The cloisters were built upon the most beautiful heights, where the soul, absorbed in the admiration of nature, was of itself lifted up to chant the praises of the God who created it. The porticos were vast tableaux worked by the greatest artists. And here, while you would suggest to me the John Baptists of the Discalced Friars, and the Filippo Benizzi in the Annunciation at Florence by Andrea the faultless, the Holy Solitude, the Camaldoli, Carthusian monasteries, Alvernia, Vallombrosa, and the sublimity of Grottaferrata, let me call to your minds our own Lombardy the sanctuaries of Saronno by Luini, of Varallo by Gaudenzio, the Holy Mount by Mancalvo, the Carthusian monastery of Garignano by the great Daniel Crespi, before which Byron was struck with wonder and with fear. In fine, even in the delirium of art in the sixteenth century, which are the greatest monuments of sculpture? The St. Bibiana of Bernini, the St. Cecilia of Maderno, the Susanna of Fiammingo, the St. Bruno of Houton, from which number we must not omit the Attila of Algardi. The Assumption of Forli by Cignani still remains the noblest work of the past age. Since it is a far easier thing to copy a form than to create a conception, many have reduced art to imitation. And we see it said that the type of the Eternal Father is taken from Jove, the Saviour from Antinous, from Niobe the Mother of Sorrows, and from the Farnese Flora and the terra cotta Faun, St. Cecilia and St. Joachim; and it appears equally ridiculous to call one of these imitators a new Phidias or new Apelles, as for Angelo Mazza to entitle himself Homer Redivivus. Winckelmann praised Raphael for a head of Christ “which set forth the beauty of a heroic youth without beard,” while he criticises Michael Angelo “for having taken his figures of the Saviour from the barbarous productions of the middle ages.” With equal discrimination Vasari, of all the wonders of Giotto at Assisi, can only admire “the very great and truly marvellous effect of one who drinks standing, but bent down to the earth, at a fountain.” Very little have these advanced the theories of Cicognara and Giuseppe Bossi, and the icy grandeur of David, Gerard, Girodet, and the other imperialists, followed here by Benvenuti, Cammuccini, Bossi, Diotti, and their like. Fabre, the French painter, was discussing with Alfieri on a crucifixion which he was about to paint. After speaking for some time on the type he ought to choose, he concluded: “Do you know what? I will paint the head of the Belvedere Apollo, give him a beard, and behold it done.” Alfieri had the good sense to reply: “If you would succeed in that, paint a dying Apollo, but not a God who redeemed us.”
After Battoni, the last painter of note of the mixed school, Mengs, went back to the antique with a mediocrity at once pedantic and fastidious. But Traballeschi and certain artists of second name, such as De Maria, Franchi, Ferrari, Torretti, and of higher mark, Andrea Appiani in the cupola of San Celso at Milan, were the men who paved the way for the regeneration. Canova[116] undertook to regenerate art chiefly with classic models, but at least with enthusiasm. But how far do his Venus, Perseus, Theseus, and even Psyche, fall behind the Magdalen, and the mausoleums of Maria Christina, Ganganelli, Rezzonico, and Pius VI.?
Bartolini, a more careful observer of nature, gave an impulse to the new art, nor is the fault his if he plunged from the conventionalities of the academy into a prosaic realism. But, restricting myself among a multitude of sculptors, to the notice of one or two, who has not admired the Dolorosa and Triumph of the Cross of Duprè, the Archangel of Finelli, the Deposition from the Cross, and the tomb at Castelfidardo of Tenerani? These men opened up a new era, where the worship of ideas prevailed over that of mere form, combating the servility of the past and the materialism of the present, aiming at a beauty not at variance with morality—a beauty perceptible to the reason. I confine myself to the Italians, but what a pleasure it would be to me to touch upon Munich and the school of Düsseldorf, and that of Berlin; and Cornelius, Schadow, the Bohemian Fuhrich, and the Frenchmen Lehmann, Pradier, Flandrin, and a noble band of others like to them.
So likewise I confine myself to the plastic arts; but were we to treat of poetry, we could say something of Tasso, crowned in death, of Perfetti, the laureate of Benedict XII., and Corilla of Pius VI. Or of music, born also in the church and there perfected before it went to amuse the court and theatre, whence it returned with profanity into the church; so that there was nothing left but to abandon it, if Palestrina had not shown how to wed reverence of speech with harmony, and reconcile devotion with art. Do you know of aught more wonderful than the Moses and Stabat of Rossini, the Crucifixus of Bellini, or the Ave Maria of Donizetti?
And hence you will conclude that where art has ever been welcomed and cherished, was under the care of the Popes, in this Rome of ours, which, in the words of Petrarch, is
“The symbol of the heavens and the earth,
The Saviour’s image, by all men revered.”
Perhaps there has not been a Pope who has not raised some edifice or given rise to some sculpture or painting.
Eugenius IV. wished to consecrate Fra Angelico bishop; Julius II., who secured his splendid dominions from the Po to the Garigliano, was ever in the company of Bramante, Michael Angelo, Perugino, Giulio Romano, and commenced the Vatican Museum by placing there the Apollo, the Laocoon, the Ariadne and the Torso. What shall I say of Leo X., who seemed to wish by the triumph of art to “give the lie” to Germany, which accuses Catholics of ignorance and dearth of civilization? The German reformer on his arrival in the midst of the artistic wealth of Rome, only perceived therein profanity, idols, and as it were an absence of reason, and a Pope making an ostentatious pomp of religion and pretending to the austerity of Paul and Hilarion in the time of the Farnese and the Medici. Adrian VI. seemed like a prodigy, a monstrosity, so accustomed were the minds of men to connect the idea of a pope with that of a Mecænas of the arts.
They have ever made their palaces a sanctuary of the arts, and as it were a harbor from the wrecks of time and the greed of speculators and kings, who paused at the threshold of the Vatican, resounding with the prayers of all the ages and the blasphemy of this.
With still greater intelligence, the pontiffs of the past age collected together the masterpieces, and the Museo Pio Clementino, and the illustrations of it executed by Winckelmann and Ennius Quirinus Visconti, became the envy and the model of all foreigners.