XXXil 



RISE AND PROGRESS 



n* has been intimated, suck auxiliaries were 

 necessary to explain the word of God to bar- 

 barous nation* ; but when printing had opened 

 the sacred roluine to all eyes, the charm of 

 paipti^g and sculpture, as applicable to religion, 

 ins dissolved. The New Testament revealed 

 nil, and that, too, in a way infinitely more direct 

 and simple than through the medium of art. It 

 was discovered also that apocryphal miracles and 

 saints had usurped the places which true saints 

 and real miracles merited. The light of Thomas 

 .'i- Becker of England, for instance, obscured that 

 of Christ and the Virgin ; nor were there wanting 

 votaries, at once so zealous and so ignorant, as 

 to kneel to insensible pictures and images, in 

 preference to supplicating the Most High. 



All this, no doubt, time and knowledge would 

 have cured ; but the catastrophe was hastened by 

 the fiery determination of the first reformers 

 concerning the abolition of indulgences and 

 other corruptions, and the resolution of an in- 

 fallible priest to permit none of his actions to be 

 questioned. Art suffered seriously by the con- 

 test ; the magnificence of religion suffered an 

 immediate eclipse ; the reformers refused the 

 aid of painting and sculpture in interpreting the 

 Scriptures ; they desired to have them as Christ 

 and the apostles wrote or uttered them, without 

 gloss or comment ; they preached down the 

 legions of saints, male and female ; they looked 

 cold on the pictures and statues of the apostles, 

 for they knew they were imaginary ; they saw the 

 image of the Blessed Virgin, and thought but of 

 the follies committed at her shrine : in short, they 

 broke and burned all works of art found in 

 churches, as superstitious, and called all who 

 countenanced them idolaters. This was good 

 for salvation, and bad for art. The noblest 

 works were those made for the church ; painters 

 and sculptors wrought, under a twofold sort of 

 inspiration, in the cause of Rome ; the pope held 

 the honours of earth in one hand, and the keys 

 of paradise in the other, arid he showered the 

 first, and promised the second, to all who ex- 

 celled in imbodying the current beliefs and holy 

 legends in colours or in marble. The artists of 

 the reformed nations had no such stimulants ; 

 they had no assurance that honours on earth and 

 happiness in heaven awaited their labours ; they 

 were compelled with manifest reluctance to 

 turn from forms purified by celestial intercourse, 

 angels, archangels, and the souls of just men 

 niadn perfect, to forms gross and corporeal to 

 the fallible creatures of the earth ; and from man, 

 with his worldly passions and pursuits, form a 

 new sort of art, worthy of finding a place in the 

 halls and houses of the gentry and the nobles. 



I The painter and the sculptor were no longer 

 called upon to unite with the architect in forming 

 a church such as that of St Peter's or of West- 

 minster abbey ; the poetical portion of art was 

 excluded for a time at least from the company 

 of tilings holy ; the godlike air, and the rapt, 

 inspired look, departed from pictures and sta- 

 tues ; for the blessed angels, we had squires am 

 nobles, with square-toed boots and padded jack- 

 ets ; for virgins and saints, we had court ladies, 

 patched and jewelled; and for apostles, we 

 received mayors of corporations, in full-bottomed 

 wigs, with maces borne before them. This was 

 turning from imagination mingled with nature, to 

 nature without imagination, no wonder that 



" Folly clapp'd her bauds and wisdom stared." 



This is spoken only of art in the reformed 

 nations. But the impulse extended to Catholic 

 countries ; and Rome, from that hour, fell off in 

 her glory, nor has the genius of any of her sons 

 been able to restore the tiara to her discrowned 

 head. 



In Britain the change was sudden, and, 

 perhaps, injurious. The true spirit of paint- 

 ing and sculpture, animated by poetry, and 

 purified by science, had more than opened its 

 eyes, when the civil wars of the land crushed the 

 national genius, and threw us centuries back in 

 the scale of civilization. Those wounds were 

 healed by Henry VII. ; commerce spread her 

 sails; discoverers went in quest of unknown 

 lands ; and the genius of art exhibited in the 

 Chapel of the King such beauty of combination, 

 simplicity of conception, and richness of embla- 

 zoning, as had not hitherto been equalled in the 

 island. " It has been said," observes Flaxman, 

 " that the number of statues within and without 

 this chapel amounted to three thousand. Per- 

 haps many of these have been destroyed, and in 

 that number every half figure or animal may 

 have been reckoned, but certainly, even at this 

 day, the number is very great ; and it is another 

 marvellous example of the astonishing estimation 

 and employment of sculpture in this kingdom 

 before the Reformation. Torrigiano seems to 

 have been employed on the tomb only, and had 

 no concern with the building or the statues with 

 which it is embellished. The structure appears 

 to have been finished, or nearly so, before Tor- 

 rigiano began the tomb ; and there is reason to 

 think that he did not stay in this country more 

 than six years, which time would be nearly, if 

 not quite, taken up in the execution of the tomb, 

 and some other statues about it, now destroyed, 

 together with the rich pedestal and enclosure. 



