We will now cross the Alps and say a few words about Italian art.
Italy was wretchedly represented at the Great Exhibition. None of her greatest artists had contributed. The best pictures were by two or three Parisian Italians, and the worst by men whose proper abode ought to be Hanwell or Colney Hatch. It has often been remarked that modern Italians labor under the same disadvantage which afflicts a man who has had illustrious progenitors. He may not be a greater fool than other men, indeed he may be rather above the average, but he gets no credit for it. People are always contrasting him with his illustrious father or his glorious grandfather, and the poor fellow has hard work to get any justice done him. This may be true enough at Venice, Florence, or Rome, where the chefs-d’œuvre of the old masters are in very close proximity. I can well understand that a stranger who has been feasting his eyes all the morning on Titians and Paul Veroneses, should find the descent very precipitous to the level of a modern Italian studio; but in Paris there were no such formidable rivals to fear, and it is much to be regretted that Italy did not put forth her whole strength. I am inclined, however, to give another reason why modern Italian art has suffered from the proximity of so many chefs-d’œuvre by the old masters, and that is the temptation to become copyists. Wealthy Americans, if they cannot carry away the originals, will have copies, and the harvest to be derived from this source by a clever painter is so rich a one that he is often tempted to abandon the paths of originality and virtue, and become a copyist.
Of course the leading painters would not accept a commission for a copy of Beatrice Cenci, but there have been (and doubtless are still) artists fitted for better things, who do accept these commissions and are glad of them. A friend of mine a good many years ago asked me to call and see a copy of this celebrated portrait which had just arrived from Italy. He had given the painter a commission for it two years before. I could not say much in praise of it. It was a fair average copy, but I could not help remarking that the artist had been a precious long time about it. “Oh,” says my friend, “mine was the seventh order for a Beatrice Cenci in his book, and he told me that nothing would induce him to paint more than four copies a year of this head. He had other work to attend to,” etc., etc. If a man once gets into the way of earning his living by copying, he will never get out of it (at least not in Italy).
Independently of downright copying there is the danger of imitating, and this is a danger to which Italian art has always been very much exposed. No good can ever come of imitating the old masters, but when the masters so imitated are men like Carlo Maratti or Luca Giordano, the downfall of the school is indeed precipitate.
Italian painters, like Italian sculptors are very skilful workmen, but they do not appear ever to get beyond a certain point of excellence.
The new school of Rome may be said to have been founded by Fortuny, and in this school execution is every thing. Doubtless this phase of Italian art is better than the dreary decadence of the first half of the century, but I cannot say I am a great admirer of the new style. I will speak of Fortuny and his followers presently, when I get to the Spanish school, but before leaving the Italian Court I may mention that there were some specimens of microscopic painting which were marvellous if they were really legitimate pictures and not painted photographs. Admitting, however, that they were genuine pictures, the very fact of their looking like colored photographs relegates them to an inferior style of art. They are curiosities, and not much more.
In justice to the Italian section I should mention that if the oil pictures were bad, the water-colors by Rota were excellent.
There seems to me no reason whatever why Italy, the land of art (par excellence), should lag behind in the international race. Italians are quick, intelligent, and imaginative. If they would steer a middle course between the tame imitations of the old masters and the sensational quackeries of contemporary art, I have no doubt they would take a high place in the European school.
The Spanish gallery was one of the most interesting in the whole exhibition. One or two of the large pictures showed great power and originality. I believe these pictures were painted by Spaniards residing in Rome. Indeed all the best Spanish pictures are painted either in Paris or Italy. There is no native school, as in the days of Velasquez and Murillo.
The most attractive wall in this gallery was that devoted to the works of Fortuny. Fortuny’s mode of painting, his delicate sense of color, and the novelty of his subjects, took the artistic world by storm some fifteen years ago. Since that time a host of imitators have arisen, mostly Spaniards or Italians, so that the modern Spanish school has come to be identified with his very peculiar kind of art.