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eoseoBBR 6 , 1855 ] THE JL .. 3 BADBB . $ 63
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MODERN PAINTING AT NAPLES . Notes on Modern Painting at Najiles . By Lord Napier . J . W . Parker . In the intervals of cold and elegant criticism applied to special painters , Lord Napier discusses the history of modern Italian art . He traces a parallel between its fluctuations and the political vicissitudes of the peninsula . When Naples reposed under the sway of Church and throne , with wealthy nobles and wealthier priests , its painters were true to the traditions of their country ' s genius . When conflicting powers arose , and the revenues of the hierarchy were partially restored to the nation , the fine arts decayed with the patronage that encouraged them . From this retrospect the moral of the picture is derived : —
Should the monarchical party maintain its present ascendancy , there will undoubtedly be a rapid increase in the wealth of the religious orders ; a greater refinement of taste , an aspiration for the loftier exponents of devotional feeling , a desire to multiply all the appliances and instruments of ceremonial exhibition will revive with the improvement in their social and financial position , and the Church , enriched and elevated , may again become for a time the nursing mother of the arts . We are inclined to question the identity here suggested between the advancement of the beautiful arts and the prosperity of the religious orders . The artist's inspiring sentiment , no doubt , is often connected with his religion . It was so in Greece . It was so in mediaeval Italy . It was so in Gothic England . It is so still , wherever art has life . But never , anywhere , have great ecclesiastical corporations , such as have lately been dishest
solved in Piedmont and aggrandised in Tuscany , proved the hig teachers or the truest friends of art . In the Athenian annals it is not found that the priesthood fostered that genius which irradiated the age of Pericles . It was from the prodigious emulation of the cities — a free political as well as a devotional spirit—that the multitude of temples arose before the Persian war , which enhanced for centuries the natural beauty of Greece . It was to satisfy the public ideal that pictures were hung in the portico no less than 911 sacred walls . Nor is it certain that the archaic style—which contented the votaries , and ornamented the inferior temples—was not coarse and meretricious compared with that which sprung from a popular piety , distinct from the influence of the sacerdotal class . The practice of colouring and gilding statuary was probably carried to its theatrical excess by i ! n i nmA « l » : nA > Am « K ** 4-r * s \ -r \ o A / iniiraiAnf +. r \ +. !»*> niAnfififiP . fillAt . fcnnf : ! nf rtllt * tnnfifl vu ^ i * u . v »*««• - »/• u # * wvvm (» — —
iXTLlOLlk } WvJi JO . 4 l . li' XKJL IJ&tVl . KJ 1 M . J ^ M * - *¦*¦ * «** V ^»* W U « . v ... vm . v v «_ v the decorators of Roman and Russian chapels . Lord Napier dilates on the neglect of art which supervened on the partial destruction of the order of priests in the last century . We are not sure that the Church revival produced any new and pure Renaissance in France , Spain , or Italy . The grossly-coloured pictures and ignoble carvings—triumphal altar-pteoes and crosses which were then multiplied in the South , were vile enough , to deprave the population , and it has not been through the influence of the clergy that nobler forms of art have flourished in any of those countries . Italian art attained its finest—perhaps final—development during the turbulent period of the Republics , and was not indebted for its best encouragement to the inspirations of the ecclesiastical body . It was in the a ^ e of political activity , of municipal independence , of free thought and bold ambition , that the Italians was most cultured , and Italy most ridhly udornod . From a flourishing commerce rose the palaces of Genoa ; by 11 civic pride which spurned the Church was kindled the half-Saracenic genius
of the Venetians . There is an era , no doubt , in the history of nations , when art like learning , is reared to mature proportions in the shade of cells and cloisters . But in those retirements philosophy also was nursed—that philosophy , among the rest , which produced the Reformation , and led to the dispersion of the relig ious orders . Science emerged from monastic recesses ; literature took refuge in them . If Lord Napier's historical theory be sound , letters , science , philosophy , should withdraw into conventual twilight , and prosper in the shade . The answer , perhaps , would be that in these elements all human interests float , while art is the vehicle of religion . Wcare fatigued by the prevailing doctrines concerning " Christian art . " The nrti ° t ' s office is not alone to idealise the mystic scones that have passed between heaven and earth , the beatitudes of saints , the devotion of martyrs . There are other grand heads to paint than those of prophets und apostles . They look down on us in the Italian galleries . There arc all tho variations of human joy and sorrow , reaching as far as poetry can range , ami oxciutio ^
some moat exquisite . idealisations which the Church would . . u » Napier regreta that the modei'ns have dedicated epochs of their art to tuo illustration of pagan legends , which have no place in our V « P ""* " ° K . affections . Hut the remark applies with as much forco to 11 viwtu £ \ l Christian subjeels-tho quaint and fantastic allegories of tho I ro-Knp l e 110 ago . There is the taste oV the cardinal , and tho tasfco of tho ln ^* R $ ^ JJ -of Leo and of Lorenzo . Indeed , the ecclesiastical ^ - '" P"' ^ S »' never been diatinguiahed by purity . Who were tho v d , riguuril wUUig . lt crowns tho Madonnas of Raphael P Who draped the nok ^^ J ^ J ^ Angelo ? Loo tho Tenth was not , as a churchman , a great inspire *
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tressimr T look one end of the cart body , and , by an extra outlay of strength , I lifted Kto ^ ithe ^ iSe-tree , from which it had been violently flung ; and after much niilliniTand straining , I succeeded in getting the body of the cart in its place . This wasan important step out of the difficulty , , and its performance increased my courage , for the work which remained to be done . The cart was provided with an axe , a tool with ^ wMch I Jia d become pretty w ell acquainted in , the ship-yard at Baltimore . With this I cut down the saplings by which , my oxen were entangled , and again pursued my journey , with . my . heart in my mouth , lest the oxen should again take it into their seaseless . heads to cut up a caper . My fears were groundless . Their spree was over for the present , and the rascals now moved off as soberly as though their behaviour had been natural and exemplary . On reaching the part of the forest where X had been , the day before , chopping wood , I filled the cart with a heavy load , as a security against another running away . But , the neck of an ox is equal in strength to iron . It * defies all ordinary burdens when excited . Pictures of Europe , Framed in Ideas , is a title requiring a little explanation . Much as it looks like a meaningless conceit , there is in it , when we begin to find out the plan of the book , some faint glimpse of a meaning . The . title , in fact , conies as near a thought as any one sentence in the work , which is . throughout a painful struggle to look like something wonderfully imaginative and profound . The " pictures" are represented by a series of essays generalising in turn the " Mountains , " the " Rivers , " the " Lakes , " and the "Seas "—not of Europe especially , but of Nature at large , and very much at large , too . The ideal frames . are verses which have a mystic reference to the subject of each essay . We have not named all the subjects , or the titles rather , of the unpictorial pictures which Mr . Bartol has , in his own manner , framed and—he might have said—glazed . There is " Superiority of Art to Nature ; " there is " Testimony of Art to Religion" ( a perfectly unreadable chapter ) ; there is "The Enduring Kingdom ; " and there . are " The Church , " " Society , " " Country , " " Mankind , " " History , " " Destiny , " and one or two more . " Superiority of Art to Nature" shall afford us a specimen of the ideas with which Mr . Bartol can afford to frame hisother kind of work : — In ecstasy the human creature stands Before the world built wondrous by God ' s hands ; The while God's spirit , through the creature ' s will , Buildeth another world more wondrous still . Art is man ' s nature , ere the earth he trod : Man ' s nature is transcendent art of God . This , the reader will understand , is the idea . Now for the platitude : — The whole intent of the present essay may move only to doubt and surprise . To most persons , probably no proposition could be a more decided paradox than that of * he superiority of art to nature . Nay , not a few may consider the statement impious . " Whatman has added to the world , is finer than the world itself ! " they may exclaim . " The thought is blasphemy . " But why blasphemy ? What is added is added by the soul , —is it not ? And what is tlie soul , but the most admirable part of God ' s own creation ? How , then , does it contradict the spirit of reverence , if it please him to make the soul his tool of further results nobler than the rudeness of the rocks and the clods of the valley ? Besides , it is among the Creator ' s first recorded commands to his children , to subdue the earth ,- ^ a direction implying some excess or departure in nature which he would have them , overrule . In substance he says to them , " I have made the world for you ; but I have made it in the rough , and left it for you to finish . I have but hewn out the model , and left it for you to polish . I did not wish to give it to you unimprovable , but so that your own faculties would be unfolded in your labours to perfect it . " This confusion of meanings—the indifferent use of the word ar ^ for beautiful , but otherwise unnecessary production , and for useful production or im-Sr ovement—would be marvellous did we not recollect the blunder of the Loyal Academy in taking as the motto of its catalogue that passage from the Winter ' s Tale in which " art" simply means the gardener ' s art of grafting . It is curious to follow Mr . Bartol as he works away on _ this fallacy , imports other fallacies foreign to the question , darts ofF to seize a distant idea , does not seize it , gpts back to his fallacies , begins to show signs of distress , revives , flags , revives again , and finally sinks into the state of utter prostration in which we find him near the end of the chapter : — The hopeless feeling with which one undertakes to describe Nature , or reads his own description , is only aggravated in regard to any account he may give of tho trophies of Art . He finds he cannot tell what is in her first chamber and on her lowest shelf . How I am afflicted by the poverty of what I have said , as , at tho moment of tracing these characters , there rush back upon me—at first in a splendid confusion , in the halls of fancy , which I have 110 time to analyse , and which it would take folios to reoord- ^ -the contents of a hundred museums , displaying those victories over matter , so much nobler than of man ovor his brother man ! I try to single out , as within tho range of my present aim , tho meanest department in this register of spiritual conquests ; and I am at onco overwhelmed with a multitude of shining objects that come upon the mind , as upon tho conspiring woman came tho soldiers ' shields in tho Roman story . Let us hope that Mr . Bartol will find time to analyse tho halls of fancy , before he publishes a second edition of his book . Tho Letters of Mra . Catharine E . Boeoher are introduced to the public in those words : — There are certain portions of this work which tho author was unwilling to bring . before-the public on her own responsibility . With reference to this , proof copies of the work were sent to a largo number of cultivated and judicious ladies of innuoncu and position in various sections of tho country , in order to secure their opinion as to what should bo said and what bo omitted . The result is , thoro is not a sontoncoin this work which has not boon sanctioned by tho approval of those , whom all will concede to bo tho proper and moat highly-qualified judges of propriety on such subjects . ' There must be a constitutional coolness about a lady who thus assumes , on account of her own book , an unassailable position for a friendly and unonywkQus jury of matrons . Whether so much anatomical knowledge as Mrs . Beecherjputa into words is or is not ffood family reading—whether the veinoua diagrams which occur so frequentl y in her book are or are not all strictly " i propor "^ -jis surely matter of opinion , bo tho influence , cultivation , judgment , and numerical strength of hor adherents what they may . Our . opinion , if Mrs . Baecher will allow us to hivve any , h that her book contains many valuable hints , and cannot do harm to young or old readers . But we
boldly tell her . that we are not awed into this opinion by the names of the ladies she has not mentioned in her " Introductory * Notice . " The book called The Unholy Alliance , and further described as an American view of the war in the East , is by a Mr . William Giles Dix , who in the December of 1853 put . forth a pamphlet ( he says ) * " condemning the threatened course of Western Europe in upholding by force the Ottoman Empire , and remonstrating against the predilections in behalf of Turkey which then prevailed much more extensivel y than now in the United States . " Mr . Dix , who places the motto " Chrislo el Cruci" on his titlepage , and relies mainly on the abstract religious argument against supporting " the historic enemy of Christianity , " is clearly animated by a hatred , not of Turkey but of England . We have left ourselves no space to deal with Mr . Dix . Very few , we think , even among those Americans who share his anti-English feeling , will rate highly his religion , his polity , or his powers of argument . From the line or two we have quoted , our English readers may form an opinion ( which a nearer acquaintance with the book will not mend ) of his grammatical proficiency .
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Oct. 6, 1855, page 967, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2109/page/19/
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