Chapter III: Grotesque Renaissance (3)

§ LXXII. The developement of that grotesque took place under different laws from those which regulate it in any other European city. For, great as we have seen the Byzantine mind show itself to be in other directions, it was marked as that of a declining nation by the absence of the grotesque element; and, owing to its influence, the early Venetian Gothic remained inferior to all other schools in this particular character. Nothing can well be more wonderful than its instant failure in any attempt at the representation of ludicrous or fearful images, more especially when it is compared with the magnificent grotesque of the neighboring city of Verona, in which the Lombard influence had full sway. Nor was it until the last links of connexion with Constantinople had been dissolved, that the strength of the Venetian mind could manifest itself in this direction. But it had then a new enemy to encounter. The Renaissance laws altogether checked its imagination in architecture; and it could only obtain permission to express itself by starting forth in the work of the Venetian painters, filling them with monkeys and dwarfs, even amidst the most serious subjects, and leading Veronese and Tintoret to the most unexpected and wild fantasies of form and color.

§ LXXIII. We may be deeply thankful for this peculiar reserve of the Gothic grotesque character to the last days of Venice. All over the rest of Europe it had been strongest in the days of imperfect art; magnificently powerful throughout the whole of the thirteenth century, tamed gradually in the fourteenth and fifteenth, and expiring in the sixteenth amidst anatomy and laws of art. But at Venice, it had not been received when it was elsewhere in triumph, and it fled to the lagoons for shelter when elsewhere it was oppressed. And it was arrayed by the Venetian painters in robes of state, and advanced by them to such honor as it had never received in its days of widest dominion; while, in return, it bestowed upon their pictures that fulness, piquancy, decision of parts, and mosaic-like intermingling of fancies, alternately brilliant and sublime, which were exactly what was most needed for the developement of their unapproachable color-power.

§ LXXIV. Yet, observe, it by no means follows that because the grotesque does not appear in the art of a nation, the sense of it does not exist in the national mind. Except in the form of caricature, it is hardly traceable in the English work of the present day; but the minds of our workmen are full of it, if we would only allow them to give it shape. They express it daily in gesture and gibe, but are not allowed to do so where it would be useful. In like manner, though the Byzantine influence repressed it in the early Venetian architecture, it was always present in the Venetian mind, and showed itself in various forms of national custom and festival; _acted_ grotesques, full of wit, feeling, and good-humor. The ceremony of the hat and the orange, described in the beginning of this chapter, is one instance out of multitudes. Another, more rude, and exceedingly characteristic, was that instituted in the twelfth century in memorial of the submission of Woldaric, the patriarch of Aquileia, who, having taken up arms against the patriarch of Grado, and being defeated and taken prisoner by the Venetians, was sentenced, not to death, but to send every year on "Fat Thursday" sixty-two large loaves, twelve fat pigs, and a bull, to the Doge; the bull being understood to represent the patriarch, and the twelve pigs his clergy: and the ceremonies of the day consisting in the decapitation of these representatives, and a distribution of their joints among the senators; together with a symbolic record of the attack upon Aquileia, by the erection of a wooden castle in the rooms of the Ducal Palace, which the _Doge and the Senate_ attacked and demolished with clubs. As long as the Doge and the Senate were truly kingly and noble, they were content to let this ceremony be continued; but when they became proud and selfish, and were destroying both themselves and the state by their luxury, they found it inconsistent with their dignity, and it was abolished, as far as the Senate was concerned, in 1549.[44]

§ LXXV. By these and other similar manifestations, the grotesque spirit is traceable through all the strength of the Venetian people. But again: it is necessary that we should carefully distinguish between it and the spirit of mere levity. I said, in the fifth chapter, that the Venetians were distinctively a serious people, serious, that is to say, in the sense in which the English are a more serious people than the French; though the habitual intercourse of our lower classes in London has a tone of humor in it which I believe is untraceable in that of the Parisian populace. It is one thing to indulge in playful rest, and another to be devoted to the pursuit of pleasure: and gaiety of heart during the reaction after hard labor, and quickened by satisfaction in the accomplished duty or perfected result, is altogether compatible with, nay, even in some sort arises naturally out of, a deep internal seriousness of disposition; this latter being exactly the condition of mind which, as we have seen, leads to the richest developements of the playful grotesque; while, on the contrary, the continual pursuit of pleasure deprives the soul of all alacrity and elasticity, and leaves it incapable of happy jesting, capable only of that which is bitter, base, and foolish. Thus, throughout the whole of the early career of the Venetians, though there is much jesting, there is no levity; on the contrary there is an intense earnestness both in their pursuit of commercial and political successes, and in their devotion to religion,[45] which led gradually to the formation of that highly wrought mingling of immovable resolution with secret thoughtfulness, which so strangely, sometimes so darkly, distinguishes the Venetian character at the time of their highest power, when the seriousness was left, but the conscientiousness destroyed. And if there be any one sign by which the Venetian countenance, as it is recorded for us, to the very life, by a school of portraiture which has never been equalled (chiefly because no portraiture ever had subjects so noble),--I say, if there be one thing more notable than another in the Venetian features, it is this deep pensiveness and solemnity. In other districts of Italy, the dignity of the heads which occur in the most celebrated compositions is clearly owing to the feeling of the painter. He has visibly raised or idealized his models, and appears always to be veiling the faults or failings of the human nature around him, so that the best of his work is that which has most perfectly taken the color of his own mind; and the least impressive, if not the least valuable, that which appears to have been unaffected and unmodified portraiture. But at Venice, all is exactly the reverse of this. The tone of mind in the painter appears often in some degree frivolous or sensual; delighting in costume, in domestic and grotesque incident, and in studies of the naked form. But the moment he gives himself definitely to portraiture, all is noble and grave; the more literally true his work, the more majestic; and the same artist who will produce little beyond what is commonplace in painting a Madonna or an apostle, will rise into unapproachable sublimity when his subject is a member of the Forty, or a Master of the Mint.

Such, then, were the general tone and progress of the Venetian mind, up to the close of the seventeenth century. First, serious, religious, and sincere; then, though serious still, comparatively deprived of conscientiousness, and apt to decline into stern and subtle policy: in the first case, the spirit of the noble grotesque not showing itself in art at all, but only in speech and action; in the second case, developing itself in painting, through accessories and vivacities of composition, while perfect dignity was always preserved in portraiture. A third phase rapidly developed itself.

§ LXXVI. Once more, and for the last time, let me refer the reader to the important epoch of the death of the Doge Tomaso Mocenigo in 1423, long ago indicated as the commencement of the decline of the Venetian power. That commencement is marked, not merely by the words of the dying Prince, but by a great and clearly legible sign. It is recorded, that on the accession of his successor, Foscari, to the throne, "SI FESTEGGIO DALLA CITTA UNO ANNO INTERO:" "The city kept festival for a whole year." Venice had in her childhood sown, in tears, the harvest she was to reap in rejoicing. She now sowed in laughter the seeds of death.

Thenceforward, year after year, the nation drank with deeper thirst from the fountains of forbidden pleasure, and dug for springs, hitherto unknown, in the dark places of the earth. In the ingenuity of indulgence, in the varieties of vanity, Venice surpassed the cities of Christendom, as of old she surpassed them in fortitude and devotion; and as once the powers of Europe stood before her judgment-seat, to receive the decisions of her justice, so now the youth of Europe assembled in the halls of her luxury, to learn from her the arts of delight.

It is as needless, as it is painful, to trace the steps of her final ruin. That ancient curse was upon her, the curse of the cities of the plain, "Pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness." By the inner burning of her own passions, as fatal as the fiery reign of Gomorrah, she was consumed from her place among the nations; and her ashes are choking the channels of the dead salt sea.

FOOTNOTES:

[27] Mutinelli, Annali Urbani, lib. i. p. 24; and the Chronicle of
1738, quoted by Galliciolli: "attrovandosi allora la giesia de Sta.
Maria Formosa sola giesia del nome della gloriosa Vergine Maria."

[28] Or from the brightness of the cloud, according to the Padre who
arranged the "Memorie delle Chiese di Venezia," vol. iii. p. 7.
Compare Corner, p. 42. This first church was built in 639.

[29] Perhaps both Corner and the Padre founded their diluted
information on the short sentence of Sansovino: "Finalmente, l'anno
1075, fu ridotta a perfezione da Paolo Barbetta, sul modello del
corpo di mezzo della chiesa di S. Marco." Sansovino, however, gives
842, instead of 864, as the date of the first rebuilding.

[30] Or at least for its principal families. Vide Appendix 8, "Early
Venetian Marriages."

[31] "Nazionale quasi la ceremonia, perciocche per essa nuovi
difensori ad acquistar andava la patria, sostegni nuovi le leggi, la
Liberta."--_Mutinelli._

[32] "Vestita, _per antico uso_, di bianco, e con chiome sparse giù
per le spalle, conteste con fila d'oro." "Dressed according to
ancient usage in white, and with her hair thrown down upon her
shoulders, interwoven with threads of gold." This was when she was
first brought out of her chamber to be seen by the guests invited to
the espousals. "And when the form of the espousal has been gone
through, she is led, to the sound of pipes and trumpets, and other
musical instruments, round the room, _dancing serenely all the time,
and bowing herself before the guests_ (ballando placidamente, e
facendo inchini ai convitati); and so she returns to her chamber:
and when other guests have arrived, she again comes forth, and makes
the circuit of the chamber. And this is repeated for an hour or
somewhat more; and then, accompanied by many ladies who wait for
her, she enters a gondola without its felze (canopy), and, seated on
a somewhat raised seat covered with carpets, with a great number of
gondolas following her, she goes to visit the monasteries and
convents, wheresoever she has any relations."

[33] Sansovino.

[34] English, "Malmsey." The reader will find a most amusing account
of the negotiations between the English and Venetians, touching the
supply of London with this wine, in Mr. Brown's translation of the
Giustiniani papers. See Appendix IX.

[35] "XV. diebus et octo diebus ante festum Mariarum omni
anno."--_Galliciolli._ The same precautions were taken before the
feast of the Ascension.

[36] Casa Vittura.

[37] The keystone of the arch on its western side, facing the canal.

[38] The inscriptions are as follows:

To the left of the reader.

"VINCENTIUS CAPELLUS MARITIMARUM
RERUM PERITISSIMUS ET ANTIQUORUM
LAUDIBUS PAR, TRIREMIUM ONERARIA
RUM PRÆFECTUS, AB HENRICO VII. BRI
TANNIÆ REGE INSIGNE DONATUS CLAS
SIS LEGATUS V. IMP. DESIG. TER CLAS
SEM DEDUXIT, COLLAPSAM NAVALEM DIS
CIPLINAM RESTITUIT, AD ZACXINTHUM
AURIÆ CÆSARIS LEGATO PRISCAM
VENETAM VIRTUTEM OSTENDIT."

To the right of the reader.

"IN AMBRACIO SINU BARBARUSSUM OTTHO
MANICÆ CLASSIS DUCEM INCLUSIT
POSTRIDIE AD INTERNITIONEM DELETU
RUS NISI FATA CHRISTIANIS ADVERSA
VETUISSENT. IN RYZONICO SINU CASTRO NOVO
EXPUGNATO DIVI MARCI PROCUR
UNIVERSO REIP CONSENSU CREATUS
IN PATRIA MORITUR TOTIUS CIVITATIS
MOERORE, ANNO ÆTATIS LXXIV. MDCXLII. XIV. KAL SEPT."

[39] The Love of God is, however, always shown by the predominance,
or greater sum, of good, in the end; but never by the annihilation
of evil. The modern doubts of eternal punishment are not so much the
consequence of benevolence as of feeble powers of reasoning. Every
one admits that God brings finite good out of finite evil. Why not,
therefore, infinite good out of infinite evil?

[40] Let the reader examine, with special reference to this subject,
the general character of the language of Iago.

[41] This opposition of art to inspiration is long and gracefully
dwelt upon by Plato, in his "Phædrus," using, in the course of his
argument, almost the words of St Paul: [Greek: kallion marturousin
oi palaioi manian sôphrosynês tên ek Theou tês par anthrôpôn
gignomenês]: "It is the testimony of the ancients, that _the madness
which is of God is a nobler thing than the wisdom which is of men_;"
and again, "He who sets himself to any work with which the Muses
have to do," (i. e. to any of the fine arts,) "without madness,
thinking that by art alone he can do his work sufficiently, will be
found vain and incapable, and the work of temperance and rationalism
will be thrust aside and obscured by that of inspiration." The
passages to the same effect, relating especially to poetry, are
innumerable in nearly all ancient writers; but in this of Plato, the
entire compass of the fine arts is intended to be embraced.

No one acquainted with other parts of my writings will suppose me to
be an advocate of idle trust in the imagination. But it is in these
days just as necessary to allege the supremacy of genius as the
necessity of labor; for there never was, perhaps, a period in which
the peculiar gift of the painter was so little discerned, in which
so many and so vain efforts have been made to replace it by study
and toil. This has been peculiarly the case with the German school,
and there are few exhibitions of human error more pitiable than the
manner in which the inferior members of it, men originally and for
ever destitute of the painting faculty, force themselves into an
unnatural, encumbered, learned fructification of tasteless fruit,
and pass laborious lives in setting obscurely and weakly upon canvas
the philosophy, if such it be, which ten minutes' work of a strong
man would have put into healthy practice, or plain words. I know not
anything more melancholy than the sight of the huge German cartoon,
with its objective side, and subjective side; and mythological
division, and symbolical division, and human and Divine division;
its allegorical sense, and literal sense; and ideal point of view,
and intellectual point of view; its heroism of well-made armor and
knitted brows; its heroinism of graceful attitude and braided hair;
its inwoven web of sentiment, and piety, and philosophy, and
anatomy, and history, all profound: and twenty innocent dashes of
the hand of one God-made painter, poor old Bassan or Bonifazio, were
worth it all, and worth it ten thousand times over.

Not that the sentiment or the philosophy is base in itself. They
will make a good man, but they will not make a good painter,--no,
nor the millionth part of a painter. They would have been good in
the work and words of daily life; but they are good for nothing in
the cartoon, if they are there alone. And the worst result of the
system is the intense conceit into which it cultivates a weak mind.
Nothing is so hopeless, so intolerable, as the pride of a foolish
man who has passed through a process of thinking, so as actually to
have found something out. He believes there is nothing else to be
found out in the universe. Whereas the truly great man, on whom the
Revelations rain till they bear him to the earth with their weight,
lays his head in the dust, and speaks thence--often in broken
syllables. Vanity is indeed a very equally divided inheritance among
mankind; but I think that among the first persons, no emphasis is
altogether so strong as that on the German _Ich_. I was once
introduced to a German philosopher-painter before Tintoret's
"Massacre of the Innocents." He looked at it superciliously, and
said it "wanted to be restored." He had been himself several years
employed in painting a "Faust" in a red jerkin and blue fire; which
made Tintoret appear somewhat dull to him.

[42] I have before stated ("Modern Painters" vol. ii.) that the
first function of the imagination is the apprehension of ultimate
truth.

[43] Note especially, in connexion with what was advanced in Vol. II.
respecting our English neatness of execution, how the base workman
has cut the lines of the architecture neatly and precisely round the
abominable head: but the noble workman has used his chisel like a
painter's pencil, and sketched the glory with a few irregular lines,
anything rather than circular; and struck out the whole head in the
same frank and fearless way, leaving the sharp edges of the stone as
they first broke, and flinging back the crest of hair from the
forehead with half a dozen hammer-strokes, while the poor wretch who
did the other was half a day in smoothing its vapid and vermicular
curls.

[44] The decree is quoted by Mutinelli, lib. i. p. 46.

[45] See Appendix 9.