SECTION IV.

Historical Painting.

LET us fancy that, in a certain stage in the progress of society, a species of food was brought into fame and use, of the most agreeable qualities, which would as a sustenance contribute to the health and comfort of mankind; and that after long use it should be discovered that this food, however calculated for universal demand, was yet so refined in its composition, and so exquisite in its flavour, that, with the exception of those engaged in its production, none, save a most select portion of society, were from habit and taste fully qualified to enjoy it (withal, accompanied by a complaint of the general insensibility of the public to the excellence of the viands): if we can fancy all this to occur respecting the ordinary wants of life, we may readily imagine the result of the offer of a refined, but exclusive, style of art to the community at large.

Whatever tone of exclusiveness art may be permitted to assume, when long familiar to the favour of the state, it is quite clear that in her stage of infancy and rise, when her powers are humble, and a taste scarcely formed whereby to estimate her strength, she must, to obtain attention, address herself to the untutored ideas natural to every individual at such a period, and thus create a taste and understanding of her powers. If she were to do this, she would soon observe, that, to become useful and popu

lar, she must not shape her taste to suit a party or a class, but adapt it to the tastes and capacities of a whole people.

During the dawn of modern art in Italy, the works of Cimabue and Giotto give proof of this adaptation, like native music, to the humblest comprehension of the multitude: as her powers refined and expanded, the same obviousness of meaning may be observed in her works. In Simone di Martino, Andrea Orcagna, Buonamico Buffalmacco, and Benozzo Gozzoli, whose art was employed in this intellectual age in embodying the leading events of Scripture story, for the use of the ignorant and uninformed classes of their times. These artists, with others of scarcely inferior merit, occupy a space of about two hundred years. They had to re-invent art; to introduce it to the world, and render it acceptable, giving all the interest of a new discovery to every fresh effort of the hand and mind.

Such was the advance of art, accompanied by corresponding preparation to receive it in the wants and tastes of the people, before the great era of art in Italy arrived: and although the Madonna of Cimabue has been long supplanted in popular admiration by the Madonna of Raphael; although the Job of Giotto and the Last Judgment of Orcagna have been excelled by the similar labours of Michael Angelo; and although The History of Joseph and his Brethren by Gozzoli has been outdone by the school of Athens, and the Heliodorus of a more matured period of art; yet, who is there that cannot see, in those early efforts, the embryo, the first thoughts of the perfected works of which they were the precursors, for the

subjects of which they supplied the first impulse, and, opening the door of success, not only helped succeeding artists with combinations of thought and material, but to the world, who were to receive and reward them, furnished, in those examples, the first relish and the earliest foretaste a previous knowledge, being not only a guide to genius, but an assurance of its appreciation?

In the advance of such a system of art, from its earliest rise to its maturity, its march of improvement, and means of calling forth the public sympathy in its favour, are matters of the deepest interest; and, whether an early style may bear to be imitated in a state of farther advance, we may be sure of this, that its mode of winning upon the liking of man may be a salutary guide to imitation at all periods. To create a want which art is to supply, it is first necessary to consider this, that art is never encouraged to a great extent for the love of art, but for some acceptable service, of utility or gratification, which art has the means of furnishing to the community or to individuals. But if art is once employed for some ostensible object, to give the semblance of individual character, to record some great event, or to decorate with appropriate subject a public or a private dwelling, it is then for the artist to superadd, by his own genius, all the grace and interest his imagination can bestow, to give a charm of beauty to render the work useful, which is the true end of art. The' painters of the Campo Santo of Pisa seem never to stop short of what their subject absolutely required, but have shown, in their treatment, an exuberance of

ideas beyond what even a scrupulous taste would permit, or the most devoted admirer of art demand.

This has been shown, in the custom of the period, so prone to fill the picture with subject, that not only event, but numerous events are arranged in succession in the same picture; the unities of art so departed from, that the events of a whole life are shown on one plane, as if they happened in one scene, and at the same instant. This sequence of time and of incident displayed in one view, was common to the illuminated manuscripts of that period; and however inconsistent with the nature of pictorial representation, was yet so brilliant in its effects, and so descriptive in its interest, that, like the picture-book of the nursery, it supplied the meaning of written language, and, with certain modifications, was adopted by the great masters as the basis of decorative painting. In the picture, by Raphael, of St. Peter delivered from Prison, this system of a succession of events has been most happily applied, as indeed it has been in the great ceiling, by Michael Angelo, which, with all its deepwrought sentiment, and character, and combined stages of progression, is one vast comprehensive pic

ture.

Another circumstance, now considered a defect or anachronism in art, may, at the period of the appearance of those early works, have served the more to engage general attention. The localities wrought into the compositions, though of Scripture history and of ancient date, are all Italian, and of modern date. In the occupations of the early people of the earth, their construction of the ark, their building of Babel, their

season of vintage, and their public or domestic convivialities; nay, in their costumes, whether in pursuit of peace or preparation for war, there is no attempt to portray a people of the ancient period, nor the period itself. The amusements, the familiar animals, the desert waste, the cultivated plain, and the lofty temples of their pictures, recall neither Egypt nor Syria; yet to the Tuscan people must have presented much that was acceptable - the town, the tower, the campagna of their native country.

But with all these claims on contemporary favour, which, however erring against taste, supply a fund of valuable information in contemporary history, these works of the Campo Santo furnish to the inquiring mind much which is desirable to know concerning the rise and growth of European art. We see allied to sacred objects, things of a strange and ludicrous kind - popular notions, however mean, taking precedence of greatness of subject, at the expence of impressive effect. Still, with all the unworthy delineations of humour and ridicule with which these historical labours are mixed up, they present in ideas of character and combinations of action with architecture, many sublime and original effects of imagination. In a single subject, The Jacob's Dream of Gozzoli, with angels ascending and descending between heaven and earth, no one need be surprised at any succeeding excellence, after so early and so bright an example of imaginative art.

Popular as these works must have been, and influential as they were upon the minds of the great scholars who followed, and who appear to have reached, at