CHAPTER V.
OF THE FALSE IDEAL:—SECONDLY, PROFANE.
§ 1. Such having been the effects of the pursuit of ideal beauty on the religious mind of Europe, we might be tempted next to consider in what way the same movement affected the art which concerned itself with profane subject, and, through that art, the whole temper of modern civilization.
I shall, however, merely glance at this question. It is a very painful and a very wide one. Its discussion cannot come properly within the limits, or even within the aim, of a work like this; it ought to be made the subject of a separate essay, and that essay should be written by some one who had passed less of his life than I have among the mountains, and more of it among men. But one or two points may be suggested for the reader to reflect upon at his leisure.
§ 2. I said just now that we might be tempted to consider how this pursuit of the ideal affected profane art. Strictly speaking, it brought that art into existence. As long as men sought for truth first, and beauty secondarily, they cared chiefly, of course, for the chief truth, and all art was instinctively religious. But as soon as they sought for beauty first, and truth secondarily, they were punished by losing sight of spiritual truth altogether, and the profane (properly so called) schools of art were instantly developed.
The perfect human beauty, which, to a large part of the community, was by far the most interesting feature in the work of the rising school, might indeed be in some degree consistent with the agony of Madonnas, and the repentance of Magdalenes; but could not be exhibited in fulness, when the subjects, however irreverently treated, nevertheless demanded some decency in the artist, and some gravity in the spectator. The newly acquired powers of rounding limbs, and tinting lips, had too little scope in the sanctities even of the softest womanhood; and the newly acquired conceptions of the nobility of nakedness could in no wise be expressed beneath the robes of the prelate or the sackcloth of the recluse. But the source from which these ideas had been received afforded also full field for their expression; the heathen mythology, which had furnished the examples of these heights of art, might again become the subject of the inspirations it had kindled;—with the additional advantage that it could now be delighted in, without being believed; that its errors might be indulged, unrepressed by its awe; and those of its deities whose function was temptation might be worshipped, in scorn of those whose hands were charged with chastisement.
So, at least, men dreamed in their foolishness,—to find, as the ages wore on, that the returning Apollo bore not only his lyre, but his arrows; and that at the instant of Cytherea's resurrection to the sunshine, Persephone had reascended her throne in the deep.
§ 3. Little thinking this, they gave themselves up fearlessly to the chase of the new delight, and exhausted themselves in the pursuit of an ideal now doubly false. Formerly, though they attempted to reach an unnatural beauty, it was yet in representing historical facts and real persons; now they sought for the same unnatural beauty in representing tales which they knew to be fictitious, and personages who they knew had never existed. Such a state of things had never before been found in any nation. Every people till then had painted the acts of their kings, the triumphs of their armies, the beauty of their race, or the glory of their gods. They showed the things they had seen or done; the beings they truly loved or faithfully adored. But the ideal art of modern Europe was the shadow of a shadow; and with mechanism substituted for perception, and bodily beauty for spiritual life, it set itself to represent men it had never seen, customs it had never practised, and gods in whom it had never believed.
§ 4. Such art could of course have no help from the virtues, nor claim on the energies of men. It necessarily rooted itself in their vices and their idleness; and of their vices principally in two, pride and sensuality. To the pride, was attached eminently the art of architecture; to the sensuality, those of painting and sculpture. Of the fall of architecture, as resultant from the formalist pride of its patrons and designers, I have spoken elsewhere. The sensualist ideal, as seen in painting and sculpture, remains to be examined here. But one interesting circumstance is to be observed with respect to the manner of the separation of these arts. Pride, being wholly a vice, and in every phase inexcusable, wholly betrayed and destroyed the art which was founded on it. But passion, having some root and use in healthy nature, and only becoming guilty in excess, did not altogether destroy the art founded upon it. The architecture of Palladio is wholly virtueless and despicable. Not so the Venus of Titian, nor the Antiope of Correggio.