(β) A further aspect we shall do well to consider is the transition from the more tranquil, reverential piety to the representation of martyrdoms, and, in general, what is not beautiful in reality. It is more particularly the North German masters who excel in scenes borrowed from the Passion in which they emphasize the savagery of the soldiery, the evil aspects of the mocking, the fierceness of the hate against Christ during the course of His sufferings, with particular insistence on features of ugliness and distortion, and which are intended to denote external forms correspondent with the depravity of spirit. The tranquil and beautiful activity of an unassuming personal piety is thrown into the background, and the movements which are inseparable from the situations above mentioned unfold us hideous distortions, expressions of ferocity, and all the unbridled exhibition of passions. Where we have the contending tumult and the uncouthness of characters presented with such detail, it is not surprising that such pictures are defective in the ideal harmony of their composition no less than their colour, so that, more especially where a taste for old German paintings first crops up, critics when thus confronted with what is, as a rule, an inferior class of technical accomplishment, fall into many mistakes when determining the date of their production. Thus it has been maintained that they are previous to the more consummate pictures of the Van Eyck period, although, for the most part, they hail from a more recent time. However, the Upper German masters were not exclusively occupied with works of this type, but have likewise treated a variety of religious subjects, and, indeed—Albrecht Dürer, with others, exemplifies this—even in scenes from Christ's Passion, have understood how effectively to grapple with the extremes of pure savagery, and even when treating such themes to preserve an ideal nobility and an external independence[369] and freedom.
(γ) Finally, the development of German and Flemish art is characterized in a complete identification of itself with the ordinary life of the Present; and, along with this, in a unified system of the most varied modes of presentation, which, both in respect to their content and technique, are distinct from one another and independently elaborated. We have seen already the advance made by Italian painting from the simple nobility of devotion to an ever-increasing assertion of secular motive, which here, however, as we pointed out in the case of Raphael, was in some measure permeated by ecclesiastical prepossessions, and in part limited by the coherent principle of antique beauty. We may add that the later course of this school is not so much a dissolution of that unity in the representation of every kind of subject-matter under the predominant interest of the colourist as a more superficial disposition, or rather, eclectic imitation of styles of draughtsmanship and painting. German and Flemish art, on the contrary, has in the most definite and exceptional degree traversed the entire scheme of content and modes of treatment, starting from its wholly traditional church pictures, single figures and half lengths, then on to thoughtful, pious, and devotional subjects, until we come to that animation and extension of the same in larger compositions and scenes, in which, however, the free characterization of figure, the heightened vitality effected by means of processions, retinues, incidental personages, embellishment of garments and utensils, wealth of portraiture, architectural works, environment, views of churches, cities, streams, forests, mountains, is still conceived and executed as a whole subject to religious motivation. This focal centre still persists; but we find that the range of subjects, which had hitherto been held together in unity, is broken into division, and the separate parts become, in the specific singularity and contingent character of their alternations or independent modifications, subject to every possible type of conception and pictorial execution[370].
In order to arrive at a full appreciation of this aspect of art's development in the present context, for we have already referred to the point, we will pass briefly in review the national conditions which were operative in the change. We are under the necessity to justify, as we shall attempt to do in the following observations, a transition from direct relations to the Church and the outlook and pictorial modes of piety to a delight in the world simply, that is to say, to the objects and particular phenomena of Nature, to domestic life in its dignity, congeniality, and peaceful seclusion, to an enjoyment of national festivities and processions, rustic dances, the games and follies attendant upon church fêtes. Now the Reformation had thoroughly penetrated Holland. The Dutch had become Protestants and overcome the despotism of the Spanish Crown and Church. And what is more we do not, if we consider the political condition here, either find a distinguished nobility which drives forth its princes and tyrants, or imposes laws on them, nor yet an agricultural people, oppressed peasantry, who break free as the Swiss have done, but rather a population which, in by far the largest proportion of it, if we except the few brave souls that tilled the soil and its more than brave heroes of the sea, consisted of citizens of the town, men of business, well-to-do burghers, men who, rejoicing in their ordinary avocations, entertained no lofty pretensions, but, as became their courage and intelligence, with audacious reliance in God, stood up to defend the freedom of their hardly-won liberties and the particular privileges of their provinces, cities, and guilds, dared to oppose themselves to all hazards without fear of the transcendent prestige of the Spanish dominion over half the world, to bravely let their blood flow for such an aim, and by virtue of this righteous boldness and endurance victoriously secured both their religious and civic independence. And if we may brand any single condition of soul-life as distinctively deutsch, it is just this loyal, well-to-do, and genial citizenship, which, in a self-respect that is without pride, in a piety which is not merely absorbed in enthusiasm and devotion, but which is concretely pious in the affairs of the world[371] and is homely and contented in its abundance, remains neat and clean, and in persistent carefulness and contentment under all circumstances, armed with its own enduring sense of independence and freedom, is able, with loyalty to its former life, to preserve the sterling character of its forefathers unimpaired. This intelligent and artistically endowed people furthermore seeks its enjoyment in the pictorial presentment of its vigorous, justly co-ordinated, satisfying, and comfortable existence; it is all for taking a renewed delight by means of its pictures in the cleanliness under all conditions of its towns, houses, and domestic arrangements, of enjoying thus its household felicity, its wealth, the generous adornment of its wives and children, the splendour of its civic feasts, the boldness of its seamen, the fame of its merchandise and the shipping, in which it rides over all the seas of the world. And it is just this instinct of orderly and cheerful existence, which the Dutch masters emphasize also in their landscape subjects. In one word, in all their pictorial accomplishment they succeed in combining with freedom, and truth of conception, with their enthusiasm for what is in appearance of inferior and momentary significance, with the freshness of open vision and the concentration of their entire soul on all that is most stamped with the seclusion and limitations of their life, the most ample freedom of artistic composition, no less than the finest feeling for accessories and the most perfect effects of studious elaboration. From one point of view this school of painting has developed to an incomparable degree the magic and mystery of lighting and colour[372] generally in its scenes borrowed from war and military life, in its tavern jollifications, in its weddings and other rustic fêtes, in its pictures of domestic life, in its portraits, landscapes, animals, flowers, and the rest. From another aspect it has elaborated with a similar excellence the characterization which penetrates to the heart of life in all the truth of which Art is capable. And although its insistence on the insignificant and contingent includes the expression of what is boorish, rude, and common, yet these scenes are so permeated throughout with ingenuous lustiness and jollity, that it is not the common in its meanness and naughtiness so much as the gaiety and joviality which creates the artistic subject and its content. We do not look at mean feelings and passions, but simply what is boorish, in the sense of being rustic, near to nature, in the poorer classes, a quality which connotes geniality, waggishness, and comedy. In short the Ideal itself is not wholly absent from this unperturbed easy-way-of-life. It is the Sabbath of Life, which brings all to one level and removes all badness, simply as such. Men who are thus so whole-heartedly of good temper can neither be wholly bad nor mean. In this respect it is not one and the same thing, whether evil is of purely momentary appearance in a character, or lies at its root and essence. In the work of these Dutch painters what is humorous in a situation cancels what is evil, and it is at once clear to us that the characters could be something other than that in the guise of which they are for the time being set before us[373]. A gaiety and comedy of this description contributes much to the invaluable character of these pictures. If pictures of this rollicking type are attempted nowadays, the painter, as a rule, only places before us what is essentially mean, coarse and bad without the illuminating atmosphere of a comic situation[374]. A bad wife rails at her tipsy husband in the tavern with all her might. In a scene of this kind we have only put before us, as I have already remarked, the bald facts that the man is a dissipated brute and the woman a rating wench.
If we look at the Dutch masters in this light we shall no longer entertain the view that the art of painting should have said good-bye to such subjects altogether, and merely confined itself to depicting the gods of old, myths, and fables, or even Madonna pictures, crucifixions, martyrs, popes, and saints of both sexes. What is a vital ingredient of every work of art is inseparable also from painting, and this is the observance of what generally concerns our humanity, the spirit and characterization of man, in other words what man is and what each individual is. This vital grasp of the conscious life of human nature and the external forms of its appearance, this naive delight and artistic freedom, this freshness and cheerfulness of imaginative sympathy, this absolute directness of execution is what constitutes the poetry that underlies the work of the majority of the Dutch painters of this period. In their paintings we may study and acquaint ourselves with human nature and mankind. Nowadays, however, our artist only too frequently will confront us with portraits and historical pictures, at which we have only to cast a bare glance, and we see that, while flatly contradicting the wildest dream of what is possible in mankind or anyone in particular, he neither knows aught at all about man or his natural colour, nor yet the modes of composition[375] in which we may justly express that humanity[376].
[214] Die gesammte Menschen-brust.
[215] Die in sich gediegene Individualität des Gottes.
[216] Betrachtung, here implying thought rather than vision.