XXVI 



RISE AND PROGRESS 



painted many scriptural ami lesfendary pictures, 

 and though his style was a little hnrsh, nnd his 

 drawing inaccurate, his paintings were long the 

 study of the student and the wonder of the 

 devotee. 



( imabue was of a noble family: but true 

 genius is of no rank or caste : his pupil and suc- 

 cessor, Giotti, was a shepherd ; he left the sheep- 

 crook for the pencil, and soon excelled in beauty 

 of design and in natural ease and grace. He at 

 first formed pictures with labels issuing from the 

 mouths of the chief characters telling t heir name 

 and history ; he soon dispensed with this easy sys- 

 tem of expression and produced what he desired 

 by means of shape and sentiment ; nor did he 

 confine himself to church legends, the imaginary 

 labours of questionable saints, or to images of 

 the virgin and the apostles ; to him we owe the 

 portrait of that heir of immortality, Dante ; he 

 likewise painted Brunetti, and others distinguish- 

 ed for literature and eloquence. The pope 

 perceived the worth of one who excelled in 

 devout delineations ; he employed him in em- 

 bellishing St Peter's, and honoured as well as 

 rewarded him. This was Benedict the Ninth : 

 the example of his Holiness was followed by suc- 

 ceeding pontiffs, and the painter and the sculptor 

 became necessary servants in the household of 

 one who had the ability to reward them on earth, 

 and the power, real or imaginary, to smooth 

 their ascent to heaven. The churches of Italy 

 imitated, perhaps envied, that of Rome ; he was 

 summoned to Naples, Milan, Lucca, Areggio; 

 nay, his native city, Florence, perceived the 

 genius of its humble son, and his pictures on the 

 walls and ceilings of her principal churches re- 

 mained for centuries to attest that he had sought 

 in nature for the expression and action of his 

 figures, and sought successfully. 



It is remarkable that sculpture began at the 

 same time to feel the inspiration which lifted 

 painting into the region of poetry and beauty. 

 The change was felt as well as perceived ; statues, 

 and groups, and processions had hitherto been 

 regarded as little better than carvings of flowers 

 and fruits, and things natural or grotesque, whose 

 chief object was to enrich the plainness of the 

 architecture, and give light and shade, rather 

 than sentiment, to the walls. The moment that 

 poetry and science brought order and grace 

 among them, they began to be looked at for what 

 they expressed rather than for what they repre- 

 sented. Yet the unity required in Gothic archi- 

 tecture was not violated; the new attractions 

 bestowed on the sculpture were still in keeping 

 with the original conception ; architecture re- 

 mained lord of the ascendant, and painting and 



.-riilptun' were his auxiliaries ; necessary at first, 

 and still more so now that genius had opened 

 their lips and enabled them to speak to the world. 

 Those who desire the true Gothic union of 

 painting, sculpture, and architecture, should have 

 Westminster abbey, during its centuries of catholic 

 glory, placed before them : no organ in those 

 days interrupted the eye in viewing the sublimu 

 harmony of the structure : the apostle stood 

 austerely in his niche ; the virgin looked meekly 

 and benignly from the wall ; the mitred abbot 

 and the sandalled saint lay carved in alabaster 

 above the spot where their bodies were buried ; 

 while our kings and warriors seemed to lie in 

 slumber, rattier than in stone, beneath their 

 carved screens and within their dim recesses. 

 All was solemn, and all was holy. Look at 

 Westminster abbey now : modern sculpture has 

 started out of keeping with the architecture, nay, 

 has openly proclaimed war against it. Figures 

 and groups come audaciously into the body of 

 the building ; they no longer confine themselves 

 to niches and recesses ; nor is this all, some of 

 the statues are engaged in works not at all 

 devout, and the architecture of their pedestals 

 and accompaniments is of all orders, simple or 

 composite, save the order that would correspond 

 with the structure which contains them. 



In the period of which we write the unity 

 which we admire was still unviolated ; this per- 

 haps arose in some measure from the artists 

 of those days being painters, sculptors, and 

 architects ; they maintained the subordination due 

 to each, and left to latter artists the ungentle 

 task of disuniting them and destroying the true 

 harmony of a Gothic building. Of the progress 

 made by sculpture in other lands it will be enough 

 to say, that it retained all its original simplicity 

 amid the new beauties with which taste and 

 genius adorned it, and that it continued in the 

 service of the church, giving form and substance 

 to legends and miracles, and sentiment to saints, 

 male and female. The progress which it made 

 in our own island demands our notice in a twofold 

 way, for we shall see in it the sculpture of Italy 

 and France, and, moreover, trace the first foot- 

 steps of our native sculptors, and observe how 

 far they obeyed an imported spirit or followed 

 an impulse all their own. Those Avho have 

 studied the rise and progress of the fine arts in 

 Britain, cannot fail to have observed that little 

 knowledge could have been derived from the 

 Romans, because, in the first place, the memory 

 of their practice had perished amid the ferocious 

 wars which the Saxons and Danes waged in tlio 

 land ; and, in the second place, that the examples 

 which they left behind them were too rude and 



