CHAPTER XXXIII
THE AGE OF STAGNATION, THE ARTS (1580-1789)
We should do wrong to leave these centuries to stand solely on their political record. Even this dreary period has contributed not a little to the sum of Italy's attractions. After the moral vigour of republican Florence, after the freshness of the Renaissance and its later grandeur, after the elegance of the courts of Urbino, Ferrara, and Milan, it requires time to adjust ourselves to a different standard and to acquire a relish for this period of dissipated little kings and dukes. But once familiar with the altered standard of excellence, these centuries, with their arts, their habits, their idleness, become exceedingly sympathetic, and lure with peculiar dexterity the idler who seeks entertainment and the picturesque. Not that there is no serious element in them, for there is. Italy, though known to us through her lovers as a woman land, has always happily commingled feminine charm and masculine strength. Like the Apennines which stretch their grim strength from the Alps to the toe of the peninsula, virility runs throughout the length of Italian history, though at times it avoids notice. In this period it is best represented by science; and we must not omit to mention a few of the most distinguished scientific thinkers.
Giordano Bruno (1550-1600) and Campanella (1568-1639) were philosophers rather than men of science; their philosophy ran counter to the scholastic philosophy sanctioned by the Church, and they came into collision with the stern spirit of the Catholic Reaction. Campanella was persecuted and punished; Bruno was condemned as a heretic and burnt to death in the city of Rome. Greater than either was Galileo (1564-1642), whose name is one of the most illustrious in astronomy. He was born at Pisa, where he was educated in the university. He devoted himself to study, especially to mathematics, and became a professor. In 1609 he heard that a Dutchman had made an instrument which in some way by means of a lens magnified objects. Acting on this hint he constructed a telescope; and, if not strictly the inventor, he was the first to use the telescope in astronomy. The next year he made various eventful discoveries: that there are mountains in the moon, and spots on the sun; that Venus has phases; that Saturn has an appendage, which later was proved to be rings; that Jupiter has four satellites, a discovery which increased the number of heavenly bodies from the mystically sacred seven (sun, moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn) to the uninspiring eleven. These discoveries persuaded Galileo to adopt the Copernican theory, and brought him into collision with the Church. Much has been said about his cruel persecution, but he appears to have received gentle treatment and to have undergone a merely nominal imprisonment. Another philosopher, Vico (1668-1744), a Neapolitan, enjoys a very high reputation in Italy as a thinker. He wrote a philosophy of history, in which he investigated the laws that govern human progress, showed that philosophical theories must treat mankind collectively, and anticipated Comte's theory of the three stages of social development.
Science is not the characteristic trait of this period; for that is to be found in the arts or in the pleasant enervating lassitude of life. In the grand-ducal atmosphere there is a sense of having browsed on lotus-flowers. As we glance back on the great centuries, their efforts look splendid, their high purposes noble, their infinite curiosity commendable, but we are content to sit in a ducal garden, to listen to the Tritons spout into the fountains, to sip chocolate, to meditate sonnets to a partner for the minuet, to gossip about "His Highness and Contessa B——, who, so that young milord, Horry Walpole, says, was once a ballerina," and to confess our sins to fat, amiable priests. We enjoy the badinage of the abbés, the ingenious vacuity of the littérateurs, the cheerful buzz of the café, the daily saunter on the fashionable promenade, the drive in the park, and all the details of theatrical make-believe existence.
As one becomes used to this lotos-laden atmosphere, one gets lenient impressions of the arts, of their peculiar and characteristic agreeableness, and rapidly loses one's previous too scornfully classical attitude. In an earlier chapter we indulged in some high-flown denunciation of the Baroque in architecture. That was because we were fresh from the Renaissance. Now that we have eaten of the lotos, we refrain from comparison and enjoy the arts in their new phases, in and for themselves. There is hardly an Italian city that would not be poorer for the absence of the Baroque. Rome, for instance, owes most of its charm to these decadent generations, to the Villa Medici, the Villa Borghese, the Spanish Steps, the Trevi Fountain, the Piazza Navona.
A Neapolitan, Bernini (1598-1680), was the master spirit of the best Baroque, both in architecture and in sculpture. His greatest achievement is the splendid colonnade which reaches out like two arms from St. Peter's Church and clasps the sunny piazza in its embrace (1667). Bernini's statues, his fountains, his decorations and ornaments, make a good history of the time. They undoubtedly reveal decadence, yet they are respectfully imitative of the great achievements of the Renaissance, whereas the works of his numerous disciples are surcharged with contortion, obvious effort, and strain for effect. There is a maximum of visible exertion with a minimum of real accomplishment. Details are multiplied, and ornaments bear little or no relation to the organic structure of the buildings which they adorn; yet that practice is an Italian trait, and even in excess has a picturesque merit. The baser work of this style, exhibited in the vainglorious churches of the Jesuits, is sometimes called the Jesuit style. After this period of stormy ornament came a calm in the eighteenth century, façades became rectilinear, and there was a general subsidence of obvious effort.
In painting the school of Bologna, led by Lodovico Caracci (1555-1619) and his nephews, Agostino and the more noted and gifted Annibale, set the fashion. They endeavoured to combine faithfulness to nature with all the merits of all their predecessors, and are therefore called the eclectic school. They remained the cynosure of touring eyes until the middle of the nineteenth century. Sir Joshua Reynolds admired and praised them. Some of their disciples were for a long time almost as famous as Raphael. Domenichino's Last Communion of St. Jerome held a place of honour in the Vatican Gallery equal to Raphael's Transfiguration. Guido Reni's Aurora, painted on the ceiling of the casino in the Rospigliosi palace in Rome, had a tremendous vogue, and even now tourists, escaped from the critics, admire it privily. Guercino, Sassoferrato, and also the lachrymose Carlo Dolci are other celebrated members of the school. Another school, almost equally famous, was devoted to Naturalism,—imitation of starving old beggars and a general depiction of want, misery, and squalor. Of these painters the principal were Caravaggio (1569-1609), a Neapolitan, and his pupil Ribera, known as Lo Spagnoletto, because he was born in Spain. A later group, the Venetians of the eighteenth century, consisted of Canaletto, Bellotto, Guardi, and others who painted again and again the idle canals and pleasure-loving palaces of Venice. The greatest of this group was Tiepolo (1693-1770), who attained in a measure the grand manner of the great masters of the sixteenth century.
In literature, though that also had flashes of seriousness, as in Filicaia's celebrated sonnet to Italy adapted by Lord Byron,—
Italia! O Italia! thou who hast
The fatal gift of beauty—
the spirit of the Baroque, in its lightest and pleasantest manner, expressed itself to the full by means of the Academy of Arcadia. The unreality of the whole Italian world was concentrated in this Academy, which soon had branches, imitations, colonies all over the peninsula. It was founded in Rome (1692) by Gravina, a jurist, Crescimbeni, a priest, and other dilettanti, for the ennoblement of literature, the purification of taste, and other meritorious purposes. The members called themselves Arcadian shepherds and shepherdesses, took pastoral names, composed sonnets by the bushel, wrote one another's biographies, and were altogether delightfully silly. Goldoni, the playwright, gives a glimpse of these littérateurs in the eighteenth century as he observed them in Pisa.
One day he passed a garden gate and saw within the garden a crowd of ladies and gentlemen grouped by an arbour. He was told, "The assembly which you see is a colony of the Arcadia of Rome, called the Colony of Alpheus, named after a very celebrated river in Greece, which flowed through the ancient Pisa in Elis." Goldoni went up to the circle and listened to a number of gentlemen who recited poems, canzoni, ballads, sonnets, etc. He observed that the company looked at him as if desirous to know who he was. Eager to satisfy their curiosity, he asked the president if a stranger might be permitted to express in poetry the satisfaction which he experienced in being present on so interesting an occasion. Goldoni had a sonnet in his head, composed by him in his youth for some similar festival; he hastily changed a few words to adapt it to the present occasion, and recited the fourteen lines with the tone and inflection of voice which set off sentiment and rhyme to the best advantage. The sonnet had all the appearance of being extemporaneous, and was very much applauded. Whether the meeting had come to its appointed end or not he did not know, but everybody got up and crowded about him. Thereupon he was introduced to a whole troop of Arcadian shepherds, who welcomed him most heartily. At another meeting the president, whose proper title was Guardian of the Shepherds, drew a large packet from his pocket, and presented Goldoni with two documents, a certificate of his membership in the Arcadia of Rome under the name of Polisseno (Polixenes), and a legal deed which bestowed upon him the Fegean Fields in Greece; whereupon the whole assembly saluted him under the name of Polixenes Fegeus, and embraced him as a fellow shepherd. Goldoni says that, in spite of the formality of the conveyance, the Turks never acknowledged his title.
Mention of the Arcadia and of Goldoni leads to another art, most characteristic of these two centuries, the player's art. The drama had never been a success in Italy; Machiavelli and Ariosto wrote comedies, but they were no better from a dramatic than from an ethical point of view. After the acknowledged failure of serious comedy, another species took the field, the "Commedia dell'Arte," and definitely established itself at about the time of the beginning of the Baroque. In this species of comedy the dramatis personæ were masked and always impersonated certain definite characters, and the dialogue was improvised. These masks were Pantalone, our Pantaloon, a Venetian merchant, who always wore a black robe and scarlet stockings, and spoke the Venetian dialect; Il Dottore, the doctor, a pompous ass from Bologna; Arlecchino, Harlequin, a silly and credulous servant in tight hose and motley jerkin, and Brighella, a quick-witted and knavish servant, both speaking the patois of Bergamo; Colombina, the soubrette, a pretty maid-servant from Tuscany; Capitano Spavento, Captain Terrible, a fire-eater from Naples, etc. This comedy, necessarily kept within narrow limits by these characters, was strictly improvisation, except that the playwright provided a scenario, a skeleton plot. It had great success, and troops of Italian comedians went all over Europe; but by the eighteenth century it had run its course and become mere vulgar horseplay, and Goldoni (1707-93), the only brilliant comic playwright that Italy has produced, gave it a death-blow.
Goldoni was a Venetian, and a perfect embodiment of the happy, careless, amiable, entertaining society of the time. He led a roaming life, going to Tuscany to learn good Italian, and finally ending his career with twenty years in Paris. Some of his plays are in the Venetian dialect; two were written in French. There are more than a hundred, counting tragedies, interludes, and all. Their virtue is their lightness. They are made of foam, a delicious dramatic soufflé, and in the hands of accomplished Italian actors, like Eleonora Duse or Ermete Novelli, retain their charm to this day. They are essential for the history of the period, with their counts, barons, marquesses, their ladies, their waiting-maids, their innkeepers, camerieri, cobblers, adventurers, and all their gay mockery of the idle habits of the time.
It will throw a little more light upon the customs of that day to mention cicisbeismo, an unwritten rule of an artificial and idle society, which prescribed that a lady should have a cavaliere servente, a gentleman dangling in attendance upon her. Every lady had a husband, as maidens were not allowed in society, and widows had to choose between a convent and a second marriage; but the husband could not wait upon her, for his own duty as cavaliere servente required him to be in attendance upon somebody else's wife. The duties of the cavaliere servente were to devote himself solely to his lady, to write billets-doux, compose sonnets to her lapdog, to hand her chocolate at conversazioni, to give her his arm on all occasions, to ride beside her coach when she was out driving, and so on. In fact, he was required to do all those little offices, petits soins, which a young gentleman is accustomed to render to the lady whom he is engaged to marry. It was a state of active flirtation, not only sanctioned but required by society. It is said that in some cases the cavaliere servente was agreed upon before marriage, and his name inserted in the marriage contract.
Besides Goldoni's comic drama and the "Commedia dell'Arte" this Baroque Italy gave the world another and far more important gift, the Opera. Italian genius flared up once more and led the world in music. As far back as the days of the Council of Trent the reforming spirit of the Church found its noblest expression in Palestrina's (1524?-94) masses, but after his death, after the Catholic Revival had lost its deeply serious feeling, music took another step. Florence, the old home of genius, was the spot. A group of music lovers, who were full of classic theories about art, wished to revive antique Greek drama, with its combination of poetry, music, and dance. They decided that the words were the chief element, that the music must be subservient to the full emotional expression of the poetry, must intensify the dramatic significance of the story. To give effect to their opinion they devised a method of setting music to declamation, the earliest form of recitative. They meant to revive the Greek drama, but they produced the opera. After a few years of work over the new ideas, in 1600, at the Pitti Palace, an opera was publicly performed in honor of the espousals of Maria dei Medici and Henry IV of France. This was the first public performance of a secular opera. Soon afterwards Monteverdi (1567-1643), a revolutionary genius in the history of music, produced his operas at Mantua. In 1637 the first public opera house was opened in Venice; others quickly followed; the opera became a favourite diversion, and Italian singers carried it to France, Germany, Austria, and England. In the same year as the performance in the Pitti Palace, a dramatic oratorio, "The Soul and the Body," was publicly performed in Rome. The oratorio was greatly developed by Carissimi (1604-74) of the Roman school, and with him and his successors acquired much stateliness and beauty. Its influence on the opera, however, was not good, at least if we adopt the opinion of those Florentine Hellenes and of Wagner, for it developed music as an independent element, and did not subordinate it to dramatic action.
With the exception of this misdevelopment of the opera, all music evolved brilliantly and well in Italy, and especially in Naples, which eclipsed all other cities, and showed that she, too, had her individual genius. Alessandro Scarlatti (1659-1725) wrote a great number of operas and oratorios, and composed a vast quantity of ecclesiastical music. He was followed by his son Domenico Scarlatti, by Durante, Leo, and Jommelli, by Pergolesi, Piccinni, Cimarosa, and Paisiello, who followed one another, like a flight of singing birds, through the eighteenth century. The Italian opera, even then, had the characteristics of subordinating dramatic propriety and all semblance of reality to arias, trills, and vocal exaggeration, but it was not till the beginning of the nineteenth century—with Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti—that the Italian opera (if I may venture to adapt a famous phrase) became melted Baroque. There were other schools of music at Rome, Bologna, and Venice. It was in Venice that the four famous asylums for girls, conservatori, were turned into music schools, and gave their name to training schools for musicians all over the world.
Besides the opera one must note, in mentioning Italian musical genius, the violin-makers, the Amati of Cremona, the greater Stradivarius (1644-1737), and other famous makers of Cremona, Brescia, and Venice; also the organ-builders, the Antignati of Brescia; the great Italian singers, then as now favourites of the world; as well as the greatest of libretto-writers, Metastasio.
Metastasio (1698-1782) had a career that can only be compared to that of a successful prima donna. As a boy he was adopted by the Arcadian lawyer, Gravina, and brought early to drink of the Pierian spring. After Gravina's death he spent his money, got into the company of singers and musicians at Naples, and composed the words of an opera "Dido," while still a youth of five-and-twenty. "Dido" had immense success, and from this time on Metastasio poured out play after play in words that went halfway and more to meet the accompanying music. His renown was triumphant throughout Europe; he became the pet of lords, ladies, kings, and Popes. He flitted from court to court, and sipped the honey of facile success; he serves as the embodiment of the Italian opera, or rather as a poetical spirit, a kind of baroque nightingale, to chant the charm, the sentiment, the sweetness, the unreality, of these two make-believe centuries.
As we take leave of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (a somewhat ignoble pair), their architecture, painting, literature, and music, we must, as in other matters, remember the good and forget the bad. We must keep in mind the Spanish Steps, which offer at their base ample room for all the flowers of all the flower-sellers of Rome, then rise in easy flight, pause, rest, and mount again, tier upon tier, till the top step stretches out into a terrace, where the pedestrian, glad to pause, turns and looks back over Rome towards the majestic dome of St. Peter's. We must remember the Trevi Fountain where gods and nymphs and waters splash and frolic together, or Guido's Aurora, where Apollo looses the rein to his heavenly horses as they gallop after Lucifer, while the straight-backed hours dance divinely alongside. We must recall the sweet sentiment in Metastasio, the light nothingness of Goldoni, the merriment of Harlequin and Columbine, the violins of Stradivarius, the singing of Farinello and Pacchierotti, the melodies of Pergolesi, and the general pleasantness of an idle, amiable society. Then we want to join the eighteenth-century travellers,—Addison, Walpole, President de Brosses, or Goethe,—and we look back with vain regret to that happy lotos-eating time, and wish it would return again.