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quence of art, now fallen into diseased excess, at once incapacitate this people for self-control and national government, and give to their present art the pretension of youthful presumption, the extravagance of frenzy, and the faltering feebleness of debilitated age. Yet the ruling passion is strong in death; and the arts, though fallen in common with the nation, still live in the life and aspiration of the people. Imagination, vagrant and fugitive though it be, still bursts into metaphor, loses itself in visions, and pictures a bright ideal now that the reality is no more. In order to understand art and Italy in their greatness, it is necessary now to see them in their fall;-to see impulse and poetry, the plastic and the pictorial faculties, gambol in the free play of infancy or garrulous in the imbecility of age-to see them in their spontaneous outbursts unfettered by judgment, unconscious of decay. It is needful even thus to see them in humiliation in order to judge of their days of power, when the artist poured out his very soul upon the canvass, and burst into eloquence that entranced the world. Thus does the student understand how Italy became the cradle of the arts; how this same people, now so feebly sensitive to beauty, found, when strong, free, and prosperous, that architecture, sculpture, and painting, were native to their hearts, and indigenous to their country.

Between the north and the south of Europe how great is the contrast. In the south art is a continuance and prolongation of the daily life, in form doubtless more subtle and ornate, a realisation, however, of life's ideal rather than its actual reversal. In the north, on the contrary, art comes more as a reaction than as a natural function, an escape from an existence of anxious toil, a kind of fairy fancy-fashioned land in which the mind may lose its habitual consciousness and take on a condition foreign to itself. In the south, art is the outburst of an overflowing impulse, and the work thus warmly glowing from the artist-soul, in the minds of others arouses the same ardour. The picture receives homage in the Church, becomes part of the

religion, and is interwoven with the worship. In the north, on the other hand, the arts are not owned by the Church; are not the ardent outburst of any national, popular, or religious impulse,—and, accordingly, not indigenous to the soil, they are but petted and pampered exotics of a mere dilettante taste. For the north the art-epoch is dawning, but not yet come, and the sun which has set in Italy may yet find its meridian in our land. Before that day can open, many things, however, must be reversed: the very climate changed. In the south, the sun which renders nature prolific makes the imagination pictorial: but in the north, man, instead of basking in the sun, plods through the snow; intellect and energy aid him, when by imagination he must perish. The fire of fancy is of little avail when he stands in pressing need of fuel for his body. In the south, both man and nature are, as we have seen, intent on the making of pictures. In the north it is the tailor which makes the man, and for all art-purposes, even a poet is spoilt. Men as they go about this great world-and, what is still more sad, women, too-with all their adornings, are no longer pictures; the artist verily does not know what to do with them on canvass, and for their own fame with posterity it is well that they should not seek perpetuity in marble. Thus do we see that the south especially, when contrasted with the north, is the cradle of art; that Italy, wherein the arts sprang, as it were, into spontaneous birth, is the only land wherein can be now traced the laws which govern their development and accelerate their decline.

Having thus spoken of Italy as a soil fertile in art, we shall devote the remainder of this essay to those early days when Christian art first struggled into birth. The cradling of Christian art in Italy has always been to us a subject of mysterious interest, dimly to trace how it obscurely rose out of darkness and persecution. At the outset, we find that the first Christian days were without art at all, as if too near the glorious reality itself-the presence and the aspect of Christ and the Apostles

to stand in need of the symbol and the shadow. But as the outward reality died from the remembrance of believers, and their religion receded into the invisible regions of faith and hope, the Church naturally sought to preserve some record of the great revelation which had been actually seen and enacted upon earth. This revelation had come, not as a shadowy vision of angels appearing in a dream,—not as a small voice issuing from a cloud, or as thunder proclaiming the law given from a mount; but it was the revelation of the Godhead in a visible person and an actual life. Christ and his Apostles walked year after year openly among men, taught upon the Mount, fed the multitudes, healed the sick, raised the dead, and thus, if we may be permitted the expression, reduced to pictorial demonstration truths which had otherwise remained the vague objects of faith. And all these pictures, Christ as he stood by the grave of Lazarus, as he entered Jerusalem in triumph, as he rose from the dead, and ascended into heaven, -pictures which in their reality had brought salvation to men, were day by day growing inore obscure in the mind's vision, till the last man who had seen these things was laid in the grave, and Christianity, losing its hold upon the senses, henceforth took its stand in the region of faith. How gladly would the early believer, in his persecution and suffering, have hung round his neck some slight memorial sketch of the Christ who had died for him! How fondly would the Church have treasured any outline, however hasty, of Christ as he was transfigured on the Mount, or when he lay in agony in the garden! But these aids being denied, the Christian artist, ere long, sought to supply their need. How mighty was the task! To bring forth Christ once again before the eyes of men— to enable him to walk the earth and teach among the people-to lead him on his way to Calvary, or show him as he rose to glory. It was perhaps inevitable that the early Church should neglect and ignore the arts which had been subservient to paganism; but the needs of human nature were too strong to be sup

pressed. The multitude in all ages, countries, and religions, have demanded an outward form and symbol of their faith; and Christianity, as soon as it laid claim to be a world's religion, falling under the same law, necessarily joined alliance with the arts. The invisible truths of the new religion demanded some outward form of beauty which might be loved-of grandeur which might be venerated. Written or spoken words were too shadowy and vague. The multitude required not only to hear of heaven, but to see it. And even the more gifted minds, who in their watchings might look upon the heavenly glory, see the vision of angels, or earth the abode of saints, would yet find aid to their higher and more abstract strivings in those art-creations where purity of soul was made visible to the eye through the beauty of form. Thus did Christian art set itself the task of giving to the angels their beauty and blessedness; to the company of the Apostles, the fellowship of the Prophets,the army of Martyrs, their dignity, inspiration, and fortitude; and thus having made heaven glorious, the Christian architect built upon earth a Church worthy of the worship of that God whom the heavens could not contain. This being of Christian art the vocation, we look, as we have said, to its first birth and cradling in Italy with a mysterious interest.

Truly its birth was dark with mystery, for it took its origin among tombs. The blood of the martyrs was the seed of Christian art no less than of the Church. In the darkness of the catacombs, the sanctuaries of refuge, art took its first precarious rise;-a strange birthplace for a thing of beauty these endless underground streets, winding and stretching hither and thither, almost too narrow for walking abreast, and almost too low for walking upright. On either side graves, mostly open and rifled, three rows in succession, one above the other small children's graves crowded in, filling vacant spaces-bones crumbling, and damp, and cold, scattered about; then, at intervals, this house of death converted into a house of God-the grave and charnel-house a shrine! The Church itself a grave,

cold, damp, the light of day shut out, the altar a grave, the very walls graves. The life of these early believers had become so wretched, and dark, and tormented, that death might well be looked on as a refuge and rest, and to live and worship among the dead was to make companionship with a future happier than the present tempest-life. To live thus in the midst of darkness, in vast sepulchres, with the flickering lamp suspended as a ray dimly shining in an unknown future, rather than rendering the present life visible-to kneel to evening prayer, the sunset marking not the hour, to lie down at night in a charnel-house; to rise again to morning prayer, the darkness of night still shadowing the day, thus praying to the God of death rather than of life and light; thus to live and die was indeed to make the martyrs' blood the seed of the Church.

But the blood of the martyrs was likewise, as we have said, the seed of Christian art. To the earliest believer these catacombs were as holes and caves of the earth-his refuge in life, his tomb in death-at once his house, his church, his sepulchre. But the place of trouble became a scene of triumph. The martyrs' sufferings were at length the believers' glory, and the Church, which was at first a mere grave, grew at length into a temple decorated by art, with the symbols of the Christian's faith. Christianity may thus, in these early symbols and pictures, be said to lie buried and embalmed. The subjects of these first works are simple, and their meaning, though often veiled, for the most part direct and evident. The dove stands for the soul, and, combined with the olive branch, signifies that the soul of the believer rests in peace. If the fish be added, which is the symbol of Christ, the figure reads, the soul dwells in the peace of Christ. Again, a painting of a wicker-basket containing bread, a flask of blood in the centre, all resting on a fish, symbolises the connection between Christ and the sacraments. The fish likewise has occasional reference to the words, "fishers of men ;" and accordingly, we find a

fisherman on a bank, with a large angling line in hand, drawing a fish out of the water, which is supposed forthwith to turn into a disciple. That there may be no doubt about the fact, the fish has been actually found half transmuted into the human form. For the most part, however, the subject is made scarcely less explicit by placing the figure of a man close by, standing out from the water, and ready to receive the rite of baptism! The anchor is, of course, the symbol of hope, and the top seen above the water, in the form of a cross, shows the foundation of that hope. Then, passing from symbolism to pictorial and bas-relief representation, we find paintings of the Good Shepherd bearing the lost sheep upon his shoulders; Daniel in the lions' den; the three Children in the fiery furnace; the sacrifice of Isaac; and Moses receiving the tables of the law, or striking the rock. On sarcophagi, the history of Jonah is a subject also frequently repeated. We find, for example, in one continuous bas-relief, Jonah cast overboard from the ship, then swallowed by the sea monster, then again thrown out upon the shore, and, lastly, the prophet, as seen stretched upon the ground in profound sleep, or disconsolate after the gourd had withered. From the New Testament we find the Nativity, the adoration of the Magi, our Saviour turning the water into wine, his healing the sick, opening the eyes of the blind, the raising of Lazarus, and the triumphant entry into Jerusalem.

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As works of art, all these frescoes and bas-reliefs are wholly unsatisfactory. In style they belong to the degraded decadence of the Roman empire-rude in execution, low_in type, and coarse in sentiment. Christian sarcophagi and the copies of mural paintings, collected by the present Pope in the Christian Museum of the Lateran, do not afford, with the exception of the noble statue of St Hippolytus, a single example pure in art. We have visited the various catacombs in search of the earliest heads of Christ, hoping that in proportion as the work approached the era of his life, it might bear some evidence of authentic likeness. We were, how

ever, disappointed. The head, for example, in the catacomb of St Calixtus, a sketch of which is given in Sir Charles Eastlake's edition of Kugler's Handbook, bears, in its type and style, evidence of a Roman, rather than of a Christian origin. In the lapse of four centuries, indeed, the tradition of the Saviour's aspect, well-nigh, if not wholly forgotten, it is evident the artist found himself left to the free expression of his own low ideal.

By an apparent anomaly, which, however, admits of easy explanation, those centuries in which Christianity is presumed to have been most pure, are characterised by a Christian art the most corrupt. Christian art came not by revelation, claims no immediate descent from heaven, but cradled, as we have seen, in suffering and helplessness, it grew into the strength and beauty of manhood by the slow process of earthly development. In examining the early works already described, this want of beauty has come upon us with pain and surprise. We look in vain for the beauty of holiness, for that calm and placid beauty which comes through patient suffering, or trustful resignation. We seek in vain for those beauties which adorn the Christian virtues, or for the sublimity of the truths which Christianity first revealed. These high attributes of Christian art, in some respects the highest which art has ever attained, were reserved for the development of a later epoch, and the dawn of a revived civilisation. The decay of the Roman empire, and the dying-out of the Pagan civilisation, are in truth the explanation of the debased aspect of Christian art in this its earliest rise. Christianity, a heaven-born spirit, sought upon earth a habitation, and demanded from art a human form to dwell in. She found in the Roman empire art fallen, and in each succeeding century still further debased. The types of humanity, fashioned by the artist, were even to Paganism a degradation. And the new religion in the first centuries of its growth, still unable in its feebleness to enter on original creation, compelled, indeed, to take art as she found it, necessarily employed such painters

and sculptors as the times afforded, and thus was condemned to the humiliation of stamping upon the earliest Christian works the mark and the stigma of a Pagan style and origin.

What good purpose these catacomb pictures and sculptures could have answered it is difficult to understand. For us, however, in the present day, they are of the utmost interest. It may indeed be said that the creed of the early Church has not only been written by the Fathers, but in these sepulchres and churches was actually delineated by the painters. The excavators set to work by the Papal Government may be said to be now exhuming what is in that land, if not an extinct, at least a buried Christianity. Whatever battles the priests of various churches may fight over these old bones in defence of essential creeds, it is fortunately not our province to decide between them. For us, as art critics, these works are links in a great and universal system of art-development and decay. They are the first beginnings of that Christian art which, in subsequent centuries, rose to so great a glory. Even in their very degradation they are a marked example of the universal craving in the human mind for expression through the language of art. A religion may be as yet weak in infancy; an empire may be tottering in decay; yet the experience of the entire world shows us that a people not content to express itself merely through words must likewise speak through the language of forms. This struggling to obtain for the invisible an outward expression, was, as we have said, at first futile; but the faculties and laws which led to the attempt urged on, though through a series of failures, to the goal of an ultimate success.

But the arts had yet long to slumber during the night of the human intellect. We have seen that as life ebbed out of the Roman empire, and darkness blotted out the light of civilisation, the new-born Christian art became in each succeeding century less vital and beauteous. Thus have we the strange anomaly of an infant art marked from the hour of its birth with all the decrepitude of age;

and thus, likewise, we find that the growing years which should have added maturity and vigour, did but accelerate decay. The earliest works are the best. The Mosaics of the fifth century, in the Baptistery of the Cathedral at Ravenna, have still some remaining vigour, some_recollection of nature. In the Baptism of Christ, which occupies the centre of this ornate cupola, the action and bearing of St John, with upraised arm of baptism, are especially noble, the heads both of the Baptist and of the Saviour showing almost the dawn of the Christian rather than the dying-out of the Pagan type. The figures of the twelve Apostles have likewise some grandeur, with, however, an increase of debility. The draperies, though retaining a reminiscence of former dignity, fall into incoherent confusion; and the onward step of the figures, while good in intention, halts in lameness. Other portions of this great and important work, still deeper in corruption, scarcely admit of art-criticism. In like manner, in Rome, the earliest Christian mosaics are for the most part the best. They are remarkable as possessing the rude vigour of Roman art rather than the more refined debility of Byzantine. Thus the head of Christ in the mosaics of the sixth century in the Church of SS. Cosmo and Damiano possesses much nobility, mingled, however, with stern savage grandeur, something, if we may be allowed the comparison, between St John wild from the desert, and Pluto vengeful from Hades.

Throughout the wide world of Christian mosaics, it is melancholy to find efforts so stupendous, labours so vast, with art-results comparatively so worthless. Within, or immediately without, the walls of Rome are ten to twelve churches still in part decorated by these works, and yet, we must confess, that for us, at least, there is not a single example in which the spirit, the beauty, or the purity, of the Christian religion has found expression. Such works are doubtless of the utmost importance to the antiquary, and even to the art-student, establishing the universal laws of development or decay; but for the lover of art in its beauty

and its poetry, to the disciple of Christianity, zealous for the honour of his religion, these mosaics are too low in the human and divine type, too debased in art, to give pleasure or satisfaction. But, doubtless to the student, as we have said, they afford much occasion for conjecture and speculation. In the wreck or resurrection of empires, in the conflux of civilisation and barbarism, in the intermingling of races, and the conflict of religions, these grand expressions of a people's faith have surely a deep import. Mr Ruskin has finely said, that the art of Venice is the meeting of the glacier stream of the north with the lava-flood of the south. Truly the conflux and the conflict of the early Christian arts in Italy are as the meeting of hostile forces in nature, and in that country the confusion of a divided people led to a corresponding anarchy in art. It was an anarchy and yet a servitude. An anarchy, because no legitimate authority was paramount: Nature no longer held the sway; the classic types had been abandoned; Christianity, as we have seen, had as yet failed to obtain expression; and the genius to create seemed annihilated. In this mosaic art there was likewise, as we have said, a servitude servitude in the servile subserviency to tradition when life had become extinct-the lifeless repetition, year after year, for seven centuries in succession, of types in which there was no nature, and attitudes in which there was no action. In an art thus lost in anarchy and degraded by servitude, the choice between Roman Christian, Byzantine Christian, and Lombardic Christian, can offer no wide scope or variety. Praise of such works is comparative, a kind of mitigated censure, an adaptation of the judgment, in charity for the times, to the prevailing standard. Thus we can understand that the antiquary, after passing some weeks underground in the catacombs, not once rectifying or refreshing his eye by feasting on the classic or the Christian art of the Vatican, should on coming to the above-mentioned mosaic in the church of SS. Cosmo and Damiano, burst out in the following rhapsody :

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