Various
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 65, No. 400, February, 1849
"The first volume contains the legends of the Scripture personages, and the primitive fathers. The second volume contains those sainted personages who lived, or are supposed to have lived, in the first ages of Christianity, and whose real history, founded on fact or tradition, has been so disguised by poetical embroidery, that they have in some sort the air of ideal beings." Possibly this poetical disguise is favourable upon the whole to art, but it renders a key necessary, and that Mrs Jameson has supplied – not pretending, however, to more than a selection of the most interesting; and, what is extremely valuable, there are marginal references to pictures, and in what places they are to be met with, and by whom painted, of the subjects given in the text, and of the view the artists had in so painting them. The emblems are amply noted with their meanings; and even the significance of colours, which has been so commonly overlooked, and is yet so important for the comprehension of the full subject of a picture, is clearly laid down. It is well said:
"All the productions of art, from the time it has been directed and developed by the Christian influences, may be regarded under three different aspects: – 1st, The purely religious aspect, which belongs to one mode of faith; 2d, The poetical aspect, which belongs to all; 3d, The artistic, which is the individual point of view, and has reference only to the action of the intellect on the means and material employed. There is a pleasure, an intense pleasure, merely in the consideration of art, as art; in the faculties of comparison and nice discrimination brought to bear on objects of beauty; in the exercise of a cultivated and refined taste on the productions of mind in any form whatever. But a threefold, or rather a thousandfold, pleasure is theirs, who to a sense of the poetical unite a sympathy with the spiritual in art, and who combine with a delicacy of perception and technical knowledge, more elevated sources of pleasure, more variety of association, habits of more excursive thought. Let none imagine, however, that in placing before the uninitiated these unpretending volumes, I assume any such superiority as is here implied. Like a child that has sprang on a little way before its playmates, and caught a glimpse through an opening portal of some varied Eden within, all gay with flowers, and musical with birds, and haunted by divine shapes which beckon forward, and, after one rapturous survey, runs back and catches its companions by the hand, and hurries them forwards to share the new-found pleasure, the yet unexplored region of delight: even so it is with me: I am on the outside, not the inside, of the door I open."
This is a happy introduction to that which immediately follows of angels and archangels.
Mrs Jameson has so managed to open the door as to frame in her subject to the best advantage; and the reader is willing to stand for a moment with her to gaze upon the inward brightness of the garden, ere he ventures in to see what is around and what is above. It is on the first downward step that we stand breathless with Aladdin, and feel the influence of the first – the partial and framed-in picture – glowing in the unearthly illumination of its magical creation.
There is nothing more interesting than these few pages upon angels. The information we receive is very curious. It is beautiful poetry to see orders, and degrees, and ministrations various, types of an embodied, a ministering church here, and ordained, together with the saints of earth, to make one glorified triumphant church hereafter. Without entering upon the theological question, as to the extension and mystification of the ideas of angels after the Captivity, (yet we think it might be shown that there was originally no Chaldaic belief on the subject not taken, first or last, from the Jews themselves,) it may not be unworthy of remark, that the word "angel," signifying messenger, could scarcely with propriety have been at the first applied to Satan, the deceiving serpent, until, in the after-development of the history of the human race, the ministering offices gave the general title, which, when established, included all who had not "kept their first estate." Nor do we think, with Mrs Jameson, that Chaldea had anything to do with the introduction of the worship of angels into the Christian church. The "gods many" of the heathen countries in which Christianity established itself, will sufficiently account for the readiness of the people to transfer the multifarious worship to which they had been accustomed to names more suitable to the new religion. It is with the poetical development we have here to do; and what ground is there for that full development in the New Testament, wherein they are represented as "countless – as superior to all human wants and weaknesses – as deputed messengers of God? They rejoice over the repentant sinner; they take deep interest in the mission of Christ; they are present with those who pray; they bear the souls of the just to heaven; they minister to Christ on earth, and will be present at his second coming." From such authority, from such a sacred theatre of scenes and celestial personages, arose the beautiful, the magnificent visions of the workers of sacred art. Heresy, however, reached it, as might have been expected; and the agency of angels, in the creation of the world and of man, has been represented, to the deterioration of its great poetry. From the beginning of the fourteenth century, a great change seems to have taken place in the representation of the angel with reference to the Virgin: the feeling is changed; "the veneration paid to the Virgin demanded another treatment. She becomes not merely the principal person, but the superior being; she is the 'regina angelorum,' and the angel bows to her, or kneels before her, as to a queen. Thus, in the famous altar-piece at Cologne, the angel kneels; he bears the sceptre, and also a sealed roll, as if he were a celestial ambassador delivering his credentials. About the same period we sometimes see the angel merely with his hands folded over his breast, and his head inclined, delivering his message as if to a superior being."
It is a great merit in this work of Mrs Jameson's, that we are not only referred to the most curious and to the best specimens of art, but have likewise beautiful woodcuts, and some etchings admirably executed by Mrs Jameson's own hand in illustration. There is a greatness in the simplicity of Blake's angels: "The morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy." Poor Blake! Yet why say poor? he was happy in his visions – a little before his time, and one of whom the world (of art) in his day were not worthy: though, with a wild extravagance of fancy, his creations were his faith, often great, and always gentle. Exquisitely beautiful are the "angels of the planets" from Raffaelle, and copied by Mrs Jameson from Gruner's engravings of the frescoes of the Capella Chigiana. That great painter of mystery, Rembrandt, whom the mere lovers of form would have mistakenly thought it a profanation to commission with an angelic subject, is justly appreciated. A perfect master of light, and of darkness, and of colour, it mattered not what were the forms, so that they were unearthly, that plunged into or broke through his luminous or opaque. Of the picture in the Louvre it is thus remarked: "Miraculous for true and spirited expression, and for the action of the soaring angel, who parts the clouds and strikes through the air like a strong swimmer through the waves of the sea." Strange – but so it is – we cannot conceive an alteration of his pictures, all parts so agree. Attention to the more beautiful in form would have appeared to him a mistrust in his great gift of colour and chiaroscuro; and, stranger still, that without, and seemingly in a marked defiance of mere beauty, he is, we would almost say never, vulgar, never misses the intended sentiment, nor fails where it is of tenderness, even of feminine tenderness, for which, if he does not give beauty, he gives its equivalent in the fulness of the feeling. We instance his Salutation – Elizabeth and the Virgin Mary. There is something terrifically grand in the crouching angel in the Campo Santo, – not in the form, nor in the face, which is mostly hid, but in the conception of the attitude of horror with which he beholds the awful scene. It is from the Last Judgment of Orcagua in the Campo Santo. We must not speak of Rubens as a painter of angels; and, for real angelic expression, perhaps the earlier painters are the best. It is surprising that Mrs Jameson, from whose refined taste, and from whose sense of the beautiful and the graceful in their highest qualities, we should have expected another judgment, could have ventured to name together Raffaelle and Murillo as angel painters. It is true, in speaking of the Visit to Abraham, she admits that the painter has set aside the angelic and mystic character, and merely represented three young men travellers; but she generally, throughout these volumes, speaks of that favourite Spaniard in terms of the highest admiration, – terms, as we think, little merited. The angels in the Sutherland Collection are as vulgar figures as can well be, and quite antagonistic in feeling to a heavenly mission. We confess that we dislike almost all the pictures by this so much esteemed master: their artistic manner is to us uncertain and unpleasing, – disagreeable in colour, deficient in grace. We often wonder at the excess of present admiration. We look upon his vulgarity in scriptural subjects as quite profane. His highest power was in a peasant gentleness; he could not embody a sacred feeling: yet thus is he praised for a performance beyond his power: – "St Andrew is suspended on the high cross, formed not of planks, but of the trunks of trees laid transversely. He is bound with cords, undraped, except by a linen cloth, his silver hair and beard loosely streaming on the air, his aged countenance illuminated by a heavenly transport, as he looks up to the opening skies, whence two angels, of really celestial beauty, like almost all Murillo's angels, descend with the crown and palm." The angels of Correggio are certainly peculiar: they are not quite celestial, but perhaps are sympathetically more lovely from their touch of humanity; they are ever pure. Those in the Ascension of the the Virgin, in the Cupola at Parma, seem to be rather adopted angels than of the "first estate;" for they are of several ages, and, if we mistake not, many of them are feminine, and, we suspect, are meant really to represent the loveliest of earth beatified, adopted into the heavenly choir. Those who have seen Signor Toschi's fine drawings of the Parma frescoes, (now in progress of engraving), will readily give assent to this impression. We remember this feeling crossing our mind, and as it were lightly touching the heart with angelic wings – if we have lost a daughter of that sweet age, let us fondly see her there. We cannot forbear quoting the passage upon the angels of Titian: – "And Titian's angels impress me in a similar manner: I mean those in the glorious Assumption at Venice, with their childish forms and features, but an expression caught from beholding the face of 'our Father which is in heaven:' it is glorified infancy. I remember standing before this picture, contemplating those lovely spirits one after another, until a thrill came over me, like that which I felt when Mendelssohn played the organ: I became music while I listened. The face of one of those angels is to the face of a child, just what that of the Virgin, in the same picture, is, compared with the fairest daughter of earth. It is not here superiority of beauty, but mind, and music, and love, kneaded together, as it were, into form and colour." This is very eloquent, but it was not the thought which supplied that ill word "kneaded."
It is remarked by Mrs Jameson, as a singular fact, that neither Leonardo da Vinci, nor Michael Angelo, nor Raffaelle, have given representations of the Four Evangelists. In very early art they are mostly symbolised, and sometimes oddly and uncouthly; and even so by Angelico da Fiesole. In Greek art, the Tetramorph, or union of the four attributes in one figure, is seen winged. "The Tetramorph, in Western art, in some instances became monstrous, instead of mystic and poetical." The animal symbols of the Evangelists, however familiarised in the eyes of the people, and therefore sanctioned to their feeling, required the greatest judgment to bring within the poetic of art. We must look also to the most mysterious subjects for the elucidation, such as Raffaelle's Vision of Ezekiel. There we view in the symbols a great prophetic, subservient to the creating and redeeming power, set forth and coming out of that blaze of the clouds of heaven that surround the sublime Majesty.
The earlier painters were fond of representing everything symbolically: hence the twelve apostles are so treated. In the descending scale, to the naturalists, the mystic poetry was reduced to its lowest element. The set of the apostles by Agostino Caracci, though, as Mrs Jameson observes, famous as works of art, are condemned as absolutely vulgar. "St John is drinking out of a cup, an idea which might strike some people as picturesque, but it is in vile taste. It is about the eighth century that the keys first appear in the hand of St Peter. In the old churches at Ravenna, it is remarked, St Peter and St Paul do not often appear." Ravenna, in the fifth century, did not look to Rome for her saints.
After his martyrdom, St Paul was, it is said, buried in the spot where was erected the magnificent church known as St Paolo fuorè-le mura. "I saw the church a few months before it was consumed by fire in 1823. I saw it again in 1847, when the restoration was far advanced. Its cold magnificence, compared with the impressions left by the former structure, rich with inestimable remains of ancient art, and venerable from a thousand associations, saddened and chilled me." We well remember visiting this noble church in 1816. A singular coincidence of fact and prophecy has imprinted this visit on our memory. Those who have seen it before it was burnt down, must remember the series of portraits of popes, and that there was room but for one more. We looked to the vacant place, as directed by our cicerone, whilst he told us that there was a prophecy concerning it to this effect, that when that space was filled up there would be no more popes. The prophecy was fulfilled, at least with regard to that church, for it was burnt down after that vacant space had been occupied by the papal portrait.
The subject of the Last Supper is treated of in a separate chapter. There has been a fresco lately discovered at Florence, in the refectory of Saint Onofrio, said to have been painted by Raffaelle in his twenty-third year. Some have thought it to be the work of Neri de Bicci. Mrs Jameson, without hesitation, pronounces it to be by Raffaelle, "full of sentiment and grace, but deficient, it appears to me, in that depth and discrimination of character displayed in his later works. It is evident that he had studied Giotto's fresco in the neighbouring Santa Croce. The arrangement is nearly the same." All the apostles have glories, but that round the head of Judas is smaller than the others. Does the prejudice against thirteen at table arise from this betrayal by Judas, or from the legend of St Gregory, who, when a monk in the monastery of St Andrew, was so charitable, that at length, having nothing else to bestow, he gave to an old beggar a silver porringer which had belonged to his mother? When pope, it was his custom to entertain twelve poor men. On one occasion he observed thirteen, and remonstrated with his steward, who, counting the guests, could see no more than twelve. After removal from the table, St Gregory called the unbidden guest, thus visible, like the ghost of Banquo, to the master of the feast only. The old man, on being questioned, declared himself to be the old beggar to whom the silver porringer had been given, adding, "But my name is Wonderful, and through me thou shalt obtain whatever thou shalt ask of God." There is a famous fresco on this subject by Paul Veronese, in which the stranger is represented to be our Saviour. To entertain even angels unknowingly, and at convivial entertainments, and visible perhaps but to one, as a messenger of good or of evil, would be little congenial with the purport of such meetings.
Mrs Jameson objects to the introduction of dogs in such a subject as the Last Supper, but remarks that it is supposed to show that the supper is over, and the paschal lamb eaten. It is so common that we should rather refer it to a more evident and more important signification, to show that this institution was not for the Jews only, and alluding to the passage showing that "dogs eat of the crumbs which fell from their masters' table." The large dogs, however, of Paul Veronese, gnawing bones, do not with propriety represent the passage; for there is reason to believe that the word "crumbs" describes the small pet dogs, which its was the fashion for the rich to carry about with them. The early painters introduced Satan in person tempting Judas. When Baroccio, with little taste, adopted the same treatment, the pope, Clement VIII., ordered the figure to be obliterated – "Che non gli piaceva il demonio si dimésticasse tanto con Gesu Christo." We know not where Mrs Jameson has found the anecdote which relates that Andrea del Castagno, called the Infamous, after he had assassinated Dominico his friend, who had intrusted him with Van Eyck's secret, painted his own portrait in the character of Judas, from remorse of conscience. We are not sure of the story at all respecting Andrea del Castagno: there may be other grounds for doubting it, but this anecdote, if true to the fact, would rather indicate insanity than guilt. The farther we advance in the history and practice of art, the more we find it suffering in sentiment from the infusion of the classical. In the Pitti Palace is a picture by Vasari of St Jerome as a penitent, in which he has introduced Venus and cupids, one of whom is taking aim at the saint. It is true that, as we proceed, legends crowd in upon us, and the painters find rather scope for fancy than subjects for faith and resting-places for devotion. Art, ever fond of female forms, readily seized upon the legends of Mary Magdalene. Her penitence has ever been a favourite subject, and has given opportunity for the introduction of grand landscape backgrounds in the lonely solitudes and wildernesses of a rocky desert. The individuality of the characters of Mary and Martha in Scripture history was too striking not to be taken advantage of by painters. There is a legend of an Egyptian penitent Mary, anterior to that of Mary Magdalene, which is curious. Whether this was another Mary or not, she is represented as a female anchoret; and we are reminded thereby of the double story of Helen of Troy, whom a real or fabulous history has deposited in Egypt, while the great poet of the Iliad has introduced her as so visible and palpable an agent in the Trojan war, and not without a touch of penitence, not quite characteristic of that age. Accounts say that it was her double, or eidolon, which figured at Troy.
Mrs Jameson makes a good conjecture with regard to the famous picture by Leonardo da Vinci, known as Modesty and Vanity, and that it is Mary Magdalene rebuked by her sister Martha for vanity and luxury, which exactly corresponds with the legend respecting her. We cannot forbear quoting the following eloquent passage: —
"On reviewing generally the infinite variety which has been given to these favourite subjects, the life and penance of the Magdalene, I must end where I began. In how few instances has the result been satisfactory to mind, or heart, or soul, or sense! Many have well represented the particular situation, the appropriate sentiment, the sorrow, the hope, the devotion; but who has given us the character? A noble creature, with strong sympathies and a strong will, with powerful faculties of every kind, working for good or evil. Such a woman Mary Magdalene must have been, even in her humiliation; and the feeble, girlish, commonplace, and even vulgar women, who appear to have been usually selected as models by the artists, turned into Magdalenes by throwing up their eyes and letting down their hair, ill represent the enthusiastic convert, or the majestic patroness!"
The second volume commences with the patron saints of Christendom. These were delightful fables in the credulous age of first youth, when feeling was a greater truth than fact; and we confess that we read these legends now with some regret at our abated faith, which we would not even "now have shaken in the chivalric characters of the seven champions of Christendom."
The Romish Church (we say not the Catholic, as Mrs Jameson so frequently improperly terms her) readily acted that part, to the people at large, which nurses assume for the amusement of their children; and in both cases, the more improbable the story the greater the fascination; and the people, like children, are more credulous than critical. Had we not known in our own times, and nearly at the present day, stories as absurd as any in these legends, gravely asserted, circulated, and credited, and maintained by men of responsible station and education – to instance only the garment of Treves – we should have pronounced the aurea legenda to have been a creation of the fancy, arising, not without their illumination, from the fogs and fens of the Middle Ages, adapted solely for minds of that period. But the sanction of them by the Church of Rome leads us to view them as ignes fatui of another character, meant to amuse and to bewilder. We must even think it possible now for people to be brought to believe such a story as this: – "It is related that a certain man, who was afflicted with a cancer in his leg, went to perform his devotions in the church of St Cosmo and St Damian at Rome, and he prayed most earnestly that these beneficent saints would be pleased to aid him. When he had prayed, a deep sleep fell upon him. Then he beheld St Cosmo and St Damian, who stood beside him; and one carried a box of ointment, the other a sharp knife. And one said, 'What shall we do to replace this diseased leg, when we have cut it off?' And the other replied, 'There is a Moor who has been buried just now in San Pietro in Vincolo; let us take his leg for the purpose!' Then they brought the leg of the dead man, and with it they replaced the leg of the sick man – anointing it with celestial ointment, so that he remained whole. When he awoke, he almost doubted whether it could be himself; but his neighbours, seeing that he was healed, looked into the tomb of the Moor, and found that there had been an exchange of legs; and thus the truth of this great miracle was proved to all beholders." It is, however, rather a hazardous demand upon credulity to serve up again the feast of Thyestes, cooked in a caldron of even more miraculous efficacy than Medea's. Such is the stupendous power of St Nicholas: – "As he was travelling through his diocese, to visit and comfort his people, he lodged in the house of a certain host, who was a son of Satan. This man, in the scarcity of provisions, was accustomed to steal little children, whom he murdered, and served up their limbs as meat to his guests. On the arrival of the Bishop and his retinue, he had the audacity to serve up the dismembered limbs of these unhappy children before the man of God, who had no sooner cast his eyes on them than he was aware of the fraud. He reproached the host with his abominable crime; and, going to the tub where their remains were salted down, he made over them the sign of the cross, and they rose up whole and well. The people who witnessed this great wonder were struck with astonishment; and the three children, who were the sons of a poor widow, were restored to their weeping mother."
But what shall we say to an entire new saint of a modern day, who has already found his way to Venice, Bologna, and Lombardy, – even to Tuscany and Paris, not only in pictures and statues, but even in chapels dedicated to her? The reader may be curious to know something of a saint of this century. In the year 1802 the skeleton of a young female was discovered in some excavations in the catacomb of Priscilla at Rome; the remains of an inscription were, "Lumena Pax Te Cum Tri." A priest in the train of a Neapolitan prelate, who was sent to congratulate Pius VII. on his return from France, begged some relics. The newly-discovered treasure was given to him, and the inscription thus translated – "Filomena, rest in peace." "Another priest, whose name is suppressed because of his great humility, was favoured by a vision in the broad noonday, in which he beheld the glorious virgin Filomena, who was pleased to reveal to him that she had suffered death for preferring the Christian faith, and her vow of chastity, to the addresses of the emperor, who wished to make her his wife. This vision leaving much of her history obscure, a certain young artist, whose name is also suppressed – perhaps because of his great humility – was informed in a vision that the emperor alluded to was Diocletian; and at the same time the torments and persecutions suffered by the Christian virgin Filomena, as well as her wonderful constancy, were also revealed to him. There were some difficulties in the way of the Emperor Diocletian, which inclines the writer of the historical account to adopt the opinion that the young artist in his vision may have made a mistake, and that the emperor may have been his colleague, Maximian. The facts, however, now admitted of no doubt; and the relics were carried by the priest Francesco da Lucia to Naples; they were inclosed in a case of wood, resembling in form the human body. This figure was habited in a petticoat of white satin, and over it a crimson tunic, after the Greek fashion; the face was painted to represent nature; a garland of flowers was placed on the head, and in the hands a lily and a javelin – with the point reversed, to express her purity and her martyrdom; then she was laid in a half sitting posture in a sarcophagus, of which the sides were glass; and after lying for some time in state, in the chapel of the Torres family in the Church of Saint Angiolo, she was carried in procession to Magnano, a little town about twenty miles from Naples, amid the acclamations of the people, working many and surprising miracles by the way. Such is the legend of St Filomena, and such the authority on which she has become, within the last twenty years, one of the most fashionable saints in Italy. Jewels to the value of many thousand crowns have been offered at her shrine, and solemnly placed round the neck of her image, or suspended to her girdle."
We dare not in candour charge the Romanists with being the only fabricators or receivers of such goods, remembering our own Saint Joanna, and Huntingdon's Autobiography. There are aurea legenda in a certain class of our sectarian literature, presenting a large list of claimants of very high pretensions to saintship, only waiting for power and an established authority to be canonised.
It is not surprising, as the world is – working often in the dark places of ignorance – if a few glossy threads of a coarser material, and deteriorating quality, be taken up by no wilful mistake, and be interwoven into the true golden tissue. Nevertheless the mantle may be still beautiful, and fit a Christian to wear and walk in not unbecomingly. There are worse things than religious superstition, whose badness is of degrees. In the minds of all nations and people there is a vacuum for the craving appetite of credulity to fill. The great interests of life lie in politics and religion. There are bigots in both: but we look upon a little superstition on the one point as far safer than upon the other, especially in modern times; whereas political bigotry, however often duped, is credulous still, and becomes hating and ferocious. We fear even the legends are losing their authority in the Roman States, whose history may yet have to be filled with far worse tales. A generous, though we deem it a mistaken feeling, has induced Mrs Jameson to make what we would almost venture to call the only mistake in her volumes: the following passage is certainly not in good taste, quite out of the intention of her book, and very unfortunately timed – "But Peter is certainly the democratical apostle par excellence, and his representative in our time seems to have awakened to a consciousness of this truth, and to have thrown himself – as St Peter would most certainly have done, were he living – on the side of the people and of freedom." A democratical successor to St Peter! He is, then, the first of that character. With him the "side of freedom" seems to have been the inside of his prison, and his "side of the people" a precipitate flight from contact with them in their liberty – and for his tiara the disguise of a valet. We more than pardon Mrs Jameson – we love the virtue that gives rise to her error; for it is peculiarly the nature of woman to be credulous, and to be deceived. We admire, and more than admire, women equally well, whether they are right or wrong in politics: these are the business of men, for they have to do with the sword, and are out of the tenderer impulses of woman. But we are amused when we find grave strong men in the same predicament of ill conjectures. We smile as we remember a certain dedication "To Pio Nono," which by its simple grandeur and magnificent beauty will live splendide mendax to excuse its prophetic inaccuracy. It is not wise to foretell events to happen whilst we live. Take a "long range," or a studied ambiguity that will fit either way. The example of Dr Primrose may be followed with advantage, who in every case of domestic doubt and difficulty concluded the matter thus – "I wish it may turn out well this day six months;" by which, in his simple family, he attained the character of a true prophet.