What we said of the statuary we may repeat with equal reason of religious paintings. How easy it would be to adorn our churches and chapels with these books of the eye, one glance at which often teaches more than a sermon. The artists at home capable of producing a religious painting worthy of being placed in a church are few, perhaps might be counted on one's fingers. European painters capable of giving an original ask such prices for their work as generally to put them as far beyond our means as if they were to be painted at home. Even at that, their conception and treatment of a subject will scarcely stand comparison with approved works of the best masters who have already treated the same subjects. But there is a large class of painters here who devote themselves to copying and reproducing those old paintings, on every scale as to size. The execution of many of them is good, and the prices for which the artists are willing to work seem very low. It is wonderful how much painting, and good painting, five hundred dollars well laid out in Rome will obtain. Several of our clerical friends, who have visited Rome this winter, carry back with them evidences of this fact.
Next to the paintings should come the stained glass, which is superb, and is offered at a price which seems really astonishing—about five dollars a square foot for the richest kind, with life-size figures.
The large windows, from several competing manufacturers, are so mounted that the light shines through them, and you can examine at full leisure and carefully the wondrous effects of united brilliancy and softness in these works of peculiarly Christian art. The art of painting on glass, which many, up to a recent period, thought entirely lost, has revived in this century, and seems fast approaching the perfection which it attained in the middle ages. There is one marked difference observable between the old windows and some of the work here. The ancients displayed their skill in combining together thousands of minute pieces of glass of different colors, so as to make up a picture in its proper colors and its lights and shadows. The modern artists have attempted the task of producing the picture on a single large sheet of glass. This would free it from the single defect almost unavoidable in this work—the stiffness of the figures. But the earlier attempts presented such variation in the perfections of the several colors used as to be failures, in point of that brilliancy and play of light which constitute the charm of this work. The source of the defect was to be found in the laws of nature, on which every work, and this work directly, depends. The general mode of procedure in which glass is colored is this: The subject is painted on the surface of a sheet of glass with metallic paints. The glass is placed in an oven and slowly and carefully raised to that point of heat at which it grows soft. The particles of metal constituting the colors sink into the glass and become portions of its substance. The difficulty was found to spring from the great difference in the rate and manner in which the colors would sink into the softened substance. What would give some colors perfectly, would leave others imperfect; and continuing the work until these were perfect, would often destroy the first. But patient study and careful work have overcome these difficulties to a degree which we did not expect. There are full-size figures here in stained glass rivalling those of the middle ages in brilliancy, and possessing the freedom of a painting on canvas.
The perfection of the Gobelins tapestry is almost incredible. A large canvas, twenty-five feet by ten, presents the Assumption by Titian, and near it is a life-size figure of our Lord in the tomb. It is a sermon but to look on the cold, rigid body of him who bore our transgressions. There are specimens of photography, some showing life-size figures, of oleography, lithography, chromo-lithography, engravings on copper, for which Rome cannot be excelled, on steel, and on wood. In many of these branches France and Germany rival, if they do not surpass Italy. But Rome stands unrivalled in mosaics, of which there are here exquisite specimens.
In architecture, we find plans of churches and colleges, very full and clear, but not striking; designs for the interior of chapels and sanctuaries, of a far higher order of art, several miniatures of churches; a fac-simile in white marble of the front of St. Peter's, and another in wood, on the scale of about one inch to ten feet, showing the entire exterior of the church front and dome in all its details, the colonnades, fountains, and square before it, and so constructed that it can be opened in several ways, in order to give an equally correct and minute view of the interior with all its ornamentation. You may recognize every painting and statue in the basilica. It took years of patient labor to make this model, and it is said to have been sold to an Italian prince for twenty thousand dollars. What a pity such a work should be shut up in some palace in the city where every one can go to the real St. Peter's. It should rather be sent to distant countries, where thousands, who will never go to Rome, might be able to obtain from it a far clearer conception than any books can give of the form and splendor of this great temple, which is deservedly the pride and the glory of the Christian world.
In music, there are organs with the latest and best improvements, harmoniums, Alexandre organs of various powers and many stops, and chimes and church-bells hung on a new patent system, by which a mere boy can swing easily and ring loudly a bell of nearly a ton weight. As for texts of church music, you may turn over the parchment leaves of huge folio graduals and antiphonaries, in which the good old monks of past ages wrote the Gregorian notes and the words so large and so clear as to be easily read in the choir, even at the distance of ten feet. There are later ones printed nearly as large, and collections of modern church music from Italy, Germany, and from France.
Ecclesiastical vestments abound in the exposition. Rome, Milan, and other cities of Italy are represented by the most celebrated of their manufacturers. France has sent a multitude from Paris, Lyons, Grenoble, Montpellier, Nismes, and elsewhere. Others have come from Germany and from Spain. Here are copes and chasubles, dalmatics, antipendiums, and veils, of the richest material and exquisite workmanship. You can examine the ample yet light and pliable vestments of Italy, the rich and stiffer ones of France, the narrow and scantier form of Austria, and the heavier ones from Spain, that ought never to wear out. In the matter of vestments you are taught a lesson of history. For here, carefully preserved in large glass wardrobes, are shown the vestments used six hundred and eight hundred years ago, if not a thousand years ago, in St. Peter's, in St. Mary Major's, in St. John Lateran's, and in the cathedral of Anagni.
The emperors of the Holy Roman Empire, as it was called, which sprung into existence in the ninth century, and died in the convulsions of Europe consequent on the French revolution, were bound to come, if circumstances allowed it, to Rome, to receive their royal consecration in St. Peter's at the hands of the pope. On such occasions, the emperor was admitted for that time into the sanctuary, wore a deacon's dalmatic, and chanted a gospel. Here you may look at the identical dalmatic which they wore a thousand years ago. It is of silk, and the figures which decorate it were worked with the needle, in gold thread. Near by are copes, and chasubles, and mitres faded and worn; which still give evidence of the art and care in making them, the richness of the materials used, and of the skill of the embroidery and painting which decorated them. What will the modern chasubles and copes around us, now so fresh and splendid, look like in A.D. 2500?
Church vessels of every class are equally abundant. Chalices, pixes, cruets, censers, incense-cups, crosses, crucifixes, ostensories, croziers, every thing that can be thought of, are here, often in their richest forms. There are chapelles for priests, and chapelles for bishops. Altar candlesticks and candelabra of every size and graceful form tempt you. Perhaps the most interesting in a scientific and also a pecuniary view, is the large collection of all those vessels made of bronze aluminium, of a light gold color, and not liable to tarnish. The weight is light, and the prices low.
There are altars of marble, of cast-iron, of bronze gilt, and of wood colored and illuminated, the last-named truly beautiful, and they would well replace some of those far more costly constructions sometimes to be met in our churches.