Don't you know that chaste women preserve their beauty and youthful character much longer than those who are not chaste? How youthful then must appear the immaculate Virgin who cannot be supposed ever to have had a vitiated thought. And this is only according to the natural order of things: but why may not we suppose in this particular case, that nature might be assisted by Divine interposition, to demonstrate to the world the virginity and perpetual purity of the Mother? This was not necessary in the Son, nay, rather on the contrary, since Divine omnipotence was willing to show that the Son of God would take upon Him, as he did, the body of man, with all his earthly infirmities except that of sin. Therefore it was not necessary for me to make the human subordinate to the Divine character, but to consider it in the ordinary course of nature under the actual existing circumstances. Hence you ought not to wonder that from such a consideration, I should make the most holy Virgin-Mother of God, in comparison with the Son, much younger than would otherwise be required, and that I should have represented the Son at His proper age.
[a] Lanzi's History of Painting in Italy, Roscoe translation, vol. i.
[NOTE 41. PAGE 100]
A few modern painters have produced works in which the Holy Family are pictured in lowly surroundings, but generally they appear to shock the public sense of propriety. Many persons will remember the sensation caused by Millais's The Carpenter's Shop, where Christ is shown as a boy of about ten years of age in the workshop of St. Joseph, and Holman Hunt's Shadow of the Cross. Later artists have been still more realistic, notably Uhde, whose sacred scenes almost stagger one with their modern suggestions, and Demont-Breton, whose Divine Apprentice represents the Boy Christ sharpening a tool at a grindstone which is turned by the Virgin.
[NOTE 42. PAGE 108]
Unquestionably the rapid advance in Italian art in the fifteenth century was largely due to the influence of the ancient Greek and Roman remains. Indeed there are very few sculptors of the period who fail to show evidence of studies in Greek forms and ornaments, while in painting there are hundreds of figures which could scarcely have been designed in the absence of antique models. True in some cases the artists do not appear to have gone beyond the ancient literature, as with Masaccio who must have had Homer in his mind when he painted his figures of Eve in the Florence frescoes, and Piero di Cosimo, whose fanciful compositions savour of the old legends wrapped up in fairy stories; but many painters were steeped both in the art and literature of Greece and Rome, and made good use of them.
But the most direct evidence of the influence of Greek art upon Italian artists of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, is to be found in the splendid series of bronze statuettes of the period. In their monumental figures the sculptors were more or less confined in their designs by considerations of portraiture, conventional drapery and symbols, and local requirements, and while they were greatly assisted by Greek experience, yet only rarely were they strictly at liberty except with ornaments and accessories. But in the small bronze figures their fancy could roam at will, and they made good use of this freedom in displaying their ready acceptance of the first principle in the design of the human figure recognized by the Greeks—that the sculptor must arrive at perfection of form if that be possible; that this perfection is not to be found in any single form in life, and consequently the artist must combine perfected parts into a harmonious whole, independently of particular models. The agreement with this principle was general, with scarcely an exception amongst the bronze figure designers, and the result was that in the period say, from 1450 to 1525, there was executed a series of bronzes fully representative of the highest level which plastic art has reached since the greater days of Greece. Right up to the time of the maturity of Michelangelo, nearly every bronze figurine cast is purely Grecian in type, and every ornament, and even every accessory which is not from its nature of contemporary style, can be traced to Greece, either directly or through Rome.
Michelangelo brought about a change in accentuating the muscular development of the body, and before the middle of the sixteenth century most sculptors had come under his influence. This was unfortunate for he alone seemed to be capable of harmoniously combining Greek lines with muscular power. A few of his contemporaries, as Sansovino, Leone, Cellini, learned how to join, with due restraint, his innovations with modifications of the Greek torso, but generally the imitation of the great Florentine initiated a decadence, as it was bound to do, for it was accompanied with life modelling, and so meant a radical departure from the Greek forms. Giovanni di Bologna alone among the later sixteenth century sculptors, was strong enough to move in an independent direction. He restrained the accentuation of the muscles, and lightened the Greek type of torso, combining with these conditions an elegance in design which has never since been surpassed.
This then is the principal cause of the high æsthetic value of the Renaissance bronzes: the human form exhibited by them is altogether more beautiful than the form coming within the compass of life experience. Then the details of work on the bronzes are immensely superior to those of the general modern handiwork. For instance the chiselling of such men as Riccio and Cellini, has never been equalled since their time, save perhaps by Gouthière. And how poor, comparatively, are the present-day castings! How carefully the old masters worked; how particular they were with their clay; how skilfully they prepared their wax, and how slowly and deliberately the mould! How many artists now would have the patience to make such a mould? For the beautiful patinas on many of the Renaissance bronzes, age is mostly responsible, though lacquers were often used for the provision of artificial patinas, particularly after the middle of the sixteenth century, the finest being found on some of the works of Giovanni di Bologna. The tone of natural patina depends largely upon the kind of oxidation to which the bronze has been subjected, and it is no doubt often affected by the alloy used. Few modern artists have given close attention to the alloys, while the method of casting is now usually regarded as a detail of minor importance.
Seeing that the production of figurines accompanied every civilization from the dawn of history to the collapse of the Roman Empire, it is curious that the renaissance of sculpture after the Dark Age should have progressed a long way before general attention was again turned to these bronzes. There are a few figures of animals which seem to be Italian work of the late trecento, but beyond these the small cast bronzes made in Italy before the maturity of Ghiberti, were practically confined to Madonnas and Saints, mostly gilt, made to fill Gothic niches, or adorn the altars of churches and private chapels. Slender Saints they were as a rule, but always elegant, with serene countenances and delicate features; beautifully modelled as became the inheritors of the traditions of the Pisanos. It was somewhere about the middle of the fifteenth century that Italy commenced to make ungilt statuettes suitable for household ornaments, and fully ten or fifteen years more passed away before they were produced with any regularity. The earliest of them of any importance appear to be a couple of Flagellators from the design of Ghiberti. They are fine pieces of work, evidently from clay models made for the scourging scene in one of the gates of the Florence Baptistry—gates described by Michelangelo as worthy to fill the portals of Paradise. These figures date about 1440. There is a Child Christ of a few years later by Luca della Robbia; and two or three figures from models of Donatello may be assigned to the neighbourhood of 1450. In the next ten years were turned out some figures from remaining models of Donatello which had been used for his work at Prato and Padua.