Diptych

“ They comprised a series of examples of sculpture in ivory, beginning with a diptych, designed with singular grace and feeling, equal to the finest works of the sixteenth century; but, possibly, of as early date as the fourth or fifth century. Amongst the numerous examples of later times, one drawing claimed the special attention of the English antiquary ”

“ VI. cent. Two worn fragments of a diptych. Cons. type. (Later carving on back.) Victoria and Albert Museum. British Museum. 43. VI. cent. Bust and scrolls. Type of No. 12. Camel bone. Mayer Collection, Liverpool Museum. 44. VI. cent. a. Cons. type, sitting. b. Cons. type, standing. Changed to St. Gregory and King David. Tesorio della Basilica, Monza. 45. VI. cent. Cons. type, changed to St. Peter. Library of the Metropolitan Chapter House, Prague. [Pg 162] 46, 47, 48, 49. VI. cent. Five-piece diptych. (46) Top. Flying figures. (47) Bottom. Barbarians. Trivulzio Collection, Milan. ”

“ Figures often appear on coins or gems, but they are always very small. On the diptychs, however, they are sufficiently large to show full details. The subjects depicted on them are various. There are games, combats in the circus, scenes from the Passion, boys emptying sacks of prizes, figures of Saints, Adam and Eve, busts and portraits of consuls both in medallions and full length. The best collections of consular diptychs are to be found at Rome, Milan, Monza, Paris, Munich, Berlin, Liverpool and London. ”

“ Nevertheless, although the art which gives life to marble and bronze—a high style of sculpture—was in a stationary or retrograde state, the lower kind, which we may call domestic, preserved some degree of activity.{342} For instance, it was then the custom for great personages to send as presents diptychs of ivory, on the outer face of which were carved bas-reliefs recalling some memorable event. ”

“ Some authorities consider the figures inferior to the other decorations: of course in any delineation of the human form, the archaic element is more keenly felt than when it appears in foliate forms or conventional patterns. Diptychs being often taken in considerable numbers and set into large works of ivory, has led some authorities to suppose that the Ravenna throne was made of such a collection; but this is contradicted by Passeri in 1759, who alludes to the panels in the following terms: "They might readily be taken by the ignorant for diptychs.... ”

“ From the different Diptychs various martyrologies, or lists of persons so to be commemorated in the ‘Canon,’ were composed to supply the place of the merely local lists or Diptychs. For as time went on, it began to be considered more and more improperxxxix to insert new names in so sacred a part of the Church prayers; and the old names being well known, the Diptychs fell into disuse. The names in the Martyrologies were at last no longer inserted in the Canon, but are repeated in the service called the ‘Prime’; though the term ‘canonized’ was still used of the holy men mentioned in them. ”

“ The brilliance of the mural paintings and richly coloured sculpture and mouldings was in harmony with the splendour of the oak-work—screens, stalls, and roofs—all decorated with gilding and painting, while the light, passing through stained glass, softened and helped to combine the whole into one mass of decorative effect. Colour was boldly applied everywhere, and thus the patchy effect was avoided which is so often the result of the modern timid and partial use of painted ornament. ”

“ Painting, commencing with mosaic and enamels, contributing to the decoration of buildings jointly with stained glass and frescoes, embellishing and illuminating manuscripts before it arrived at its highest point of perfection, with the Art of Giotto and Raphael, of Hemling and Albert Dürer; Engraving on wood and metal, with which is associated the work of the medallist and the goldsmith; and after attempting to touch upon Playing-cards and Niello-work, we suddenly evoke that sublime invention destined to change the face of the world—Printing. ”

“ Wandering through a maze of long skylighted galleries where the master-works of Modern Art are conserved and cherished, he was to encounter the thought that haunted him in a myriad of images, wrought by the chisel, the brush, the burin, and the graving-tool in marble or bronze, upon canvas or panel, in ivory, or silver, or enamel, or gold. ”

“ Let us suppose that a piece of pottery or porcelain has been painted, and that the action of the fire has made the coloring perennial, so that we find on it a portrait or a landscape everlasting as the ware itself. Let us suppose, further, that the tints are natural, that, in short, the portrait is all that we now understand by the word, and that in the landscape nature is displayed as on canvas—then we should have a specimen of the perfect union of the potter’s and painter’s art. ”

“ Sculpture in stone, whether granite, gem, or marble, while we accurately use the general term 'glyptic' for it, may be thought of with, perhaps, the most clear force under the English word 'engraving.' For, from the mere angular incision which the Greek consecrated in the triglyphs of his greatest order of architecture, grow forth all the arts of bas-relief, and methods of localized groups of sculpture connected with each other and with architecture: as, in another direction, the arts of engraving and wood-cutting themselves. ”

“ Exquisite values and exquisite combinations are present in the masterpieces of every art. The sweet blending of musical tones which leads into a delicacy of overtones that no ear can distinguish; the subtle shadings of color in a painting, soft touches of pictorial harmony which can be felt more surely than they can be seen; tender curves in the most vigorous statue, and marble surfaces surging so slightly that their shadows scarcely linger ”

“ For all we mould in clay or cast in bronze or carve in stone or tint with encaustic pigments or colour with paint, in a word, every attempt at artistic representation by the hand of man after a brief lapse of time loses its truth and becomes motionless and impassive like the face of a corpse. So far superior to all pictorial art in respect of truthful representation is the craftsmanship of the smooth mirror and the splendour of its art. ”

“ But sculpture, and, above all, painting, propose to themselves the imitation not only of the forms of nature, but of the characters and passions of the human soul. In those sublime arts the dexterity of the hand is of little avail, unless it is animated by fancy, and guided by the most correct taste and observation. ”

“ Of course, the Painter, whose eye is trained to look into the texture of surfaces, sees all more readily. I am looking up to rough crags, and enormous bulges, where the recent fracture would seem to have an almost painful sharpness to the touch. Where the surfaces have been for a time exposed to the weather, they have the flesh-finish of a statue. Along the lower portion, where you see the glassing effects of the waves, there it resembles the rarest Sèvres vase, or even pearl itself, so exquisitely fine is the polish. It is almost mirror-like. ”

“ But many schools of art affect for the most part one kind of texture only, and a vast quantity of the art of all ages depends for great part of its power on texture produced by multitudinous lines. Thus, wood engraving, line engraving properly so called, and countless varieties of sculpture, metal work, and textile fabric, depend for great part of the effect, for the mystery, softness, and clearness of their colours, or shades, on modification of the surfaces by lines or threads. Even in advanced oil painting, the work often depends for some part of its effect on the texture of the canvas. ”

“ These figures are of value, of course, as illustrations of the possibilities, and also as historical illustrations, of the growth and development of the fictile art. No man will wish to have an Ariadne in china made by an excellent artist, if he can have the same work of the same artist in marble.
We have the same feeling in regard to a fine painting: would any one wish to exchange the Dresden Madonna of Raphael on the canvas for a perfect copy in mosaic, or in the most exquisite Gobelin tapestry? None. And yet the mosaic or the tapestry has cost ten times more of human labor. ”

“ Go from one to the other once or twice. Later painters of the Renaissance use this solemn theme as a mere excuse for obtruding the nude—and often the vulgar nude—into churches. On the same wall are a good triptych in grisaille by P. Pourbus (Way to Calvary, Descent from the Cross, Resurrection: from Notre-Dame at Damme) , and other pictures.
The remaining walls have portraits and other works, from the 17th century downwards, most of which need no explanation. A few of them, indeed, are not without merit. ”

“ Sculpture in clay will accordingly include all cast brickwork, pottery, and tile-work [31] —a somewhat important branch of human skill. Next to the potter's work, you have all the arts in porcelain, glass, enamel, and metal,—everything, that is to say, playful and familiar in design, much of what is most felicitously inventive, and, in bronze or gold, most precious and permanent. ”

“ But it is not until quite the end of the century that mosaic anywhere practically gives way to enamel painting.
The sixteenth century, therefore, includes, broadly speaking, all that is best in Renaissance glass and much that is already on the decline. There is a tide in the affairs of art; and after the full flood of the Renaissance, sweeping all before it, glazing and glass painting sank to the very lowest ebb, out of sight in fact of craftsmanship. ”

“ A finished coloured drawing or painting of the design, to a smaller, or even to the same scale as the fresco painting, must be prepared, and the artist should endeavour to make an exact copy of this on the plaster surface, as there is no time to experiment in colour schemes, or to make alterations from the original coloured design in the short period that is at the disposal of the painter when he is at work on the wet plaster. ”

“ The extraordinarily rapid advance, both in artistic conception and in power of execution, during the preceding fifty years, fostered by the concurrent advance in sculpture and painting, hastened the vase-painter to his ruin. With the attainment of perfection in drawing, dexterity and grace are his sole aim, and in place of vigour and originality we meet with over-refinement and mannerisms, and florid pictorial compositions executed in a careless manner. ”

“ The earliest glass, therefore, and the latest, the best and the worst, may alike be termed pictorial. The difference is in the conception as to what constituted a picture, say, in the thirteenth century and the seventeenth. It all depends upon the kind of picture attempted.
Archaic art aims already at nature. We probably do not give the early painter credit enough for his intention of rendering natural things naturally. In part at least the stiffness of his design comes from lack of skill, and often where we find him quaint he meant no doubt to be perfectly serious and matter-of-fact. ”

“ If you have looked long enough, and carefully enough, at the three previous sculptures, you cannot but feel that the hand here is utterly changed. The drapery sweeps in broader, softer, but less true folds; the handling is far more delicate; exquisitely sensitive to gradation over broad surfaces—scarcely using an incision of any depth but in outline; studiously reserved in appliance of shadow, as a thing precious and local—look at it above the puppy's head, and under the tent.
This is assuredly painter's work, not mere sculptor's. ”

“ When he returned in the evening, he would talk to me with feverish eagerness of his next subject for exhibition.
The subject was "a Roman lady leaving the bath." He wanted the marble to reproduce that faint shiver of the skin at the contact of air, the moisture of the delicate textures clinging to the shoulders, and all sorts of other fine things which I no longer remember. Between you and me, when he speaks to me of his sculpture, I do-not always understand him very well. ”

“ What little can be seen of the painting—and only ill-lighted fragments remain—is full of tenderness, refinement, and grace; no touch of drama; no hint of passion. The sculpture, stripped of its stucco surface, is rude but often impressive. But what impresses most is not the art but the religion of the place. ”

“ Even in the fourteenth century it was seen that there was a fashion of naturalism in design, in the fifteenth there was an ever-increasing endeavour to realise natural form, and not natural form alone; for, in order to make the figure stand out in its niche, it became necessary to show the vault in perspective. It was obviously easier to get something like pictorial relief by means of painting than in mosaic, which accordingly fell by degrees into subordination, and the reign of the glass painter began. ”

“ Later yet, all the antique eccentricities passed away, and the laws of perspective and balance were fully developed in an art which has an unspeakable charm. All the things that modern art has decreed as crude or childish has passed away, and the sweet flower of the Gothic perfection unfolded its exquisite beauty. This Gothic perfection was the Golden Age of tapestry. ”

“ Such is Giottesque painting: an art which is not merely essentially decorative, but which is, moreover, what painting and sculpture remained throughout the Gothic period, subservient to the decorative effect of another art; an art in which all is subordinated to architectural effect, in which form, colour, figures, houses, the most dramatic scenes of the most awful of all dramas, everything is turned into a kind of colossal and sublime wall-paper; and such an art as this would lead us to expect but little realism, little deliberate and slavish imitation of the existing. ”

“ Now if the essentials of monumental painting, which we have named, and the special functions of the art of the painter are united in any scheme of mural decoration, the result would be an ideal work of decorative art, examples of which may be found in the frescos of Giotto, and in those of the majority of the Italian painters who followed him, down to the sublime creations of Michael Angelo. ”