Again to a friend Gibson writes:—
“I renewed my visits to the Vatican, refreshing my spirits in that Pantheon of the gods, demigods, and heroes of Hellas. . . . In the art of sculpture the Greeks were gods. . . . In the Vatican we go from statue to statue, from fragment to fragment, like the bee from flower to flower.”
These five years in which Canova, Thorwaldsen, and Gibson lived and wrought together—although the youngest of this trio was still in his student life—form a definite period in the history of modern art in Rome. The dreams, the enthusiasm, the devotion to ideal beauty which characterized their work left its impress and its vitality of influence—a mystic power ready to incarnate itself again through the facility of expression of the artists yet to come. To the young men whose steps were turned toward Rome in these early years of the century just passed, how great was the privilege of coming into close range of the influence of such artists as these; to study their methods; to hear the expression of their views on art in familiar meeting and conversation! These artists were closely in touch with that “lovely and faithful dream which came with Italian Renaissance in the works of Pisani, Mino di Fiesole, Donatello, Michael Angelo, and Giovanni da Bologna—all who caught the spirit of Greek art.” Artistic truth was the keynote of the hour, and it is this truth which is the basis of the highest conception of life.
“Art’s a service,—mark:
A silver key is given to thy clasp
And thou shalt stand unwearied night and day,
And fix it in the hard, slow-turning wards
To open, so that intermediate door
Betwixt the different planes of sensuous form
And form insensuous, that inferior men
May learn to feel on still through these to those,
And bless thy ministration. The world waits for help.”
In their true relation art and ethics meet in their ministry to humanity, for only in their union can they best serve man. All the nobler culture has its responsibility in service. “Many a man has a blind notion of stewardship about his property, but very few have it about their knowledge,” said Bishop Phillips Brooks, and he added: “One grows tired of seeing cultivated people with all their culture cursed by selfishness.” To the true idealist—as distinct from the mere emotionalist with æsthetic tastes—selfishness is an impossible prison. The only spiritual freedom lies in the perpetual sharing of the fuller life. The gift shared is the gift doubled. Art is the spiritual glory of life; the supreme manifestation, the very influence of spiritual achievement. Mr. Stillman, discussing the revival of art, has questioned: “Does the world want art any longer? Has it, in the present state of human progress, any place which will justify devotion to it?”
He questions as to whether man is still
“Apparelled in celestial light,”
or whether he has lost “the glory and the freshness” of his dreams.
“No one can admit,” continues Mr. Stillman, “that the human intellect is weaker than it was five or twenty centuries ago; but it is certain that if we take the pains to study what was done five centuries ago in painting, or twenty centuries ago in sculpture, and compare it with the best work of to-day, we shall find the latter trivial and ’prentice work compared with the ordinary work of men whose names are lost in the lustre of a school.
“Then, little men inspired by the Zeitgeist, painted greatly; now, our great men fail to reach the technical achievement of the little men of them. There is only one living painter who can treat a portrait as a Venetian artist of 1550 A.D. would have done it, and how differently in the mastery of his material! If we go to the work of wider range, the Campo Santo of Pisa, the Stanze, the Sistine Chapel, the distance becomes an abyss; the simplest fragment of a Greek statue of 450 B.C. shows us that the best sculpture of this century, even the French, is only a happy child-work, not even to be put in sight of Donatello or Michael Angelo. The reason is simple, and already indicated. The early men grew up in a system in which the power of expression was taught from childhood; they acquired method as the musician does now, and the tendency of the opinion of their time was to keep them in the good method.”