Lady Eastlake does not like the notion of our Lord's falling under the cross. It is not in the Bible, and she pronounces it to be counter to the spirit and purport of the Gospel narrative. She grows positively angry with some painters for having represented an angel holding the chalice, surmounted by a cross or host, before the eyes of our blessed Redeemer in his agony. She has her own standard of feeling, abstract and arbitrary, to which she refers the decision of such points. But where is the guarantee for the correctness of that standard, or the security for its general acceptance? The Bible does not tell us what its own spirit and purport are, and outside the Bible Lady Eastlake, at least, cannot point to any infallible authority. She is, therefore, imposing her own judgment, unsupported by any assigned reason, upon the world, as a rule to be followed. So, too, St. Veronica to her is always de trop, morally and pictorially, in the Way of the Cross; and scholastic interpretations, seemingly because they are scholastic, of the types of the Old Testament, are invariably pronounced by her to be strained, unreal, and superstitious. So effectually does Protestantism interfere with the capacity of a critic to appreciate the higher developments and fuller expression of Christian art.
Not that a Protestant or a free-thinker can have no sense at all of the supernaturally beautiful. If they are trained to a high degree of moral and intellectual cultivation in the natural order, and in proportion to the height of their attainments in that order, they will not fail to be affected by beauty of a superior order. For there is no contradiction between the truth of nature and the truth which is above nature. The Protestant, indeed, as sincerely holding large fragments of Christian truth, will necessarily have much sympathy with many exhibitions of supernatural beauty. But he lacks the clue to it as a whole; and if he can often admire, rarely, if ever, can he create. Both Protestant and unbeliever must therefore labor under much vagueness and uncertainty of judgment, inasmuch as they can have no fixity of principle. Often they will not know what they want; they will praise in one page what they condemn in the next; or, when moved, will be at a loss to account for their emotion. They will exhibit phenomena not unlike those so often presented in this country by unbelievers, who, entering our churches, are one while overawed by a presence they cannot define, and which bewilders their intellect, whilst it captivates their imagination; and another while, as unaccountably, are moved to disgust and derision by what to them is an insoluble riddle, a perplexity, and an annoyance. To such critics some phases of the supernatural will never be welcome. The tortures of the martyrs, the self-inflicted macerations of ascetics, the sublime self-abandonment of heroic charity—whatever, in a word, embodies and brings home the grand, sacred, but, to the natural man, repugnant idea of the cross, will always be offensive, and produce a sense of irritation, such as even Lady Eastlake, with all her [{251}] self-mastery and good taste, cannot wholly suppress or conceal. So true is it in the sphere of Christian art, as in that of Christian doctrine and devotion, Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis. Casual excitement, transient enthusiasm, unmeaning admiration, are at best the pitiful substitutes for an intelligent and abiding appreciation of excellence, in those who are not possessed of supernatural ideas in common with the subjects and authors of the works of genuine Christian art.
It would be unfair, however, not to mention that Lady Eastlake admits many important modifications of this rigid principle of adherence to the letter of Scripture. The following secondary canons go far to soften down the asperity of her Protestantism. They shall be stated in her own words:
"On the other hand, additions to Scripture given in positive images, if neither prejudicial to art nor inconsistent with our Lord's character, are not in themselves necessarily objectionable; but will, according to their merits, be looked upon with indulgence or admiration. The pictures, for instance, representing the disrobing of our Lord—a fact not told in Scripture, yet which must have happened—will be regarded with pathetic interest. The same will be felt of Paul Delaroche's exquisite little picture, where St. John is leading the Virgin home; for such works legitimately refresh and carry on the narrative in a scriptural spirit. Nay, episodes which are more purely invention—such as the ancient tradition of the Mother of Christ wrapping the cloth round her son, previous to his crucifixion; or, again, the picture by Paul Delaroche, of the agony of her and of the disciples, represented as gathered together in a room while Christ passes with his cross—even such imaginary episodes will silence the most arrant Protestant criticism, by their overpowering appeal to the feelings; since in neither case is the great duty of art to itself or to its divine object tampered with.
"The same holds good where symbolical forms, as in Christian art of classic descent, are given, which embody the idea rather than the fact. For instance, where the Jordan is represented as a river god, with his urn under his arm, at the baptism of our Lord; or when, later, the same event is accompanied by the presence of angels, who hold the Saviour's garments. Such paraphrases and poetical imaginings in no way affect the truth of the facts they set forth, but rather, to mortal fancy, swell their pomp and dignity.
"Still less need the lover of art and adorer of Christ care about inconsistencies in minor matters. As, for example, that the entombment takes place in a renaissance monument, in the centre of a beautiful Italian landscape, and not in a cave in a rock in the arid scenery of Judea. On the contrary, it is right that art should exercise the utmost possible freedom in such circumstances, which are the signs and handwriting of different schools and times, and enrich a picture with sources of interest to the historian and the archaeologist. It is the moral expression which touches the heart and adorns the tale, not the architecture or costume; and whether our Lord be in the garb of a Roman citizen or of a German burgher (though his dress is usually conventional in color and form), it matters not, if he be but God in all."
The arbitrariness of the principles set forth in the earlier portion of this passage, and the quiet assumption that all ancient traditions are pure inventions, may well be excused by the reader for the sake of the inconsistency which saves from condemnation not a few glorious pictures, which could never otherwise have been made to square with the rule of literal adherence to the Gospel narrative.
Another principle essential to the right appreciation of art is admirably stated by Lady Eastlake:
"All will agree that the duty of the Christian artist is to give not only the [{252}] temporary fact, but the permanent truth. Yet this entails a discrepancy to which something must be sacrificed. For, in the scenes from our Lord's life, fact and truth are frequently at variance. That the Magdalen took our Lord for a gardener, was the fact; that he was Christ, is the truth. That the Roman soldiers believed him to be a criminal, and therefore mocked and buffeted him without scruple, is the fact; that we know him through all these scenes to be the Christ, is the truth. Nay, the very cruciform nimbus that encircles Christ's head is an assertion of this principle. As visible to us, it is true; as visible even to his disciples, it is false. There are, however, educated people so little versed in the conditions of art, as to object even to the nimbus, as a departure from fact, and, therefore, an offence to truth; preferring, they say, to see our Lord represented as he walked upon earth. But this is a fallacy in more than one sense. Our Lord, as he walked upon earth, was not known to be the Messiah. To give him as he was seen by men who knew him not, would be to give him not as the Christ. It may be urged that the cruciform nimbus is a mere arbitrary sign, nothing in itself more than a combination of lines. This is true; but there must be something arbitrary in all human imaginings (we should prefer to say symbolizings) of the supernatural. Art, for ages, assumed this sign as that of the Godhead of Christ, and the world for ages granted it. It served various purposes; it hedged the rudest representations of Christ round with a divinity, which kept them distinct from all others. It pointed him out to the most ignorant spectator, and it identified the sacred head, even at a distance."
This principle may, indeed, be legitimately extended much further. The purpose of Christian art is instruction, either in morals or in dogma, or in both. It is not, therefore, a sin in art to sacrifice upon occasion some portion of historical truth, in subservience to this end. Nor in fact, in Catholic ages, was there danger of the people being led into error on the fundamental facts of religion. The Gospel narrative was too familiar to them for that. They seem, as is well remarked by Father Cahier, to have had hearts more elevated than ours, and more attuned by meditation and habitual catholicity of spirit to mystery, and its sublimer lessons; and therefore, whenever we find in early paintings what seems to us anomalous in an historic point of view, we may conclude with safety that there was a dogmatic intention.