But lest, in quoting from writers zealously devoted to the Roman Creed, we may seem to admit that such sympathies belong not to Protestant breasts, it will be well to appeal to one whose pen has, with no common success, combated the usages wherein popery most startles those whose faith is based on the Reformation. "I never looked at the pictures of one of these men that it did not instantaneously affect me, alluring me into a sort of dream or reverie, while my imagination was called into very lively activity. It is not that their drawing is good; for, on the other hand, it is often stiff, awkward, and unnatural. Nor is it that their imagination, as exhibited in grouping their figures or embodying the story to be represented, was correct or natural; for often it is most absurd and grotesque. But still there is palpably the embodiment of an idea; an idea pure, holy, exquisite, and too much so to seem capable of expression by the ordinary powers either of language or of the pencil. Yet the idea is there. And it must have had a mysterious and wondrous power on the imagination of these men, it must have thoroughly mastered and possessed them, or they never could have developed such an exquisite ideal of calm, peaceful, meek, heavenly holiness, as stands out so constantly and so pre-eminently in their paintings." In noticing the cavils of connoisseurs upon these paintings this author happily observes, that they were "looking for earthly creatures and found heavenly ones; and, expecting unholy expressions, were disappointed at finding none but the holy."[121]
We may here remark, in passing, the nearly coeval introduction of a class of themes which, though innovating upon the purity of Catholic faith, were admirably adapted to develop the mystic tendencies of devotional painting. It was about the thirteenth century that the Madonna acquired the unfortunately paramount place in the Romish worship she has since been permitted to hold. Her history became a favourite topic of Franciscan and other popular preachers, at once facile and fascinating. Not content with describing the scriptural events of her life, they adopted traditions regarding her birth, marriage, and death; or the more abstruse and questionable legends of her miraculous conception, her assumption, exaltation, and her coronation as queen of heaven, and the cintola or girdle by which she drew up souls from limbo. It would be quite foreign to the matter in hand were we to examine the orthodoxy of these devotional novelties, or their influence upon the social estimate of the female character. Enough to observe that they speedily enriched Christian art in all its branches, but chiefly in Umbria, where, in accordance with the prevailing popular taste, such of them as partook of dogmatic mystery gained a preference over more real or scenic incidents. The early Giottists were wont to close their dramatic delineations of her earthly history with a peaceful death, its only artistic licence being the transit of her soul in the shape of a swaddled babe. But the Madonna-worship of this more spiritual school was satisfied with nothing short of her translation in the body, direct to realms of bliss from amid a concourse of adoring disciples. In like manner, the old Byzantine painters inscribed over her image one uniform epigraph, "the Mother of God"; whilst the devotional masters delighted to seat her beyond the skies, where her blessed Son placed a diadem upon her brows as the queen of heaven. It hence became an established practice of the latter to depict her charms, not after the mould in which nature cast fair but frail humanity, but to clothe them in abstract and purer beauty appropriate to one whom, though incarnate, they were taught to regard as divine.
[CHAPTER XXVII]
The Umbrian school of painting, its scholars and influence—Fra Angelico da Fiesole—Gentile da Fabriano—Pietro Perugino—Artists at Urbino—Piero della Francesca—Fra Carnevale—Francesco di Giorgio.
THE Umbrian art, of which we have attempted to trace the origin, has not hitherto met with the notice which it merits. Lanzi allowed it no separate place among the fourteen schools under which he has arranged Italian painting, and, by scattering its most important names, has lost sight of certain characteristics which, rather than any common education, link its masters together. Nor was this omission wonderful, for the Umbrian painters and their works were dispersed over many towns and villages, none of which could be considered the head-quarters of a school, and to visit these distant localities would have been a task of difficulty and disappointment. The patronage of princes and communities seems to have been sparingly bestowed in that mountain-land. Assisi, adorned by many Florentine strangers, was mother rather than nurse of its native art, and other religious houses wanted the means or the spirit to follow her brilliant example. Hence the comparatively few opportunities afforded to the Christian painters of Umbria of executing great works in fresco, the peculiar vehicle of pictorial grandeur; and alas! of these few, a considerable proportion has been lost to us under the barbarism of whitewash.[122] The revival of feeling for religious art, of late commenced by the Germans, and their persevering zeal in illustrating its neglected monuments, have established the existence of an Umbrian school in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; but its history remains to be written.[*123] The task would carry us too far from the leading subject of these volumes, yet we shall endeavour in a few pages to sketch its development, from the dreamy anchorites whose rude pencils embodied the visions of their favourite St. Francis, to Raffaele, whose high mission it was to perfect devotional painting,[*124] apart from the alloy of human passions, and to withstand for a time that influx of pagan and naturalist corruptions, which after his premature death overwhelmed it.
Two fanes were commenced in the thirteenth century near the Tiber, which became conspicuous as shrines equally of Christian devotion and Christian art. The cathedral of Orvieto for two hundred years attracted from all parts of Italy many of the best artificers in sculpture and painting, some of whom, arriving from Umbria, carried back new inspirations to their homes. The sanctuary of St. Francis, at Assisi, coeval with the dawn of Italian art, borrowed its earliest embellishments from Tuscany,[*125] where Giotto and his followers were ingrafting on design two novel ingredients—dramatic composition and allegorical allusion. The former of these elements distinguished the Florentine from contemporary schools, and carried it beyond them in variety and effect, preparing a way for the pictorial power which Raffaele and Michael Angelo perfected. To the inspirations of Dante it owed the latter element, and to the enthusiastic though tardy admiration which his fellow-citizens indulged for his wildly poetical mysticism, may be ascribed the abiding impress of a tendency which not only authorised but encouraged new and varied combinations. The rigid outlines, monotonous conventional movements, and soulless countenances of Byzantium gradually were mellowed into life and beauty; but it is curious to observe how much sooner genius caught the spirit than the form,—how it succeeded in embodying expression long before it could master the more technical difficulties of design, action, and shadow. The credit claimed for Giotto of introducing physiognomical expression is, however, only partially true. Compared with the Greek works, or even with those of his immediate antecedents, Cimabue, Guido, and Margaritone, his heads, indeed, beam with animated intelligence, and feel the movement which he first communicated to his groups. Yet not less was the still and unimpassioned, but deep-seated emotion which the Umbrian painters embodied in their miniatures and panels, an improvement upon the lifeless and angular mechanism of the Byzantine artificers, although these very opposite qualities are generally condemned to the same category of contemptible feebleness by our pretended connoisseurs, glibly discussing masters whose real works they never saw, or are unable from ignorance and prejudice to appreciate. Such a state of art could not, however, remain wedded to a few fixed types. It was inherently one of transition, and necessarily led to a gradual abandonment of the Giottist manner of representation, while it enlarged the principles of composition introduced by Giotto. Beato Angelico, the first Florentine who successfully departed from that style, reawakening the old religious spirit, and embodying in it forms of purity never before or since attained, forsook not wholly the Dantesque spirit. His passing influence yielded to a manner more in unison with the times, which was formed and nearly perfected by Masaccio; but still Dante was not left behind. Luca Signorelli, issuing from his Umbrian mountains and his Umbrian master, imbibed at Florence the lofty images of "the bard of hell," and energetically reproduced them in the duomo of Orvieto, in startling contrast with the works of Angelico, and other devoted masters, who had previously decorated that museum of art.
There, too, had been wrought some choice productions of the Pisan sculptors,[*126] but their tendency to clothe nature in the forms of antique design met with little sympathy, and no imitation, from students whose minds were preoccupied by tales of St. Francis, and thus it is unnecessary here to notice them further. The Sienese school is in an entirely different category. Without encumbering ourselves at present by the definitions and distinctions of German æsthetic criticism, we shall merely remark that the painters of Siena, from Guido until late in the fifteenth century, never lost sight of that sentimental devotion which we have already described as the soul of Christian art, and which so curiously pervades the statutes of their guild formerly quoted. The cathedral of Orvieto was founded in 1290 by a Sienese architect, who, as we may well suppose, brought some of his countrymen to assist in its embellishment, and to infuse these principles among the native students, who, from assistants, became master-artificers of its decorations. Nor was this the only link which connected Sienese art with the confines of Umbria. The scattered townships in the Val di Chiana preserve in their remaining early altar-panels clear evidence that these were supplied from Siena; and Taddeo Bartolo, repairing thence in 1403 to Perugia, and perhaps to Assisi, left proofs that the bland sentimentalism of his native school might be united with a tranquil majesty, to which the Giottists had scarcely attained.[*127]
Having thus briefly touched upon foreign influences which told on the pictorial character of Umbria, we are prepared to consider the most remarkable artificers whom it has produced, especially in the duchy of Urbino. Of these the first place is due on many accounts to Oderigi da Gubbio,[*128] for, besides his claim to be founder of the schools of Gubbio and Bologna, he is celebrated among the most excellent miniaturists of his time by Dante, who has placed him in purgatory, a sentence justly deemed by Ticozzi somewhat severe for "the head and front of his offending," that of over-zeal in his art.