And consider that old man forsaken of his children—Lear. His complaints and tempers seem almost childish at times; and yet through that play, more than through any other written expression of human woe, runs the feeling and the passion of a great heart breaking through ingratitude. Again think of that last act in “The Cenci,” with Beatrice cursed by fate, stained with crime, and finally brought face to face with trial and death. Have you ever read or known of such another whirlwind of wildness and calmness, of weakness and fortitude, of courage and fear! And the ghastly, creeping horror of it all! Can you not feel it? Neither Shakespeare nor Shelley can chart and scale upon a board the passion he would show us. It could not be pinned down or summed up scientifically. It can, in fact, be brought home to us only by that great under-current running through all notable art—feeling.
Consider once again Wagner’s “Götterdämmerung!” How would it be possible to tell with musical notes all the tragic power that lies in that opera? Wagner himself was not able to do it. What he did was to summon up a romantic mood of mind by contemplating the theme in his imagination and then, to suggest by a choice of motives and orchestration, the immense passion of the story. By following the orchestration rather than the individual singers you can feel in the different motifs the poetry of that heroic age—the glorious achievements, the sad passing, the mournful sunset, the fading into oblivion of those who ruled the beautiful world. If you cannot feel the mystery, the sadness, the splendor of it all, I am afraid it argues some want of music and romance in your soul rather than a want of poetry in the opera. The feeling is there; it is the last thing perhaps to be recognized by the student of music, and yet it is the one thing above all others that has made Wagner a great poet. He could suggest more than he could describe, and because he suggests and does not describe is one reason why he is, at first, so difficult to understand.
XIX.—GAINSBOROUGH, Mrs. Siddons. National Gallery, London.
The picture in this respect, is not different from music or literary poetry. Poetic feeling in painting may be and has been shown in many subjects and in many ways. If we go back to the Gothic period in Italy, when the painters were just emerging from mediævalism, we shall find a profound feeling for religion. It shows in Giotto and the Florentines, in Duccio and the Sienese. They do not know how to draw, color, or light a picture correctly; they are just learning to paint, and like children they feel infinitely more than they can express. And they do not try to express any precise or detailed account of Christianity. They could not if they would. That which is called “religious feeling” in the altar-pieces of the Gothic period and the early Renaissance is really a mental and emotional attitude of the painter—a fine sentiment, an exquisite tenderness in the presentation of biblical themes and characters. It is no matter whether the sentiment is really religious or merely human; it is in either case poetic. And it is no matter whether the painter’s devotion and earnestness were misplaced or not; at least they were sincere. There never was a time in the history of painting when the body of artists believed more thoroughly in their theme, their work, and themselves than during that early Italian time.
You can see this well exemplified in Orcagna—in his “Last Judgment” in Santa Maria Novella. The Madonna looking up at her Son is an embodiment of all the pietistic sentiment of the time. The figure is ill-drawn, stiff, archaic-looking; but in the white-cowled face what purity, what serenity, what pathos! The clasped hands seem moved in prayer; the upturned eyes look unutterable adoration. Orcagna is bent upon telling the faith of the Madonna in her Son, but he can only do so by telling the faith that is within his own soul. His revelation is a self-revelation, but it is not the less a religious feeling and a poetic feeling. Is this not equally true of that pious monk of San Marco, Fra Angelico? Can there be any doubt about his life-long sympathy with religion and the religious theme in art? It was his sympathy that begat his painting. That sweet, fair face full of divine tenderness, which we have so often seen in the copies of his trumpet-blowing angels, is it not the earthly embodiment of a divine spirit?
Fra Angelico was the last of the great religionists in art, and before his death the sentiment of religion began to wane in the works of his contemporaries. They were straying from the religious to the naturalistic subject, but wherever their sympathy extended their feeling showed. When Masaccio, Benozzo, Botticelli, and Leonardo began to study the outer world with what earnestness and love they pictured the humanity, the trees, the grasses, the flowers, the long, flowing hill-lines, and the wide, expanding Italian sky. Botticelli’s “Allegory of Spring” (Plate [29]) or Benozzo’s “Adoration of the Magi” in the Riccardi palace (Plates [2] and [17]) or Leonardo’s face of “Mona Lisa” must have been seen sympathetically and thought over passionately, else we never should have felt their beauty. Benozzo, inheriting his religious point of view from Fra Angelico, blends his love of man, animals, and landscape with his belief that they are all made for righteousness; Botticelli is so intense that he is half-morbid in his sensitiveness; and Leonardo, with that charm of mood and sweetness of disposition in the “Mona Lisa,” is really transcendental. It is all fine, pictorial poetry, howbeit more in the suggestion than in the absolute realization.
This quality of poetry shown so largely in what I have called “feeling” is apparent in all great art, regardless of nationality or subject. The Venetians, for example, had none of the intense piety of the Umbrians, but they had perhaps just as much poetry. Even the early Venetians, like Carpaccio and Bellini, were more material than Fra Angelico and Filippino. They painted the Madonna with all seriousness and sincerity, with belief in the truth of their theme, but with a human side, as noble in its way as the spiritual, and just as truly marked by poetic feeling (Plate [7]). After them came another painter, of greater skill and power. He was not so boyish in his enthusiasm as Carpaccio, but Theocritus in love with pastoral nature never had so much feeling for the pure joy of living as Giorgione. His shepherds seated on a hill-side playing and singing, in a fine landscape and under a blue sky, make up a picture far removed in spirit from theology, philosophy, science, war, or commerce. The world of action is forgotten and in its place there is Arcadia with sunlight and flowers, with beautiful women and strong men. But is it not nobly poetic? When Giorgione painted the Castelfranco Madonna (Plate [24]) he did not change his spirit to suit the subject. The picture has written upon the face of the Madonna as upon the face of the landscape: “I believe in the beauty and glory of the world.” You may call this a pagan belief if you choose, but it is with Giorgione a sincere and a poetic belief.
Correggio at Parma was not materially different from Giorgione as regards the spirit of his art. His religious characters were only so in name. He never had the slightest sympathy with the melodramatic side of the Christian faith and could not depict the tragic without becoming repulsive; but he saw the beauty of women and children in landscape and he felt the splendor of sunlight and shadow and color (Plate [8]). There is no mystery or austerity or solemnity or intellectuality about his characters. They are not burdened with the cares of the world; but how serenely and superbly they move and have their being! What grace of action! What poetry of motion! What loveliness of color! Shall you say that there is no poetry in that which appeals directly to the senses, that which belongs only to the earth? As well contend that there is no beauty in the blue sky, no loveliness in flowers, no grace in the wave that curves and falls on the beach.
