The Renaissance, that is, the resurrection, in the beginning of the fifteenth century, of ideas and forms of classic antiquity, was preceded by individual efforts which, though often failing to reach the mark, ought to be taken account of in the history of this great revolution. The plastic memories of the Græco-Roman world have played in the preoccupation of the Middle Ages a more considerable rôle than is usually thought. Mere force of events put our ancestors in the presence of ancient chefs-d’œuvre, and they had to look at them whether they would or not. Some saw in them only idolatrous monuments, and have found fault with them as such. Others attributed to them magic virtues; some have given themselves up to the admiration they felt in looking at the immensity of Roman ruins, the richness of early materials, the perfection of the handiwork. These latter, it might be affirmed, are the most numerous. Even during the most sombre period of the Middle Ages, all Europe felt the fascination that Rome, the oldest city par excellence, exercised for twenty centuries. That which attracted from far and near thousands of visitors to the banks of the Tiber was not only the promise of indulgencies, a desire to pray on the tomb of martyrs, to contemplate basilics resplendent with gold and precious stones, but also memories left by the cæsars.
After having heard with a kind of incredulity the marvels of this incomparable city, one is further amazed by the number of its temples, palaces, baths, and amphitheatres. Have not reliable authors told us that she lately possessed thirty-six triumphal arches, twenty-eight libraries, 856 public baths, twenty-two equestrian statues in gilded bronze, eighty-four of the same in ivory, obelisks, and innumerable colossi?
Doorway, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence
From the twelfth century popular imagination laid hold of these pictures, transforming and amplifying them. Wondrous tales became current and were incorporated in works received as authoritative—the Descriptis plenaria Votius Urbis, the Graphia aurea urbis Romæ, and lastly the Mirabilia civitatis Romæ. Again at the end of the fifteenth century the valiant Charles VIII, wanting to give his subjects some idea of the town into which he had lately entered lance in hand, caused one of these records of another age to be translated for them. A few extracts will show with what strong faith these stories worthy of The Thousand and One Nights were received before the Renaissance:
“Inside the capital was the greater part of a golden palace adorned with precious stones and said to equal the third part of the world, in which there were as many statues of images as there are provinces in all the world. Each image had a tambourine round its neck, placed with mathematical art, so that if any region was in rebellion against the Romans, immediately the image of the province turned its back to the image of the city of Rome, which was the largest and dominated the others, and the tambourine at its neck sounded. Then immediately the Capitol guards told this to the senate, and people were forthwith sent to expugn that province.
“The horses and nude men denote that in the time of the emperor Tiberius there were two young philosophers, that is, Praxiteles and Phitas, who said they were so wise that anything the emperor said in his room, they not being there, could report word for word. And they did as they said, not demanding money for it, but to be always remembered, so the philosophers have two marble horses with their feet on the ground, which denote the princes of this century. And they who are naked on the horses denote that their arm, high and held out, and their bent backs speak of things to come, and as they are naked, so the science of this world was naked and open to their understanding.”
From admiration to imitation is only one step. Artists in their turn went to work and took without scruple from what was a common heritage. Doubtless many of these borrowings are unconscious or really only show up the immense inferiority of the copyist. But is the influence of the antique less striking? One must recall in this order of ideas the splendid creations of architects in the Roman period—the duomo, the campanile, and the baptistery of Pisa, the baptistery of Florence, and the basilica of San Miniato, the duomo of Lucca, and so many chefs-d’œuvre raised according to principles that innovators of the following age, the champions of Gothic style, were so audaciously to trample underfoot.
Nicholas Crescentius (son of the celebrated tribune) in the eleventh century, impelled by a desire to renew the ancient splendour of Rome, had the elegant little house at Ponte Rotto built of antique fragments. Similarly the emperor Frederick Barbarossa (1121-1190) had these former glories in mind, when he had graven on his seal a view of Rome with the Colosseum. But it was to his illustrious grandson Frederick II (1184-1250) that the honour is due of first pleading the cause of the Renaissance, and he should rightly be placed at the head of the precursors. We possess numerous witnesses of his love for the monuments of ancient art.