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83 IN

COLOR

A History of

WESTERN ART

History of Western Art

History of

Western Art
Michael Levey

NEW YORK AND TORONTO

OXFORD UNIVERSITY

PRESS

To

CHARLES

MICHAEL

LF.VEY

968

Library of Coii(;rcss Catalogue Card

All Rights Reserved

Printed

ill

i]reat Britain

Number 68-54496

Contents

Introduction

From

Cave

to the City

I5

The Impact of Christianity

63

III

The Gothic World

87

IV

In a

II

V
VI

VII

VIII

the

New

Perfect

Perspective

ii5

I55

Manners

High Art and Low Nature

209

Facing up to Reality

265

'We must go on

3^9

List

searching'

of Illustrations

Index

343

357

Art never expresses anything hut

the creation of

its

the only history

it

time,

it

is

itself.

So

far

from hein^

usually in direct opposition to

preserves jor us

is

it,

and

the history of its onni progress.

Oscar Wilde

Introduction

DUCHAMP

Fonutaiu

I9I7

Art is not something which has ceased to be created. It is more

important for a history of art to begin with that fact than to
offer any theory of what art is - still less to try and guess what
art will be.
It is

that

is

important to begin with that fact partly because the art

sealed off by belonging in the past has often lost its power

to shock, startle or annoy. History has

made

it

all

dreadfully

We

smile to read how disconcerted were contemporary spectators when they first saw the art of, for example,
Tintoretto, or Borromini or Cezanne. But few people have
worked out their own estimate of these artists' creations;

palatable.

done it for them.

no credit in mindlessly subscribing

history seems to have

Not only
cult

is

there

of 'old masters', but there

is

a positive

danger

to the
in this

waiting for the anaesthetist, history, to turn art drowsy before

one dares inspect it. Such an attitude comes from fear. It is
nothing to do with 'modern' art as such but is connected with
ordinary human reaction to novelty of any sort.
Art is always novel. It all aspires to the condition of

Duchamp's Fountain

(III. 1),

in so far as

it

means to be something

different

always

in

from what

art has

been before, and the difference

some degree unforeseen. Duchamp

is

has said that he

production of such 'ready-mades', knowing that

habit-forming drug'. Ultimately there is no explanation
of any work of art, whenever it was executed, but history is
largely concerned with explanations. The phenomenon of the
'Wars of the Roses' is susceptible of this treatment; a painting
of the Madonna of the Rose-hedge will remain inexplicable,
even when every fact of iconography of the Virgin, ecclesiastical patronage, and the development of altarpieces in the
fifteenth century, has been investigated.
This means that individual judgment is as necessary in
estimating the art of the past as in estimating that of the present.
Or rather, it means that greater independence needs to be
exercised over the past because that comes with an impressive
accumulation of history which may bring us emotionally to
our knees without waiting to see the object. Dealing with the
prestige of antiquity in the eighteenth century, the sculptor
Falconet pertinently pleaded, 'that we may be allowed, before
genuflecting, to consider the god'. And this scrutiny is the only
method by which finally we can appreciate art of any sort of
any date, ancient or modern. The best tribute we can pay it
is to take it seriously, even if this leads eventually to taking some
of it away and putting it in the cellar. The result is better than
impossibly crowded, overstocked rooms where everything is
present but nothing is really cared for.
Art is the furniture which man will go on creating in his
attempts to make the physical universe more pleasant and
endurable. In whatever form it exists, art remains some sort of
barrier or bulwark, however temporary, against the particular
physical fact of death. Life's brevity and art's longevity, the
immortality of art contrasted with the mortality of both those
who create it and those who enjoy it: such typical, longrestricted the
'art is a

pay tribute to the super-vitality which is felt

Something of that may rub off on to us - if
only for a few moments - and help us forget that in reality we
are doomed. The awareness is there in the Egyptian tomb or in
the sculpted porch of a Gothic cathedral. It is no accident that
so much art has always found itself connected with death,
erecting tombs and propagating myths of immortality. Art
established cliches
to be art's secret.

its own illusion not only in the teeth of death but just
because of that. It is the only constructive alternative to a lifetime of death-like inactivity. Our one chance lies, as Pater said,

offers

'in

getting as

The

many

furniture that

to mitigate his

is

own

pulsations as possible into the given time'.

art

was originally constructed by the artist

some way or other it can

sentence, but in

be of service to us, his fellow prisoners.

It is not surprising that art has always been enlisted in the
service of myths, whether religious or profane. Indeed, it might
be said that art is equally in need of myths to propagate and
when it can do no better is glad to seize on Superman or Batman
or the miracle of modern canned goods. It is magic - a magic
most apparent to us perhaps not in any visual art (unless the
cinema) but in the act of reading. The intense spell which a book
can usually cast on anyone is less easily cast by the visual arts.
Conversely, there is less demand for explanations about books.
A novel by Simenon needs no explanation of its function or
purpose. It is not necessary to urge the reader to work his
imagination and try and take some interest in fictional characters in lace-curtained Liege on a foggy afternoon. The reader
perfectly understands and responds to the novel's convention.
The spectator in a gallery of pictures (even when they are all
old masters) is perpetually asking questions which extend from
the works of art and which reveal how little he can instinctively
sink himself in them.
To such an extent is this so that, ironically, he may well fmd
himself disorientated when confronting modern works of art
where the very questions he is used to asking have no application. The spectator looks for the myth rather than the art.
Trained to believe that there are extra-artistic reasons why a
Romanesque crucifix looks as it does, he expects to be given an
explanation of Rauschenberg's work beyond the fact that it
looks as it does because that is how the artist made it. History's
explanations may have their validity, but they are dangerous if
relied on too much.
may appreciate an object better for
comprehending its original purpose, but many works of art
have always been created for no purpose except to be art; and,
further, no amount of interesting historical explanation will
turn a non-work of art into art. As we approach closer to the
art of our own time, historical explanations become less convincing and coherent. A.J. P. Taylor's From Sarajevo to Potsdam
is not intended to, and will not prove to, illuminate either the
architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright or the paintings of Matisse,
though it spans effectively much of their active lifetimes.
There is, of course, a good, and indeed historical, reason for
this. The purpose and powers of art have actually become less

We

certain as it has developed out of its social context. During the

nineteenth century it lost much of its myth material. Religious
belief declined; autocratic monarchies declined - Napoleon
being probably the last ruler whose propaganda became art.
At first it seemed that art would throw its energies into
propagating a new religion of factual realism and scientific
observation. And there it encountered a new rival, the camera.
Well into the present century, there were aspirations for art to
be true in an almost evangelical sense of the word. Degas is as

usual alone, honourably alone, in stating quite flatly, 'Art

is

understand the paradox of art led to the

quintessentially ninctccnth-ccntury disaster of Holman Hunt's
The Lij^ht of the World (III. 233^. The least embarrassed art form
of the nineteenth century was, significantly, architecture which
retains its primary functional purpose. Two new types of building required by the nineteenth century's own progress were
the railway station and the office building triumphant solutions
were found to both, involving new concepts and new materials.
A confident excitement is apparent in the lyric prose in which
the American architect, Louis Sullivan, wrote about the 'tall
office building', and his buildings were finer than his prose.
When art, of all kinds, has most effectively served a religious
system, that system has itself usually been more than a pillar - a
positive colonnade - of society. At such periods there are
naturally no debates about art's role in the community. Its
purpose gives it a definite utihtarian basis- one that has gradually
been pulled away from under it until today it need support
nothing, but also runs the risk of being unsupported. Religious
pictures and portraits are the two ends of painting according to
Diirer, and it is remarkable how much great Western art up to
1800 is subsumed in those two categories, especially when one
adds works of art that, though not overtly religious, are
deceit.' Failure to

didactic in intent.

Today
its

the

problem may seem

social purpose.

And

it is

at first to be that art has lost

only apparently given one by the

commissioning of sculpture for new buildings and

schemes of decoration for some university or satellite town
which often attract more attention at the planning stage than
polite

when
what

the
to

work

do with

is

finally executed.

art.

are not the place for

We

are basically uncertain

Certainly our squares and our cemeteries
it.

Even when

modem monuments

do

they may be as free from all 'programme' reference as is

Barbara Hepworth's monument in memory of Hammerskjold
exist,

10

HEPWORTH

Single

Form 1962-

^M*'-.-jmr^

(///. 2). This simply exists in its own right as a soaring form in
bronze. That it would anyway be free of cemetery associations
might be expected, but it is particularly interesting that the
sculptor has spoken of the liberating effect a visit to Brancusi's

on her, after living in a Northern climate, 'where the

approach to sculpture has appeared fettered by the gravity of
studio had

monuments

to the dead'.

Rodin's Balzac (III. 2jg), executed at the end of the nineteenth

century and rejected by its commissioners, offers us, as well as
its form to appreciate, an image we can recognize as human.
But its rejection was probably inevitable, because it insists on
being not a factual representation so much as Rodin's reaction
to, his impression of, Balzac's personality. If to us it now appears
devoid of all shocking quality, we can perhaps recover some of
its original disconcerting novelty by seeing it against the
tradition expressed by an eighteenth-century monument,
Pigalle's to Marshal Saxe, (III. 198), with its elaborate iconographic programme. Pigalle's is in fact the triumphant culmination of a tradition - the last, and one of the greatest, of Baroque
tombs. Its imagery is easy to read at the most essential level man
confronts death. This is obvious, and made very effective,
without our needing to know anything about Saxe. Rodin's
Balzac is private by comparison. Whereas the more one learns
about Saxe the more one can 'read' his monument, with the
Balzac it was the very knowledge of the writer that made Rodin's
sculpture so shocking to the Societe des Gens de Lettres who
had commissioned it. Hepworth's monument is free of any
such problem. It need not symbolize anything, still less represent
anything connected with the real person Hammerskjold. It
does not prompt one to ask questions about him. It is simply a
shape which the sculptor has associated with him.
The only question it may, accidentally, prompt is: do we
have any place for art that has no purpose except to be art?
While it is not worth pretending that we can use art in the way
it was once used, it is perhaps significant that we nowadays fmd
art in things that are utilitarian. What were once called minor
arts - or not even arts at all - now have their opportunity to be
taken as seriously as a painting or piece of sculpture. The very
word 'art' may immediately give the wrong connotation,
suggestive of stuffmess, and bourgeois respect for the museum.
This is no longer such a modern idea, for it is over fifty years
since Duchamp thought up the idea of 'ready-mades', of which
his Fountain is a good example.
:

12

The

idea of art's immortality

is

itself

brought into doubt by

window display or the collage which

and may even be intended to drop to bits.

the ephemeral poster, the

quickly grows dusty

creator, and awe at what he has created, can

be disposed of best either by setting up the objet trouve as art or
by positively destroying art, in ridicule or by a physical act. The
idea of attacking 'art' is something that, once again, goes back
to Duchamp: not only for his witty gesture of putting a
moustache on the Moria Lisa but also for the hinted destruction
in his remark, 'use a Rembrandt as an ironing-board'.
In such ways art proclaims its freedom to be anything it likes.
It keeps trying to be exciting and topical, thinks up new ways to
astonish and amuse us, and yet increasmgly seems unable to be
needed. Perhaps most people have frankly lost their interest in
art of any sort. If that is so, art cannot help it and the way back
to an audience certainly does not lie in appealing for one. Even
the loss of social purpose is something partly more apparent than
real, because we persuade ourselves into seeing the past peopled
with connoisseurs, every Renaissance man a fme judge of merit
in a building, a statue or a painting. But it is simply untrue that
there ever was a climate of universal appreciation. When art
was most closely tied to social uses, probably most people could
hardly see the art for the use they went to the temple or church
as a reHgious duty, not for an aesthetic experience. Probably
half the citizens of Florence were quite uncaring about Cellini's
Perseus (III. 134} when it was first put up - or, if they hked it, did

The magic of the

wrong reasons.
Today we are actually much

so for the

better placed, to respond to art

of our own period as well as to survey that of the past. Artists
have encouraged the autonomy of the spectator to the point
where we may each be our own artist, picking up our own
objets trouves, making our own assemblages of junk. If that
achieves nothing else, it may at least encourage our confidence
and help us exercise discrimination over art of all periods. Just
as not everything produced today is necessarily good, great,
or even authentic, so what has survived from the past is not
necessarily great - however historically important it may be.
There is really no secret about appreciating art, except to have
a belief that art - whatever it is - is essential. It is not just a pastime
or an amusement, but a deadly serious activity which must be

taken seriously.
Nevertheless, art docs not speak one international, universal
language easily comprehended by everyone. It is more a Babel
13

than Esperanto. Works of art into which artists put all their
technique and energies are not going to yield their secrets at a
glance. Assimilation is slow - and with the visual arts there is

always a difficulty in preventing too hasty a survey. Books and

music take time to read and hear. Visual works of art require
time just as much, but the spectator has there to apply the
discipline for himself. Temples, tombs, cathedrals, monuments,
built and planned and decorated all over Western Europe during
the course of centuries, do not necessarily make plain immediately their functions or their artistic effect. It is not true that Giotto
and Picasso are really the same sort ot artist, because no two
artists are ever the same. Even when two artists seem to set out
to be rather similar, in a little moment out of whole centuries
of art, they diverge to become quite different. Style makes them
each individual and we learn to recognize, for example, that
Fragonard is utterly distinct from Boucher -just as we learn to
distinguish a German Gothic cathedral from a French one.
It is this sense of individuality that has become the chief
characteristic of Western artists and Western styles of art. Even
if one were to begin only at ad 1 500, the shifts and changes, the
crowd of conflicting individualities and contrasting creations
are themselves bewildering enough to justify some attempt at a
guide. To go right back to the origins of art makes the attempt
much more hazardous, but perhaps all the more worth trying.

14

CHAPTER ONE

From the Cave

to the City

Arch of Titus, Rome.

First

The

century A d

from Hving in caves to building

- an evolution that does
not by any means throughout imply artistic progress - from the
story of man's progress

cities is also

the story of art's evolution

long-hidden paintings of Lascaux and Altamira to the neverneglected monuments of imperial Rome. Between intervenes
a huge period of time. But myths and a sense of magic he behind
much of the resulting works of art. Art has a definite ritual use,
whether it suggests vitaHty or positively aims at giving an
individual immortahty. Magically, it extends the Hmits of
ordinary experience: making appear on the cave walls creatures
that arc not present, and giving posthumous life for ever to the
Divine Titus, son of the Divine Vespasian, on an arch inscribed
with his name and dedicated to him by the Senate and People

ofRome(///. jj.
That was put up nearly nineteen hundred years ago, but may
be claimed
the

murky

as a

very recent

artifact

prehistorical times

when we

of cave

start to

descend to

art to seek the origins

of
15

4 Stags, Lascaux
cave, Dordognc

5 Standing bison,
Altamira cave,
Santander

The 'Venus' of Willcndorf

Western art. These origins are themselves isolated, a largely

Northern European prologue which gives us art without
civilization long before there took place the main Mediterranean drama of art and civilization which culminates in Greece.
We need expect no architecture from a shadowy era when the
land-mass was covered largely by ice, but painting and sculpture
were already practised by primitive man - with surprisingly
accomplished results, far in advance of any social development.
The emphasis ot this art lies not on mankind but on animals
which retain their impressive vitality even when man - in the
shape of stick-like hunting figures - begins to include himself
in the images. Some mana was perhaps thought to reside in the
animal, powerful and huge, whose flesh and blood will renew
one's own. Indeed, it is possible that mafia resided not so much
in the living animal as in the image of it painted on the rock.
The idea of animal-derived virility is not merely a naive prehistorical concept, but something that lingers on in our steakobsessed age. The Altamira bison (III. 3 j can be seen almost in
the terms of those large-scale diagrams often appearing on the
menu of steak-houses where dotted lines and arrows indicate the
most succulent portions.
Though their actual means of expression may be cruder, the
cave paintings reveal equal, if not greater, observation. Telling
us Httle about the hunter, they vividly convey - in outline or in

blended tones - the hunted. At Lascaux a frieze of stags (III. 4),

each with its muzzle at sHghtly different angle, passes over the
rock wall like some slowed-down image from a film. There is a
developing, deliberate naturalism which leads from these, the
earliest images, traced with an unvarying outline, to the
coloured, even textured effects represented by the Altamira
animals. Yet even over this great period of time, there seems
little temptation to enlarge subject-matter. The artists continue
to concentrate on what perhaps they were most conscious of:
other living creatures which existed but which were different
from mankind. They were more worth recording than man's
appearance or his environment. Yet, given the means at the
command of the creators of Altamira, they would have been
fully capable of producing images of themselves as economical

and

effective as their portraits

When

the

human body

of animals.

appears,

it is

in sculpture.

It

appears

without any concern with the face, made up of a series of tactile

bulges which suggest buttocks and breasts - for it is the female

body

that

is

preferred in these small amulet-like objects

(III. 6).

17

More

patently than the cave paintings, these reveal a concern

with form and suggest an ability to stylize quite consciously,
anticipating Brancusi by many thousands of years. The so-called
'Venus' found at Willendorf is naturalistic by comparison with
other more geometrically-stylized statuettes in which the head
may shrink to a small blank ovoid. And though the Willendorf
'Venus' has no face, her hair is noticeably elaborate and the pose
of the head tilted forward avoids the problem of a featureless
face. The result is, perhaps accidentally, a self-regarding figure:
among the very first of navel-gazing nudes (the Willendorf
'Venus' has a clearly-marked navel) and a tight little nut of
sexual potency.
Although we do not know whether such sculpture preceded
cave painting, both are products of an early, shifting, tribal
world where buildings were probably no more than reed or
mud huts. Not until long after the Western European cave
paintings had been produced did there begin to be monuments
in stone set up by men, connected with ritual, either in worship
of some god or in honour of the dead (if the two were distinctly
separated). These suggest ideas of permanence which probably
never occurred to the cave artists, who certainly cannot have
guessed how well preserved, though concealed, their art would
prove to be. Some three thousand years or more seem to
separate the naturalism of the Upper PalaeoHthic cave paintings
from the NeoHthic Age (around 7500 bc) when man emerges
on the earth's surface to build such large-scale monuments as
Stonehenge, one of the earliest surviving magic circles (III. 7).
This retains an atmosphere at once impressive and oppressive.
Its stones are like dragon's teeth, sprung up in a circle which
appears more threatening than holy, but they mark a new
achievement and suggest some definitely organized society.
It is an indication of man's imaginative powers that it was
for the needs not of the living but the dead that stones were first
set up. Whatever type of primitive hut he lived in, he built more
enduringly when he made tombs, by the construction of the
dolmen, two upright stone slabs roofed with a horizontal slab.
This is the principle extended to make at Stonehenge a complete
circle, or rather, two concentric circles within which stood
other dolmen-like groups of stones. And it is the same simple
principle that, literally, underlies the construction of the Lion

Gate

at Mycenae (III. ig).

some way or another

it is probable that Stonehenge is

connected with the sun, serving either as some kind of temple or

In

7 Stonehenge, Wiltshire. Late Neolithic

to Bronze Age c. 1500

even

giant sun-dial.

as a

Nor

between 1900 and 1700 bc

does sun-worship cease with

this

Neolithic monument. The solar myths of Egyptian culture arc

a fairly famihar idea, but it is more unexpected to find Plato
naming the sun-god, Helios, as joint leader in his concept of a
new state cult (in the Laws), in which Helios and Apollo are
joined. Stonehenge may be taken to mark the end of the prehistoric prologue to the development of Western art. The scene
shifts to

the Mediterranean.

universe,

it is

now magic

Even though magic

that

seems

still

rules the

a controllable force, that

can be manipulated by a whole elaborate code of rules. It is as

if man had at last dared to look at other men, and discovered
that nature, the gods (and man's own secret urge) were all
placated by images of himself and his environment. The fuiiily
groups of Egyptian sculpture are sympathetic as sculpture and
also for their suggestions of a more homely and less deathobsessed environment than is usually supposed. Above all, in
moving to the different climate - in every sense - of the Mediter-

ranean cultures, we encounter not merely works we can

recognize as art but the activity of art for its own sake.
19

As an introduction to this world, therefore, the small ivory

hippopotamus (III. 8) is perhaps better than a pyramid. This
is old indeed, produced by the Badarian culture which preceded
the First Dynasty in Egypt, and thus from before 3100 bc. No
cult object, it is an unguent jar that happens also to be a miniature
work of art. It pays tribute to the artist's power of observation,
and it evokes a sophisticated, positive civilization where such an
object might be as useful in life as in death useful by delighting
the eye in addition to serving as a receptacle for ointment or
scent. Its creator was not content with providing simply the
most utilitarian form but amusingly worked the shape into that
:

of a

common

animal to be seen along the Nile.

Although it is true that Egyptian culture revolved round the

fact of death, and much of its art was produced with a view to
providing for death, all this thought and activity had exorcized
its terror. Whereas the Greeks were too restlessly inquirmg ever
to settle on a satisfactory myth of an after-life, and seem always
hovering on scepticism about their entire religion, the Egyptians
evolved a clear, calm and fundamentally naive system which
really mirrored as closely as possible the life they knew. The
gods lived in their temples as houses - and their temples were
built on the plan of the Egyptian house. In death each spirit
inhabited his tomb on the same domestic principle; his daily life
was reproduced there in painting or sculpture, along with
models of objects of ordinary use, and an image of himself, often
his family. Eternity consisted in hunting (III. g) or doing
nothing, just existing, content within the comfort of a rehgious

with

Ivory hippo-

potamus jar. Before

3100

20

Bc;

mr

"''*'

9 Ti hunting, relief

from the tomb of

Ti, Saqqara.
^^^-

%^

'^-

..*#''

,''

"

<^

-.Mil:..-:../

-:

Dynasty

2350

c.

B(;

system well summed up by one hieroglyphic text which reads:

have given thee all good things and all offerings which arc in
the South, for thou hast appeared as King of Upper and Lower

'I

Egypt

for ever.'

Like the Egyptian cUmate, its art hardly changed. Centuries

passed in a fertile land that needed little effort at cultivation by
its

inhabitants.

The

vital act

of irrigation was performed by the

its banks once a year. And the

Nile, conveniently flooding

river

is

in

some ways

the real subject in that relief in the

tomb

of Ti, for if he is taller than his servants, the long, level stems
of the background papyrus, growing beside the river, are taller
still. The fish and the hippopotami in the water below, and the
flapping birds amid the papyrus buds, are all part of the Nile
bank scenery - here skilfully laid out to cover a wall like a great
animated screen.
21

2500-

It is usual to express surprise that Egyptian art retained its

conventions for so long (going on drawing the eye frontally in
profiles, for example) without further attempts at naturalism,
but there was wisdom in this conservatism as long as it preserved
its artistic vitality.
An early admirer of Egyptian art was
Van Gogh writing to his brother about it he said '. when the
thing represented and the manner of representing agree, the
thing has style and quahty'. This serves to remind us that there
must always be some convention in art; and thus paradoxically
we may more easily be able to appreciate a head such as that
carved in yellow quartzite (III. lo) rather than the fully
naturahstic portrait busts of Greece or Rome (III. 44). The
Egyptian head is a portrait also, of an unidentified queen, done
about 1360 BC, but its appeal is not connected with lifclikeness
so much as with its combination of bulk and delicacy. On the
hard shape of head are scooped out the deep winged eyesockets, shapes pleasing in themselves and echoed by the curved
heavy lips. While recognizably a human head, it keeps an aura
of remoteness and strangeness which is part of its beauty. It
stands for a person rather than is concerned with minute
particularization of a person, and yet it is completely art. Any
absence of the lifelike is not the artist's failure but the pursuit of
a conscious convention. Already art tacitly poses the question
for us of why should it pursue merely natural appearances. Its
task is to create not imitate.
:

10 Head of an
unidentified queen

from Amarna. Late

XVIII Dynasty
C.

1360 BC

Frieze of King
Smenkhkare and
Queen Meryt-Aten.
Late XVIII Dynasty
C. 1365 BC
1 1

Only once during the course of thirty centuries were

Egyptian pohtics, culture, religion - and hence art - drastically
changed. The king Akhenaten (i 378-1 360 bc) moved his
capital from Thebes to a newly-built city, broke the domination
of the priests of the god Amon, and introduced a less rigid and
immobile style of art. His revolution did not outlast his reign,
and under his weak son-in-law Tutankhamen (disproportionately famous to us, because of the intactness of his tomb) the old
religious and artistic forms were re-established. The naturalism
encouraged by Akhenaten's reforms is shown by such relief
portraits as that of his successor, Smenkhkare, and his Queen
(III. 11), where the thin King positively lounges in casual pose,
legs crossed, body relaxed- man rather than god, simply gazing
at his wife who brandishes a bouquet of flowers. Yet even
though this frank domesticity is new, a domestic vein is deep in
23

all

Egyptian

art.

Women

arc

shown

equal, not subordinated to

men. If death has dictated the reliefs and the statues, at least man
and woman face it together, often with interlinked hands, in a
homely harmony quite foreign to Greek art - and, indeed, to
Greek culture.
Egyptian

art

is

neither intellectual nor aggressive.

It

does not

human body

(and is mercifully unaware of the

glamour of being an athlete) but is quite conscious of physical
appearance and able to record it (III. 12), even when it is not
conventionally beautiful. There is a human air to the architecture of Egyptian temples, their pylons heavily decorated with
figures in sunk relief, approached through an avenue of humanglorify the

headed sphinxes, or with

The

facade where giant statues act like

themselves in these comparatively simple

structures, where the curved arch was hardly used, are worked
into shapes derived from papyrus and lotus plants, suggesting
again the fertile Nile which made living easy in a climate that
hardly encouraged thought. It cannot be said, however, to have
discouraged work if we reflect that the Egyptians built the
largest surviving mass of man-built stone in the pyramid of
pillars.

pillars

13

^i^^:^W^:

The Sphinx and

Pyramid of Chcphrcn,
Giza. IV Dynasty
c. 2615-2500 BC

Statuette of

Meyrehastel.

VI Dynasty
c. 2350-2130 BC

Chephren (///. ij) which, together with the near-by Sphinx,

remains the most potent symbol of their civihzation. Against
the achievement of the Parthenon (III. 25) it seems almost
irrational, absurdly unsubtle, exercising the power less ot art
than of the picturesque.
Within pyramids like that of Chephren was once treasure,
accumulations of objects of every kind, presumably comparable
to the piled treasure found in the uniquely intact tomb of
Tutankhamen. In some ways it is all Egyptian art that was
sealed in there

from the

life-sized statues flanking the entrance,

to the elaborately jewelled bracelets

the king.

There

is

on the mummified arms of

and sensuousness about

sophistication

the painted alabaster and gilded

wood

creations which, like

fabulous toys, littered the tomb, and a delicacy as well as

moving strangeness in those gold goddesses (///. 1^) who stood
guard over the king's viscera. Once again, they are not totally
lifelike nor perfectly proportioned. At first glance they may all
25

look

alike,

though

They may seem

their head-dresses are carefully differentiated.

and yet the gesture of their

pose of their heads together combine to
suggest graceful guardianship. For all their bodies' apparent
rigidity, there is a nervous fluidity in the modelling of their fine,
many-pleated, clinging dresses, and it communicates itself to
their long thin feet, with toes almost like extended pleats of
expressionless,

open arms and the

alert

drapery.

The

from which Egyptian art has always

partly a matter of history rather than aesthetics.
climate and sand were to preserve an extraordinary

lack of prestige

suffered

is

Although

amount of its

sand long concealed

a great deal; the body of

was in this way hidden more than once in
ancient times, and was not exposed again until the nineteenth
century. Egyptian civilization was a dead one, without the
apparent continuity which was to lead from Greece to Rome
art,

the Sphinx at Giza

and then to Christianity. It did not conquer, in either a miHtary

or an artistic way. It left no proper Hterature, and barely left any
writing - for the system of hieroglyphics is typically a matter of
images not abstract symbols. Even its cities were always
where the major monuments were not palaces but
tombs and temples. As a system of civilization, it has nothing to
teach us but that should leave us only the more free to appreciate
the considerable achievements of its often austere art (III. 14).
pictorial

lifeless cities,

14 Ramesses

1237 BC

II

and

his

son lassoing

a steer.

XIX Dynasty

c.

1304-

=*.,..

15
c.

..

Guardian goddesses of Tutankhamen's

1360 BC

J!f nil

viscera.

XVIII Dynasty

A considerable move west, psychologically as well as

geographically, is required to encounter the next, the most
relevant civilization, that of the Aegean, which begins with the
Minoan culture of Crete, hi strict archaeological accuracy, it
begins with a Neolithic period that is to be set at least as far
back

artistically Crete will probably always mean

Minoan Bronze Age, centring on the complex
which grew up at Knossos, associated with the legendary

as

500Q b c but

the culture of the

palace

Much about that world still remains controversial

and mysterious, and equally mysterious is the catastrophe which
around 1400 bc destroyed the civilization - not many years
before the reign of Akhenatcn in Egypt. Not surprisingly, there
are some tenuous links between Minoan art and both Egyptian
and Mesopotamian, but the Cretan products are very different.
They appear remarkably undominated, to begin with, by
religious preoccupations. The agglomeration at Knossos was
not a temple but a palace, meant to be lived in and well equipped
with civilized appurtenances. Cretan art seems equally tree from
dynastic obsessions, commemorating no monarchs or rulers,
and leaving no very clear evidence at all about the island's
political and religious organization. There was apparently no
monumental sculpture - in marked contrast to Egypt - and no
grandiose concept of tombs. Eternity, an atter-life, even the
future, seem to have raised no very urgent problems. Art no
longer aims to impress posterity, but seems much more eager
to catch vitality and thus in some, highly sophisticated, ways
becomes closer to Altamira than tc^ Egyptian art.
There is a sense of action and movement which is startlingly
new and quite obvious in the statuette of a girl athlete vaulting
over a bull's horns (III 16). It is typical of Minoan culture that
this practice seems to have been as much sport as religious
ritual. Highly popular as a theme in Cretan frescoes and
statuettes, the bull was perhaps a sacred animal but it appears as
sheerly animal, a creature against whom men and women pit
king Minos.

game of, apparently, bloodless skill, hi

movement and athletic - almost balletic - grace

their wits in a

statuette

prized for their

own

sake.

the
are

Cult objects, frescoes in the palace

at

Knossos, and the distinctive decorative spirals on Minoan

pottery all extend these ideas of movement.
Where Ti in his tomb (III. g) hunted for ever, as solemn as
if engaged in a sacred ceremony, acrobats at Knossos are
depicted positively dancing as they sport with a bull hardly less
elegant, slender and nimble-footed than themselves (III. 17).

28

16

Cretan bull-jumping

statuette. Sixteenth

century bc

such wit and refinement in this admittedly restored

one might hesitate to accept it as representative of
Cretan culture - and there is an element of false chic as well as
false history in giving the name 'la Parisienne' to a woman's
profile in another fresco from Knossos. But the vitality, and the
wit too, genuinely are present in the naturalistic ornaments of
the pottery which developed out of vigorous geometrical

There

is

fresco that

designs into the recognizable marine creatures (III. 1 8) spread so

convincingly over often aptly bulbous surfaces that they seem
writhing within the jar. It was particularly in categories like
pottery,

now

usually termed a

minor

art,

that the

Minoans

displayed their sophistication and their artistic abilities. At its

height, their culture was very prosperous and Crete peaceful.
Everything in their art encourages the idea of a luxury-loving,
ingenious, social people, fond of games rather than hunting,

and particularly keen on dancing. Like an echo of all those

sound the lines where Homer describes the gold and
silver shield of Achilles, wrought with a dancing-place, 'such
as Daedalus made for Ariadne in broad Knossos'.
That is an echo from the already distant, increasingly mythical,
past. Shifting west again, we encounter the earliest culture on
the Greek mainland, in that Mycenaean one which is so closely

interests

'.

/,:^^<^%;^^'i.MpH-ij4*V^lJf,

"S

}}
17 Bull-jumping,
fresco

from

Palace,

the Royal

Knossos

c.

1500 BC

18

Octopus jar from

Palaikastro

1450 BC

c.

1500-

19 Lion Gate,

Mycenae. Fourteenth
century bc

and mysteriously bound up with the Minoan. Wc do not know

whether it was a natural disaster, quite possibly a series of
volcanic eruptions, or a foreign invasion which destroyed not
only Knossos but the whole Cretan culture. And while Crete
continued to decline, Mycenae rose to power in the Mediterranean. Crete itself was colonized and a Mycenaean-Minoan
style grew up, fostered perhaps by Achaean princes who had
settled on the island. On the mainland, a much tougher,
monumental rather than miniaturistic world is evoked by the
most famous rehc, the Lion Gate at Mycenae (III. 19), which is
31

20 Geometric vase
c.

defensive

as

Mycenae and

well

as

summarily,

750 BC

heraldically,

decorative.

the other chief Aegean city of the period, Tiryns,

were really fortified citadels, surrounded by massive walls

which to the Greeks of later, classical times seemed to have been
built by giants.
It might well seem to them that the Mycenaean Empire had
been the creation of a mythical race, giants or heroes, because it
too fell and its cities became ruins. The Greeks themselves did
not have any clear idea of what had happened or who exactly

were

the invaders

who

disturbed the whole ot the pre-classical

Mediterranean world. There were invasions and counterinvasions; the Trojan War was fought, and Troy fell to the
mixed bands of Achaeans, Dorians, Argives. The collapse ot old
32

was not immediately followed by the creation of new. It

almost suitable that there should be a pause, a period of
confused darkness, out of which gradually came some simply
patterned vases whose austere ornament is called Protogeometric, and which are the first signs of a quite fresh centre of
artistic activity, Athens.
Greek art begins with these. They, and especially the largescale partly Geometric vases (III. 20) which follow them, can be
seen to embody to a surprising degree the principles of an art
and a civilization which was more than just harmonious or
classically balanced. If lack of evidence prevents us getting a

cities
is

21 Achilles slaying the

Amazon queen

amphora by Exekias

540 bc

c.

Penthesilea at Troy,

on an

complete idea of the Minoan and Mycenaean cultures (scarcely

having any existence in history before the archaeological
explorations of the nineteenth century), it is through the mist of
a two-thousand-year-old reputation that we gaze at Greece and mist can be as much of a nuisance as missing evidence. With
Athens we encounter the first city that has remained a city,
dominated still by the Parthenon on the Acropolis (or upper
city), but which has become also a symbol in European
consciousness. It is almost easier to talk about our debt to Greece
than about Greece itself.

The decoration on

the large mixing-bowl (III. 20), placed for

on an Athenian grave about 750 b c, is a useful reminder
that Greek art was a beginning all over again. It did not evolve
directly from Mcsopotamian or Egyptian, though it was to
libation

22 Aiitiope and Theseus

from the Temple of

Apollo

at Eretria

c.

510

Bc;

23 Zeus and Ganymede,

modelled by a
Peloponncsian artist, from
Olympia c. 480 bc:
terracotta

\
JH.-'tSSSSMMaaMMiyHilik

art for its own ultimately very diflTcrent

purposes. Partly perhaps as a result of performing its own
evolution, impetus earried it in sculpture and architecture far
beyond anything dreamt of by the Egyptians - not in terms of
engineering but of sheer art. To some extent, the Greeks began

borrow from Egyptian

with nothing. They had not got a rich fertile land, but one
stony and rugged. There is some aptness in the fact that the
Acropolis is not even now a grassy hill but a hard slippery sea
of stone, like a mixture of volcanic lava and marble. Greek daily
life was fairly rugged too, at least austere; nor was death
accompanied by the luxury objects which accompanied any
Egyptian who could afford them. The somewhat drone-like
palace existence suggested by Knossos was equally alien to the
Greeks,

as

was the Minoan interest in small-scale objcts d'art.

Greeks had imagination. It is more usual to lay

Instead, the
stress

on

their intellect

(which

is

perhaps only the imagination

active in a purely mental sphere) but even Socrates survives for

works of art. We have

assume that his death actually happened as Plato
describes the scene; were that so, still Plato is its artistic creator,
as Thucydides is the creator of the Pericles who makes his
famous speech to the Athenians. Plato and Thucydides confirm
something that already finds expression, however crudely, on
the eighth-century mixing-bowl a concern with human action
and narrative. Greek pottery was not long to be content with
either geometric patterns or lifelike animals as decoration; it
was to develop a subtle accomplished language for painted
scenes on vases (III. 21), vivid as scenes from Greek plays
and, like them, ranging from high tragedy to low, clowning
us largely thanks to a series of literary

come almost

to

comedy.
As Greek sculpture evolved, it too was animated by concepts
of humanity and action, quickly resulting in something much
more lively than any culture had previously created. Apart from
vase-painting, not much Greek painting survives. In architecture some great buildings were produced, but the style was
condemned to a basic lack of variety and inability to design
beyond the needs of the temple and the open-air theatre. It was
in sculpture that the

dom,

first in

one not

Greeks found the

the belief that

man

is

what

fullest

imaginative free-

matters. Their

myth was

about gods or goddesses in the sense of beings

different from men (for they are quarrelling in sculpture often
enough, as they quarrel in the Iliad) but about how marvellous
it is to be men. The statues are confident, not doubting, serene
36

really

even when struggling, bodies in which physical well-being has

itself become a religion. For all the brilliant mental qualities
exemplified in their literature, the Greeks sculpted figures that
seem almost shockingly brainless and incapable of thought.
Today, after experiencing so many dusty white plaster casts
in museums, and so much talk of idealization and classicism, it is
easy to think of Greek sculpture as always colourless in surface
and frozen in attitude, Olympian in the sense of superior
aloofness. Yet in many ways it was warmer and more essentially
human than any sculpture before or since. Its gods - and much
Greek sculpture was concerned with them - were entirely
human figures, expressing divinity not by bizarre costume, still
less by animal attributes, but by their physical power, beauty
and, often, nudity which displayed this divinity to advantage.
Sculpture was often literally colourful. Instead of those chalky
masses with blank eyes which words like 'classical sculpture'
evoke, we encounter the non-Olympian (though from
Olympia) group Zeus and Ganymede (III. 2^), probably once a
temple pediment, inevitably damaged but still retaining a good
deal of its original colour. When this was executed, around
480 BC, Greek sculpture had fully emerged from its primitive,
Egyptian-style beginnings. After some tentative movement,
a mere shift in statuesque pose of a single body, a slight turn to
the head, it had gone on to tackle the problem of several
figures, often engaged in violent actions like fights and rapes
indeed, that by Zeus of Ganymede). But archaic convenstill kept it from complete naturalism, and within their
restriction marble could be carved to achieve the beauty and
inner calm of another, more graceful-seeming rape - that of
(like,

tions

Antiope by Theseus (III.

the Zeui and Ganymede.

22), executed

some

thirty years before

The Antiope and Theseus is also a portion of sculpture from a

temple pediment, and the delicacy of its carving must have been
less easy to appreciate in its original position high up in the air.
Yet that location helps to emphasize the public quality of most
Greek sculpture - indeed, most Greek art - and a good deal
of Greek life. It is directed less towards individuals than to the
community of citizens. The focal point of it all becomes not the
palace or the tomb, but the city. Where Egyptian art seems
hermetic, with its splendours largely hidden from profane eyes,
Greek art is open or open-seeming, suggesting communal
participation, in the temple or at the theatre. In some ways the
sculptured pediments are comparable to Greek plays, which
37

were

also publicly acted-out religious ritual in origin.

from the

Like

of archaic
tragedy with a single actor to the flexible naturahsm of
Euripides' tragi-comedies. The final manifestations of Greek
sculpture, these plays evolved

sculpture in the

last

two

centuries

bc

stiffness

are frankly theatrical in

dramatic effects. If the Laocoon group is the most famous

example, other groups better reveal the extremes of human
agony and pathos which were to be sculpted in fully realistic
terms. The Gaul killing himself and his wife (III. 27) represents
supreme virtuosity in the pursuit of emotional and physical
realism in stone: a complete drama in itself, at once heroic and
human, it was probably to exercise influence over Bernini in the
seventeenth century.
The language of groups hke the Zens and Ganymede seems
somewhat homely; certainly it is not heroic. Zeus strides along
with rustic vigour - like a farmer carrying home his son, rather
than a god suddenly infatuated with a mortal. The Antiope
group is perhaps harder to judge, being so fragmentary; but its
their

restrained air

is

quite deliberate,

made

beautiful pleats of Antiope's short tunic

24

patent in those few

musical and almost

Temple of Hera, Paestum. Mid-sixth century

MM '(!,

25

The Parthenon, Athens 447-433 bc

trill-like effect against

the barely articulated corselet.

Its

poised

between extremes of stiffness and

complete naturalism, are typical of a stage of artistic evolution
which was not to be prolonged. The Greek political world too
was changing, sharpening into new awareness under the
constant challenge of invasion by the barbarian Persians. It
grace, and graceful balance

cannot quite be claimed as a national consciousness, because even

at times of greatest common danger individual city-states
remained jealously unhelpful to each other, but it culminated in
the transformation of Athens from a city into the centre of
an empire - its dominant position visually expressed in the
splendour of its temples and their sculpture.
The earliest Greek architecture has much of the restraint of
archaic sculpture, but with greater massivencss. Temples were
built in the early Doric style, surviving most impressively in the
temple of Hera at Paestum (III. 24), elemental and even
elementary beside the refmed Doric of the Parthenon (III. 23)
a century later. The Paestum site is a reminder that Greek art
39

26 Apollo from the

west pediment,

Olympia

c.

460 BC

spread with Greek colonies; and the temples themselves there

have become almost natural shrines, on flat ground, between
the sea and the mountains, thrusting up their powerful columns
amid thick grass and wild oleanders. Standing within the
precincts, we can appreciate all the better the giant bones of the
plan - bones which have not whitened, only grown more deeply
honey-coloured under exposure to the sun - still satisfyingly
harmonious in its simplicity. There is more than massivencss in
this architecture. Each sturdy column, springing without
individual base to a plain cushion-hke capital, has a fluted,
tapered shaft that introduces delicacy and relief into the monumental general effect. These columns arc strong blocks of
masonry, but beautifully spaced so that they and the intervals
between them are the building, which, though roofless and
without sculpture, remain not just a picturesque ruin but fully
architecture.

From another huge Doric

comes the
40

clay

temple, that of Zeus

group Zeus and Gatiymcde

(III.

at

Olympia,

2j). Before the

Parthenon this was the largest temple on the Greek mainland,

and one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. At Olympia
the rudiments of Greek architecture could once be seen, for the
temple of Hera there was built with wooden columns, only
gradually replaced by stone ones as they decayed; some wooden
columns were still standing when the traveller Pausanias visited
the temple in the second century ad. Olympia was one of the
two great religious sanctuaries of Greece, the other being Delphi.
Although the seat of worship of Apollo was Delphi, it was at
Olympia that Apollo triumphed at the centre of one of the pediments (III. 26). This figure, majestic without effort, relaxed amid
a battle of drunken Centaurs and struggling Lapiths, marks the
fmal achievement of Greek sculpture betore the lull 'classical'
naturalism of the Parthenon sculpture. This Apollo recalls a
pillar, for all the articulation of his muscles; his Hps are shghtly
parted to suggest breathing, but the planes of his face are
stylized, not realistic. The few folds of drapery over his arm are
as formal as the fluting on a column. He is still a Dorian figure,
vigorously vertical, in

embodies

movement

rappel a I'ordre, a

but not

in violent action.

triumph of reason over

He

irrationality,

27

Giiiil killiiii^

<.eli

and

/;/'.<

C~)rigina]

him-

wife.

bronze ot

third ccnturv lu:

and the defeat of brute instinct by intellect and courage qualities of the Greek mind which we like to think most typical.
Apollo here has apparently been purged of his mysterious
Asiatic origin; before the clarity and command of this figure, it
is easy also to forget the Apolline oracle at Delphi, with its
prophetic hysteria and cloudy prophecies.
Apollo's monumental calm at Olympia is the product of art.
The statue dates from around 460 BC, by which time dramatic
political events had shaken the Greek world, all its scattered
city-states threatened by invasion from the great kings of Persia,
first Darius and then his son Xerxes. The defeat of the Persians
at Marathon in 490 was a moral as well as military victory for
Athens, one consolidated ten years later when the Athenians,
having evacuated the city, won the naval battle of Salamis. But
Athens itself had been virtually destroyed by the Persians; the
sacred edifices of the Acropolis were levelled to the ground,
statues were overthrown and buried, and the remnant of the
garrison slain in the temple of Pallas Athene before the building
too perished. Rebuilding of the city olTcred an opportunity to
express new pride in it as the heart of an empire. The removal
from Delos to Athens of the treasury of those Greek states who
had united against Persia is a symbol of the new concentration
on this city - and it is rather typical of Athenian ways that money
from the treasury was soon financing private Athenian concerns,
including the

new

buildings

on

the Acropolis. This diversion,

of the city, was due to

and Pcriclean Athens has become a by-word for an

like the initiative in the reconstruction

Pericles;
ideal

of civilization.

The

reality was full of disconcerting events, not least the

imprisonment and death in prison of the great sculptor Phidias
who was judged guilty of impiety when a charge of defrauding
the state could not be upheld. The achievements of Phidias can
scarcely be judged by us, but he represents the emergence ot the
individual, named artist on to the Western scene - taking his
place in history with rulers and generals and writers on the
strength of his achievements in the visual arts. And though the
sculpture of the Parthenon can hardly all be his in execution,
it was probably planned by him under his friend, Pericles. What
was built on the Acropolis in the middle years of the fifth
century b (; did not differ in kind from earlier Greek monuments.
It was simply a more intense idea of corporate homage to the
gods which set up there temples and public buildings at once
beautiful, functional and didactic. There were to be no triumphal

42

arches to Pericles, no statues of actual great men, or palaces to

a ruling class. What was honoured was an idea: of
democracy or patriotism or virtue. It was art to impress the
stranger and encourage the citizen. At the heart of the Parthenon

house

was the barbaric splendour of Phidias' huge gold and ivory

of Pallas Athene - an idol which might have served to be
worshipped in Assyria or Egypt. But the long frieze which ran
round the inside of the outer colonnade (III. 28), showing a
procession of ordinary people coming to honour the goddess,
represents the quintessence ot Greek art.

statue

It

takes an actual, secular event, the Panathenaic four-yearly

this in terms of recognizable humanity,

calmly riding or walking, masters of themselves and their
animals, yet scarcely individuals. Nothing could be less like
portraiture; these are types of young man, older citizen, or girl.
Part of the sculptor's skill has gone into rigorous control of
reality and casual appearances. These people are elevated into
an unlocaUzed, timeless sphere. Perhaps they are a little too

ceremony, and depicts

28 Waterbearers
century B c

from the Parthenon north

frieze.

Mid

fitth

r-1

43

little too bland. The consciously graceful folds of

drapery have become almost too insistent and fussy in
the group of goddesses (III. zg) from the east pediment. It is

balanced, a
their

from the sculpture

usual to call this a 'progress'

at

Olympia,

although the aesthetic reasons for that judgment seem unclear,

and in terms of evolution it might suggest rather a decline.
Marble here certainly wonderfully suggests the thinnest of
creased and ruffled drapery, clinging to breasts and limbs; in
terms of imitation it has gone further than any art we have
previously encountered. Yet the idea of divinity is already here
perhaps rather commonplace; the moving magic of the
imagination which had made Apollo so truly a god (III. 26)
seems in this group to have grown less bold. To some extent, it
is this Phidian classical style that is the transitional one: it has
modified archaic vigour by a good dose of harmonious
naturalism.

Something of the same modification

ot sterner styles of

seen in the variety of buildings put up during the

fifth century on the Acropolis, and in the mingling of Doric
with Ionic columns in the entrance portico there, the Propylaea.
architecture

is

Damaged and restored though

is, the Propylaea still conveys

was like to climb up and enter
the Acropolis. And here the fac^ades of outer columns in Doric
style gave way in the central passage to more slender Ionic

convincing sensation of what

this
it

with their convoluted, more expressive capitals (///. 30).

like the Erectheum, were built in this comparatively new style which introduced a fresh rhythm into
Greek architecture, particularly necessary since the units of
pillars

Other buildings,

29
C.

Group of

435 BC

three goddesses

from the Parthenon

east

pediment

"4^

^'

.'fclfe'

i.-^

^^
30

The Propylaea, Athens 437-432 bc

pillar and pediment remained constant. Against the austerity

and regularity of the near-by Parthenon, the Erectheum stands
out all the more because of its asymmetry, its highly decorated
capitals with patterned bands, and its famous Caryajtid porch
where the archaic derivation of figures from columns is finally
reversed by having columns turn into women - strong but
effortless supporters of the roof (III. ji).
They serve, accidentally, to forecast the inevitable shift of
Greek art towards more patently human themes. The caryatids
of the Erectheum are fully-clad maidens who have the severity
of priestesses; but as a novel subject to display its virtuosity
sculpture was soon to strip off the garments and - after centuries
of the male nude - reveal the female nude. The most famous
statue of this kind was the Venus of Cnidus by Pra.xiteles, who
worked as a sculptor in the fourth century and who was
inspired not by the goddess but by his mistress.

45

Caryatid Porch of the Erccthcum, Athens 421-405 bc

31

Praxiteles

To

is

perhaps the

first

mannerist

this extent, his style represents a

artist in

Western

phenomenon which

art.

later

occurs again at other periods when a convention of elevated

naturalism has been fully grasped, and art then sets out to
become more patently artful. The high polish on Praxiteles'

marble

flesh, his

use of painters to tint his sculpture, the elabora-

tion of surface detail

(a

whole simulated tree-trunk with

climbing Hzard in his Apollo

pitcher in the Cnidian Venus)

The Hermes

Saiiroctoiiiis; a
all

point to

patterned water-

new

sophistication.

and 'classical' in its mutilated

state, that we easily forget what must have been the origmal
effect of the god's graceful upraised right arm - a pose o'i
asymmetrical elegance and deliberate virtuosity. The idea o'i a
statue carved out of a single block of stone is immediately
destroyed by this extension into the air above the head, in a
gesture that suggests new freedom. The statue stirs and stretches
into a further dimension, not with strained effort but with a
lazy, teasing mastery which is more impressive. The subject oi
Hermes with the intant Dionysus - one comparatively novel in
46

(III.

32)

is

so familiar

2 PRAXITELES

Hermes with
the Infant

Dionysus
C.

340

BC

introducing sheer charm and cliildhood appeal into large-scale

Greek sculpture - did not of itself require Praxiteles' virtuoso
design. This is, as it were, an additional conceit by the sculptor
who carries off with fluent ease a difl^icult task, presenting us
with an unexpected, highly accomplished treatment of such a

theme.

and make such art as this symptomatic of

severe and bracing than earlier work.
Art will not obey public school rules, though they have continued naively to be applied; one writer of a history of Greece
has expressed doubt whether Praxiteles' Hermes 'could stay a
long cross-country run'. It may be true that the whole fabric of
Greek civilization was itself beginning to decline during the
lifetime of Praxiteles, but art is not governed by national and
It is

wrong

to try

decline because

political laws.

it is

less

society at a particular nadir

may

well witness

an exotic peak of flourishing art. The last centuries of the preChristian world experienced a collapse of the city-state and its
replacement by gigantic empire concepts - most splendidly
displayed by Alexander the Great's ambitions, but most
permanently achieved by the Roman Empire. The result was
a new level of civilization, richer and more sophisticated than
anything produced before, in which almost every object of use
could be one of beauty and rarity too. Not even in the Renaissance would art find itself so fully and consistently required as
in these years of Hellenistic activity, when Greece included

Minor.
There was an internationalism in the arts which suited the
internationalism of Alexander, as he conquered Egypt, entered
Babylon, overthrew the Persian Empire and adopted Persian
dress and customs. Art had come a long way from its magical
large parts of Asia

It possessed nearly perfect technical accomplishment, able to serve with new expression the old requirements
of tomb or palace, and able also to create the exquisitely
wrought, miniature object which is to serve only art's sake. The
new cities were not completely Greek ones, but those like
Antioch, Pergamum and Alexandria, Alexander's own foundation, where Asiastic influences mingled with Greek. In the

beginnings.

Pergamum altar (III. jj) the architecture virtually is

the sculpture, with figures writhing and sprawling in forceful
poses which threaten to pull them out ot' the frieze, in a new
type of almost theatrical assault on the spectator. Obviously,

colossal

if

moderation and balance are one's standards for art, this will
art; in place of Praxiteles' mannered fluidity, it oflers

not seem
48

ii

The Pergamum

altar,

north wing of Great Altar ot Zeus

80 B c
c.
1

^<<Y-y*

Baroque vigour and extreme emotional involvement. Not

it seem to recall the group of the Gaul killing

accidentally does

himself and his wife

(III.

27), for that too, in the original bronze,

(died

was Pergamene work, commissioned by King Attains

197 Bc;), whose successor erectcci the altar at Fcrgamum.
1

Desire for

new

expressiveness

made popular

the third archi-

though accidentally
named as the richest, since the city of Corinth was famous for
its luxury. Literally more florid possibilities were introduced
by use of this capital, with its springing, carved acanthus
leaves curling around an inverted bell shape, which was particularly to be used by the Romans. It represents a more
tectural order, the Corinthian, suitably

opulently decorative style, reaching its popular peak not in

Greece but at Rome, with architecture that no longer needed
the pillar as an essential unit. Opulence and a patent richness ot
material appear in many of the artifacts produced by the minor
arts - cameos, gems, coins and blown glass - all evoking a much
more frankly colourful and luxury-loving world than that ot
fifth-century Athens. Yet it still continues the Mediterranean
tradition of artistic concentration on the human body. Although
clay figures had been made earlier, it was in a new mood of
charming genre that there appear the elegant figurines (III. ^4)
associated with Tanagra. In one way they are a gossipy, plebeianseeming art compared with the heroic statue, but even that was
to be scaled down, becoming half-table-ornament, half-toy, in
bronze statuettes which often had the additional refinement of
eyes inlaid in silver or enamel, with lips and nipples of copper
(III.

35).

Alexander the Great's own patronage points to concepts very

different from those of Pericles with his public concern but
private withdrawal and unostentation. Not even Alexander
has managed to come down to posterity with the effortless
ability of King Mausolus whose widow built the Mausoleum
at Halicarnassus which has become a synonym tor an imposing
tomb. It is the living Alexander who was to be so well reflected
in the busts of Lysippus, the sculptor most prized by Alexander
for combining observation of the set of his head with expression
of his determined character. The Tanagra figurines are one
testimony to an interest in how people look and what clothes
they wear. Lifelike portrait busts, with emphasis on the character of the face, begin to be popular in the Hellenistic period:
significantly, it was in this category of the not too wildly
imaginative, that Roman sculptors were to make their finest
50

3 5

Statuette ot a god,
probably Poseidon.
Second centurv BC

34 Tanagra figurine,

woman
sun-liat.
15

with a tan and

Third century

36 Alexander mosaic, from an original Greek painting of c. 330 Bc.

Before A D 79

While at times Alexander appeared as a god, or

companion of gods, at others it was as ordinary man that
he was depicted. Little Greek painting of any period survives,
but an echo of pictorial style at Alexander's Court is apparent
in a Roman mosaic copy, the 'Alexander mosaic', showing his
victory over the Persians at the Battle of Issus in 333 bc (III.
j6). There is nothing conventionally 'classical' about this

contribution.
the

pantingly vivid characterization includes not only

his highly-spirited horse, as wild-eyed and
nervously resolute as its rider. Alexander is shown not naked,
nor in timeless cloak and stylized breastplate, but in highly
particularized armour - recorded down to the laces which
partly hold it in place, and the knotted belt. Against that detail,
the King's bare head is all the more effective: an individualized
portrait which is convincingly human, heroic and yet unidcalscene.

Its

Alexander but

ized.

That

this

indication of the

52

mosaic comes from Pompeii is one small

permanent debt of Roman art to Greece.

It is too sweeping to say that the Romans did not have

imagination. But unUke their written and spoken language,
their artistic language was not completely their own. Physically, they had conquered Greece; artistically, it had conquered
them. Guilt perhaps mingled with their admiration, while a
certain pride in their superior practical achievement made them
able to enjoy the quiet of Athens after the noisy bustle of Rome.

Greek artifacts had for long been imported into Italy and
were much prized, as well as imitated, by the Etruscans - those
people more famous than they quite deserve to be. Perhaps
there is something which still seems intriguing and mysterious
about them, partly because they became a 'lost' race, absorbed
by the power of Rome. There remains something very
shadowy altogether in the reconstruction of their civilization -

much the same way that Minoan Crete is still shadowy; and
what has been conjectured is not always convincing. The
Etruscan emphasis on the tomb as a sort of house returns us to

in

37

The ambush of

the

Tomba

the Trojan prince Troilus, wall-painting troni

dei Tori at Tarquinia

c.

530 BC

Egyptian concepts, and the whole idea of their decorated tomb

interiors

(111.

jy)

is

in opposition to the Greeks'. Just as there

something niggling about

a rather straggling,

their goldsmiths'

work, so there

is
is

slack style to these painted decorations.

They do not seem

to have settled for a single completely

At times, the wriggling, linear beasts and
stunted trees could almost be mistaken for Anglo-Saxon work,
which is perhaps only to say that an endemic Eastern fondness
for calligraphic pattern lies behind them both.
Because they had no marble tor sculpture, the Etruscans
evolved - especially from clay - their most impressive contribution in vivid statues which are quite unlike anything produced elsewhere. Clay sculpture was used on sarcophagi, as
well as on temples, and in both cases with striking narrative
effect; the man and woman from a sarcophagus lid ot about
520 BC (III. j8) might be reclining at a banquet, with their
lively expressions and busy, gesticulating hands. Other comparable clay pairs of men and women show the same relaxed
air of intimacy, and even more individualized portraiture.
What is additionally remarkable about these groups is the
place accorded to women - again very different from Greek
social ideas, and anticipatory of Roman standards. Etruscan

realized convention.

concern both with painted wall decoration (albeit for tombs)

and with portrait sculpture links its art strongly with Rome.
And though Roman sculpture was largely content to copy and
pastiche Greek work, usually with heavy, uninspired results,

Roman

portrait busts speak their

own

novel idiom. Swelling

Empire evolved, they could be sometimes

forceful, imperial, hewn from multicoloured marble, at other
times surprisingly delicate - and always intensely realistic.
It is realism, in another sense, that was the animating principle behind the Romans' most considerable artistic achievement: their architecture. 'And pompous buildings once were
things of use', is Pope's crisp summing up of that essentially
practical urge which laid out the Roman public places, the fora,
to greater size as the

designed the great arches of aqueducts that still stand, made use
of concrete for building purposes, and roofed in large structures with vaults and domes. The result is a triumph of the city not in the rather showplace sense of Periclean Athens, where
the outstanding buildings were sacred edifices up on the Acropolis, but as a utilitarian environment for citizens. It is their
needs, rather than those of the gods, that are catered for by
amphitheatres, public baths, basilicas (law courts) and libraries.
54

Etruscan

38

tomb

sculpture, terracotta figures of

man and woman

C.

S20

BC

is physical and material in comparison with Greek intellect

sometimes grossly material, imposing rather than beautiful
- but it is profound recognition of what people want, even
down to its comparative indifference to canons of beauty.
The transformation of Rome itself began under Julius
All

Caesar,

in

typically

practical

project to

employ

surplus

well as improve the city. The activity was still going

on in the fourth century a d when the Basilica of Maxentius
(III.' jg) was completed by Constantine. Even in ruins, it
reveals not only a vast scale but its quite un-Greck sense of
volume and space, hi place of the pillar and flat root, it is constructed in terms of wall and arch - the wall pierced with

labour

as

windows and
is

the arches coffered.

Whereas the Greek temple

to be appreciated essentially as an exterior, buildings like the

Basilica

of Maxentius are planned not merely to accommodate

to be appreciated from within. They are

spacious- in a way that no Greek building had aimed to be. The
Basilica of Maxentius, completed by an emperor who had been
converted to Christianity, may seem in some ways more
a

crowd of people but

55

filter

'A.-^'>

39 Basilica of Maxentius, Rome, begun by Maxentius and hnishcd

by Constantine. Completed soon after ad 313

Romanesque than Roman. In fact, its solution to the problem

of roofing a large space by a series of vaults is a basic solution of
Western architecture.
But the Basilica is also fully in the tradition of the Empire,
Itself to be dated from the assumption of the title Augustus by
Octavian in 27 bc and which was technically to live on in the
West until Romulus Augustulus, the last - ironically named Emperor, was deposed in ad 476. It was perhaps from Asia
Minor that the Romans had learnt the principles ot arch and
vault, hi terms of strict invention they possibly invented
nothing, but they dug determinedly into space and contained
volume. Their architecture is physically experienced by the
spectator who becomes involved with his relationship to the
arch, triumphal or 'otherwise, under which he passes, and the
vault that soars over him. Where, for example, the Greek
theatre began as a natural depression, using a hillside for the

half-circle

56

of tiered

seats,

the

Romans

built

up the complete

is3H'iW!e3-v

4P

<

IV

40 Colosseum, Rome, begun by Vespasian, finished

by Titus

on open ground, rising in row upon row

of arches, to reach the monumental grandeur of the Colosseum.

ring of amphitheatre

Pierced outside by arches, it was also circumscribed at each

by corridor tunnels (III. 40). While standing almost aggressively huge and high, it was also planned to accommodate
hundreds of spectators, facilitating their passage to the different
levels of the seats through the network of corridors which were
reached from no less than eighty entrance archways. What it
accommodated spectators for is equally typical of the Romans as
opposed to the Greeks; it is hard to connect the word civilization with people who inaugurated their amphitheatre with the
level

slaughter of five thousand animals in a single day - a mere

beginning to their barbaric use of the Colosseum.
Yet these people achieved more than feats of engineering, or
cruelty. That concern of theirs with architecture which is a
containing of space within an interior created the Pantheon,
typically Roman in its great porch of free-standing Corinthian

57

ad

80

-^

'*''

41

The Pantheon, Rome,

AD

125 and 12S

started AV) inS/iiy, consecrated

between

42 Mosaic pavement with head of Medusa.

First

century

ad

columns, and more typical in its perfect domed interior

(III. 41). This remains today still luminous, uncluttered and
serene. It seeins to symbolize an absolute, ordered cosmos in
which space does not frighten man but siuTOunds him, without
diminishing his stature. In a dramatically simple way light is
introduced into the interior, and at the same time concentrated,
by the single, circular opening at the centre of the beautifully
coffered dome. As either temple or church the Pantheon is
without vagueness or mystery. Completely coherent and
harmoniously planned, it expresses the almost magic power of
the circle - here become perceivable, solid, architectural torm is a shape continually haunting mankind. The concept
of the Pantheon, so irrelevant to Gothic thought, returns with
new relevance in the Renaissance obsession with centrally
planned churches and in the Baroque triumph ot the dome.
Some Roman mosaics play with space in eye-deceiving ways
which give almost the illusion of looking up into a dome - or
down into a whirlpool (III. 42). The flat walls of Roman

which

59

villas constantly dissolve in decorative schemes, whether

executed in paint or mosaic, which enliven the surface with
swags of fruit or arabesques, and once even simulate a complete
orchard, as in the frescoes from the villa of Livia, the wife of
Augustus (///. 4j). The mosaic pavement illustrated takes the
eye on a more dazzling optical journey, achieved by the careful
pure geometrical pattern of diminishing black
arrangement
and white cubes - now seeming to radiate outwards from the
central opening with the Medusa head, and now apparently
drawing one rapidly into its vortex with the effect of a whirling
disc. Spinning discs by Duchamp, and the further modern
developments of Optical artists, are already anticipated by this
ingenious challenge to the eye.

43 Fresco

60

from the

Villa

of

Livia,

Rome.

Late

first

century

bc

44 Head of a Young
Girl, probably
Minatia Polla

people of Roman portrait busts were not

deceived about reality. In those busts aesthetics
again seem to matter less than psychology and truth to physical
appearance; and the result is an extraordinary gallery of many
quite brutal, decadent and sinister faces which seem only too
famiUar as the people described in the pages of Tacitus or
Suetonius. When idealized and heroicized, they are both less

The

solid, actual

very likely to

feel

and less convincing. More fascinating, and sometimes equally frightening, are the female portrait busts where
elaborate hair-dressing gives regal effect even to women who
did not rule. But their variety cannot easily be summed up. The
Head of a Young Girl (III. 44), whose coiffure suggests the
period of Tiberius and Clauduis, has an impressive candour
and simplicity which seem not idealization but fact. She lives
as a convincing yet quite ordinary human being, girl not
interesting

goddess, recognizably
her name.

person although

we

cannot be sure of

61

45 Head

oj a

Man cad

450

The emphasis on

personality and the calm, proto-Victorian

of much Roman portraiture were to change - as so much
changed - with the collapse of the antique world and the challenge of the new Christian religion. It is from a strange climate,

air

half-pagan

still

but

at a

date well after the official establishment

of Christianity, that one of the very last Roman portrait busts

comes (III. 45). This man with huge, haunting eyes - eyes no
longer naturalistic but windows of the soul - might stand as
saint on some cathedral fa(;ade. Already he looks towards the
future.

62

CHAPTER TWO

The Impact

of Christianity

The

challenge which Christianity deliberately offered to the

antique pagan world might seem to reverse nearly all that
world's established artistic ideals and return art teinporarily to
the cave. It was there that Christianity had been born, there its
adherents took shelter (adorning the Catacombs with pictorial
religious symbols) and there, rather than in palaces or trmmphal
arches, its victorious humility might best be exemplified. Its
attractive through his sufferings and meekness; a
paradox is enshrined in the god who may be represented by a lamb. The fmal achievement of antiquity had been
the creation, in the East as well as in the West, of great cities.
Christianity's early achievements were rather in the number of
its churches and monasteries. Even the most famous Christian
creation - Constantine's foundation of the capital called after
him Constantinople - was in fact a re-foundation of ancient
Byzantmm, once protected not by the Virgin Mary but by
Hecate. A Christian was the citizen of a kingdom not of this
world. Whatever splendour was created by art, he believed that
there is here no abiding city. Even the sacking of Rome in a u
410 by Alaric, which might appear an appalling blow to
civilization, was seen by St Augustine in a different perspective.
Man's city is nothing compared with the universal, nonmaterial city, that City of God which is the subject of Dc
Ciuitate Dei, a book which we shall later hear of as delighting
Charlemagne.
While it is true that the new religion everywhere brought a
dramatic revolution which gradually changed every aspect ot
life as well as art, its emphasis on the transcendental was not
new. Late pagan antiquity had already undergone the crises
which fostered mystery religions, like Christianity coming
from the East, concerned like it with the immortality of the
soul, and worshipping sometimes in temples which (to judge
from that of Mithras excavated in London) were close in form

deity

was

deliberate

to the Christian basilica. Perhaps

we

shall

never

know

exactly

63

how much

and Christian art were indebted to such

popular enough to have a temple
erected to it at Rome by the Emperor Marcus Aurelius.
Yet, though Christianity had not originally had any monopoly of the spiritual, its triumph put on it the onus of breaking
an old Mediterranean tradition. In the early Renaissance, men
like the sculptor Ghiberti were to look back on the victorious
establishment of Christianity as a period when the noble arts
of antic]uity were destroyed. Events were actually a good deal
more subtle - so subtle in fact that they still remain rather
baffling. It is not just that pagan ideals lived on even after
Constantine had officially established Christianity as the
religion ot the Roman Empire. Many antique pagan motifs lent
themselves to Christian adaptation; and Christ would appear
not only as a shepherd but as a Roman centurion. Yet the whole
ethos was slowly changing, and art changed with it. Concentration on the affairs of the soul meant a dwindling of interest
in the body: once solidly realized, physically studied for its own
sake, it is no longer a proper subject in early Christian art. There
no longer seemed space for it - and this was almost literally
true. Against eternity everything shrank and grew cramped.
The gesture and pose of Anastasius in the ivory diptych (III. ^j)
carved to celebrate his proconsulship in ad 517, are stiff and
restricted. There is here no sense of depth, little sense of proportion, and a preference for decorative symbols (rather too many
of them) to cover every inch of space. Apart from sarcophagi
(III.
46), sculpture as such virtually disappears from art
altogether in these years; small carved ivories remain typical.
Mosaic is first preferred to painting, and painting comes to
mean the illustration of religious texts. Throughout, religious
purposes dominate all other ones. Architecturally speaking,
there are virtually no private hc^uses between late Roman villas
and fitteenth-century Florentine palaces. For centuries the
ordinary person could be forgiven for assuming that art's sole
function was to serve religion.
The most fascinating period of Christian art is nc^t perhaps
its
finest, unimpeded years o^ Romanesque style, but the
earliest one when it was still humble, co-existing with pagan
art in a strange climate of old and new. Two private Roman
citizens, Secundus and Projecta, were married towards the end
ot the fourth century ad, and the silver marriage casket made
for their wedding (III. 48) evokes this world more effectively
than any words. Perhaps it looks rather clumsy against fully
(Christianity

cults as Mithraisni

64

itself

^^,-^1
46 Jonah sarcophagus. Late
third century

47 Diptych of the Consul

Anastasius ad 517
1

ti.M

vy"

h- ell

ffri.
48 Marriage casket of Secundus
and Projecta. End of fourth
century A D

X *^>^-^^

antique

artifacts,

with

its

stumpy

pillars

and

its

rather lumpish

bodies. Nereids, peacocks and sea-monsters cover

it with pagan
imagery, while Venus floats across the lid, shell-borne on a
wavy sea. These scenes exude a last poignant breath of antique
mythology, the visual equivalent of some late Latin love poem,
the Pervii^ilium Veneris perhaps, where wave-borne Venus,

'undantem Dionem', is still a ruling goddess. A different deity

left its mark on this marriage casket, inscribed with a quite
new sentiment: 'Sccundus and Projecta, may you live in
Christ.' Two cultures are blended without conflict. Wisely
preserving Venus - for she stands as a primal force in human
beings - Christianity incorporates her into its scheme, turning
love into charity and then into divine longing. Ultimately, it is
with Christ that Secundus and Projecta must hope to be united.
Such hope was in differing ways to lie behind so much ot the
art produced in the years that followed. Silver marriage caskets
themselves seem to disappear not merely under the pressure of
has

(not surprisingly, though, in an increasingly

monastic climate, and considering some of St Paul's advice to
the Corinthians) but in a Europe which was often swept by
Barbarian invasions and struggling to keep some flicker of
culture alight in a dark, uncertain world. It constantly seemed
that Antichrist's coming was imminent. Piety, rather than art,
might delay him. Cultural chaos and darkness gave in fact a
period of gestation out of which were to come brief renascences
and finally the Renaissance. Five hundred confused years elapse
between the Age of Constantine and that of Charlemagne. It
was the Emperor Constantine who had recognized the Christian
faith and given it official existence. In the shape of Pope Leo III,
that faith recognized Charlemagne and gave him official
existence when he was crowned Emperor at Rome on
Christmas Day 800.
These events have their relevance for the centuries when art
had to cling to whatever culture and literacy there might be.
It could hardly dispense with serving religion - even had it
wished to. At Rome, at Ravenna and at Milan - a particularly
important artistic centre - it was actively working to give visual
expression to Christianity. In the person of St Ambrose at

Christianity

now

able to challenge the Emperor

was the Emperor who yielded.
The collapse of the Roman Empire in the West threw into relief
the Byzantine civilization which centred on Constantinople
and which artistically, legally, theologically, is particularly

Milan

this

himself

66

was

when

a religion

necessary; and

it

associated with the achievements and the faiHngs of Justinian.

The mosaics

Ravenna, especially those of S. Vitale (///. 32),

of this exotic Court art - less hieratic and
monotonous than it is usually said to be. And although the
mosaic portraits there of Justinian and his Empress, with their
retinues, are so famous, they are subordinated in the overall
scheme to the commanding figure of the youthful Christ,
seated on a globe, in the centre of the apse. Even the Western
renascence under Charlemagne was really a religious movement, concerned with Biblical scholarship and proper conduct
of church services, pious and literary rather than consciously
artistic in most of its manifestations. Few or no works ot art can
be shown as having personally belonged to him. He owned
swords, jewelled reliquaries and - perhaps most prized of all - a
at

best reveal the flavour

live

white elephant, presented to him by the Caliph Haroun

al-Raschid.
for civilization, literacy and order.
he stopped travelling and settled at Aix-la-Chapelle, it
was to construct a physical expression of his aims in a complex
of buildings which was significantly called 'nova Roma'. At
last, it might seem, culture had been fully re-established in
Europe with a splendour and a certainty which recalled imperial
Rome. But it remained a culture so deeply tinctured with
Christianity that the two had become virtually the same thing.
Throughout those confused centuries between Constantine and
Charlemagne, the Christian religion had been the real bulwark
of Western civiHzation. Even if, as seems likely, Charlemagne
did not welcome his unexpected coronation by the Pope, he
himself remained deeply religious; and a courtier-cum-biographer tells how much he delighted in the writings of St
Augustine, 'especially that one which is entitled De Cit'itate Dci\
It is merely chance perhaps that of all his buildings at Aix, only
the palace chapel now survives - but this is no bad symbol of
the enduring purpose behind all art in these years. Whether
creating monasteries and churches, carving ivories or illustrating
books, artistic activity is closely connected with propagating a
definite spiritual message. Until the Renaissance this continued
to be its primary concern. 'We pressed the completion of the
.', Abbot Suger wrote in the twelfth century, of his
work
rebuilding at Saint-Denis, 'lest God have just cause to complain

But Charlemagne stood

When

of us.'
earhcst specifically Christian attempt to avoid God's
complaints inevitably concerned the actual place of worship,

The

67

49

S.

Sabina,

Rome

(interior).

Begun 425

50

S. Vitale,

Ravenna

(interior).

Consecrated

547

The nearest antique parallel for such buildings lay

temples than in Roman meeting-halls or basilicas (like
that of Maxentius, ///. jg). Constantine built a huge basilica
of St Peter's at Rome, a wonder of the Western world until it
was demolished and replaced during the Renaissance. Despite
their antique name, such basilicas changed many of the previous
ideas of a place of worship. They are built almost as an allegory
the church.

less in

of the Christian world-view: unadorned brick outside, all

mosaic and marble within, buildings experienced like the soul's
pilgrimage, as the worshipper moved first through an arcaded
courtyard, then into the porch or narthex (where penitents and
the uninitiated catechumens assembled) and finally into the
pillared nave of the church itself, with its pronounced longitudinal rhythm leading the eye and mind to the altar where
during the Mass would be manifested God himself Behind the
68

51

S.

Sophia, Istanbul (interior). Built by Justinian 532-7

curved the apse with its half-dome suggestive of eternity an effect increased by its usual gold mosaic decoration, a
heavenly, space-dissolving shimmer as background to some
scene stressing the merciful divinity of Christ the Saviour.
Secundus and Projecta could still have been alive and able to
worship, perhaps in S. Sabina (III. 49), a typical Roman
altar

begun in 425. Here the apse mosaics are later, but the
dominant effect is the rhythmic progression down
the nave, marked by Corinthian columns, with arcades and
simple clerestory above. Such interiors, even at their most
basilica,

building's

splendid, remain straightforward and uncluttered.

There already existed an altogether alternative construction,

used chiefly for baptisteries, derived from circular Roman
mausoleums, and culminating in the centrally planned church
and the dome. If the basilican church is ancestor ot the Gothic
cathedral, the early Christian baptistery already looks forward
to the Baroque church. What amounts to a combination of the
two plans, resulting in a basilica with a dome, was a design more
popular in the East than the West. However, one outstanding
example, Sancta Sophia at Constantinople (III. 51), is too vast
to be neglected. Better than any other surviving monument, it
symbolizes the grandiose concepts of Justinian and shows him
to have been an Emperor completely in the imperial Roman
tradition. The exterior of the huge church is huddled and
undistinguished - redeemed, indeed, only by the four tall
minarets, a Turkish addition which positively improves its
appearance. The interior is bewildering in its spaciousness,
annihilating the spectator's consciousness in a way not attempted
by the Pantheon. Space seems hardly to be contained at all in
Sancta Sophia, so colossal are its proportions; its ground-plan
is that of a three-aisled church, but one is scarcely aware of this
when standing in the actual building. The mosaics in Sancta
Sophia are remarkably disappointing and apparently all date
from later than Justinian's reign. Whereas no building in his
Western capital of Ravenna can equal the scale and effect of
Sancta Sophia, it is the mosaics at Ravenna which now best
convey not only the jewelled splendour of the Byzantine Court
but a good deal about personalities at his Court.
The centrally planned church of S. Vitale (III. 50) represents
a sophisticated richness

one of the
ian's Western

it is

last

70

takes

on yet brighter

in a rapidly

darkening

lustre since

Italy. Justin-

was more artistically splendid than

His whole huge empire, barely held together

capital

politically stable.

which

beacons

by

battle

during

his lifetime, disintegrated at his death.

last

wave of Barbarian invaders, the Lombards, swept over Italy.

Their coming and their establishment is - in artistic terms - a
sign of the new, powerful, non-Mediterranean tradition which
had its own contribution to make to art. Northern Europe was
about to take the initiative. The revival of Roman tradition and
Roman imperial power took place outside the Mediterranean
altogether, with the cultural and political achievements of
Charlemagne. In more ways than one, he is the heir ofjustinian.
It is fitting that at the 'nova Roma' of Aix-la-Chapelle, his
chapel was itself nothing but a plainer, less colourful, somewhat
cruder version of Justinian's S. Vitale.
S. Vitale was intended as a palace chapel, very much the
Emperor's personal foundation and consecrated by him in 547.
An octagon crowned by a dome, its interior is almost confusing at the point where one enters it today. The first impression is of archways and galleries curving like theatre-boxes
about a central space and billowing outwards to the surrounding ambulatory. Everything seems pierced and worked. Such
flat surfaces as exist appear undulating, covered by veined
marble or the glittering, unquiet texture of mosaic.
Hints of illusionism and the theatre are even more relevant
in looking at the famous mosaic of the Empress Theodora and
her retinue (111. 52). Despite the usual application to it of
adjectives like hieratic, we see - as doubtless the first spectators
saw - a vivid, eye-deceiving assembly of varied human beings,
brought into the church as dramatically as if a curtain had
suddenly been lifted. These people look out with real curiosity
and vitality - one woman, at the extreme right, positively
peering round the corner, anxious not to be squeezed out.
Despite the restriction of mosaic, every effort has been made to
suggest varied physiognomies and indeed different reactions
to the moment of the Empress seeming to advance with her
golden offering, while on the opposite wall the Emperor
advances with his. The background of his mosaic is quite plain;
but the whole setting of the Empress's is illusionistic. At the
right a swag of boldly striped awning suggests a raised curtain
and gives a sense of depth. Around and behind the Empress is
an elegant, decorated niche, once again curving the flat wall
with its shell-like half-dome. More remarkable is the casual
action at the left, where an attendant stretches out to push aside
a curtain at a doorway - thus relating himself to his setting in a
way that was not to be caught by art again for centuries.
71

52 Empress
c.

Theodora and her

suite,

mosaic

at S. Vitale,

Ravenna

540

Far troni being hieratic, timeless images (a cliche idea probably derived from hazy associations of Byzantium and icons),
these figures are

human

scale, that

among the most vivid

we shall encounter, at

beings, in virtually

before
Giotto. It is true that they evoke a Court world - but not an
unreal one - and even a mondaifi atmosphere: no accident, one
might feel, that the Empress had been a witty comedian, as well
least in Italy,

as a prostitute, before she married Justinian. Yet her very

presence on the wall at S. Vitale in splendour equal to his is a
tribute to her personality, symbolizing the importance assigned
to her in government as well as
private life. Not for a long
time afterwards in the Western world is an ordinary woman

(certainly in this case positively

by art.
Such an image would
Northern Europe. There

no virgin and no

saint) to

be so

effectively treated

72

the arts

were altogether on

more

aims were scarcely representational.

Vitale mosaics are in essence courtly art (confirming a

miniature
If the S.

certainly not have been possible in

scale,

and

their

from Alexander up to Ingres' portraits of

Napoleon), there existed already a tradition of monastic art.
Monasticism had spread to the West originally from Egypt as
a form of ill-organized asceticism. It became a power-house as
well as lighthouse in Barbarian-ravaged Europe, consolidated
by the spread of the rule of St Benedict, founder of the great
monastery of Monte Cassino, who died a very few years before
Justinian consecrated S. Vitale. Yet in the North, Barbarian
delight in abstract ornament and pattern influenced the chief
art fostered by monasticism: the writing and illumination of
books. The monasteries of Ireland and Northumbria produced
a whole series of such works in which complete pages were
given to an elaborate fretwork of interwoven patterns. Even
when human figures were represented, it was with conscious
abstraction and a distinct indiflference to the appearance of
objects. A miniature of St John the Evangelist from the Lindisfarne Gospels, probably influenced by Mediterranean example,
might superficially seem in the same convention as the Ravenna
mosaics; but the illuminator cannot help making abstract
patterns of the face, the zigzag folds of drapery and the strange
open-work chair with its cushion that in reality would fall
through if anyone sat on it. The very placing of the writing on
the page denies any sense of depth; like St John's eagle, it is
planned for its linear, decorative effect (III. 5j). Other pages of
these Gospels, executed about 700 on the island of Lindisfarnc,
tradition that extends

all representation. The four lines that here enclose

become elsewhere the frame for an intricate embroidery
whose serpentine knots and ribbons are all woven into the
overall pattern of a cross. However barbaric the style, that is the

retreat

from

St John

significant

symbol.

The triumphant emergence of the monastery as such is

nowhere better expressed than in the 'ideal' plan for the buildings at Saint Gall (III. 33) - a project drawn up about 820
within the Carolingian circle, though by then Charlemagne
himself was dead. It is remarkable for its careful planning and
elaborate complex of structures which range from lavatories
to a special enclosure for geese; but its core is the twin-towered
church. Everything is provided for: prayer, work, illness, food,

and

visitors,

more than

who have

their

own accommodation. The

result

plan for a monastery; it is a cosmic blueprint tor

the conduct of Christian life. It symbolizes too 'the feudal
medieval world, where each object or person has an appointed
place in the hierarchy. Its scale and extent well suggest the

is

73

53

St John, Lindistlirnc Ciospcls

c.

700

54 St Matthcii', manuscript illustration off. Soo

!5545^.?5?3L;j;^^gi?^

palatial air

of

a great

monastery. The abbot of such

com-

munity must inevitably become a prince, an administrator and

a powerful landlord. Such dominance was to be assumed by the
famous abbey of Cluny, and is expressed in the spread throughout Europe of the Cluniac Order. Artistically, the greatest
achievement of monasticism was its fostering of the Romanesque style - the first and perhaps the last truly international
architectural style. Against the heaven-scaling bravura of high
Gothic, the style of Romanesque architecture-cum-sculpture
may look rather heavily carthbound - a sort of Christian Doric
- but the steps it took were solid through a sense of confidence
and cohesion which was excitingly novel in Europe.

Something of that

already hinted at least in Charlemagne's

art - never to become quite a single
style - centred on his Court was more monastic than secular.

intentions.

The

basis

is

of the

55 'Ideal' plan for St Gall

c.

820 (redrawn)

There seems to have been no urge

ones, of the

Emperor

for portraits, not even votive

in his Hfetime,

and thus nothing

to equal

Theodora at S. Vitalc. It was

from the monastery at York that Charlemagne brought the
scholar Alcuin ('your Virgil', he called himself, but he was a
tonsured Virgil who died virtually an abbot). A place is found
on the 'ideal' plan of Saint Gall for the typical scriptorium
where the monks would work at painted illumination of the
Gospels - while Alcuin, it might be said, had worked for
Charlemagne in illuminating them metaphorically. What both
achieved was a fresh grasp on significance and narrative,
resulting in manuscript illustrations which contrast with the
the vivid portrayal ofJustinian and

patterned linear conventions of the Lindistarne Gospels. In

flat calligraphic St John there, we now see an

place of the

articulated St

Matthew engaged

in writing, seated

on

more

solid-looking chair, in a settmg of curtained room (III. 54).

Obviously, this more realistic image of an evangelist is not

by reason of that reality - itself easily made

and conventional if compared with some
figure by Giotto. But it is certainly much more descriptive of
reality: making a continuous action out of what it illustrates.
The saint is seen at his task, grasping his book, his body propped
in a position like that of someone writing. Above all, there is
ordered narrative, in which humanity is more striking than
sanctity - or, rather, through vivid observation the religious
artistically superior

to look stereotyped

message is enhanced.
It is perhaps not altogether an accident that those curtains
twisted about the pillars which frame St Matthew should recall
the looped-up curtains in the Ravenna mosaic of the Empress
Theodora. Byzantine art had certainly influenced such sophisticated illumination as this. Byzantium had, however, already
undergone one religious crisis in which angry iconoclasticism
rejected the idea of sacred images of any kind. When that movement subsided, Byzantium restored the concept of such images,
but to some extent sealed them ofl"in an unchanging convention
of gold backgrounds, and truly hieratic poses and features. It
was Eastern timelessness against Western change. The Byzantine icon continues down the centuries - still present in much the

same form

in

nineteenth-century Russia.

were to die gradually

away. Far from there being a European iconoclastic controversy, a steady fostering of the visual arts in the service oi
religion culmhiated in the Romanesque achievement. Wliat
In

the West, Byzantine influences

77

under Charlemagne and Alcuin had been primarily a literary

movement now beeame sculptural and architectural. The
saints and Christs in glory who, on a small scale, had decorated
Gospel-books were now carved in the porches of churches. As
for the churches themselves, they were becoming architecturally more articulate, eliminating the plain and temporary
aspects of the old-style basilica. Their roofs were vaulted stone;
a whole cluster of chapels would radiate out where before there
had been a plain apse; and the church exteriors would be
enriched not only by elaborate sculpted porches but by
dominating groups of towers marking out the plan (III. 57).
Articulate as architecture had become - capable too ot
variations which range over France, Spain, England, Germany
and Italy - it is in sculpture that the Romanesque style expressed
itself most boldly. This was the very art form that Christianity
had previously neglected, as if inhibited by pagan achievement.
Quite suddenly, it seems, sculpture was seen to offer a strikingly
new channel for the telling of the Christian story. What had
perhaps happened, no doubt much more gradually than now
appears, was a shifting away from the symbolic and transcendental aspects of religion to emphasis on the more actual,
realistic ones. The Bible could be illustrated - not in the sense ot
decorating pages of a manuscript with ornament, but in showing its dramatic scenes in dramatic terms. There is another shitt
too, connected with the impact of religion on a wider public.
The illuminated Carolingian books are essentially reserved for
a cultivated, usually

be

owned by

monastic, clientele: individual treasures to

an abbot or abbess. The same

a great individual,

must largely be true of ivories and reliquaries - things which

certainly can make no strong single visual eflect on a
congregation.

But if the doorway of the church is itself a Bible in stone or

bronze, with vivid, clear, intensely dramatic scenes carved on
56), the scriptural story will make its impact on evert the
most unlearned worshipper. The doors of some earlier churches
had been similarly carved, but the masterpiece of such work was
achieved in the doors, of which a detail is reproduced here,
commissioned for his church at Hildesheim by Bishop Bernward in the very early eleventh century. The church itself is one
of the earliest examples of a grand Romanesque exterior, a
proclamation as it were of Germany's sympathy for diis style
in which great churches were soon to be built all over the
country - notably at Cologne. Bishop Bernward was said to

it (III.

78

56 The Expulsion of Adam and Eve, troni the doors of St Michael's,

Hildesheim. Early eleventh century

be experienced and knowledgeable about the arts; he had also

been tutor to the Emperor Otto III, last of three emperors who
have given their name to this period - the Ottonian. Politically
represents the main European development
of Charlemagne's huge empire at his death.
Germany's long tradition of superbly eloquent sculpture is
already established in the Hildesheim doors where the figures
seem scarcely content to remain in the flat plane of bronze
relief, so forceful and expressive are their animated bodies. Bare
of scenery other than essential properties of a tree or a cloud,
each composition is animated by a dramatic force conveyed
through the figures - with marvellous use of gestures. God
stalks forward to point accusingly at Adam who bends, naked
and ashamed, pointing at Eve; she crouches lower still in shame,
in turn pointing at the serpent. Abel seems positively to spin as
he falls to the ground, felled by Cain's club - and the huge hand
of God thrusts itself dramatically from a cloud overhead. It is
in intensely human terms that the risen Christ appears - almost
brutally remonstrating, it might seem, with the gesticulating
Magdalen who expostulates even while she adores.

and

artistically,

it

after the collapse

79

This art sccnis perfectly attuned to its purpose. The stress is

not on the mysterious elements of Christianity but rather on its
ethical, practical ones. At Hildesheim, Old and New Testament
subjects are ranged in analogy. It is as a warning with regard to
this life that Christ appears carved in porches as Judge of the
World - and he appears not floating in a heaven of gold mosaic
but with exemplary scenes of the blessed and the damned. The
emphasis is again on narrative. The very capitals of pillars,
especially in French churches, arc often not abstract ornament
or leaf patterns but alive with complete miniature scenes of
compressed action. It is a sign of the developed importance of
the sculptor that several of the greatest Romanesque achievements, especially the sculpture on cathedral fac^ades, arc signed
work by individual artists who thus emerge from dark age

We know that Guglielmus worked on the cathedral

Modena. The famous tympanum of the cathedral at Autun is
signed under Christ's feet by Gislebertus. The lavishly carved,
anonymity.

at

almost Gothic Puerta de la Gloria of the cathedral of Santiago

at Compostela is by Master Mateo.
Although it is usual to say that subordination of sculpture to
architecture

is

a typical feature

of the Romanesque

style, this is

57 C'hurch of the
Apostles, Cologne

1035-1220

judgment. Not only were facades, capitals,

and fonts sculpted with figures, in quite revolutionary
proliferation, but free-standing sculpture - often in painted
wood - was evolved. The whole style might be said to be
imbued with a feeling for modelling as well as carving; there is
something moulded and soft about the arched interiors of most
Romanesque churches, and about their gentle, rather agglomerated exteriors, with rows of round windows and arcades.
Sculpture and architecture are perfectly married in the rich yet
somehow intimate exterior of Notre-Dame at Poitiers (III. 58),
a church that might seem to have reversed the original basilica
principle of plain exterior and elaborate interior. At Poitiers the
nave is a series of tall arches which support a simple barrel-vault.
The facjade is carved and shaped with a screen for sculpture
within arches, niches, recesses, and even the two towers might
be sculpted features, almost refusing to assume architectural
domination, and remaining more turrets than towers.
Perhaps it is true that there lingers something artistically
rather haphazard and not always accurately calculated about
some effects in Romanesque architecture. Yet it was a monumental style capable of considerable variations, increasingly
partly a hindsight
pulpits

58

Notrc-Dame,
Poitiers.

Eleventh century

expressive of the confident power of establislied Christianity.

It is well summed up by the cathedral at Durham (///. 39 j,
an artistic product of the Norman Conquest, planted triumph-

on its hill site like a fortress as much as a church. At the

period it was begun, Christendom was expressing its sense of
unity and divine purpose by the First Crusade: the Western
world had set out to do battle against the East, carrying the
cross but trusting even more in the sword, and at hrst seeming to
be successful in its devastating mission.

antly

religion which had begun so tentatively and humbly

appeared to have become the literal driving force of
Europe. Even if it had somehow abruptly vanisheci from
Romanesque Europe, it would have left not just traces but the
whole Continent one artistic monument to its empire. In every
country great churches and cathedrals testified to its ubiquitous
power. Pilgrims crossed Europe to worship at shrines like that
of St James at Compostela, and not only there but along the
pilgrim route churches had arisen on a huge and imposing scale
- part of that public sense of religion providing for great masses
of people. Indeed, from a religious point ot view the Romanesque style served most beautifully. There would seem no
reason for art to evolve any further, but already its vitality
refused to be constrained by purely religious purposes. In the
twelfth century St Bernard of Clairvaux shrewdly detected the
dangerous symptom of sheer beauty- art for its own sake -even
in the very churches and cloisters. He wrote a strongly worded
letter about the dangers of marvelling over the products of art
when instead one should be meditating on the law of God.
Of course, some secular works of art had been created in the
years between Charlemagne and St Bernard. Especially in
Norman-occupied territory, and therefore notably in England,

The

now

there had been castles built

which represent more than

just

achievement too
of roofing over a large space was expressed not only in the
stone-vaulted Romanesque churches but in William Rufus'
Westminster Hall, which remained for over a century the
largest room in Europe. One of the rare objects which can
actually be shown to have had a personal commissioner, and
presumably owner, is the 'Alfred Jewel' (III. 61) which presents
a highly stylized, typically Northern, linear image of the King
and is inscribed 'Alfred had me made'. Although religious
fortresses for defence; the sheer engineering

Bayeux tapestry (///. 60),

which was probably intended from the first as adornment tor

associations certainly enter into the

82

\
jirit?'''!

the nave of Bayeux cathedral, the subject-matter is fully secular

historical - a picture chronicle which has something of the
gesticulating vigour of the earlier Hildeshcim doors. What is

and

there conveyed in strongly three-dimensional, tactile terms, is

expressed by once again linear ones in the Bayeux embroidery:
in a

rhythm which

rises to

the agitated effects o{ the actual

including the extraordinarily memorable image of a

horse completely perpendicular, its head on the ground and its
hind legs kicking wildly in the air.

battle,

Yet over these years religious purpose and religious imagery

continued to be the primary concern of art. Christianity had
evolved out of the early basilica a totally new sort of building,
conditioned by Christianity's own needs, and exemplified so
well by Durham cathedral. What had begun as no more than a
new message scratched on the old-style marriage casket ot

Secundus and Projecta, had taken tangible shape in buildings

and sculpture which might artistically challenge the greatest
achievements of antic]uity.
Durham itself is a building which more than consolidates the
Romanesque - and this not merely because of its later Gothic
western towers. Despite what its massive circular pillars might
suggest, the roof they support has an unexpected lightness ot
effect and,

owing

to the clerestory, the interior

place of the long tunnel-vault there

84

is

now

is

light-filled. In

- almost certainly

6o BaycLix tapestry (detail).

Late eleventh century

'Alfred Jewel'.
Late ninth century

6i

for the first time in Europe - the criss-cross pattern ot a rib-vault

which introduces new aesthetic as well as technical possibilities.
Art and knowledge - a conjunction that sounds worthy of
Leonardo and the Renaissance- is in fact a medieval formulation
concerned tc^ produce a style which, though once sentimentally
thought of as profoundly religious, was really urged on more
by aesthetic and secular considerations. Gothic creativity
springs from a soil already rich in cathedrals, in a united
Christendom that might seem - briefly - a vision of St Augustine's come true. In fact, Christendom would bccc^me disunited

long before the

final

expiry of the Gothic

style.

The Crusades

were ultimately to prove a spiritual disaster. Monastic ideals

were to be replaced by university-inspired, intellectual ones.
Power rather than piety is what is represented by a Gothic
cathedral, and it becomes the focal point not of some monastery
complex but of a rising town, often itself a commercial centre.
For long art had been tolerated and employed for religion's
sake. The Gothic world is one where, gradually but definitely,
art can be employed for its own sake. It needed the solid, established Romanesc]ue pillar from which to take flight. From that
soared into sophisticated fantasy, exulting in sheer
which was to be curtailed, rather than
encouraged, when the Renaissance came to take a more sober
basis

it

artistic

look

freedom

at things.

/m

62 Freiburg-im-Breisgau, openwork interior of spire

c.

1340

CHAPTER THREE

The Gothic World

It is

more than

convenience of chapter-heading to speak of

style because it is perhaps the
pervasive, homogeneous style in Western art,
a

world created by the Gothic

first

fully

marking clearly quite minor objects as much as great cathedrals,

and manifesting itself in secular as well as religious artifacts.
Even if this should be claimed as already partly true of the
Romanesque, Gothic makes a sharper stylistic impression not
only because of a greater range of surviving evidence but
because it is a much more consciously stylish style. It is the
product of refinement, thinned constantly to yet more brilliant
exiguousness until its success seems to depend not only on what
we see but on what we are aware has been suppressed. Atter the
achievement of building solid towers and spires comes the

achievement - as at Freiburg (III 62) - o{ making tower and

all open-work. The minster of Freiburg is a paradox ot
monumental fragility which is to demonstrate how art can
spire

surprise us, defying the natural laws.

Indeed, as a way of expression Gothic may be said to have

never totally died out. This certainly seems true historically, for
some of its later but still valid manifestations are of the seventeenth century (like the wonderful Gothic fan-vaulting ot the
staircase to Christ Church hall at Oxford, executed in 1640),
while by the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it was being more artificially - revived. And although the term 'Gothic' is
ridiculously inappropriate in its literal sense to the high refinement ot thirteenth- and fourteenth-century art, the adjective
has come to take on a significant validity. It is hard to think
how one could apply the adjective 'Romanesque' to anything
other than the strict pr<.)ducts or imitations of that period, but
'Gothic' can be used as apt stylistic shortliand to define something

of Botticelli, Cranach or Bernard Buftet.

is really no clear-cut clo.se to the
Gothic style. The Renaissance, whatever that is, did not
brusquely reverse all its concepts at one blow; Gothic
in the art

Not

surprisingly, there

63 Saint-Denis, Paris (interior).

Begun 1140

coexisted with new styles, and an ardst like Ghiberti evolved,

without any sense of revolution, from an early Gothic style
into one that is apparently more 'Renaissance' - is certainly very
different. But if there is no end to Gothic, there is a conveniently clear beginning in the new choir (III. 6j) built under
Abbot Suger for the abbey of Saint-Denis, outside Paris. Begun
in 1 140, this was dedicated four years later. It is a consciously
new addition to a Romanesque church, using rib-vaults and
windows with pointed arches, so that in Sugcr's own words,
'the church shines with its middle part brightened'. And this
concept of the shining church is more relevant for Gothic art
than any of the actual motifs used - the pointed arch, the ribvault or the flying buttress - none of them strictly the invention
of Gothic architects. Suger's desire for lightness and brightness
is a haunting idea which finds fulfillment a century later in the
Sainte-Chapelle (III. 64), which really might be the architectural
realization of that fantasy 'chapel of glass' occurring in some
medieval romances. One of these tells of a glass chapel which
magically contracts and expands, and such playing with space
is more than a conceit of Gothic buildings: where the visitor is
drawn, dazzled, uncertain of what is real and what is not, along
high aisles with fragile, fretted roofs and walls that are almost

88

- constantly glimpsing eternity, which yet

one elusive step aheaci.
It is certainly convenient that Saint-Denis should be the
place of birth of the Gothic style. The exact origins of the style
are not beyond dispute, but the pointed arch as such perhaps
came to Europe from Eastern buildings - and it is tempting to
suppose that the Crusades may have played some part in this.
However it actually originated, it remained basically the
creation of France. Although it crossed to England it was never
properly established in Italy, and only gradually in Germany.
Saint-Denis is itself a crystallization of French consciousness,
dedicated to the patron saint of France, directly associated with
the monarchy- especially under Suger, who was the King's chief
minister as well as the abbot - and once the home of marvellous
treasures of goldsmiths' work which equally reflect the new
Gothic refinement. Just about the same time as he had the new
choir constructed, Suger had an antique porphyry flagon,
which he had found neglected in a chest, converted into an
ingenious symbol of St John the Evangelist's eagle (III. 66),
with vivid, almost witty use of the vase as the bird's body. So
vivid is the final objet d'art that it looks like a clockwork automaton. One might almost imagine the eagle's head swivelling
and its sharp, blade-like wings beginning to beat. Such ideas
are very close to the Gothic reality, not just as written about in
poems but as executed. The architect and master mason,
Villard de Honnecourt, working in the thirteenth century, left
a book of drawings which record not only buildings, sculpture,
methods of design and some tips on lion-taming, but also gives
instructions for the making of such automata ('engiens', he
calls them) as an eagle lectern which turns its head when the
Gospel is read, and a bowl with a semi-mechanical, drinking
dove (III. 65).
So much of this aspect of the Gothic world has been destroyed
that it easy to forget that it was not all sublime cathedral porches
and church vessels. The painted metal flowers which at one
palace splashed unsuspecting spectators, and other comparable
ingenious toys, have proved as ephemeral as the wonderful
architectural puddings and the often fantastic, plumage-like
clothes. These are things which have to be read about or seen in
the pages of illuminated manuscripts, but that testimony is
sufficient to show how the artfulness of art was being appreciated.
Even where it continued to serve religion, art was now recognized as a power in its own right and the artist (whether
entirely translucent

always

90

lies

(left) Page from album of designs for various machines, including

mechanical eagle, by Villard de Honnecourt c. 1235

65

66

(rii^ht)

Eagle flagon

made

for

Abbot Suger, mount

c.

140

began to be recorded as
an actual, and important, person. It is true that Abbot Suger,
who wrote at length of his improvements at Saint-Denis, did
not bother to mention who had designed or built the new
additions there. Elsewhere a few years later we hear several
names of architects and even hints of their personalities.
Villard de Honnecourt's wide-ranging interests are one

architect, engineer, sculptor or painter)

of the increasingly multifarious Gothic world where

judgments begin to matter in a quite new way. 'I
drew this, because I liked it best', he wrote beside his drawing
of the choir windows at Rhcims, and this aesthetic concern is
perhaps the keynote of all Gothic art. What is sketched by
Villard is positively enshrined in the finest Gothic cathedrals,
mirrors of the restless range of art which is always ambitious

reflection

individual

91

for change and elaboration. It cannot be said that the

architecture in these centuries radically changed the basic
concepts
established by the early Christian basilica and consolidated

by

the

Romanesque church, but

exhaustion.

When

elaborated these to the point of

the final stone was twisted and cut to make
it

the undulating, filigree effect of late Gothic architecture

there
remained nothing left except to conceive the Rococo style.
And in Germany particularly the affinities between late Gothic

and Rococo - notably

in sculpture - are almost bewildering;

the Renaissance call for sober, scientific truth is strangled
am^d

writhing foHage and gilt gesticulating figures poised in

emotional extremes.
The Gothic cathedral already points to these extremes. Its
very art is responsible for a feeling of alienation in comparison
with the calm and simple ordering of a Romanesque cathedral.
The incredibly rich facade of a cathedral such as that of Amiens
(III. 67) has passed beyond anything which
might have seemed
Its Romanesque forerunner, even the
church at Poitiers (III. 58)
that is comparable in its general idea. But Robert de
Luzarches,
the architect at Amiens, has out-soared that until it is no longer
as the germ from which this tremendous plant has
prohferated. And Amiens is not even now completed, because spires were intended to crown the pierced
and
fretted towers, a final extension of that vertical movement
which begins in ascending the steps before the building. It is

recognizable

grown and

how any ordinary worshipper could grasp the

of the visual richness which is here carved and
sculpted on such a huge scale into row upon row of figures,
crockets, pinnacles, on a wall that has virtually ceased to" have
solidity. It is all false entrances and blind, statue-inhabited
arcades, at a level so far above that of human beings that whathard to see

significance

ever the sculpture's exact significance, it can hardly be analyzed

without prolonged scrutiny and considerable scholarship.
The usual explanation of such elaborately sculpted facades is
that they served as the bibles of the illiterate - but at Amiens
the
language used is scarcely more easily comprehensible than
would be a theological textbook. And in one way, despite the
giant scale of this fac^ade, the effect is an extension of the extreme
sophistication and private ethos of illuminated manuscripts.
Like those, its first impact is of extreme richness (deep relief and

play of light and shadow serving as background instead of

burnished gold) presenting a vision which amazes rather than
communicates to the spectator any specific single message. As

92

67 Amiens Cathedral

c.

1220-36,

towers above level of rose

window

late

well as a church, it is intended to be a scarcely rational temple of

sheer art. In the seventeenth century the engineer Vauban was
to refer to the sublime madman who had conceived the
cathedral at Coutances, but a member of the Chapter of Seville
cathedral in 1401 already thought in these terms for the huge
Gothic building planned there, 'so great and of such a kind that
those who see it finished shall think we are mad'.
Nor is the interior of a Gothic cathedral a place where the

worshipper should immediately feel at home. Wonder and

excitement are more likely to be provoked by the mysteriously
high nave, linked by slender, stalk-like cc")lumns which begin at
human level but finally flower tar overhead in the sinewy, thin
shoots that trace out patterns on the distant vault. Looked up
at from the ground, these vault-patterns are abstractly beautiful
(III. 68), triumphs of geometry that need no other adornment.
At first they may seem more intellectual and less florid than the
exteriors, but gradually they too assumed almost their own life
- no longer pretending to serve a serious structural purpose. The
vault of Suger's Saint-Denis is a very uncomplicated affair
compared with what was to grow up especially in England.
Here the almost rushing verticality and thrust of a French
cathedral like Amiens was exchanged for lower and more
longitudinal effects. Even the most elaborate fa(;ades of English
cathedrals were conceived as strongly horizontal screens - like
those of Salisbury or Wells. There was nothing comparable to
that obsession with height which reached a positive height of
folly in the choir of Beauvais cathedral - the highest ever
achieved until it collapsed within a few years of being built. Yet
the vaults of English cathedrals show an equal addiction to
extremes, not of height but complexity. The architects seem to
delight in constructing a web of ribs, now fanning out, now
clustering in star-shapes, sometimes growing elaborate bosses

where they intersect. Increasing virtuosity of effect turned what

was originally something which marvellously deticd gravity
by soaring upwards into something no less gravity-detying and
marvellous a pendant-vault, like that at Christ Church (III. 6g)
where the miracle seems to consist in the whole structure being
:

suspended in space - forever dropping, and forever held like a

canopy over the choir. That was built in 1478, when the Gothic
style in England had gone through the permutation hoops set
up by architectural historians - Early English, Decorated,
Perpendicular - and even then had not reached the firework
brilliance of Henry VII's chapel in Westminster Abbey.

94

:hapter-house vault, Wells Cathedral

-1 3 19

69 Choir ceihng, Christ Church, Oxford

Cathedral c. 1478

Within the Gothic cathedral, where art is always busy paring

solidity, altering the property of stone, teasing the eye by
deception, the perfect art form was not sculpture, still less
painting, but the stained-glass window. This was the final
paradox of visible and invisible - one that it is easy to understand,
for the human fascination with glass is something exploited
again by modern architecture. Seen from outside, the elaborate
tracery of some cathedral's wheel-like rose-window already
dissolves a portion of wall but looked at from inside, where the
actual amount of light available is controlled by the deep
colouring of the glass itself, there is no wall at all. It is out of a

away

shadowy penumbra

that a giant, translucent kaleidoscope

assembles itself- in sheer colour and pattern, before any 'subject'
can be deciphered. Close-up details of stained-glass windows
may show their stylistic affinities to manuscripts, but it is the
glowing total effect, and even subordination ot detail, that
matters most as a visual impression.
The artist (and there were individual artists in glass, for
Clement, 'verrier de Chartres', signed a window at Rouen) was

95

obey decorative laws. To achieve the final harmony of

might make haloes red or blue or yellow (///. 70)
and garments that change colour quite arbitrarily. The convention of lead strips increased the pattern-making effect and set
off the different shapes of each piece of coloured glass like a more
exciting, and much more translucent, form of mosaic. In early
Gothic windows, the colours have a real gem-like intensity and
in themselves are mystic, like fragments of those gems which
had haunted the medieval imagination, stimulated by the New
free to

colour, he

Jerusalem described in St John's Revelation.

Such visions are hardly the experiences of every day.
Medieval men did not automatically become mystics by virtue
of living when the cathedrals were being built and decorated.
Like Abbot Suger, they might be practical administrators as
well as contemplators of jewels. Suger himself certainly
marvelled over the precious stones that he was given or
acquired for Saint-Denis, and an interesting passage in his book
on his work there tells how the beauty of 'many-coloured gems'
sometimes called him from external cares, encouraging him to
meditate. The material objects led to immaterial concepts; as
he pondered, he felt himself transported from the inferior to
the higher, spiritual world. Consciously or unconsciously, he
here seems to be answering the fears expressed by St Bernard.
Nevertheless, within a few years, the tendencies of art would
really be the other way about - bringing the spiritual world
closer to man by expressing it in more 'realistic' and less
symbolic forms. This 'realism' is partly a matter of psychological
truth as well as the copying of natural appearances. For this
reason, there is often a sharp stylistic distinction between the
apparently bourgeois, even brutal, realism of some art (true to
what we might see) and the extremes of courtly refinement and

emotion

(true

to

what we might

feel).

Architecture was

inevitably free from this particular problem of reahsm, but it is

useful to note that the problem was not brought into existence

through the rise of secular patronage. In so far as it is a problem,

one for the spectator perhaps rather than for the artist. The

it is

was, in fact, gaining an autonomy whereby he could

a personal style. Giotto and Duccio are contemporaries
working in patently opposed styles. Exactly at the close of the
fourteenth century when Glaus Sluter was sculpting in Burartist

develop

gundy

his intensely soHd, almost stubbornly realistic figures,

there developed the most affectedly graceful, sinuously swaying

images - usually of the

Madonna

or female saints - which were

96

70 The

Visitation,

detail

of the west

fac^ade

window, Chartn

Cathedral. Twelfth ccntur

mm*4>,t^mk

iAAll ttUI &S

UX <MJU t^ i iit Mill <U^

^^i4/*rtt* ^is^x

,,f^:

'

^>^?.'WJ|^

Mm

over Europe. Sluter's work was for a great aristoDuke of Burgundy; many ot the small
Madonna images must have prettified private, bourgeois homes.
For this sculptural variety to exist there had first to be a
considerable evolution of technique: the image needed to be
released from the stone where, in Romanesque sculpture, it had
lain in fairly flat rehef or partly been imprisoned in pillars. It is
the same evolution towards the freestanding figure which had
taken place in Greece in antiquity; and the same law applies.
The later work is not of itself better for this freedom. Compopular

cratic

98

all

patron, the

parable conventions to those which govern the Apollo from

Olympia

(III. 26) govern the Old Testament figures, executed

mid-twelfth century, for the west porch at Chartres
cathedral (III. yi). Their very proportions reveal their difference
from ourselves; like enough to be recognizably human, they
are otherwise almost oriental in their delicate remoteness, with
beautifully cut, thin drapery that not only clings to their bodies
but virtually is those bodies: tunics of minutely-pleated
material topped by solid, yet still remote and absorbed heads.
There is scarcely any movement in terms of realism.
Thus, in their own terms, they stand like guardians rather
than prisoners. Yet it was certainly one of the major achievements of the Gothic world - with its love of automata and
magic objects - to make statues step forward from cathedral
facades, moving now with revolutionary ease, experiencing
emotions, positively mirroring human beings with a lifelikeness that had been lost to Western art since antiquity. The
graceful, almost Phidian Visitation group at Rheims (III. yz) -

in the

71

Old Testament

Chartres

c.

11

figures,

50

72 T//C 'isitalioii,
Rhcinis Cathedral
c. 1230
[

73 The Foolish Vir<^iiis, Magdeburg Cathedral c. 1234

74 Equestrian statue of Otto

Magdeburg

c.

II,

1240-50

probably of about 1230 - is a very familiar, typical illustration

of what could be achieved, but it is perhaps rather too bland in
its

conscious gracefulness.

The emotional

assault

which new technique had

row of

also

made

on the
cathedral of Magdeburg, in Germany, executed only a few
years after the Rheims llsitatioii. Extremes of raging grief and

possible

is

seen in the

Foolish Virgins

(III.

73^

chagrin shake these figures out of rhetoric into a quite extraordinary humanity - and art makes them the plastic equivalent
of a disturbing cry which might well halt anybody approaching
the cathedral porch. This is art which achieves a mimesis that
had not been experienced before in the West. It perturbs rather
than elevates (though it is fair to add that the Wise Virgins
are sculpted on the opposite side of the porch). Few things
are more misleading than equations of art and national temperament; but in sculpture at least a distinction can early be
established between Germany and France- and by the eighteenth

century
technical

it

Meanwhile, the
Rheims and Magde-

will be seen to be quite patent.

command which

is

revealed by

101

burg makes it possible for sculpture to be utilized in new ways,

serving purposes other than purely religious ones.
The Foolish Virgins are, for all their freedom of movement,
still conceived as attached to a supporting wall. But also at

Magdeburg, standing under

market place,
74), which
was probably done at the same period as the sculpture on the
cathedral porch. It marks the emancipation of sculpture from

is

a stone

the equestrian statue of the

architectural

support,

quite

canopy

in the

Emperor Otto

literally.

An

(III.

earlier

equestrian

Bamberg (the 'Bamberg rider') may

Magdeburg concept, but does not have the

statue in the cathedral at

have inspired the

free-standing, fully modelled effect which makes the latter so

public and remarkable. The Emperor had been dead for
some two hundred and fifty years, but he lives vividly again
in this - one of the earliest of such secular monuments, and one
of the most elaborate. It is not an idealized image of royalty, but
an individualized, lively and almost coarsely vigorous depiction.
Nor was it set up at Magdeburg in any mood of obsequiousness
- rather the opposite. Otto II is there because of the civic

he had granted to the city, and the statue is the result of a

source of patronage, neither religious nor royal, but civic.
Beside the cathedral and the palace in the Gothic city, there
would soon be architectural expression of the commune in an
equally large and dominant building, the town hall.
The Magdeburg equestrian statue shows that sculpture could
now ably commemorate an actual man - giving a sense of keen
portraiture even where the sculptor had not seen the living
rights

new

The artist's power to commemorate combines with

power to create. On tombs the figures are no longer
flattened impersonal images whose attributes of kingship or
original.

his

have to serve instead of character, but take on new

depth and weight - both emotionally and literally. Their taces
clerical status

75 Tomb ot Henry
thirteenth ccnturv

III,

Westminster

Abbey,

London.

Late

76 Hunting Lodge of Frederick

II,

Caste! del Monte, Apulia

c.

1240

become

individualized portraits, sometimes characterized to

a death-mask, in smiling repose or
grimly rigid. A distinct personality is already suggested by the

convey too the impact of

bronze effigy of Henry

a

disastrous reign,

in

III

of England

(III.

75),

who

died, after

1272. Perhaps the quivering,

empty-

of one who has strained himself in vain - is

partly an accident, but at least some impression of character is
conveyed. The fourteenth-century monuments of English kings
- like those of Richard II and Edward III - undoubtedly aim at
exact portraiture: recording each individual curve of eyebrow
and wrinkle of forehead.
The splendid abbey where they are all buried was Henry Ill's
creation, but he was also the builder of an adjoining palace at
Westminster. He was in fact one of the first of those cultivated
royal patrons who prove markedly more successful in artistic
than in political affairs. It is something of an irony that his
palace has been absorbed and lost in the present structure ot the

handed

effect

as

103

Houses of Parliament, because they represent the power of

Parliament to which politically he lost as well. What best
survives c^t his palace and its decoration is entry after entry in the
royal accounts, showing that he had whole rooms painted with
allegorical figures and battle scenes (perhaps rather as Uccello
was to paint for the Medici some two hundred years later).
With Henry III there can be no doubt that his patronage was
direct and personal - keeping architects, sculptors and painters
very busy. The King's personal wishes and his memoranda can
be detected or positively read: 'We remember' - runs one of
these latter - 'that you said it would be much grander to make
the two leopards, to be placed on either side of our new chair at
Westminster, ot bronze rather than of marble.
This has a
.

positively Renaissance ring to

it.

It

serves to

.'

show

the secular

patron offering an alternative to ecclesiastical patronage, and

Henry Ill's painted rooms in his palace sustain the secular note.
Rooms now begin to exist for decoration and furnishing, to
provide an agreeable atmosphere in which people can relax.
Just about the period Henry III began his palace of Westminster, the Emperor Frederick II built the Castel del Monte
(III. y6) in Apulia, which was not intended to be a defensive
building but a hunting-lodge. No haphazard affair, this is
built with a deliberate and typical symmetry (echoed all over
Europe with carefully planned castles and manor-houses) and
also includes a conscious classical antique motit - remarkable
enough in the largely Gothic Europe ot 1 240 - in the pedmiental
gateway. By the fourteenth century castles, palaces and palatial
city halls could architecturally challenge the dominance of the
cathedral. Great commercial centres like Venice and Bruges
expressed a sense of their own civic pride in buildings (Ills. 78,
79) which are graceful as well as imposing, secular churches
raised to the religion of trade and to the greater glory of the
state. Art is lavished on such buildings no less than on cathedrals.
The high town hall at Bruges might easily be mistaken for a
church, with its spire and pinnacled facade pierced by tall
windows; at Venice, the Doge's palace stretches its vast pink
flanks along sea and land, reducing the near-by basilica ot
S.

Marco

to

its

original status as the Doge's chapel.

As

for the

princely castle, it had become the fragile-looking but actually

quite firm cluster of white towers anci chimneys, blue rot^ts and

weather-vanes which the Limbourg brothers

sky of deeper blue (III. 77). This is not an
enchanted fairv-tale vision but an autumnal view of the castle
gilt fleur-de-lis

set against a perfect

104

77 September

(detail)

from the Linibourg brothers' Trcs rick

Heiires tie Due de Berry 141 3-1

,^"7<r:4.^^Hfe^ .-^-aF^

"^f^-slU^

of Saumur, owned in the late fourteenth centviry by the Due

de Berry, brother of the King of France.
This prince is himself the quintessence of Gothic man, superb
patron of the arts, inquisitive, acquisitive, intoxicated by visual
splendour, fond of exotic objects which ranged from a dromedary and an ostrich to a prize collector's piece of jewellery - St
Joseph's wedding-ring. Saumur was only one of his many
castles, several of them recorded in the background to the
Calendar pages of the months painted for his sumptuous book
of hours, Les tres Riches Hemes. This book was outstanding even
among his treasures: so elaborately conceived that it was not
quite finished at the Due de Berry's death in 1 4 1 6, though he had
encouraged the illuminators by pledging them a valuable ruby
from his store of such treasure. Inside castles like Saumur, there
would be splendid, heraldic tapestries, marvellous gold plate,
and objects which almost defy description, fantasy works
positively challenging the achievements of a Faberge.
For New Year's Day 1404, the Due de Berry's nephew Charles VI of France - received from his wife the 'Little Gold
Horse' (III. 81), basically a religious tabernacle but remarkable
for its secular feeling and virtuosity - no accident that it should
be called by a name emphasizing not the Virgin and Child group
but the white-enamelled gold horse which stands below. That
and its fashionable groom, equally brilliantly enamelled with
particoloured hose and patterned sleeves, are tribute enough to
the Gothic artist's awareness of reality. Aware ot it, able as here
to capture it well enough, the artist is not bounded by it. Just
as the late antique world had delighted in bronze statuettes
where eyes were enamel and lips were copper (III. j$), so the
high sophistication of the late Gothic world could enjoy the
Virgin's bower of gold leaves and huge pearls, varied by other
larger stones, set up on a dais of gold approached by twin golden
staircases, and where, setting the whole object's courtly cheerful
mood, the King's horse finds its prominent place - a reminder
of the secular world which waits when prayer is over.
As for the Calendar pages illuminated by Pol de Limbourg
and his brothers for the Due de Berry, while these represent a
supreme achievement in the long tradition of illuminating
manuscripts (the culmination of what had been done at
Lindisfarne seven hundred years before, ///. 5j), they also
proclaim the end of that tradition. The pages have become
complete pictures, atmospherically vivid, yet elegant and
controlled. It was not necessary to wait for the invention ot
106

78

The Doges'

Palace, Venice
1

309-1424

79

Town

Hall,

Bruges.

From

^76

"^

printing to realize that beyond these marvellous pages there can

be no progress. The illuminated manuscript as such could barely
contain what painters now wished to do. Despite the linear
technique, and only faint colour washes, there is a Chaucerian

vigour and forcefulness about the dedicatory page (III. 80)

which John Siferwas executed for the Lovell Lectionary (before
1408), showing him presenting his illuminated manuscript to
the patron, Lord Lovell. The most famous painter to begin with
such work is Jan van Eyck full in the fifteenth century; but he
moved beyond it, never to return, becoming instead a European
'prince of painters' in the new technique of oil painting.
Just as the Gothic style had developed and made more
expressive the potentiahty of architecture and sculpture, so it
touched with quite new and sophisticated articulateness the

iinnnntouitanicttmBm*^tgo
itatfataiD Qim: ninomt&inoDU/
Mt&KuJLiMJEiMiiflt

itt

0y^

ffy

"%

So John Sifcru'a.< with

Lord Loi'cll, frontispiece
of the Lovell Lectionary.
Before 1408

'Little

Gold Horse'

altar tabernacle.

Before 1404

83

Duccio The
Animiiciatioii
c.

131

previously rather humble art of painting. The taste which had

manifested itself in Southern Europe largely through mosaic,
and in the North through stained glass and illuminated manuscripts, now encouraged in both South and North an art that
held up a fresh sort of mirror to the imagination a picture. The
word itself is an addition to the vocabulary in late Middle
English and in the modern sense of a painting does not apparently
occur before 1484.
Churches had certainly been decorated with frescoes, but it
was perhaps the creation of actual panel pictures - first in painted
altar frontals and crucifixes- which raised the status of painting.
More directly than any other art it could also reflect the visible
world.
men would see this reality naturally varied, as
much as how they would choose to express it. As expressed by
Giotto (III. 82) there was a revolutionary illusionism in the
actual depiction which traditionally sets Western painting on a
course which would falter only in the nineteenth century.
That fresco was painted about 1306 - an accidental manifesto
of the 'modern' style which would largely triumph over the
Gothic. That world where splendour of colour, linear grace, a
conscious quest for beauty, all matter more than truth to
natural appearances, is perfectly expressed in Duccio's small,
:

How

exquisitely

(III. 8j) of some

house that the Virgin here receives
house that obeys purely artistic laws: set against

wrought panel of the Annunciation

five years later.

the angel, but a

It is

also in a

84 siMONE MARTINI Tkc Aumiiuiatioti 1333

a flat

it is really only the symbol of a building,

might be of coloured cardboard, no more

gold background,

a structure that

suggesting substance than the delicate figures, graceful yet

hesitant, that do not quite stand but quiver rather in linear
tension. The full blaze of Gothic intensity is exposed in the
complete work of art that is made up by painting and frame in
Simone Martini's Annunciat'um (III. 84), painted in 1333, and
itself an artistic defiance of all Giotto's realism. The frame burns
upwards with its tongues of flickering gold; and it is against a
great sheet of gold and simulated marble that the Virgin almost
affectedly shrinks before the angel-apparition with its leaf-

crowned head from which shoot

This

is

pure vision, lyrical in

its

further fiery rays ot gold.

linear insistence

and blaze ot

colour.

The

pictorial equivalent

of some complex vault tracery or

sinuously graceful statue, this style became international.

Simone Martini himself was a famous artist at the period; he
worked at Avignon as well as in his native Siena. A whole knot
of influences and effects is tied together in the Glatz Madonna
(III. 83) which breathes an echo of Byzantium mingled with the
half French-half Italian courtly richness of Martini, a suitable
altarpiece to have been produced in the international centre ot
Prague in the mid-fourteenth century. The throne alone is a
Gothic triumph, with its pinnacles, roofed niches for lions to
crouch in, opening windows whence angels peer, all fragile but
carved, in a heaven of gold-embroidered drapery
suspended by the topmost angels. Although the commissioner
of the altarpiece is only a small kneeling figure, his presence is
significant. All this splendour is, as it were, his personal vision;
it is his crozier and his gloves which lie on the steps in tront ot the
Virgin, and he himself- Ernst von Pardubitz - is portrayed in
his new rank of archbishop, going down to posterity within the
work of art.
finely

It is

true that Giotto's revolution

might seem

to

doom

this

look old-fashioned, but art is not Ihvitc-cotKtirc. Not

only does the Glatz Madoiuia retain its vahdity, but the Gothic
style in painting retained its vitality in different artists long after
Masaccio in the fifteenth century appeared to consolidate
Giotto's achievement. Indeed, although Italy is conventionally
the home of the Renaissance, the centre of scientific naturalism,
the least Gothically-inchned of countries, it was there that
Gothic painting bloomed longest. In Pisanello, who did not die
'i<:ioii
until I4S>, all its supreme stylishness is summed up. His
style to

12

BOHEMIAN
MASTER GlatZ

85

Madotuia
c. 1350

86 PISANELLO

I'isioii

of Sts AiitlioiiY Ahhol and George

ofSts Anthony Abbot and George (III. 86) is an exotic encounter

of chivalry and old age near a dark wood, where the two saints
seem oblivious o{ that celestial sizzling aurora borealis in the
sky wiiich contains within it the embracing Virgin and C'hild.
This is the country of enchantment; and it is a final fantasy touch,
yet somehow not surprising, that the foreground grasses have
twisted themselves into forming the painter's name.

114

CHAPTER FOUR

In

New

The house

Perspective

that Giotto

had

to St Anne
structure in

built in the Annunciation

82) proved a significant and

architecture, sculpture and painting.
(III.

prophetic

Such harmony and coherence - achieved through a conscious,

of space - were to be sought by all the arts
during the fifteenth century. Instead of bewildering the
spectator by sheer visual splendour, they would attempt an
intellectual, even scientific brilliance. The untidy actual world
would not be merely reflected but re-ordered, in those interests
of art and knowledge which achieve finally a new fusion in the
personality of Leonardo da Vinci. His life span, as well as his
artistic contribution, makes him the culmination of Renaissance
endeavours, the most gifted offspring of the fifteenth and fuher
of the sixteenth century. The medieval formula which tound

rational organization

expression in the sentence 'Ars sine scientia nihil est' (used

during the discussions about the building of the Gothic cathedral
at Milan towards the end of the fourteenth century), now

became applicable in a quite different sense.

In

whatever medium

he works, an artist is expected to display not only skill and

craftsmanship but his intellectual knowledge, incorporating
some general or particular truths about the universe.
If we turn back to Giotto's fresco and look at it in the light ot
these Renaissance requirements, it conforms remarkably well
and makes one easily understand the constant fifteenth-century
Italian praise of Giotto. He was the founder-figure needed too
when Italian art-history came to be written. In Vasari's Lii>es,
Duccio receives a very brief biography - and part of that is
devoted to someone else; but pages are given to the work, and
also the personality, of Giotto. It was Vasari who first printed
Petrarch's reference to a painting

by

his friend Giotto, 'the

beauty of which is not understood by the ignorant, but the

.'
The Annunciation to St Anne is
knowledgeable marvel.
equally for such connoisseurs.
.

IS

It brings us down from the Gothic gold heaven to earth. The

wall on which the composition is projected becomes like a
transparent window - not of visionary stained glass but totally
colourless - through which we look into a box-like, delimited
space. Both outside and inside of the house are plotted with

geometrical precision. This architecture is austerely classical;

a positive antique classical reference - an early hint of
renascent interest in antiquity - is provided by the sarcophagusderived relief carved on the roof. Far from everything being
covered by decoration, each object is stripped to reveal its
essential form. To Giotto it is more marvellous to depict the
event within a firmly human framework of life (one realized as
firmly as is the cube of house) than to emphasize the super-

and

natural.

It is

a feat

of the

intellect to

have created the

illusion

of a

three-dimensional building; and a feat of the imagination to

have created the simultaneous eifect of the girl outside in the
porch carding wool while within St Anne kneels before the
It is typical, too, of the practical aspect of Giotto's art that
angel makes use of the window to appear at - thus obeying,
as far as possible, ordinary physical laws. Everywhere rationality
has been at work.
But in its concern with a reasonable, harmonious universe, art

angel.
this

to encounter, and respond to with new intensity,

the relics of that antique civiUzation which had been apparently
buried by Christianity. Out of that misty past, which the Gothic
had typically seen in magical, mythical terms, there now

was bound

emerged buildings and statues which took on new significance

and reality. It was the Gothic cathedral which would appear the
aUen edifice, while the domed containment of space which is
the Pantheon became an ideal to be carefully studied and copied.
What antique sculpture happened to survive would equally be
studied.
It was inevitable that the theatre of this sort of re-discovery
must primarily be Italy, since everything bound Itahans (as it
still does) to the tradition and prestige of their Roman ancestors.
Indeed, so strong and enduring was that tradition that it had

never really died out. Negatively, it offered resistance to dissemination of the alien Gothic style; positively, it offered
possibilities of imitation and continuation which are associated
with the concept of 'the Renaissance'. One of the many
difficulties about this concept - which was not truly a style, and
certainly never a single-minded artistic movement - is that it
declines to

ii6

have

date of origin. In Italy the

Romanesque

style

87 Cathedral, Civita Castcllana,

was deeply

Umbria 1210

Roman

in feeling. All the balanced architectural

used to be thought was created by Brunelleschi in fifteenth-century Florence as a result of rediscovering
antiquity is apparent in Romanesque works, some ot which
Brunelleschi must have very carefully studied. Whether or not
he went to see the cathedral at Civita Castellana, near Rome, this
building (III. 87) already in 12 10 revives classical forms in an
impressively majestic way, incorporating the Roman triumphal
arch motif for the entrance. The complexity of different styles,
which is the history of Western art, can hardly be more
effectively conveyed at that period than by comparing this
cathedral facade with that at Amiens (III. 67), begun only ten

harmony which

it

years later.

The aura of antiquity which hovers around Civita Castellana

was actively fostered by one of the most gifted and eccentric
figures of the Middle Ages, truly the 'Wonder of the World',
the Emperor Frederick II (died 1250), whose Castel del Monte
(III.

The

76) sufficiently reveals his deliberately classicizing tastes.

he revived antique forms- including the triumphal

fact that

become a veritable
more significant than

arch - to create an ethos in which he could

Roman

emperor,

second Augustus,

that other influences inevitably

is

mingled with the

classical

111

117

much of the

art

produced

in his

kingdom of Norman

Sicily

and

Frederick certainly challenged the perspective

as sketched by the Papacy, and Dante perhaps unwittingly paid him a great compliment by singling him out alone of Roman Emperors - for a place in Hell.
It was from Frederick's Apulia that there came the sculptor
Nicola Pisano. The Crucifixion (III. 88) is one carved relief on
his pulpit at Pisa, dated 1260. This gravely beautiful work is
clearly influenced by antique prototypes, sarcophagi above all.
Its almost stubborn sense of monumentality, with heads still
proportionately too big for bodies but making impressive masks

Southern
of affairs

Italy.

of dignity, declares
Italian sculpture.

before; and yet

new mastery of

the

human

figure in

more natural-seeming than what had gone

almost more remarkable is its restraint. In

It is

another relief from the same pulpit, the Virgin stands at the
Presentation like Juno, wearing a diadem and clasping her
toga-hke cloak in great noble folds. Antique reminiscence is
combined with a keen perception of individual faces, expressive

of varied emotions, characterized at various ages. Above all,

the compositions are held in a harmony that is timelessly classic
as

well

as classical.

Even

in the Crucifixion the violent

swoon

of the Virgin is checked by the supporting figures of steady,

simply draped women, like Roman matrons, who have much
of the organic toughness of Giotto's people, while the extended
arms of the crucified Christ seem to embrace all humanity - the
mockers as well as the mourners.
It is true that in Nicola's distinguished son, Giovanni Pisano,
there is some veering towards French Gothic grace, a quickening
of rhythm which has moved away from the classical antique
tradition towards the more elegant, international standards
which were to be represented in painting by Simone Martini.
But another great pupil of Nicola's, Arnolfo di Cambio,
responded to his sense of gravity and monumental form, to
produce the tremendous block of Virgin and Child (III. 8g)
destined for the facade of the Duomo at Florence, itself projected
and begun by Arnolfo in his capacity as architect. The Virgin

88 NICOLA PISANO
Crucifixion, pulpit ot
the

Duomo,

Pisa 1260

89 ARNOLIO 1)1
CAMBIO Virfiiii and
Child

c.

i2()6

and Child group

probably from only a few years before

to St Anne, and it fits well into that powerfully plastic world. Neither Virgin nor Child is conventionally
beautitul, but they are invested with a power which is more
impressive than beauty. These boulder-like forms suggest
endurance; the heavy spheres of their massive heads, the jutting
rock of the Virgin's knee, are not realistic but natural-seeming
shapes that might have been evolved by weathering rather than
by the sculptor's skill. Arnolfo's Virgin seems to enshrine
maternity, beyond the associations of the Christian religion,
going back to tap the roots of humanity and being Demeter,
Cybele, Mater Matuta whom the Roman women worshipped
by bringing children in their arms, and yet ultimately Marv
seated with her blessing Child on the cathedral of S. Maria della
is

Giotto's Annunciation

Fiore.

Hke a proclamation of the specifically Florentine contribu- anti-Gothic and derived from the antique
past which lay so close to the ground on which Italians walked.
Established in Giotto's work, the tradition passes down from
him to Masaccio and thence to Michelangelo. The Arena chapel
frescoes, of which the Annunciation to St Anne is one, consistently
untold the Christian story on the sohd, even chill, earth of
actuality where monumental human beings move the more
effectively for their very economy of emotion and gesture. It is
all a cosmic drama, but Giotto keeps his stage free from trivial
genre touches - so that the moment of Joachim's sorrowful
It is

tion to the 'new' art

return to his sheep in the hill country (III. go) is made poignant
still figure ofJoachim, oblivious of the dog that hastens
to greet him, and to the patent embarrassment of his shepherds.

by the

Giotto's truth seems to pierce to the heart of the human

condition, and in that neither Masaccio nor Michelangelo
rivalled him.

It is

difficult

not to

make him

virtually the founder

Western painting, because in him its potentialities are fully

revealed - indeed, in one way are fully realized. Never before
had painting managed to organize a completely spatial world
in which recognizably human figures could act out intensely
human emotions. In the Joachim fresco, it is not just the
protagonist's feelings which matter, but those of the shepherds and the dog's - so that, as he savours the situation, the spectator
experiences a positive miniature drama. This is something very
different from the effect of straightforward images oi Christ
crucified or the Virgin and Child, or even the vivid humanity of
the Hildesheim doors (III. fi6). Yet in some ways it is a dangerous
ol

20

90 c.iOTVo Joachim's

rciiini lo the Sliccpfold

c.

306-1:

less artistically concentrated than it is in Giotto's work,

can easily dwindle into being illustration. Giotto's own
followers could not sustain his concentration, and thence
onwards Western art would keep lapsing into trivial illusions
of realism until frightened otf finally by the invention of

power;
it

photography.

By

the fifteenth century the achievements of Nicola Pisano

a new meaning. Their empirical results -

and Giotto assumed

achieved in

largely Gothic

Europe - were inspiring particularly

incorporate into art standards ot the

natural and the truthful. Yet these standards were not the
prerogative of Italy. The sculpture of Glaus Sluter (III. 91) in
Burgundy shows that before 1400 a Northern artist could think
to Italian artists trying to

monumental terms, and with a powerful sense

not merely of realism but of portraiture. Here Duke Philip the
in anti-Gothic,

x^^-4

Bold kneels with impressive effect in the doorway of the

monastery he had founded at Dijon - projecting fully from the
architecture, with bulky, heavily-carved robes and lifelike
features, a statue originally made still more living probably by
painted naturalistic colour. This type of realism was to pervade
Northern sculpture, and especially its painting, to an extent
which first astonished Italy anci then came to seem rather
prosaic. But it too is part of the new feeling for humanity,

human

expressed in

terms.

Its

basis

remains empiric rather than

was for 'art et science' that a later Duke Philip,

the Good, of Burgundy, was to praise his well-beloved painter
and equerry, Jan van Eyck.
Van Eyck's spatial world is no less crisply constructed than

intellectual

yet

Giotto's, but

it

it is

intimate rather than epic,

its

quintessence the

where man is not noble but homely, positively at home

in a personal environment which had never been so exactly
mirrored before until Van Eyck painted the double portrait of
the Arnolfmi (III. gz). This still astonishes us by its revolutionary
technique and revolutionary concept. In itself it almost justifies
interior

all

that used to be written about the Renaissance

the individual, because

it

standing proudly in his

exudes

own

a sense

triumph of
of man emancipated and

right.

92 VAN EYCK The

Marriage of Gioi>aiiui( ?
Anioljiiii and Giovaiuia
Ceiiami( ?) 1434

>

i;t

sluter Philip

the

Bold and St John the

Baptist

This scene of the betrothal of Giovanni Arnohnii is painted

with almost legal minuteness and accuracy. It opens tor us a
window on no ideal but a positively eye-deceivingly real
world where we encounter not sacred personages, no historically
important episode, but a private ceremony between two quite
123

On that Van Eyck has worked with all his 'art

convey the cube of their fully-furnished room
with its central mirror - significant object - that reflects even the
wall which is behind the spectator. In the mirror figures can be

private people.
et science', to

room -just as the spectator seems to enter it,

eye drawn up the line of floorboards. Without a knowledge
of perspective, this almost peep-show effect would not be
achieved: so much is 'science'. Art is yet more, one may feel,
for the grasp of atmosphere is instinctive, a delicate response to
seen entering the

his

light falling

on

whole gamut

ot textures,

moulding

to a

glow-

ing velvety surface the hard mathematical framework. Like

Giotto, Van Eyck anticipated the course of naturalistic Western
painting; certainly he unwittingly created 'the interior' as a
subject for pictures, and left Dutch seventeenth-century genre
painters little to do except duplicate his elTects, rarely with such

rigorous control.

Although it is wrong to divide fifteenth-century, still less

sixteenth-century, Europe too neatly into North and South for there was a constant exchange of influence, and Jan Van
Eyck, for example, was highly esteemed in Italy - it yet remains
Northern art tended to emphasize, with Aristotelian
concern, natural man in his natural environment, while in Italy
more elevated, transcendental obsessions lifted him into Platonic

valid that

spheres. Before Diirer,

interest

in

artistic

few Northern

artists

showed much

theory or would have claimed

deep

intellectual basis for their art.

Interest in man himself encouraged the most personal ot
mirrors - the portrait - which nearly every Northern painter
produced. Marvellously plotted as are Van Eyck's, it is the
portraits by Rogier van der Weyden (III. g^) which best capture
the living, emotional impact of sheer humanity, with some
elusive sense of the fragihty as well as the beauty ot human
existence. Rogier's rehgious pictures show that this sense is not
subjective, for there the pathos is quite apparent. Superbly

Hfelike in surface realism, his people are

more

intensely real for

being vessels of interior emotion - themselves men, and women,

of sorrows 'and acquainted with grief. It was no mere illusionistic trick when Rogier painted a crystal teardrop on the Virgin's
face. And though for long Northern art notoriously showed
little interest in the nude as such, it was always conscious ot the
naked, exposed human condition. The greatest tlttcenth-century
sculptor in the North, Nikolaus Gerhaert, shared Rogier's
intensity; his almost shockingly realistic portrait bust (///. g4)
124

93

ROGIER VAN DER

WEYDEN

Philippe de Cioy

94 NIKOLAUS GERHAERT
Portrait Bust 1467
125

95

House of Jacques Canir, Bourges, Mid

fifteenth century

has inevitably been called a self-portrait. Despite the solidity of

stone, it too conveys fragility, with a palpitating sense ot skin

by the hand's pressure - and the hand a marvel ot weight

and texture, suggesting sinew, knuckle and fingernails. The
hunched pose is a pose of actual life, at once brooding and
relaxed, so that we seem to encounter another person at a
private moment when he is unaware ot scrutiny.
The new illusionistic power of art to reflect back man and his
environment is seen on a monumental scale and yet in domestic
context on the fiic^ade of the house ot Jacques Ccrur at Bourges
creased

g3), a private dwelling for a great mid-tlfteenth-century

financier, one of the rising middle class. That Co^ur was quite

(///.

is macie clear by his motto, A vaillaiis

which is carved in the well-designed,
elaborately decorated rooms of his house. A citizen's hc^me has
now become palace and church combined (Caair's chapel is
incorporated within his house) and the guardian saints from
cathedral porches have become the litelike servants - forever

conscious of aspiring
cneurs

ricii

impossible,

126

96 VAN DER
GOES Portiiiciri
aUarpiccc
(right

wing)

97 LEONARDO Adoratioii of the

Kiii^^s

?i48i

waiting for their master - carved to peer inquisitively out of

simulated windows on the fa<;ade.
No less monumental was the scale in which, before the end
of the fifteenth century, painting mirrored actual people. In
Hugo van der Goes' Portinari altarpiece (III. g6), atmosphere,
buildings, water, hills, trees and people - the whole range of
the visible

world -

are contained with astonishing verisimili-

challenges painted sculpture by its powerful forms with

full-length, actual-size portraiture and every refinement of
texture from heavy, brocaded, fur-lined robe to the silky halttude.

It

transparent strands of the kneeling

girl's hair.

But

that

is

only

the beginning. Thanks to the luminous property of oil paint, it

can eclipse all other arts in conveying in the same composition
128

the very tang of a winter day, in a countryside of bare, brownish

where a few birds perch in tall, leafless trees, and a cold

hills,

gleams on the steely surface of a lake.

Commissioned by a Florentine, Tommaso Portinari, agent
of the Medici bank in Bruges, the altarpiece probably really was
a revelation when it arrived in Florence about 1476. As a picture
to convey the sense of what it might have been Hke to be
light

present at the Nativity - or rather, if the Nativity had taken

place in the fifteenth-century - the impact of the whole huge
is as immediate as a miracle play. In other pictures
der Goes aims at almost disturbed, highly emotional
assaults on the spectator, to impress scenes on him with eyewitness eflfect in a way that anticipates Griinewald (III. 154)1x1 the

altarpiece

Van

following century. As for the wonderful winter landscape, this

has almost gained autonomy; it is by no means the first of such
sensitively observed landscapes embedded in Northern pictures,
but on this scale, and with its integration of figures into the
landscape, it becomes a prototype for Bruegel (III. 156). Some
Florentine painters too certainly responded to the total impact
of the altarpiece, which is indeed a quintessence of Northern
achievement.
Yet, within five years of its arrival in Florence, Leonardo
da Vinci was to begin his Adoration of the Kings (III. gy), more
ideal than naturalistic, in a setting utterly unlike any ordinary
environment, ruled by intellect as much as by observation.
Mystery has replaced clarity - and this would probably always
have been so, even had the picture been completed. Not
astonishingly lifelike portrait figures but shadowy, graceful
types of youth and old age, dressed in timeless robes, ebb and
flow with elemental vitality about the graceful still centre that
is the Virgin. After Van der Goes' vigorous miracle play, we are
witnessing a classic drama: one that crystallizes Italian achieve-

ment, marvelled over by Leonardo's contemporaries and to

inspire the young Raphael, born two years after it was begun.
Leonardo is a culmination of those Italian interests which
from the early fifteenth century had been attempting in effect
a combination of ars and scientia which would produce
ambitiously new and more truthful art. They are particularly
associated with Florence through the triumvirate oi friends
Donatello, Brunclleschi and Masaccio, by fir the youngest and
shortest-lived. To these must be added another Florentine,
Alberti, also their friend but more obviously learned, literate
and more theoretically-inclined. The very prestige of Florence,
129

M
t-*^

VO-

^^=

.^^

y8 DELLA QUHKCIA CfCdtioil

Oj Adcllll

I425-3S

by Florentines like Alberti and codified in the Lives of

by adoption, Vasari, perhaps blinds us to the
attempts sporadically made elsewhere in Italy. Although it is

asserted

that Florentine

customary to explain nearly every Renaissance manitestation as

engendered by Brunelleschi's architecture or by his discovery of
a method of visual perspective, by Donatello's sculpture and by
Masaccio's paintings, this is too neat an explanation. Thus,
somewhat older probably than any of these famous artists was
a Sienese sculptor, Jacopo della Querela, who is increasingly
recognized as an independently great figure. He brought to
sculpture his own remarkable feeling for organization and
monumentality - achieving in the Genesis reliefs (///. g8) for
the church of S. Petronio at Bologna massively eloquent effects
which were to be admired by Michelangelo. The strongly
muscular body of Adam, naked and newly stirring under God
the Father's gaze, is itself no bad Renaissance symbol, showing a
quickening concern with anatomy, and expressive too of art's
confident power to re-create the moment of first human
creation. Quercia's vital, alert Adam, gazing up directly at his
Creator, seems to otfer inspiration for the heroic Adam of
Michelangelo's electric, cosmic vision (III. 127) where God the
Father creates not man but a demi-god.
Jacopo della Quercia is probably the most distinguished nonFlorentine artist of the early fifteenth century, serving as a
reminder that Renaissance concepts might be embodied in any
genius and did not require a specifically Florentine climate in
which to bloom, hideed, it was at Florence that della Quercia
was signally defeated, when in 1401 a competition was organized
for a new pair of bronze doors for the Baptistery. Brunellcschi
also was ultimately defeated, and turned from sculpture to
architecture. Donatello was too young to compete, but he was

soon to be employed in the studio of the victorious contestant,

Lorenzo Ghiberti.
What is remarkable about Florence in these years is the
diversity of talents, sometimes interacting, sometimes opposing
each other, yet always sharing some intellectual quahty, and
over-spilling from one category of art into another - not
surprisingly when most of the exponents were proficient in
several media. Ghiberti is, in many ways, the fither ot them all.
Himself trained as a painter and goldsmith, involved in the
project for the

dome of Florence cathedral,

as

well as responsible

eventually for a second pair of bronze doors for the Baptistery,

he inevitably had a busy workshop through which passed many
131

over a period of some forty years. To his other

Ghiberti in old age added writing; he is the first
artist to produce, in effect, an autobiography. Whereas he fairly
speedily described his first pair of bronze doors, he lingered
lovingly in detail over the second pair, not only describing each
scene but stating what his guiding principles had been in
executing them: close imitation of nature, observation of
proportions and use of perspective.

young

artists

activities,

The result of these clearly formulated aims is seen in the story

of Isaac (III. gg), one of the ten large gilded-bronze panels that
make up these later Baptistery doors, placed in position in 1452,
'the Gates of Paradise', as Michelangelo called them. Although
three episodes are combined in the scene, the effect is of total,
overall harmony - a quite consciously organized effect which
comes from the precise calculation of space into, as well as
across, the composition. Ghiberti has made explicit his concern
with much more than just telHng the story. Indeed, his 'nature'
is a very different concept from the natural effects achieved by
Jan van Eyck, Hugo van der Goes, or even by Giotto. It is much
more artful and artificial. One can hardly call the beautiful
series of interlocked, palatial arcades, receding in ever-thinner
relief into the bronze panel, merely the setting, because they and the space they adumbrate - are virtually the subject.
They are part of that almost programmatic determination to
explore space in art, to organize in real architecture too - as well
as in sculpture and pictures - lucid buildings in which spatial
relationships would be defined with new clarity. Ghiberti has
here built his own temple of this new art, rising gracefully but
firmly from the elaborately chequered pavement which itself
forms a geometrical grid, demonstrating command of perspective. In fact it is perspective which is the secret subject of the
composition. Everything within it obeys this intellectual law,
where all the lines of pavement and architecture, and the
disposition of the figures, are calculated to lead the eye to a
single vanishing-point, beyond the last arcade, in the centre of
the composition. Ghiberti lays over disparate phenomena the
cool scheme of his own intellectual vision which presents us
with an order that underlies the merely visible. Order rather
than beauty is his aim, though inevitably a sense of beauty comes
from such an ordering.
That Ghiberti had been trained as a painter is probably
relevant, and his square reliefs with their thick, plain frames are
like so

132

many

individual pictures inserted into the elaborately

99 GHIBERTI The Story of Isaac 1425-38. Relief from the Baptistery

doors, Florence

framework of the doors. Painters rather than

theme of organized, architccturallydefmed space in which figures can move with calm assurance.
It is a theme continually worked on and refmed throughout the
fifteenth century, and then subsequently stated in one final,
definitive masterpiece - Raphael's School of Athens (III. izg) sculpted outer

sculptors seem to take up the

there could be no progress. Yet that sense of

permanent, underlying order, with its preference for intellectual rather than surface beauty, is something which, once
demonstrated as achievable in painting, would remain. It is a
demonstration which separates the fifteenth century from the
Gothic world, and indeed from antiquity. It becomes a principle

beyond which

133

Western painting, patent not only in Raphael but in Poussin

and Cezanne, crystallizing in the group round Mondrian early
in this century. The philosopher Schoenmaekers, who greatly
influenced him, made a statement that would certainly have
been understood by fifteenth-century Florentine artists and
in

philosophers: 'We want to penetrate nature in such a

the inner construction of reality is revealed to us.'

way

that

For this reason most painters there tended to ignore the

appeal of natural atmosphere and surfaces, absorbed in building
an 'inner construction of reality' which could be as mathematically planned as it is in a picture by Uccello (Ill.ioo ), with
its

clear-cut defiance of the

tion

of

a decorative

even

horses,

principle

more

is

at

reahstic

muddle of real warfare, and substitugeometry drawn from helmets, lances,

To some extent, this abstracting

much more animated - but no
of Botticelli. He is indifferent to

dead body.

work

too in the

- pictures

defining space in depth, but

intervals.

Out of these he

is uniquely sensitive to linear

built the intense, private reahty of the

Venus (HI. loi ), in which it might be said that Gothic

methods express a Renaissance concept. Perfect harmony
reigns throughout the composition, symbolized in the weightless pose and poise of the goddess, effortlessly sure of sustaining
her balance in the rhythm of propulsion. This is a morally
serious picture, in which pagan mythology is treated with the
Birth of

earnestness previously reserved for Christian subjects.

100 UCCELLO Rout of S. RoilhVIO

'^^

<?

U\\\v,

Wave-

01

BOTTICELLI Birth of

borne Venus returns

'oins

as if

from

exile,

perhaps symbolizing love

pivotal force of the universe but serene, spiritual love,

almost closer to Dante than to any poet of classical antiquity.
as the

Nor are preoccupations with mathematical and ideal truths the

prerogative of Florentine painters. With a subtle sense of
interval rivalling Botticelli's,

and with

much more

subtle

response than Uccello's to the poetry of geometry, Piero della

Francesca created what are now among the most famous of
fifteenth-century pictures, like the Resurrection (III. 102 ) in his
small native town of San Sepolcro. The sepulchre here is a
scarcely substantial rectangle, but its long horizontal divides
the picture at exactly one-third of its height. Christ's absolutely
is calculated by placing him vertically in the
middle of the composition; he is its emotional and perhaps
literal module, being half the height of the total picture.
Even the revolutionary naturalism of Masaccio is in the
interests of an inner reality. Nature is penetrated rather than
observed in the Trinity (III. 103), which is a more monumental

logical 'rightness'

135

concentration of the interests shown by Ghiberti's Isaac panel.

Masaccio's now much-praised bulky figures look back to
Giotto, and though they lend themselves to being written
about in sculptural terms they are not necessarily finer - or even
more historically important - as a result. Indeed, Ghiberti's

more
is

fluid figures

most

were probably much more

significant in Masaccio's Trinity

is

influential.

paint of space, and the painted architectural construction

is

probably the nearest thing to

What

the exploration in

which

surviving painting by

Brunelleschi.

Almost an exact contemporary of Ghiberti's, Brunelleschi

was equally multi-talented. It is true that he lost the 1401
competition to Ghiberti, but he was to prove one of the most

103

MASACCIO

The Trinity
1425

potent demonstrations that not every important thmg in

Florence was by Ghiberti. Brunelleschi's concern with the
question of mathematical perspective in painting perhaps
literally lies behind the coffered barrel-vault in Masaccio's
fresco - the indented lines being still visible - and is certainly
inspired, if not positively executed, by Brunelleschi. Probably
Ghiberti's own developing grasp of centralized perspective
and response to architecture were also indebted to his rival - not
only to the projects but to the actual buildings Brunelleschi
constructed.

137

PIERO DELLA IRANCESCA

TIlC RcSlincClioil

104 BRUNELLESCHI

Cupola of the

Duomo,

Florence,

1432.

Unfinished

at

Brunellcschi's

death in 1446

achievement was the vast dome of

it was his turn to triumph over
04
Ghiberti, it is in the small Pazzi chapel that he most clearly
expressed the new architectural ideals of lucidity and order. The
exterior is almost too neatly planned, with its geometrically
precise use of classical motifs - entablature, rosettes, Corinthian
columns - but used to create, as it were, a 'modern' classicism,
not merely imitation. The facade uses the same vocabulary as
the architecture in Masaccio's fresco, and inside the chapel (III.
105) the balanced, patterned symmetry is perhaps even more
strikingly similar. There is the same passion for clarity, definition and what might be called a rich austerity. In the chapel,
bands of grey pietra serena mark out and define the white walls pattern-making rather than serving any real functional purpose,
If Brunellcschi's greatest

the cathedral

(III.

where

but giving an abstractly beautiful effect. Nothing is blurred or

The spectator is not challenged by doubts about
reality; rather, the reality of space extending around him seems
made palpable and controlled. Under the shallow cupola of the
Pazzi chapel, man does not shrink but contentedly expands,
harmonized into being part of this lucid scheme, able to relate
himself to these proportions. If this is a simulacrum of the

indefinite.

universe, man's place in

I3

it is

central.

I05 BUUNHLi.HSCiii Pazzi

1443

cli.ipcl,

FKmcikc

(intcrmr).

Work

suspciulcd

The new architecture was not restricted to churches. More

than one architect now thought again in civic terms, substituting ideal order for the incoherence which had grown up
in medieval cities. At Florence there emerged the town palace
to house those prosperous merchant citizens who were struggling for leadership - and who still struggled even after the
Medici family had achieved domination. Something fortresslike and forbidding is still felt in the facade of Palazzo Rucellai
(III. 108 ) designed by Alberti, the first palace to revive classical
orders in the superimposed pilasters which help to articulate
each storey and give visual coherence to the building. Leon
Battista Alberti is also the first Renaissance theoretician,
reviving antique forms in a more consciously classicizing way
than Brunelleschi, more obviously learned and more eager to
instruct others. He studied the writings of the imperial Roman
architect Vitruvius (by whom no buildings are known) and
himself wrote treatises on architecture, painting and sculpture.

He

represents a

new

figure, the artist-theoretician,

and stands

new

type of literate patron, anxious for learned, often

highly personal, works of art. It is typical of Alberti that he
should always use the word 'temples' to describe churches, and
convenient that the most idiosyncratic of all churches - that of
S. Francesco at Rimini (III. 106) - was designed by him. Its
also for a

106 ALBERTI

S.

Francesco, Rimini

c.

1450

SliS^lS^IUI

1^

triumphal arch-like facade was never finished, but its Roman

reminiscences are obvious enough, even without the
Pantheon-inspired dome which was intended to crown the
building.

Alberti described in writing the complete ideal city, with

temples and public buildings, and regular palaces and houses
graded for the grades of citizen. But the basically severe concept
of a cube of palace, with windows and doorways equally
severely treated, remained monotonously true of Florence. It
impossible to imagine there comparable effects to the trompe

is

Vcvil on Jacques Coeur's house (III. g^), so closely contemporary

with Palazzo Rucellai. It was at Venice that a much richer style
of palace architecture was to be encouraged, where Alberti's
pilasters have become sturdy pillars grouped along a facade
that is further animated by jutting balconies and clusters of
high windows which at each storey curve up its full extent (III.
107 ) Instead of the 'blind' effect of Florentine palaces, with
their suggestions of narrow, rather bare rooms behind the
facjade, there is an open spaciousness about these Venetian

windows offer maximum illumination to

The owners of such palaces were equally
merchants, but more princely and frankly luxury-loving

facades

where

the

the spacious interiors.

rich

in their use

of art.

107 LOMBARDO and CODUCCI

Palazzo Vendrainin, Venice.

Begun
?,^.

U.U

c.

148

^:!i-*SHailffflBt<

.Ti.l..ii

lT.T.n

,f.l..in \

[^ f,m|:|..L;)ir

n,m^-.

an.mL ^._ c

108 ALBERTI
Palazzo Rucellai,
Florence 1445-57

Indeed,

it

was anywhere rather than

developed the

finest

domestic

interiors,

at

Florence that there

where men could

feel

How

much this was

pleasurably at ease as well as uplifted.
completely art's province is shown by the beautifully decorated
rooms in the palace built at Urbino in the mid-fifteenth century
for Federico da Montefeltro: a palace today stripped of much
of its furnishings but giving no sense ot emptiness or desolation.
There a doorway (III. i og ) becomes a work of art, delicately
and crisply carved, while the door itself may be no less carefully
designed to hold an inlaid pattern in the wood. Beauty rather
than a grandiose effect is what matters. The palace itself is a
marvel of harmony, a house rather than a fortress despite its

109

Doorway of the

Sala dclTIole, Palazzo Ducalc,

Urbino

c.

146S

tMiuuMiiuum

UMIHMt.

fj.t).w/.w.fwM;jnjjiw.w.iw.r>,

uiuuii|imimiii

3&\X|^C-li-"fv?i.'^v

m
ii)l))yil!l|))l))l)llll!l)liJIII)l|)JIJ)ilJ!lll|)l)li)ll).l))Lli)))0^

p^^i^m:^>^a((|p)

2;'

:i.

h
:

mmmifmimkk

An

almost Eyckian grasp on reality presents

their environment, without any
flattery or idealization. Intimate rather than public events are
selves

(III.

111).

these people,

and suggests

commemorated,

suitably personal for a private

had been

a small-scale

brothers

(III.

book of illuminations by

room. What
the

Limbourg

77) has here swelled into a large-scale fresco

cycle.

with relating him to the

himself. The massive
statuesque people of Giotto may be felt to be not sufficiently
articulated; their bodies remain hewn, archaic blocks and their
faces impassive in grief or joy. Man's physical appearance was
equally to be re-scrutinized. Modelled by light and shade which
gives relief, articulated, expressive, and naked, man and
woman are driven from Paradise in Masaccio's Carmine
fresco (///. 112)- the first of the new generation, banished from
the Gothic Garden of Eden, to tread solidly on solid earth. But

The concern with man's

setting,

man

universe, argues fresh interest in

who had made it possible for

humanity in painting.
Donatello, older than Masaccio, younger than Brunelleschi
and Ghiberti, outlived them all; he did not die until 1466, and
he was working up to the end of his hfe. His art enshrines the
full triumph of human beings - not only as bodies physically

it

was

a sculptor,

Donatello,

Masaccio to express

this stark

simulated in life-size free-standing figures of stone and bronze,

but as containers of emotion, experiencing and conveying the
subtlest states of mind. This intensely expressive character is
what has stamped all Donatello's work, from the largest statue
to the smallest relief It is true that he was a revolutionary
master of three-dimensional spatial effects (able to teach lessons
to his teacher, Ghiberti), a revolutionary master of realistic

when necessary to convey classical

113); but he was not a sculptor equivalent to
Brunelleschi as architect or Masaccio as painter, despite their
mutual friendship. By the end of his hfe, he had tacitly rejected

monumental
gravity

sculpture, able

(III.

their concerns. His pursuit

of emotional expression had led to

the bronze reHef of the Resurrection (III. 114) which is barely

bothered with space, and presents us with a wearily clambering,
battered Christ - very different from Piero della Francesca's
(III.

102

- grasping his banner

from the tomb as if from

like a battle-axe,

emerging

nearly mortal struggle with

death. Donatello's triumphant concentration on humanity is
tinged with a considerable irony: when explored, the human
condition is seen to be no perfect harmony of man and his

joylessly

144

niti

'/fJIlM^

'"p^"

III

MANTEGNA

environment;
vulnerable

Frcsco

we

ot"

thc

are not

Gonzaga tamily

(detail)

1474

monumental, archaic presences but

flesh.

Donatello aims

at

psychological truth.

Ideas of victory,

naturally associated with the saints and with the Resurrection,

of David's conquest of Goliath. The

victorious and ready to take
on another giant, is seen in Verrocchio's David (III. 116), a
famous and popular statue by a great Florentine sculptor of the
next generation after Donatello. Not a tremor disturbs his
proud features, softened - if at all - by the fiiintest complacency.

are implicit too in the story

keen, competent

young shepherd,

145

12

MASACCIO

Expulsion from
Paradise

1425/6-8
(III. 115), historically remarkable as the
bronze since antiquity, is aesthetically,
emotionally, remarkable too. It pays tribute, no doubt, to
Donatello's study of antique sculpture, but its ethos is far
removed from any classical god's. If we did not know the

But Donatello's
first nude cast

146

statue
in

113

DONATELLO

Equestrian statue of
Gattamclata 1447-53

114 DONATELLO

The

1462-6.
Relief from the pulpit
of S. Lorenzo, Florence
Resurrection

'

i!

c.

>^)>ifniy^^wf^W^iHH(fi

ii

fin H
I

[mm

nor had Goliath's head to form the statue's base, this

might ahiiost seem to embody defeat. That is not subtle
enough to do justice to Donatello's imaginative concept,
whereby suggestions of lassitude in the midst of victory and
sadness after exertion have slightly slackened the Hmbs. The
long-bladed sword seems too heavy for the boy to hold any
longer. Complete nudity, only enhanced by the shepherd's hat,
conveys an idea of innocence. There is something shocking,
even perhaps to the divinely-inspired perpetrator, in killing a
man; David seems bemused by his feat, brushed by disturbing
sensations as his leg is brushed by the feathered wing of his
story,

Dai'id

victim's helmet.

Perhaps it is not surprising that we know nothing of contemporary reactions to this, and to some other now familiar
statues by Donatello. His very late works, the S. Lorenzo
bronze pulpits (of which the Resurrection is part), were not set
up in Florence until 1515 - at which time they made a con-

117 ANTONIO

POLLAIUOLO Hercules
and Antaeus

wide
siderable impact, at least on painters. Indeed, Donatello's
on
influence was, even in his lifetime, perhaps most marked
any case it could not
evolved, and the
and
be a single effect, for his own
category of art
any
hardly
left
achievements
his
of
complexity
untouched. Physical study of the body, so patent in his Dai'id,
was pursued in both painting and sculpture by the brothers
Antonio and Piero Pollaiuolo. Antonio produced what seem
where the nude is
to be the first 'modern' bronze statuettes,
painters

- from Masaccio

to

Mantegna.

hi

style shifted

often

thrown

into violent action

(III.

117), studied here for its

Even in the

for its classical subject-matter.

own

sake rather than

by the
clothed figures of Luca Signorclli, in turn influenced
modelled
strongly
Pollaiuolo brothers, there is a harsh sense of
anatomy and a defiance of conventional beauty. Perhaps, like

Michelangelo,

Donatcllo

would have responded

to

the

Judgment
violently expressive nudes who stir into life in his Last
as well
saved
are
there
frescoes at Orvieto (III. 119). Although
149

115

DONATELLO

Di7l'l(/

1440-3

116 VERROCCHio Dai'id. Bctorc 1476

damned

in this apocalyptic vision, Signorclli's imagination

with grim vividness on mankind's awe. Heaven rains
fire; angels sound their trumpets; and trembling naked men
and women await their fate.
From Donatello came also technical innovations. He had set
up the bronze equestrian memorial to Gattamelata and also
evolved a new style of tomb, with equal emphasis on immortality, constructing round the image of the deceased everincreasingly elaborate niches with heaven hovering close at
hand in a group of Virgin and Child. Death is softened into a
dreaming sleep, and indeed is defied by the immortality which
as

fastens

art gives.

Out of the

originally quite

finally the richest

that

at

of

all

modest wall-monument emerged

fifteenth-century funerary chapels,

Florence for the Cardinal of Portugal

(III.

118),

by the brothers Bernardo and Antonio Rossellino. In

this there is a positively Baroque variety of gilding, coloured
marble, trompe I'ceil painting - so much busy decoration amid
which the quite un-Baroque, calmly sleeping figure of the
created

Cardinal lies at rest.

Donatello's withdrawal from spatial obsessions into an
increasingly emotional sphere, peopled by beings conventionally ugly in their expressiveness but passionately human, is
itself a significant result of newly scrutinizing nature and man.
Escaped from Gothic uncertainty, man had reacted by building
temples perhaps too rigorously lucid and ordered. Space may
prove not susceptible of being organized into a neat threedimensional cube. The penetration of nature, which might
seem to promise a fundamental coherence, could reveal disconcerting facts. Even the desire for universal knowledge
might lead to a knowingness which missed the essential
mystery of things. In the sixteenth century, the English poet
Spenser's friend, Gabriel Harvey, was to scold those who
behave 'As if they had a key for all the locks in Heaven.' Some
doors must remain closed even to the most potent conjunction
of ars and scieiitia and it is this perhaps which ultimately
Leonardo da Vinci understood. 'Nature is full of infinite causes
that do not come within experience,' he wrote; and again and
again over sheets of drawings: 'Tell me, if ever anything was
finished.' Certainly the Adoratioti of the Kiri^^s (III. 97) was not,
remaining a dream of grandeur, a confusedly rich palimpsest
from which others could pluck a vocabulary, but which was
never brought to full, final coherence.
150

In

some ways,

prove

the empirical attitude of Jan van Eyck might

which to look at the universe. The

a truer perspective in

warmly atmospheric, natural world of Giovanni Bellini, himwhen young by Donatello and sharing much of

self influenced

poignant power, is quite unintellectual. He responds with

hght and colour, almost palpably fused into an
envelope to wrap round the Madonna quietly praying over her
sleeping Child (III. 121). Light is graduated in a subtle way that
comes from no scientific study but plain observation. Even
about the composition's coherence there is a natural air, so that
we scarcely realize it is composed - accepting this woman and
child seated in the stony fields with the herdsmen and their
oxen, the castle on its hill, all held in a perfect, glowing prism
of translucence.

his
all

his senses to

118 ROSSELLINO BROTHERS Tomb of the Cardinal of Portugal

1461-6. S. Miniato al Monte, Florence

c.

'

iiy siGNORELLi Last Jiidi^DU'iit

r';

jMTTTjIBjiflMi'iiv^MiiiTiiirT.

frcscot's (detail)

::

1499-1503

As for the disturbing aspects of nature, sensed in Leonardo

and Signorelli, and no less in Diirer, they are patent in the contemporary pictures of Hieronymus Bosch, as sensitive as BelHni
to atmospheric effects but in a weird universe (III. 120). The
world is like a great apple cut open, and found to be full of
maggots. Man is no monumental hero but a shrimp, created in
a strange universe, ahen to the humanity of della Quercia. The
world is full of wonderfully dehcate organisms that seem set in
motion not by the great Architect but by some crazy clockmaker. It is a frightening cosmos that Bosch presents, but we
may feel it is closer to the truth of things than the spacious halls
of Ghiberti's palace (III. gg). Combined with complete confidence in conveying the illusion of physical appearances, painting could now begin to serve hallucinatory purposes - suggesting
visions and nightmares, with visionary or nightmare intensity.
152

120 BOSCH Garden of Earthly Delij^hts (detail)

c.

1500

CHAPTER FIVE

Perfect Manners

twenty or so years of the sixteenth century saw art

which burnt throughout Europe,
turning craftsmen into artists of princely stature who have
never lost their prestige. Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo,
Raphael, Diirer, Titian - these are only among the first names
in an extraordinary concourse of talents working contemporaneously, and posthumously at work for centuries in the
influence they exercised. As long as some sort of naturalistic
canon governed painting and sculpture, the achievements of a
Titian or a Michelangelo would retain their relevance - to the
point of making later generations of artists almost despair.
Impressionism and its aftermath could claim an ancestor in
Titian's late work; and Renoir's enthusiasm for him is significant: 'Titian! He has everything in his favour.' Rodin is the
last heir of Michelangelo - very different though the two
sculptors' working methods were.
These are only the extreme limits of styles and influences, that
were formed in the sixteenth century but which constantly
went on revitalizing and inspiring art in a way previously
unparalleled. What is unparalleled is not the continuation of a
style as such but its continual evolution under manipulation
from fresh geniuses. If a style may be likened to a stream, then
these are streams of molten metal - here made to follow a
finely drawn channel in which it runs as a mere glittering thread,
there pouring hotly into a scooped-out hole, now cooled into
twisted artificial shapes and now again left in apparently rough

The

first

refined in a blaze of creativity

Goldsmiths, alchemists, magicians, the great sixteenthcentury artistic creators each seemed to strike the earth at a
different point and cause to flow a spring which would prove
the source for the great artists who followed them.
can trace the phenomenon in all the three major arts (in
the architectural style that begins with Palladio at least as much
as in Michelangelo's sculpture) but in none is it more patent
than in painting - the new predominance of which is itself
state.

We

155

122 LEONARDO
Moiia Lisa c. 1 503

something created by the sixteenth century. What Raphael

painted would be admired and influential in the eyes of Rubens,
Rembrandt, Poussin and Bernini in the seventeenth century,
still exercise great influence in the eighteenth century, be worshipped in the nineteenth century by Ingres - and praised too by
Renoir. Nor is it just a matter of Raphael's own huge prestige.
What emerged in the early sixteenth century were manners of
painting flexible enough to serve Western art for several
centuries. Even the 'revolutionary' attitudes of Caravaggio and
Courbet are in fact contained within these well-established
styles, and we may doubt if their revolutions would have
seemed so shockingly novel to the contemporaries of Raphael
and Titian. The periods art-historically labelled 'Baroque' and
'Rococo', and that always continuing current ot 'realism' which
accompanied them, arc all in essence contained in early sixteenthcentury achievements. The airborne visions of Tiepolo (lU.
221), the last great exponent of high Rococo manner, find their
ultimate origin in Michelangelo's Sistine ceiling frescoes
127),

156

completed

in 1512.

(111.

123

HAPiiAi'L Portidii of Bdldassarc disti^ilioiiL

new refinement, its sophistication and also its effortcommand of realism, is summed up in Raphael's portrait ot

All the
less

Baldassare CastigHone (III. 123). The sitter alone is significant

enough, introducing us to a new concept of society, populated
not by monks or burgher-merchants but by gentlemen. He was
the author of a famous book // Cortt\^iano (published in 1528,

although written several years earlier) which is concerned not

with the courtier but with good behaviour and social
standards. In an age in which painters could be treated like
gentlemen, Castiglione suitably recommended that gentlemen
should acquire some knowledge of painting as part of their
education. And an important aspect of the new century was
the new respect which was paid to artists. Even if it is only
a legend that the Emperor Charles V stooped to pick up
Titian's brush, the existence of the story is significant. Other
factual testimonies confirm what that anecdote implies. When
Diirer reached Venice, he actually wrote: 'Here I am a gentleman [ein Herr].' Even as imperious a patron as Julius II recognized in Michelangelo a genius who must be honoured.
Castiglione was a close friend of Raphael's, and something ot

just

the portrait's spell comes from a rapport sensed as existing

between painter and sitter.
Probably no comparably subtle and complex portrait of a
man had ever before been painted. It owes a good deal to its
spiritual mother, Leonardo's Mona Lisa (III. 122), but what is
there veiled mystery has become confident clarity in Raphael's

handling.

The

result

is

certainly natural-seeming, but

it

goes

shows the direction of the

graceful and finished
varied,
art,
more
sixteenth-century
new
than nature itself No longer is it a sufficient achievement to cap-

beyond

nature.

That particular

step

ture the likeness of a person Raphael, indifferent to Castiglione's

;

environment (reduced to a portion of wall and slightest

indications of a chair), seeks to capture Castiglione's personality.
The sitter relaxes in a pose devised by the painter, effortlessly
absorbed into becoming a work of art - a chromatic harmony
of silver-grey and black and white, a compositional one of
sinuous, interlocking curves - at once ideal and naturalistic.
At first glance the portrait is wonderfully convincing simply
as an eloquent likeness; it has all, and more, of the vitahty so
much prized by fifteenth-century art. Yet, when examined
it is noticeably timeless, formal for all its vitality, a very
conscious arrangement - as in the dark silhouette of circular hat
against the luminous background - which bespeaks conscious

again,

158

The

choice restriction of Castighone's costume

precepts against bright clothes) is merely
the first of nonchalant-seeming but carefully devised effects.
In place of fifteenth-century detail, so lovingly scrutinized and
recorded, we have these plump, almost generalized torms,
where form matters more than surface texture.
Within this beautifully constructed image there lie two
distinct stylistic potentialities. Blended here, they could be
intention.

(embodying

his

own

separately, refined on and transmuted in their turn,

one way the CastigUone is an ancestor of the intimately
naturalistic art of Rembrandt, while in another it lifts the sitter
out of temporal associations, making a courtier-hero out of this
man so perfectly composed in both the temperamental and
the artistic sense of the word. Verisimilitude as such is then less
important than the ideal series of shapes, all curvilinear, yielding
gracefully to the eye, which have been constructed by Raphael
to convey a sense of artistic confidence and satisfaction that
actually seems in disaccord with the sitter's somewhat anxious
gaze. Even the duality of the portrait is part of art's new per-

drawn out

so that in

Soon there would be painted eye-deceiving effects,

ambiguous visual tricks comparable to those mentioned in
Shakespeare's Richard II: 'Like perspectives, which rightly
gaz'd upon / Show nothing but confusion, - ey'd awry /
.'.
Distinguish form
fection.

These are more than clever virtuoso devices. They reveal art
managing to mirror the ambiguities of human existence, sometimes presenting Christian and historical subjects with new
psychological awareness, as in Pontormo's Visitatioti (III. 159 ),
or introducing a perspective reminder of death into the straightforward-seeming portrait of two friends - as Holbein does in
his so-called

Ambassadors (III. 162).

blended in the Castiglione portrait would

What Raphael had

eventually harden into two opposing forces - fully hostile to

each other by the nineteenth century, but both strangely
irrelevant for modern art. The actual portrait may well have
been known to Titian (who could have seen it at Mantua), hi
the seventeenth century it was certainly seen by both Rubens
and Rembrandt - one executing a full-scale copy of it, the other
hastily noting down its composition and utilizing it tor selfportraits; and late in the nineteenth century it was to be copied
by Matisse. What is crystallized by Raphael in this portrait is
expressed on a variety of scale in the variety ot his other work.
Yet Castiglione remains the perfect figure for the period: the

159

sophisticated connoisseur

who may

be imagined appreciating

the new, heroic achievements of sculpture (III. 123), or the

richness of the new medium of engraving (Ill.i4g ), the ideal

inhabitant of some elegant villa with its superbly planned

garden, equally a product of art's refinement and response to
social needs. Finally, Castiglione's nationality is symbolically
correct, because ItaHan art had taken the leading place in
Europe, along with Italian manners. What is usually called the

High Renaissance

style

was almost an

entirely Italian creation;

remained Italianate even when disseminated through Europe,

and was indeed often carried there by expatriate Italians. In
itself this points to the prestige of Italian art; and among the
first of such expatriates was one of the very greatest, Leonardo
da Vinci, whose fmal years were spent in France.

it

124

160

LEONARDO

D('/;((^'('

Although Leonardo's life was peripatetic and some of his

works left unfinished (or, like the Last Supper, ruined in

finest

his lifetime),

he

is

in an extraordinary

way

the animating

new, perfect styles. In him is first apparent

an effortless conquest of nature. He is also the first of the
perfectly mannered artists, a legend in his lifetime for his grace-

principle behind the

ful

elegance,

beautiful

clothes,

knowledge- all reflected in

his

mysteriously

universal

the suave people of his drawings

and

themselves so often hauntingly graceful, supernaturally beautiful in youth or supernaturally wise in old age.
In the Adoration of the Kings (III. gj) he already set a press of
such people about the Virgin and Child, and made a fitting
environment for them by turning the Bethlehem stable into a
palatial ruin with a great double staircase, where noble horses
pace with equal suavity. He took the factual fifteenth-century
paintings,

and created the memorable image of Mona Lisa (III.

is not only in the woman but m that
melting background, an unvisited country of sunken, ribbonlike rivers winding among inaccessible crystalline peaks - an
portrait

122),

where the mystery

no less disturbing than is the sitter's expression.

Leonardo's imaginings would cast their spell over many great
sixteenth-century artists including Raphael, being felt by
Giorgione and Correggio - both magician-like painters whose
art would aim in turn at casting a spell over the spectator. And
even where he did not positively execute but only brooded on
eternity

possibilities,

Leonardo seemed

to exercise a fertilizing influence.

He dreamed of a centrally planned domed church, occurring in

various designs among his manuscripts, prophetic of Baroque
achievements and providing more than
Bramante's plan of the new St Peter's.

a hint

probably for

Leonardo seldom worked his concepts

began to lose interest once
the idea was formulated. Increasingly he seems to have thought
of himself as not a painter. His interests were as much in science,
anatomy, geology, and in 'machines' - from pageant mechanisms to projects for flying. But he had introduced a new concept
of grace into art, in his uncanny, supra-real figures and in that
twilit, smoky technique which hints at impermanence, flux, dissolution. Leonardo's contribution seems symbolized by one of
those swirhng deluges he liked to draw (III. 124), graceful, energetic, and yet ultimately alien a world from which man is swept
away. Nature as we know it has certainly been vanquished,
It

scarcely matters that

into actual execution. Probably he

but

this

elemental vision

is

not altogether optimistic.

I6l

world - realistic-seeming
beyond our ordinary experience - may frighten as well
as delight us. What it will certainly do is affect us in an overwhelming way. Just as the Motia Lisa surpassed the plain
humanity of fifteenth-century portraiture, so the closely
contemporary David of Michelangelo (III. 125) has made a
giant hero out of Donatello's shepherd boy (III. 115). Not
blood but some divine ichor flows in the veins of this vast
figure, totally nude and aggressive in nudity, a positive
Gohath beside Donatello's David - an impossibly heroic, magnificent statue which forbids any identification with mankind,
Art's ability to create a supernatural

but

far

despite

Nor

all

does

who

the suggestions of muscle and sinew carved in marble.

this

David require any miraculous help from God;

it

god. After Leonardo, Michelangelo is the next

overpoweringly revolutionary creator of a new style, himself
trained within the fifteenth century but much younger than
Leonardo and outliving him by almost half a century. Leonardo
was on the committee at Florence in 1 504 to decide the placing

is

he

is

127 MICHELANGELO Crcatioii of Mail Sistmc Chapel,

Rome

508-1.

of Michelangelo's Dat'id: the two men seem to have always felt

an uneasy rivalry, and neither would have thought of himself
as primarily a painter. It was left to Raphael to bring the two
men together - artistically speaking - and become the first
painter to fuse and apply their divergent manners.
Michelangelo replaces Leonardo's universal speculations with
a single obsession, already declared in his David: the human
body. It is symboHcally apt that he should have frescoed the
Sistine chapel ceiling with scenes from Genesis, and that the
most memorable of those frescoes is the Creation of Man (III.
127). In himself both Jehovah and Adam, Michelangelo
crystallizes here the whole myth of artistic creation. Energy is

embodied

in the sweeping ovoid group from which Jehovah,

borne along on the impetuous bodies of his own angelic
creation, extends one fmger to vitalize his last creation, man: a
perfect, about to become living, statue. The principle of energy
- that spark already jumping in the tiny gap between the fingertips of Creator and created - has communicated itself to the

163

125, 126

MICHELANGELO

(/(_'//)

David 1503-4

(nX'/'O lioiidaiiiiii Picta

1555-64

most extraordinary aspect of the ceiling: the twenty seated

youths, more Hving painted sculpture, who serve to frame each
scene from Genesis, and who are like a triumphal chorus to
illustrate God's words: 'Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish
the earth.

.'
.

Although we know how^ much Michelangelo hated the huge

and terrible task of frescoing the Sistine ceiling, it remains his
most perfectly accomplished work. It contains, as Vasari said
with

permissible

exaggeration,

every

perfection,

so

that

might well not bother to seek other inventions,

attitudes, methods of expression, striking subjects; a whole
vocabulary was there. Yet the medium remained uncongenial
to Michelangelo. His concept of creativity was connected with
real plasticity, weight and volume - not merely the feigned
suggestion of these in paint. Thus, though never completed,
the Medici chapel at Florence is closer to his ideals. It is rich for
art's sake - with pilasters, mouldings, niches, and even doorways that have no structural or utilitarian purpose. One is
hardly conscious of the walls, since they are sculpted and
delicately wrought into a series of projections and recessions,
with little space left unadorned; they have become skeleton
frames ot shallow ledges and brackets, so much background to
the dominant sculpture (III 128) which would have filled more
of them had it been executed as intended.

painters

This is capricious, deliberately invented architecture, not

based on study of ancient examples, nor mirroring a coherent
cosmos with man centrally placed in it. The uneasy figures on
the tombs, and the heroic, armoured effigies of the Medici
princes who are commemorated - but not realistically portrayed - increase the effect of having penetrated into a strange
temple, marvellous, dignified, but scarcely reassuring. How
calmly by comparison the Cardinal of Portugal could sleep in
his tomb (111. 118), but Michelangelo's own vision would
deepen into a more tragic view of existence than had ever
apparently been guessed at by the Rossellino brothers. Michelangelo evolved from being the creator of the David, with its
superb physique and physical pride, into the sculptor of the

Rondanini Picia (III. 126), where Christ is a flayed and broken

body, kept upright only by the rigid Virgin, herself angular and
broken by grief. In 1564, in the last weeks ot his lite, Michelangelo hacked away at this group until nothing was left but
the marble bones we see. Yet the result could hardly be more
expressive; its daring style is not by any means just an accident
164

Michelangelo had long before cracked the mould of his

poHshed style).
Perhaps it was the pursuit of energy which led Michelangelo
to that final group - still a valid work of art, undestroyed for all
the blows inflicted on it. What Leonardo had sought in natural
phenomena, Michelangelo found in man. For the first archsynthesizer of their styles, Raphael, Leonardo probably represented grace and Michelangelo force. Fused in the School of
(for

early,

Athens

(III.

I2g), the

two

qualities

make

a perfect

marriage.

128 MICHELANGELO Mcdici Chapcl, S. Lorenzo, Florence (interior)

15^4-34

165

''-

-.,1.'i

'

129 RAPHAEL School of Alliens 1509-11

is no strange or disturbing scene, but a triumph of accompHshed manner. Graceful, ideally noble forms - active too, as
well as contemplative - move with assurance through an ideal,
vaulted architectural setting on giant scale, spacious, open to
the sky but somehow itself elemental, unchanging. All the
variety and invention of pose shown by Michelangelo's nude
Sistine figures is rivalled by Raphael's clothed ones. The graceful people Leonardo made to press about the Virgin in the
Adoration of the Kings have swollen to a leisurely concourse,
planned to cohere and flow from group to group, yet all
depending from that central pair of Plato and Aristotle, framed
by the curve of the furthest arch, themselves as it were married
here to express full philosophical harmony. And, very different
in this from Leonardo or Michelangelo, Raphael puts vivid
portrait heads on to his ideal people.
Raphael was far the youngest of the creators of the High
Renaissance, but he outlived Leonardo by only a year. The
tragedy of his early death interrupted a career of almost too
ideal success, an increasing accumulation of problems and tasks
tackled with ease and untroubled assurance, an increasing train
of pupils and assistants engaged under the master's direction,
not only on paintings but complete decorative schemes, including sculpture, and some architectural projects. Both Leonardo
and Michelangelo experienced difficulties and failures: tragedy
for them lay in their flawed careers. Leonardo, obsessed with
ideas of eternal incompleteness, perhaps hardly minded; but
Michelangelo was plunged into pessimism by the protracted,
hopeless history of the tomb he was commissioned to build for
Pope JuHus II, which he wished to build and on which he
seemed continually frustrated. The Medici chapel too is quite
unfinished, though he lived for thirty years after his last
activity on it. Against such uncompleted works, Raphael may
appear to offer the 'closed' perfection of the School of Athens,
but that fresco marks merely one peak of his achievement - the
culmination in him of fifteenth-century concern with figures
in an ordered architectural framework.
A quite new language is spoken by the Galatea (III. ijo), so

This

its setting but so rich in its composition, conof bodies alone, perfectly modelled, graceful, but in

utterly simple in
sisting

quite distinct action. Botticelli's Birth of 'enus (III. loi ) looks

positively austere and pinched beside the carefree accomi

plishment of Raphael's picture, with its variety, invention and

sense of ease. And Raphael was to push beyond this to a more
i68

more charged with emotion, more powerful

and complex. His last painting, the Transfiguration (III. 131 ), is
a cosmic drama, where celestial vision and earthly reaUty are
united by the spectator, witness of the ecstatic, upHfted Christ
and of the troubled, epileptic boy. This world is more mighty,
artificial and awe-inspiring than ours; the apostles are giant,
gesticulating figures, each wrought to convey a different
emotional state; the foreground kneeling woman alone is a
triumph of eloquent art. With her elaborately braided hair, her
elaborate style,

gracefully disposed yet

monumental

draperies, her effective

embodies all that would be meant by

'the grand manner'. The whole picture is a carefully arranged
stage for Baroque drama, and she is a heroine consciously
moulded to perform in public. Nothing about her appearance
or performance is to be judged natural - from the musculature
of her impossibly powerful body to the bronze-like draperies
that have been twisted round her, emphasizing the contorted

commanding

pose, she

pose.

The

rich

open language of the Galatea has become

yet

own laws and rules,

rhetoric,

with

artists to

imitate because

its

its

effects will

daring manner for other

seem

stilted, tepid,

even

they are achieved through energy. Even then,

perhaps, they will always require the spectator to be educated
in the laws of such artistic rhetoric. The danger in extreme
manners is that those who do not respond to them will loathe
them. And those educated to one style of rhetoric or realism
will be disconcerted by others. The sixteenth century thus saw along with highly personal styles - the phenomenon of certain
styles being objected to by patrons and connoisseurs. In Venice
one member of the Scuola di S. Rocco was to stipulate that he
would contribute to its decoration only on condition Tintoretto
was not employed. Phihp II of Spain disUked El Greco's style.
tasteless, unless

the fault of Titian's work was its lack of art

and design; their aid was needed to build out of his natural gifts
- which Michelangelo thought great - a completely artful
style. And though we may feel Michelangelo has missed the
point of Titian's achievement, he aptly condemns in advance

To Michelangelo

much Dutch

seventeenth-century picture-making.
Raphael had woven something marvellous and personal out
of hints which originated in Leonardo and Michelangelo. Only
a genius could do that, and to many subsequent artists he would
seem the most perfect of painters for this very power of
synthesis.

In

the other arts

the position

was much more

169

n:^
ijo UA\'UA\.L Galatea

c.

151

131

RAPHAEL

Traiisfii^iii-atioii

complicated, partly through the lack of a comparable figure.

Indeed, even here Raphael remained perhaps the most influential figure. Michelangelo's sculpture suggested an epic yet
private world in which lesser men might well hesitate to
intrude; but its achievement centred on the idea of the perfect
human body, inevitably nude and usually male. Concepts of
Mars had mingled with Apolline ones in his statues: a fierce
pride,

which was

his

own, investing

the figures sometimes with

almost of outrage that they should be gazed on

even at their most frankly sensuous they retain

a sense

at all
a

and

strange
171

132 SANSO\'INO Apollo

C.

IS37-4O

133 FLOTNER

/l/J(i//()

1532

Something more graceful and Praxitelean, softer and

was to be evolved. Sansovino's
Apollo (III. ij2) at Venice is shown elegantly shrugging one
shoulder, a slender, disdainful god. On his fountam at NuremVirginity.

more

yielding in manner,

burg, Flotner's Apollo

(III.

ij^)

is

almost exaggeratedly slender,

commanding a vast bow with arms scarcely thicker

than the wood he bends. The most famous, though by no means
the finest, ot these unheroic heroes who have come from the

effortlessly

dancing class rather than antiquity, is Cellini's Perseus (III. IJ4).

If Michelangelo instinctively thought on a colossal scale, the
sculptors of these statues seem more interested in suggesting the
proportions of the statuette; they concentrate on detail - as the
172

134 CKLLiNi Perseus.

Commissioned
135

1545, set

up

in

1554

GIANBOLOGNA Apollo

intricate bases

of Flotner's and Cellini's statues confirm - and

It would be quite wrong to say that they

graceful refinement.

lack energy or inventiveness, but these qualities are channelled

into the direction of astonishing us

summed up by

by

their sheer

manner.

the small bronze Apollo

(III. 1^5), of
by probably the greatest sculptor between
Michelangelo and Bernini, Jean Boulogne. He came from
Flanders, but settled in Florence. Gianbologna, as his name was
Italianized, was certainly able to work equally brilliantly on a
monumental scale with a sense of drama and movement, shifting
sculpture from Praxitelean terms into ones closer to the Per-

All

is

exquisite ingenuity,

gamum

altar. The Apollo is taut for all its apparent negligence,

complicated, sinuous silhouette, an echo of Raphael's
Galatea, developed in other work by Gianbologna into fully
three-dimensional terms, so that one feels stirred to walk round

with

one ot his groups, discovering further aspects of its effectiveness.

Throughout, there is a dynamism which Gianbologna has
inherited artistically from Michelangelo - so that his figures are
like graceful swimmers, enjoying the element around them and
making the atmosphere vibrate - and which will return to
sculpture in the ecstasy of Bernini's St Theresa (III.
195).
Such art, whether Bernini's full Baroque or the sixteenthcentury grand manner, needs an arena in which to perform - the
larger the more effective in most cases. With that goes a need
for the sort of sophisticated audience which was once likely to
be found at a court. France under a king such as Francois I
offered these possibilities in the first half of the sixteenth century,
attracting first the aged Leonardo - an exhausted magician and then a series of talented painters and sculptors, including
Cellini. What was achieved at Fontainebleau (III.
136) is the
quintessence of art freed from allegiance to rehgious or dynastic
taith, performing with absolute assurance before an audience
who completely believe in the prestige of art. Once again, it is
a fusion of all the arts that is attempted, including pictures amid
the stucco reliefs, giving an architectural importance to the tall,
caryatid-like statues that animate the long walls - so much
transference into fully plastic terms of what Michelangelo had
frescoed on the Sistine ceiling, but capriciously vaned for

more playful than serious. Space too is played

with, broken into juts and runs and scrolls of decorative motifs;
and the figures grow elegantly tall, boneless, anatomically
adaptable, to suit the decorative rhythm. The Galerie Fran(^ois I,
variety's sake,

designed by the Florentine Rosso - a painter of considerable

emotional power in religious pictures - is a triumph of manner

appHed in a way unparalleled before in richness and artifice.

What began as scarcely more than a corridor has become a
grotto-hke tunnel, overgrown with white unnatural stalactites,
all paying tribute to the bizarre inventive powers
of art to
transtorm the ordinary into the unexpectedly extraordinary.
Native French sculptors preferred a less extreme manner, perhaps even more accomplished but less ingeniously graceful.

Even so, a problem is stated and solved by the narrow stone

panels of the Fontaine des Innocents by Jean Goujon (III 137).
Without apparent effort, the nymphs are disposed to fillthe
restricted area, their draperies as fluid as the water which pours
from their water-pots, and the whole flat hard surface rippling
all the way down from the crisp hair to the weightless,
dancing
feet.

174

136 ROSSO and PRiMATiccio Galeric Franc^ois

1533-4

1,

Fontaincblcau

c.

This almost lyrical effect animates the much wider-ranging

Pilon, who was not just a decorator but a
sculptor of penetrating three-dimensional power. The head of
the bronze statue of Cardinal Birague (III. ij8) shows a mastery
of realistic portraiture, rivalling anything fifteenth-century
Flemish in candid intensity, while the sweeping folds of the
Cardinal's robes flow and curl behind him in a musical arrangement that obeys the rules of art, not nature. Photographs which
show this wonderful monument without its literal coda cannot

work of Germain

175

137 C'OUJON
Fontaine des
Itniflcoits (detail)

IS 47-9

138 PILON
Cardinal
Birai^ite. After
1

do

S3

Raphaelesque mingling there of natural and

of pungent realism with suave artifice; Pilon's interest is
in what art can make out of a cardinal's robes. How brilliantly
he has applied his manner can be seen in strict art-historical
terms by comparing Cardinal Biraqnc with the usually cited
precedent of the tomb of the Amboise cardinals in Rouen
cathedral, where their robes lie behind them in flat, lifeless slabs.
Not for a long time after Pilon would French sculpture achieve
anything at once so truthful-seeming and so stylish as his work.
There is the same triumphant emergence in the sixteenth
century of perfect manners in architecture as in sculpture and
painting, and Italy remains the scene of such emergence. A new
vocabulary was created out of those elements which had
justice to the

ideal,

176

Roman classical times and which are united in the

Pantheon the dome, the pediment and the pillar. Modern Papal
Rome, even in the years before Raphael and Michelangelo
settled there, already seemed to offer the ideal climate to foster
the style which would become the Baroque, hi the complex
of St Peter's (III. 140) the general effect is homogeneous, despite
the time gap between Michelangelo's dome and Bernmi's
colonnades - and even despite Maderno's long nave and fac^ade
which have spoilt the visual impact of the dome. This is architecture not only on a new giant scale, but with a dramatic
richness which makes earher achievements seem ineloquent.
existed since
:

Brunelleschi's

dome

for Florence cathedral

(III.

104)

rises as

from the structure below; Michelangelo's

is built up on an elaborate drum, with projecting doubled
columns, itself crowned with a wreath-hung ring which is also
the base from which the dome finally rises.
A mass of material is boldly sculpted and thrust upwards,
rising in triumph but not without effort, to provide the typical
silhouette that has replaced Romanesque tower or Gothic spire
in a form that swells as well as soars. The positively Corinthian
richness and variety of imposing design are equally effectively
seen in contrast to the Doric style and austerity of Bramante's
Tempietto of S. Pietro in Montorio (III. 139), executed in 1 502.
quickly

as

possible

^wwrr^VKBitiiirw
.^9

HHAMANTH Tcmpictto

S.

Pictro in Montdrui. Rdiiic

S02

Is^vVJ^-

140 St Peter's and Piazza

S. Pietro,

Rome

U U

t-

i- I'

1655-67

Yet Bramante's building, small in scale though it is, has a harmonious symmetry and a concentrated effect which makes it
something of a Janus temple. It is the culmination of fifteenthcentury aspirations for order and coherence, yet in its monumentality and its curving rhythm (extending to the curving
platform of steps on which it stands) looking forward to the
later achievements of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
It is the actual expression of projects and designs for the ideal
circular church which had haunted Brunelleschi and interested
Leonardo, and which would not be without their relevance for
Bernini.

Bramante's Tempietto is calm rather than dramatic, austerely

from decoration, and almost the architectural equivalent
of Raphael's School of Athens. Like that, it is classical in the sense
of balance and serenity, in its respect for antiquity, and even in
partly closing an epoch. Bramante was Raphael's uncle, and it
is his style of lucid architecture that frames the figures in
Raphael's fresco. Just as in painting Raphael disturbed the
free

equilibrium to achieve a richer, more dramatically 'engaged'

style, so he later came to consider Bramante's architecture insufficiently rich. Antiquity could mean not merely Dc:)ric
179

severity but the almost florid effects of imperial Rome - and

these were more relevant to modern Papal Rome, especially

under Popes like Julius II.

Acting very much as a

new

Roman

emperor, JuHus

St Peter's to replace the old basilica

to contain the

II

required a

which was inadequate

tomb he intended Michelangelo

to build him.

Bramante was the first architect, and his plan of virtually a

square church crowned by a huge dome replaced horizontal
emphasis, and the long basihca nave, by a dominant verticality
- an effect which was consohdated and made more dramatic by
Michelangelo when he came to be the architect. Had Bramante
completed it before his death, the church might well have
seemed not rich enough. As it stands, its grandiose elaboration,
sensuous and dramatic use of colour and space, even the
and additions over several centuries, combine to
make it an ideal both Renaissance and Baroque. Bramante's
plan was significantly altered to provide a long nave for processional purposes. In the form of a dome rising behind a pedimented facade, with giant pillars, and an interior of long nave
its

alterations

opening into a centralized space,

church was created that would

141

PERuzzi Palazzo Massimi,

Rome. Begun

1535

142 SAN GALLO Palazzo

Farnese, Rome 1534-45

serve as the standard.

When, towards

the end of the seventeenth

century, Wren tried to return to Braniante-style complete

centrahzation for St Paul's, he had to yield to tradition and

provide once again

long nave.

Rome was not a

of stern Republican virtue so much as a great luxurious
capital which had built on a vast scale often for pleasure. It was
in Raphael's Hfetime that there were discovered, appreciated
and copied, the paintings and reliefs which survived from
Nero's Golden House which had covered the Esquiline Hill.
Even Julius II had not attempted to rival the statue of Nero
which once stood there, described by Suetonius as being a
hundred and twenty feet high. But new palaces and villas, and
public buildings, could echo something of the sheer luxury, as
well as grandeur, which had made Rome so famous. Palazzo
Looked

at

by

a sophisticated age, ancient

city

Farnese (///. 142 ) develops positively antique Roman motifs, as

well as consolidating with quite new and imposingly modelled
style earlier Renaissance palace ideas. Palazzo Massimi (III. 141)
is an entirely fresh solution. Palazzo Farnese was designed by
the younger Antonio da San Gallo and became a standard for

TWr'syn!''''^^!!-^

143

MGORK)

Villa d'Estc

145 PALLADio S. Giorgio

Maggiore, Venice
(interior).

Begun 1570

144 SANSOViNO The

Library, Venice 1537-54

Roman palaces;

Palazzo Massimi is by Baldassarc Peruzzi. Both

were involved in stages of the evolution of St Peter's,
but San Gallo was really a believer in Bramantesque symmetry,
in distinction to Peruzzi's orientation towards Raphael and the
more daring, delicate effects seen in Palazzo Massimi - with its
gently curving facade and unusual pillared entrance. It refuses
to impose by strength, but its almost swaying ingenuity extending to the oddly shaped 'picture-frame' upper windows
- suggests a concept of grace which fits in well with sculpture
Hke Cellini's (III. 134).
These are town palaces, but it was equally in antique classical
tradition to build country villas and to teach nature how it
could be improved by art. Villa d'Este at Tivoh (III. 143) is only
one example of sixteenth-century re-creation of that concept,
but it is among the most superb. Stone, earth, trees and - above
all - water, have been organized into a constant series of vistas,
steps and fountains, meant to be encountered in ascending so
that the villa itself and the extensive view over the Campagna
architects

A bare hillside has become this artful

construction which forms a series of visual adventures - like
progress down the Galerie Franc^ois I at Fontainebleau or survey
are the fmal experience.

of the varying aspects of some statue by Gianbologna.

Although Rome, ancient and modern, provided the most
stimulating climate for new architectural manners, architects
themselves

moved from Rome

to disseminate their

own highly

At Venice, Sansovino - architect as well as

sculptor of the Apollo (III. 132) - built opposite the Gothic Doge's
Palace the Library (III. 144); and the word's connotations do
not prepare one for this pageant-style building, regular and yet
individual idioms.

highly picturesque, a vibrating screen of arches and pillars,

topped by a statue-adorned balustrade. Its theatrical grandeur
prepares the way for the most injfiuential of all Italian architects,
Palladio. He was not trained in Rome, but he was devoted to
the Roman antique standards of Vitruvius and he visited Rome
three times, benefiting from the example of Bramante perhaps
as

much as from antiquity.

The villas that he built

into the eighteenth century

influenced Northern Europe well

and by that time were being copied

America. Indeed, his classicism came to stand for classical

- and in many ways he deserves that this should have
happened. Despite his real learning, his buildings do not seem
learned, still less pedantic. They have a delightful quality communicating delight - which is far removed from anything
also in

antiquity

184

by Alberti or by Michelangelo. His classicism, his purity of

design, even his desire for lucidity, were all perfectly serious but
governed by a basic picturesqueness which was the secret of his
popularity. This made him no less great as an artist. His manner
was completely his own - and his style must be one of the most
immediately recognizable of all architectural styles, though it
has not proved easy for historians to give it any of their usual
labels. His church of S. Giorgio Maggiore at Venice (III. 145)
might indeed exhaust the vocabulary of art-history. Its white,
light-filled interior is austere and intensely exhilarating space
is contained and yet seems boundless without any suggestion
ot being beyond control. It is as if atmosphere had piled up
within this bright, scrubbed, vast marine temple, ready to
:

billow out to support the spectator, himself

floor.

tion
in a

as if

encapsulated,

by gusts of energy down the gleaming

Roman Baroque churches, with their encrusted decora-

bounced

effortlessly

and elaborate tresco schemes, are picturesque and theatrical

way very different from Palladio's, stunning rather than

cheering the spectator. But in seventeenth-century Venice,

Longhena's

S.

Maria

della Salute (III.

exciting quality of his architecture.

182) has much of the

And many eighteenth-

century German churches share the same sense of control amid

apparent excess, culminating in the superb interior of
Vierzehnheiligen by the great architect Neumann (///. 185).
In the sixteenth century, the new Italian style was dissemin-

Europe particularly by books of architectural

the most influential was that by Sebastiano
Serho, a popularizing theorist who had worked with Peruzzi in
Rome but later moved to Venice. Palladio may well have met
him, and his own Four Books of Architecture provided patterns
for arches, bridges, theatres and temples, as well as villas and
palaces. Serlio was also summoned to France, though his design
for the Louvre was not used. What was built instead by Pierre
ated through
designs.

Lescot

One of

(III.

146)

is

perhaps more

classically

Roman

than ItaHan,

and considerably more graceful and less massive than the

contemporary Palazzo Farnese (III. 142). But it speaks a new
'renascent' language, most obviously in its central motifs,
which via Serlio goes back to Vitruvius, and which all over
Europe was replacing the Gothic style for architecture. It was
probably due to Serlio's book that the huge town hall at
Antwerp (III. 147), built by Cornelis Floris about 1560, had a
triumphal arch-like central feature, with coupled pillars,
statues and tall obeHsks. In England, French and Flemish
i8s

influences

mingled with

Italian ones,

and

a rather startling

new

more vigorous than refined, is displayed in the central

pavihon of Burghley House (III. 148), dated 1585; this has
become its own peculiarly idiosyncratic style - barbaric and
untidy when compared with Itahan architecture - which yet
richness,

pays almost touching tribute to the urge for highly-wrought

novelty.
Italy probably represented individuality as well as just the

Venice - as has been mentioned without mentioning antiquities; and it

unlikely that he ever visited Rome. The self-portrait that he

classical tradition. Diirer in

enjoyed
is

his

new

status,

painted
lizes

(III. 1^2) in 1498, after his first visit to Venice, crystalthe sense of the artist-gentleman, fashionably dressed, at

no tools ot his trade, and with a view of the distant

Alps which suggests his travels: 'Heureux qui, comme Ulysse,
.'
a fait un beau voyage.
Nevertheless, it is not as a painter
that Diirer was important. It might almost be said that his
symbolic importance is altogether greater than his artistic one;
he aimed at artistic and even social manners which did not
always find much scope in his native Nuremberg. His intense
curiosity, his observation of natural phenomena (not allied to
ease with

146 LESCOT Square court of the Louvre, Paris.

Begun 1546

.
V

*.''

147 FLORis

Town

Hall,

Antwerp

c.

1560

148 Central Pavilion, Burghley House, Northamptonshire 1585

intellectual speculation,

however) and

ness arc fascinating aspects of a

pated

itself

Leonardo -

to

mind

whom

he

is

his instinctive literari-

that never quite

so often

emanci-

compared - was

constantly being sought out by great patrons, remaining private

even when he had been purchased, idle, preoccupied, loitering
almost - into fame.

were at his own instigation; he often solicited

anxious to be public and published, working neurotically hard, and not so much alone as lonely. But he was acknowledged as a unique artist in a new medium 'the Apellcs of black
lines', as a contemporary called him, recognizing that in his
engravings and woodcuts there was an artistic power as great
Diirer's travels

a patron,

as that usually

reserved for paintings. Unlike pictures, prints

could easily travel; and it was not merely Diirer's compositions

which were admired, and which were certainly influential, but
the richly wrought, detailed invention which is present through187

out an engraving like the St Eustace (III. 149), executed ni 1500,

when Diirer was about twenty-nine. This tour de force is almost
painting with the graver, ranging from delicate hatching that
conveys the muscles of the animals to the concentrated black-

of the tree-fringed lake where a tiny swan floats reflected

on the dark water. Man, beast, landscape - all nature is here, but
assembled through the artist's invention, more varied than
anything we have seen before, more copious and more ingenious. Thus, by Vasari's standards for the new art of the sixteenth
century, Diirer was already qualified to join the company of
his great Italian contemporaries; and this particular engraving
was singled out for praise by Vasari. And within Diirer's lifetime another Northern painter-engraver, Lucas van Leyden,
was to produce even more subtle prmts - enriching the Prodigal
Son's return with every variety of costume, architecture,
ness

extensive landscape (III. 130).

The highly individual, interacting and yet contrastmg
geniuses of Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael set the sixteenth century off to a complex start. Diirer's engravings introduced another element. In Venice even Bellini's work might
seem stiff and ineloquent against the much more fluent, graceful,

moody

which begins under the impetus of Giorgione - a

dead before Michelangelo had fmished the
ceiling or Raphael begun his Galatea. Giorgione's few
art

revolutionary
Sistine

149 DURER
St Eustace

500

ISO LUCAS

VAN LEYDEN

Rctiini of

(lic

Piodii;al

Son IS 10

surviving paintings- ot which the Tcmpesta (III. i^i) is among

the most haunting - are personal in a way hardly found again
until Watteau. The Tempcsta has a strangely surreal quality, so

calmly conveyed that one scarcely ponders on why these figures

should be in the countryside during a thunderstorm. Even it the
subject is ever identified with certainty, still the picture will
retain its un-public, almost improvised air - which is deliberate.
The composition's elements are not far from those in Diirer's
engravings, but the mood is lulling and more sensuous: the
storm not dramatic but like summer lightning, and the woman
absorbed into the wonderful natural setting as she suckles the
child.

hint of this

mood

is

sensed in Bellini's sacred picture,

the Madotina of the Meadow (III. 121 ), but Giorgione has broken
the timeless spell, making light and landscape more capricious
is moody too, making patches of
colour as if for colour's sake rather than dutifully recording
three-dimensional shapes with clear outlines. Indeed, in this
stylish use of paint in a way personal like handwriting, Giorgione
goes further than any of his contemporaries - except Titian.

and dream-like. The paint

189

'^'I^fa^

31

Gii)ki,iuNh

* ^IWPI

ciiipcsta

mm

^f^

152 DURP.R
Selj-PoYtrait

1498

manner was not

by

demonstrated by recherche
novel approach, still
less by intellectually pondered concepts of art. It was in his style
of painting, of actually handling the medium - and in his last
pictures he used his hands as well as brushes - that he virtually
established the convention of oil painting in Europe up to
Renoir. Though he was only a painter (in the same sense that
Jane Austen was only a novelist) he already spoke the new
Titian's

subject-matter, nor even

to be

a particularly

heroic language, more Baroque than Renaissance, in the Assuiita

(III. J 53^ of 1 518 - a huge picture which seems orientated away
trom Bellini, or even Giorgione, and full instead of the ethos
being created by Michelangelo and Raphael. The Virgin sweeps
191

up

to

53

TITIAN

heaven amid

ing the hovering

AsSUfltil

a hectic

God

<i

cloud ot cherubs, ecstatically greet-

the Father in a blaze of light, while

gesticulating figures of giant Apostles

fill

the foreground

brothers to those in Raphael's Trausfi^^uratiou. Titian tells the

story of the Assumption in physical terms, with swelling torms
of flesh and drapery which turn the subject from a mystery into
a palpable drama. The Virgin's very clothes are made eloquent

192

of assumption, gracefully swirling across her to emphasize the

rushing motion of flight; and light aids the drama, as it blazes
above,

falls

patchily

on the clouds and

scarcely illuminates the

earthbound Apostles.
This almost scientific and psychological exactness - with
which the painter seeks to communicate intense sensations to
the spectator - is seen at its literally most stunning in the nearly
contemporary Resurrection (III. 154) by Griinewald. The extraordinary elements of this are perhaps too often stressed - as if
the German painter was Blake auant la lettre. Griinewald's style
is undoubtedly different from Titian's, but both painters give
visionary intensity to depicting a vision in dramatic terms,
heightening naturalism. Titian idealizes his figures in a world
of grand gestures and noble poses, but builds them with light
and colour just as Griinewald does. Griinewald's psychological
intensity is sharp, even shrill. Giorgione's summer thunder and
Titian's sultry blaze seem tame beside the phosphorescence of
Griinewald's risen Christ, burning orange and yellow in darkest
night, blinding even while he calmly illuminates, a rocket
whose upward force hurls men to the ground. To novelty of

154 cjrOnewald
Resurrection (detail)

155 ALTDORFER Battle of the

Isstis

1529

novel observation which gives scientific intengaseous halo into which Christ's face is actually
absorbed; the Light of the World is interpreted as a real light, of
decreasing strength as it moves outside Christ's orbit, melting
into a cold ring of blueish flame. His grave-clothes are like
charred paper twisting and writhing in a blaze.
Nor need such intense effects be restricted to religious subjects. Complete confidence of technique could lead the painter
to such superb atmospheric effects - painted for their own sake -

concept

is

allied

sity to the vast

194

as were caught in Altdorfer's Battle of the Issits (III. 153^. The

batthng armies ot Alexander and Darius are out-battled by the
cosmic drama of the sky where the sun sinks hotly, reflected in
great sheets of sea and glinting on the jagged, glassy ridges of
distant mountains. This is not only an extraordmary aerial
pageant its atmospheric intensity to be equalled by Rubens
and Turner alone - but the vast panorama emphasizes the
clash ot East and West, and dwarfs man and his doings to
insignificance beside the eternal round of day and night.
Even Bruegel was not to achieve anything as revolutionary
as Altdorter's blazing sunset, but his seasonal pictures are
peopled by ordinary figures, peasants or bourgeois, at their
common tasks. It is not history but plain, daily fact that is
illustrated, and yet the atfecting thing is the atmospheric
intensity. This art too impacts on the spectator in a new way:
conveying almost physical sensations of a bitter winter day or
hot June afternoon. Bruegel did not catch only extremes, but
subtly, scientifically, painted those in-between hours which
affect us most of all. In November (III. ifi6), the light is slowly

156 BRUEGEL THE ELDER SorcDihcr

Rcttiiii

of the Held) 1565

fading as the cows are driven home; clouds are gathering, and
soon this hindscape will be deserted. It is on this realization that
the

whole mood tremblingly depends -

a foretaste

as if the

dying day was

of man's dying too.

Although the development of landscape painting may be

Northern phenomenon, the pursuit of atmospheric
subtleties was a European one - a single aspect of the general
urge towards more subtle art. Again and again that leads back
to Leonardo, himself the writer who had linked subtlety of
Hght to subtlety of manner. He had mentioned the charm
arising through effects of muted light, and it is frank charm
that breathes from Correggio's Nativity (III.
157), where
nothing is too startling or abrupt or subhme. It is not only the
divine brightness of the Child shining out in the misty night
that marks accomplishment here, but the luminous group of
angels, almost Rococo figures in their aerial grace. And grace
largely a

has been given to the scarcely rustic shepherd, doffing his cap
with a suave courtesy worthy of a Magus, no less than to the pair
of refined women whose hands assume artlessly graceful poses

evocative rather of the boudoir than of Bethlehem.

Allowed

to give his suavely alluring

manner

to a totally

Correggio painted pictures ravishing in themselves which form not so much a cornerstone as a pillow for
eighteenth-century painters like Boucher. More disturbing
aspects of nature, seen psychologically heightened and therefore strange, also develop from Leonardo, hi Pontormo, who
was influenced by him, though also by Michelangelo and by
Diirer's prints, tension has replaced Correggio's melting charm
yet there is grace in the crackling, swaying forms who express
the Visitation f/Z/.ispj.This is no narrative picture but a moment
of contact seized and frozen - barely localized, timeless, haunting
alluring subject,

in

its

intense spell. Just like Griinewald,

Pontormo

is

trying to

convey the significance of the subject in the most concentrated

and psychologically exact terms. It was not a piece of charming
daily life when the Virgin visited St Elizabeth, but the solemn
meeting of God's mother and the mother of St John the Baptist:
a mystery of the Child leaping in Mary's womb and Elizabeth
'filled with the Holy Ghost'. A comparable thinking into the
significance of a scene, conveying the sensation of what it
might be like if an angel erupted into a room, is apparent in the

157 {far
1530

left)

CORREGGIO

Natii'ity

c.

1^8 {left)
1526/8'

159

LOTTO Annunciation

{riaht)

PONTORMO

Visitation
C.

IS28

i6o TITIAN Pieta 1573-6

Aiitninciatioii (III. 138)

by Lorenzo Lotto,

closely

contemporary

with Griinewald and Pontormo. Giotto's sense of cosmic

order is rudely jolted here in the interests of dramatic accuracy;
and the frightened cat is at once 'realistic' and yet a refinement
no painter had dared introduce before.
Not every emphasis on art's ability to outdo nature produced
results as apparently bizarre as those of Griincwald, Pontormo
or Lotto; Titian's Assunta and Correggio's Nativity show that.
Yet Titian too, in his search for emotional impact, moved
away from the dignified surface of that confident picture,
breaking up composition and surface to achieve finally the
moving, mysterious Picta (III. 60), unfinished at his death in
1 576. More than similarity of subject links this to Michelangelo's
Rondanini Picta (III. i26j. Nor is Titian's evolution connected
just with subject-matter, for all his other work - whether his
magical pagan pictures or superb portraits - shows him steadily
evolving, displaying greater and greater confidence in the
power of paint to obey his wishes. In the Picta there is the same
plangency as he gave contemporaneously to a picture of the
Flaying of Marsyas. There is wildncss in the Picta, with the
y

198

161

TITIAN

Gioi'iuiiii d'AcqiiiV'ii'a,

Lord of Atri(?)

c.

I5<

distracted

Magdalen rushing from the picture, as if calHng on the

Even the grey architecture seems to

spectator to share her grief.

obey emotional laws, ghostly rather than substantial in its form,

building conjured up from nowhere to shelter the Virgin; its

statues

grow

human

suffering

strangely animated, disturbed partakers of the

below them; and the paint throbs to the same

grieving rhythm.

There had never been such a painter as Titian - nor has there
been since. Effortlessly, and to vast applause, fame and wealth,
he vanquished nature by producing art more natural than
anything seen before. Between the Assunta and the Pieta - that
is, over a period of almost sixty years - he ceaselessly painted
great pictures which were despatched across Europe and which
everywhere affected painters. At the centre of his art lay a concern with mankind which was not elevated or theoretical but
a rough physical familiarity, beyond cynicism and beyond being
impressed. From his art certain strands could be separated: Van
Dyck borrowed the glamorous appearance of his sitters;
Velazquez was inspired by Titian's directness. But in Titian it
had all been tightly bound into one whole. His portrait supposedly of the Lord of Atri (III. 161) achieves a splendour that
might well be called 'Renaissance', turning a man into Duke
Theseus of A Midsummer Nij^ht's Dream, a hunter of women
as much as animals, superbly incongruous in raspberry-red and
gold pageant-style clothes in a chill grey landscape. With all
the splendour goes a shrewd grasp on reality, on that common
clay which lies under the glaze of finery, and this grasp gives
the picture a sting of wit.
The very variety of sixteenth-century manners perhaps
conceals some of the underlying similarities. If stylistically it
seems a shock to turn from Titian's portrait to Holbein's
'Ambassadors' (III. 162), it is not one emotionally, for the two
pictures mhabit much the same climate - despite their different
settings. Holbein is not just the craftsman-cum-photographer
that the sheer accomplishment of his style sometimes suggests.
His two 'ambassadors' look like very naturalistic portraits, but
they are disposed with the formality of supporters in a coat of
arms; a shield is formed by the what-not with its litter of skilfully drawn objects in foreshortening - many, if not all, having
personal associations for the two sitters. That more than one
plane of reality is intended is revealed by the skull painted in
perspective across the foreground, existing in the space between
pictured men and ourselves - a shadow of mortality which
200

62 HOLBEIN THE YOUNGER The Ambassadors 1533

literally

puts the rest of the composition into a

means

new

perspective.

not clear to us, but at least

we can guess that surface naturalism is not sufficient for painter
or painted; nor are the sitters seen, like the Arnolfmi (III. gz),
in their ordinary environment, but in one specially devised
and quite artificial (the patterned pavement, for instance,
being derived from one in Westminster Abbey, which is
All that such a portrait

is still

clearly not the setting).

Holbein shows that the idea of improving and refining on

nature - whether in portraiture or other pictures - was not
restricted to Italy. In some ways, portraiture best reveals the
transmutation of nature into art.
much science lies under
the elegance and 'surprise' quality of such transmutations is
shown in the self-portrait (111. 1 64) painted by Parmigianino, a
tragically short-lived artist of graceful, handsome appearance

How

201

64 PARMiGiANMO
in a

163
c.

Self-portrait

Coru'ex Mirror 1524

BRONZiNO

Capponi

Lodoi'ico

1550-5

well as a supreme exponent of graceful style. The Self-portrait

unexpected because Parmigianino has not corrected the effect
of its being painted from a convex mirror reflection indeed,
the curved shape combined v^ith the illusionism of shining
glass, the distorted hand, the reflected lights of a background
as
is

window,

suggest that this object is no painting but itself a

perhaps the most complicated of all refming of
flesh into art was achieved at Florence by Bronzino, polishing
not only the surface of his pictures but the people in them
( III. i6j) figures of marble or ice, with ivory hands and jewelled
eyes, perfectly enamelled simulacra beside whom Raphael's
Casti^lione looks almost artless and prosaic.

mirror.

all

And

Bronzino is indeed a last refmcmcnt of high artifice and

manner, beyond which there could be only reaction or extinction. That is particularly true of Florence, whose greatest
impetus in the arts was exhausted - and has never revived. One
final petal of the gilded lily of art appeared in England, at
Queen Elizabeth's C^ourt, where the jewel-like miniatures of
Nicholas Milliard

202

f/Z/.id^y,

shadowless yet vivid likenesses, are

i65 HiLLiAUD Yoiiiig Man

amid Briar Roses c. 1588

amorous tokens to be exchanged in the alkisivc,

wear this
complicated, Illyrian world of Twelfth Ni^i^ht: '.
jewel for me', Olivia says lovingly to the apparent boy, Viola,
"tis my picture/ That the artist and his own personal style are
still of paramount interest is testified to by Donne who wrote:
'a hand, or eye/By Hilliard drawne, is worth an history' by a
the perfect

lesser painter.

^03

It was by a return, in effect, to the artistic sources of the early

sixteenth century that there evolved the final triumph of sheer

manner

that

is

the Baroque.

Where Bronzino

to affect the spectator, this style gathered

almost disdained

up the resources of

Raphael and Michelangelo, taking in Correggio's graceful

illusionism and Titian's earthy vitality, and produced one great

- Rubens - able to digest such potent influences and from

them forge his own powerful, 'engaged', highly personal style.
The edifice which he crowned was already being built by
artist

and Veronese, orientated respectively towards

Michelangelo and Raphael but both indebted also to Titian.
Between them - and they certainly affected each other's style they virtually fused the elements of striking dynamism and
physical splendour which would characterize Rubens' art. To
typify them as spirit and flesh is too simple, for both were complex creators of increasing subtlety, whose late works are often
Tintoretto

surprisingly similar.

Yet it is inevitable to think of Tintoretto as the master of

dramatic moments of divine intervention in human affairs cosmic dramas where miracles replace Altdorfer's merely
natural atmospheric effects. Bronzino, incidentally, had studied

66 TINTORETTO Miracle of St Mark 154H

Michelangelo's

work

remote marble
of Michelangelo

to achieve his polished,

pictures. Tintoretto's equally intense study

on the energy contained under the surface, releasing

lit by lightning-flash, catching
up in their drama so that we cease to be spectators and

fastened
it

us

in great canvases that are stages

become

participants.

It is at

our

feet that the slave lies in the

Mark (III. 166) and over our heads that the saint
hurtles down, saving and illuminating - a firework tossed into
the box-like, exploding construction. Tintoretto's manner was
Miracle of St

increasingly one of highly personal expression, using his brush

and paint

as if tracing

with white

fire,

culminating

in the Last

16 j) painted some forty years after he had burst

on to the Venetian scene with the Miracle of St Mark. The long
tunnel of this room is not disturbed but mystically illumined
by the glowing Christ whose manifestation of his divinity has

Supper

(III.

brought the transparent angels - painted with no more solidity

than glass - to wheel in worship, unseen by men.
In some ways, Veronese is a more complicated phenomenon
than Tintoretto. The balance and harmony which drew him to
Raphael produced the good manners of the Family of Darius
(III. 1 70), where East and West meet without shock, and where

167 TINTORETTO Last Supper 1592

->-^*#i^

t/V"

..-^^^

1 68
VERONESE Venus
and Adonis c. 1580

conqueror displays magnanimity to the family of his toe with

modern, Castiglione-style courtesy. This picture is Veronese's
School of Athens, more worldly in its lesson, opulent, exotic but

wonderfully well-bred. Like neither antiquity (despite its

subject) nor sixteenth-century Venetian actuality (despite
topical touches in heads and costumes) it creates an ideal middle
state, a pageant world but not an impossible one, where Titian's
Lord of Atri (III. 161) might well feel at home. With all the resources of naturalism, Veronese conceived a climate as deeply
imaginative as Tintoretto's but peopled by solid lovers rather
than air-borne saints. His Vetius and Adonis (III. 168) shows no
struggling mortal trying to evade an ardent goddess, but a
man contentedly collapsed on a woman's lap, being fanned
against the heavy afternoon sultriness which bathes the whole
picture in its sensuous spell: a tangerine-clad Antony and a
blonde, bare-breasted Cleopatra, characters half-historical,
half-mythological, who represent as much the heart's longing
for happy love as Tintoretto's the aspirations of the soul.
The fusion that Rubens would achieve totally was already
aimed at, with very different results, by El Greco whose style

206

i69 EL GRECO Burial of Count Orgaz 1586

was

anthology of most of the great artists discussed

now famous personal manner reduced
itself to some extent to a refinement of Tintoretto's, a narrowing
to candlehght power of what had been a blaze of energy, but
flickcringly strange in its effect on the spectator. The whole of
the large Burial of Count Or<;>az (III. i6g) is like a vision - earth
being no less hallucinatory than heaven, both inhabited by
insubstantial, spectral figures. There is no sense of space or
weight; everything seems to burn upwards, in an agitated,
crowded, windy world of smoke and flame. Its logic is artistic
in

a positive

this

chapter. His

dream-logic, expressing what the artist feels rather than

suggesting anything he has actually seen.
El Greco's is undoubtedly a flight from Renaissance daylight,

and the painter is significantly recorded to have been found in

one spring day with the room dehberately darkened.

his studio

Nor is it surprising if his style resists conventional classification.

Coming from Crete, trained at Venice partly under the very
old Titian, settling at Toledo at least by 1577, El Greco survived
until 1614. By that time he had outlived Caravaggio and
Annibale Carracci the youthful Bernini was already astonishing
Rome with his virtuoso sculpture; Rubens had been in Italy
and was established as the leading painter in Antwerp. Such
facts in themselves point to the development of that last of
;

manners - the Baroque - which was fostered especially

its roots lay in those great artists like Michelangelo
and Raphael whom Greco had studied, and its final flower was
Tiepolo, a Venetian who died in Spain - in one of the last
countries where was acceptable the style which most of Europe
had by then rejected as false.
perfect
in

Rome:

170 VERONESE Family of Darius before Alexander'

nr

A'

it
rm

.-

^
\i
i

CHAPTER

SIX

High Art and Low Nature

how easily one age misunderstands

conventions of another than the for-long-held
belief that the grand manner ol the seventeenth century - the
Baroque style - was false, morally depraved and meretricious.
Few

things better illustrate

the artistic

The

reaction which brought into existence the Baroque style

had actually originated in a desire to be more natural and less
to overwhelm the spectator with emotional truths
had been absent too long from art: to be solid not fanciful,
to impress and instruct rather than merely please. It was
necessary to revitalize art; thus the seventeenth century saw a
'renaissance' which seemed to begin by going back to the early
years of the previous century, putting blood into the frozen
veins of Bronzino's people, warming into life the whitened,
etiolated simulacra of Fontainebleau.
At its most vigorous, this new naturalism easily burst the
frame of natural reference, as it does in Rubens and Bernini, the
greatest Baroque masters, who are yet intensely natural, fully
aware of humanity under all the trappings of grandeur. It is
not surprising that these great exponents of the Baroque style
were supreme in their grasp on vivid, candid nature. Whether
giving tremendous conviction to imaginative ideas or catching
nature with unrivalled directness, they were really using the
same idiom. The public art that could apotheosize James I
(III. 1 72) or set angels and clouds cascading around the Chair of
St Peter (III. 1 yi) was based on an awareness of humanity at least
as intense and moving as Rembrandt's; and it could therefore
produce with no sense of discrepancy such private work as
Bernini's stunning bust of his mistress Constanza Bonarclli
(III. 1 74) and Rubens' closely contemporary portrait of his
second wife and young son (III. 173}.
In architecture too, the style of the seventeenth century was
to begin by being dignified, soHd and, at least externally, often
quite plain. Bernini's church of S. Maria dell'Assunzione at
Ariccia (III. i 73) is a positively austere reduction of the Pantheon
artificial,

that

209

^J T
1:

'

^-.

'

.^'i\

y.

:^

/i

>^

^^

"IV'/^^'j

171 BERNINI

C/ifliV

of Peter, St Peter's,

Rome. Begun 1624

172 RUBENS Apotheosis of James

Hall, London 1635

I.

Ccihng, Whitehall Banqueting

174 BERNINI Const an z a

Boiiarelli

c.

173 RUBENS Helena Foiirment

and her Son 1636-7

and dome: in its

Doric version of that imperial
Roman building, with its rich porch of Cormthian columns
reduced by Bernini to three plain archways. Its concentrated,
almost Cubist form makes it a church that might have been
designed by Poussm rather than by someone traditionally
associated with extravagant effects. The interior is scarcely less
austere, beautifully lucid and decorated only by angels holding
up wreaths at each segment of the coffered dome. In England
Inigo Jones had spoken of the principle which he was to follow
in his buildings: 'Ye outward ornaments oft to be sollid, proporsionable and according to the rulles, masculine and unaffected.' Nothing more perfectly expressive of these sentiments exists than his St Paul's, Covent Garden (III. 1 76), derived
from Palladio but with much sturdier effects, partly obtained
by a strict following of Vitruvius' rule tor massive eaves.
to

its

basic terms of temple-style portico

austerity,

212

what might be

called a

16

175 BERNINI

S.

Maria dell'Assunzione, Ariccia 1662-4

176 INIGO JONES St Paul's, Covent Garden,

London

163

177 viGNoi.A Gcsu,

56S

Begun

Rome.

78 GAULLi Adoration
of the

Name Jesus.

Rome

Ceiling, Gesu,
I

The

traditional, sixteenth-century base

676-9

from which Inigo

out is reinforced by architecture other than
Palladio's. The church of the Gesu (III. 177) at Rome, begun
by
Vignola in 1568 and executed by his pupil della Porta, is in
fact plainer in its facade than Vignola's original statue-animated
design. But in that design it lacked the great rolHng scroll-like
volutes which support and connect the upper pcdimented
portion to the lower. The whole church is on a huge scale, with
giant pilasters and a dramatic central doorway, framed, pcdimented, arched - as if to prepare the visitor for the large yet
simple nave planned to be filled by a vast congregation and the
reverberations of some dramatic sermon. More than a hundred
years after the church had been begun, Gaulli frescoed the nave
with the crushingly illusionistic Adoration of the Natnc Jesus
(III. 178), a. final double triumph of the Baroque and
the Jesuit
Order for whom the church was built. This is the sort of high
art associated with the Baroque, yet it has not only carefuHy
planned, forceful illusionism but a carefully planned programme
of meaning. Gaulh's allegorical figures are solid enough,
falling out of the framework and apparently into the actual
church. A concept of divine illumination and damnation on
epic scale is given a plastic conviction and intensity as reahsticJones has

set

seeming

any scene of peasants or low

214

as

life.

^^-*.

^"^

179
Paris

MANSART and lemercier Val de Grace,

1645-67

180

WREN

St Paul's,

London

modern church, the Gesu was disseminated

extensively as the Jesuits themselves. Its long nave and
scrolled and pedimented facade remained the pattern of the

As
its

type of

almost

as

Baroque church, sometimes varied and made more dramatic

by clustering pillars, or calmed into cooler dignity with more
vertical effect - as in the church of Val de Grace (III. lyg) at
Paris. The fmal echo of it is in Wren's St Paul's (III. i So), blended
from ItaUan and French examples; but Wren's own personal
wish for St Paul's to be a centrally-planned church is itself an
indication of the alternative interest of the period - a church
like Bernini's at Ariccia. Taking the concept both of centralization and that of longitudinal emphasis, another great architect,
Baldassare Longhena, produced the unique solution ot S.
Maria della Salute at Venice (III. 1 82) an octagon crowned by a
dome, with a subsidiary dome over the sanctuary beyond. Its
,

smaller

dome

is

usually forgotten or invisible, and the effect

is

of a huge, dramatic Palladian-style porch, approached from a

great platform of steps, which leads into a somewhat challenging
space - perhaps not accidentally recalling the effect ofJustinian's
S. Vitale at Ravenna (///. 30).
Out of the two concepts present in the Salute evolved
another interesting but popular mixture, the oval, which was
perhaps the most signfficant of all Baroque designs (though to
SerKo's book of 1547), playing with space
be found already

sending the eye on journeys that may prove

exciting and precarious rather than harmonious in the Renaissance sense of certainty. Energy seems to have been pulling
and pushing ordinary geometrical shapes into quite novel
dynamic ones which need a new vocabulary to describe them
in such a church as S. Carlo alle Quattro Fontane (///. 181), by
Bernini's great rival, Francesco Borromini. There is something

in a

new way,

sculptural in

Borrommi's

attitude to architecture, ironically

because he was - unlike Bernmi - no sculptor, and indeed

nothing but architect. His sculpture was the carved column,
scooped-out niche and almost putty-like squeezes which are
placed around his windows. Everywhere there is animation.
The undulating interior of S. Carlo is prepared for by the
undulating facade (III. 181) where the eye traces serpentine
rhythms up and across the building. This is not rhetoric, still
less a bizarre effect for its own bizarreness, but an exploration
in terms of energy. Borromini's extremes are intellectual ones;

though no universal man, he was

brilHant technician and

mathematician. His buildings are very

much of

their century

217

Quattro Fontane,

181

BORROMINI

S.

Carlo

alle

182

LONGHENA

S.

Maria

della Salute,

Rome

Venice 1631-85

1655-67

not in their presumed theatricality and 'caprice', but in their

three-dimensional expression of the poetry of science and
mathematics - and these things too are part of nature revealed.
Borromini's achievements were in Rome, but it is not
without significance that he came from the extreme North ot
Italy, virtually Switzerland. His greatest heirs were not even
active in Rome, and the harvest of his example is in the finest
Rococo churches of Austria and Germany. Even more subtle
effects, with positive dissonances and uneasy complexities,
appear in the buildings of Guarino Guarini, priest, philosopher
and mathematician, as well as architect, working chiefly at
Turin, on palaces as well as churches. A view into the dome of
the Cappella della SS. Sindonc is almost hke looking into the
interior of a complicated piece of machinery. Perhaps the
exterior of the chapel (III. i8j) best reveals Guarini's extraordinary delight in extreme, spiralling effects, where solids arc
dissolved ultimately into hair-like plaiting in stone, topped by
a final twirl which was even more extreme in the drawn design
than as executed.
218

1 83
{far left) guarini Spire of the
Capclla della SS. Sindone, Turin
I

667-90

184,185 NEUMANN Church of the

VierzehnheiHgen (left) exterior,
{right) interior 1744

Here the basic dignity of the Gesu, and the niascuhne weight
ofJones' St Paul's, have disappeared in a realm where imagination and mathematics continue to astonish the spectator. This
mixture - if indeed it is a mixture - lies at the heart of Rococo
architecture. It calls for a pursuit of intellectual extremes which
never appealed to French or English architects in general, and
which in Italy - as elsewhere - died away in the eighteenth
century under pressure of the apparent 'return to order' of
neo-classicism.

Germany and

Austria there was an instmctive response to

adumbrated by Borromini and Guarini: instinctive
to the point where several masterpieces were created by men
who were in status no more than humble masons. The most
distinguished, however, was trained engineer, artillery-otficer
and theoretician, Balthasar Neumann. The interior of his church
of Vierzehnheihgen (III. 1 85) is the supreme triumph of the oval
in a series of great bursts of light and air which recall Palladio
but which are contained by a glowing yellow sandstone exterior
(///. 184), dignified and suitably vertical for its commanding
In

the ideas

219

86 Palace

the garden faqade

at Versailles,

position on a hill. The exterior alone is sufficient to show that

such architecture is not wedding-cake confectionery or highlycoloured stage scenery but completely serious; and inside, the

church has the hard delicacy of a huge shell, tinted in shellpink and other pale tones, all clear-cut curves which sway and
intersect not in dizzy extravagance but with a rightness gradually
perceived as part of an organic, overall plan. Far from launching
out into eternity, we are brought back finally to the oval central
altar of the Fourteen Saints, itself like a gilded, curving shell: as
it were, stating the architectural motif which recurs on a big
scale in the surrounding fabric, and which is also the emotional
focus and reason for the building.

Vierzehnheihgen

culmination which is also the close of a

masterpiece as in sculpture Pigalle's
monument to Marshal Saxe (III. ig8), while in painting Tiepolo
represents equal culmination and close. Such extremes are likely
to encounter criticism in their own period, and already Borromini's architecture had been stigmatized by Bernini as 'chimerical' - based on fantasy rather than the fact of man and human
stature. Pursuit of dignified splendour, and the constant presence
of classicism as represented by Palladio, resulted notably outside
Italy in architecture which was no less vigorous for being
ostensibly more 'correct'. It would be convenient if this style
had naturally been adopted by Protestant countries, while the
is

style, as definitely a farewell

more extreme Baroque

Catholic. Indeed, this

is

style

remained

typically

Roman

often supposed to have been

what

happened, but art did not obey religion so neatly. France

remained suspicious of excess - perhaps of all imaginative
extremes - and though Versailles (III. 1 86) is vast, it is sober and
220

87 GABRIEL

Petit Trianon,

Versailles 1762-8

188 PERRAULT, LE VAU, LEBRUN

East Front of the Louvre,
Paris 1667-70

189 HERE The Hemicycle,

Nancy 1750-7

90

VANBRUGH Blcnhcim

Palace, Oxfordshire 1705-20

monotony. Mansart's Val de Grace

had earHer hinted at a preference for calmness and
balance, and there is a certain irony in the fact that Bernini's
criticism of Borromini was spoken in France - a country which
was to show increasing reserves about Bernini's own work.
Louis XIV abandoned Bernini's plan for the Louvre and
what was built instead, probably as a result of collaboration by
le Vau, Perrault and the pamter Lebrun, was the colonnaded
East Front (III. 1 88). This has no real precedent but begot many
imitations and adaptations; it announces a particular type of
French classicism which survived well into the nineteenth
century. It was suited to solve some problems of town-planning,
and a direct borrowing from the Louvre design lies behind the
work of Jacques-Ange Gabriel, Louis XV's architect, in the
Place de la Concorde at Paris. Much more spontaneous and
varied is the town-planning achievement of Emmanuel Here at
Nancy (III. i8g) begun only a few years before the Place dc la
Concorde - an enchanting Rococo liberation which was perhaps possible only in what was technically the small capital of
another kingdom, being ruled by the titular King of Poland.
Though the scale of Gabriel's Petit Trianon (III. 187), begun in
1762, offers a relief from the oppressive palace at Versailles, its
style continues the classicism of the Louvre facade; it seems a
building expressly designed to rebuke any latent tendency
towards Rococo movement.
Like France in this, but unlike it in religion, England also
returned to 'masculine and unaffected' Palladianism from which
it had only rarely departed. Yet the departures - into the tremendous weight and vigour of Vanbrugh's Blenheim ( III. 1 go) for
regular to the point of
(Ill.iyg)

222

example - show unmistakably that England was capable of

producing its own version of Baroque. Were there any doubts
about this, the attacks at the period of Wren's St Paul's and on
a tendency of certain noblemen to build 'false and counterfeit
Piece[s] of Magnificence' show that such a dangerous style was
already thought to exist. It was often associated directly with
the 'wildly extravagant' designs of Borromini, and contrasted
with the purity of Palladio. In fact, there is something magnificent and original about the rhetorical pile of Blenheim;
Vanbrugh, no less than Inigo Jones, wished his architecture to be
masculine, as well as magnificent - suitably so for a great
mihtary commander. Blenheim is a deliberate national

monument,

erected to a hero in his lifetime and

much more

posthumous memorial.
Palladian classicism was suitable both

useful than a

for less grand houses,

planned often to follow Palladio's own villas very
closely, and for extension on the urban scale that is found at
Bath, associated with the two John Woods, father and son. It
is hard to select among that embarrassment of architectural
riches, but the younger Wood's Royal Crescent (III. igi), of
which the foundation-stone was laid in 1767, combines
dramatic grandeur with regularity and remains unequalled
even there. Royal Crescent forms a single palace block villas,

191

WOOD

THE YOUNGER Royal Cresccnt, Bath. Begun 1767

Ipi^

192 LEDOUX
Barricre dc
CoLircclIes, Paris

1785-91 (destroyed)

sweeping around

huge lawn which

falls away from it; but

providing thirty houses, both varied and
elaborate in decor, behind a giant, pillared, uniform fa(^ade.
Something much more ambitious was almost contemporaneously being attempted in London by the Adam brothers
- the Adelphi terrace destroyed in the 1930s. Robert Adam,
the leader of the three brothers, used the word 'exploded'
to
explain his substitute of Hght decoration, grace and variety
(mannered if not mannerist concepts) for the too severely
It is

also a solution to

regular Palladian style.

As far as can be seen from engravings and descriptions, the
Adelphi combined plain massiveness on its lower-level arcades

with an elegant, lightly pilastered and wreathed terrace above.

This duahty is typical of the complexity of the late eighteenth
century. Classicism

when re-examincd, took one back

could lead to a sturdy simplicity of basic
geometric forms, deriving from true Doric architecture such
tar

beyond

as that at

Falladio.

Paestum

itself,
It

and resulting in the Barnere de

Pans - classical beyond Gabncrs
imagining - by the revolutionary architect Claude-Nicholas
Lcdoux. And classicism could also mean the more familiar
Courcclles

(III.

(///.

igz)

24),

in

Adam style, sometimes exploding weight and

extreme filigree refinement in which Ponipeiian
seems virtually Rococo. Adam was a great architect, capable of
a whole gamut of styles and his antiquity could
be as effectively
grand, cool and unfcvercd as it is in the black and white hall
at
decorative

severity in

Syon House

(///.

jpj;.

224

193

ADAM The

Hall,

Syon House, Middlesex 1762-g

"Vfv

k'^

.\'

194 DE

MEN A

Virgin of Sorrows

and sculpture the final Rococo fling can be

contemporary work of Fragonard and
in the fragile yet earthy and intensely vivacious terracottas
of Clodion (III. ig6) - artists who hved through the French
Revolution but who still dared to speak the language of Rubens
and Bernini. They close what had begun in Rome in the early
seventeenth century. Bernini's was a universal talent, harnessed
under Pope Urban VIII to become a much happier seventeenthcentury Michelangelo: 'born by Divine Disposition and for the
glory of Rome to illuminate the century' the Pope wrote of
Bernini, whom he encouraged as architect and even as painter.
Yet it was as a sculptor that Bernini had first astonished Rome,
and it is his sculpture that remains the truest expression of his
genius. The bust of his mistress (III 1 74) and the Chair of St
Peter (III. iji) loosely represent his response to nature and his
In painting

paralleled best in the

dramatically decorative ability to express the visionary. It is

Bernini invokes - and is always invoking. There is
nothing of Michelangelo's Olympian air, nor of his tortured
sense of a body escaped from imprisonment in a marble block.
One can scarcely think of a block at all before the fluttering
faith that

movement of a statue like the St Theresa whose draperies

animated into a storm of disturbance which seems to mirror
her emotional state (III. igs).
The core of Bernini is energy obviously this is true of any
creative artist, but in Bernini the energy seems to burn its way
fluid

are

226

195 BERNINI Ecstasy of St Theresa 1645-5:

f*^.
bS.

'^^

W
.V

with few or no obstacles. Nature, the rules,

concepts of repose - all have to bend and melt before a
fiery quality which can be expressed negatively by saying his
work is never dull. And it is prodigious in scope. 'The glory of
Rome' meant not only his religious sculpture but his portrait
busts of the Popes, his fountains and his piazza before St Peter's
(III. 1 40 ).Yet it is ultimately on his creative power in realizing
religious drama that one fastens. The complete expression of this
- not on a huge scale, it should be noted, but with every device
of art in setting and presentation - is the Cornaro chapel at S.
to the surface
classical

della Vittoria where the Ecstasy of St Theresa (III. 195) is

the focus of a surrounding solidly three-dimensional theatre. The
vision is physical in concept and realization the Saint's dangling

Maria

marble foot extraordinary

in its flesh-like

the rough-textured, pumice-like cloud

in palpitating

more

abandon. The group

is

smoothness against

on which she swoons

raised up, floating in a

way

because of the firm framework

of polychrome pillars, the carved spectators in theatre-boxes
at either side. The intense natural observation, in which mystic
experience is transmuted into physical terms, is worthy of
St Theresa's own description of her experiences. Bernini's is a
eftectively visionary

196 CLODION

The

Intoxication of

Wine

197 COYSEVOX Mercury

deliberate conjuring with the strongest of illusionistic effects

one shares - not the Saint's ecstasy but something of her

so that

reahty can be expressed only by the maximum reality

of artistic appearances.
The dangers of such means, when not fused by molten
energy like Bernini's, are patent. Like Borromini's architecture,
Bernini's work was often attacked and reacted against increasingly by the invoking of classical standards. He and Urban
VIII 'corrupted public taste' for over a century afterwards, the
sculptor Flaxman pronounced in 1805, with the strong moral
bias of his period. Leaving aside this confused charge, it
happens that Bernini's own tastes were extremely classic: he
admired Raphael, Annibale Carracci and - notably among his
contemporaries - Poussin. That admiration is further evidence
taith. Its

for a basic

homogeneity

seventeenth-century art.
reality seized by Bernini was being
over Europe, whether influenced or not
in

The powerful emotional

aimed at by sculptors all

by him. In Spain there developed statues of starthng reality,
usually of painted wood, often dressed in real fabrics, sometimes
tortured into masks with crystal tears and apparently liquid
blood - but sometimes more truly affecting in their sober
grief

The

Virgin of Sorrows

clad with her

(III.

194)

is

tragically calm; plainly

heavy-Hdded eyes and mouth turned down, she

229

straightforward, psychologically convincing image, almost

sorrow. Elsewhere, even in France, a
vigorous poetry now animated decorative sculpture; the
equestrian Mercury (III. igyjhy Antoine Coysevox is pitched
between earth and heaven, a symbol of Baroque energy that is
touched also by Rococo hints - as in the horse's curled-over,

is

classically restrained in

ornamental tail.
Coysevox, like Bernini, was also a great portrait-sculptor,
and it was this category of sculpture that was to be demanded
in steadily more truthful, and more prosaic, terms. The toofamous busts of Jean-Antoine Houdon represent an absolute
return to the natural, but monuments still offered sculptors
throughout the eighteenth century opportunities to combine
the allegorical with the naturalistic, to make great drama out
of those Rubens-like themes of immortality and honour. One
last real-life hero. Marshal Saxe, was commemorated by the
last of such monuments f///.i95j,byJean-Baptiste Pigalle. Here
a recognizably individualized, armoured figure of the great
soldier-lover goes, like Don Giovanni, bravely down into the
tomb that death has opened for him. Approached frontally, as
it must be, the vast monument is one bold, challenging statement: a pageant of heroic departure set round with angry
weeping allegories, a vainly interceding France and falling
campaign banners, all of which make glorious the approach
of death.
The trumpets and thunder of that farewell cannot, however,
drown out the pan-pipes of Clodion, closer to earth, gallant
rather than glorious, yet still instinct with energy. And just as
the final triumph of Rococo architecture is in Germany and
Austria, so it was there that one final sculptural style evolved
which married almost rustic nature and high art: to produce
elegant, vigorous, high-coloured statues whose very fingers are
bent to hook the beholder's attention. The vision of the
AssHmptioti (III. igg), devised by Egid Quirin Asam is still
visionary in Bernini's terms, but it has exploded his unified
concept into highly-charged fragments even more astonishing,
w^ith the Apostles gaping in fluid amazement while the Virgin herself an open-mouthed astonished diva - is rushed to heaven
with reckless Rococo verve. The artifice of this vision is obvious
enough: an almost Firbankian refinement upon the physical
languor of the St Theresa. The classic beauty of Greek art, as it
was to be inculcated by Winckelmann, has nothing to do with
Asam's art; his statues act in every way as if they were not
230

198 PIGALLE

Monument

to

Marshal Saxe 1773

^'"''^i^^^m.

''Ai:^]6

statues, refusing to

be calm and dignified, anxious rather to

communicate and express emotion. In that they are - for all

their gilt draperies and rouged cheeks - more true to nature
than the chilly people of Canova's sculpture (///. 200), where
even

direct portraiture idealization has laid a cold, con-

geahng hand upon the actual. PauKne Bonaparte would be a fit

inhabitant of Adam's hall at Syon (III. igj).
In all Bernini's sculpture there exist not merely pictorial
but positively painterly quahties.
for certain painters reveals,

had

He

himself, as his admiration

a particular interest in painting.

have recognized the quality also in Rubens,

when one remembers that he was
exphcable
but
barely nine years old when Rubens left Rome, never returning

He should

certainly

his silence

is

In painting Rubens is undoubtedly the century's

dynamo one which retained some current to animate even
up to Van Gogh- and a symbol of the century's internationahsm.
He absorbed the Venetians and Raphael and Michelangelo, was
influenced by both Caravaggio and Carracci, and built up an
individual style which not only formed Van Dyck, touched
Velazquez, once at least affected Rembrandt, but animated
to

Italy.

Watteau, even in

ill-health,

with the energy to create that

culminates in the Enseigne de Gersaint (III. 224). In England

Gainsborough was markedly influenced by Rubens' landscapes,
and Reynolds owned a fine landscape by him.

200 CANOVA Pauline Bonaparte 1808

199

ASAM The

Assinnptioi}

1718-25

\
H'%'

202 RUBENS /! Allegory of Peace and

War 1629/30

Like Bernini, Rubens burnt with energy. He saw the natural

world quite clearly in its surface appearances, but was able to
re-make it, re-people it, charge it with an additional electricity
which pulsates under all his greatest work and gives its meaningful vitality to enhance life itself. Warmed by his imagination,
allegory and personification took on solid flesh. An Allegory of
Peace and War (III. 202) is movingly full of artistic and personal
conviction. There is even something splendid in the armoured
Mars, reluctantly led by the wise Athena from the fecund scene
where jewels, spurting milk, a cornucopia of glossy fruit, as
well as eager children, all give reality to the concept of Europe
enjoying peace, released from the threat of havoc. He could
give restless, pageant-like splendour to such subjects as the
Mystic Marriage oj St Catherine (III. 201), where the whole
composition is excited and inspired, a tossing, curving wave

which sets even the architecture in motion, rolling up to the

Madonna, enthroned and, almost alone of the figures, calmly at
rest. St Catherine's vision may be compared with St Theresa's,
235

201 RUBENS Mystic Marriage of St Catherine 1627-8

but Rubens makes his interpretation more public than Bernini's

group; it is not a privilege to attend the mystic marriage of
St Catherine so much as something enforced on us by the
gesticulating saints, conjuring us to an occasion as much festive
as

mystic.

Rubens was easily fired by ideas of triumph, whether of

church or monarchy. He responded to a stable social framework
where nature was beneficent in its manifestations. There was
no irony in his vision of the blessings ofJames I's reign (III. i yz)
any more than there was scepticism in Bernini's sculptured
glorification of the Cathedra Petri. It was within such concepts
of a God-directed universe and beneficent nature that Rubens
was able to produce such pictures as that of Helena Fourment
with her young son (III. lyj), the private blessings enjoyed by
Rubens and celebrated by him in paint. This candid intimacy
rivals Rembrandt's intimate portraits. And towards the end of
his hfe, Rubens seemed to turn back in a new mood of intimacy
to his native countryside, extending as it were to landscape the
personal pride and tenderness which he had given to paintings of
his family.

Yet Rubens' nature had needed Italian artistic stimulus before

could develop. The Rome not only of the past but of modern
masters such as Caravaggio and Annibale Carracci had guided
his energy into expression. Just as Baroque architecture goes
back to the sobriety of the sixteenth-century Gesu church, so
the equally seminal fresco scheme in the Galleria Farnese (111.
203), for which Annibale Carracci was summoned from
Bologna to Rome in 1595, is sober, unillusionistic decoration
in part - still closer in many ways to Raphael than to the
dramatic extreme of Gaulli (III. 178). Cardinal Alessandro
Farnese had built the Gesu for the Jesuits, and it was for his
great-nephew that the Galleria in the family palace was frescoed. There are painted a series ot classical love-stories composed as pictures on the ceiling so many flat canvases, it might
seem, on a framework most remarkable for the solidly-realized
living nudes who inhabit this world above the cornice, and who
contrast with the feigned architecture of herms, roundels and
putti which they flank.
Elements of Veronese and Correggio mingle here with
Raphael and Michelangelo, indicating that vein ot colour
(almost, colourfulness) and nature which was going to be
brought into academic conflict with design, or draughtsmanship, and intellect - though, in fact, the conflict was really based
it

236

^m^^'

203 CARRACCi Galleria

1

Farnese

(detail).

Palazzo

Farnese,

Rome

597-1604

on false premises. In late seventeenth-century France, Rubens

and Poussin were to be made leaders of the two opposing
tactions, in a way that did Httle justice to Poussin's response to
colour or Rubens' intellectual, antique interests. Like Raphael,
Annibale Carracci himself makes it clear that there need be no
such conflict. And like Raphael again, he offered work out of
which the twisted strands could be separated and drawn highly
illusionistic, dramatic, light-filled ceilings could be developed
trom the Galleria Farnese, or the more 'classic' picture on the
ceiling which was never more effectively achieved than in the
Aurora (III. 204) of 161 3, by Guido Reni. A pastel-coloured,
cool vision of antiquity, it deserves its great fame for its perfect
solution to decorating a room, its mild but genuinely poetic
response to mythology and its glimpse of still-dark landscape
that Constable was to praise.
:

237

Annibale's

own

landscapes display an increasingly ordered

which nature remains the inspiration but has been

re-arranged in an ideal way. In the Flight into Egypt (III. 203) the
Roman Campagna falls into a pattern more perfect than any m
reality, somehow made to mirror the concept of departure and
exile, with the Holy Family already cut off by the river from
the rich pastoral countryside behind, and about to enter a dark,
vision, in

new land. The elements of Giorgione's Tempesta (III.

151) are here more intellectually restated. But the seventeenth
century, even in Rome, the capital of classical idealizing tendencies, also required an almost scientific observation of nature
and natural phenomena. It fostered the sensitive light effects of
strange

Adam

Elsheimer's small landscapes

(III.

206) where nature

seems to rustle and stir under subtle, trembling atmospheric

moods, and man is merged with nature - no longer its lord.
Though he worked chiefly in Rome, Elsheimer was a German,
and the tradition he continued was Altdorfer's.
Out of the intensely ordered arrangement of man and nature
came the 'classical landscape', made by Nicolas Poussin to hold
deepest possible philosophical implications, as Bernini
recognized. It was in front of one of these classical landscapes
that Bernini, putting a finger to his forehead, remarked:
'Signor Poussin is a painter who works up here.' Atmospheric
nature, closer to Elseimer's than to Annibale Carracci's, floods
the pictures of the third great foreigner working in Rome,
Claude Lorrain (III. 2oy) Here the re-ordering of nature has
been conducted as stringently as by Poussin, but by the laws of
a dream world rather than of logic or intellect. Although
the

figures always animate these scenes, the

204 RENT Aurora 161

permanent hero of

I05

CARRACCi

them

all is

Flight into Egypt

light:

caught

at the subtlest

moments of vapour-

world is all solids, cubes and cones

of landscape and cloud, where even water becomes a heavy,
metallic liquid; everything remains graspable by man. But
Claude's is a world where earth is only a slim crust between
shimmering sky and sea: often reduced to no more than two
stage-scenery wings which provide the bare framework
within which insubstantial atmosphere hovers.
veiled brightness. Poussin's

Claude's landscapes represent an extreme, yet

that he never painted pure landscapes

it

is

without some

notable

human

presence and association. Nature inevitably retained its Renaissance significance of humanity, and it was as an emotional,

drama

Domenichino's Last Communion of

and
famous picture is as much a key to the period as Bernini's group
of Sf Theresa in Ecstasy, and its influence lasted longer. It tells of
no miracle but instead of the tenacious faith of the dying Saint,
emaciated and feeble, who has insisted on being borne to a
chapel from the desert to receive Communion for the last time.
Awe, devotion and pity are expressed by the Saint's attendants
and by the ideal trio of ministrants: priest, deacon and subsheerly affecting
St Jerome

(III.

zog)

that

was

for long appreciated. This large

239

deacon, in their very gradations of age making up

symbol of

human

hfe.

by

emotional seriousness and their celebration of natural

Domenichino

recognizable
realistic terms, but with emphasis not on any dramatic action
but on decorum and dignity. It is almost a stoic picture, for the
old man's resolution may be admired without sharing his faith;
and it is probably the ancestor ot all affecting deathbed pictures.
In many ways, Domenichino's severe ideals - in composition
as much as in concept - anticipated and influenced Poussin.
Pictures like Poussin's Death oJGermanicus (III. 208) create a new
climate of attitude to antiquity, tacitly challenging Christianity
their

tells

the

story

in

Germanicus is mourned for his learning

well as his military qualities. A hero even
to Suetonius, he is one of the first of Poussin's pagan martyrs. An
antique Roman scene is painted in modern Rome, and destined
for the Barberini family whose head would become Pope
virtue; the poisoned

and benevolence,

Urban

as

VIII.

Rome was
Caravaggio,

206 ELSHEIMER

<ii:.M*

of the supposedly 'realistic' art of

sometimes strangely treated as a pioneer of

also the scene

Fli(^ht into

Egypt

207 CLAUDE

modern

Eiiibarkarioii of (he

Queen of Slieha 1648

Carracci is less ideal and contrived than

Caravaggio is less naturalistic and revolutionary than he would have liked to appear. Like Annibale he
came from Northern Italy; like him he was influenced by
sixteenth-century Venetian painters, with more response perhaps to the emotional assaults planned by Lotto (III. 158) than
to the imperturbable good manners of Veronese. And in
subject-matter he remains remarkably conventional, preferring
religious themes. His effects of theatrical realism may well be

he

art. If Annibale

at first appears,

called 'Baroque'.

The

Spiritual Exercises ot St Ignatius Loyola,

the founder of the Jesuits,

sensations akin to the

Calling

of

St

210), but Caravaggio seems to linger more on the

round the Saint than on Christ - a figure in timeless

Mattheii'

group

had encouraged palpable, physical

drama of Caravaggio's

draperies

(III.

whose pose

is

oddly

stilted. It is

rather as if Caravaggio

241

needed to invoke Raphael's late rhetoric for his religious figures

but in his own idiom could respond to the genre scene of the
group around the table. The elements of theatre uneasily linked
with 'realism' - perhaps unfairly suggesting Italian touring
company verismo - are emphasized by the shallow space of the
picture area and the harsh contrasts of light and darkness: a
darkness that is black and flat rather than atmospheric. To some
extent, Caravaggio was perhaps the victim of an artistic delusion, for the closer he came to imitating realistic surfaces in paint
the more inner significance is lacking. There is some hollowness
behind his apparently hardest modelling, and an absence of
conviction under the waxwork appearances. The effects may
be eye-deceiving, but they do not deceive the mind.
Caravaggio caused a great stir, and for a while exercised

He did perhaps mean to

bring nature back into too ingenious-seeming and sterile art;
and the plebeian quality of his models, his touches of carefully
great influence chiefly outside Italy.

209 x:)OMENk:hino Last ComwiDiion

of

St Jerome 1614

208 POUSSiN Death ofGennatiiciis 1627-31

:^^?^
IT

210 CARAVAGGIO

CalHiii^ of St

Mattlu'w

naturalistic detail, and his determinedly dramatic

might suggest exciting possibilities to greater painters.
But the century that was to produce the electric realism of
Rubens, the dignified truth of Velazquez and the poignant
naturalism of Rembrandt, can scarcely claim in Caravaggio
more than a pioneer - pioneer, rather than peer of those great
painters. Nor was his revolution one that would lead to anything we can legitimately call modern art; its aftermath was the
exhibition picture of the nineteenth century, where glossy
paint and shocking subject-matter would briefly create
journalistic sensations around painters now totally forgotten.
Truth in art is an elusive substance. Yet within the conventions of naturalism in Western painting, it was clear to the
seventeenth century that Titian was the artist who had come

painted

effects

244

21

VAN DYCK

Clhnlcs

212 VELAZQUEZ
Francisco Lezcano

213 REMBRANDT
Margareta Trip
c.

66

Rubens studied and copied his work; so did

it.
Rubens' most gifted pupil Anthony van Dyck, whose Charles I
(III.
211) captures an outdoor naturalism, amid refinement,
which eluded the brash pursuit of Caravaggio. Van Dyck can
even suggest the passage of time: the King negligently strolling,
barely pausing for his portrait before drifting out of the picture.
Between ruler and gentleman, formality and informality, the
picture is deHcately balanced; though art has refmed and sieved
nature here into an elusive, fluid substance, the nervous vitality
of nature is still present. In Italy portraiture languished. After
Van Dyck, it was Velazquez in Spain who best knew how to
pick up Titian's brush. If it is the illusion of being confronted
by real people that is required, Velazquez can produce the
astonishing Las Meuinas (III. 218) which is a positive life-size
box of trick effects - but much more than that.
Where Rubens elevated James I to a heaven of flashing
allegory, Velazquez places royalty on earth: in a framework of
common nature, the plainest and yet the most vivid of environments. Van Dyck subordinated all to the King - even bending
the horse to his design. Velazquez' art has gone into making the
whole scene appear quite natural, even artless; his portrait is
not of any single person but of a Court which includes himself
In one way, this is a self-portrait with other figures: the artist in
his studio, much as Vermeer in Holland was to depict him (///.
216} not many years later. Yet Velazquez is stubbornly unideal.
As much emotional weight is attached to the dwarfs and
attendant women as to himself or the youthful Infanta they
have their lives too, and in single portraits of the Court dwarfs
(III.
212) Velazquez indeed painted - with overwhelming
dignity - the 'natural', in the sense of the mental defective. How
ideal the humanity of the fifteenth century seems in the presence
of this penetrating vision, and how foppish and fancy-dress
Caravaggio's characters. But Rembrandt's Margareta Trip (III.
2ij) has something of the same essential, stubborn humanity;
she is physically weak where the dwarfs were mentally so, and
Rembrandt gains part of his effect from the associations of tremulous old age; sunken face against starched ruff, withered
hand clasping the intensely clean white handkerchief
Nature is not only humanity but our environment; Jan van
Eyck had already stated so much in the Arnolfini group (III.
g2), and a good deal of seventeenth-century genre painting,
especially in Holland, records appearances ot ordinary lite
without his intellectual power and penetration. The topical,
closest to

247

2 14

^UKHAkAN

Still-lije

21$ RUiSDAEL The Mill

at

Wijk

c.

1670

2i6 VERMEER The

Artist's Studio

c.

1666

may well give it the appeal of diaries

and newspapers; and it is easy to say, as is usually said, that such
art developed in opposition to the Baroque visionary art of
Rubens or Bernini. Yet it needed just as much visionary power
to seize on the natural, subordinate its distracting elements, and
produce such almost mystically ideal realism as Vermeer's
interior with an artist (III. 216) or the grave intensity of Zur-

gossipy aspects of this art

baran's

Still-life (III.

214).

It is

hardly too paradoxical to claim

that these painters have, in their

own

fashion, practised St

on their subject, they

up with the conviction of inner reaUty. They

Ignatius' Spiritual Exercises: meditating

have conjured

it

mean more to the spectator than could an ordinary

hght-filled room or a pile of fruit. And they also point to the

make

it

complete emancipation of the painter from the tyranny of

subject-matter.

217

HEMKUAum

Christ prcachitiii 1652

A painter like Jacob Ruisdael has turned landscape into being

of his own states of mind (III. 213). What
is not the topographical accuracy of the
scene but the play of light and shadow in an entirely natural
universe. There are no cataclysmic events; to some extent the
earth is of no more importance than it is in Claude. It is the
always changing atmosphere that is Ruisdael's subject. He seems
absorbed by mutability, and though he painted no 'Allegory of
Time' his landscapes are full of feelings of transience. In Rembrandt's portraits time is always passing, through suggestions
of changing mood, transient light and something momentarily
seized - it seems - in the actual sitters. The nature that he sees is
as direct as Velazquez' its central concern is humanity, neither
elevated nor scorned, placed in the framework of its daily
environment - as we see it in the Syndics (III. 2ig). This was
painted only a very few years after Las Meninas, and the two
pictures provide fascinating, eternal food for comparison. When
Rembrandt took up conventional religious subject-matter it
was touched with a sense of humanity deeper than anything
Caravaggio had known. In his etchings - and perhaps Rembrandt was at his most personal in this medium - he would
depict a Christ (III. 2iy) whose divinity does not separate him
from the people to whom he preaches. He is one with them a

moody

interests

reflection

him, and

us,

and they are ordinary humanity indeed, not dressed-up actors

but plain, puzzled beings, utterly convincing as the species to
which we ourselves belong.
Such 'nature' would be instinctively responded to by Goya,
who named as his teachers Rembrandt and Velazquez, along
with Nature herself. The coming of the eighteenth century did
not shift the emphasis from nature; and it is a gross error, as well
as an irony, to confuse Watteau's personal revolution with an
increase in artificiality. Like Goya, he invoked nature - and
could have named Rubens and Veronese as his teachers from
the past. The eighteenth century had inherited the tail-end of
the tradition of perfect manner; it increasingly stigmatized that
inheritance as false and outworn, and invoked nature to lead it
back towards the unvarnished truth. Goya, perhaps more
profoundly than any other painter, understood that there is
something confused and irrational at the heart of nature. But
what he feared was positively enjoyed by an artist like Blake,
whose highly visionary subjects were expressed in a technique
deliberately 'primitive', disdaining the illusionism of oil paint
(III.

226).

251

2i8 VELAZQVEZ Las Meniiias 1656

219 REMBRANDT The Syndtcs 1662

The paintings of Tiepolo (III. 221), themselves consciously

echoing Veronese, are intended to exceed and improve on
nature. That they are 'false' is part of the artist's intention; and it
is clear that as a document of dark age history, this Marriage of
Frederick Barbarossa is quite worthless. No more do the petitpoint pastorals of Boucher (III. 220) provide instruction about
what the actual countryside is like. These are works of art that
justify themselves by power of the imagination: they mean to
take us into a world which does not exist and never has existed
outside art. It is really no different an aim from Blake's - different as the results are - but it has no particular moral conviction.
Both Tiepolo and Boucher showed themselves aware of, and
able to delineate, ordinary nature (Tiepolo in his caricatures, for
example, and Boucher in his genre scenes). Their lifetimes were
those also of Canaletto, recording often with poetic response
even the gritty workaday reality of Venice (III. 22 j), and of

253

220 BOUCHER Slu'phcni

pipiii(i to a

Shepherdess

111 TIEPOLO Marriage of Frederick Barharossa 1752

222 CHARDIN

Mowhlg

Toilet

741

224 WATTEAU

Eh.tc/X'hc dc

Gcrsahit 1720

Chardin, whose interior scenes have an unreal perfection (III.

222) recalHng Vernieer's, yet with an intensely human concern,
warmer than Vermeer but not sentimental. And Gainsborough
was their contemporary too, in himself uniting natural observation of people with silken graceful artificiality, as in The

Morning Walk

(III.

225).

even Chardin's, the deepest truths of human

nature might seem to be lacking - for one reason or another.
Certainly they are not lacking in Watteau's work, whether in
the dialogue of passion that makes tense the surface of his scenes
of lovers and dancers or in the naturalism of the Ensei(^ne de
Gersaint (III. 224), where a genre scene is shot through with
electric, erotic energy to make this interior the shop of the
human heart. But Watteau is concerned, seriously concerned,
with love; and the eighteenth century was spoiling for a fight.
In

Like

all this art,

Madame

Dangereuses,

amorous

de Merteuil in
it

replied

to

its

own

great novel, Lcs Liaisons

hedonistic

appeals,

relaxation,

words: 'La guerre.' Hogarth tried to

period by satiric, modern moral subjects which are

unity, with the

disturb his

perhaps too entertaining (III. 228) for their purpose. Several

painters sought increasingly in history - even in contemporary

256

225 GAINSBOROUGH The Moniiiij^ Walk 1785

226 BLAKE The Spiritual

Form of Pitt 1808

227 COPLEY Death of

Chatham 1779-80

228

HOGARTH

After the Marriage (Marriage a

history - for stirring, true events.

la

Mode)

c.

1744

Death remained the most

popular basic concern. The American-born Copley was something of a pioneer in this field of the modern history picture,
stirringly but inaccurately showing, for example, the Death of
Chatham (III. 22j). A much greater fright was needed; it was
given to all Europe by the French Revolution. When the
tremors caused by that event died away, the mould of perfect
manner and high art was seen to be one of the casualties, hi art,
as in politics, new realities had to be faced.
Two artists, Goya and David, born within two years of each
other, invoked nature in a revolutionary way and were caught
up in the events of the stormy years around 1800. What they
witnessed was shockingly natural, or romantically exciting.

259

229 UAVID Death of Marat 1793

230 GOYA J

May

1808

The

art they made from these events assaults the spectator with
Baroque force, so that we too become witnesses; and in
several ways the Death of Marat (III. zzg) and the 3 May 1808
full

(III.

2 jo) are the last great religious pictures.

They mark too

the

end of all Renaissance ideals; the blood that had been vigorously
restored to humanity after etiolation by artists like Bronzino is
here shed. And before they had painted these pictures, both
David and Goya had, as it were, crystalHzed their beliefs concerning art and nature. Desire for the truth had led, via such
pictures as Poussin's Death of Gernuviictis (III. 208), to David's
famous Oath of the Horatii (III. 2ji), a severe, exhortatory view

of antique history which delighted most of late eighteenthcentury Europe; regenerating art, much as Ledoux's archi261

tccture or Canova's sculpture

might be supposed to do, suband moral fervour for Rococo falsity

and light-heartedness. That is high art indeed.
Goya was less confident but more profound; he exposed the
irrational weakness in our natures, and originally intended that
the frontispiece of his book of etchings, the Caprichos, should
show The Sleep of Reason produces Monsters (III. 232). After the
self-portraits of Velazquez and Rembrandt comes this one,
which shows Goya dreaming, his reason lulled to sleep, and the
air thick with monsters. When he prepared this etching, Goya
had not yet seen the results of reason's breakdown which the
stituting classical truth

May 1808 so vividly depicts; but he drafted a caption that

serves as epitaph on the old half-Renaissance world into which
3

he was born and

as foretaste of the modern one into which he

'Imagination, deserted by reason, begets impossible
monsters. United with reason, she is the mother of all the arts,
and the source of their wonders.'

lived:

231 DAVID Oath of the Horatii 1785

3-

GOVA

he Sleep

ol

Kidsoii piodnics Moiisuis

ij^j'^j

233

iLiKNi-.K L'lyssi':, iU'iiJiii\^ rolyjilicmii.'-

234 CONSTABLE Tlw Haywaiii

tJ^Hf'*^

i<S2i

i.s^v

CHAPTER SEVEN

Facing up to Reality

Eight years after Goya's death, John Constable deHvered the

first of his series of lectures on landscape painting at the Royal
Institution in London. His opening phrases stated his own
beliefs about. painting: 'that it is scientific as well as poetic', and
'that imagination alone never did, and never can, produce

works
italics

reveal

that are to stand

are his

own).

And

by

comparison with

Constable's

own

realities'

paintings

what he meant by 'realities', as well

which he sought to convey.

as

(the

234J
showing the
(III.

scientific truths

Not for the last time, an artist claimed that art was concerned with depicting v^hat concretely is: 'la representation
des choses reelles' was to be Courbet's definition. No doubt by
accident, Constable seemed to offer a standard by which we
can judge art according to its verisimilitude to the exterior
world. Such was probably the standard adopted by most people
in the nineteenth century. There did not seem much place for
exercise of the imagination, and though Turner's pictures (III.
233 j may most immediately and obviously refute this, one must
remember that all Ruskin's enormous, eloquent defence of
Turner before his contemporaries rests on Turner's truth to
nature. Indeed, Ruskin virtually provided as well a defence of
the Impressionists (not so unexpectedly, because he shared their
abhorrence of average French academic art), in his emphasis on
the great 'modern' subject of landscape, in his quasi-scientific
observations on colour and variation of light, and above all his
stress on truth to appearances. No one before Ruskin had ever
denigrated the old masters so violently - he proposed, among
other things, the burning of the majority of Dutch landscape
pictures - with a view to praising so violently a living painter.
In other circumstances he might have championed not Turner
but Monet.
It was a brave attempt, and it was also central to the problems
which all the arts faced with the arrival of the nineteenth
century. Ruskin himself increasingly could not see a solution.
265

No accident turned him

from concern with art to concern witli

which art is produced; and it is no
accident eitiier that he, who had compared himseU'with Swift,
should ukiniatcly be drawn into despair and insanity. 'One day
.', was how he saw his age's
mimicking, the next destroying
akernating attitude to the work of those who had made possible
its intellectual and artistic life. This was the essence of the
dilennna, and it is remarkable how much art produced by the
nineteenth century can be divided into tame imitation of the
past (buildings in Greek, Gothic or Renaissance style) and
unprecedentedly violent rupture from it (Cezanne, Gauguin,
Van Gogh).
Ruskin, like Tolstoy, proposed a middle way truth to natural
appearances should be wedded to moral truth. Unfortunately,
the results meant - especially in the eyes of both these critics - a
triumph of moral subject-matter; what was depicted came to
matter more than how it was depicted. Tolstoy inevitably
praised peasant pictures that unite everyone in the same feelings,
indifferent to whether they were by Millet or Bastien-Lepage.
And the champion of Turner finished by praising a dance 'of
two girlies outside of a mushroom' by Kate Greenaway.
Constable's unfortunate, but typical, distrust of the imagination chimed only too well with the fears and aspirations of a
world trying to settle down and forget the shock of the French
Revolution. Increased literacy also proved deeply inhibiting
the society

amid and

for

to the visual arts, so often collapsing into sheer illustration

during the nineteenth century. Never before had there been

such a gap between contemporary estimates and those of
posterity; Ruskin's Modern Painters is partly an attempt to make
conservative opinion ai'atit-(iarde. Art was, in many senses, up
against reality: the reality of social conditions where it was
not always apparent that anyone needed art, the reality of
existence which was not heroic but prosperous or desperate,
industrial and prosaic. Thackeray was merely one more person
who welcomed artists cultivating 'the pathetic and the familiar'
in place of the grandiloquent. He was glad to see the disappearance of such allegorical pictures as, in his own words:
'Britainiia, Guarded hy Relii^ion and Neptune, Wekoniifi^ General
Tomkins in the Temple of Glory'. Yet, it ought to be only modi-

joy which saw that replaced by the intensely reaHzcd,

no less absurd Lii^ht of the World (III. 2j3) by
Holman Hunt, truest of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The
moral purpose here may be admirable; the artistic discipline -

fied

reahstic but

266

''j^iipijii^i&ckifkK.

235

HOLMAN HUNT
The

Li(^ht

of the

War hi

\^ S3

l:i '>.

working through cold nights in a real orchard - certainly was.

But for all the surface reality of eye-deceiving weeds, wooden
door and tin lantern, inner significance is absent; indeed, these
very properties, like the tasteless crown of thorns and jewels,
betray the basic banality. And Carlyle cruelly revealed this
said in front of the picture, and the painter, that it was
'empty make-believe'.

when he

In no medium was the dilemma posed by reality made more

apparent than in sculpture, an art less utilitarian than architecture and more public than painting. And it is probably true
to say that no medium sank to a lower level, where technical
competence merely underlined artistic poverty. The squares of
every large European city are, like graveyards, full of nineteenthcentury marble and bronze statues where reality is enshrined
in top-hatted figures, sculpted down to the last crease of
trouser and welt of boot. Not that such factual detail is in itself
the flaw it proved no solution to dress up Queen Victoria and
Prince Albert in Anglo-Saxon costume, as did William Theed,
a pupil of the much more famous John Gibson. Gibson's lifesize 'Tinted Venus' represents the logical end of realism: a
statue apparently as successful and popular in mid-nineteenthcentury Rome as had been David's Oath of the Horatii sixty-five
years earlier. Gibson's is the last echo of neo-classicism, less
severe than that of Canova - under whom he had studied - and
here passing into a rigid yet waxen insipidity (III. 2j6).
Historically, his statue closes a tradition which goes back to
Praxiteles (III. j2). Its conscious stillness almost demands to be
disturbed; the best the nineteenth century could do was to put
animation back into sculpture, first with the Rococo feverishness of Carpeaux whose work (III. 2jy) is almost pictorially
fluid. Form seems eaten away from within by energy, while
light falls over such surfaces as survive with flickering effect.
There is a romantic elegance also in Carpeaux's best sculpture
which made him a suitable choice to create a monument to
Watteau. His fluidity of form - one escape out of straightforward realism - is carried even further by the sole nineteenthcentury Italian sculptor of any importance, Medardo Rosso.
His is a positive impressionism, remarkable daring and revolutionary for its period, in which the forms flow and coagulate
without too much regard for what is realistic. His Conversation
in a Garden (III. 2j8), of 1893, is scarcely representational at all;
but the three beaky shapes are dynamic eruptions of bronze that
seem still molten, its surface exciting in its alternations of
;

268

236
c.

GIBSON 'Tinted

237 CARPEAUX

Vetiiis'

1850

238

ROSSO

Coiit'ersatioii in a

Garden 1893

la

Daiise 1869

smooth and rough texture. The emphasis is on material, on

movement and freedom - the artist's freedom to re-shape
reahty into forms more vital than could be found by modelling
three

little lifelike

dolls conversing in a recognizable, miniature

garden.

The problem of lifelikeness is acutely enshrined in the work

of Rodin, the greatest sculptor of the nineteenth century but
one who ends a tradition rather than opens up profoundly new
possibiHties. 'Three centuries of mannerism, academicism and
decadence', according to Herbert Read, separate him from
Michelangelo. Unfortunately, even were this true, strains of
mannerism, academicism and decadence are all apparent in
Rodin himself: sometimes so academically realistic that he
could be accused of casting a statue from a live model, and
certainly mannered, if not decadent, in the Balzac (III. 2jg).
There is, of course, no reason why a great work of art should
not be mannered; the Balzac is highly personal, deliberately
subjective, conveying an 'idea' of Balzac rather than providing
the nineteenth century with its average concept of a portrait
statue. Yet there is a surface of realism even here, a tendency to
describe, so that what at first glance must have once seemed
shockingly unnatural is quickly perceived nowadays to be the
effect of a coat wrapped round the figure in a theatrical gesture.
The result is a sort of realistic rhetoric, removed from the ordinary without being fused into something beyond the commonplace. Rodin has some affinity with G. F. Watts in England, and
more than a touch of Victor Hugo. An 'helas' must qualify our
recognition of Rodin as the greatest of nineteenth-century
sculptors.

Although architecture had the advantage of being

free

from

the weight of traditional reaHsm, it was deeply bound to tradition as such. Indeed, it was plagued by a historicism which
consistently quoted from the styles of the past, making Renais-

sance clubs and banks, Gothic town halls and churches - not to
speak of its more bizarre excursions into hybrid styles supposed
university buildings. But though it is
whole architecture of the nineteenth century
by some of these famous aberrations, that is no more just than
judging its painting solely by the Royal Academy and French
Salon artists. In many ways, it was actually in architecture that
the century made its finest contribution to art - regardless,
incidentally, of whether that contribution has proved influential. Bridges, stations, office and emporium buildings - and
suitable for

museums and

usual to judge the

270

il^j

RODIN Balzac 1S97

^S'Jfe-SJjV;

exhibition ones like Paxton's Crystal Palace (III. 240) - show

that the century was capable of original feats, particularly where
it could feel confident that art and mechanical progress had

come

together.
In the early years of the century, the idea

inspired

antique

of the planned

city,

modern example of Napoleon's Paris and the

one of imperial Rome, produced some of the fmest
by

the

to a practical yet agreeable urban environment.

whether wild or tamed into park and garden,
scenery,
Natural
also found its place in these schemes - most obviously in the
splendid London designed and partly achieved under the Prince

solutions

Regent and Nash. The neo-classicism which served Schinkel in

Berlin for temple-style museums (III. 241) is more florid and
yet more frankly scenographic in Nash's Regent's Park terraces
but there is a sense of order and elegance in this
(III. 242}
of creating private houses which contrasts with the
way
palatial
huddled terraces and uncouth Baroque of mid-Victorian
architecture. For some reason Nash has remained a despised
figure in English architectural history; his very grandness and
cool symmetry have been stigmatized, probably through a
Puritan confusion about the aims of art, in comparison with the
'bold independence' of Philip Webb and Norman Shaw. The
visual effect of Shaw's own house (III. 243), built in 1875, as
well as being prophetic of miles of later nineteenth- and
twentieth-century suburban semi-detached villas, is so aggressively awful as to suggest that it was designed not by Norman,
but by George Bernard, Shaw. In Nash's architecture, Vitruvian principles still retain their classic vaHdity; and man can
better measure himself against the unit of the pillar than amid
the gables, leaded panes and fretwork balconies that Shaw
presumably thought 'truer' than stucco capitals.
Yet architecture, no more than the other arts, need necessarily obey a single law of truth - whether truth to function or
to materials. Schinkel, who was in London at the time Nash was
replanning it, was capable of Gothic-style buildings and monuments - in which cast iron was used. Nash executed a Gothic
country-house for himself as opposed to his opulent classical
town-house in Regent Street, where the Quadrant columns
were also of disguised cast iron. While Paxton's Crystal Palace
may seem a triumph of 'modern' style, prophetic of later architectural developments in iron and glass, muddled historicism
could create masterpieces really in no style at all: faintly monstrous and overblown public buildings like the British Houses
:

273
240 PAXTON Crystal Palace, London 1 850-1
241 SCHINKEL Altes Museum, Berlin 1824-8
242 NASH Cumberland Terrace, London. Begun 1826-7

243

SHAW

Architect's

own

house,

London 187s

244 BARRY and PUGiN Houses of Parhament, London

840-60

of Parliament (III. 244), the unique child of Barry's Italianate

classicism and Pugin's Gothic passion. Pugin, inevitably,
loathed the Crystal Palace; he called it the 'Crystal Humbug',
hinting thus at its falseness - unfortunately, since it is fitter for
its function than his own building and quite free from superfluous ornament. Yet Pugin's romantic Gothic pile, partly

dependent for its picturesque effect on the river and convenient mist, remains an achievement as well as a warning. The
same is true of Charles Garnier's Opera (III. 245) in Paris: a
monument of highly personal Baroque, equally effective on its
site, but almost grossly evocative of pleasure, as abandoned as
the late pictures of Ingres. No performance inside the Opera
could equal its pleasure-dome exterior, and no parliamentary
debate could approach the unworldly, religious air of Pugin's
seat of government.
Of the two buildings, Garnier's was closer to contemporary
needs; indeed, it led to a whole style of theatre architecture. It
had been evolved for public social use. Although the odd great
274

245 CHARLES GARNIKR Opera, Faris 1861-74

building might emerge from brooding on the past, some solution beyond imitation was needed. 'Stations are the cathedrals
of our century', wrote an English critic in 1875. Destruction
was necessary - as Ruskin perhaps saw, certainly feared. It was
not destruction of old buildings, however, but of preconceptions - extending beyond the forms used to a realization that
whole new types of buildings would indeed prove as relevant to
the nineteenth century as cathedrals to medieval man.
With new types of building went new materials, first iron

and

later steel.

The

first results.

were technically triumphs of

engineering rather than architecture: bridges spanned in an

huge yet skeletal Eiffel Tower (of

dream of a weightless, open-work
spire (as at Freiburg, ///. 62) come true on a vast scale in the
modern world. Emphasis on engineering - on craft or science,
rather than on the 'fine art' of architecture - meant a concentration on essentials, turning away from decoration and orna-

unprecedented
1889)

which

is

way and

the

the Gothic

ment, to produce such

a stark result as the

Monadnock Block in

249 j. After the richly Baroque Opera of Garnier,

the theatre designed by another architect of by chance the
same surname, Tony Garnier, is effectiveb/ compact and plain
(///. 2^6). It illustrates his belief that in architecture 'Truth alone
is beautiful.' His theatre is true to its materials of reinforced
concrete and glass. Facing up to the reality of modern needs and
modern materials is not something to be dodged but enjoyed;

Chicago

(///.

V/

'^'1

-T-

246 TONY GARNiER Theatre, Industrial City 190 1-4

and Garnier's design - dating from 1901-4 - retains an extraordinary validity. Only one year younger than Gamier, Adolf

Loos produced

few years

later in the Steiner

House

(III.

247),

Vienna, the quintessential statement about the beauty of

truth - truth seen here in a ruled-out, uncompromising
simphcity, its structure unhindered by useless ornament. This
is crisply reasonable and elegant domestic architecture,
beside
which Norman Shaw's picturesque house is illogical and
sentimental, and not particularly 'true'.
Not every modern nineteenth-century architect was prepared totally to banish ornament. It is very much present in the
work of the American Louis SulHvan, whose Wainwright
Building (III. 248), in St Louis, looks almost Expressionist and
highly decorated in comparison with the exactly contemporary
Monadnock Block in Chicago. It is notjust Sullivan's building
that faces two ways, but his own ideas; he condemned ornament as a luxury, and the Wainwright Building is basically a
well-planned grid of regular piers and windows. Yet the top
storey writhes in a very different rhythm, with round windows
piercing lushly carved foliage. Sulhvan restricts ornament,
at

276

247 LOOS Steiner House, Vienna 19 10

it, but in the buildings of Antoni

Gaudi the ornament virtually is the architecture. It is really a
latent Gothicism which produced his extraordinary fluid effects,
where stone seems to have melted and been moulded as if it were
wax - and into this wax miscellaneous objects appear inserted.
Alberti could have comprehended the principles of Loos'
Steiner House, but Gaudi's utter novelty and almost shocking
powers of fantasy are unparalleled in earlier architecture. His
Sagrada Familia (III. 250) at Barcelona is not at all what Ruskin
had in mind in saying that 'Ornamentation is the principal part
of architecture'; yet it might be justified by that sentence. And,
after too much purity and truth to material and function,
Gaudi's architecture - which was after all actually built - may
seem to have achieved something by its relentless breaking of

without dispensing with

every rule. For Constable's

tion of the wildest kind.

'realities', it

has substituted imagina-

In painting itself, conflict revolved round the artist's liberty

and the public's reserves over that liberty. At bottom, what was
increasingly in doubt was whether society needed art. For this
reason, men like William Morris denounced the whole social
structure which appeared 'incurably vicious'. His solution was
destruction of evil machinery and a return to an impossible

248 SULLIVAN

Wainwright Building,
St Louis

249

890-1

BURNHAM and

ROOT Monadnock
Block, Chicago 1891

^iMw
250 GAUDi Church of Sagrada FamiHa, Barcelona. Begun 1884

Middle Ages of primitive handicrafts. Wilde was much closer

to a solution when he said - already in 1882 - 'All machinery
In 1901 SulUvan's pupil, Frank Lloyd
may be beautiful.
Wright, one of the creators of modern architecture, read a
panegyric on our 'age of steel and steam': exciting, prophetic
of twentieth-century developments, but finding Httle room tor
the painter in 'the Machine Age'.
.'

279

The Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution had

catapulted the painter into a very difficult world, one experienced by and responded to, in different ways, by such
David and Goya. To some extent, their attitudes are
by Constable and Turner - both invoking truth to
sensations yet with contrasting results. The proclamation
of 'le
Reahsme' made by Courbet in 1855, and presented pictorially
artists as

inherited

Monsieur Courbet' (III. 251) of the previous year,

remains the central concern for all painters. Increasingly it was
realised, as Courbet's champion, Champfleury, said:
'there are
no bad images for interested eyes'; but few artists painted
themselves hailed as genius-Saviour on the road not to Emmaus
but to Montpellier. Constable's Hay wain (III. 234) is real enough,
solid, even stolid, deliberately commonplace in
subject-matter,
and yet perhaps rather romantic in its associations of rural
peace and lingering belief in the moral value of 'nature'.
Turner's nature, as seen in Ulysses deriding Polyphemus (III.
233),
is romantically exciting, rather in the
stirring, slightly vulgar
manner of Wagner's early operas. Instead of Constable's
pastoral scenery and summer sky, we encounter a whole range
of exotic effects with blazing sky and glassy-cool sea, an elemental pageant amid which the sunset-dyed ship is itself a halfridiculous and half-effective symbol. Turner was also the
creator of pictures like the Evening Star (III.
253), quietly revolutionary in dispensing with subject-matter, a tone poem
rather than an opera. This absolute stillness of sea and sky,
broken only by the minute crystal point of a single star, is truth
to nature so intensely realized that beside it even the best contemporary landscapes of Caspar David Friedrich (III. 252) look
contrived, 'Gothick' in their spookiness, and faintly dead in
actual handHng of paint.
In different ways, both Constable and Turner retreat before
the urban social conditions of their century - indeed, before the
whole spectacle of humanity. Their concept of nature is of a
world not made by man and scarcely intruded on by him like
Friedrich's group, mankind's role is that of spectator. This does
not make such painters' work any less great as art, but it
divorces it from concern with the reality of life around them.
The landscapes of Corot (III. 254) have a timeless innocence
and a sort of Arcadian tranquillity which reflect the artist's own
tranquil innocence. This 'nature' promises to turn into Impressionism, and Corot began with a tonal accuracy which
unfortunately he could not retain.
in 'Bonjour,

280

251 COURBET 'Boiijour, Monsieur Coiirhet' 1854

Dramatic human reality, in shocking, topical terms, had

already been thrust before the public in Gericault's Raft of the
'Medusa' (III. 235), resuming as it were where David's Death of
Marat (III. zzg) had stopped. And there unheroic humanity is
shown suffering in a way that can leave no spectator uninvolved
- overwhelmed, more Hkely, by the size and emotional power
of a painting which perhaps proves too extravagantly sensational. Ordinary life does not offer many opportunities for
depicting such accumulated horror. Increasingly, and with less
artistic energy, painters were to provoke s\xc\\ frissons by turning
281

famous incidents from past history: there queens were

cardinals expired, and the httle Princes waited
ominously in the Tower (III. 257)- With Delaroche, the story
to

executed,

ak)ne provides the emotional mipact; he simply illustrates an

historical anecdote in a way typical of the many mid-nineteenthcentury Salon and Royal Academy painters, hideed, Millais
was later to paint the same subject, with even more flagrant
tableau vii'ant air. This is exactly the sort of art against which
Courbet rebelled - even more by his subject-matter, however,
than his technique. 'Borijour, Monsieur Courbet' (III. 251) is an
almost crude breath of air, rough, tough, and arrogantly
honest after the polished waxwork insipidity of Delaroche.
Daumier's works (111. 260) more subtly confirm a determination to reveal what life was really like - interpreting with
indignation or compassion, not merely recording it; in his work
the humblest reality is faced up to and transfigured into art.
Daumier was one of a disparate trio indicated by Baudelaire
when in reviewing the Salon exhibition of 1845 he said: '.
let us love them all three'. The other two were Delacroix and
.

253 TURNED The

Eueniii(i Star

254 COROT Pout

252 FRIEDRICH

Man

and

Woman j^aziiii^

at the

Moon jHkj

Before 1840

de Nartii 1826/7

from
of Delaroche, yet Baudelaire could praise him for colour
that was 'scientific'. Delacroix himself retouched portions of
the Massacre de Scio (III. 2^6) after seeing some of Constable's
pictures in Paris, notably The Haywain (III. 2J4). Although the
Massacre was an appalling contemporary event, and Delacroix
sympathized with the massacred Greeks, the picture is more
stirring and colourful than shocking. It does not impact on the
spectator with the force of Gericault, but it has its own energy
and excitement - its brushwork vibrant in comparison with
Ingres. Delacroix's subject-matter often scarcely differs

that

Delaroche's glossy surface. Strictly speaking, Delacroix's

colour was not scientific, but in its very vitality there was a
freshness and truth which would prove an inspiration to the
Impressionists. It is this colour that gives conviction to scenes
which otherwise strike rather a contrived note. Delacroix

seems to urge on

home

a basically sluggish

temperament, one

really

own

century, to conceive massacres and

atrocities, wild horses and bleeding bodies; they are tribute of a
quite at

in his

not always happy kind to Delacroix's behef in

as the central concern of art.

255 GERICAULT Raft of the 'Medusa' 1819

^.^

human

existence

256 DELACROIX Massacre de Scio 1824

285

257 DELAROCHE
Little Princes in the

Tower 1831

What Delacroix makes natural-seeming, Ingres refmcs into

the ideal. It used to be commonplace to see Ingres as an isolated
figure - a hot-house camellia blooming eccentrically amid
naturalism - but his obsessive concern with
him to Cezanne, and his superb linear gifts
not merely inspired Degas but are part of an undying tradition.
Like Klee, Ingres can often be found taking a line for a walk,
and he already obeyed Klee's self-administered dictum: 'the
essence of the subject must always become visible, even if this
is impossible in nature'. Manipulating the surface properties of
reality, Ingres keeps producing effects that are virtually surreal
in their obsessive detail. His wonderful portraits (III. 2^8) are
remarkable for everything except, ironically, naturalism. To
some extent Ingres solved better than anyone else the dilemma
of the mid-nineteenth century. He was, in many ways, the
'painter of modern life' demanded by Baudelaire. Allowed to
exercise his imagination on the past, he became ludicrous and
rising, plein-air

certain motifs links

Confronted by the prosaic reality of Madame

Moitessicr, opulent, over-upholstered, a modern example of

pedestrian.

conspicuous waste - a subject Delacroix would have turned

from and Daumier caricatured - Ingres became inspired. He
stalked her, plotted her, over the years, and finally evolved the
double-headed image where art has fused a masterpiece out of
heaviness and banality.

286

rf^.^

258 INGRES

Madame

Moitcssicr 1844/56

;:i-

..=_A-i^''l-

sy^ii^
2Sy

MAUOX BK(JWN

ll'oik

1X52-65

260 DAUMiER Third Class Carriage 1S63/5

26i

MANET Dejeuner

There
primitive

is

siir

I'Herbe 1863

something primitively tenacious and tenaciously

Ingres'

in

technique.

Like

the

Pre-Raphaelite

Brotherhood in England, but nearly half a century earlier,

Ingres had perceived that art needed purification. Reality must
be looked at clearly - with something of that clarity of outline
(and clarity of purpose) which might be found in early, preRaphael paintings. A group of German artists in Rome - the
so-called Nazarenes - had at the beginning of the nineteenth
century produced a surreal type of picture, mingling literary

whose very precision conwhat is known to be there,

rather than what is immediately seen, and paying much more
attention to line than to true colour relationships. The PreRaphaelite Brotherhood was more amateurish and muddled

subject-matter with a technique

tradicts optical truth:

in

its

going

showing

us

aims, while proclaiming with Ruskin the necessity of

'to nature in all singleness of heart, selecting nothing,

Their nature remained quite unnatural,

had usually been the result of prolonged study.

rejecting nothing'.

even though

it

2H9

Holman Hunt's Lij^ht of the World (III. zj^) marks the failure of
when this principle was applied to an imaginative
religious idea. The failure of Work (III. z^g) by Ford Madox
Brown - a picture that should have combined Courbct's

creativity

with Daumier's social concern - is ultimately a

is not so surprising when Brown's own
working methods are considered: 'Worked well at the shawl
in the open air', he recorded of a small portion of this crowded
picture. 'Now that the pattern is all drawn and covered with a
'realisme'
failure

of

fusion. This

I put-in the outdoor effect.'

Other outdoor effects (///. 261 265), achieved not long afterwards in France, would prove artistically more valid. Like

tint,

Ingres, like Delacroix, like

were

Courbet,

like the Pre-Raphaclitcs,

and then assimilated.

they shared was on first sight too naked - literally so
in Manet's Dejeuner siir VHerbe (III.261), though this is not truly
an Impressionist picture. Yet, in the end, their essentially
bourgeois, optimistic art - obsessed with appearances - became
the standard by which thousands of people have gone onjudging
painting, to be disconcerted by styles and subject-matter which
are superficially less related to the ordinary world we see. No
artistic revolution, perhaps, is easier to understand. The
Impressionists turned away from literary or historical subjectmatter, remaining altogether somewhat uninterested in la
condition humaitie; they painted the ordinary world as a spectacle
in which they were scarcely engaged except visually. Renoir's
wet day in Paris (III. 262) is as enchanted as some picture of
nymphs by Boucher, and this is one^of his most ordered and
coherent paintings, touched with lessons learned frofn Ingres
the Impressionists

The

first

to be attacked

'truth'

and Cezanne. The hedonism released by Impressionist art

on every visual experience with a greediness that may
eventually exhaust the spectator - and the artist too. Yet the
whole movement was quintessentially formed by its period:
an age without faith in imaginative myth or religion, challenged
by, but equally proud of, its scientific discoveries, its industrial
and urban development. And by inventing the camera, the
nineteenth century had challenged in particular painting of all
rushes

the

arts.

brought to a head the whole crisis of reality. Impressionism, the movement most closely linked to photography,
did not at first seem to feel the challenge. In the paintings of
It

Monet, the truest and most typical of Impressionists, there

seemed to be a camera-like objectivity: the seizing in paint on
290

262 RENOIR

les

Parnpluies

c.

1884

263 DEGAS Pouting 1873-5

265

MONET

la

Seine a Ar(^eiiteuil 1S74

the actual spot of what is visible to the eye, catching momentary effects, fracturing solid reality into the dancing visual

impression of fragments of light and colour f///. 263 j. This may

be how we see; it is less informative about what we see and
experience. Just as so much great nineteenth-century painting
dodged out of the city into the countryside, so Impressionism
dodged the question of the real in concentrating on the visible.
A very strong sense of the importance of physical facts, almost
a moral sense of truth-telling, had lain behind Constable's
pictures; in Turner, whose work Monet saw in England in 1870
(before the first Impressionist exhibition), nature is invoked in
some eternal cosmic drama, symbol of the artist's own interior
turmoil. Both English painters are involved with what they
depict, and depict more than they see. It is legitimate to ask,
what had Monet to say about the Seine at Argenteuil? And it is
hard to find in his picture anything that could not be seen by
the average spectator, with or without a camera.
Yet Impressionism, in this sense, was much shorter-lived
than any of the painters associated with it. It had developed
293

64 MANET Meal

in the

Studio

,S6S

haphazardly and gradually; and gradually it ceased to be

practised. In Monet's very late pictures, objects have dissolved
into pools of colour, and the relation to exterior reality is
tenuous to the point of non-existence. The whole Impressionist movement was the last attempt of Western painting to
deal scientifically with Constable's 'realities'. Instead of the
outer eye, it would be the inner one that henceforward accounted
for more. In Monet's art a positive brainlessness can be detected,
but with some other painters associated, more or less wilhngly,
with Impressionism the position is rather different. Renoir
was much more directly stirred by life in the sense of people ravishing, pretty people of such dangerously feathery prettiness
that he himself came to correct his style; and the left-hand
portion of les Parapluies shows a new, non-impressionistic
sense of form. Degas had never painted in the open air; he was
interested in catching the 'essential gestures' of life, making
reality significant by his intense acid concentration and
brilliantly unexpected compositional angles - stimulated by
newly-imported Japanese prints and by photography, but not

266 SEURAT

la

Grande Jatte 1884-6

267 uoMhn Gloucester Farm 1874

269 SARGENT Graham Robertson

268

WHISTLER Carlyle 1873

1895

emulating either. Even when he utilized photographs, he

produced something vividly personal (III. 26j).
In Manet there existed almost surreal ambiguities; they are
present in the Dejeuner sur I'Herhe, which still possesses a

challenging

sombre Meal

modern
strangely

They

air,
ill

and they give

their

'history

pictures',

force to

the

silvery-

indeed. These are

without overt incident and yet

the Studio (III. 264), a

'still life'

removed from anything resembling

a 'slice

arc partly traditional pictures painted with

of

life'.

no greater

novelty of style than could be paralleled in the work of

Velazquez or Goya. Reserved, dignified, undramatic, Manet's
art is perhaps the most baffling of all the art produced by the
nineteenth century. It is certainly full of the recognizable world
and closes a tradition. Even there an ambiguity lurks, for Manet
died prematurely of gangrene, whereas Degas, Monet and

>7i

REDON

Seahorse

in

an Undersea Landscape. Betore 1909

Renoir were all exceptionally long-lived - into the active litetime of Matisse and Picasso. It is, historically at least, a sobering
thought that they could all have seen Duchamp's 'signed'
Fountain

(III.

1).

Other painters came pointedly to challenge Impressionism.

However ditferent from each other, Cezanne, Van Gogh and
Gauguin were in search of a reality deeper than that of visual
impressions. They were much more aggressive, artistically
speaking, in their attitude to their material, and more pro297

170

M-:

DoiJANinu

iu)Iissi:aii

The Snake (Charmer 1907

272

TOULOUSE-LAUTREC

Jardiii

de

Paris:

jauc Anil

1893

mil-

foundly imaginative. These three alone

released painting

more

from

its

violently divorced

may

be said to have

naturalistic obsessions.

from public

They were

success than the Impres-

Manet - who thought himself badly treated - may seem

popular success in comparison with the period's total neglect
of Van Gogh. The importance of this trio must He in their art,
but their historical importance for the twentieth century is so
colossal that it almost conceals their own personal achievements.
Cubism, Fauvism, Expressionism - merely to begin a list of
movements and styles that fmd their source in these painters can too easily colour their art as we look back. From the point
of view of modern pioneering, they lead in association with the
magic, glowing unreality of Odilon Redon, whose dreampictures f///. 271) are the vision of the inner eye; and the work of
Redon's friend 'le Douanier' Rousseau, whose natural world
(III. 2 jo) is scarcely less visionary and magical; and the monumental, intellectual, achievement of Seurat (III. 266), the
painter whose attitude most closely approaches that of Cezanne.

sionists.

298

273 BEARDSLEY

Ascctisioti

of St Rosc of Lima 1896

274 CEZANNE Moiit

Sciiiitc-l 'ictoirc

1885-7

It is necessary to see each achievement of the nineteenth

century in its own right, before turning every great artist
into being also a prophet. And amid the giant figures, those of
such individual but not towering talents as Whistler and
Sargent can easily be overlooked. Their American origin is a
hint towards the slow but distinct emergence of an American
School of painting. Where Whistler and Sargent sought

Europe and the experience of European old masters like

Velazquez, Winslow Homer remained - despite one European
stay - much more nationally-rooted in his subject-matter
(III. 267) znd his attitudes. Homer's vision is very consciously
of what he has seen; it is typical of its century in its realism and
also in its tendency to lapse into illustration. Free from this
danger. Whistler's art wavers uncertainly in a way surprising
for such a would-be trenchant personality. Some lack oY
invention or, perhaps more truly, some tailurc of artistic energy,
prevents his work from making any consistent impact. He
^00

275 VAN

GOGH The

Soii'er

1888

remains the painter of one or two familiar masterpieces - like

the Carlyle (III. 268) -which manage to be boldly austere and
tonally effective, true to the artist's vision of life re-arranged,
but also true to life.
While Whistler has always been treated respectfully, if not
necessarily with enthusiasm, Sargent has been absurdly denigrated. His fashionable success as a portrait painter served him
ill with posterity, but even his brashest, slickest pictures leave a
distinct image - where Whistler grows vague and indeterminate. When he was quite free to choose his sitter, Sargent
could paint with great sensitivity combined with a genuine
romanticism. Clothes provide a permanent drama in his
pictures, and the subtle portrait of Graham Robertson f///. 269)
originated in Sargent's being attracted by the long overcoat
Robertson wore.
to

There are, equally, certain isolated great artists who conform

no pattern ot the period. There is considerable technical
301

importance in the work of Toulouse-Lautrec, whose posters

and hthographs are 'modern' art: art in their achievement, and
modern in their use of new processes of reproduction. Painting
as a fine art is jolted into a more up-to-date world; the aura of
the 'original' naturally diminishes when it is designed to be
mechanically reproduced. Lautrec's brilliant draughtsmanship
(III. 272) stiW triumphs in reproduction; and he is engaged,
wittily as well as poignantly, with his subject-matter in ways
closer to

Daumicr than

to Degas. His gas-lit inferno

is cheerfully
the satanic perversions of another
great artist - if a painter, one only in black and white. Beardsley
had been influenced by Lautrec's posters and he wrote his own

humane compared with

remarkably accurate prophecy of the future: 'London will soon

be resplendent with advertisements, and against a leaden sky
skysigns will trace their formal arabesque.' All Beardsley's
work was intended for reproduction, though it is in bookillustration rather than in posters that his exotic, erotic style best
flowered. For his own erotic book. Under the Hill, he produced
the Ascefision of St Rose of Lima (III. 2yj), a much more successful religious picture

theme

excites

than the Light of the World, in so

and creatively engages the

artist. It also

far as its

perfectly

is not a reproduction of what already

but a making visible of other things.
That paraphrase of Klee's dictum about art certainly illumi-

expresses the fact that art

exists

nates the solution practised in diflferent

Van Gogh and Gauguin. Yet while

it is

ways by Cezanne,

true that they sought

beyond the transitory - Cezanne seeking it through

an intellectual geometry, a structure of order, which recalls
Constable, and Van Gogh by a passionate expressionism akin to
Turner's - they all sought it in nature. Nature still meant the
open-air countryside, and the peasants or workers most closely
connected with the country. Less strangely than it might appear,
the spirit of the Preface to Lyrical Ballads still haunts their art;
rustic life - in Gauguin's case primitive Tahitian life - seeming
the condition where 'the essential passions of the heart find a
.'. Thus, in subject-matter these great pioneers of
better soil
modern painting are largely true to the tradition of their own
century, hi the landscape around Aix (III. 274), or in a still-life,
for a reality

Cezanne found significance enough. Given these objects,

familiar and knowable (in a way no person can possibly be),
he proceeded to reduce them to their essential forms: that is,
nature slowly revealed itself to him, in colour as much as form.
It is not too much to see a romantic concept even of the 'history

302

"^v
-5^_

#->

^^^

I
)

276 VAN GOGH

White Roses 1 890
picture' lying

behind

his

dreams of fusing the human body and

make in les Grandes Baigneiises

fmal statement on a theme which had entered
Western art with Giorgione (III. 151). Renoir too was to come,
late in life and in his own terms, to make his contribution to this
general theme, re-doing Rubens as it were, in the richly fleshy
natural environment, trying to
(III.

277)

Judgment of Paris (III. 278).

Van Gogh's was altogether a much more urgent vision; it
could not fail to upset - and indeed it is recorded as having upset
Cezanne, to whom his pictures seemed a madman's work. And
this is tragically apt, because Van Gogh's pictures are the work
of someone fighting to preserve his sanity: 'trying to remain
true', he wrote of his art, 'is perhaps a remedy in fighting the
.'. To some extent. Van Gogh's pitiful life, harried by
disease
the threat of madness, tends to obscure the resolute quality of
.

303

277 CEZANNE

Ics

Graudcs Ba{^ucuscs iSyS-iyo:

picture is a symbol: it is intensely eloquent of that calm and

harmony, only briefly recovered by the painter and for which
he had always been searching. This is a green and white
paradise for Van Gogh, as much his haven as the South Sea
Island scene (III. zyg) proved for Ciauguin.

The incompatible characters of the two men are hinted at in

two pictures. In the yellow house at Aries they had tried

these

unsuccessfully to live and paint together, but Gauguin's urge

towards the primitive unsettled him even before he quarrelled

with Van Ciogh. Instead of merely using the exotic effects of

Gauguin was directly to experience - and come
to full artistic life in - an exotic world. An artistic tendency to
retreat before urban industrial reality becomes geographical
escape. His flight from Europe was itself prophetic of the discovery of non-Western art which would soon have significant

oriental prints,

on European painting (e.g. Picasso's Demoiselles d'Ap{^rion

wonderful colour bloomed to express
an ideal mythical world, peopled by physically splendid beings
who really seem to achieve a harmony with the brilliant flora
amid which they live (III. zjg). Man and open-air nature are
brought together, just as they are in the late work of Renoir and
Cezanne. The sun still shines on warm flesh; nature is beneficent
and somehow an fond ordered, truthful and peaceful.
Yet these were visions achieved in what Frank Lloyd Wright
the Machine
was by 1901 calling our 'age of steel and steam
Age'. Is nature really so ordered and peaceful? And what is
effect
III.

2g2). In Tahiti, his

Do human beings not have some psychological percepand pressures more disturbing than calming? A person on
a frighteningly steep bridge in an alarmingly wavering landscape suddenly puts hands up to face and screams (III. 280).
Munch's picture is of 1893, but in Bacon's work its echoes
are still with us (III. 312).
truth?

tions

306

28o

MUNCH

1 he Scream 1893

28

MOniCiLIANI
IVowaii

Italian

Woman

in a

282 PICASSO
Blue Dress 1941

CHAPTER EIGHT

'We must go on

searching'

At any period an artist might make such a statement, but in fact

these words come from Paul Klee's aphoristic essay 'On
Modern Art'. They may well seein to have a special application to twentieth-century art, so consciously and so continually
searching that it has taken on some of the dangerous ephemerality of fashion. Media as well as styles have changed more and
rapidly as the search has continued. The very categories
of what constitutes pictures and sculpture have themselves
changed and expanded, and sometimes merged. Most people
are less dogmatic than they would have been fifty years ago
about defining what is - or is not - a work of art. Duchamp's
'ready-mades' have proved extraordinarily prophetic; but it
has become increasingly difficult to shock and astound the
public. Only too conscious now of the giant errors made by
critics and public in the nineteenth century, our century has
largely tried to protect itself by calmly accepting everything -

more

but probably au fond caring for nothing much which has been
produced. The sixteenth-century Venetian who disliked
Tintoretto's work, or those

many

Victorians

by Holman Hunt's Li^ht of the World,

judgment of taste. Posterity - if there is a
wonder whether art any longer mattered
really affect

anybody's

life

who were moved

expressed a
- may well
to us, so little does it
or interests outside very narrow
at least

posterity

circles.
is the first difficulty underlying any survey of art in our
century. Historically, we can hardly be expected yet to
comprehend its significance. Aesthetically, there has been Httle

This

own

attempt to challenge or revalue the lazy estimates which have

grown like weeds on the one-time battlefields of taste: Picasso
is more famous than Matisse, and hence can be presumed to be a
greater artist. Mediterranean culture and tradition exercise a
glamour over the Anglo-Saxon world which guarantees a
preference for art engendered within that magic territory; it is
bad luck to be born a Northern artist and preserve a 'Northern'
3oy

concern with emotion, expression or fantasy. Indeed, the sole

prejudice that is developed and popular among art critics is
against German twentieth-century art; Dessau has no emotive

power compared with Aix-en-Provence.

There is another difficulty, connected with appreciation,
which histories of art particularly like to emphasize: the break
with previous visual traditions which can certainly be made to
look abrupt if a Kandinsky is placed next to a Courbet. But this
sort of comparison does less than justice to an artist like
Modigliani - sculptor, it should be remembered, as well as
painter- who managed to be 'modern' partly through response
to art of the past; and his incisive images (III. 281), graceful yet

now that figurative art

Of course it is true that the early twentieth

keen, deserve re-appreciation

respectable.

again
century

is

which violently
overthrew what was then currently passing as traditional most patently in the sort of illusionistic realism practised by
painting. But the presumed difficulty is only a Western one,
and then came into existence only at the Renaissance. The
contemporaries of Duccio would probably have experienced
little difficulty in appreciating Kandinsky; certainly they could
have responded to Klee. Byzantine mosaics, the Lindisfarne
Gospels, Gothic stained glass are merely some of the examples
ot pre-Renaissance art which were able to invent images without copying exterior reality. We do not hear that the public
experienced any bafflement in understanding such art; and one
should reflect before saying that this was only because the
public had faith in the concepts expressed by the art, since a
modern public should also be presumed to have faith - in the
concept of artistic inspiration. If one generation can believe in
angels, another should believe in genius. And how the Gothic
artist boldly trusted to art is shown by the eagle vase (III. 66) oi'
Abbot Suger; without too much incongruity this could be
associated with Picasso's sculpture created out of found objects.
In both we enjoy, and are meant to enjoy, pleasure of recognition combined with pleasure of surprise: the vase become an.
eagle's body, bicycle handlebars become a bull's horns (///. 28j).
deliberately achieved several artistic revolutions

And

in neither case arc

real bull's

head or

we

troubled that the result

a real eagle.

What

the results

is

not like

do resemble,

however, are ideas that existed in their creators' minds.

They too - the ideas - have their reality. Indeed, their absence
from the work of, for example, Monet is what makes it so
dangerously thin and dependent on what is seen. Munch's
310

283 PICASSO Bull's Head 1943

Scream

of

(III.

reality

280) is a refusal to surrender to that outside envelope

like a shirt of Nessus to most nine-

which had clung

teenth-century painters.

He

deliberately shakes that concept of

optimism that is exuded from the

Bonnard and Vuillard were close contemporaries of Munch. Bonnard's diluted Impressionism
marks the end of a tradition, dying agreeably in patches of sun-

harmony and

gentle, intimist

pictures of the 'Nabis'.

light,

domestic interiors and

faceless,

not very vigorous nudes.

much more

sharply decorative painter (III. 284),

less in thrall to what is seen and more capable therefore of giving
artistic independence to shapes and - especially - colour. What
Vuillard

is

is

certainly hinted at in Vuillard

becomes triumphant

fact in

work of Matisse. Explaining what characterized the movement he led, to be dubbed Fauvism, Matisse stated: 'we comthe

abandoned imitative colour'. He himself early painted a

blue male nude, disconcerting even his friends -just as Picasso's
friends were to be disconcerted when they first saw les Detnoiscllcs
pletely

d' Avignon (III.

2g2).

311

Where Munch sought an intensity of feeHng expressed partly

through subject-matter, Matisse made colour in itself serve as
expression. It is the coloured surface which is important in the
red version of the Dinner Table (III. 28$ ):the table is as flat as the
wallpaper, and the epergnes with fruit no more solid than the
flower motifs which cover table-cloth and wall. The subordination of ordinary reality is much stricter than a 'Nabi'
painting, and though one can easily recognize that the scene
shows a maid at a table near a window, the picture is not 'about'
this but about blue and red combined together near an expanse
of green. The effect of these is controlled by pattern-making, in
which sharp black lines not only delineate shapes but serve - as
in stained glass - to intensify the patches of colour they surround.
It is not therefore a paradox but part of Matisse's control of his
effects, however brilliant in colour, that he should also have
been a brilliant draughtsman. There is economy even amid his
most apparent luxury, and the economy of effect in his drawings
manages to be at the same time sensuous and colourful, despite
the restriction.

284 VUILLARD
Interior

1893

285 MATISSE
The Dinner Table 1908

286 MATISSE Negro Boxer 1947

313

All Matisse's interests

the paper cut-outs

made up of
difference

over

which

directly juxtaposed

to

long

life

seem concentrated

in

are typical of his late years: patterns

flat

three-dimensional

shapes of colour.

illiisionism

in

the

The

in-

Dinner

of 1908, has become complete emancipation from any

of reality in the Nej^ro Boxer (III. 286), a paper cut-out
of 1947. Colour is now patently the subject, with black a
lively, pugilistic motif against rectangles of complementary
red and green. In the black shape Matisse expresses his symbol
of the boxer but beyond that no deduction is possible: 'When
Table,

transcript

paint a green, this does not necessarily mean grass.'

The emancipation which Matisse early achieved in his

own

way was prophetic not only of the

twentieth century's
ability to dispose as it liked of visual reality but had a direct
influence on other painters - perhaps more significantly outside France. His recognition of the autonomy of colour has
been developed as a principle in modern art and the almost
magic sense of colour released, flooding pictures with its own
personal

vitality,

is

found

as a

force behind

many

quite diverse painters,

including Nolde, Klee and Kandinsky. Something of this

dominance is suggested, not altogether accidentally, by the
very name of the Blanc Reiter group preparing the spectator
for a world where it is perfectly acceptable - indeed, artistically
true - that a horseman should be blue. He becomes the champion of anti-naturalism but also the symbol of deeper reality.
In this determination to express something more 'real' than
:

had seen. Van Gogh, Gauguin and Munch

way. These three artists in particular inspired the short-lived German group die Briicke (founded in
1905), whose most distinguished member was Kirchner. No
more than Matisse did Kirchner intend the recognizable
the Impressionists

had already

led the

references to reaHty in his work to be the real subject. His

imagination played around street scenes in Berlin f///. 287), for
example, heightening reality with brilliantly jagged, often
sinister shapes and lurid colour - expressing his view of a city,
very different from the gentle atmospheric Paris of Impressionism. Kirchner bites more deeply and satirically into the
spectacle of urban life than any French artist except ToulouseLautrec; and his lynx-faced ladies and shrill colour make him
much more truly fauve than any of the historically Fauvc
group. Briefly a member oi die Briicke but basically committed
to nothing but his own intense vision, Nolde - two years
older than Matisse - early subordinated exterior reality, trans-

3H

figuring it into some of the most sensuously rich twentiethcentury paintings. Colour seems to well out from centres
within the composition - perhaps most superbly in his watercolours (III. 288) which blossom like the flowers he was fond of
painting, blossoming with a vividness that has passed beyond
anything lifelike. The flowers are flakes of burning fire or
molten metal, hallucinatory in their effect: they are part of
Nolde's sense of a mystic universe, with, in the words of the
seventeenth-century mystic poet Vaughan, 'Bright shoots of
everlastingness.'

287

KIRCHNER
Potsdamer
Platz

1913-14

315

2HH NOLDt Red and

Yclloti'

Poppies

289 KANDiNSKY Composition

I\' ly

290 KLEE

Flaj^'^cd

Touni 1927

Nature, in equally mystic sense, was vital to the slightly later

Blanc Rcitcr group. The simplicity - not naivety - which these
artists admired was expressed better in le Douanier Rousseau
(cf ///. 270) than in the more strident, matter-of-fact world of
Gauguin. Ideas of magic and primitivism take the Blanc Rcitcr
painters' art back to the cave. They are one aspect of a twentieth-century dissatisfaction with Western civilization and cul-

consequent interest in so-called 'primitive' art. Some

artists may seem merely charming and decorative.
Kandinsky and Klee, also both members of the group, cannot be
dismissed in this way. Historically, Kandinsky's importance is
considerable: finally, perhaps, for his treatise 'Concerning the
Spiritual in Art' (191 2) rather than for his actual pictorial work.
The twentieth-century earliest determination - present before
being articulated - to banish the object altogether from the
picture was probably first expressed by Kandinsky, already in
ture,

and

Blanc Rcitcr

1910. Despite their energy, their musical lyricism, their lively

yet not quite witty mventivcness, Kandinsky's pictures (III. 28g)
remain faintly contrived; there is an element of exercise about

many of them which contrasts with even the slightest, yet

always authentic pictures and drawings of Klee. Kandinsky's
spiritual intentions were perhaps too solemnly conscious; and
sometimes Klee's wit may well seem directed at exploding
such solemnity, letting the unconscious thumb its nose at
everything that had been called art.
While some German twentieth-century painters have been
underestimated through being supposed gloomy, clumsy and
'expressionist', Klee has probably been underestimated because
of his light-heartedness, delicacy and charm. There was, however, nothing superficial in Klee's own continual search tor
ways towards great art. Picasso may have arrogantly declared,
I find.' Klee was humble, not out of any lack of
'I do not search
pride in trying to be a good artist but because he realized that
it is not
but something working through the artist which
produces art. And sometimes what Picasso found has speedily
lost its lustre. Through doodling, through the example of child
art, through a sort of lulling of the conscious, Klee was able
finally to create something that seems slight but which remains
tenaciously vivid. Unlike Kandinsky, he often retained images
which are quite recognizable; unlike Kandinsky, he could
control - and that most beautifully - his design. The sheer
;

inventiveness of the images and colour produced pictures

(III. 2go) which are intensely poetic and timeless in a good sense.

318

They

we

neither reproduce nor totally reject the exterior

world

imagination which has coloured all Klee's images,

products of an inner eye which sees much deeper than the
ordinary one. This perhaps is Klee's final lesson, in a life of
giving many lessons: that the imagination must be trusted.
see;

it is

Klee's finest

work was done

after the First

World War when

he joined the Bauhaus under Gropius, but the Blaiie Reiter

group had been formed before 1914. In the first fourteen years
of the twentieth century, the diversity of its searching was
already apparent; indeed, in those years were established many
of the dominant styles and movements which still echo on,
more than half a century later. Yet underlying the diversity is
the common beUef that 'all forms of imitation should be held
in contempt'. These words are from the Futurist manifesto of
1910, which expresses in particular the views ot a group ot

poet and a composer, along with painters,

formed the group). Eager for the truth of modern sensations,
emphasizing the vortex of life, and trying to capture its speed
and motion in their pictures, they produced paintings which
are no longer effective in those devices that the cinema has
made seenl absurd but which in their very apparent absurdity
anticipate Dadaism and Surreahsm. Perhaps the most successful picture of this kind is the work of someone who was not an
Itahan Futurist, Duchamp's Nude descending a staircase ( III. 2gi),
painted in 1912. This is a picture which still conveys a sense of
Italian artists (a

hurtling energy, an almost noisy clatter of wooden planes

against wooden steps, a deliberately aggressive, energetic
dismissal of anything resembling a 'real' nude.
It was a different way of rejecting naturalism that led to the
severely geometrical abstractionism practised in Russia by
Malevich. In 1913 he painted his manifesto of the movement

he called 'Suprematism' a picture of a black square on a white

ground. Kandinsky, Russian by birth, may seem an obvious
link, and yet Malevich probably did not know him and certainly had more purist, perhaps more truly painterly ideas.
Very firm shapes and very deUberately restricted contrasts of
colour make Malevich's pictures have much more in common
with Mondrian than with Kandinsky. An entirely painted
architecture is built up, a scaffolding which is intended to be a
structure of the ideal world - harmonious as our world is not
but ought to be. Reason, logic, seriousness mark all these
:

down to the truth that underlies natural appearances.

Already, in dealing with fifteenth-century Florence, the words

efforts to dig

319

of the philosopher Schoenmaekers, a great influence on

Mondrian, have proved relevant: 'we want to penetrate nature
in such a way that the inner construction of reality is revealed
to us'. And these words supply a prologue to the most serious
and sustained movement of the early twentieth century:
Cubism.
Les Di'tHoisclU's d'Ai'i^tuni (lU.zgz) is a shocking, seminal
picture - an ugly, unfinished picture losing significance when
loses its power to shock - which marks the beginning of
Cubism without being itself Cubist. The question of totally

it

non-naturalistic art

be that

is

illusionistic

not a very difficult one indeed, it may well

like Caravaggio's ultimately raises
;

work

292 picAS,^o

DUCHAMP Nude

les Demoi.<elli's

d'Avi^^noii

desceriditij^ a staircase

191

1907

more questions. What happens in les Demoiselles d'Avi^^noti is

the shocking juxtaposition of two quite grotesque heads to
some figures who derive from Cezanne's Bai^neuses(Ill. 277).
These two heads are

in a

completely

new

idiom, suggested by

sculpture but wrenching reality in a much more disturbed and disturbing way. It is an aggressive break with the
Renaissance-established canons of illusionism, all the more

Negro

aggressive since
in the

it is

carried out not in landscape or

still-life

but

most sacred of Renaissance subjects- mankind. Not only

two heads not like anything we see in ordinary life, but

woman's left breast is a deliberate, shaded square:
however tentatively, Cubism has already begun its radical work.

are the

the upper

Picasso and Braque must be spoken ot together as the founders

of Cubism; and in the constant search for geometrical design
and structure, Braque remained a Cubist. What they invented
was an artistic language which emphasized its independence
from reality by at first virtually banishing colour along with
recognizable contours and shapes. Although it is sometimes
described as vaguely scientific, it was perhaps basically more
truly romantic and poetic. Picasso's portrait of Vollard (III. zg^)
and Braque's Young Girl with Guitar (III. 2gj) - different as they
already are from each other in details of style - both exult in the
freedom of having found a way to express their perceptions of
the subject, regardless of what is actually visible. It is less science
than magic which creates these fractured, multiple images
which are like shifting kaleidoscopes. Braque's picture has an
almost musical rightness in its placing of the lines (it is indeed
more linear than Picasso's Vollard), and Braque was to develop
this gift in a series of still-lives - his preferred theme - which
might be called decoratively cubist in their effect and palpitatingly sensuous in their colour and surface when compared
with the still-life in the foreground of les Demoiselles. Braque's
intensely personal art produced some of the finest paintings of
the first half of the twentieth century, but his apartness leads to
his being somewhat overshadowed by conventional art history
once the early years of Cubism are over.
The influences and effects of Cubism were speedily felt, and
also its limitations. Braque and Picasso were the first to realize
that there was something too hermetic, too dull perhaps, in the
style; they provided a dose of fresh reality in the most real of
ways, by applying to the picture surface actual pieces of cutout paper and cards, and varying the paint texture by roughening it with sand. Something more colourful and playful was

322

the result: a sense of trompe I'lvil which can take on at times a

surreaHstic conviction. There is also a kinetic aspect of Cubism,
whereby the images seem to move, revealing each facet - each

cube - while the spectator remains still. To be developed by

Futurism, it was achieved by Duchamp not by the suggestion
of coloured lights playing over surfaces but by the series of
hard, sharp planes presenting multiple images in the Nude
descending a staircase.

Even there, in a style which Duchamp was to abandon, can

be detected a deliberate overtone of anti-art: there is a greater
discrepancy perhaps between the title and what we see than
between title and picture in the case of Braque's Young Girl with
Guitar. And perhaps the theme of the staircase itself provides
another hint of the direction to be taken by Duchamp, for it is a

common dream symbol

(Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams

been pubUshed in 1900). Duchamp's anti-art ideas were
to become one of the stronger planks in the rather uneven
platform of Dada - a movement which began in Switzerland,
was suitably international in its membership and its influence,
and which seemed to signal complete liberation trom the past.
At the same time, Duchamp was also to be praised by Andre
Breton, leader of the movement which emerged as quite
different from Dada, however mingled the two had at first
seemed: Surrealism. In Duchamp's The Bride stripped bare by
her Bachehns even - an early example ot the new art object
which refuses to be categorized - Breton rightly found intimations of eroticism, lyricism, science and humour; and though
The Bride figures in histories of Dada, it is as far from being

had

first

non-art

as

it

ticularly true

is

from being

'ready-made'.

The same

of the work produced by Dada

is

par-

artists like

Arp

and Schwitters. Although Schwitters made a point of assembling his compositions out of rubbish, the results (III. zg^) are
not only works of art, apparently casual yet carefully planned
down to the application of the smallest fragment of torn paper,
but they themselves have now taken on an aura of the past;
they are the slightly dusty incunabula of modern art, and it no
more matters that they are made out of wire, feathers and tram
tickets than that early Italian pictures are painted with earth
colours, gold-leaf and lapis lazuli.
If the original intention of Dada was to be against everything

- especially the everything represented by Zurich, the city

where it began - Surrealism represents liberation rather than
mere revolution. Both movements began in literature; and

293 BRAQUF.

>'();/;/(T

(;irl

with Guitar

294 PICASSO

I'ollard

1909-10

much surrealist painting. Reason is

allow the unconscious mind to release images
which are usually vivid and precise - like dream images needing to be painted with extreme, almost 'primitive' detail.
This role of making visible what is within him is Max Ernst's
definition c:)f the painter's task, when describing his discovery of
the images and shapes provoked by the grainy floorboards of a
seaside hotel. In his work (///. 296J imagination really seems to
find free play. Certain images, like doves and forests, return
literary associations colour

excluded so

as to

295 SCHWITTERS Opcucd by Customs

c.

1937-9

Vi

326

296 ERNST Grey Forest 1927

again and again with haunting effect - an effect Ernst himself

captures evocatively in two sentences about his original
vision: 'In a country the colour of "a pigeon's breast", I hailed the
flight of 100,000 doves. I saw them invade the black forests of
desire and endless walls and seas.' Against Ernst's authentic
magic, the surrealism of DaU may seem too glossy and contrived; the chic surreahsm of a shop- window rather than anything sprung from the unconscious. It is easy, however, to be
unfair to Dali since his later work has become glossy academicism
and because there is little point in praising someone so adept
at

praising himself Perhaps

however, that the more

some

it

literal,

is

not altogether an accident,

figurative surrealists have had

difficulty in preserving the poetic, inspirational

in their

element

work.
327

The

searching which Klec spoke of had led, in painting

by the 1920s. In 1926 Gropius
built the Bauhausf///. 297) at Dessau, typifying the new modern
attitude to architecture and also the new modern concept of an
artistic centre which should serve as a power-house of all the
arts. In this too there is something of a return to pre-Renaissance
standards: a cathedral rather than a palace seems the relevant
comparison, and concern with the community rather than the
individual. In architecture there might seem to be a less radical
alone, to such diversity of results

break with nineteenth-century standards, because the more

advanced of those had already laid definite foundations for
modern developments. In America Sullivan's architecture
remained, still remains, acceptably 'modern'. The elements of
steel and glass which make up the Bauhaus had been used in
Paxton's Crystal Palace, romantic as that building may seem
when compared with the logically coherent, skeletal design by
Gropius, occupying space yet scarcely realized as mass.
One reason for a sense of continuity is that the nineteenth
century had already initiated novel types of buildings - stations,
museums, office blocks - which were to offer architects in the
twentieth century some of their best opportunities. The tall
office block created by Sullivan culminates in the weightless
but triumphantly high Seagram Building f///. 30 i^, seeming to
rise unsupported, beginning as it were in the air. This is perhaps
the last echo of Gothic chapels of glass, and certainly the last
echo of Bauhaus ideals. The glass-roofed halls of nineteenthcentury stations culminate in the undulating, spacious rather
than massive, Stazione Termini at Rome. The problems of
the museum building have demanded more radical solutions
than the nineteenth century quite dared to propose; its impersonal cavernous halls for housing art have given way to
something more flexible, dynamically exciting and dramatic in
the winding layers of Wright's Guggenheim Museum, perhaps
almost too personal a setting tor works of art.
The problem of the urban centre - which had once occupied
Julius Caesar at Rome - seemed solved by the early nineteenth
century but had become acute again before the century ended.
Agglomeration of houses in industrial cities (the very creators of
the materials that ought to have meant better housing) had
produced slums. And whereas people may question the relevance for them of 'art' m the sense of paintings or sculpture,
architecture remains the art which directly concerns everybody; unfortunately, this has sometimes had the effect of pre-

328

venting buildings from being architecture - rather as most

newspapers fail to be literature. Le Corbusier, whose treatise on
urbanism 'la Ville Radieuse' was pubHshed over thirty years ago,
was one of the architects most obsessed with the problem of
modern man's domestic existence. His Unite d'Habitation at
Marseilles ("///. 2g8) is a return to the horizontal gridof Gropius,
opened up here to provide the maximum light through glass,

making

cells

for existence

which may encourage intimations

of bee-like activity or tend too

much

to

suggest prison

uniformity.

The possibilities of the individual house in or near an urban

environment naturally interested English planners; the garden
city and garden suburb remain very much an English conception, exercising some fitful influence in Northern Europe, but
a luxury of space - and an ideal - that most countries neither
had nor desired. When it came to building blocks of flats for
ordinary workers on a municipal scale, England lagged behind
Continental and American example. Box-like, cell-like constructions in which to live were opposed by Frank Lloyd
Wright, whose private houses are planned in relation to their
natural setting, most patently in the Kaufmann House (III. 2gg).
Here nature has dictated if not the forms at least something of
the effect. Long horizontals are complemented by trees; real
rock is echoed by slabs of concrete built out over a mountain
stream. Such a solution to the 'house' is as princely and personal
as Villa d'Este. It aims at being a work of art, not imposing on
but blending with its environment, where man and nature
have created together in harmony. Such a view of their activity
was to be expressed also by certain modern sculptors.
And in disassociating himself from cold functionalism,
Wright has proved particularly significant. Glass and steel
cubism has more recently been replaced by more expressive,
personal qualities which may best be conveyed in stone and
concrete materials. Having searched for and tound ways to
dissolve walls, architecture

is

now more

likely to find

put massiveness back into walls - above

ways

in

which the individual

architect

ways

to

all,

perhaps, to find

may

express his indi-

probably the only way in which a building

can become a work of art. It is as an example of the new style,
expressed in a personal idiom, that one can see Denys Lasdun's
Royal College of Physicians (III. joo): built in Nash's Regent's
Park complex, a challenging environment which is partly
garden as well as architectural into which it was planned to tit.
viduality. This

is

329

297 GROPius Bauhaus, Dessau 1925-6

298 LE CORBUSIER L'Unite d'Habitation, Marseilles 1946-52

299 WRIGHT Kaufmann House,

Bear Run, Pennsylvania 1936
300 LASDUN Royal College
of Physicians, London 1964

301 VAN DER ROHE and

JOHNSON Seagram Building,
New York 1958

302 BRANCUSI
in Spncc
1919

Bird

Since sculpture was probably the weakest art form in the

nineteenth century, it was the one whose tradition was most
obviously to be rejected by modern sculptors. In fact, freed
from tradition, sculpture has proved the most fluid and flexible
of modern media. Rodin was no Cezanne or Van Gogh. This
was recognized by the most significant sculptor at the beginning
of the twentieth century, Brancusi, even though he could praise
Rodm. It was equally recognized by Matisse, by no means the
first great painter to show interest in, and to practise, sculpture.
Degas and Renoir indeed had produced perhaps the only truly
'modern' sculpture in France during the nineteenth century.
Brancusi refused to become an assistant ot Rodin's. He saw his
task as one of purifying art, dispensing with surface realism and
penetrating to that essence of things which was equally
occupying painters in the early years of this century.
The shapes which Brancusi created (III. 302) achieve a purity
and satisfying non-realism, while emphasizing bulk and weight
11,^

Cf;.

.-.-11

J=B3apv?;<?f:.7%,[.;:i;;^,,iai!:^^~iv^^^

303 PICASSO

304

MOORE

Woman

Reading 1952-3

Rcdiiiini^ Figure

1929

aiming to penetrate to the essence of

go deep enough. At least in hindsight,
there remains something rather obvious about his smooth
egg-shapes and polished streamlined surfaces. Perhaps he was
not very inventive; and by a strange irony he could even seem
to be himself the victim of a sort of rhetoric - a fate liable to
happen to any artist whose style does not evolve. Many of the
problems of appreciating Brancusi are avoided by the sculpture
of Arp, a founder of Dada, and creator of lively painted and
sculpted reliefs. Arp's sculpture in the round was a later
development; there his shapes are intended to be organic, to
relate in some way to nature, and yet they are not so obviously

in a tactile

way; but

in

things, he perhaps did not

abstracted

from recognizable prototypes

in

nature

as

are

Brancusi's.

Possibly there is a romantic fallacy in that tendency of some

sculptors (and some of their admirers) to see their work
constantly in relation to nature - presumably under the dan-

modern

gerous tutelage of Wordsworth. The language of eternal forms

is often diffuse and misty rather than profoundly mystic. There

305 BOCCIONI Dcvi'lopmcnt of a Bottle

in

Space 1912

307 GABO Spheric Theme 1951

3o6 GiACOMETTi Mail Pointing 1947

can be, it is true, the satisfyingly boulder-like maternity of, for

example, Arnolfo di Cambio's Madonna and Child (III. 8g); but
sculpture equally includes the high Rococo artificiality of
Asam's Assumption (III. 199). To some extent it may be that the
work of Hepworth and Henry Moore marks the end of a phase
of modern sculpture that began with Brancusi's definite and
necessary revolution. Even the once much-praised concept ot
'truth to material' - contradicted by Asam with beautifully
flagrant effect - is being contradicted by young sculptors again
today. And it can never be said to have had much effect on
Picasso - fortunately. Although Moore probably still holds
virtually official position as the most famous sculptor ot our
period, Picasso's sculpture (only recently shown in pubhc
en masse), in its sheer variety, its beauty as well as its wit, and

constant energy, can challenge that position. Against Moore's

typical reclining figure

Woman

(III.

304),

monumental and

timeless,

joj) may seem a mere

impudentjVi/ d' esprit; yet it is a sparkling sample of that inventiveness (including finding use for nails, screws and bits of wood)
which animates Picasso's other sculpture, whether the incisively
Picasso's tiny

Reading

(III.

335

L'?***'

I
.3S&.>

%'^'

310 SMITH Cubi XV'III

30^ STELLA
BanipiiT 1966

309 CARO Reel 1964

i<X)4

delicate cut-outs in metal or the Cubist constructions, executed

some

No

fifty years earlier.

other sculptor has ranged as far and as successfully as

who typifies the revolutionary diversity of twentieth-

Picasso

century sculpture. Yet amid the diversity there are apparent

two main streams: one preserving some sort of link with the
image made, however remotely, to resemble man; the other
seeming to challenge nature by creating completely new forms,
preferring novel, unexpected materials, sometimes
changing conventional ideas of sculpture by using only wire or
glass. Braque and Picasso had pointed this way, in their use of
real objects when breaking out of hermetic, analytic Cubism.
In comparison with their experiments, Moore has remained
traditional; in his work the basic human element is either
expressed or strongly felt permeating the shape. And perhaps
the last great sculptor to at least suggest the theme of man was
Giacometti. His elongated figures (III. 306) have a hallucinatory
quality, coming partly from their dream-like proportions and
partly from molten, wax-like effect even though they are
usually of bronze. They recall Giacometti's origin as a Surrealist sculptor. They are people like candles, burnt down to
a thread of vitality which seems always on the point of being
extinguished. In them perhaps does really die the Western
tradition of figurative sculpture.
The new and more challenging sculpture, represented by
Picasso's Cubist construction, quickly found its own champions. In Russia, the rival of Malevich and also originally a
painter, Tatlin, had produced by 19 14 under Picasso's influence
constructions which have no basis in representation. He was to
be influenced also by the Futurists, of whom the painter-cumsculptor Boccioni was for this phase the most interesting.
Boccioni seems to have done no sculpture when he issued his
manifesto on Futurist Sculpture in 19 12, but he briefly followed
out what he preached. The Development of a Bottle in Space (III.
30^), executed that year, is revolutionary in its opening up of
forms, suggesting that space has pulled out and pressed around
these shapes so that the bronze seems to have been wrought in
a slip-stream of energy. Significantly, Boccioni had praise for
Medardo Rosso's sculpture (III. 238); and he called also for
work with startlingly different materials from those traditioncloth, mirrors,
glass, wood, cardboard
ally in use: '.
electric light'. He would probably have seen in kinetic sculpture
the ultimate solution to that dynamism which art had to capture

often

338

and enshrine. Another way, stimulated no doubt by Tathn's

was expressed by another Russian, who took the name
Naum Gabo. Gabo's most typical plastic constructions (///. ^oj)
are completely abstract, beautifully clean and balanced, glasslike architectural sculpture which occupies space without
asserting mass - and thus belongs in the idiom of the Seagram
ideas,

Building

(///.

301).

As architecture has turned back to an emphasis on mass and

on materials, so more recent sculpture has preferred the appar-

Some sculptors have

sometimes by use of
mechanical debris assembled in the body of the sculpture, or
combined with solid, geometric shapes. Machinery, geometry,
use of discarded ironware all these were elements in the work
of the leading American sculptor David Smith (died 1965) who
more than once worked as a welder in a factory. Indeed, he
wanted his studio to become Hke a factory; he chose to work in
iron or steel exactly because they had no 'art' associations apart
from purely twentieth-century ones. Yet even the geometric,
severely abstract shapes of his late sculpture, in an outdoor
setting which Smith preferred for his work {l\\. 310), may seem
romantic - with echoes of Frank Lloyd Wright - when compared with the concentrated, clear-cut single statement of
Anthony Caro's work in England (III. 3og). Brightly painted in
one colour, boldly extended, this nakedly exists as a steel statement which refuses to be covered by explanations, whether

ently least tractable of

shown an

interest

in

all

materials, iron.

surface effects,

artistic

or art-historical.
it is easy to

show comparable recent developments. Frank Stella's Bampur (III. 308) might reasonably be
juxtaposed to Caro's sculpture - not to make the two artists say
exactly the same thing, but to show that a certain cool impassivity and concern with construction represent one aspect of
In painting, too,

art in the 1960s.

That diversity which makes

it

difficult

enough

yet to survey the arts at the opening of the twentieth century

only increases as one approaches our own decade. Even more

uncertain in some ways are the years that Ue between - no

longer the present and not yet become totally the past. It is all
the more extraordinary to reflect that throughout the whole
century so far Picasso has been at work and his life and his work
;

are easily

confounded in one image of intense

posterity ultimately estimates him, he

is

vitality.

However

evidence that

art

still

mattered to the twentieth century. His vast international fame

symbolizes the internationalness of modern art. And ultimately

339

312

BACON Study

of the

tinrsc

from the film 'Battleship Poteiuhiii' 1957

List of Illustrations

Measurements

and centimetres, height preceding width

are ^iveu in inches

MARCEL DUCHAMP

12

b. 1887
Fountain 19 17
14 X 19 A 24 {36 > 48 X 61)
Original lost
Photo Barney Burstein, Boston, Mass.

BARBARA HEPWORTH

b.

Woodh.
London,

Frieze of Ramesses
steer.

Temple of Seti

Rome.

First

century

ad

15

Photo Georgina Masson

4

Lascaux cave, Dordogne, stags

The group

h.

frieze

at

and his son lassoing

1 304-1 237 bc

Abydos

Wood

Museum

Photo Roger
5

c.

Guardian
goddesses
of Tutankhamen's
viscera. XVIII Dynasty c. 1360 bc
Coffer wood with sheet-gold h. 78 (198)
Cairo

197 (500)

II

XIX Dynasty

Photo Roger
ot Titus,

Museum

14

York
Arch

2o| (53)
British

Sphinx and Pyramid of Chephren, Giza. IV

Dynasty c. 2615-2500 BC
Photo Ewing Galloway

1903

Form 1962-3
Bronze h. 252 (460)
Photographed against Dag Hammerskjold
Memorial Library, United Nations, New

Sedment.

13

Single

Statuette of Meyrehaste! from

VI Dynasty c. 2350-2130 BC

Wood

Altamira cave, Santander, standing bison

Polychrome painting on

vault

16

otcave

Bull-jumping

statuette.

Cretan,

sixteenth

century bc
6

The 'Venus of Willendorf

Carboniferous limestone figurine h. 4^
Vienna, Naturhistonschcs Museum
Photo

Bronze h. 4^ (i 11)
London, British Museum

(11)

Photo R. E. George

Museum
17

Stonehenge, Wiltshire. Late Neolithic (19001700 Bc) to Bronze Age {c. 1500 bc)
Photo Edwin Smith

18

Bull-jumping fresco c. 1500 bc

Royal Palace, Knossos

Octopus jar from Palaikastro c 1500-1450BC

11(28)
Heraklion, Archaeological
Photo Josephine Powell
h.

Hippopotamus

(Egyptian).

jar

Badarian

period (before 3100 Bc)

Ivory h. 2| (7)

London,

British

Saqqara,

Tomb

V Dynasty

c.

Museum

19

Photo John Boardman

20

Head of an
Late

from Amama.
1360 bc

unidentified queen

XVIII Dynasty

Cairo

c.

Museum

of King Smenkhkare and Queen

Meryt-Aten. Late XVIII Dynasty c. 1365 BC
Limestone h. 9^ (24)
Bought at Giza, probably from Memphis area
Frieze

Berlin, Staatliche

Museen

geometric crater from the Dipylon

cemeterv c. 7 so b c
h. 48(122)
Attic

Athens, National Museum

Photo Hirmer Verlag

Photo Service des Antiquites, Cairo

1

Lion Gate, Mycenae. Set in position in the

fourteenth century bc. Sculpture of the

Aegean Late Bronze Age

of Ti. Relief of Ti hunting.

2500-2350 bc

Photo Hirmer Verlag

10

Museum

21

Athenian

amphora

Achilles slaying the

silea at

Troy

London,

c.

Exekias

showing
Penthe-

540 bc

British

Photo Hirmer

by

Amazon queen

Museum

I'erlag

343

22

Apollo

Theseus from

and

Aiiiiope

at Eretria

c.

the

Temple

Clay with

ot

510 bc

h.

Parian inarbic h. 43 (no)

C.halkis

Phoio Hirmcr
23

Berlin, Staatlichc

Museum
35

Vr/ni;

of blue paint and gilding

traces

13(33)

Museen

Statuette of a god, probably Poseidon.

Second century BC
Bronze h. 10 (255)
Paris, Louvre

Zeus and Canymedv from OKnipia, modelled

by a Peloponnesian artist c. 480 bc
Terracotta h. 43 (no)

Photo Archires Photographiques

Olympia Museum
Photo Hirincr

24

Temple of Hera, Paestum. Mid-sixth ccnnin,

BC
Phoio Hintier

25

36

'erlati

'crla<;

The Parthenon, Athens 447-433 uc

Built to the plans of ktunis and Callicratcs
Phoio Hirmcr I'erlai;

26

Apollo from

the west

37

pediment, Olympia

h.

38

and

his ififc.

Copy

after

84 (214)

frieze.

Mid

from

fifth

the

Parthenon

British

30

at

man and

woman on

Villa Giulia

c.

520 BC

Museum

of Maxentius, Rome. Completed

soon after ad 31
Height of cross-vaults 114 ft (35 m.)
Photo Fototeca Unione
Basilica

40

Colosseum, Rome. Completed

ad

80

Photo Edti'in Smith

41

Group of three goddesses trom

east pediment c. 435 BC
Photo Hirmer

Ton

north

century bc

Athens, Acropolis Museum

Photo Hirmer Verlai^

London,

39

Pentelic marble

29

dei

Photo Georgina Masson

Photo Manscll-Anderson

Waterbearers

Tomba

530 BC

bc

Rome, Terme Museum

28

c.

Terracotta figures ot

Rome,

killing himself

h.

the Trojan prince Troilus,

the lid of a sarcophagus (Etruscan)

'erta^i;

original bronze ot the third century

Stone

The ambush of

512)

about 120 (366)

Olympia Museum
Gaul

Museum

Tarquinia

460 B c
Parian marble

27

106^
201^ (271
Naples, National
Photo Andre Held

wall-painting from the

c.

Photo Hirmer

Alexander mosaic, detail of the Battle of Issus,

from an original Greek painting of c 330 bc.
Before a d 79
From the House of the Faun, Pompeii.

42

'erlag

ad

18/19,

Mosaic pavement with head ot

First century A D

Medusa.

Rome, Terme Museum

The Propylaea, Athens 437-432 BC

Built to the plans of Mnesicles.

started

consecrated 125-8
Photo Gcorgiiia Masson

the Parthenon

Museum

The Pantheon, Rome,

Photo Manscll-Anderson

Width of

entrance front 62 ft (18-3 m.)

Photo Hirmer I 'erla^;

43

Fresco from the Villa of Livia,

Rome. Late

century BC
Height of wall n8 (300)
t'irst

31

Caryatid Porch of the Erectheum, Athens

421-405 BC

32

PRAXITELES Hermes ifiih the Iiijani Dionysus

C.

340 BC

Rome, Terme Museum

Photo Georgina Masson

44

Parian marble h. 84 (215)

Olympia Museum

Head of a Young Girl, probably Minatia

Rome, Terme Museum

Polla

Photo Mansell-Alinari

Photo Walter Heg^e

33

The Pergamum

altar,

north wing of Great

45

Altar of Zeus f. 180 bc

Marble (reconstruction). Height of sculptured
frieze

90 (229)

46

Photo Berlin, Staailiche Museeii

34

344

figurine, woman
sun-hat. Third century BC

Tanagra

with

fan

and

Head of a Man c. A D 450

Marble h. 26^ (67)
London, British Museum
Jonah sarcophagus. Marble
century
Rome, Lateran Museum
Photo Hirmer I'erlag

reliet.

Late third

47

Diptych of the Consul Anastasius

xji

Ivory 145
Paris,

ad

517

64

(36 X 13)

Upper church of

the Sainte-Chapelle. Paris

1243-8
Photo Giraudon
(interior)

Louvre

c.

Phcro Hinrier Vcrlag

48

Marriage casket of Secundus and Projecta.

End of fourth century ad
Silver embossed and partly gilt h.
(28)
London, British Museum
1

49

Sabina, Rome (interior).

Photo Georgina Massoii
S.

65

S. Vitale,

Ravenna

Ms

Begun 425

Photo Hirmer
51

Roman
with

'erlag

1235
19093 f 22 v.
Bibliotheque Nationale

c.

fr.

Paris,

Consecrated 547

(interior).

Page
from album of designs for various machines,
including water-powered saw and mechanical
eagle

66
50

VILLARD DE HONNECOURT.

Sophia, Istanbul (interior) 532-7

Photo Hirmer I 'erla^
S.

porphyry vase
wings and teet

(or possibly Egyptian)

head,

eagle's

tail,

Mount

mounted

in gold.

Made

for

Abbot Suger, Saint-Denis

Paris,

Louvre

c.

140

Photo Giraudon
52

Mosaic of the Empress Theodora and her

suite

67

540

c.

S. Vitale,

Ravenna

Photo Bulloz

Photo MiVisell-Alinari
53

St John

700
Lindisfarne Gospels
c.

Cotton Ms Nero D. IV f 209

London, British Museum
54

5f Matthew c. 800
Harley Ms 2788, f

London,
55

'Ideal'

British

68

Wells Cathedral, Chapter-house vault 12951319

Photo Martin Hiirlimann

69

Christ

v.

1478
Photo National Buildings Record, F. H. Crossley

Museum

plan for St Gall

c.

70

820 (redrawn)

The Expulsion of Adam and Eve.

panel. Early eleventh century
St Michael's,

Bronze door-

71

the Apostles, Cologne 1035-1220

Photo Bildarchiv Marburg
Poitiers.

Eleventh century

Durham
t.

Chartres Cathedral, west porch. Old Testa-

Rheims Cathedral,

Magdeburg Cathedral The

c.

from

Cathedral

30

Towers and

windows

great

74

12 50- 13 00

llrgins

Foolish

1234

Photo Bildarchii' Marburg

south-west

the

The

central west portal.

I isitation c.
1230
Photo Bildarchiv Marburg

73

Photo Giraudon
59

west facade window,

Twelfth century

figures f. 1 1 50
Photo Bildarchii' Marburg

Church of

Notre-Dame,

['isitation (detail).

ment

Hildesheim
72

58

c.

Chartres Cathedral,

The

Photo Bildarchiv Marburg;

57

Church, Oxford Cathedral, Choir

ceiling
13 v.

St Gall, Stiftsbibliothek
s6

Amiens Cathedral c. 1220-36. towers above

of rose-window later

level

Equestrian
c.

Photo A. F. Kersting

statue

of Otto

II,

Magdeburg

1240-50

Photo Deutsche Fotothek, Dresden

60

Bayeux

tapestry

(detail).

Late

eleventh

century

75

Bayeux, Musee de

la

Photo Giraudon
61

gold

portrait covered

mount 2j\

by

London,

Tomb

ments.

of

bronze

Monu-

Crown Copyright

crystal plaque,

76

Museum

Freiburg-im-Breisgau, interior of spire

Photo Hcli^a Schmidt-Glasstier

f.

1340
77

Hunting-lodge of Frederick
Monte, Apulia c. 1240

Saint-Denis, Paris, ambulatory.

Photo Bildarchii' Marburg

Begun 1140

II,

Castel

del

LIMBOURG BROTHERS
Tres

63

Abbey,

Late thirteenth century

Photo Royal Commission on Historical

I4 (6 x 3)

Oxford, Ashmolean
62

III.

Lite-size cast

'Alfred Jewel'. Late ninth century

Enamel

Westminster

Henry

Tapissene

riches

Chantilly,

Hemes: September
Musee Conde

(detail)

1413-16

Photo Giraudon

345

7S

GIOVANNI BUON and BARTOLOMMEO BUONc. 1374-1464

The Doges"

90

Palace, Venice

yy

Town

80

Loveli Lectionary (frontispiece)

with Lord Loveli. Before 1408

Bruges

91

1376

c.

81

'Little

Gold Horse'. Altar tabernacle of gold,

pearls,

enamel, and precious stones. French,

92

GIOTTO

St

to

DUCCIO

Anne

1306-12

c.

93

17

173

(4.^

391-6/7

active 1422-d. 1441

ROGIER VAN DER WEYDEN

c.

1400-64

Croy

94

3)

NIKOLAUS GERHAERT
Portrait Bust

13

c.

Antwerp, Musee des Beaux-Arts

BUONINSEGNA

DI

c.

Champmol

Panel 19^- ii| (49

c 1260-

c.

Wood

JAN VAN EYCK

Philippe de

1319
The Annunciation

1405

National Gallery
Photo National Gallery

Padua, Arena Chapel

Photo Mansetl-Atinari
83

<:.

1266/7-1337

Annunciation
Fresco

died

The Marriage of Giovanni(?) Arnolfini and

Giovanna Cenami( ? ) 1434
Wood 32i 23^ (81-8 59-7)
London, by courtesy of the Trustees of the

before 1404
Treasury of Altotting
Phoio Hirmer I 'crlag
82

CLAUS SLUTER

Stone
Dijon, Chartreuse de
Photo Giraudon

Museum

British

1306-12

c.

Philip the Bold and St John the Baptist

Sifcrwai

/c/iii

Harley 7026

London,

Sheepfold

to the

Photo Mansell-Anderson

Phoio Mansell-Aliihiri
Hail,

1266/7-1337

Arena Chapel, Padua

1309-1424

Fa<;ades

GIOTTO

Joachim's return
Fresco

d.

1473

1467

Sandstone

44)_

Strasbourg, Frauenhaus
Photo Bildarchiv Marburg

the Trustees of the

London, by courtesy of
National Gallery
Photo National Gallery

84

SIMONE MARTINI
104I

House of Jacques Coeur, Bourges 1442-53

Photo Edition des Monuwents Historiques

96

HUGO VAN DER GOES

1284-1344

c.

The Ainuinciation 1333

Wood

95

i2o| (265

Portinari altarpiece (right

305)

and

Photo Mamcll-Alinari

Berlin, Gemaldegalerie

34)

97

Dahlem

Wood

"18^

Wood

1395-1450
Anthony Abbot and George
11^ (47

29)

London, by courtesy of the Trustees of the

88

NICOLA PISANO
h.

Umbria 1210

Duomo,

Pisa 1260

DI

and Child

CAMBIO

100
c.

c.
296
69 (175)
Florence, Museo dell'Opera del
Photo Mansell-Alinari
I

irgin

Marble

346

c.

1374-1438

Adam 1425-38

Creation

ol

Marble

relief

on

the

main door of the

Bologna

LORENZO GHIBERTI

c. 1378-1455
The Story of Isaac 142 5-3 8
Bronze relief panel, Baptistery doors, Florence

Photo Mansell-Alinari

34 (86)

ARNOLFO

JACOPO DELLA QUERCIA

Photo Manscll-A linari

99

Photo iXJansell Collection

89

95|

Photo Mansell-A linari

98

active 1258-78

Crucifixion, pulpit of the

Marble

VINCI 1459-1519

Kings ?i48i
962 (243
246)

oj the

Basilica di S. Petronio,

Cathedral, Civita Castellana,

Photo Mansell-Anderson

1475

Florence, Uffizi

National Gallery
Photo National Gallery
87

c.

55i (253 X 141)

LEONARDO DA
Adoration

ANTONIO PISANELLO
Vision ofSts

Florence, Uffizi
Photo Kindler Verlag

Photo Walter Steinkopf

86

Margaret and Mary Magdalen)

Sts

Wood99|

BOHEMIAN MASTER
Glatz Madonna c. 1350
Canvas on wood 73
13^ (185

1440-82

donors: Maria Portinari with her daughter

Florence, Uffizi

85

c.

wing showing female

1232-1302

PAOLO UCCELLO
Rout

oJ'S.

Wood

c.

1396-1479

Romano

71^ X 126 (182/ 330)

London, by courtesy of the Trustees

h.

Duomo

National Gallery
Photo National Gallery

ot the

loi

SANDRO BOTTICELLI

c.

Padua, Piazza del Santo

Photo Mansell-Andersoii

1445-1510

Birth of Ventis

Oil on canvas 68|

<

85J (175 x 278)

114

Florence, Uffizi

102

PIERO DELLA FRANCESCA

The Resuneclioii

Communale

Borgo S. Sepolcro, Palazzo

Photo Andersoti

MASACCIO
The

115

Trinity 1425

FILIPPO

Lorenzo,

S.

DONATELLO
David 1440-3
Bronze

i40i-?28

Florence,

Fresco
Florence, S. Maria Novella
Photo Maiiscll-Anderson

104

of

Florence
Photo Broi

Fresco

103

DONATELLO
The Resurrection c. 1462-6
Bronze relief on pulpit

1410/20-92

Museo Nazionale

Photo Mansell-Anderson
1

BRUNELLESCHI

16

Cupola of the Duomo, Florence

c.

1435-88

Bronze

1432

c.

ANDREA DEL VERROCCHIO

David. Before 1476

1377-1446

Florence,

Photo Aliiiari

Museo Nazionale

Photo Mansell Collection

105

BRUNELLESCHI
Pazzi chapel, Florence (interior).

106

Work

sus-

ANTONIO POLLAIUOLO
Hercules and Antaeus 1475-80

Photo Scala

Bronze

LEON BATTISTA ALBERTI

S.

Francesco, Rimini

c.

c.

1432-98

h. 17I (45)
Florence, Museo Nazionale
Photo Mansell-Alinari

1404-72

1450

Photo Maiisell-Alinari
107

117

pended 1443

118

LOMBARDO
MAURO CODUCCI d.

PIETRO

1435-1 S15
1504

Palazzo Vendramin
1 48
Photo Georgiiia Massoii

Calergi, Venice.

and

BERNARDO ROSSELLINO 1409-64

ANTONIO ROSSELLINO 1427-79
Tomb
S.

Begun

of the Cardinal of Portugal

Miniato al Monte, Florence

c.

and

1461-6

Photo Mansell-Alinari

c.

108

119

LEONE BATTISTA ALBERTI

109

Urbino

c.

Palazzo Ducale,

Orvieto Cathedral
120

HIERONYMUS BOSCH

121

GIOVANNI BELLINI

1468

Photo Matisell-Aiidersoii

no

Tapestry: Dame a la
century
144 X 126 (366 X 320)
Paris,

111

licorne.

Early sixteenth

Cluny Museum
c.

The GotizagafamilY

1474

(detail)

MASACCIO

113

Lisa

VINCI

1452-1

1503
Oil on canvas 38^ x 20^ (97
Paris,

19

c.

51-5)

Louvre

123

RAPHAEL

1483-1520

Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione

1386-1466
Equestrian statue of Gattamelata 1447-53

Oil on canvas 32^ x 26^ (82

Bronze

Photo Archives Pholographiqties

c.

ot the

Photo Giraudon

Maria del Carmine, Brancacci Chapel,

DONATELLO

LEONARDO DA
Mona

1401-28

Florence
Photo Mansell-Alinari

1430-1516

Photo National Gallery

122

Expulsion from Paradise 1425/6-8

Fresco
S.

c.

Meadow

National Gallery

Mantua, Palazzo Ducale, Camera degh Sposi

Photo Scala, by courtesy of Sadea-Saiisoiii

of the

Originally on panel 26^ x 34 (67 x 86)

London, by courtesy of the Trustees

1431-1506

Fresco

112

c. 1450-1516
Garden of Earthly Delights (detail) c. 1500
Oil and tempera on panel, side panel 86f x 3 85
(220 X 97)
Madrid, Prado

Madonna

ANDREA MANTEGNA

1441/50-1523

c.

Fresco

Palazzo Rucellai, Florence 1445-57

Photo Mansell-Alinari

Doorway of the Sala dell'Iole,

LUCA SIGNORELLI

Last Judgment (detail) 1499-1503

1404-72

Paris,

1519

67)

Louvre

347

124

LEONARDO DA
A

VINCI

i4S2-i'ii9

8^ (163

Black chalk 6^

Majesty Queen Elizabeth

136

ROSSO FIORENTINO

1494-1540 and
1504-70
Galerie Franifois I. Fontainebleaii c. 1533-4
Stucco by Rosso, painting by Primaticcio

FRANCESC:0 PRIMATICCIO

1475-

564

IXvid 503-4
Marble h. lyS^ (505)

Plioio Scahi

137

Florence, Accadeniia

126

i<;29-i6o8
Apollo
Florence. Palazzo Vecchio

Photo Maiisell-Aliiiari

II

MICHELANGELO 13UONAROTTI
1

GIANBOLOGNA

21)

Windsor Castle, Royal Library

Reproduced by gracious permission of Her
125

ns

Dchii;c

JEAN GOUjON

1540-62

rt.

Phoio Alifiari

PoittiVue de< Iniiocciiis (detail)

MICHELANGELO

Marble
Pans, Louvre

Rondauiui Pieta 155S-A4

h. 98 (249)
Milan, Castello Sforzesco

GERMAIN PILON

547-9

Photo Giraudoii

Marble

127

138

MICHELANGELO

Bronze
Pans, Louvre

1508-12

Crcatioti oj Miiii

Fresco

Rome,
Plioto

128

Photo Giraudoii

Chapel
Manscll-A liiiari
Sistine

139

Photo Miiiistll-Aliihiri

RAPHAEL

140

1483-1520

School of Alhenf
Fresco

5oy-i

141

Photo Wilicaii Musctinu

142

RAPHAEL
C]alaica

c.

Fresco 116^

Rome,
131

88f (295

143

RAPHAEL
Rome, Vatican
'atican

1095 (405

c.

Bronze

278)

144

Galler\-

Miisciinn

1486-1570
145

1537-40

1485-1559

1534-45

f. 1520-80
1550-60
Photo Geor^ina Masson

JACOPO SANSOVINO

c.

146&-1529

ANDREA PALLADIO

1508-80
Giorgio Maggiore, Venice (interior). Begun
1570

Photo Linda Murray

Photo Matiscll-Aliihui

PETER FLOTNER

146
c.

Bronze
Nuremberg,

Town Hall
Photo Hclga Schmidl-Glassiicr

BENVENUTO

CELLINI

Perseus.

Commissioned

Bronze

h.

147

Florence, Loggia dei Lanzi

Photo Maiisell-Aliiiari

c.

1515-?^^

CORNELIS FLORIS
Town Hall, Antwerp

c.

546

1514-75
560
i

Photo A.C.L.

1500-71

1545, set

126 (320)

PIERRE LESCOT

Square court of the Louvre, Pans. Begun

Photo Jean Roubier

1485-1546

Apollo 1532

348

Rome

PIRRO LIC;ORIO

c.

San Marco

134

ANTONIO DA SAN GALLO

S.

h. 58 (147)

Venice, Loggctta ot the Campanile, Piazza

133

1481-1536

Begun 1535

Library, Venice 1537-54

Photo Mansell- Anderson

JACOPO SANSOVINO
Apollo

c.

1655-67

Villa d'Este. Tivoli

'rraiisfii^uration

Photo

BALDASSARE PERUZZI

Rome

225)

Villa Farnesina

Oil on panel 1593

132

and Piazza S. Pietro,

Photo Manscll-Audcrsoii
St. Peter's

Palazzo Farnese,
Photo Anderson

1444-1514

502

Palazzo Massimi, Rome.

Photo Linda Murray

Rome, Vatican Stanze

130

Rome, S. Pictro in Montorio

Phoio Linda Murray

Lorcnzt), Florence (interior)

S.

BRAMANTE
Tempietto

MICHELANGELO
Medici Chapel,
1524-34

129

1530-90

c.

Cardinal Biiaaiie. After 1583

up

in

1554

[48

Central

Pavilion.

Burghlc\

Northamptonshire 1585
Photo National Monuments Record,
Commission on Historical Monuments

House,
Royal

149

ALBRECHT DURER
St Eustace

Engraving 14
150

160

1O3 (35-5

26)

1494?-! S33
Sou isio

ot the Prodi^cil

Engraving 7i

9|

GIORGIONE

c.

161

24-5)

(iS*

476/8-1

ALBRECHT DURER

10

Cassel,
(7<S

1471-152S

16^ (52

(Tiziano Vecclli)

Assiiiita

siS

c.

Resurrection (detail)

Amhassadors

Panel 81^

41)

163

1470/S0-152S
5 5-16

164

c.

PIETER BRUEGEL

the Elder

oj the

c.

165

166

167

FRANCESCO PARMIGIANINO

1487/8-1534
Natii'ity c. 1530
Wood ioo| 74(2S6 188)
Dresden, Gemaldegaleric

1480-1556

1494-1566/7

'

156)

Carmignano, Parish Church

Photo Mansell-Aliuari

1518-94
543-5)

TINTORETTO
569)

PAOLO VERONESE

1528-88
and Adonis c. I 580
Oil on canvas 835 > 755 (212
191)
eniis

169

170

GRECO (Domenikos Theotocopoulos)

1541-1614
Blind/ of Count Orgaz 1586
3f'0)
Oil on canvas 191I < 141I (4!<7>
Toledo, S. Tome
EL

PAOLO VERONESE

1528-88

Darius before Alexander

Canvas 92^ x 186^^ (234 > 473)
London, by courtesy of the Trustees of the
National Gallerv

Family

1528

6i| (202

58S

Madrid, Prado
Photo A Lis

Dresden

Oil on canvas 166

114 (42 15
290)
Recanati, S. Maria sopra Mercanti
Photo Mansell-Aliuari

79^

JACOPO TINTORETTO

Aiiuuiiciatiou 1526/8

Wood

547-1619
c.

l^hoto .\Linsell-Anderso}i

168

Photo Staailiche Kuustsamtnluu{;eu

c.

atnid Briar Roses

1 592
Oil on canvas 144 224 (366
Venice, S, Giorgio Maggiore

JACOPO PONTORMO

Museum

NICHOLAS HILLIARD
Man

1503-40

Convex Mirror 1524

Last Supper

ANTONIO ALLEGRI DA CORREGGIO

c.

1503-72

1550-5

Miracle of St Mark 1548

Oil on canvas 161 |i
2133 (415
Venice, Accademia
Photo Mausell-Andersoii

Herd) 156s

>

LORENZO LOTTO

c.

Watercolour 55 x if (13-5 x 7)
London, Victoria and Albert Museum

525/30-69

46^ 62f (i'i7 - 159)

Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum
Photo Kuusthistorisches Museuni

I'isitatiou

Cappout

Panel 95 (24)
Vienna, Kunsthistorisches

14S0-153S

1529
4S (158
120)
Munich, Alte Pinakothek
Photo Bayerische Staats{;emiildesammhingeii

159

82^ (207 x 209-5)

Self-portrait in a

Wood'63i

158

Battle of the Issus

157

de

ALBRECHT ALTDORFER

Wood

(lean

86)
Oil on canvas 45^
33^ (116-5
Neu' York, copyright The Frick Collection

Youii^

Noi'emher (Return

Cassel

1497/X-i 543
Dinteville and

AGNOLO BRONZINO
Lodoi'ico

Oil on panel 1055

s6g (269
144)
Colinar, Unterlinden Museum
Photo Bildarchiv Marburg

56

National (Jallery
Photo Satioual Gallery

14S7/90-1576

<.

Isenheini Altar

Gemaldegalene

HANS HOLBEIN the Younger

77ic

141 (690
270
360)
Venice. Fran Church
Photo Matiscll-Aiukrsoii

15s

1550

London, by courtesy of the Trustees of the

TITIAN

C.RUNEWALD

c.

152)

Georges de Selve) 1533

Wood

154

59^ (224

Photo Staatliche KuustsaiuinluuQen

72)

Madrid, Prado

395)

d'Acquai'ii'a. Lord of Airii ?

Oil on canvas 88

149S

Oil on pane! 20^

153

1487/90-1576

c.

TITIAN
Gioranni

162
Scll-f'oitraii

(Tiziano Vecelli)

Pietd 1573-6

Tcmpeitn
2S^
Oil on canvas 3O3
Venice, Accademia
152

TITIAN

Oil on canvas 137^

153, (350
Venice, Accademia
Photo Mansell-Aliuari

LUCAS VAN LEYDEN

Rcnini

Is

1471-152S

soo

of

349

171

GIANLORENZO BERNINI

isyS-irtSo

Chair of Peter, begun 1624

Bronze, partly gilt

Rome,
172

SIR

184,

186

VAU 1612-70 and JULES

HARDOUIN MANSART 1646-1708

St Peter's

Kersting (interior)

PETER PAUL RUBENS

1577-1640

Oil on canvas

London

RUBENS

GIANLORENZO BERNINI
Coiistanza Bonarelli

188

1598-1680

189

BERNINI

1573-1652

Covent Garden, London 1631

191

GIOVANNI BATTISTA GAULLI

193

CHRISTOPHER WREN

and

London 1675-1712

194

195

Monu-

1598-1682
Venice 1631-85
Photo Mansell-Anderson

183

Maria

della Salute,

GUARINO GUARINI

1624-83
Cappella della SS. Sindone, Turin
1

667-90

Photo Mansell-Alinari

350

1628-88

Sorrows

Painted wood,

h.

i6| (425)

Museum

GIANLORENZO BERNINI
Ecstasy of St Theresa

1599-1667
Quattro Fontane, Rome 1655-67

BALDASSARE LONGHENA

S.

I'irgin of

London, Victoria and Albert

Marble,

life-size

Rome,

S.

Maria

1598-1680

1645-52
della

Vittoria,

Cornaro

Chapel
Photo Anderson

Photo Mansell-Alinari
182

1728-92

Syon House, Middlesex 1762-9

PEDRO DE MENA
The

FRANCESCO BORROMINI
allc

Hall,

1632-1723

Photo Royal Commission on Historical

ments

Carlo

1736-1806

Photo A.F. Kersting

1598-1666
1585-1654
Val-de-Grace, Paris 1645-67
Photo Giraudon

S.

ROBERT ADAM
The

FRANgOIS MANSART
JACQUES LEMERCIER

St Paul's,

CLAUDE NICOLAS LEDOUX

(destroyed)

Gesu, Rome
Photo Scala

iHi

1728-81

Barriere de Courcelles, Paris 1785-91

1639-

1709
Adoration of the Name Jesus 1676-9
Fresco, central part of ceiling

SIR

WOOD THE YOUNGER

192

180

JOHN

Photo Fdii'in Smith

Rome. Begun 568

Photo Mansell-Anderson

179

SIR JOHN VANBRUGH 1666-1726

Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire 1705-20

Royal Crescent, Bath. Begun 1767

507-73

Gesti,

178

1705-63

Photo A. F. Kersting

GIACOMO BAROZZI DA VIGNOLA

1

EMMANUEL HERE DE CORNY

Photo Giraudon

190

Photo National Buildings Record

177

CLAUDE PERRAULT 1613-88, LOUIS

LE VAU 1612-70 and CHARLES LEBRUN

The Hemicycle, Nancy 1750-7

INIGO JONES
St Paul's,

c 1710-82
Trianon, Versailles 1762-8
Photo Giraudon

Photo Giraudon

S. Maria dell'Assunzione, Ariccia 1662-4

Photo G.F.N.

176

JACQUES ANGE GABRIEL

1 6 1 9-90
East front of the Louvre, Paris 1667-70

life-size

Florence, Museo Nazionale

Photo iXIansell- Anderson
175

the garden fa<,Mde 1669-85

Petit

1635

c.

at Versailles,

Photo Giraudon
187

Helena I-oiirmciii and her Son 1636-7

Panel 44i3^Uii3 ^^)
Pans, Louvre
Pholo Girandon

Marble,

LOUIS LE

Palace

Ceiling, Banqueting Hall, Wiiitciiali,

174

1687-1753

Clhurch of Vierzehnheiligcn, near Banz 1744

Photos Bildarchiv Marburg (exterior), A.F.

Aihithcosis oj James I 1635

173

BALTHASAR NEUMANN

185

196

CLAUDE MICHEL

called

CLODION

1738-1814
The Intoxication of Wine
Terracotta h. z^^ (60)
New York, The Metropolitan Museum of
Art, Bequest of Benjamin Altman, 1913
Photo The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York

ANTOINE COYSEVOX

1640-1720

208

Mercury

Marble
Gardens

Hood Dunwoody Fund

Photo Lata Aufshcr^

Photo Minneapolis

JEAN-BAPTISTE PIGALLE
Moniimeni

1714-85
Marshal Maurice de Saxe 1773

to

209

Strasbourg, St Thomas
Photo Giraudon

EGID QUIRIN

ANTONIO CANOVA

Calling of St

808

SIR

577-1640
Mystic Marriage of St Catherine 1627-8
Canvas 222^ 166^ (565 401)
Antwerp, St Augustine
Photo A.C.L.

ANTHONY VAN DYCK

Charles

Paris,

1599-1641

Oil on canvas 107^

83^ (272 -212)

Louvre

DIEGO RODRIGUEZ DE SILVA VELAZ-

QUEZ

RUBENS

599-1660

Francisco Lezcano

Allegory of Peace and War 1629/30

116 {198
Oil on canvas 78
297)
London, by courtesy of the Trustees of the

Oil on canvas 42^

National Gallery

REMBRANDT VAN

An

Photo

Photo National Gallery

1 560-1609
597-1604

Farnese

GUIDO RENI

L14
1

575-1642

FRANCISCO DE ZURBARAN

1598-

5fi7/-///e

106-5)
Oil on canvas 23 ^ > 42^ (59-5
Florence, Contini-Bonacossi Collection

215

ANNIBALE CARRACCl

560-1609

JACOB VAN RUISDAEL

The Mill

at

IVijk

c.

Oil on canvas 47
88^ (120
Rome, Palazzo Doria
Photo Mansell-Anderson
1

1628/9-82

670

Oil on canvas 32^

Flight into Egypt

100)

39^ (88

Amsterdam, Rijksmuscum

224)

Photo Rijksmuseum Amsterdam

,

^^

JAN VERMEER
The

578-1610

Artist's Studio

1632-75
1666

c.

100)
Oil on canvas 47^
39^ (120
Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum

Flight into Egypt

Oil on copper I2|

41-5)
16^ (31
Munich, Alte Pinakothek
Photo Bayerische Staatsgenidldesammlungen
-

CLAUDE LORRAIN

RIJN 1606-69

1664

Aurora 161
Fresco
Rome, Casino Ludovisi
Photo Mansell-Anderson

ELSHEIMER

Mas

Fresco

Photo G.F.N.

88)

Margareta Trip c. 1 661

Oil on canvas 5i| x 38I (130-5
975)
London, by courtesy of the Trustees ot the
National Gallery
Photo National Gallery, London

ANNIBALE CARRACCl
Galleria Farnese (detail)

32I (117

Madrid, Prado

ADAM

348)

'

Borghese

PETER PAUL RUBENS

Matthew

Oil on canvas I33g

137 (338
Rome, S. Luigi dei Franccsi
Photo Mansell-.4ndersoii

Photo Anderson

204

Museums

MICHELANGELO MERISI DA CARAVAGGIO 573-1610

Marble

Rome, Palazzo

of Arts

15S1-1641
Last Communion of St Jerome 1614
10O5 (419 256)
Oil on canvas 165
Rome, Vatican Gallery
Photo Vatican

1757-1822

Pauline Bonaparte Bori^hese as Venus

Villa

In<:titute

DOMENICHINO

ASAM

1692-1750
The Assumption of the Virgin 1718-25
Rohr, altar of the collegiate church

SIR

1 594-1665
Death of Germanicus 1627-31
Oil on canvas 58^
196-5)
77^ {148
The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, William
-

Paris, Tuileries

Rome,

NICOLAS POUSSIN

217

RIJN 1606-69

Christ preaching 1652

Etching 6|- 7i (16

1600-82

Embarkation oj the Queen of Sheba 1648

Oil on canvas 58^ x 76^ (148 x 193-5)
London, by courtesy of the Trustees of the
National Gallery
Photo Eileen Tweedy

REMBRANDT VAN

218

20)

DIEGO RODRIGUEZ DE SILVA VELAZ-

QUEZ

599-1660

Las Meninas 1656

Oil on canvas 125^

108| (318 x 276)

Madrid, Prado

351

219

REMHRANDT VAN
The Syiittiis 1662
Oil oil canvas 75^

RIJN

loy^ (lyi

229

\(^o6-(,()

/)(i/i of Marat 1793

Oil on canvas 65
50^ (165

279)

Amsterdam, Rijksmuscum
220

Brussels,

FRANCOIS BOUCHER
Shepherd pipiiifl 10
Oil on canvas 36^

<i

1703-70

230

Shepherdess
142)

554 (93
London, reproduced by permission o\ the
Trustees ot'thc Wallace Collection
Photo VV'alhue Collection, Crown K'/iyr/ij/u
221

GIOVANNI BATTISTA TIEWOLO

1696-

oj l-rederick Barhiirossa

231

1752

CHARDIN

JEAN-DAPTISTE-SIMEON

2^1

233

ot'

the

12I3 {138

DE

C;OYA

JOSEPH MALLORD WILLIAM TURNER

235

WILLIAM

308)

1 776-1 837
The Hay wain 1821
Oil on canvas 5I5 x 73 (130 x 185)
London, by courtesy of the Trustees of the
National Gallery

Museen, Berlin

THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH

1727-88

1757-1827
Form of Pitt 1808

Tempera on canvas 29^ 245

London, The Tate Gallery

(74

62)

Photo Tate Gallery

JOHN SINGLETON COPLEY

Death of Chatham 1779-80
Oil on canvas 90 V 121 (228-5
London, The Tate Gallery

1738-1815

237

1 790-1 866
1850
Marble with slight pigmentation h. 68 (173)
London, Collection P.J. Dearden
Photo Victoria and Albert Museum

c.

JEAN-BAPTISTE CARPEAUX

1827-75

307)

Paris,

Louvre

Photo Archives Phoiographicjues

1697-1764

After the Marriage (Marriage a

la

Mode)

238
c.

1744

Oil on canvas 27
89)
35 (69
London, by courtesy of the Trustees of the
National Gallery
Photo National Gallery, London
"<

23-5)

La Danse 1869
Stone

Photo Tate Gallery

WILLIAM HOGARTH

827-1910

JOHN GIBSON
'Tinted ['enus'

--

Manchester, City Art Gallery

Photo City Art Gallery, Manchester

236

WILLIAM BLAKE

HOLMAN HUNT

The Light of the World 1853

Oil on canvas iS, ^ 9^ (47

352

JOHN CONSTABLE

Moriiin(^ Walk 1785

Oil on canvas 93
179)
70^ (236
London, by courtesy of the Trustees of the
National Gallery

228

of

JOSE

1746-1828
Reason produces Monsters 1799
4|(i8
12)

234
1684-1721

'/'/)(

227

427)

Berlin, Charlottenburg Palace

Spiritual

1748-1825

JEAN-ANTOINE WATTEAU

The

344)

Ulysses deriding Polyphemus 829

Oil on canvas 525
203-5)
80^ (132-5
London, by courtesy of the Trustees of the
National Gallery
Photo John IVehb, Brompton Studio

Enseigne de Gersaint 1720

226

1775-1851

1697-1768
The Stonemason's Yard c. 1730
Oil on canvas 48^ 64^ (123
163)
London, by courtesy of the Trustees
National Gallery
Photo National Gallery, London

225

FRANCISCO
LUCIENTES
Etching 7i

CANALETTO

Photo Staatliche

135^ (265

JACQUES-LOUIS DAVID

The Sleep

Oil on canvas 543

C;OYA

Photo Bulloz

699- 779
Morning Toilet 1741

224

DE

Oil on canvas 19^

iSg (49
40)
Stockholm, National Museum
National
Photo
Museum, Stockholm
223

JOSE
1746-1828

Oath of the Horatii 1785

Oil on canvas 129^
i684 (330
Paris, Louvre

Wijrzburg, Residenz
Photo Hirmer I 'erla<i

FRANCISCO
LUCIENTES
Madrid, Prado

Fresco

222

1748-1825
128)

Musees Royaux des Ueaux-Arts

J May 1808
Oil on canvas 104^

1770
Marria<ie

JACQUES-LOUIS DAVID

MEDARDO ROSSO

1858-1928
Garden 1893
Bronze 13 26| 15^ (a 67 x 40-5)
Rome, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna
Conversation

in a

Photo Soprintendenza alia Galleria

Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna

Roma

II,

239

AUGUSTE RODIN

1840-1917

isi

Stucco

240

h.

and Woman gazing at

Oil on canvas 35
44 (89

13 j (289)

Musee Rodin

Plicio

Martin Hiirlimanii

SIR JOSEPH PAXTON

CHARLES FOX 1810-74

SIR

i8oi-6s,

Sydenham

Architeclural Rei'ieir' photograph hy Dell ami

KARL FRIEDRICH SCHINKEL

Museum, Berlm 1824-8

254

1781-1841

796-1 875
Pont de Narni 1826/7
Oil on canvas 16^ 24^ (42

(destroyed)

Paris,

1752-1835

Photo Julian IVontncr

Architect's

Photo

;55

NORMAN SHAW

RICHARD

own

house,

National

SIR

CHARLES BARRY

and

156

246

1812-52

Photo National Buildings Record, Royal

mission oil Historical \loiniments

Com-

JEAN-LC^UIS-CHARLESGARNIER

1825-

157

PAUL-HIPPOLYTE DELAROCHE

1797-

Tower 1831

Oil on canvas i6|

Photo Julian Woiittier

London, reproduced by permission of the

TONY GARNIER

H.

SULLIVAN

DANIEL

Moilessier 1844/56
36^ (120 92)
Oil on canvas 473
London, by courtesy of the Trustees of the
National Gallery
Photo National Gallery

1856-1924
1

890-1

HUDSON BURNHAM 1846JOHN WELLBOM ROOT

ANTONI GAUDI
Church
1884
Photo

159

Oil on canvas 53 - 77^ (134-5

Manchester City Art Gallery
260

1852-1926

Mas

-^

1821-93

HONORE DAUMIER

-^

196)

1808-79

Third Class Carriage 1863/5

Oil on canvas 26| x 36^ (67 x 92)
Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada
Photo National Gallery oj Canada

Begun

GUSTAVE COURBET

1819-77
Monsieur Courbet' 1854
Oil on canvas 50^
149)
585 (129
Montpellicr, Musee Fabre
Photo Giraudon

FORD MADOX BROWN

Work 1852-65

iSyi

ot Sagrada Familia, Barcelona.

'Bonjoiir,

JEAN-AUGUSTE-DOMINIQUE INGRES
Madame

Building, St Louis

Monadnock Block, Chicago

Photo Dr F. Stoedtner

50)

1780-1867

870-1933
Steiner House, Vienna 1910

LOUIS

19^ (42

Trustees of the Wallace Collection

Photo Wallace Collection, Croii'ii copyright

869-1948
258

ADOLF LOOS

1912 and
1850-91

151

354)

Little Princes in the

Photo Hedrich-Blcssing

>50

1798-1863

Opera, Paris 1861-74

Wainwnght
249

98

Drawing

248

EUGENE DELACROIX

1856

Theatre, Industrial City 1901-4

247

717)

Louvre

Massacre de Scio 1824

Canvas 1643 ' i28| (417
Pans, Louvre
Photo Giraudon

Houses of Parliament, London 1840-60

24s

1791-1824

Photo Bulloz

179S-1860

AUGUSTUS WELBY NORTHMORE

PUGIN

THEODORE GERICAULT
Paris,

Commission on Historical Moiinments

244

62)

Rcij't

Royal

Record,

>^

Louvre

of the 'Medusa' 1819

Oil on canvas 1933 282^ (491

1831-1912

London 1875

Monuments

COROT

Photo Giraudon

Cumberland Terrace, London. Begun 1826-7

243

JEAN-BAPTISTE-CAMILLE
1

Photo Staatliche Xhiseen Berlin

JOHN NASH

JOSEPH MALLORD WILLIAM TURNER

Photo National Gallery

Wainwright

242

18 19

111-5)

1775-1851
The Evening Star (unfinished). Before 1840
Oil on canvas 36^
123)
48^ (92-5
London, by courtesy of the Trustees of the
National Gallery

HENDER-

and

SON

Altes

1774-1840

Moon

Berhn, Staatliche Museen

!53

Crystal Palace 1850-1. Moved to

1852-4, destroyed 1936

241

the

Paris,

'

CASPAR DAVID FRIEDRICH

Man

Balzac 1897

161

E!:OUARD

MANET

1832-83
Dejeuner sur I'Herhe 1863
106^ (211
Oil on canvas 83^
270)
Paris,

Louvre

353

PIERRE-AUGUSTE RENOIR

262

Lcs
Oil

I'tirapliiii's

I.

1841-iyiy

273

18S4

7h

EDGAR

DEGAS

HILAIRE-GERMAIN

New

18^ (34'5

274

Museum

York, The Metropolitan

of

275

Art

264

EDOUARD MANET

CLAUDE MONET

154)

276

oj the

Gloucester

80)

177

1836-1910

PIERRE-AUGUSTE RENOIR
Judgment

oJ Paris

841-1919

1914
Oil on canvas 38
46 (96-5
117)
Philadelphia, Collection Henry P. Mcllhenny
c.

279

280

DOUANIER' ROUSSEAU

>

1844-1910

281

AMEDEO MODIGLIANI
Italian

1884-1920

Woman

Oil on canvas 405

26| (102-5

6?)

New

York, The Metropolitan Museum of

Art, Chester Dale Collection 1956

1840-1916

Seahorse in an Undersea Landscape. Before 1909

Pastel 19A
19! (49
49)

282

864- 1 901

PABLO PICASSO
Woman
Oil on

New York, New Gallery

HENRI DE TOULOUSE-LAUTREC

Bibliotheque Nationale

1863-1944

26| (84 x 67)

j;}^
Oslo, Nasjonalgalleriet
Photo Nasjonalgalleriet Oslo

186)

Jardin de Paris: jane Ai'ril 1893

Coloured lithographic poster 51
X 94)

EDVARD MUNCH
The Scream 1893
Oil on cardboard

1856-1925

Graham Robertson 1895

Oil on canvas 89^
45 (227 -114)
London, The Tate Gallery
The Snake Gharmer 1907
Oil on canvas 65
73^ (165
Paris, Louvre

1848-1903
Whispered Words 1892
Oil on canvas 30
38 (76
96-5)
From the Collection of Mr and Mrs John

Hay Whitney

142-5)

JOHN SINGER SARGENT

PAUL GAUGUIN

Carlylc: Arrain;enu'iit in qrcy and black 1873

354

1839-1906

lection

Institute ('/"C/hViJqc

Oil on canvas 67
56 (170
Glasgow Art Gallery

Paris,

PAUL CEZANNE
1

Farm 1874

ODILON REDON

VAN GOGH

Oil on canvas 8 1 98 (208

249)
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Wilstach Col-

JAMES ABBOT McNElLL WHISTLER

1853-90

1834-1903

272

VINCENT VAN G0(;H

I'he Sower
US

Les Grandes Baii^neuses 1898-1905

1859-91

Oil on canvas h. 32 (87)

Philadelphia, Museum of Art Collection
Photo Philadelphia Museum of Art

271

92)

Photo Philadelphia .Museum of Art

Art

WINSLOW HOMER

'LE

Institute Galleries

278

270

36^ (67

London, Courtauld

GEORGES SEURAT

Photo courtesy

269

Oil on canvas 26^

White Roses 890

Oil on canvas 93
72 (236 > 183)
Collection of Mrs Albert D. Lasker
Photo Folkwang ALuseum, Essen

1840-1926

Memorial Collection

268

1839-1906

Sainte-l Ictoire 1885-7

La Grande jatte 1884-6

Oil on canvas 81 x i2o| (210 ' 306)
Chicago, Art histitute, Helen Birch Bartlett

267

of Das

Oil on canvas 13
16^ (33
41)
Laren, Collection V. W. van Gi)gh

1832-83

La Seine a Arj^eiiteuil 1874

Oil on canvas 23! v 3H (60
Paris, Louvre
266

Fourtli tableau

II.

Meal in the Studio 1 868

Oil on canvas 47^ 6o| (120
Munich, Neuc Pinakothck
26s

13-5)

Sai'oy

PAUL CEZANNE
Mont

46)

>

si (20

Rheiiii^old

iS.U-iyiy
1S73-5

From The

Ihnitiiifi

Oil on canvas I2|

1872-98

St Rose of Lima 1896

oil (.'.iiivas 71
45^ (iSo
15)
London, by courtesy of the Trustees of the
National (lallery
Photo National Gallery

263

AUBREY BEARDSLEY

b. 1881
Blue Dress 1941
canvas 45^ x 35 (n6 X 89)
in a

Private collection

283

PICASSO
Head 1943
Bronze 163 ^ i6|

Bull's
-i

x 37 (129-5

5^ (41 x 40-5 x 15)

Artist's collection

Photo Copyright Arts Council of Great Britain

284

EDOUARD VUILLARD

296

HENRI MATISSE

31^ (52

>-

1891

b.

Forest 1927

Oil on canvas 3i| x 39I (81 x 100)

79)

Private collection

1869-1954

297

The Dinner Table 1908

Oil on canvas yig 96| (181 x 220)
Leningrad, Hermitage

Photo

298

MATISSE

WALTER GROPIUS

b.

1883

Bauhaus, Dessau 1925-6

286

MAX ERNST
Grey

Oil on cardboard 2O5

Leningrad, Hermitage
285

1868-1940

1893

Interior

Dr

F. Stoedtner

CORBUSIER (CHARLES EDOUARD

JEANNERET) 887-1967
LE

Negro Boxer 1947

Gouache cut-out I2| x 10 (32 x 25-5)

Paris, Musee National d'Art Moderne
287

ERNST LUDWIG KIRCHNER

NOLDE

EMIL

Red and

Yelloii'

299

1867-1956

300

DENYS LASDUN

LUDWIG

Watercolour 13^ 18^ (34 x 47)

Seebull, Ada and Emil Nolde Foundation
1866-1944

1914

VAN DER ROHE

JOHNON b. 1906

MIES

and PHILIP

Composition IV 1911
Oil on canvas 63 y 78^ (160
200)
Paris, Collection Nina Kandinsky

b.

Photo Copyright Lasdun, Behr Photography

301

Poppies

WASSILY KANDINSKY

1867-1957
Bear Run, Pennsylvania 1936

Royal College of Physicians, London 1964

>

289

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT

'Falling Water',

188&-1938

Potsdamer Platz 1913-14

Oil on canvas 78^ x 59 (200 x 150)
Private collection

288

L'Unite d'Habitation, Marseilles 1946-52

New

Seagram Building,
Photo U.S.I.S.
302

1886

York 1958

CONSTANTIN BRANCUSI
Bird in Space

b.

1876-1957

919

290

PAUL KLEE
Flagged

8 79- 1

Bronze

54 (137)

York, The Museum of Modern Art

Photo The Museum of Modern Art, New York

940

Town 1927

Watercolour on paper, black background

IlfxSi (30x21-5)

h.

New

303

PABLO PICASSO

b.

881

Woman

Reading 1952-3
Painted bronze 6|
14 (15-5

291

MARCEL DUCHAMP
Nude descending a
Oil on canvas 58
Philadelphia

35 (148

Museum

Private collection
Photo Copyright Arts Council of Great Britain
John Webb, Brampton Studio

1887
No. 2 19 12
b.

Staircase

89)

of Art,

Louise and

304

PABLO PICASSO
New

293

York,

Museum

305

UMBERTO BOCCIONI
Development of a

Bottle in

Bronze h. 15 (38)
York, The

New

1882-1963

Young Girl with Guitar

Oil on canvas 51^
295 (130 74)
Paris, Musee National d'Art Moderne

1898

stone 1. 33 (84)
Leeds, City Art Gallery

of Modern Art

GEORGES BRAQUE

b.

Brown Horton

b. 1881

Les Demoiselles d' Avignon 1907

Oil on canvas 96 92 (244
234)

HENRY MOORE
Reclining Figure 1929

Walter Arensberg Collection

292

36)

'

Berne, Private collection

Aristide Maillol

1882-1916

Space 191

Museum

of

Modern

Art,

Fund

294

PABLO PICASSO

b.

306

Pointing 1947
Height including base 70 (178)

1881

London, The Tate Gallery

'

Photo Tate Gallery

25! (92 x 65)

Moscow, Pushkin Museum

295

1901-66

Man

Vollard 1909-10

Oil on canvas 36^

ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

KURT SCHWITTERS

307

NAUM GABO

b.

1890

Theme 1951

1887-1948
Opened by Customs c. 1937-9
Collage 13 x 10 (33-1 X25-4)
London, The Tate Gallery

Spheric

Photo Tate Gallery

Photo The Solomon R. Gugi^enheini

Version of 1937 original. Plastic h. 22| (57)

New York, The Solomon R. Guggenheim

Museum
Museum

355

30S

FRANK STELLA

Stainless steel h.

li,uii['iir

New

b. 1936
1966
Alkyd <Sy loSi (226 275)
ZiirKh, CJallcric Bisdiofbcrger

15^ (294)

York, Marlborough-Gerson

Inc.

309

ANTHONY CARO
Reel 1964
Stcd painted

red

267)
Collection Alan

^4

b.

40

Bower

DAVID SMITH
Will n)64

Ciihi

356

1906-6S

los

JACKSON POLLOCK

1912-56

Europe 1950
Duco on canvas 106 - loS (269
Collection Lee Krasner Pollock

1924

Plioio Kdsiiiiii Cjiillcry

310

311

(S6

102

312

FRANCIS

BACON

274)

b. 1910
Study of ihf Nurse from the hliii 'Baiileship
Potemkiii' 1957
Oil on canvas 7S ' 56 (19S
142)
Collection Mr and Mrs A.M. Burden. New

York
PI\oto Miulboroniih (^cillery

Index

PiU'i-

numbers

in

italics

refer

illu.flriilion>

lo

Adam, Robert

224, 233, 225

Aix-la-Chapellc. "nova Roma' at 67. 7i
Akhenaten, King 23, 2S

Alanc

Albert, Prince 26S

Leon

Battista

129.

131,

140,

141. 1S5, 1^0. 141

Alcuin

?-'

Alexander the Great 4S.

195.

so,

52,

72.

s-'

King 82; 'Alfred jewel" 83

Altamira cave 15. 17. 16

Altdorfcr, Alhrecht 195, 204, 23S, 194
Ambrose, Saint 66

Amiens

177.

208. 209. 212, 217, 220.

cathedral 92, 94,

17,

gj

Ariccia, S.

Maria dell'Assunzione 209.

Aristotle 168

Athens, Acropohs 34. 36, 42-5; Erectheuni 44. 45, 46; Parthenon 34, 41,
42-4, jg. S2; sculpture 43-4, 4J, 44;

Propylaea 44, 4^
Attalus

I 50
Augustine, Saint 63, 64
Augustus, Emperor. 56, 60, 118
Aurehus, Marcus, Emperor 64
Autun cathedral 80

Claude Lorrain 238-y. 251. 241

Bramante, Donato

12.

18. 332, 334.

Braque, Georges 322, 323, 338, J24

Breton. Andre 323
Bruegel, Pieter, the Elder 129. 195-6,
'95

Bronzino, Angelo 202, 204. 209. 261,

202
Brown, Ford Madox 290. 288
Bruges. Town Hall 104, 107
314

Brunelleschi, Filippo

1 1

7.

29,

36,

Chartres cathedral 99, 97. g8

Cheops 25, 26
Chicago, Monadnock Building

275,

276. 278
Civita Castellana cathedral 117, 117

Claudius,

Emperor

61

Clement, 'I'crriVr de Chartres' 95

Clodion (Claude Michel) 226, 230, 228
Cluny, Abbey of 76
Coducci, Mauro 141
Ca'ur, Jacques 126, 141, 126
Cologne, Church of the Apostles 78, 80
Compostela, Santiago cathedral 80;
Shrine of St James 82
Constable, John 237, 265, 266, 277, 280,
284, 293, 294, 302, 264
Constantine, Emperor 63, 64, 66, 67, 68

Constantinople 63, 66; S. Sophia 70, 6g

Copley, John Singleton 259. 2^8
Corbusier. Le 329, jjo
Corinth 50
Corot, Jean-Baptiste-Camille 280, 28}
Correggio, Antonio AUegri da 161,
196-7, 198, 204,

ig(i

Courbet, Gustavc 156. 265, 280, 282,

290. 310, 281
253,

255

Bastien-Lepage, Jules 266

Bath 223 Royal Crescent 223-4, ^^3
Baudelaire, Charles 282, 286
;

Bayeux

tapestry 83, 84, 84

Beardsley, Aubrey 302, 2gg

Beauvais cathedral 94
151,

Bernard 87

Canaletto, Giovanni Antonio

188,

137. 138, 140, 144, 177. 179. '3^. '39

Barberini tamily 240

Barcelona, Sagrada Famiiia 277
Barry, Charles 274, 27,^

256,

63, 66, 67, 71. 73. 76, 77.

79. 82

335. JJ^

Briicke, die

Jcan-Baptistc-Simcon

Charlemagne

161, 177, 179, 180.

Burnham, D.H. 27*

Byzantium 63, 71, 112

152.

266. 286. 290.

Boulogne, Jean see Gianbologna

Bourges, house of Jacques Coeur 126.

Buffet,

Giovanni

134.

Charles V, Emperor 158

Charles VI of France 106

Bacon, Francis 306, 340, ?^i

Balzac, Honore de 12, 270, 271
'Bamberg rider' 102

Bellini,

7,

297, 298, 302-3, 305, 306. 322, 332,

joo, }04

Umberto 338, jj4

Borromini, Francesco 7, 217-18, 219,
220, 222, 223, 229, 216
Bosch. Hieronymus 152, J_s?
Botticelli. Sandro 87, 134. 135. 168. 1 ?.5
Boucher. Francjois 14. 197. 253. 290.

Brancusi. Constantin

Arnolfo di Cambio 119, 120, 335, 121

Arp, Hans 323. 324
Asam, Egid Quirin 230, 335, 2ji2

Cezanne, Paul

Chardin,

184, 175

212, 217, 21}

172, 173, 174,

Champfleury 280

141. 126

lOjl

13,

184. '73

Berry. Due de 106

Blake, William 193, 251. 253, 2^8
Bliiiie Reiler 314, 318, 319
Blenheim Palace 222, 223, 222

Antioch 48

Antwerp, Town Hall 1S5, 208, 187

Apuha, Castel del Monte 104, 117, 118,

Benvenuto

Cellini,

Bemvvard, Bishop 78

Boccioni,

Alexandria 48
Alfred,

174.

222. 226. 228-9. 2)0, 233, 235. 236.

238, 239. 250. 179. 210, 212, 21), 227

(S3

Alberti,

Bernard. Saint, of Clairvaux 82, 96

Bcrnim, Gianlorenzo 38, 156, 173.

189,

lyi. '54
Benedict, Saint 73
Berlin, Altes Museum 273, 314, 272

Canova, Antonio 233, 262, 268. 2jj

Carpeaux. Jean-Baptiste 268, 269
Caravaggio (Michelangelo Mensi da)
156, 208, 233, 236. 240-2, 244, 247,

Coutances cathedral 94
Coysevox. Antoine 230. 22g
Cranach. the Elder. Lucas 87
Cubists, the 320. 322-3, 338

Dada

319, 3-3- 334

251, 320, 244

Carlyle, Thomas 268

Dali. Salvador 327

Caro, Anthony 339, 3j6

Carracci, Annibale 209, 212, 229, 233,
236. 237. 238. 240. 2J7. 2}g

Darius,

Castiglione, Baldassare 158, 159, 160,

206

Dante Alighicri

Emperor

18

42, 195

Daumier, Honore 282, 286, 290, 302,

28S
David, Jacques-Louis 259, 261, 268,
280, 281, 260. 262

357

Degas, Edgar lo, 286, 294, 302, 332,

292
Delacroix, Eugene 282-6, 290, 285
Delaroche, Paul 282, 284, 286
Delos 42
Delphi 41, 42
Dessau, Bauhaus 310, 319, 328, jjo
Dijon 122
Domenichino (Domenico Zampieri)
239-40, 24J
Donatello 129, 131, 144, 145, 146, 148,
149, 150, 151, 154, 162, 14J, 148
Donne, John 203

Duccio

di

Buoninsegna 96, in, 310,

no
Duchamp, Marcel

60, 297,

7, 8, 12, 13,

309, 319, 323, 7,320

Diircr, Albrecht 10, 124, 152, 155, 158,

186-8, 197, i8S, 191

Durham cathedral 82, 84, Sj
Dyck, Anthony van 200, 233,

Edward
Elizabeth

247,

of England 103
of England 202

Adam

238, 240

Max 326-7, J27

Euripides 38
Exekias jj
Eyck,Janvan 108, 122-4, 132, 144, 151,
247, J2J
Ernst,

Laocoon
64, 88, 131, 132, 136,

137, 138, 144, 152, ijj

Giacometti, Alberto 338, jjj

Gianbologna 173-4, 185, 173
Gibson, John 268, 269

Giorgione 161, 188-9, '9'.

190
Giotto di

Bondone

112, 115,

16,

-^3**,

303,

14, 72, 77, 96, III,

152, 155, 158, 160-1, 162, 163, 165,

168, 174, 187, 188, 196, 197, 128, 136,

Gislebcrtus 80
Giza, Sphinx and

160

JO, 121

Lescot, Pierre 185, 186

Pyramid

ol

Cheops

25, 26

Goes,
127

Hugo

van der 128,

Falconet,

Etienne-Maunce

Farnese, Cardinal Alessandro 236

Federico da Montefeltro, palace of 14?

Flaxman, John 229

Florence

13, 117, 119, 129, 13 1-2, 140,

141, 202, 319; Baptistery, 132, ijj\

Cathedral (Duomo) 119, 138, 177,

1^8; Medici Chapel 164, 168 Palazzo
;

Chapel
138, ijg; S. Lorenzo 148; S. Miniato
al
Monte, Tomb of Cardinal of
Rucellai, 140, 141, 141; Pazzi

Portugal 150, i^i

Floris,

Cornehs

185, 187

Flotner, Peter 172, 173, 172

Fontainebleau 174, 209, 17}

Fragonard, Honore 14, 226
Fran(;ois 1 of France 174, 17.5
Frederick II, Emperor 104, 117, 118
Freiburg-im-Breisgau 87, 275, 86
Friednch, Caspar David 280, 282
Freud, Sigmund 323
Futurists, the 319, 323, 338

Gabo,

Naum

339, JJ3

Gabriel, Jacques-Ange 222, 224, 221

Gainsborough, Thomas 233, 256, 257

Gamier, Charles 274, 275, 275
Garnier, Tony 275, 276
Gaudi, Antoni 277, 279
Gauguin, Paul 266, 297, 302, 306, 314,
318,^05
GauUi, Giovanni Battista 214, 215
Gerhacrt, Nikolaus 124, 12}
Gericault, Theodore 281, 284, 284

Limbourg brothers

22, 233, 266, 297,

298, 302, 303, 305-6, 314, 332, 301,

303

London 273; Adelphi Terrace 224;

132,

Gogh, Vincent van

143, 14s

Goujon.Jean 174, 176

Goya, Francisco de 251, 259, 261, 262,
265, 280, 296, 261, 263
Greco, El 169, 206, 208, 207
Greenaway, Kate 266
Gropius, Walter 319, 328, 329, 330
Griinewald, Mathis 129, 193-4, 197,
198, 193
Guarini, Guarino 218-19, 218
Gughelmus 80

Haroun
8

Le Vau, Louis 222, 221

Ligorio, Pirro 182
104, 106, 144. 103
Lindisfarne Gospels 73, 77, 106, 310, 74
Li via, villa of 60, 60
Lombardo, Pictro 141

129,

al-Rashid, Calif 67

Harvey, Gabriel 150

Henry III of England 103, 104, 120, 102
Hepworth, Barbara 10, 12, 335, n
Here, Emanuel 222, 221
Hildesheim doors 78, 79, 80, 84, 79
Hilliard, Nicholas 202-3, 20J
Hogarth, William 256, 259
Holbein the Younger, Hans 1 59, 200-1
201

Homer

29, 36

Homer, Winslow

300, 293

Honnecourt, Villard de 90, 91, 91

Houdon, Jcan-Antoine 230
Hugo, Victor 270
Hunt, William Holman 10, 266, 290,
309, 267

Impressionists 290-4, 296-7, 298, 314

Ingres,

Jean-Auguste-Dominique

72,

156, 219, 274, 286, 289, 290, 287

Issus, battle

Crystal Palace 273, 274, 328, 272;

Houses of Parliament 273-4, 274;
Regent's Park Terraces 273, 272;
Royal College of Physicians 329,

331; St Paul's Cathedral 181, 217,

223, 216; St Paul's Covent Garden
212, 219, 213; Temple of Mithras 63;
Westminster Abbey, Henry VII
chapel 94, 03 201 1 02 Westminster
Hall 82, 103, 104
Longhena, Baldassare 217, 216
Loos, Adolf 276, 277, 277
1

Halicarnassus, mausoleum 50
Faberge, Carl 25

38

Lascaux cave 15, 17, 16

Lasdun, Denys 329, 331
Lcbrun, Charles 222, 221
Ledoux, Claude-Nicolas 224, 261, 224
Lcmercier, Jacques 216
Leo III, Pope 66, 67
Leonardo da Vinci 85, 115, 129, 150,

19, 120, 121, 122, 124,

132, 136, 144, 198,

Gonzaga family

III

Elsheimer,

Germanicus 240
Ghiberti, Lorenzo

Lotto, Lorenzo 198, 241, 196

Louis XIV of France 222
Louis
of France 222
Loyola, St Ignatius 241, 250
Lucas van Leyden 188, l8g
Luzarches, Robert de 92
Lysippus 50

XV

Maderno, Carlo
Magdebourg loi,

177
102, 100
Malevich, Kasimir 319, 338

Manet, Edouard 290, 296, 298, 289, 292

Mansart, Frani^ois 222, 216
Mantegna Andrea 143, 149, 143

Mantua 143, 143

Marathon 42
Unite d'Habitation 329, 330
Masaccio 120, 129, 131, 135, 136, 138,

Marseilles,

144, 149,

07,

'4<^

Mateo, Master 80
Matisse, Henri 9,

159, 297, 309, 311,

313-14, 332, 312, 313

Mausolus 50
Medici family 104, 140
Mcna. Pedro de 229, 226
Michelangelo 120, 131, 132,

of 52

I of England 209, 247

Jones, Inigo 212, 214, 223, 213
Julius II, Pope 158, 168, 180, 181

James

Julius Caesar 55, 328

Justinian, Emperor 67, 70, 71, 72, 73,

149, 155,

156, 158, 162-5, 168, 169, 171, 172,

173,

174,

177,

l8o,

185,

188,

270, 162, 163, 163

Kandinsky, Wassily 310, 314,

319, J'6
Kirchner, Ernst

j 14,

29, 36,

318,

313

Paul 286, 302, 309,

318-19, 328, 340, 317

Klee,

Knossos 28,

191,

197, 198, 204, 205, 208, 226, 233, 236,

77, 217

30

310,

314,

Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig 331

Milan 66, 1 1
Millais, John Everett 282
Millet, Jean-Fran(;ois 266

Minos 28

Modena

cathedral 80

Modigliani,

Amedeo

Poitiers,

310, j 09

Mondrian, Piet 134, 319, 320

Monet, Claude 265, 290, 293, 294, 296,

Pompeii 52, 224

Pontormo, Jacopo

Cassino, monastery 73
335, 338, jjj

Moore, Henry

Morris,William 277

Munch, Edvard

306, 310-11, 313, 314,

208, 209, 226, 230, 233, 235, 236, 237,

244, 247, 250, 251, 303, 21 1. 212, 234,

id, 72,

235

159, 197, 198, 197

273

Tommaso

Nero, Emperor 181

129

Balthasar 185, 219, 21S, zig

Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood 289-90

Primaticcio, Francesco 173
Pugin, Augustus 274, 274

York, Seagram Building 328,

39.

Guggenheim Museum

JJ';

328

Nolde, Emil 314-15, 516

Olympia, Apollo

41.

QuERCiA, Jacopo della

Raphael

42,

44,

40;

99.

Zens and
Ganymede 37, 38, 40; temple of Hera
41 temple of Zeus 40
Otto II, Emperor 102, 101
Otto III, Emperor 79
Oxford, Cathedral 94, ps; Christ
Anliope and Thaciis 37.

j(?;

131, 130

129, 133, 155, 156, 158, 159,

161, 163, 165, 168-9, 171, 173, 179,

184, 188, 191, 192, 202, 204,
205, 208, 229, 233. 236, 237, 242, 137,

181,

166-7. '7". '7'

Rauschenberg, Robert 9
Ravenna, S. Vitale 66, 67,

Paestum, temple of Hera 39-40, 224,

3
Palladio, Andrea 155, 184-5, 21^. 214,

Redon, Odilon 298, 297

Rembrandt van Rijn 13,

156, 159, 209,

233, 236, 244, 247, 251, 262, 246, 230.

Rem, Guido

Renoir, Pierre-Auguste 155, 156, 290,

Pardubitz, Ernst von 1 12

Parmigianino, Francesco Mazzola 201-

Reynolds, Joshua 233

2,

294, 297, 303, 306, 332, 291, 304

Rheims cathedral

202

Paris 273, 286, 314; Barriere de

celles 224,

Louvre

Tower

224; Eiffel

185, 222,

Cour-

1S6,

274, 275, 27 i\ Place de

275;

Opera
Concorde

221;
la

222; Sainte-Chapeile 88, Sg; Saint-

Denis 67, 88, 90, 91, 94, 96, S8\ Val

de Grace 217, 222, 216
Paul, Saint 66
Pausanius 41
Paxton, Joseph 273, 328, 272
Pericles 36, 42, 43, 50

Pergamum,

altar 48, 50,

49

Claude 222, 221

Perrault,

91,

99,

loi,

102;

sculpture, 99

Richard II of England 103

Rimini, S. Francesco 140, 140
Robertson, Graham 301
Rodin, Auguste 12, 155, 270, 332, 271

Rome

15,

53, 66,

Salisbury cathedral 94
San Gallo, Antonio da 18 1-2, 184, 181
Sansovino, Jacopo 172, 184, 172, 182

Saqqara, Tomb of Ti 21
Sargent, John Singer 300, 301, 293
Saumur, castle of 106, 103
Schinkel, Karl Friedrich 273, 272

Schocnmaekers, M. H.J. 134, 320

Schwitters, Kurt 323, 326
Secundus and Projccta, marriage casket
of 64, 65, 70, 84, 63
Serlio, Sebastiano 185, 217
Seurat, Georges 298, 294
Seville cathedral 94

WiUiam

184, 208, 218,

181,

226, 233, 236, 238, 240, 268, 273, 289,

Simenon, Georges 9
Sluter,

112, 119,

Socrates 36
Spenser, fedmund 150

Frank 339, 336

Stonehenge 18, 19, 19
Suetonius 61, 181, 240

Stella,

Suger, Abbot 67, 88, 90, 91, 94, 96, 310;

Eagle flagon for 91
Sullivan, Louis 10, 276, 279, 328, 27*

Suprematism 319

Tacitus
Tanagra
Tallin,

Surrealists 310, 323, 326, 338

Swift, Jonathan 266

6i
50, 3

Vladimir 338, 339

Taylor, A.J. P. 9

Peruzzi, Baldassare 181, 184, 185, 180

181; Palazzo

Petrarch 1 1
Phidias 42, 43
Philip II of Spain 169

Pantheon

Thackeray,

S.

Thebes 23
Theed, WiUiam 268
Theodora, Empress 71,
Thucydides 36

Philip the

Good, Duke of Burgundy

122
Picasso,

Carlo alle Quattro

Fontane 217, 216; S. Sabina 70, 6*;
St

Pablo

14, 297, 306, 309, 310,

311, 318, 320-2, 335, 338, 339, 309,

311,321,325,333
Piero della Francesca 135, 144, 136
Pigalle, Jean-Baptiste 12, 220, 230, 230
Pilon, Germain 175-6, 177
Pisa, Duomo pulpit 118, 118
Pisanello,

Antonio

Pisano, Giovanni

114, 114

1 19
Pisano, Nicola 118, 119, 121, 118
Plato 19, 36, 168

57, ^j, 116, 141, 209, 38;

Pietro in Montorio, Tempietto

177. 179. '7*; S.

Peter's 68,

177,

180,

184,

179;

Chair of Peter 236, 210; Sistine

Chapel 156, 163-4; Stazione Termini 328; Temple of Mithras 64
Romulus Augustulus, Emperor 56
Root, J. W. 278
Rossellino, Antonio and Bernardo 150,
164, 131

Rosso Fiorentino 174, 173

Rosso,

Medardo

268, 338, 269

cathedral 95
Rousseau, 'le Douanier' 298, 318, 296

Rouen

in

Claus 96, 121, 122

Smenkhkare, King 23, 23

Smith, David 339, 337

181; Palazzo Farnese 181, 184, 185,

181, 184, 180:

59

Siena 1 12
Siferwas, John 108
Signorelh, Luca 149, 150, 152, 132

328; Arch of Titus 15, 13; Basilica of

Maxentius 55, 68, 36; Church of the
Gesu 214, 217, 219, 237, 214. 213;
Colosseum 57, 37; Galleria Farnese
236, 237, 237; Nero's Golden House

Massimi

Shaw, George Bernard 273

Shaw, Norman 273, 276, 27.;

Simone Martini

237, 238

217, 219, 220, 222, 223, 224, iSj

Pater, Walter 8

Building 276,

278

Shakespeare,
70, 71, 72, 73,

77, 217, 68. 72

Read, Herbert 270

Church Hall 87

see Paris

St Gall 73, 77, 76

St Louis, Wainwright

Praxiteles 45, 46, 48, 268, 47

Nazarenes, the 289

Ruisdael, Jacob van 251, 248

Ruskin, John 265, 266, 275, 277, 289

Saint-Denis
214

della

Poussm, Nicolas 134, 156, 229, 237,

238, 239, 240, 261, 242
Prague 1 12

Nancy, Hemicycle 222, 221

Nash, John 273, 329, 272

Giacomo

Portinari,

9, 31, 32, ?!

Napoleon Bonaparte

New

Rubens, Peter Paul 156, 159, 195, 204,

81, 92, 81

149, 149

'Pop' art 340

Pope, Alexander 54
Porta,

307
Mycenae, Lion gate

Neumann,

Antonio

Pollaiuolo, Piero 149

Pollock, Jackson 340. 340

305, 310, 293

Monte

Notre-Dame

Pollaiuolo,

Tiberius,

W. M.

Emperor

266

72,

77

61

Tiepolo, Giambattista 156, 208, 220,

253. 254
Tintoretto, Jacopo

7,

169, 204, 205, 206,

309, 204. 203

Tiryns 32
Titian 155, 156, 158, 159, 169, 191-3.
198-200, 204, 205, 206, 208, 244, 247,
192, 198, 199
Tivoli, Villa d'Este 164

Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri de 302, 298

359

Library

184,

182;

Palazzo

Tolstoy, Leo 266

107;

Troy

Vcndramin 141, 141; S. Giorgio

Maggiore 185, 181; S. Maria della

32
Turin, Cappella della SS. Sindone 218,

2t8
Turner,

Salute 185, 217, 216

J.

M. W.

195. 265. 266, 280,

291, 302, 264, 28}

Tutankhamen,

23, 25,

27

UccELLO, Paolo 104, 134, 135.

Urban VIII, Pope 226, 229, 240

Vermeer, Jan 247, 250, 256. 2^9

Veronese, Paolo 204, 205-6, 236, 241,
251, 253, 206. 208
Vcrrocchio, Andrea 145, 148
Versailles 220, 222, 22a, 221

'.^4

Urbino, Palazzo Ducale 14^. i43.

Victoria,

N-

Queen 268

Vienna, Steiner House 276, 277, 277

Vierzehnhciligen, church of the 21920, 21^,

Vanbruch,John

Vignola,

222, 223, 222

Vasari, Giorgio 115, 131, 164, 188

Vauban, Marquis de (Sebastien

214, 214

Virgil 77

Lc

Prcstre) 94
Velazquez, Diego 200, 233, 244, 247,
251, 262, 296, 300, 246, 252

Venice 158, 208; Doge's Palace 104,

360

2/9

Giacomo

Vitruvius 140. 184. 185, 212, 273

Voll.ird, Ambroise 322
Vuillard,

Edouard

311, Ji2

Wagner, Richard 280

Watteau, Antoine 189, 233, 251, 256,

268, 256
Watts, George Frederic 270

Webb.

Philip 273

Wells cathedral 94, 95

Weyden, Rogier van der 124, J23
Whistler, James McNeill 300, 301, 295
Wilde. Oscar 279
Willendorf Venus' 18, 16
William Rufus, King 82
Winckelmann, Johann J. 230
Wood, John, father and son 223; the
younger 221
Wordsworth. William 334
Wren. Christopher iXi, 217, 223, 216
Wright, Frank Lloyd 9, 279, 306, 328,
329. 339,.?.?'

Xerxes 42

ZuRBARAN, Francisco de

250, 248

WORLD OF ART

THE

Surveys

A HISTORY OF WESTERN ART

A CONCISE HISTORY OF PAINTING From Giotto
A CONCISE HISTORY OF MODERN PAINTING
A CONCISE HISTORY OF MODERN SCULPTURE
Frank Willett AFRICAN ART
David Talbot Rice ISLAMIC ART
Roy C. Craven A CONCISE HISTORY OF INDIAN ART
Edward Lucie-Smith EROTICISM IN WESTERN ART
Bruce Arnold A CONCISE HISTORY OF IRISH ART
Michael Levey
Michael Le\ey
Herbert Read
Herbert Read

Periods and

to

Cezanne

Movements

PREHISTORIC ART
THE ART OF THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST
MINOAN AND MYCENAEAN ART
GREEK ART
Mortimer Wheeler ROMAN ART AND ARCHITECTURE
John Beckwith EARLY MEDIEVAL ART
David Talbot Rice ART OF THE BYZANTINE ERA
Andrew Martindale GOTHIC ART
Peter and Linda Murray THE ART OF THE RENAISSANCE
E. Powell
Seton Lloyd
Reynold Higgins
John Boardman

T. G.

Germain Bazin BAROQUE AND ROCOCO

Timothy Hilton THE PRE-RAPHAELITES
Phoebe Pool IMPRESSIONISM
Edward Lucie-Smith SYMBOLIST ART
Nikolaus Pevsner THE SOURCES OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN
Wolf-Dieter Dube EXPRESSIONISM
Edward Lucie-Smith LATE MODERN The Visual Arts since 1945
Lucy R. Lippard POP ART
Adrian Henri TOTAL ART: Environments, Happenings, and Performance
:

Artists
L.

D. and Helen

S.

Ettlmger

Walter S. Gibson
Walter S. Gibson
Kathleen Raine
Graham Reynolds
John Russell
j. P. Hodin
Timothy Hilton

BOTTICELLI

HIERONYMUS BOSCH
BRUEGEL
WILLIAM BLAKE
TURNER
SEURAT

EDVARD MUNCH
PICASSO

WORLD OF ART

THE
A

History of

Western Art

Michael Levey
312
This deliberately concise history

plates

is

83

in

color

something

of a tour

de force, intended to

stimulate the expert as well as to guide the layman. Throughout,

it

is

motivated

by the author's belief in art as a vital activity and, therefore, as something that - in
the words that open and close the book - "has not ceased to be produced." Not
a bare factual outline, it concentrates on individual works of art, whether a
Minoan statuette, a Gothic reliquary, or a Raphael portrait. What is told is, in

Western man's creative energy constantly finding new ways

no arbitrary pattern
fill the world with non-natural objects. The author imposes
of surprise in
element
novel
simple explanation but, rather, emphasizes the

effect, the story of

to
or

every work of

art

that has often disconcerted people at

first

sight

- long before

nineteenth- and twentieth-century controversies about "modern" art. The result

course
is a book that does justice to major styles and many artists over the whole
enjoyment
own
authors
of Western art, and also communicates a sense of the
looking at works of

in

art of

every kind.

"An admirably lucid and concise history" - Book World

".
.

a masterly survey"

- The Connoisseur

book to read for the first time for sheer enjoyment, and re-read
subtle and penetrating analyses" - Arts Review
"This

is

for its

learning
"It would be hard to find a better book for someone who wished to start
."- London Daily Telegraph
about painting, sculpture and architecture
.

Michael Levey

is

Director of the National Gallery

in

London. He has been Slade

Professor of Fine Art at Cambridge, and has given the Wrightsman Lectures in
New York. He has written several books, including A Concise History of Painting:

From Giotto

to

Cezanne, also

in

the World of Art series.

;xrt/Mus/Cra'*

OXFORD UNIVERSITY

P
t-'tj;r,.o905ie-v
ISBN 0-19 519943-X