1842.J 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL. 



141 



PROTESTANTISM AND ART. 



1. De Protestanlismo jlrtibus haud Infeito. Scripsil Carolus Gr.u- 

 MEiSEN. Slultgartice tt Tubingte, 1839, 4lo. 



2. Ber Protaiantische Goitesdienst, und die Kanst, 1840. 



Nothing, we conceive, but an over-scrupulous horror of the 

 abominations of the church of Rome has induced the reformed church 

 to repudiate, together with the creed and ritual of Rome, the services 

 of those arts which, when legitimately employed to such end, enhance 

 the decorum and solemnity of religious worship, rendering it more 

 impressive. A very laudable indignation at the abuse of art in the 

 theatric pageantry employed by Popery, and the grovelling super- 

 stitions to which it has been made to minister, has led us to run into 

 the contrary extreme, and to reject it altogether, with somewhat more 

 of narrow sectarian zeal than either prudence or real consistency. 



Whether usjustly or not, the Reformation is generally charged, 

 even by those who adhere to its doctrines, with having operated most 

 unfavourably upon the tine arts, both architecture and painting. In 

 consequence of Protestantism having withdrawn the patronage of the 

 church from them, those arts, it is asserted, the latter more especially, 

 have not only lost much of their influence and authority, but have 

 actually deteriorated — have sunk down to a lower sphere, where they 

 can no longer put forth their energies, and exhibit themselves in their 

 majesty and splendour to all classes of the community without dis- 

 tinction. Painting may now be said to employ itself merely for the 

 opulent, and for such of the other classes as have opportunities of 

 visiting exhibitions, which are, unfortunately, so constituted as to 

 minister quite as much, if not more, to frivolous curiosity — to lounging 

 gossipping about art— than to art for its own sake, and in its better 

 spirit. By far the greater mass of the population of this country have 

 not the means of forming acquaintance with it in any shape, excepting 

 it be that where we behold it sunk down to disgrace and deformity, 

 without a trace left of its intellectual character, but grovelling down to 

 the level of Jack-Sheppardism and Co. in literature. To the lower 

 orders of English, painting is as unknown, its powers and capacities as 

 undreamt of by them, as by the negroes in our sugar plantations, or the 

 colonist in the back settlements of America. Neither is this the onlv 

 consequence — whether an ill or merely inditFerent one in itself — result- 

 ing from the exclusion of painting from churches and other places of 

 social worship : since thus debarred from exercising their powers on 

 an adequate scale, both the art and its professors are compelled to 

 abate their enthusiasm, to lower their tone and their pretensions, and, 

 instead of abandoning themselves to nobler impulses, thereby seeking 

 to raise others to a calmer and loftier sphere, above the vulgar region 

 of ordinary sympathies and affections, their high calling is more or less 

 lost sight of, the ambition that would lead to great aspirings quite 

 benumbed. Hence that branch of the art which is somewhat incor- 

 rectly termed historical painting, it being in fact that wherein its 

 inventive and poetical faculties are chiefly exerted, declines, and sinks 

 in public esteem ; while those branches which confine themselves to 

 matter-of-iact reality, and demand no loftier talent than manual 

 dexterity of execution, usurp the place of the other, till materialism 

 comes to be almost our established creed in art. 



Pursuing the above train of remark, we might go on to show that 

 when shut out from religious edifices, the species of painting here 

 alluded to finds no other congenial abode— scarcely a place of refuge. 

 Withdrawn from the gaze of the multitude, they learn to dispense with 

 it, or rather have now to learn that the art admits of being applied 

 more worthily than it at present is. On this account is it that while 

 it is rejected by the church, it equally fails to obtain patronage from 

 other public bodies. Our civic companies and other societies afford it 

 no admittance within their halls, except in the humble quality of 

 portraiture, or what is not a step higher removed from it.* Under 



* We have heard that Cornelius the celebrated (jerm:m artist is to be 

 invited over to this country, for the purpose of paintmg in fresco some of the 

 No. 56.— Vol. V.— May, 1812. 



such circumstances, little is to be expected from individual and priv.ate 

 patronage, more especially for works of that high class on which the 

 glory of the great Italian schools chiefly rests ; because those who can 

 afford to indulge their taste for such productions naturally prefer 

 specimens of those schools— works of already established reputation. 

 Besides all which, although our Protestant feelings are not shocked— 

 whether they ought to be so, is another question— at meeting with 

 many pictures in the galleries of our opulent collectors that are 

 stamped most strongly and undisguisedly by the Romish creed and 

 cultiis, it does not follow that objections would not be entertained 

 against religious subjects more consonant with our own belief. On 

 the contrary, it is precisely because we have no reverential sym- 

 pathy with them, that we do not feel at all scandalized at beholding 

 subjects borrowed from the mythology and legends of modern as well 

 as ancient Rome placed upon much the same footing, as mere 

 objects of virtu ; whereas it might seem to partake as much of pro- 

 faneness as the reverse, were an artist commissioned to decorate a 

 luxurious modern drawing-room with Scriptural pieces. Let them be 

 what they might, hardly could they fail, if noticed at all, to strike as 

 most incongruous subjects where the tone of everything else is so 

 diametrically opposed to them, and where the frivolous gossip or the 

 fashionable scandal of the day is retailed as conversation. The feel- 

 ings — or if such be deemed the more suitable term — the prejudices 

 that restrain us from employing painting to embellish the house of 

 prayer and devotion with scenes drawn from holy writ, ought likewise 

 to withhold us from making such subjects the ornaments of our dwell- 

 ings, thereby depriving them of their solemnity, and rendering them 

 familiar objects which, if not utterly indifferent, must frequently be 

 felt to be most inopportime. So far, therefore, we are at least some- 

 what consistent in affording no encouragement, either public or private, 

 to that branch of the art which the Romish church has especially 

 patronized. Which being the case, it is not at all surprising if the 

 talent that should be exerted upon it is turned aside into other chan- 

 nels ; far more wonderful would it be, if artists were to devote 

 themselves out of sheer enthusiasm to that cultivation and exercise of 

 their energies, which would lead them to poverty, if not to absolute 

 starvation. 



Do what we may, so long as painting shall continue to be dissociated 

 from the intercourse of public life — from both the civil and the religious 

 institutions of the community, it is idle to expect it should ever be 

 again re-instated in the imposing majesty it possessed when the art 

 was intimately allied with religious creeds and popular sympathies. 

 It may continue to appeal to the iasle of the few, but cannot be made 

 to engage the feelings of the many, although it may catch their tran- 

 sient attention. The consciousness of this depresses the artist, and 

 deadens all those loftier impulses which should animate him ; for he 

 knows that were he to succeed in subjects of the class alluded to, they 

 would be regarded as little better than happy counterfeits and sem- 

 blances of bygone traditions of art — things to be criticised by rrle, 

 instead of being contemplated with the same spirit as that in whicn 

 they were conceived. 



After all, however, it may be asked on the other side, is there not 

 little — or, more than a little, a prodigious deal — of cant about the 

 efficacy and value of art as a means of moral instruction?* Now, to 

 speak honestly, we confess that such appears to be, to us, the case a 

 there is a great deal of cant, of well-meant exaggeration, of over- 

 halls anil public rooms in the New Houses of Parliament. Yet such report 

 may be inerelj- an oii-t/it ; at all events, several years must elapse before the 

 huikling is so far advanced towards completion as to admit oi anytliinjj of 

 the kind being cummenced. 



Of the moral anil intellectual influence of the fine arts, we once received 

 a practical leison that has not been thrown away upon us. It was at a public 

 dinner of artists and amateurs, where in due C(jur>e "ere served up sundry 

 fair spoken speeches relative to the iinpurtanee ::iid moral value of paintin;; 

 and the fine arts generally, wliieh. thoiigli lliey nii^ht seem germane tii the 

 occasion, we could nut help thinl^ing were somewhat superfluous and imper- 

 tinent, it being likelier than not that the company jiresent hardly retiuiied to 

 be told that •■ there's nutliing like Icatlier." liut now comes tlie real moral 

 of our aneclote :— no sooner had the chairman vacateil his seat to his " Hrv," 

 tlian one of the company being called uitou to oblige the rest by the exercise 

 of his vocal i>oueis and gilt of " harmony divine," roared forth a bawdy 

 song, no less intolerably stupid than disgusing! 



