Fig. 323. Guido Reni. Saint Michael.—Cappucini, Rome.
Fig. 324. Domenichino. Last Communion of St. Jerome.—Vatican.
Domenico Zampieri, called Domenichino,[[92]] (1581–1641) is a far more serious figure. We see him best not in the sentimental sibyls which he multiplied nor even in the studied emotionalism of his most famous altar-piece, the Last Communion of St. Jerome, in the Vatican, Figure [324], but, rather in such decorations as those in S. Andrea della Valle, and in the monastic church of Grotta Ferrata. Here we find a heavy and simple emphasis, a great clarity both of figure construction and of composition. For his personal awkwardness, patience and quietism his comrades mockingly called him the Ox. It took character to play the ox amid the febrile sprightliness of the Catholic Reaction. His gravity is marked also in his color. He forsakes the old decorative conventions of the Renaissance and works in olive and silvery tones which suggest in a generalizing way the coolness and freshness of nature. Above all he is not facile like most of his contemporaries, but studious, dilatory, and considerate. At times he yields to the prevailing sentimentality, but usually he is both spontaneous and reticent. He seldom insists, but candidly lets the picture be seen. All these qualities appear in the modestly hoydenish masterpiece, Diana and her Nymphs, in the Borghese Gallery, Figure [325]. It is completely captivating for its element of surprise, its manly wholesomeness, its winsome setting of lithe girlish bodies amid verdure under a gray sky. This unaffected mood in mythology has rarely been recaptured. We have it in Vermeer’s little Diana at the Hague and, only yesterday, in the Nausicaa of Lucien Simon. Such qualities of lucidity, reserve, and simple nobility made Domenichino the natural model for Nicholas Poussin. We can trace the influence through Poussin’s masterpieces, and had France been wise enough to understand her greatest painter, her academic tradition, which was promoted in Poussin’s name, might have taken a much more fruitful course than it actually did.
Fig. 325. Domenichino. Diana and her Nymphs.—Borghese, Rome.
An ill fate finally took Domenichino to Naples. There he found the ruffianly local painters banded against every foreigner, and in particular he met the systematic animosity of the truculent Spaniard, Ribera. Outright terrorism alternated with petty persecution. They defaced his work and tampered with his materials. Soon they broke his delicate and timid spirit, even turned him against the wife with whom he had lived on terms of ideal affection. Today it remains uncertain whether he died of shattered nerves or was actually poisoned. Presumably the barbarous Neapolitans would have done about the same to any visiting artist, but doubtless they turned the screw a shade harder upon a gentle idealist who brought into their realistic stews some afterglow of the quietistic dignity of a Montagna or a Cima.
When all reservations are made, the Eclectics had fairly done their work of correcting the disorder of the late Renaissance and of restoring something of the old decorum. They made possible the revival of the grand style at Rome, in the eighteenth century, by Carlo Maratta and Raphael Mengs. The Eclectics were the bridge by which the classical manner passed over into Western Europe, an indispensable link in the chain of the great hellenistic tradition. That should be enough to keep them in memory if not in unqualified honor.
Our review of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth, century in Italy will have served its purpose if it has convinced the reader that this was no time of stagnation. We have rather to do with activities of exploration and reconstruction which are much too restless and various. The intellectual power of the Italian painters had not greatly diminished in comparison with the Renaissance. Italy still was capable of giving the leads which have guided painting elsewhere ever since. What was lacking was not energy but patience, reflection and taste. The Italian artist tended to regard himself as a swift and resolute executant first of all, and no longer knew how to nourish his spirit as a man. Even as executants, the realists and eclectics had the humiliation of finding themselves outdone by foreigners. Successively in the seventeenth century Ribera, Rubens, Van Dyck, Velasquez, Claude Lorrain and Poussin came to Italy and sojourned there. It was in every case apparent that the foreigner excelled all native artists in his field. The traditional authority of Italian painting still held, but its contemporary glory was evidently waning.
But even in decline Italy was strong enough to hand on her torch to newer hands. From Titian stems the florid classicism and aristocratic portraiture of Rubens and Van Dyck, which dominated the whole eighteenth century in France and England; through Caravaggio and Ribera, Italy made Velasquez the founder of those most characteristic nineteenth century movements, realism and impressionism; through Raphael, the Carracci and Domenichino, she fed the white flame of Poussin’s classicism, which in one way or another has determined the academic development of all Western Europe. Thus Italian painting, eternally alive in the timeless region where dwells the fame of Giotto, Masaccio, Leonardo, Giorgione, Raphael, Michelangelo, Titian, is as well most practically and actually alive in the recent and present struggles, failures, and triumphs of our modern schools. Without understanding Italian painting we cannot understand our own painting. And while the modern world will hardly return to the coherence, solidity, and grace of the great Gothic and Renaissance masters, I am confident that there can be no exit from our present confusion and incoherence until our painters learn at least to consult those great Italian predecessors who dwelt on the heights above which is the abode of the human spirit’s creative rest.