Medieval art

“ If the romanticists have failed fully to explain medieval art to us, let us still be grateful to them: they gave our cathedrals back to us, they denounced ignorance and scourged the stupidity that would have ended by tearing down those sublime piles. ”

“ That thought has come to many others who, knowing and appreciating medieval progress in art and literature, have tried to work out the reasons for the gap that exists between medieval art and modern artistic endeavor. Some of these explanations, because they serve to make clear why art evolution stopped so abruptly and we are retracing our steps and taking models from the past rather than doing original work that is an advance, must be quoted here. ”

“ At the base of this are sculptured stone figures representing the Roman guards watching the tomb; and these are shown clad in medieval armour!—a curious instance of inconsistency, but then there were no art critics in those days, and the medieval carver and painter were a law unto themselves! Yet in spite of their oftentimes glaring anachronisms, the works of the medieval artists, be they sculptors or painters, were always effective and suggestive of life, and never failed to be decorative. Modern art, as a rule, simply reverses these conditions. ”

“ The tapestrylike lawn, the decorative bright colors, and the inverted perspective of the shed are elements common to medieval art. The realistic rendering of birds and animals, the weight and volume given the kneeling Magi in the foreground, and the classically inspired nude figures at the distant left reflect the new-found interest of the Renaissance in both classical antiquity and the external world. The colorful, festive mood of the painting, moreover, is emphasized by the bustling throngs of people arriving to worship the Christ Child. ”

“ But it is not so much the ecclesiastical art of the middle age, its sculpture and painting—work certainly done in a great measure for pleasure's sake, in which even a secular, a rebellious spirit often betrays itself—but rather its profane poetry, the poetry of Provence, and the magnificent after-growth of that poetry in Italy and France, which those French writers have in view when they speak of this medieval Renaissance. ”

“ It was the greatest marvel that architectural art had produced, and it united all these magic qualities with a gravity and solemnity in the temple, a stern solidity in the castle, an asceticism in the monastery, a quiet, retiring sentiment in the seat of learning, a cheerfulness in its civic and domestic structures, and a deeply touching expression in its sepulchral monuments, which no style could possibly go beyond, and none have yet equalled. ”

“ It is absolutely necessary, too, that you should understand and be familiar with all the varieties of our old architecture, because, though you may not follow them in your own works, you may be frequently called upon to restore them, though this reason is hardly necessary to lead you to master the whole range of Mediæval art.
Still, however, you cannot choose but follow more lovingly the works of the periods which most approve themselves to your minds as the days when art was the most vigorous, noble, and full of deep and true sentiment. ”

“ But the medieval art, and especially that branch of it which flourished in our own country, has a different origin, and sprang from the system, not of illustration, but of pure ornamentation, which prevailed in Ireland before the eighth century, but which reached its highest development among the Oriental Moslems. ”

“ Nor was it to architecture alone that the arts of the period were devoted: we find the same art expended on stained glass, on metal-work of all sorts, on enamels of the most magnificent character, on the illumination of manuscripts, the painted decoration of the buildings, on jewellery, on ivory-carving, on embroidery, on{204} woven fabrics, tapestry, seal-engraving—in fact, on every branch of decoration; every one of which arts were carried out with a degree of skill and instinctive taste truly amazing. ”

“ If Gothic architecture is that on which your loving choice has fallen, you are more happily situated. Then you are not studying an imported art, but that of your own country; you have not to travel widely from home to study its noblest productions, for they are at your very doors; you have not to go through a long course of book-study, treating of examples of art which you have no means of seeing and studying with your own eyes ”

“ But the medieval genius is many-sided, and never satisfied with that which is beautiful alone; and this magnificent array of Christian carving would not be complete to the mind of the medieval artist unless he had crowned the angles of his buildings with a series of grotesque gargoyles and allegoric statues, representing the streams that watered the earthly paradise, while at the summit of the roof are niched angles bearing instruments of music. ”

“ The best idea of what the German medieval artists had produced was to be obtained from the quantities of paintings and wood and stone carving which came into the market after the suppression of monasteries and charitable foundations. At that time men had lost all appreciation for monuments of art ”

“ I now come to the manner in which Mediæval architecture should be studied.
In the first place, though books and prints are very useful in their degree, let me impress upon you, in the strongest manner, that all real study should be at the fountain head. You may derive information as to the history of art from books, but knowledge of art itself must be derived from works of art. The knowledge derived from books and prints comes to you at second hand—you are seeing through other men’s eyes ”

“ My object is rather to trace out the re-awakening of art in the eleventh and following centuries from the slumber in which it had so long lain, than to chronicle its changes during the chaotic ages which followed the final catastrophe of the ancient world. ”

“ You must much rather study it artistically, with reference to its intrinsic merits and its noble beauty, and morally, as illustrating the elevated sentiment and noble earnestness of those who, while pressing forward a new style of art, generated at every step such glorious productions. ”

“ Productions of the highest class of antique art attract our admiration on account of their ideal beauty, and the combination of imaginative conception with perfect mechanical skill which they display: medieval antiquities, deficient, very frequently, in their artificial workmanship as in elegance of design, arrest our notice because they bear an impress of reality ”

“ In the earlier ages both of painting and sculpture these considerations, obvious as they are, were not taken into account. The first artists during the medieval revival of art rose as little to theory as children do. ”

“ The single-mindedness of medieval artists is always astonishing. Anything from the Bible was apparently meet for the walls of this sumptuous house of prayer, which, instead of being a mere bit of florid decorative architecture belonging to the King, is a vivid pictorial history. ”

“ I will not, however, weary you with barren bills of fare and outline tours, but will content myself with saying that the same course of close all-gathering study must be followed up wherever you go, whether making a tour of village churches or of the great northern abbeys, or seating yourselves down before a majestic cathedral.
Architecture properly so called, wood-work, metal-work, decorations, stained glass, and every form of art and workmanship, must be studied as if you had to perform like work for yourselves; and you must make yourselves perfect masters of it in every way ”

“ As the Arts are intimately connected with the epochs in which they are practised, and mark the state and variations of civilization and manners, more forcibly than any other criteria of their age, I have ventured, as Sculpture holds a distinguished place amongst the medieval arts of England, to submit a few observations on its progress in this country, and, where possible, on the artists by whom it was practised. ”

“ But it is the moral understanding of the artist which is most affected by the contemplation of so vast an assemblage of Christian art, as contrasted with the Classical, contained in our museums or in ancient monuments. ”

“ Differences of taste and education lead us to form varied estimates of the relative merits of the several styles of art, but the most devoted follower of classic{18} antiquity could scarcely question the absolute and intrinsic beauty of a Gothic cathedral. Every style of architecture has had its own glories. ”

“ What I wish to suggest is that our own proper subject is art rather than antiquity. The fact that the types from which we have to study have grown old is accidental: their merits and their value are perfectly irrespective of their age, and would have been as great had they been erected in our own day ”

“ There are not wanting signs that even in architecture, in which the greatest and most permanent traces of medieval genius are found, the world is growing a little impatient of Gothic buildings, whether as imitative creations or as the claimants of exclusive orthodoxy in their art ”

“ We have followed out our arched construction, and the process by which it was rendered at once susceptible and productive of artistic beauty, till we might fancy it to need nothing but the gradual additions of refined art to render it a perfect style; and it would be both an interesting and a profitable field of speculation to take up the style at such a point, and to{178} study how best to clothe it with the charms of the highest art, irrespective of our knowledge of its historical destiny; how, in fact, to perfect our round-arched style to the highest and most refined artistic status ”

“ Because the Church defined much of the social and cultural structure of medieval life, Christian themes predominated as the subject matter for the arts of the period. In the National Gallery collections, works created in Florence, Siena, Rome, and Central Italy show the range of skills and styles prevalent in painting as it progressed from the highly religious art of the Middle Ages to the more secular art of the Renaissance. ”

“ Archaic art seems to have the power of reproducing itself; and even the ages of heroic and barbaric myth may re-occur after periods in which society and civilisation may appear to have worn themselves out by over-refinement ”

“ I confess, however, that so little opportunity is allowed us for cultivating this art in connection with architecture, and so small the funds at our disposal, that we have fallen into the sin of putting our sculpture into the hands of men of a very inferior class—extemporised, in fact, from amongst our ordinary carvers ”

“ It craves spontaneously after a great style of art, which it sees to have been once the birthright of our race. It demands that we should—I will not say simply revive that style of art, but that we should revivify it: not that it should be reproduced as a splendid pageant, to be re-enacted for the sake of gratifying our romantic or antiquarian predilections, but that we should rekindle its actual life ”

“ The twelfth century is the source of most of the "medieval" influences in modern art and literature, and the French romances of that age are the original authorities for most of the "Gothic" ornaments adopted in modern romantic schools. ”

“ The thirteenth century was to Mediæval art what the Periclean and Augustan ages were to the Greek and Roman; and in each case, though war and bloodshed are in themselves hostile to art, there can be no doubt that the excitement of the human mind, resulting from great national struggles, has tended to produce that advance in art which followed, in one case, the glorious assertion of national independence ”

“ As might be expected from the circumstances of their position, the architectural efforts of the new races were founded on the basis of the Roman monuments, with whose vestiges they were on every hand surrounded, aided by friendly and continuous importations of the still living art of the Eastern Empire. ”

“ Every article on these islands has an almost personal character, which gives this simple life, where all art is unknown, something of the artistic beauty of medieval life. ”

“ Thus was the marvelous art of the Middle Ages treated in almost every land, but particularly in France. We find three sorts of injury upon its ruins, these three marring it to different depths; first, Time, which has made insensible breaches here and there, mildewed and rusted the surface everywhere; then, political and religious revolutions, which, blind and fierce by nature, fell furiously upon it, rent its rich array of sculpture and carving, shivered its rose-windows, shattered its necklaces of arabesques and quaint figures, tore down its statues--sometimes because of their crown ”

“ Do you find portraits of either men or women who radiate the overwhelming passions, the vital moods, of our galled and soaring nature? It is not a long time since the Middle Ages. In the stretch of history centuries shrink to nothing, and the Middle Ages are as the earlier hours of our own historic day. But has there not been a change even within that short time? Did not the medieval portrait-painters portray in their sitters great moods as no painter portrays them now? How many painters of to-day can find great moods in the faces of their sitters?
"And so I come again to your model. ”

“ Finally, I wish that all artists would remember the one great fact which separates by so wide a gap the architects, sculptors, and painters of the best days of the Middle Ages from us now—their earnestness and their thorough self-sacrifice in the pursuit of art, and in the exaltation of their religion. ”