BROWNING'S ITALY (22 page)

and green marble, similar but richer than that of the cathedral, and with floral sculpture in the friezes. Figure sculpture adorns the lowest ränge of paneling in the first stage of the base, the designs believed to be by Giotto, and partly executed by him, partly by Andrea Pisano, Lucca della Robia and others. Also, in the upper stage of the base the lower ränge of paneling is ornamented with a series of standing figures in small, pointed arched niches, by Donatello, and others.

Browning makes the incompleteness of this tower serve his argument of the superior interest attaching to the less "perfect" things of art.

«

Tis a life-long toil tili our lump be leaven —

The better! What's come to perfection perishes. Things learned on earth we shall practice in heaven:

Works done least rapidly, Art most cherishes. Thyself shalt afford the example Giotto!

Thy one work, not to decrease or diminish, Done at a stroke, was just (was it not) 'Ol 91

Thy great Campanile is yet to finish."

1 Referring to the well-known anecdote of the envoy of Benedict IX who, when visiting Giotto, asked for a drawing to carry as a proof of his skill to the Pope. Giotto taking a sheet of paper and a brush-full of red paint and resting his elbow on his hip to form a sort of compass, with one turn of his hand drew a circle so perfect that it was a marvel to behold, whence the proverb " Rounder than the O of Giotto."

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The poet later on is guilty of a slight in-consistency in regard to the bell-tower, for after admiring it because it is not finished, he has an enthusiastic vision of the attaining of Italian political independence and its cel-ebration by the finishing of the spire.

"When the hour grows ripe, and a certain dotard

Is pitched, no parcel that needs invoicing, To the worse side of the Mont Saint Gothard,

We shall begin by way of rejoicing; None of that shooting the sky (blank cartridge),

Nor a civic guard, all plumes and lacquer, Hunting Radetzky's soul like a partridge

Over Morello with squib and cracker.

"This time well shoot better game and bag 'em hot —

No mere display at the stone of Dante, But a kind of sober Witanagamot

(Ex: 'Casa Guidi,' quod Videos ante) Shall ponder, once Freedom restored to Florence,

How Art may return that departed with her. Go, hated house, go each trace of the Loraine's,

And bring us the days of Orgagna hither!

How we shall prologize, how we shall perorate,

Utter fit things upon art and history, Feel truth at blood-heat and falsehood at zero rate,

Make of the want of the age no mystery; Contrast the fructuous and sterile eras,

Show — Monarchy ever its uncouth cub licks Out of the bear's shape into Chimera's,

While Pure Art's birth is still the republic's.

«

"Then one shall propose in a speech (curt Tuscan —

Expurgate and sober, with scarcely an 'issimo,') To end now our half-told tale of Cambuscan,

And turn the bell-tower's aÜ to altissimo: And fine as the beak of a young beccaccia

The Campanile, the Duomo's fit ally, Shall soar up in gold füll fifty braccia,

Completing Florence, as Florence Italy.

"Shall I be alive that morning the scaffold

Is broken away, and the long pent fire, Like the golden hope of the world, unbaffled

Springs from its sleep, and up goes the spire While *God and the People' piain for its motto,

Thence the new tricolor flaps at the sky ? At least to foresee that glory of Giotto

And Florence together, the first am I."

In still another mood of the poem, how-ever, he presents a possible Solution of these two moods.

"There's a fancy some lean to and others hate —

That, when this life is ended, begins New work for the soul in another state,

Where it strives and gets weary, loses and wins: Where the strong and the weak, this world's congeries,

Repeat in large what they practised in small, Through life after life in unlimited series;

Only the scale's to be changed, that's all.

«

Yet I hardly know. When a soul has seen By the means of Evil that Good is best, And, through earth and its noise, what is.heaven's serene, —

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When our faith in the same has stood the test — Why, the child grown man, you burn the rod,

The uses of labor are surely done; There remaineth a rest for the people of God:

And I have had troubles enough for one."

This is tantamount to saying that the quality of imperfection appeals to the human mind as long as it is itself in a state of imperfection, but once having passed on to another phase of existence, with a soul fully developed by the lessons learned through life's imper-fections, then delight and joy and peace will be the portion of the soul attuned to perfec-tion. It will be such a state of exaltation as that described by Shelley in the climax of "Prometheus Unbound."

Thus his musings over the early painters lead the poet into political prophecy and philosophical ruminations, both of which, in spite of his praise of imperfection, bring the conclusion that perfection is best.

Neither could the fame of Nicolo the Pisan be materially enhanced by Browning's calling him "his sculptor." Vasari's enthusiasm for him is unbounded, so much so in fact, that he attributes to this sculptor numerous buildings which the ruthless editors of later days say there is no proof that he designed.

His Inspiration came direct from ancient

Greek sculpture, if Vasari is to be believed; thus he brought in one of the important elements of the Renaissance, the return to ancient modeis, Giotto and Cimabue having inaugurated the "return to nature."

"Among the many spoils of marbles," Vasari relates, "brought by the armaments of Pisa to their city, were several antique sarcophagi, now in the Campo Santo of that town. One of these, on which the Chase of Meleager and the Calydonian boar was cut with great truth and beauty, surpassed all the others; the nude as well as draped figures, being perfect in design, and executed with great skill. This sarcophagus, having been placed for its beauty by the Pisans in that fa9ade of the Cathedral which is opposite to San Rocco, and beside the principal door of that front, was used as a tomb for the mother of the Countess Matilda. Nicolo was at-tracted by the excellence of this work, in which he greatly delighted, and which he studied diligently, with the many other valu-able sculptures of the relics around him, imitating the admirable manner of these works with so much success that no long time had elapsed before he was esteemed the best sculptor of his time."

Nicolo's work for Florence was not ex-

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tensive; about all that the poet could have called to mind as surely his is the church of Santa Trinita; but doubtless his thoughts wandered to other famous works of his, like the Pulpits, at Pisa and Sienna, and the Area di San Domenico at Bologna.

His date is really precedent to that of Giotto, so that he may truly be considered to have Struck the death-blow to the stiff By-zantine art that flourished before. His in-fluence was feit not only in Italy but as some scholars have shown it even penetrated into the remote forests of Germany.

Ghiberti is famous among other things for having won the commission for the doors for the church of San Giovanni in Florence. All the artists in Italy were invited to compete by submitting an example of their skill to the Guild of the merchants and the Signoria of Florence. Let Vasari again teil the story by virtue of his nearness to the times. "A great concourse of artists assembled in Florence. Each of these artists reeeived a sum of money, and it was commanded that within a year each should produce a story in bronze as a speeimen of his powers, all to be of the same size which was that of one of the compart-ments of the first door. The subjeet was chosen by the consuls, and was the sacrifice

of Isaac by his father Abraham, that being selected as presenting sufficient opportunity for the artists to display their mastery over the difficulties of their art, this story com-prising landscape with human figures, nude and clothed, as well as those of animals; the foremost of these figures were to be in füll relief, the second in half-relief, and the third in low relief. The candidates for this work were Filippo di Ser Brunellesco, Donato, and Lorenzo di Bartoluccio, who were Florentines, with Jacopo della Quercia of Sienna: Nicolo d'Arezzo, his disciple; Francesco di Valdambrina, and Simone da Colle, called Simon of the bronzes. 1 All these masters made promise before the consuls that they would deliver each his specimen completed at the prescribed time, and all set themselves to work with the utmost care and study, putting forth all their strength, and calling all their knowledge to aid, in the hope of surpassing one another. They kept their labors meanwhile entirely secret, one from the other, that they might not copy each others plans. Lorenzo, alone, who had Bartoluccio to guide him, which last suffered him to shrink before no amount of labor, but com-pelled him to make various modeis before

1 It has been since found that there were other competing artists*

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he resolved on adopting any one of them, Lorenzo only, I say, permitted all the Citizens to see his work, inviting them or any stranger who might be passing and had acquaintance with the art, to say what they thought on the subject; and these various opinions were so useful to the artist, that he produced a model which was admirably executed and without any defect whatever. He then made the ultimate preparations, cast the work in bronze, and found it succeed to admiration. When Lorenzo, assisted by Bartoluccio, his father, completed and polished the whole with such love and patience, that no work could be executed with more care, or finished with greater delicacy." As a result of all this "The story executed by Lorenzo only, which is still to be seen in the Hall of Audience, belonging to the Guild of the Merchants, was perfect in all its parts. The whole work was admirably designed and very finely composed: the figures, graceful, elegant and in beautiful attitudes and all was finished with so much care and so much perfection, that the work seemed not to have been cast and polished with instruments of iron, but to have been blown by the breath."

Again to Ghiberti is accorded a chorus of praise by modern critics. Among these no

more powerful note is sounded than that by Symonds who says that "he came into the world to create a new and inimitable style of hybrid beauty. Though so passionate an admirer of the Greeks that he reckoned time by Olympiads, he remained, nevertheless, unaffectedly natural and in a true sense Christian. Ghiberti's people of the bronze gates are so long and delicate and graceful, with a certain character of exquisiteness that they appear to belong to a Praxitelian rather than to a Phidian epoch — to a second rather than to a first phase of evolution. They are marvelously precocious, pressing forward in advance of their time. They are pictorial rather than sculptural, but are so beautiful and so different from the works of other men that Ghiberti will always remain to us as one of the four or five most individual sculptors of the Renaissance, and as one of the supreme masters of pictorial composition affording a precedent even to Raphael."

Besides this masterpiece Florence has several tombs designed by him, among them that of Ludovico degli Obizzi, Captain of the Florentine army, in Santa Croce, and most important the tomb of S. Zanobius, bishop and patron saint of Florence, in the Duomo.

Ghirlandajo, to whom Browning again refers by his family name Bigordi, properly belongs to the Pre-Raphaelite period, and is regarded by Symonds as the most complete representative of the Coming splendor of the füll Renaissance. He was a naturalist of a robust order, furnishing a fine contrast to another of the distinguished Pre-Raphaelites, Sandro Botticelli, with his subtle idealism and delicate ornamentation.

The most sympathetic criticism of his work to be found is in the notes to the Blashfield and Hopkins' edition of Vasari's Lives, for Symonds, while acknowledging his greatness, is too much dazzled by the eflFul-gence of the "great masters," near at hand, to see him, it seems to us, in his true propor-tions. The same may be said of Symond's attitude toward Botticelli.

"In his work there is none of the manner-ism of Botticelli, only a trace of the classicism of Filippino and not a sign of the exaggerated movement of Signorelli. His figures do not mince nor swagger, they take the pose of well-bred people sitting for their portraits, and stand naturally and quietly on either side of his compositions, looking out at the spec-tator or at each other, not paying much attention to the drama or the miracle in which

Ghirlandajo, himself takes but little interest. Costume and background are treated in the same sober spirit. Goldsmith as he was, he did not fill his pictures with dainty details like Botticelli, who devised stränge settings for jewels and patterns for brocades and curiously intricate headgear: costume and background are accessories, and are sub-ordinated to the general effect. He does not lack invention, and can introduce charming episodes when he pleases, but the contempo-rary Florentines, standing with hand on hip or folded arms, are apt to form the strengest portion of the composition. His drawing is very firm and frank, and he was the best all-round draughtsman that had appeared up to his time; the color in his frescos tends to bricky reds and ochers, in his tempera to strong and brilliant tones, which are occa-sionally even gaudy. He shows his subtlety in characterization, in differentiation of feature, in seizing the personality of each model, in sympathetic comprehension of widely diflfer-ing types of men."