Signor Ferdinando Filippi di Buti, whom I had met at Leghorn, showed himself desirous of having a statue of mine to put in the mortuary chapel that he had built from its very foundation close to one of his villas on the pleasant hill that rises above the town. The subject was a beautiful one, and, after the "Dead Christ," I could not have desired anything better to make than "Christ after the Resurrection," and this was the very subject that Signor Filippi wanted of me.
IMPORTANCE OF RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT.
The "Triumph of the Cross," the "Madonna Addolorata" that I spoke of further back, the "Pietà," and this "Christ after the Resurrection," are the strictly religious subjects that I have made—rather, that I have had the good fortune to make, because I believe that such subjects, always beautiful in themselves, when they find the soul of the artist disposed to feel them and comprehend them, are also capable of high serene inspiration, and secret efficacy to the soul of those who behold them, be they in spirit even thousands of miles distant from the number of believers.
Let the truth prevail. Religious sentiment has its root in the heart, in the intellect, in the imagination, and, in a word, in all the impulses of the soul. A heart without God is a heart without love, and will not love woman but for the brutal pleasure she procures, and, in consequence, not even the children that are the fruit of, and also a burden upon, his selfishness. He will not love his country except for the honours and the gain that can be got out of it, and will sacrifice it carelessly for a single moment of pleasure or interest, because a heart without God is a heart without love. An intelligence without the knowledge of God is wanting in a basis as starting-point for all its reasoning—it is without the light that should illumine the objects it takes hold of to examine. Such an intellect is circumscribed within the narrow circle of things perceptible to the senses, where, finding nothing but aridness wherein to quench its burning thirst, which is always insatiate for goodness and truth, it ends either in a fierce desire of suicide, or as a vengeance of nature's own in that saddest of nights, madness. An imagination deprived of the splendid visions of the supersensible, loses even its true functions, because, not seeing or divining through time and space, through life and death, in the stars and in the atoms, anything but a casual mechanism, it is cruelly condemned to inertia, and with clipped wings can no longer sustain its flight—those wings which so potently upheld Dante as he passed from planet to planet, leaving the earth down in depths far beneath him. The eye accustomed to matter is besmeared with mud, and can no longer bear the bright light of the sun and the planets, which seem as if they were the eyes of God.
RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT.
Religious sentiment has existed in all times, amongst all people, and it exists in the conscience of man independent of all education and example. The immense vault of the heavens; the innumerable planets resplendent in light; the sun that illuminates, warms, and fertilises the earth; the expanse of the waters of the sea; the prodigious variety and beauty of animals, plants, and fruits; the loveliness of colours, harmony of sounds from everywhere, and for all our senses,—come to us as the proof of God. But more even than from exterior things we feel it within ourselves. The blood shed by the martyrs fighting for the faith; life given in large profusion for the defence of country, liberty, and honour, or our women and children; active indignation against tyranny, cowardliness, and injustice; the tender charm we feel for innocence, admiration for virtue, and charity towards the poor, orphans, and those in trouble,—all these are signs that God has placed within us a part of His very nature. We feel within us the impulses of charity, and in prayer we feel our heart expand with hope; out of frailty we fall, and faith renews in us the strength to rise again. Religious sentiment makes the heart glow, illuminates the intellect, fertilises the imagination, and creates not only the good citizen and good father, but also the artist.
VISIT OF MANZONI.
Our hundred basilicas, the paintings and statues of our Christian artists that Italy and the world is so rich in, bear witness to this tribunal of truth to which anxious humanity, even from its earliest days, appeals. Phidias, Homer, Dante and Michael Angelo, Brunellesco and Orgagna, Raphael and Leonardo, Donatello and Ghiberti, and a hundred others, prove that religious inspiration is of so large a source that one can always draw from it; and although in the application of it the form may in a measure vary, yet it will always be great and admirable, because the mind that lifts itself up, though it may deviate more or less salient in curves, will always remain elevated. Correggio and Bernini, Guido Reni and the Caracci, were under the bad influence of their time as to method, but the intention was always good. And coming down to our recent fathers, and speaking always of artists, were Canova, Rossini, and Manzoni not great, for the very reason that they took their inspiration from religious subjects?
As the venerated name of Manzoni has fallen from my pen, I shall describe the visit that he made to my studio. When his visit was announced to me, I had but just finished the bas-relief for Santa Croce and the "Pietà." He was in company with the Marchese Gino Capponi, Aleardi, and Professor Giovan Battista Giorgini. After having seen several of my works, he stopped before the model in plaster of the bas-relief for Santa Croce, and said—
THE POWER OF FAITH.