The History of our Lord as exemplified in Works of Art; with that of the Types, St. John the Baptist and other persons of the Old and New Testament. Commenced by the late Mrs. JAMESON; continued and completed by Lady EASTLAKE. 2 vols. London: Longman. 1864.
The series of works on Christian Art brought out by the late Mrs. Jameson, and which earned for her so high a reputation as an art critic, was conceived upon a plan of progressive interest and importance. From "Sacred and Legendary Art," published in 1848, she passed to the special legends connected with Monastic Orders, and in 1852 gave to the public her most charming volume, entitled "Legends of the Madonna." The series was to have closed with the subject of the volume now before us, and some progress had been made by Mrs. Jameson in collecting notes on various pictures, when, in the spring of 1860, death cut her labors short. The work, however, has passed into hands well able to complete it worthily. We may miss some of the freshness and genuine simplicity with which Mrs. Jameson was wont to transfer to paper rare impression made on her mind and heart; but Lady Eastlake, while bringing to her task the essential qualification of earnestness and exhibiting considerable grace and force of style, is possessed of a far wider and more critical acquaintance with the history of art than her amiable predecessor either had or pretended to have. It is pleasant to find in these pages, as in those which preceded them, the evidence of a desire to avoid controversial matter; and that, without compromise of personal conviction, care has been generally taken not to wound the feelings of those who differ from the writer in religious belief. The primary object of the work is aesthetic and artistic, not religious; and it is seldom that the laws of good taste are transgressed in its pages by gratuitous attacks upon the tenets of the great body of artists who are the immediate subject of criticism. Indeed, considering that these volumes are the production of a Protestant, we think that less of Protestant animus could hardly be shown, at all consistently with honesty of purpose and frankness of speech. That no traces of the Protestant spirit should appear, would be next to an impossibility; and the affectation of Catholic feeling, where it did not exist, would be offensive from its very unreality. So much self-control in traversing a vast extent of delicate and dangerous ground deserves all the more hearty acknowledgment, as it must have been peculiarly difficult to a person of Lady Eastlake's ardent temperament and evident strength of conviction. If, therefore, in the course of our remarks, we feel bound to point out the evil influence which Lady Eastlake's religious views seem to us to have exercised on her critical appreciations, it will be understood that theories, not persons, are the object of our animadversions. It is at all times an ungrateful task to expose the weak points of an author; it would be especially ungenerous to be hard upon the shortcomings of one who has done such good service to the cause of truth, in proving, however unconsciously, by the mere exercise of persistent candor, the identity of Christian and Catholic art. Catholics, indeed, do not ordinarily stand in need of such proof. If they know anything of art, the fact of this identity must be with them an early discovery; but it is gratifying, especially in a time and country in which scant justice on such matters is too often dealt out to us, to be able to adduce a [{247}] testimony the more valuable because given in despite of an adverse bias. It is quite possible, indeed, that the writer has not perceived the full import of her work; but no one, we think, can study her examples or weigh the force of her criticism with out coming to the true conclusion upon this subject.
But, before establishing the correctness of this assertion, we must draw attention to one point upon which we are at issue with Lady Eastlake: a point, moreover, of no small importance, as it vitally affects the value of a large part of her criticisms. A question arises at the outset, what standard or test of Christian art is to be set up; and Lady Eastlake makes an excellent start in the investigation. There is, perhaps, no principle so steadily kept in view throughout the work, or so often and earnestly insisted on, as this: that genuine Christian art and true Christian doctrine are intimately and essentially connected. Art is bound to depict only the truth in fact or doctrine (vol. ii., p. 266, note). Departure from sound theology involves heresy in art. Now, no principle can be more true than this, or of greater importance toward forming a correct judgment upon works professing to belong to Christian art. Beauty and truth are objectively identical, for beauty is only truth lighted up and harmonized by the reason; and to supernatural beauty, which Christian art essentially aims at expressing, supernatural truth must necessarily correspond. For here we have nothing to do with mere material beauty, "the glories of color, the feats of anatomical skill, the charms of chiaroscuro, the revels of free handling." Admirable as these are in themselves, and by no means, theoretically at least, injurious to Christian art, they belong properly to art as art, and are more or less separable from art as Christian. Christian art is never perfect as art, unless material beauty enters into the composition; but as Christianity is above art, and the soul superior to the body, so material beauty must never forget its place, never strive to obtain the mastery, or constitute itself the chief aim of the artist, upon pain of total destruction of the Christian element. The soul of Christian art is in the idea—the shadowing out by symbol or representation, under material forms and conditions, of immaterial, supernatural, even uncreated beauty, the beauty of heavenly virtue, or heavenly mystery or divinity itself. But how are these objects, in all their harmony, proportion, and splendor, to be realized—how is supernatural beauty to be conceived—except by a soul gifted with supernatural perceptions? Faith, at least, is indispensably requisite to the truthfulness of any artistic work intended to represent the supernatural. Without faith, distortion and caricature are inevitable. With faith—the foundation of all knowledge of the supernatural in this life—much, very much, may be accomplished. But it is when faith, enlivened and perfected by supernatural love, exercises itself in contemplation, that the spiritual sight becomes keen, and the soul, from having simply a just appreciation, passes to a vision of exquisite beauty, sublimity, and tenderness, which a higher perception of divine mysteries has laid open to its gaze. The hand may falter, and be faithless to the mental conception, so as to produce imperfect execution and inadequate artistic result. Faith and love do not make a man an artist. But, amidst deformity or poverty of art in the material element, if there is any, however slight, artistic power employed, the outward defects will be qualified, and almost transformed, to the eye of an appreciating spectator, through the inner power which speaks from the painter's soul to his own: just as we learn to overlook, or even to admire, plain features, and anything short of positive ugliness of outline, in those whose mental greatness and moral beauty we have learned to venerate and to love. On the other hand, any amount of material perfection in contour and color is insipid as a doll, [{248}] a mere mask of nothingness, incapable of arresting attention or captivating the heart, unless within there be a soul of beauty—that inward excellence which subordinates to itself, while it gives life and meaning to, the outward form. On the side of the object, truth; on the part of the spectator, faith and love—these are the palmary conditions of Christian art and its appreciation. For it must ever be remembered that supernatural truth lies beyond the ken of any but souls elevated by faith; and, what is of equal importance, that faith can have no other object than the truth. Its object is infallible truth, or it is not faith. No wonder, then, that, when we see a prodigality of manual skill and grace of form, and even moral beauty of the natural order, devoid of the inspiration of supernatural faith and love, we are forced to exclaim with St. Gregory, as he gazed on the fair Saxon youths, Heit proh dolor! quod tam lucidi vultus homines tenebrarum auctor possideret, tantaque gratia frontis conspicui mentem ab aeterna gratia vacuam gestarent. [Footnote 51] Alas! that so much physical beauty should embody nothing but a pagan idea! It were as unreasonable to look for Christian art as the product of an heretical imagination, as to demand Christian eloquence or Christian poetry from an heretical preacher or a free-thinking poet. The vision is wanting, the appreciation is not there—how, then, is the expression possible?
[Footnote 51: "Alas! what pain it is to think that men of such bright countenance should be the possession of the Prince of Darkness; and that though conspicuous for surprising grace of feature, they should bear a soul within untenanted by everlasting grace.">[
Nor is this a mere abstract theory, erected on a priori principles. It would be easy to verify our position by a large induction from the history of art. Is there a picture whose mute eloquence fills the soul with reverential awe, or holy joy, or supernatural calm, or deep, deep sympathy with the sufferings of our Lord, or the sorrows of his Immaculate Mother, we may be sure the painter was some humble soul, ascetical and pious, who, like Juan de Joanes, or Zurbaran, spent his days in lifelong seclusion, given up to the grave and holy thoughts which their pictures utter to us; or that other Spaniard, Luis de Vargas, famed alike for his austerity and amiable Christian gaiety; or a Sassoferrato, or a Van Eyck, seeking in, holy communion the peace of soul which can alone reflect the calmness of sanctity, or the bliss of celestial scenes; or the holy friar, John of Fiesoli, known to all as the Angelic whose heroic humility and Christian simplicity, learned in a life of prayer and contemplation, invest his pictures with an unearthly charm. These, and many another pious painter, known or unknown by name to men, looked on their vocation as a holy trust, and sought to keep themselves unspotted from the world. Theirs was the practical maxim so dear to the blessed Angelico, that "those who work for Christ must dwell in Christ." On the other hand, does a picture, albeit Christian in subject and in name, offend us by false sentiment, or cold conventionalism, or sensuality, or affectation, or strain after theatrical effect, or any of the hundred forms which degraded art exhibits when it has wandered from the Christian type—we know that we are looking on the handiwork of some schismatic Greek, or modern Protestant; or that, if the painter be a Catholic, he lived in the days or wrought under the influence of the Renaissance, when paganism made its deadly inroads upon art, substituting the spirit of voluptuousness for the sweet and austere graces that spring of divine charity; or under the blighting influence of Jansenism, which killed alike that queenly virtue and her sister humility by false asceticism and pharisaic rigor. We might even trust the decision as to the truthfulness of our view to an inspection of the examples with which Lady Eastlake has so abundantly illustrated her volumes. Indeed, hitherto her principle and ours are one.
But unfortunately, though the major premise of the art-syllogism is granted on both sides, Lady Eastlake adopts a minor, from which we utterly dissent. It is implied in one and all of the following statements, and is more or less interwoven with the whole staple of her work. She tells us that "the materials for this history in art are only properly derivable from Scripture, and therefore referable back to the same source for verification" (vol. i., p. 3). And again: "It may be at once laid down as a principle, that the interests of art and the integrity of Scripture [by integrity is meant literal adherence to the text of Scripture] are indissolubly united. Where superstition mingles, the quality of Christian art suffers; where doubt enters, Christian art has nothing to do. It may even be averred that, if a person could be imagined, deeply imbued with aesthetic instincts and knowledge, and utterly ignorant of Scripture, he would yet intuitively prefer, as art, all those conceptions of our Lord's history which adhere to the simple text. … All preference for the simple narrative of Scripture he would arrive at through art—all condemnation of the embroideries of legend through the same channel" (vol. i., p. 6). And again: "The simplicity of art and of the Gospel stand or fall together. The literal narrative of the agony in the garden lost sight of, all became confusion and error" (vol. ii., p. 30).
Now, whatever obscurity and confusion these passages contain—and they do contain a great deal—one thing is unmistakably clear, that the orthodoxy of the ultra-Protestant maxim, "The Bible and the Bible only," is a fixed principle with Lady Eastlake. And the consequence is, that, whenever she looks at a religious picture, she refers to the Gospel narrative for its verification. If it does not stand this test, it is nowhere in her esteem. What is not in Scripture is legendary and unartistic, because necessarily at variance with scriptural truth. Thus whole provinces of art in connection with our Lord are banished from her pages. Surely such a canon of taste is not only narrow, but arbitrary: narrow, as excluding whatever comes down to us hallowed by tradition, considered apart from or beyond the limits of scriptural statement; arbitrary, because it leaves art at the mercy of the sects, with their manifold dissensions as to the extent of Scripture, or its true interpretation. Thus, Lady Eastlake, being herself no believer in the doctrine of the real presence, does not recognize its enunciation in the sacred pages, and loses, apparently, all interest in the great pictures which symbolize or relate to the most holy sacrament of the altar. So, too, most of the special devotions to the person of our Lord, which have sprung out of the living faith of the church, and have furnished subjects for pictures incontestably of a high order, are totally omitted from her classification of devotional compositions. We can hardly imagine it possible for her to adhere consistently to her rule in other departments of Christian art. The Immaculate Conception, for instance, the Assumption, the Coronation of our Lady, the marriage of St. Catherine, the stigmata of St. Francis, the vision of St. Dominic, the miracles of the saints—subjects, many of which have inspired some of the noblest productions of her favorite Fra Angelico, or of Raphael, or Murillo, or Velasquez—undoubtedly do violence to her criteria of artistic merit, though we cannot believe that she would contest their universally acknowledged claim to the highest honors in Christian art. Indeed, fidelity to this narrow Protestant maxim would have rendered these two volumes an impossibility. Strange, then, that it should not have occurred to the mind of the authoress that by far the larger part, and, on her own showing, the most glorious part, of the fraternity of Christian artists have been men full to overflowing of the spirit of a church which has never adopted her standard of orthodoxy.
The Catholic Church is at once the parent, historically, of all Christian art and the upholder of that grand principle of tradition which gives to art, no less than to doctrine, a range far wider and more ample than the mere letter of the biblical records. Of course, contradiction of Scripture, or "alterations of the text, which, however slight, affect the revealed character of our Lord," must give offence to every judicious critic; but it is tradition and the voice of the living Church—together with that instinctive sense of the faithful which, so long as they live in submission to their divinely-appointed teachers, is so marvellously true and unerring—that must be the criteria of orthodoxy, and determine when the artist's conceptions or mode of treatment are contrary to, or in accordance with, the spirit of the sacred text.