be the servant of G.o.d in the march of progress--such is the law which regulates the growth of genius."

They worked and taught by this creed. Thorwaldsen, on first arriving in Rome, wandered for three years, it is said, among the statues of G.o.ds and heroes, like a man in a dream. The atmosphere of the earlier day when t.i.tian was employed by the king of Portugal and Raphael by the Pope to create works of great public importance still lingered and exerted over Thorwaldsen, and over all artists susceptible to its subtle influence, a peculiar spell. Its power was revealed in his subsequent works--the "Christ;" the sculptured groups for tombs in St. Peter's and in other churches; the poetic reliefs symbolizing "Day" and "Night;"

"Ganymede Watering the Eagle;" the "Three Graces," "Hebe," and many others.

Among Canova's works his immortal masterpiece is the monumental memorial group for the tomb of Pope Clement XIII in St. Peter's. The Pope is represented as kneeling in prayer. The modelling of the entire figure is instinct with expression. The fine and beautiful hands express reverence and trust. The countenance is pervaded with that peace only known to the soul that is in complete harmony with the divine power. The Holy Father has taken the tiara from his head and it lies before him on the cus.h.i.+on on which he kneels. Although the entire portrayal of the figure reveals that devotion expressed in the solemn and searching words of the church service, "And here we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto thee,"--although it is the very utmost rendering of the soul to G.o.d, it is yet the deliberate, the joyful, the living acceptance of divine love and no mere trance of ecstasy. No more wonderful figure in all the range of sculpture has been created than the Clement XIII of Canova.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE GENIUS OF DEATH,"

DETAIL FROM TOMB OF CLEMENT XIII, ST. PETER'S, ROME Antonio Canova _Page 43_]

The group is completed by two symbolic figures representing Religion and Death. The former is personified as a female figure holding a cross; the latter sits with his torch reversed. Grief, but not hopeless and despairing sorrow, is portrayed; it is the grief companioned by faith which ever sees

"The stars s.h.i.+ne through the cypress trees."

The base of the monument represents a chapel guarded by lions.

Pistolesi, the great Italian authority on the sculpture of St. Peter's and the Vatican galleries, notes that the lions typify the firmness and the force and the courage, "_la fortezza dell'anima_," that so signally characterized Clement XIII. There is probably no sacred monument in the realm of all modern art which can equal this creation in its delicacy, its lofty beauty, and the n.o.ble message that it conveys.

The oldest art school, the Accademia di San Luca, founded in 1507 by Sixtus, when he called to Rome all the leading artists of Europe to a.s.sist in the decoration of the Sistine Chapel, is an organization that magically links the present with the days of Canova, Thorwaldsen, and Gibson, as it linked them, also, with the remote and historic past. The father of the present custodian of the Academy knew Thorwaldsen well.

The grandfather of the gifted Italian sculptor, Tadolini (who has recently completed the tomb for Pope Leo XIII, placed in the Basilica of San Giovanni Laterano), modelled the bust of Thorwaldsen, and in one gallery hangs the great Danish sculptor's portrait, painted by himself.

The first director of San Luca was Federigo Zuccaro. In the early years of the nineteenth century this Academy was a vital centre of art life, and it is still a school that draws students, although the visitor who does not loiter and linger in his Rome may fail to know of this most alluring place. The San Luca is in the Via Bonella, one of the old, dark, narrow, and gloomy streets of the oldest part of Rome,--a short street of hardly more than two blocks, running between the Via Alessandra and the Forum. Hawthorne vividly pictures all this old Rome when he speaks of the "narrow, crooked, intricate streets, so uncomfortably paved with little squares of lava that to tread over them is a penitential pilgrimage; so indescribably ugly, moreover; so cold, so alley-like, into which the sun never falls and where a chill wind forces its deadly breath into our lungs; the immense seven-storied, yellow-washed hovels, or call them palaces, where all that is dreary in domestic life seems magnified and multiplied; those staircases which ascend from a ground floor of cook shops and cobblers' stalls, stables and regiments of cavalry, to a middle region of princes, cardinals, and amba.s.sadors, and an upper tier of artists just beneath the unattainable sky: ... in which the visitor becomes sick at heart of Italian trickery, which has uprooted whatever faith in man's integrity had till then endured;" the city "crushed down in spirit by the desolation of her ruin and the hopelessness of her future;" one recalls these words when pa.s.sing through the unspeakable gloom and horror and desolation and squalor of ancient Rome. In these surroundings one's cab stops at "No.

44," and ringing the bell the door is open, whether by super-normal agency or by some invisible terrestrial manipulation one is unable to determine; but in the semi-darkness of the narrow hall he discerns before him a flight of steep stairs, and, as no other vista opens, he reasons that, by the law of exclusion, this must be the appointed way.

Along the wall are seen, here and there, some antique casts from Trajan's Column, and reliefs from Canova and Thorwaldsen. The galleries above hold only a small and a comparatively unimportant collection of pictures. There are marines from Vernet and Claude Lorraine; a "Venus Crowned by the Graces" from Rubens; Giulio Romano's copy of Raphael's "Galatea,"--the original of which (in the Villa Farnesina) represents Galatea surrounded by Nymphs, Cupids, and Tritons, being carried in a sh.e.l.l across the sea. There is a Cupid, and also the "Fortuna" of Guido Reni,--the latter a figure of ineffable grace floating in the air. One of Raphael's early works representing "St. Luke Painting the Madonna" is here. There are several works by t.i.tian, but these have less than would be expected of the glory usually a.s.sociated with his name; and a Vand.y.k.e representing the Virgin and Child, with two angels playing, the one on a lute, the other on the violin.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "LA FORTUNA," ACCADeMIA DI SAN LUCA, ROME Guido Reni _Page 47_]

One salon filled with portraits of artists is especially interesting, and that of Thorwaldsen is so feminine in its costume and the parting of the hair, that it is almost inevitably mistaken for that of a woman.

Guido's graceful "Fortuna" is represented as a female figure flying through the air, her long hair streaming in the wind, and the picture recalls to one the Greek legend of Opportunity, as told by Kainos. The legend runs:--

"'Of what town is thy sculptor?'

"'Of Lukzon.'

"'What is his name?'

"'Lysippos.'

"'And thine?'

"'Opportunity, controller of all things.'

"'But why standest thou on tiptoe?'

"'I am always running.'

"'Why, then, hast thou wings on both feet?'

"'I fly like the wind.'

"'But wherefore bearest thou a razor in thy right hand?'

"'As a sign to men that I am sharper than any steel.'

"'And why wearest thou thy hair long in front?'

"'That I may be seized by him who approaches me.'

"'By Zeus! And thou art bald behind?'

"'Because once I have pa.s.sed with my winged feet no one may seize me then.'"

From one landing, on the steep narrow staircase of San Luca, opens the Biblioteca Sarti, an art library of some fifteen thousand volumes. The sculpture gallery is now closed and can only be entered by special permission. This is the more to be regretted as it contains the princ.i.p.al collections in Rome of the original casts of the works of Thorwaldsen and Canova.

The latter-day artists who have been setting up their Lares and Penates in Rome at various periods during the early and into the later years of the nineteenth century have found the Eternal City in strong contrast with its twentieth-century aspects, however it may have differed from the Rome of the Popes. The earlier American artists to seek the Seven-hilled City were painters; and Allston, Copley, and Stuart had already distinguished themselves in pictorial art before America had produced any sculptor who could read his t.i.tle clear to fame. It is to Hiram Powers (born in Vermont in 1805) that America must look as her first sculptor, chronologically considered, closely followed by Thomas Crawford, who was but eight years his junior, and by Horatio Greenough, who was also born in the same year as Powers, and who preceded him in Italy, but whose work has less artistic value. Mr. Greenough has left a colossal (if not an artistic) monument to his gifts in stately shaft marking Bunker Hill which he designed. Problematic in their claim to artistic excellence as are his "Was.h.i.+ngton"--a seated figure in the grounds of the Capitol in Was.h.i.+ngton--and his group in relief called "The Rescue" in the portico of the Capitol, his name lives by his personality as a man of liberal culture and n.o.ble character, if not by his actual rank in art. First of the American group in Italy, he was followed by Powers, who sought the ineffable beauty and enchantment of Florence in 1837. Horatio Greenough died in comparatively early life, leaving perhaps the most interesting of his works in a relief (purchased by Professor George Ticknor, the distinguished historian of Spain) "representing in touching beauty and expression a sculptor in an att.i.tude of dejection and discouragement before his work, while a hand from above pours oil into his dying lamp, an allegory ill.u.s.trative of the struggles of genius and the relief which timely patronage may extend to it."

Mr. Powers pa.s.sed his entire life in Florence. His work attracted great attention and inspired ardent appreciation. In portrait busts Powers was especially successful; and his "Greek Slave," his "Fisher Boy," "Il Penseroso," and "Proserpine" impressed the art-loving public of the time as marked by strong artistic power and as ent.i.tled to permanent rank in sculpture.

Mr. Crawford died young; but his name lives in the majestic bronze statue of "Beethoven" which is in the beautiful white and gold interior of Symphony Hall, in Boston; and his "Orpheus" and some other works claim high appreciation. Writing of Crawford, Mr. Hillard said:--

"Crawford's career was distinguished by energy, resolution, and self-reliance. While yet a youth, he formed the determination to make himself an artist; and with this view went to Rome--alone, unfriended, and unknown--and there began a life of toil and renunciation; resisting the approaches alike of indolence and despondency. His strength of character and force of will would have earned distinction for powers inferior to his. Nothing was given to self-indulgence; nothing to vague dreams; nothing to unmanly despair. He did not wait for the work that he would have, but labored cheerfully upon that which he could have. Success came gradually, but surely; and his powers as surely proved themselves to be more than equal to the demand made upon them."

On the death of Mr. Crawford, Thomas William Parsons wrote a memorial poem in which this stanza occurs:--

"O Rome! what memories awake, When Crawford's name is said, Of days and friends for whose dear sake That path of Hades unto me Will have no more of dread Than his own Orpheus felt, seeking Eurydice!

O Crawford! husband, father, brother Are in that name, that little word!

Let me no more my sorrow smother; Grief stirs me, and I must be stirred."

Thomas Ball, who went in early manhood to Florence, where he remained until when nearly at the age of fourscore he returned to his native land, still continues, at the age of eighty-five, to pursue the art he loves. He has created works, as his equestrian statue of "Was.h.i.+ngton" in the Public Gardens and his "Lincoln Freeing the Slave" in Park Square, both in Boston; his great Was.h.i.+ngton Memorial group in Methuen, Ma.s.sachusetts; his "Christ Blessing Little Children," and many other historic and ideal sculptures, that seem endowed with his beautiful and winning spirit as well as with his rare gifts. Larkin G. Mead chose Florence rather than Rome for his home and work. His n.o.ble "River G.o.d,"

placed at the head of the Mississippi near St. Paul, as well as other interesting creations, link his name with that of his native land.

Randolph Rogers, a man of genius; Rinehart, Paul Akers, and Thompson all died before the full maturity of their powers; Akers at the early age of thirty-six, leaving, as his bride of a year, the poet, Elizabeth Akers Allen, who, under the _nom de plume_ of "Florence Percy," has endeared herself to all lovers of lyric art. In a monograph on Paul Akers, written after his death, the writer says of his studio in Rome:--

"Linked with this studio is Hawthorne's tale of 'The Marble Faun,'