220 REVIEWS AND PAMPHLETS ON ART

“Finally, throughout his works, we are conscious of an earnest, a lofty, a religious aim and purpose, as of one who felt himself a pioneer of civilization in a newly-discovered world, the Adam of a new Eden freshly planted in the earth’s wilderness, a mouthpiece of God and a preacher of righteousness to mankind.-And here we must establish a distinction very necessary to be recognised before we can duly appreciate the relative merits of the elder painters in this, the most important point in which we can view their character. Giotto’s genius, however universal, was still (as I have repeatedly observed) Dramatic rather than Contemplative,-a tendency in which his scholars and successors almost to a man resembled him. Now, just as in actual life-where, with a few rare exceptions, all men rank under two great categories according as Imagination or Reason predominates in their intellectual character-two individuals may be equally impressed with the truths of Christianity and yet differ essentially in its outward manifestation, the one dwelling in action, the other in contemplation, the one in strife, the other in peace, the one (so to speak) in hate, the other in love, the one struggling with devils, the other communing with angels, yet each serving as a channel of God’s mercies to man, each (we may believe) offering Him service equally acceptable in His sight-even so shall we find it in art and with artists; few in whom the Dramatic power predominates will be found to excel in the expression of religious emotions of the more abstract and enthusiastic cast, even although men of indisputably pure and holy character themselves; and vice versâ, few of the more Contemplative but will feel bewildered and at fault, if they descend from their starry region of light into the grosser atmosphere that girdles in this world of action. The works of artists are their minds’ mirror; they cannot express what they do not feel; each class dwells apart and seeks its ideal in a distinct sphere of emotion,-their object is different, and their success proportioned to the exclusiveness with which they pursue that object. A few indeed there have been in all ages, monarchs of the mind and types of our Saviour, who have lived a two-fold existence of action and contemplation in art, in song, in politics, and in daily life; of these have been Abraham, Moses, David, and Cyrus in the elder world-Alfred, Charlemagne, Dante, and perhaps Shakspeare, in the new,-and in art, Niccola Pisano, Leonard [sic] da Vinci and Michael Angelo. But Giotto, however great as the patriarch of his peculiar tribe, was not of these few, and we ought not therefore to misapprehend him, or be disappointed at finding his Madonnas (for instance) less exquisitely spiritual than the Sienese, or those of Fra Angelico and some later painters, who seem to have dipped their pencils in the rainbow that circles the throne of God,-they are pure and modest, but that is all; on the other hand, where his Contemplative rivals lack utterance, he speaks most feelingly to the heart in his own peculiar language of Dramatic composition-he glances over creation with the eye of love, all the charities of life follow in his steps, and his thoughts are as the breath of the morning. A man of the world, living in it and loving it, yet with a heart that it could not spoil or wean from its allegiance to God-’non meno buon Cristiano che eccellente pittore,’ as Vasari emphatically describes him-his religion breathes of the free air of heaven rather than the cloister, neither enthusiastic nor superstitious, but practical, manly and healthy-and this, although the picturesque biographer of S. Francis!”-Vol. ii. pp. 260-264.

[Version 0.04: March 2008]