As the age in which Shakspeare wrote, had he not been in existence, would still have been remarkable on account of its dramatic writers, so the Cinque Cento is equally distinguished as the era of the arts. Yet has no very satisfactory cause been assigned for the direction of the human mind to these particular pursuits at these precise periods; for, simultaneously in countries differing in climate, governments, and manners, have the requisite men of genius arisen.
It might be easier to account for the depression than the rise of the noblest arts. Of this we shall presently speak; aware, at the same time, how ungracious will be the words which will admit of a decadence among ourselves. When we boast of our "enlightened age," it would not be amiss that we stay for a moment our pride, look back, and consider how much we have absolutely lost; in how much we are inferior. Every age seems destined to do its own work, which it does nearly to the perfection of its given art or science. Succeeding ages are destined rather to invent new than to improve upon the old. What has been done, becomes an accumulated wealth that Time deposits ever, and passes on to continual work to add fresh materials, and stock the world with the means of general improvement and happiness. There is always progression, but it is a progression of invention; the destined works are too vast, too infinite to allow a long delay in the advancement of any one accomplishment. It is rapidly completed; we are scarcely allowed time to stand and wonder; we must pass on to perform something new. Yet, if such attained thing shall be lost, or nearly so, the power to create it again may be again given; but it works de novo, adapting itself to the new principle which has rendered the reproduction advantageous, if not necessary. Thus, for instance, in the ages which we are pleased to call dark, to what magnitude and what exactness of beauty did not architecture reach, and that in a particularly inventive style—the Gothic—borrowing not from what had before been, and which had been held perfect, a style upon which we do not now even hope to improve, but content ourselves with admiring and copying. Thus it should seem that where any thing like a practical continuance of an art has been permitted, the entirely new direction it has taken would show that invention, required for the age, was the object, and that, too, bounded by a limit. "For this purpose have I raised thee up," would appear to be the text upon which the histories of the arts, as of every thing human, may be considered the comment.
It is to the total loss of ancient art that mankind are indebted for its revival, its re-discovery, as it were; for little or nothing was left from which, as from an old stock, art was to begin.
The new Christian principle created a new mind, to which there was little consonant in what was known, however imperfectly, of ancient works. Hence what is termed revival might, with more aptitude of expression, be called the re-discovery.
Had art been uninterruptedly continued from the days of Apelles, it would probably have degenerated to its lowest state. The destruction, the altogether vanishing away of the former glory, was essential to the rise of the new. All was nearly obliterated. Of the innumerable statues of which Greece was plundered by the Romans, but six were to be found—five of marble, and one of brass—in the city of Rome, at the beginning of the fifteenth century; so that art may be said to have been defunct. The decadence of architecture seems also to have been required for the originating the Gothic, for the inventing altogether a new style, which had no prototype. It was necessary to the establishing the Christian principle operatively, that the mind should be wrested powerfully from former and antagonistic ideas. And this could scarcely have been effected had any thing like a continual, an important succession of vigorous life in these arts been allowed.
It seems to have been the work of a great guiding will, that the way should be prepared for renovation, by the almost entire loss or mutilation of the greatest works of former periods, and by the veil of ignorance which victorious barbarism spread before all eyes, that they should not distinguish through that cloud the remnant of a glory which was too great to be altogether destroyed. The very language which spoke of it was a buried charm, that the oblivion might be more perfect. And not until the now grown Christian mind required the re-discovery of art, was that tongue loosened. The revival of ancient literature and the birth of new art were simultaneous. With the latter, at least, it was more than a sleep from which it arose—it was from a death, with all the marks of its corruption.
We do not mean to assert that art rose at once full-grown, as Pallas from the head of Jove. It had undoubtedly its progression; but it did not grow from an old stock; and hence it did grow and arose unimpeded and unchoked by an unwholesome exuberance, to the greatest splendour and glory. Whether there can be again any new principle which will require new inventions, it would be almost presumptuous to consider; but we do feel assured that should it be so, there will not be an adaptation of present means to it, but that the wing of oblivion must have to sweep over, overshadow, and obliterate the present multifarious form and body of art. The fine arts are not like the exact sciences, always progressing from accumulative knowledge towards their final and sure establishment of truth; on the contrary, their great truths recede further from view, as knowledge is accumulated, and practice, deteriorates by example. Science is truth to be dug out of the earth, as it were; a precious ore, not strictly ours, but by and for our use. The fine arts are in a far greater degree ours, for they are of the mind's creation; they are the product of a faculty given, indeed, but given to create and not to gather, and dig up ready-made for our purpose; they are of that faculty which has given the name to the poet, as altogether the maker. They give that to the world which it never could have received by any accumulation of fact and knowledge. Take away the individual genius, the inventive, the creating mind of the one man, the Homer, the Dante, the Shakspeare, the Michael Angelo, the Raffaelle, and the whole product is annihilated; we cannot even conceive of its existence, know of no mine wherein to dig, no facts, no knowledge out of which it can grow. That creating power may, indeed, turn all existing things to its use, all facts and all knowledge; but it commands and is not governed by them—is a power in no degree dependant on them, which would still be, though they existed not—a power which, if it exhausted worlds, would invent new for its purpose. To whom, then, are such powers given? for what purpose?—and are they of a gift deteriorated in its use and abuse? Alas! they are still of the "corruptible," and cannot, in our present state, "put on incorruption." They are, however, of the mind, which may be purified and strengthened, or corrupted and degraded.
They effect in a great degree, and suitably to the age's requirement, their purpose. Corrupted from the ardour and sincerity of their first passion, and by the admission, little by little, of what is vicious, and yet which, we must confess, has its beauty; their very aim becomes changed, less large by subdivision, and less sure by confusion and uncertainty of aim, until all purpose be lost, in a low satisfaction in mere dexterity and mindless imitation. And what shall stay art in such downward way of decadence? Can a strong impulse be given to it—for there is no strength but the mind's strength? It is not patronage, but purpose, which is wanted. What shall revivify the passion that gave it earnestness,—the sincerity, the trust in itself, the confidence in its own high-mindedness, the sense of the importance of its objects, and the true glory of their pursuit? We have our fears that we are doing much to multiply artists, and degrade art. We distribute patronage in so many streams, by our art-unions, that no full fertilising current is visible. We make a pauperism, and stamp it with the disgrace of the beggarly contribution; we, pauperise the mind too, by the demand for mean productions, and by circulating, as the choicest specimens of British art, engravings which tend utterly to the deterioration of the public taste. Perhaps there is nothing more frightfully injurious in the present state of art, than this ever putting before the public eye things in themselves bad, and mostly bad, where badness is more surely fatal, in purpose. It is far easier for good taste and for good art, in practice, to arise out of a blank, out of nothing, than out of an exuberance of bad examples. These things tend to vitiate the pure. The great daily accumulation of inferior works, low in character, and deficient in artistic knowledge and skill, that are ever thrust before the public eye, are doing much mischief. They are poisoning and vitiating the ground from which taste should spring. We are not educating in art, but against art. We are teaching to admire things which, were it possible to keep what is bad from the public eye, would disgust as soon as seen. And even where the exhibition is in no other respect vicious, it is too often vicious from the total absence of any high purpose. For lack of object, we look to some mere mechanical prettinesses; and by habit learn first to look for, and then to work for, nothing more. When the great men of other days, whose names we have now so constantly in our mouths, dedicated themselves to art, they did it with all their soul. They had the earnestness of a passion; and what they did not, as we should now say, well, technically viewing some of their early works, they did to express some strong and some worthy feeling. And as they advanced in technical skill, still they ever thought a certain dignity and importance were essential to their works. The public mind had not yet felt satiety. But in time the progeny of art multiplied. The trading multitude had to entice purchasers, and to persuade them that their novelties were at least more pleasing, if the aim was not so high. The new lamps were cried up above the old. Thus they first created a bad taste, and then pandered to it. Cold conventionalities took the place of feeling; even beauty was studied more for low sense, than for its moral, and intellectual expression. Art was smothered by her own children. The brood has been too numerous, and the productions as variable as the brood. They who would do great things were they allowed, are not allowed. The lower fascinations have taken possession of the public mind. Patronage runs to the little, and the greatest encouragement is to those who will provide the market with the cheapest, if not the best wares. Artists must live as well as other people. They cannot, if they would, sacrifice themselves to work out great and noble ideas, for which there is no demand; and for this state of things they are themselves in no small degree to blame. It is their own cry for patronage that has raised these art-unions: the patronage has been raised, but who gets it? They (like the national guard in Paris) have been superseded by their own inferior workmen. And what shall remedy all this superfœtation? First, let pains be taken properly to educate in art the public eye, and the public mind. We rejoice to know that, while we are writing, a society is forming, similar to the Cambden Society, for the publication of all important works on art, whether old or original, and for having the finest productions of art engraved, in whatever country they are to be found. As good taste is the object, so care will be taken that nothing of a deteriorating character will be admitted; and works will be produced which, in the present state of general feeling, private speculation would scarcely venture upon. The works will, we are given to understand, chiefly be distributable among the members of the society; but some, thought to be particularly well adapted to give a better direction to the public taste, will be generally purchasable.
This society is of great promise—if it succeeds at all, it will succeed eminently, and we believe it must succeed. It will, we have some hope drive the low, the meaningless things of the day out of the field. We are, as a nation, really ignorant of art. We know it not, as it has been. We want to see the public eye acquainted, through good engravings, with the numerous fine frescos that cannot be generally known in any other way. Whatever tends to the real advancement of art will obtain the solicitous attention of this society.