"Adverte quod patriarchae et prophetse pinguntur cum rotulis in manibus; quidam vero apostoli cum libris, et quidam cum rotulis. Nempe quia ante Christi adventum fides figurative ostendebatur, et quoad multa, in se implicita erat. Ad quod ostendendum patriarchse et prophetae pinguntur cum rotulis, per quos quasi qusedam imperfecta cognitio design atur; quia vero apostoli a Christo perfecte edocti suut, ideo libris, per quos designatur perfecta cognitio, uti possunt."

WILLIAM DURANDUS, quoted by Didron, p. 305.

PLATE VII.—Next to this subject of the preaching comes the Baptism: and then, the circumstances of St. John's death. First, his declaration to Herod, "It is not lawful for thee to have thy brother's wife:" on which he is seized and carried to prison:—next, Herod's feast,—the consultation between daughter and mother, "What shall I ask?"—the martyrdom, and burial by the disciples. The notable point in the treatment of all these subjects is the quiet and mystic Byzantine dwelling on thought rather than action. In a northern sculpture of this subject, the daughter of Herodias would have been assuredly dancing; and most probably, casting a somersault. With the Byzantine, the debate in her mind is the only subject of interest, and he carves above, the evil angels, laying their hands on the heads, first of Herod and Herodias, and then of Herodias and her daughter.

PLATE VIII.—The issuing of commandment not to eat of the tree of knowledge. (Orvieto Cathedral.)

This, with Plates X. and XII., will give a sufficiently clear conception to any reader who has a knowledge of sculpture, of the principles of Giovanni Pisano's design. I have thought it well worth while to publish opposite two of them, facsimiles of the engravings which profess to represent them in Gruiier's monograph [1] of the Orvieto sculptures; for these outlines will, once for all, and better than any words, show my pupils what is the real virue of mediaeval work,—the power which we medievalists rejoice in it for. Precisely the qualities which are not in the modern drawings, are the essential virtues of the early sculpture. If you like the Gruner outlines best, you need not trouble yourself to go to Orvieto, or anywhere else in Italy. Sculpture, such as those outlines represent, can be supplied to you by the acre, to order, in any modern academician's atelier. But if you like the strange, rude, quaint, Gothic realities (for these photographs are, up to a certain point, a vision of the reality) best; then, don't study mediaeval art under the direction of modern illustrators. Look at it—for however short a time, where you can find it—veritable and untouched, however mouldered or shattered. And abhor, as you would the mimicry of your best friend's manners by a fool, all restorations and improving copies. For remember, none but fools think they can restore—none, but worse fools, that they can improve.

[Footnote: The drawings are by some Italian draughtsman, whose name it is no business of mine to notice.]

Examine these outlines, then, with extreme care, and point by point. The things which they have refused or lost, are the things you have to love, in Giovanni Pisano.

I will merely begin the task of examination, to show you how to set about it. Take the head of the commanding Christ. Although inclined forward from the shoulders in the advancing motion of the whole body, the head itself is not stooped; but held entirely upright, the line of forehead sloping backwards. The command is given in calm authority; not in mean anxiety. But this was not expressive enough for the copyist,— "How much better I can show what is meant!" thinks he. So he puts the line of forehead and nose upright; projects the brow out of its straight line; and the expression then becomes,—"Now, be very careful, and mind what I say." Perhaps you like this 'improved' action better? Be it so; only, it is not Giovanni Pisano's design; but the modern Italian's.

Next, take the head of Eve. It is much missed in the photograph—nearly all the finest lines lost—but enough is got to show Giovanni's mind.

It appears, he liked long-headed people, with sharp chins and straight noses. It might be very wrong of him; but that was his taste. So much so, indeed, that Adam and Eve have,



both of them, heads not much shorter than one-sixth of their entire height.

Your modern Academy pupil, of course, cannot tolerate this monstrosity. He indulgently corrects Giovanni, and Adam and Eve have entirely orthodox one-eighth heads, by rule of schools.

But how of Eve's sharp-cut nose and pointed chin, thin lips, and look of quiet but rather surprised attention—not specially reverent, but looking keenly out from under her eyelids, like a careful servant receiving an order?

Well—those are all Giovanni's own notions;—not the least classical, nor scientific, nor even like a pretty, sentimental modern woman. Like a Florentine woman—in Giovanni's time—it may be; at all events, very certainly, what Giovanni thought proper to carve.

Now examine your modern edition. An entirely proper Greco-Roman academy plaster bust, with a proper nose, and proper mouth, and a round chin, and an expression of the most solemn reverence; always, of course, of a classical description. Very fine, perhaps. But not Giovanni.

After Eve's head, let us look at her feet. Giovanni has his own positive notions about those also. Thin and bony, to excess, the right, undercut all along, so that the profile looks as thin as the mere elongated line on an Etruscan vase; and the right showing the five toes all well separate, nearly straight, and the larger ones almost as long as fingers! the shin bone above carried up in as severe and sharp a curve as the edge of a sword.

Now examine the modern copy. Beautiful little fleshy, Venus-de'-Medici feet and toes—no undercutting to the right foot,—the left having the great-toe properly laid over the second, according to the ordinances of schools and shoes, and a well-developed academic and operatic calf and leg. Again charming, of course. But only according to Mr. Gibson or Mr. Power—not according to Giovanni.

Farther, and finally, note the delight with which Giovanni has dwelt, though without exaggeration, on the muscles of the breast and ribs in the Adam; while he has subdued all away into virginal severity in Eve. And then note, and with conclusive admiration, how in the exact and only place where the poor modern fool's anatomical knowledge should have been shown, the wretch loses his hold of it! How he has entirely missed and effaced the grand Greek pectoral muscles of Giovanni's Adam, but has studiously added what mean fleshliness he could to the Eve; and marked with black spots the nipple and navel, where Giovanni left only the severe marble in pure light.

These instances are enough to enable you to detect the insolent changes in the design of Giovanni made by the modern Academy-student in so far as they relate to form absolute. I must farther, for a few moments, request your attention to the alterations made in the light and shade.

You may perhaps remember some of the passages. They occur frequently, both in my inaugural lectures, and in "Aratra Pentelici," in which I have pointed out the essential connection between the schools of sculpture and those of chiaroscuro. I have always spoken of the Greek, or essentially sculpture-loving schools, as chiaroscurist; always of the Gothic, or colour-loving schools, as non-chiaroscurist. And in one place, (I have not my books here, and cannot refer to it,) I have even defined sculpture as light-and-shade drawing with the chisel. Therefore, the next point you have to look to, after the absolute characters of form, is the mode in which the sculptor has placed his shadows, both to express these, and to force the eye to the points of his composition which he wants looked at. You cannot possibly see a more instructive piece of work, in these respects, than Giovanni's design of the Nativity, Plate X. So far as I yet know Christian art, this is the central type of the treatment of the subject; it has all the intensity and passion of the earliest schools, together with a grace of repose which even in Ghiberti's beautiful Nativity, founded upon it, has scarcely been increased, but rather lost in languor. The motive of the design is the frequent one among all the early masters; the Madonna lifts the covering from the cradle to show the Child to one of the servants, who starts forward adoring. All the light and shade is disposed



to fix the eye on these main actions. First, one intense deeply-cut mass of shadow, under the pointed arch, to throw out the head and lifted hand of the Virgin. A vulgar sculptor would have cut all black behind the head; Giovanni begins with full shadow; then subdues it with drapery absolutely quiet in fall; then lays his fullest possible light on the head, the hand, and the edge of the lifted veil.

He has undercut his Madonna's profile, being his main aim, too delicately for time to spare; happily the deep-cut brow is left, and the exquisitely refined line above, of the veil and hair. The rest of the work is uninjured, and the sharpest edges of light are still secure. You may note how the passionate action of the servant is given by the deep shadows under and above her arm, relieving its curves in all their length, and by the recess of shade under the cheek and chin, which lifts the face.

Now take your modern student's copy, and look how he has placed his lights and shades. You see, they go as nearly as possible exactly where Giovanni's don't. First, pure white under this Gothic arch, where Giovanni has put his fullest dark. Secondly, just where Giovanni has used his whole art of chiselling, to soften his stone away, and show the wreaths of the Madonna's hair lifting her veil behind, the accursed modern blockhead carves his shadow straight down, because he thinks that will be more in the style of Michael Angelo. Then he takes the shadows away from behind the profile, and from under the chin, and from under the arm, and puts in two grand square blocks of dark at the ends of the cradle, that you may be safe to look at that, instead of the Child. Next, he takes it all away from under the servant's arms, and lays it all behind above the calf of her leg. Then, not having wit enough to notice Giovanni's undulating surface beneath the drapery of the bed on the left, he limits it with a hard parallel-sided bar of shade, and insists on the vertical fold under the Madonna's arm, which Giovanni has purposely cut flat that it may not interfere with the arm above; finally, the modern animal has missed the only pieces of womanly form which Giovanni admitted, the rounded right arm and softly revealed breast; and absolutely removed, as if it were no part of the composition, the horizontal incision at the base of all—out of which the first folds of the drapery rise.

I cannot give you any better example, than this modern Academy-work, of the total ignorance of the very first meaning of the word 'Sculpture' into which the popular schools of existing art are plunged. I will not insist, now, on the uselessness, or worse, of their endeavours to represent the older art, and of the necessary futility of their judgment of it. The conclusions to which I wish to lead you on these points will be the subject of future lectures, being of too great importance for examination here. But you cannot spend your time in more profitable study than by examining and comparing, touch for touch, the treatment of light and shadow in the figures of the Christ and sequent angels, in Plates VIII. and IX., as we have partly examined those of the subject before us; and in thus assuring yourself of the uselessness of trusting to any ordinary modern copyists, for anything more than the rudest chart or map—and even that inaccurately surveyed—of ancient design.

The last plate given in this volume contains the two lovely subjects of the Annunciation and Visitation, which, being higher from the ground, are better preserved than the groups represented in the other plates. They will be found to justify, in subtlety of chiselling, the title I gave to Giovanni, of the Canova of the thirteenth century.

I am obliged to leave without notice, at present, the branch of ivy, given in illustration of the term 'marble rampant,' at the base of Plate VIII. The foliage of Orvieto can only be rightly described in connection with the great scheme of leaf-ornamentation which ascended from the ivy of the Homeric period in the sculptures of Cyprus, to the roses of Botticelli, and laurels of Bellini and Titian.

THE END