Chapter XVI: Resulting Forms:--Thirdly, Precipices (2)

Sec. 35. In fact, as I said some time ago, the whole landscape of Claude was nothing but a more or less softened continuance of the old traditions of missal-painting, of which I gave examples in the previous volume. The general notion of rock which may be traced in the earliest work, as Figs. 1 and 2 in Plate +10+ Vol. III. is of an upright mass cut out with an adze; as art advances, the painters begin to perceive horizontal stratification, and, as in all the four other examples of that plate, show something like true rendering of the fracture of rocks in vertical joints with superimposed projecting masses. They insist on this type, thinking it frowning or picturesque, and usually exhibit it to more advantage by putting a convent, hermitage, or castle on the projection of the crag. In the blue backgrounds of the missals the projection is often wildly extravagant; for instance, the MS. Additional, 11,696 Brit. Mus., has all its backgrounds composed of blue rocks with towers upon them, of which Fig. 85 is a characteristic example (magnified in scale about one-third; but, I think, rather diminished in extravagance of projection). It is infinitely better drawn than Claude's rocks ever are, in the expression of cleavage; but certainly somewhat too bold in standing. Then, in more elaborate work, we get conditions of precipice like Fig. 3 in Plate +10+, which, indeed, is not ill-drawn in many respects; and the book from which it is taken shows other evidences of a love of nature sufficiently rare at the period, though joined quaintly with love of the grotesque: for instance, the writer, giving an account of the natural productions of Saxony, illustrates his chapter with a view of the salt mines; he represents the brine-spring, conducted by a wooden trough from the rock into an evaporating-house where it is received in a pan, under which he has painted scarlet flames of fire with singular skill; and the rock out of which the brine flows is in its general cleavages the best I ever saw drawn by mediaeval art. But it is carefully wrought to the resemblance of a grotesque human head.

Sec. 36. This bolder quaintness of the missals is very slightly modified in religious paintings of the period. Fig. 86, by Cima da Conegliano, a Venetian, No. 173 in the Louvre, compared with Fig. 3 of Plate +10+ (Flemish), will show the kind of received tradition about rocks current throughout Europe. Claude takes up this tradition, and, merely making the rocks a little clumsier, and more weedy, produces such conditions as Fig. 87 (Liber Veritatis, No. 91, with Fig. 84 above); while the orthodox door or archway at the bottom is developed into the Homeric cave, shaded with laurels, and some ships are put underneath it, or seen through it, at impossible anchorages.

Sec. 37. Fig. 87 is generally characteristic, not only of Claude, but of the other painters of the Renaissance period, because they were all equally fond of representing this overhanging of rocks with buildings on the top, and weeds drooping into the air over the edge, always thinking to get sublimity by exaggerating the projection, and never able to feel or understand the simplicity of real rock lines; not that they were in want of examples around them: on the contrary, though the main idea was traditional, the modifications of it are always traceable to the lower masses of limestone and tufa which skirt the Alps and Apennines, and which have, in reality, long contracted habits of nodding over their bases; being, both by Virgil and Homer, spoken of always as "hanging" or "over-roofed" rocks. But then they have a way of doing it rather different from the Renaissance ideas of them. Here, for instance (Plate +41+), is a real hanging rock, with a castle on the top of it, and ([Greek: katerephes]) laurel, all plain fact, from Arona, on the Lago Maggiore; and, I believe, the reader, though we have not as yet said anything about lines, will at once, on comparing it with Fig. 87, recognize the difference between the true parabolic flow of the rock-lines and the humpbacked deformity of Claude; and, still more, the difference between the delicate overhanging of the natural cliff, cautiously diminished as it gets higher[87], and the ideal danger of the Liber Veritatis.

Sec. 38. And the fact is, generally, that natural cliffs are very cautious how they overhang, and that the artist who represents them as doing so in any extravagant degree entirely destroys the sublimity which he hoped to increase, for the simple reason that he takes away the whole rock-nature, or at least that part of it which depends upon weight. The instinct of the observer refuses to believe that the rock is ponderous when it overhangs so far, and it has no more real effect upon him than the imagined rocks of a fairy tale.

Though, therefore, the subject sketched on this page is sufficiently trifling in itself, it is important as a perfect general type of the overhanging of that kind of precipices, and of the mode in which they are connected with the banks above. Fig. 88 shows its abstract leading lines, consisting of one great parabolic line _x y_ falling to the brow, curved aqueous lines down the precipice face, and the springing lines of its vegetation, opposed by contrary curves on the farther cliff. Such an arrangement, with or without vegetation, may take place on a small or large scale; but a bolder projection than this, except by rare accident, and on a small scale, cannot. If the reader will glance back to Plate +37+, and observe the arrangement of the precipices on the right hand, he will now better understand what Turner means by them. But the whole question of the beauty of this form, or mode of its development, rests on the nature of the bank above the cliffs, and of the aqueous forces that carved it; and this discussion of the nature of banks, as it will take some time, had better be referred to next chapter. One or two more points are, however, to be stated here.

Sec. 39. For the reader has probably been already considering how it is that these overhanging cliffs are formed at all, and why they appear thus to be consumed away at the bottom. Sometimes if of soft material they actually _are_ so consumed by the quicker trickling of streamlets at the base than at the summit, or by the general action of damp in decomposing the rock. But in the noblest instances, such cliffs are constructed as at c in Fig. 73, above, and the inward retirement of the precipice is the result of their tendency to break at right angles to the beds, modified according to the power of the rock to support itself, and the aqueous action from above or below.

I have before alluded (in p. 157) to this somewhat perilous arrangement permitted in the secondary strata. The danger, be it observed, is not of the fall of the _brow_ of the precipice, which never takes place on a large scale in rocks of this kind (compare Sec. 3 of this chapter), but of the sliding of one bed completely away from another, and the whole mass coming down together. But even this, though it has several times occurred in Switzerland, is not a whit more likely to happen when the precipice is terrific than when it is insignificant. The danger results from the imperfect adhesion of the mountain beds; not at all from the external form of them. A cliff, which is in aspect absolutely awful, may hardly, in the part of it that overhangs, add one thousandth part to the gravitating power of the entire mass of the rocks above; and, for the comfort of nervous travellers, they may be assured that they are often in more danger under the gentle slopes of a pleasantly wooded hill, than under the most terrific cliffs of the Eiger or Jungfrau.

Sec. 40. The most interesting examples of these cliffs are usually to be seen impendent above strong torrents, which, if forced originally to run in a valley, such as _a_ in Fig. 89, bearing the relation there shown to the inclination of beds on each side, will not, if the cleavage is across the beds, cut their channel straight down, but in an inclined direction, correspondent to the cleavage, as at _b_. If the operation be carried far, so as to undermine one side of the ravine too seriously, the undermined masses fall, partially choke the torrent, and give it a new direction of force, or diminish its sawing power by breaking it among the fallen masses, so that the cliff never becomes very high in such an impendent form; but the trench is hewn downwards in a direction irregularly vertical. Among the limestones on the north side of the Valles, they being just soft enough to yield easily to the water, and yet so hard as to maintain themselves in massy precipices, when once hewn to the shape, there are defiles of whose depth and proportions I am almost afraid to state what I believe to be the measurements, so much do they differ from any which I have seen assigned by scientific men as the limits of precipitous formation. I can only say that my deliberate impression of the great ravine cut by the torrent which descends from the Aletsch glacier, about half way between the glacier and Brieg, was, that its depth is between a _thousand and fifteen hundred_ feet, by a breadth of between _forty and a hundred_.

But I could not get to the edge of its cliffs, for the tops rounded away into the chasm, and, of course, all actual measurement was impossible. There are other similar clefts between the Bietschhorn and the Gemmi; and the one before spoken of at Ardon, about five miles below Sion, though quite unimportant in comparison, presents some boldly overhanging precipices easily observed by the passing traveller, as they are close to the road. The glen through which the torrent of the Trient descends into the valley of the Rhone, near Martigny, though not above three or four hundred feet deep, is also notable for its narrowness, and for the magnificent hardness of the rock through which it is cut,--a gneiss twisted with quartz into undulations like those of a Damascus sabre, and as compact as its steel.

Sec. 41. It is not possible to get the complete expression of these ravines, any more than of the apse of a Gothic cathedral, into a picture, as their elevation cannot be drawn on a vertical plane in front of the eye, the head needing to be thrown back, in order to measure their height, or stooped to penetrate their depth. But the structure and expression of the entrance to one of them have been made by Turner the theme of his sublime mountain-study (Mill near the Grande Chartreuse) in the Liber Studiorum; nor does he seem ever to have been weary of recurring for various precipice-subject, to the ravines of the Via Mala and St. Gothard. I will not injure any of these--his noblest works--by giving imperfect copies of them; the reader has now data enough whereby to judge, when he meets with them, whether they are well done or ill; and, indeed, all that I am endeavoring to do here, as often aforesaid, is only to get some laws of the simplest kind understood and accepted, so as to enable people who care at all for justice to make a stand at once beside the modern mountain-drawing, as distinguished from Salvator's, or Claude's, or any other spurious work. Take, for instance, such a law as this of the general oblique inclination of a torrent's sides, Fig. 89, and compare the Turnerian gorge in the distance of Plate +21+ here, or of the Grande Chartreuse subject in the Liber Studiorum, and consider whether anywhere else in art you can find similar expressions of the law.

"Well; but you have come to no conclusions in this chapter respecting the Beauty of Precipices; and that was your professed business with them."

I am not sure that the idea of beauty was meant in general to be very strictly connected with such mountain forms: one does not, instinctively, speak or think of a "Beautiful Precipice." They have, however, their beauty, and it is infinite; yet so dependent on help or change from other things, on the way the pines crest them, or the waterfalls color them, or the clouds isolate them, that I do not choose to dwell here on any of their perfect aspects, as they cannot be reasoned of by anticipating inquiries into other materials of landscape.

Thus, I have much to say of the cliffs of Grindelwald and the Chartreuse, but all so dependent upon certain facts belonging to pine vegetation, that I am compelled to defer it to the next volume; nor do I much regret this; because it seems to me that, without any setting forth, or rather beyond all setting forth, the Alpine precipices have a fascination about them which is sufficiently felt by the spectator in general, and even by the artist; only they have not been properly drawn, because people do not usually attribute the magnificence of their effect to the trifling details which really are its elements; and, therefore, in common drawings of Swiss scenery we see all kinds of efforts at sublimity by exaggeration of the projection of the mass, or by obscurity, or blueness or aerial tint,--by everything, in fact, except the one needful thing,--plain drawing of the rock. Therefore in this chapter I have endeavored to direct the reader to a severe mathematical estimate of precipice outline, and to make him dwell, not on the immediately pathetic or impressive aspect of cliffs, which all men feel readily enough, but on their internal structure. For he may rest assured that, as the Matterhorn is built of mica flakes, so every great pictorial impression in scenery of this kind is to be reached by little and little; the cliff must be built in the picture as it was probably in reality--inch by inch; and the work will, in the end, have most power which was begun with most patience. No man is fit to paint Swiss scenery until he can place himself front to front with one of those mighty crags, in broad daylight, with no "effect" to aid him, and work it out, boss by boss, only with such conventionality as its infinitude renders unavoidable. We have seen that a literal facsimile is impossible, just as a literal facsimile of the carving of an entire cathedral front is impossible. But it is as vain to endeavor to give any conception of an Alpine cliff without minuteness of detail, and by mere breadth of effect, as it would be to give a conception of the facades of Rouen or Rheims, without indicating any statues or foliation. When the statues and foliation are once got, as much blue mist and thundercloud as you choose, but not before.

Sec. 43. I commend, therefore, in conclusion, the precipice to the artist's _patience_; to which there is this farther and final encouragement, that, though one of the most difficult of subjects, it is one of the kindest of sitters. A group of trees changes the color of its leafage from week to week, and its position from day to day; it is sometimes languid with heat, and sometimes heavy with rain; the torrent swells or falls in shower or sun; the best leaves of the foreground may be dined upon by cattle, or trampled by unwelcome investigators of the chosen scene. But the cliff can neither be eaten nor trampled down; neither bowed by the shower nor withered by the heat: it is always ready for us when we are inclined to labor; will always wait for us when we would rest; and, what is best of all, will always talk to us when we are inclined to converse. With its own patient and victorious presence, cleaving daily through cloud after cloud, and reappearing still through the tempest drift, lofty and serene amidst the passing rents of blue, it seems partly to rebuke, and partly to guard, and partly to calm and chasten, the agitations of the feeble human soul that watches it; and that must be indeed a dark perplexity, or a grievous pain, which will not be in some degree enlightened or relieved by the vision of it, when the evening shadows are blue on its foundation, and the last rays of the sunset resting in the fair height of its golden Fortitude.

FOOTNOTES

[80] Distinguished from a _crest_ by being the _face_ of a large
contiguous bed of rock, not the end of a ridge.

[81] The contour of the whole cliff, seen from near its foot as it
rises above the shoulder of the Breven, is as at Fig. 76 opposite.
The part measured is _a d_; but the precipice recedes to the summit
_b_, on which a human figure is discernible to the naked eye merely
as a point. The bank from which the cliff rises, _c_, _recedes_ as
it falls to the left; so that five hundred feet may perhaps be an
under-estimate of the height below the summit. The straight sloping
lines are cleavages, across the beds. Finally, Fig. 4, Plate 25,
gives the look of the whole summit as seen from the village of
Chamouni beneath it, at a distance of about two miles, and some four
or five thousand feet above the spectator. It appears, then, like a
not very formidable projection of crag overhanging the great slopes
of the mountain's foundation.

[82] At an angle of 79 deg. with the horizon. See the Table of angles,
p. 181. The line _a e_ in Fig. 33, is too steep, as well as in the
plate here; but the other slopes are approximately accurate. I would
have made them quite so, but did not like to alter the sketch made
on the spot.

[83] Professor Forbes gives the bearing of the Cervin from the top
of the Riffelhorn as 351 deg., or N. 9 deg. W., supposing local attraction
to have caused an error of 65 deg. to the northward, which would make
the true bearing N. 74 deg. W. From the point just under the Riffelhorn
summit, _e_, in Fig. 78, at which my drawing was made, I found the
Cervin bear N. 79 deg. W. without any allowance for attraction; the
disturbing influence would seem therefore confined, or nearly so, to
the summit _a_. I did not know at the time that there was any such
influence traceable, and took no bearing from the summit. For the
rest, I cannot vouch for bearings as I can for angles, as their
accuracy was of no importance to my work, and I merely noted them
with a common pocket compass and in the sailor's way (S. by W. and 1/2
W. & C.), which involves the probability of error of from two to
three degrees on either side of the true bearing. The other drawing
in Plate +38+ was made from a point only a degree or two to the
westward of the village of Zermatt. I have no note of the bearing;
but it must be about S. 60 deg. or 65 deg. W.

[84] Independent travellers may perhaps be glad to know the way to
the top of the Riffelhorn. I believe there is only one path; which
ascends (from the ridge of the Riffel) on its eastern slope, until,
near the summit, the low but perfectly smooth cliff, extending from
side to side of the ridge, seems, as on the western slope, to bar
all farther advance. This cliff may, however, by a good climber, be
mastered even at the southern extremity; but it is dangerous there:
at the opposite or northern side of it, just at its base, is a
little cornice, about a foot broad, which does not look promising at
first, but widens presently; and when once it is past, there is no
more difficulty in reaching the summit.

[85] I ought before to have mentioned Madame de Genlis as one of the
few writers whose influence was always exerted to restore to
truthful feelings, and persuade to simple enjoyments and pursuits,
the persons accessible to reason in the frivolous world of her
times.

[86] Veillees du Chateau, vol. ii.

[87] The actual extent of the projection remaining the same
throughout, the angle of suspended slope, for that reason,
diminishes as the cliff increases in height.