STUDY OF A HEAD
In Italy a reaction against the Christian doctrine of the degradation of the flesh led to a new recognition of the beauty of man and of his physical environment. Anatomy and perspective were studied, accordingly, with a new sense of their significance in Art. The spirit of science led to "such amazing studies of leaf and flower as Lionardo loved to draw. Thus to Tuscan artists the new movement brought the love of nature, and the light of science."
We come upon Dante and Petrarch in this Discourse, in tracing the history of Italian Art during the centuries of transition: "With Dante we reach the threshold of the Renaissance. He stands on the verge of the middle ages; in him the old order ends. With Petrarch the new order begins." It is not so much as a poet, however, that Petrarch counts in this process from one period to another; but rather as an intellectual pioneer, leading the way into the great pagan world. Petrarch "was the first Humanist," in short.
We cannot stay to dwell upon the effect of the Humanists and all they stood for, good and evil, in Italian Art and Letters. We pass on, now, from Petrarch and the influence the movement had on Italian literature, to its effect on Italian Art. The Renaissance did not affect Art in the same way, as Botticelli may serve to show. "But perhaps," said the lecturer, "the various operations in the province of Art of the two main motive forces of the Renaissance—the impulse towards the scientific study of nature, and the impulse to reinstate the classic spirit—may be best illustrated by reference to Lionardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Michael Angelo." The passages in which Leighton characterised these three masters are among the most striking of all those uttered by him within the walls of the Academy. Lionardo's scientific "avidity of research," Raphael's "classic serenity," and Angelo's "mediæval ardour," are turned to admirable effect in the pages of this Discourse; and the tribute paid to them on the part of an English painter who has zealously sought to live and work in the light of their great examples, has indeed an interest that is personal, in a sense, as well as general and critical.
Take this concluding sentence upon Raphael:
"Whatever was best in the classic spirit was absorbed and eagerly assimilated by him, and imparted to the work of his best day that rhythm, that gentle gravity, and that noble plenitude of form, which are its stamp, and proclaim him the brother of Mozart and of Sophocles."
Or this, again, on Michael Angelo, as distinguishing him from Raphael:
"The type of human form which he lifted to the fullest expressional force is the last development of a purely indigenous conception of human beauty, whereas the type which we know as Raphaelesque is a classic ideal warmed with Christian feeling. Sublimely alone as Buonarotti's genius stands, towering and unapproached, ... it does but mark the highest summit reached in the magnificent continuity of its evolution, by the purely native genius of Tuscan Art."
Having arrived at Tuscan Art, and at Michael Angelo, in whom it reaches its consummate development, we leave Italy, and turn now to the description of Art in Spain, given by Lord Leighton in his Discourse of December, 1889. And first we have some account of the extraordinarily various racial strains which were contributed to form the significant figure of the fifteenth-century Spaniard. On the ancient Iberian stock was grafted Celtic, Greek, Phœnician, and Carthaginian blood; and to these infusions succeeded the great invasion of the Visigoths of the fifth century.