OF THE FINE ARTS. 



XXX111 



From the names of several English painters, 

 sculptors, founders, and masons mentioned in 

 the documents, who were not concerned in Tor- 

 rigiano's engagement, we may presume the 

 chapel and its sculptures were native productions. 

 The figures are superior to those of the tomb in 

 natural simplicity and grandeur of character. 

 We must now take a long farewell of such noble 

 and magnificent works of art, in raising which 

 the intention of our ancestors was to add solem- 

 nity to religious worship to impress on the 

 mind those virtues which adorn and exalt 

 humanity." 



This British sunrise of art was obscured by 

 the reformation. In the year 1538, images which 

 had been worshipped were commanded to be de- 

 stroyed. This injunction was afterwards ex- 

 tended to all images whatsoever ; and as pictures 

 as well as figures were included, the destruction 

 was immense. The paintings were torn down, 

 cast into heaps, and burned ; the statues were 

 thrown out of their niches, and broken to pieces ; 

 those which were fixed to the walls had their 

 heads struck off, as well as their hands ; and this 

 happened to saints, apostles, warriors, and 

 kings. Many noble sculptures perished. In 

 repairing one of our cathedrals lately, dozens of 

 those heads were found, some of them eminently 

 beautiful, excelling both in form and sentiment. 

 To destroy the sculptures of a Gothic building, 

 is to pick the jewels out of a royal crown ; 

 they are in imagination all compact with the 

 architecture, and cannot be removed without de- 

 stroying that fine harmony and beautiful variety 

 for which those structures are remarkable. " The 

 commands," says Flaxman, " for destroying 

 sacred painting and sculpture, effectually pre- 

 vented the artist from suffering his mind to rise 

 in the contemplation or execution of any sublime 

 effort, as he dreaded a prison or the stake, and 

 reduced him in future to the miserable ministry 

 of monstrous fashions, or drudging in the lowest 

 mechanism of his profession. This unfortunate 

 check to our national ability for liberal art oc- 

 curred at a time which offered the most fortunate 

 and extraordinary assistance to its progress. 

 The lately-discovered art of printing began to 

 enlighten the European hemisphere with the 

 beams of knowledge in all directions. Copies 

 of the Bible were generally dispersed; the 

 philosophy of Plato and Aristotle were under- 

 stood, and well illustrated ; mathematics were 

 successfully studied, so was anatomy ; linear 

 perspective had been, in a great measure, per- 

 fected, by Paul Uccello, the Florentine, some 

 time before. These advantages did much to- 

 wards the formation of Raphael, Michael Arigelo, 



Titian, da Vinci, and Correggio, in common 

 with the great scientific and literary luminaries 

 of the same period, among whom we may boast 

 our Bacon, Shakspeare, Spenser, and afterwards 

 John Milton. But the genius of fanaticism and 

 destruction arrested our progress. The icono- 

 clastic spirit continued, more or less mitigated, 

 till its great explosion during the civil wars." 

 The crusade preached in England against paint- 

 ing and sculpture extended only to works found 

 in the churches ; in Scotland, the popular fury 

 was directed, for selfish purposes, against the 

 structures, in which all images were enshrined. 

 The magnificent cathedrals and abbeys were 

 passed under the remorseless harrow of Knox 

 and his companions ; that of Glasgow alone 

 escaped, like the righteous servant from the 

 destruction of Job's house, to tell of the ruin of 

 the rest. That many fine paintings perished, is 

 not likely ; but illuminated books and manu- 

 scripts, with thousands of statues, were burned 

 and broken ; and all, too, with the idea of doing 

 a deed serviceable to true religion, and welcome 

 to God. The religion for whose sake all this 

 was done has been restored to its rank and 

 influence ; but the noble edifices, who will re- 

 build them ! 



Painting, sculpture, and architecture, seem to 

 have more of the sensitive plant in them than has 

 fallen to the lot of poetry ; for while the former 

 were idle through fear, the latter, in the strains 

 of Shakspeare and Spenser, had asserted the 

 right of the muse of Britain to stand on the same 

 elevation with the heathen muses of Greece and 

 Italy. Protestants perhaps had a scruple of 

 conscience in works of painting and sculpture. 

 We were willing to accept the assistance of other 

 countries in a manufacture which had ceased at 

 home. France was ready to supply us then, as 

 now, with whatever we desired of the neat, the 

 polished, and the affected. Spain might have 

 furnished us with examples of a gloomy splen- 

 dour and a sullen beauty. From Italy we re- 

 fused to receive anything, for we dreaded the 

 mark of the beast, and the pollution of the 

 scarlet; but from Holland dear, dull, protes- 

 tant Holland we imported works of art, and 

 artists too, with right good-will. To the market 

 of the United Provinces we went with a wary 

 eye ; we had the love of our immortal souls 

 much at heart, and traded cautiously. Yet much 

 caution seems not to have been required ; for 

 who would dread to find an apocryphal apostle 

 in a Dutch burgomaster, a madonna in a seven- 

 petticoated dame of Amsterdam, or a St Ste- 

 phen or a St Lawrence in the drinking and 

 drabbing scenes of Teniers and Ostade. From 

 d 



