We cannot pretend to decide upon the truth of this supposed connection between the establishment of an institution to minister to the wants of the forsaken and the development of a special branch of Christian art. Whether true or not, this much is certain, that it is in keeping with a multitude of instances which go to prove how favorable the practice of Catholic charity is to the progress of the arts. Love ever pours itself around in streams of radiance, lighting up whole regions which lie beyond its immediate object. It copies the creative liberality of God, who, in providing us with what is necessary for subsistence, surrounds us at the same time with a thousand superfluous manifestations of beauty.
But it is time to pass on to the second volume of this history, which we owe almost entirely to the pen of Lady Eastlake. It is mainly occupied with the Passion of our Lord; and certainly the diligent attention paid by the authoress to this subject, and the judgment displayed in the arrangement of the narrative and the selection of examples, cannot be too highly commended. The style is generally clear, simple, and earnest. Always dignified, it sometimes rises to eloquence, as in the description of Rembrandt's etching of the "Ecce Homo," and in the following criticism of Leonardo da Vinci's celebrated "Last Supper." After a clever disquisition on the difficulties of the subject, and the conditions essential to its effective treatment, she thus proceeds:
"We need not say who did fulfil these conditions, nor whose Last Supper it is—all ruined and defaced as it may be—which alone arouses the heart of the spectator as effectually as that incomparable shadow in the centre has roused the feelings of the dim forms on each side of him. Leonardo da Vinci's Cena, to all who consider this grand subject through the medium of art, is the Last Supper—there is no other. Various representations exist, and by the highest names in art, but they do not touch the subtle spring. Compared with this chef d'oeuvre, their Last Suppers are mere exhibitions of well-drawn, draped, or colored figures, in studiously varied attitudes, which excite no emotion beyond the admiration due to these qualities. It is no wonder that Leonardo should have done little or nothing more after the execution, in his forty-sixth year, of that stupendous picture. It was not in man not to be fastidious, who had such an unapproachable standard of his own [{256}] powers perpetually standing in his path.
"Let us now consider this figure of Christ more closely.
"It is not sufficient to say that our Lord has just uttered this sentence, viz., 'Verily, verily, I say unto you, one of you shall betray me;' we must endeavor to define in what, in his own person, the visible proof of his having spoken consists. The painter has cast the eyes down—an action which generally detracts from the expression of a face. Here, however, no such loss is felt. The outward sight, it is true, is in abeyance, but the intensest sense of inward vision has taken its place. Our Lord is looking into himself—that self which knew 'all things,' and therefore needed not to lift his mortal lids to ascertain what effect his words had produced. The honest indignation of the apostles, the visible perturbation of the traitor, are each right in their place, and for the looker-on, but they are nothing to him. Thus here at once the highest power and refinement of art is shown, by the conversion of what in most hands would have been an insipidity into the means of expression best suited to the moment. The inclination of the head, and the expression of every feature, all contribute to the same intention. This is not the heaviness or even the repose of previous silence. On the contrary, the head has not yet risen, nor the muscles of the face subsided from the act of mournful speech. It is just that evanescent moment which all true painters yearn to catch, and which few but painters are wont to observe—when the tones have ceased, but the lips are not sealed—when, for an instant, the face repeats to the eye what the voice has said to the ear. No one who has studied that head can doubt that our Lord has just spoken: the sounds are not there, but they have not travelled far into space.
"Much, too, in the general speech of this head is owing to the skill with which, while conveying one particular idea, the painter has suggested no other. Beautiful as the face is, there is no other beauty but that which ministers to this end. We know not whether the head be handsome or picturesque, masculine or feminine in type—whether the eye be liquid, the cheek ruddy, the hair smooth, or the beard curling—as we know with such painful certainty in other representations. All we feel is, that the wave of one intense meaning has passed over the whole countenance, and left its impress alike on every part. Sorrow is the predominant expression—that sorrow which, as we have said in our Introduction, distinguishes the Christian's God, and which binds him, by a sympathy no fabled deity ever claimed, with the fallen and suffering race of Adam. His very words have given himself more pain than they have to his hearers, and a pain he cannot expend in protestations as they do, for this, as for every other act of his life, came he into the world.
"But we must not linger with the face alone; no hands ever did such intellectual service as those which lie spread on that table. They, too, have just fallen into that position—one so full of meaning to us, and so unconsciously assumed by him—and they will retain it no longer than the eye which is down and the head which is sunk. A special intention on the painter's part may be surmised in the opposite action of each hand: the palm of the one so graciously and bountifully open to all who are weary and heavy-laden; the other averted, yet not closed, as if deprecating its own symbolic office. Or we may consider their position as applicable to this particular scene only; the one hand saying, 'Of those that thou hast given me none is lost,' and the other, which lies near Judas, 'except the son of perdition.' Or, again, we may give a still narrower definition, and interpret this averted hand as directing the eye, in some sort, to the hand of Judas, which lies nearest it, 'Behold, the hand of him that [{257}] betrayeth me is with me on the table.' Not that the science of Christian iconography has been adopted here, for the welcoming and condemning functions of the respective hands have been reversed—in reference, probably, to Judas, who sits on our Lord's right. Or we may give up attributing symbolic intentions of any kind to the painter—a source of pleasure to the spectator more often justifiable than justified—and simply give him credit for having, by his own exquisite feeling alone, so placed the hands as to make them thus minister to a variety of suggestions. Either way, these grand and pathetic members stand as preeminent as the head in the pictorial history of our Lord, having seldom been equalled in beauty of form, and never in power of speech.
"Thus much has been said upon this figure of our Lord, because no other representation approaches so near the ideal of his person. Time, ignorance, and violence have done their worst upon it; but it may be doubted whether it ever suggested more overpowering feelings than in its present battered and defaced condition, scarcely now to be called a picture, but a fitter emblem of him who was 'despised and rejected of men.'"
Perhaps there is no other passage in the work so lovingly elaborated as this. Rivalling in energy, it surpasses in delicate discrimination even such brilliant criticisms as that of the eloquent Count de Montalembert on Fra Angelico's "Last Judgment"—a criticism which must have struck all readers of "Vandalism and Catholicism in Art" as worthy of the painting it describes. But the mention of the blessed friar of Fiesoli reminds us that he is a special favorite with Lady Eastlake also. The spell of his tender and reverent contemplations has told upon her with considerable power, to an extent, indeed, which makes her scarcely just toward Raphael himself. Several graphic pages are devoted to a description of Fra Angelico's "Last Judgment." His "Adoration of the Cross" also is dwelt upon with much affection, and in great detail. But our readers will be enabled, we hope, to form some idea of the feelings with which Lady Eastlake regards this most Christian of all artists, from the shorter extracts which we subjoin. After criticizing a fine fresco by Giotto of "Christ washing the Disciples' feet," she thus comments upon Fra Angelico's treatment of the same subject:
"Of all painters who expressed the condescension of the Lord by the impression it produced upon those to whom it was sent, Fra Angelico stands foremost in beauty of feeling. Not only the hands, but the feet of poor shocked Peter protest against his Master's condescension. It is a contest for humility between the two; but our Lord is more than humble, he is lovely and mighty too. He is on his knees; but his two outstretched hands, so lovingly offered, begging to be accepted, go beyond the mere incident, as art and poetry of this class always do, and link themselves typically with the whole gracious scheme of redemption. True Christian art, even if theology were silent, would, like the very stones, cry out and proclaim how every act of our Lord's course refers to one supreme idea."