Woman in Science / With an Introductory Chapter on Woman's Long Struggle for Things of the Mind

by J. A. Zahm

Queen Caroline proved her interest in the excavations that were to contribute so much to our knowledge of antiquity "by appearing frequently at Pompeii and stimulating the workmen to greater efforts. She frequently spent entire days, during the great heat of summer, at the excavations, to encourage the lazy workmen and to reward them in the event of success. The funds were increased so as to make the employment of six hundred men possible. The Street of Tombs was next uncovered, forming a complete and solemn picture, greatly impressing the beholder even to-day. For the first time a complete outline of an ancient marketplace and its surroundings could be obtained. The market, closed and inaccessible to wheeled traffic, was surrounded by a colonnade filled with monuments, with the great temple in the background, and beyond the arcades were other temples or public buildings, among the principal being the stately Basilica. Constant and increased efforts were thus crowned by important results. The Queen did not withhold generous assistance. The French architect, Fr. Mazois, received from her fifteen hundred francs while preparing his monumental work at Pompeii."[217]

It is not too much to say that Queen Caroline's archæological work at Pompeii was as far-reaching in its results as was that of her illustrious brother in the land of the Pharaohs. It drew in the most impressive manner the attention of the world to the vast treasures of art which lay concealed under the earth-covered ruins of the once noted cities of the ancient world, and stimulated scholars and learned societies to undertake similar researches in Sicily, Greece, Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, and the almost forgotten islands of the Ægean Seas.

While this energetic sister of the great Napoleon was occupied in bringing to light those priceless treasures of art which had for seventeen centuries lain beneath the ashes of Vesuvius, a bright, refined, spirituelle young girl, born in Dublin and bred in England, was unconsciously preparing herself for a brilliant career in the branch of archæology known as Christian iconography. Her name was Anna Murphy, better known to the world as Mrs. Jameson. At an early age she gave evidence of unusual intelligence, and she had hardly attained to womanhood when she was noted for her knowledge of languages and for her remarkable attainments in art and literature. Numerous journeys to France, Italy and Germany and a systematic study in the great museums and art galleries of these countries, but, above all, her association with the most distinguished scholars of Europe, completed her education and prepared her for those splendid works on Christian art which have made her name a household word throughout the world.

Mrs. Jameson was a prolific writer, but those of her works on which her fame chiefly rests are the ones which are classed under the general title, Sacred and Legendary Art. They treat of God the Father and Son, of the Madonna and the Saints, as illustrated in art from the earliest ages to modern times. So masterly and exhaustive was her treatment of the difficult subjects discussed in this chef d'œuvre of hers that no less an authority than the eminent German archæologist, F. X. Kraus, writes of this elaborate production as follows:

"Neither before nor since has the subject matter of this work been handled with such skill and thoroughness. The older iconographic works were mere dilettanteism. For the first time since classical archæology had applied the principles of modern criticism to Greek and Roman iconography, and had presented an example of scientific treatment free from such reproach, was a serious iconography of our early Christian monuments possible. Mrs. Jameson was the first to attempt this on a large scale. It was clear to her—and here lay the advance which her work reveals—that in order to accomplish her colossal task two things must be realized. She must not build on a foundation of material that is imperfect or brought together in a haphazard way. She must not only see and test everything available in the way of monuments, but she must likewise place the productions of literature and poetry beside those of the plastic arts. It was clear to her, also, that, in this case, one would throw light on the other, and that the investigator who would lay claim to the name of archæologist must, moreover, study the spirit of a people in all its monumental and literary manifestations.

"Mrs. Jameson strove to learn the mind and the mode of early Christian times from the works of the Fathers. She saw in the hymns of the Middle Ages and in the writings of the mystics the sources of the art ideas which disclose themselves in the wall and glass paintings of our cathedrals and in the entrancing creation of a Fiesole. She had also the special advantage of being thoroughly imbued with Dante's ideas of the plastic arts of the Middle Ages.

"And all this is evidenced in a form which exhibits neither dry dissertation nor wearisome nomenclature. Each of her articles is a little essay. It teaches us what place the Madonna, or St. Catherine, or some other saint has held in the memory and in the imagination of past centuries. We behold the sainted forms flitting before our eyes in all the charm of poetic perfection which was given them by the childlike phantasy of the Middle Ages, and in all the power which they exercised over men's minds, and which, however we may view the religious side of the question, certainly had the effect of creating forms of infinite beauty and pictures of unspeakable reality."[218]

When we recollect that Mrs. Jameson achieved so much before the foundations of Christian archæology had been fully laid; before de Rossi's monumental publications had supplied the means of interpreting early Christian sculpture; before critics and archæologists were at one regarding the significance of early Christian and Middle Age symbolism, or agreed on the principles that were to guide to a correct understanding of the pictures of Roman and Gothic art, and while students were yet in ignorance as to the real influence of Byzantine art on that of western Europe, we cannot but wonder at the courage and the energy of this gifted woman in undertaking and in bringing to a happy issue a work which, even to-day, with all our increased facilities and greater array of facts, would be considered a herculean task.

As we read her admirable volumes on Sacred and Legendary Art we can, as did a close friend of hers, see the enraptured author "kindle into enthusiasm amidst the gorgeous natural beauty, the antique memorials and the sacred Christian relics of Italy," and we are prepared to believe, with the same friend, that there was not "a cypress on the Roman hills, or a sunny vine overhanging the southern gardens, or a picture in those vast somber galleries of foreign palaces, or a catacomb spread out, vast and dark, under the martyr churches of the City of the Seven Hills, which was not associated with some vivid flashes of her intellect and imagination." And we can also understand how "the strange, mystic symbolism of the early mosaics was a familiar language to her," and why she should experience special delight when she found herself "on the polished marble of the Lateran floor or under the gorgeously somber tribune of the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, reading off the quaint emblems or expounding the pious thoughts of more than a thousand years ago."[219]

It is gratifying to know that Queen Victoria recognized the surpassing merits of this noble woman by placing her on the civil list, and that our own Longfellow was able to say of her masterpiece, Sacred and Legendary Art, "It most amply supplies the cravings of the religious sentiment of the spiritual nature within."