The Book of Art for Young People

by Agnes Ethel Conway; Sir William Martin Conway

THE RENAISSANCE

Who is this old gentleman in our next picture reading so quietly and steadily? Does he not look absorbed in his book? Certainly the peacock, the bird, and the cat do not worry him or each other, and there is still another animal in the distance—a lion! Can you see him? He is walking down the cloister pavement on the right, with his foot lifted as though it were hurt. The story is that this particular lion limped into the monastery in which this old man lived, and while all the other monks fled in terror, this monk saw that the lion's fore-paw was hurt. He raised it up, found what was the matter, and pulled out the thorn; and ever afterwards the lion lived peacefully in the monastery with him. Now, whenever you see a lion in a picture with an old monk, him you will know to be St. Jerome. He was a learned Christian father who lived some fifteen hundred years ago, yet his works are still read, spoken, and heard every day throughout the world. He it was who made the standard Latin version of the Scriptures. The services in Roman Catholic churches in all countries are held in Latin to this day, and St. Jerome's translation of the Bible, called the Vulgate, is the version still in use.

Here you see St. Jerome depicted sitting in his own study, reading to prepare himself for his great undertaking; and what a study it is! You must go to the National Gallery to enjoy all the details, for the original painting is only 18 inches high by 14 inches broad, and the books and writing materials are so tiny that some are inevitably lost in this beautiful photograph. The study is really a part of a monastery assigned to St. Jerome himself, his books, manuscripts, and other such possessions. He has a pot of flowers and a dwarf tree, and a towel to dry his hands on, and a beautiful chair at his desk. He has taken off his dusty shoes and left them at the foot of the steps.

The painter of this picture, must have had in his mind a very happy idea of St. Jerome. Others have sometimes painted him as they thought he looked when living in a horrible desert, as he did for four years. But at the time this picture was painted, about the year 1470, St. Jerome in his study was a more usual subject for painters than St. Jerome in the desert. One reason of this was that in Italy, in the latter half of the fifteenth century, St. Jerome was considered the patron saint of scholars, and for the first time since the fall of the Roman Empire, scholars were perhaps the most influential people of the day.

ST. JEROME IN HIS STUDY
From the picture by Antonello da Messina, in the National Gallery, London

Of course you all know something about the remarkable revival of learning in the fifteenth century, which started in Italy, spread northward, and reached England in the reign of Henry VIII. Before the fifteenth century, Italians seem to have been indifferent to the monuments around them of ancient civilization. Suddenly they were fired with a passion for antiquity. They learnt Greek and began to take a keen interest in the doings of the Greeks and Romans, who in many ways had lived a life so far superior to their own. Artists studied the old statues, which taught them the beauty of the human figure. The reacquired wisdom of the ancients by degrees broke down the medieval barriers. There was born a spirit of enterprise into the world of thought as well as into the world of fact, which revolutionized life and art. The period which witnessed this great mental change is well known as the Renaissance or 'rebirth.'

When you first looked at this picture you must have thought it very different from the two earlier ones. Such a subject could only have been painted thus in an age when men admired the scholar's life. Though the figure is called that of St. Jerome, there is really nothing typically saintly about him; he is only serious. The subjects chosen by painters of the Renaissance were no longer almost solely religious, but began to be selected from the world of everyday life; even when the subject was taken from Christian legend, it was now generally treated as an event happening in the actual world of the painter's own day.

The manner in which this picture is painted is still more suggestive of change than the subject itself. Our artist knew a great deal about the new science of perspective, for instance. One might almost think that, pleased with his new knowledge, he had multiplied the number of objects on the shelves so as to show how well he could foreshorten them. Medieval painters had not troubled about perspective, and were more concerned, as we have seen, to make a pretty pattern of shapes and colours for their pictures. The Van Eycks, as we noted, only acquired the beginnings of an understanding of it, and were very proud of their new knowledge. It was in Italy that all the rules were at last brought to light.