With life brightened and inspired by their sympathy, and by all the sources of interest and culture which their society included, Leighton began brooding over the work which he meant should embody the best of his attainments so far as they were then developed. Florence and her art had cast a spell on his spirit very early in his existence. He had become especially enamoured of Giotto, the half-Catholic, the half-Greek Giotto. Pheidias had not yet touched him intimately; but his loving, spontaneous appreciation of this Florentine master, whose work in one sense echoes the secret of the noble, serene sense of beauty to be found in that of the Greeks, proves that in very early days Leighton's receptive powers were alive to it. The subject which inspired his first great effort appealed especially to Leighton from more than one point of view. In the historical incident which he chose was evinced the great reverence and appreciation with which the early Florentines regarded art, even when expressed in the archaic form of Cimabue's painting. The fact of his picture of the Madonna causing so much public enthusiasm was in itself a glorification of art; a witness that in the integral feelings of these Italians such enthusiasm for art could be excited in all classes of the people. One of the doctrines Leighton most firmly believed, and most often expressed, was that of the necessity of a desire for beauty among the various classes of a nation, poor and rich alike, before art of the best could become current coin.[26] In painting the scene of Cimabue's Madonna being carried in triumph through the streets to the Church of Sta. Maria Novella, Leighton felt he could record not only his own reverence for his vocation, but the fact that all who follow art with love and sincerity find a common ground, whatever the class may be to which they belong. To Steinle, religion and art were as one, and his pupil had so far been inoculated with his master's feeling that, as his friend and brother artist, Mr. Briton Rivière, writes: "Art was to Leighton almost a religion, and his own particular belief almost a creed." As no difference of class should be recognised in church, so neither should any be accentuated between artists, when such are worthy of their calling, a belief which Leighton carried into practice all his life in his relations with his brother artists. He makes Cimabue, the noble, lead by the hand the shepherd boy Giotto, who was destined to outstrip his patron in the race for fame, and to become so great an influence in the history of his country's art. The magnates of the city are represented in Leighton's procession as forming part of it, while Dante, standing in a shadowed corner, is watching it pass.
Again, Leighton was afforded an opportunity, in the accessories of the design, of painting the things which had entranced him in those days when he first fell in love with Italy; the mediæval costumes in the old pictures, the background to the Città dei Fiori of hills, spiked with cypresses pointing dark, black-green fingers upwards to the sky, and the beautiful San Miniato crowning one of their summits, the stone pines, the carnations, the agaves—all these things that had appealed to his native sense of beauty as such wonderful revelations, when, at the age of ten, he was transported to the sunlit land of art and beauty, after being accustomed to the sights and surroundings of a dingy region in fog-begrimed London.
The subject of Leighton's early opus magnum was indeed no bare historical fact to his mind; it was a symbol of everything to which, in his enthusiasm for his calling, he attached the most earnest meaning, and which was also steeped in the radiant glamour cast over his spirit from childhood by the land that inspires all that is most ardent in the æsthetic emotions of an artist.
The subject decided on, in the spring-time of 1853 he began working, as hard as the trouble in his eyes would permit, at the cartoons for the design. His intention of remaining in Italy during the summer was frustrated, partly by the unsatisfactory state of his eyes and health generally, partly by the decision of his family to return to their home in Frankfort for the summer, before finally settling in Bath. This change of plans is first mentioned in a letter to Steinle received February 23, 1853:—
Translation.]
Rome, Via Di Porta Pinciano 8.
Dear Master and Friend,—How gladly I seize the opportunity to answer your delightful letter, and to connect myself again through the post with a man and a time round whom and which so many dear remembrances cling; that I did not do this immediately on receipt of your lines, I hope you have not set down to a possible negligence or to any sort of cooling of my grateful attachment to you, but that you have thought,—something has happened, Leighton has not forgotten me; and so it is; I suffer with my eyes. How sorry I am to begin a letter by giving you such news, for you expected only to hear from me of industrious making of progress; therefore exculpation of my silence is my first duty. The disorder of my eyes is not painful; I do not suffer with it; I am only incapacitated. Oh, that I were again in Frankfurt, then I should be well! Otherwise I am fairly well, and am intensely eager to do a great deal—and dare not; I am not altogether incapacitated, only my wings are clipped; I work for two or three hours every day, but as I cannot accomplish all that I desire, the little I can affords me the less pleasure; what, however, particularly damps my ardour is the lack of intellectual stimulus, because for nearly six weeks I have not looked at a book, for in the evening I simply dare not do anything. I have driven myself out into society, till I absolutely prefer going to bed. If I could only compose in my head! but first this was always difficult for my unquiet head, and secondly I have, in consequence of this moral Sirocco, been blown upon by such a svoglia-tezza that it is quite impossible; it only remains for me to think sadly of my, and I may say to you, most sympathetic friend, of our hopeful expectation, and to vex myself with the recollection of the zeal and joy with which I had commenced to put my plans into execution in Venice and Florence. My optic ailment is partly of the nerves, but principally rheumatic. You can imagine whether it has been improved by four weeks of unbroken wet weather! But enough of these complaints. I will now turn to your letter and answer the points on which you touch. What a refreshment your lines were to me! They are a mirror of your warm, rich soul; I read with unfeigned emotion how sympathetically you still think of your two pupils; you have not been out of our minds for a moment; see how it is in my atelier here: in your portrait you are bodily, in your writings you are spiritually, present with me daily. That I did not write to you immediately on my arrival was certainly wrong of me, for then I had not begun to suffer with my eyes; but my head was in such a maze that I always put off and thought, I will wait till I hear if he has received my first lines, quite forgetting that you did not know my address in Rome. I am sure you will forgive me. What you imagined about my impressions, agrees at the first blush with the facts, but as regards the "gathered honey" it has unfortunately turned out quite differently. I feel as if blighted, and until I have the full use of my eyes it will not be otherwise. Of Rico I will say nothing, for he will write himself either to-day or to-morrow; I can only tell you that so far we have travelled through Italy in perfect concord and friendship; but there is one thing that he will not tell you himself, he is indefatigably industrious, and has made marked progress in both drawing and painting. One word about my own development. Since I left Frankfurt, my observations on nature and art, in all beyond what is technical, have produced in me a curious shyness, a peculiar and uncomfortable distrust of myself. When on my journey I saw Nature unfold before my eyes in her teeming summer glory, and saw how each flower is like a miracle on her richly worked garment, when I saw how golden threads wound everywhere through the whole fabric of beauty, then it seemed to me that the artist could not without sacrilege pass over the least thing that is sealed with the love of the Creator; when, later on, I noticed in Venice and Florence with what love and truth the great Masters had rendered the smallest, then my feelings arose; I knew only too well that I, until I should have drawn a multitude of studies, could not possibly complete a composition in the sense that I should wish, and otherwise I would not; and the consequence of this knowledge is that I have not attempted a stroke of composition, and I often anxiously ask myself whether I could; thus far it has worked to paralyse me, but on the other hand it has led me to draw some very complete studies which would certainly not displease you, dear Master. Finally, I touch upon a point which, on account of its painfulness, I would gladly pass over. I heard in Florence from André of your severe loss, and my first impulse was to write to you to express my sympathy; but when I set about it, I found it so infinitely difficult to say anything suitable without irritating your wound, that in the end I forbore. Your consolation you draw from a higher source than human friendship.
We have visited Overbeck several times, and have found him a dear and estimable old man, but naturally the difference of age and of aims is too great between us for him to supply your place with us; besides, I do not wish that he should in any way supplant Steinle in my memory or affection.
Flatz and Rhoden have welcomed us both most cordially; your name is a charm with them; as regards their art, both are thoroughly able, but unfortunately such literal copyists of Overbeck's style that absolutely no difference is perceptible; consequently they are quite insipid to me, for I consider a real independence indispensably necessary in an artist. From all three I send you most cordial greetings.
Much as I could still tell you, my dear friend, I must hasten to a close on account of my eyes. I beg you not to repay my silence in kind, but when you have a moment, put a few lines on paper for the encouragement of your distant pupil. I long also to know how your works prosper, particularly the large one on the grey canvas with the light from above.