Part 2 (1/2)
Therefore it will follow that engraving distinguishes itself froreater need ofis to be produced easily,--deliberately, always,[C] but with a point that _glides_ over the paper Engraving, on the contrary, requires always force, and its virtue is that of a line produced by pressure, or by blows of a chisel
It involves, therefore, always, ideas of power and dexterity, but also of restraint; and the delight you take in it should involve the understanding of the difficulty the workman dealt with You perhaps doubt the extent to which this feeling justly extends, (in the first volume of ”Modern Painters,” expressed under the head ”Ideas of Power”) But why is a large stone in any building grander than a small one?
Simply because it was raved line is, and ought to be, recognized as rand than a pen or pencil line, because it was more difficult to execute it
In this ive much, and admire much, because you see it is all cut in stone So, in wood and steel, you ought to see that every line has been costly; but observe, costly of deliberative, no less than athletic or executive power The main use of the restraint which ive ti it, and to insure its being the best in your power
37 For, as with deliberation, so without repentance, your engraved line ain in metal, or patched and botched in stone; but always to disadvantage, and at pains which ular evidence in one of Durer's finest plates that, in his time, or at least in histhe disputes as to the ht and Death, you will find it soested, or insisted, that the horse's raised foot is going to fall into a snare What has been fancied a noose is only the former outline of the horse's foot and liraved line is therefore to be conclusive; not experiraver Much excellent pen drawing is excellent in being tentative,--in being experih fullness of it--halting _wisely_ between two opinions--feeling cautiously after clearer opinions But your engraver has made up his opinion This is so, andfor a thoughtfulfor a foolish one to say Foolish engraving is consummately foolish work Look,--all the world,--look for everraver; see what a fool I have been! How ! How many lines upon lines, with no precept, much less superprecept!
38 Here, then, are two definite ethical characters in all engraved work It is Athletic; and it is Resolute Add one more; that it is Obedient;--in their infancy the nurse, but in their youth the slave, of the higher arts; servile, both in thethe schools of painting as superior to itself
And this relation to the higher arts ill study at the source of chief power in all the normal skill of Christendom, Florence; and chiefly, as I said, in the work of one Florentine ural Series,” ”Aratra Pentelici,” and ”Eagle's Nest”
[B] My inaugural series of seven lectures (now published uniforural Lectures, - 144
LECTURE II
THE RELATION OF ENGRAVING TO OTHER ARTS IN FLORENCE
39 From as laid before you in my last lecture, you ,'plates froraving, the art of producing decoration on a surface by the touches of a chisel or a burin; and I mean by its relation to other arts, the subordinate service of this linear work, in sculpture, in ; or in the representation and repetition of painting
And first, therefore, I have to map out the broad relations of the arts of sculpture,the was distinctly connected with them[D]
40 You will find, or elo and Tintoret I indicated the singular importance, in the history of art, of a space of forty years, between 1480, and the year in which Raphael died, 1520 Within that space of tie was co, art;--a e, not definable in brief terms, but most clearly characterized, and easily ree of conscientious and didactic art, into that which proposes to itself no duty beyond technical skill, and no object but the pleasure of the beholder Of that e itself I do not purpose to speak in the present course of lectures; but h chart of the course of the arts in Florence up to the ti for you, definitely, the growth of conscience, in hich is distinctively conscientious, and the perfecting of expression and means of popular address, in that which is distinctively didactic
41 Means of popular address, observe, which have becoularly important to us at this day Nevertheless, re, black _pictures_,--practically conte black _letters_,--htsman only as it , as beautiful and unique painting or engraving, remain exactly what they were; but other useful and reproductive methods of both have been superadded Of these, it is acutely said by Dr Alfred Woltmann,[E]--
”A far more important part is played in the art-life of Ger_ of works; for Ger, is also the land of picture-printing Indeed, wood-engraving, which preceded the invention of book-printing, _prepared the way for it, and only left one step _ and _picture-printing_ have both the sain, na Not e of adorning their private chapels and apartious pictures; the poorest ht in that which the artist had devised and produced It was not sufficient for him when it stood in the church as an altar-shrine, visible to hiation from afar; he desired to have it as his own, to carry it about with hirand i and copperplate is not sufficiently estiations They were not alone of use in the advance of art; they form an epoch in the entire life of mind and culture The idea embodied and multiplied in pictures became like that embodied in the printed word, the herald of every intellectual movement, and conquered the world”
42 ”Conquered the world”? The rest of the sentence is true, but this, hyperbolic, and greatly false It should have been said that both painting and engraving have conquered ood in the world, and, hitherto, little or none of the evil
Nor do I hold it usually an advantage to art, in teaching, that it _should_ be coibly and kindly beautiful, while it rereater power Westlish nation, than a million of popular illustrated treatises on architecture
Nay, even that it cannot be understood but with soht before it can be seen, is no harm The noblest didactic art is, as it were, set on a hill, and its disciples come to it The vilest destructive and corrosive art stands at the street corners, crying, ”Turn in hither; coled”
And Dr Woltmann has allowed himself too easily to fall into the common notion of Liberalisood art isolated, not so The question is, first, I assure you, whether what art you have got is good or bad If essentially bad, the more you see of it, the worse for you Entirely popular art is all that is noble, in the cathedral, the council chamber, and the market-place; not the paltry colored print pinned on the wall of a private room
43 I despise the poor!--do I, think you? Not so They only despise the poor who think them better off with police news, and colored tracts of the story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife, than they ith Luini painting on their church walls, and Donatello carving the pillars of their market-places
Nevertheless, the effort to be universally, instead of locally, didactic, eously, as you know, and in a thousand ways varied, the earlier art of engraving: and the developood or evil, came exactly--so fate appointed--at a tile which closed in the Reformation in some countries, and in the desperate refusal of Refor whose lives we are to study, were, both of them, passionate reformers: Holbein no less than Luther; Botticelli no less than Savonarola
44 Reformers, I mean, in the full and, accurately, the only, sense Not preachers of new doctrines; but witnesses against the betrayal of the old ones, which were on the lips of all men, and in the lives of none
Nay, the painters are indeed more pure reformers than the priests They rebuked the manifest vices of men, while they realized whatever was loveliest in their faith Priestly refored itself into e, but in stern rebuke of all that was vile in conduct or thought,--in declaration of the always-received faiths of the Christian Church, and in warning of the power of faith, and death,[G] over the petty designs of ht foremost in the ranks of the Reformation
45 To-day I will endeavor to explain how they attained such rank Then, in the next two lectures, the technics of both,--their way of speaking; and in the last that they had got to say
First, then, we ask how they attained this rank;--who taught _them_ what they were finally best to teach? How far must every people--how far did this Florentine people--teach its masters, before _they_ could teach _it_?
Even in these days, when every ood as another, does not the question sound strange to you? You recognize in the past, as you think, clearly, that national advance takes place always under the guidance of roups of masters, possessed of what appears to be soift of invention; and we are apt to be reverent to these alone, as if the nation itself had been unprogressive, and suddenly awakened, or converted, by the genius of one man
No idea can be more superficial Every nation must teach its tutors, and prepare itself to receive the, apparently by chance, of ifts suddenly melt the multitude, already at the point of fusion; or suddenly forained coherence enough to be capable of forain of national intellectual territory, by tracing first the lifting of the enius
46 I have told you that we have nothing to do at present with the great transition froht which took place at the beginning of the sixteenth century I only want to go as far as that point;--where we shall find the old superstitious art represented _finally_ by Perugino, and the modern scientific and anatoelo And the epithet bestowed on Perugino by Michael Angelo, 'goffo nell' arte,' dunce, or blockhead, in art,--being, as far as e of history extends, the most cruel, the reathow trenchant the separation is between the two orders of artists,[H]--how exclusively we offi nell' arte,'
and write our Florentine Dunciad, and Laus Stultitiae, in peace; and never trench upon the thoughts or ways of these proud ones, who showed their fathers' nakedness, and snatched their masters' fame
47 The Florentine dunces in art are aabout twenty of therievous number? It may, perhaps, appease you a little to be told that when you really have learned a very little, accurately, about these twenty dunces, there are only fivethe artists of Christendom whose works I shall ask you to exaether,--an exorbitant demand on your attention, you still think? And yet, but a little while ago, you were all agog to get o and look at Mrs A's sketches, and tell you as to be thought about _thereatest difficulty to keep Mrs B's photographs fros in the University galleries And you aste any quantity of tiraphs; and yet you look grave, because, out of nineteen centuries of European art-labor and thought, I ask you to learn so seriously about the works of five-and-twentythe quantity of ti which can hit balls farthest So I will put the task into the simplest form I can
1200 1300 1400
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Arnolfo
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Cimabue
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Giovanni Pisano
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Andrea Pisano
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Giotto
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Orcagna
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Brunelleschi
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Ghiberti
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Donatello
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