76

IL PENSEROSO.

artists have been successful only in the degree that they have freed themselves from the restrictions imposed upon art by its subjection, in choice and treatment, to the dogmatic ideas of the age. In that grand monument of Michel Angelo's genius, Il Penseroso, in the Medici Chapel at Florence, and its kindred groups, we find his native greatness unshackled, except by the natural limitations of material. Faultless, as viewed by the standard of a Phidias, these masterpieces are not; but the grand creative sentiment of heroic Greek art, without its complete harmony and refinement, is legibly stamped upon them. They give the spectator new conceptions of the power of art, and the imagination is stimulated to penetrate the fulness of meaning of a genius that suggests a breadth and depth kindred to Infinity.

The Comparison of Classical and Christian Art continued. Different Treatment and Love of Landscape. - Christian Art excels in Idea and Comprehensiveness. - Mythology and God the "Father" as Art - Inspirations. - Roman Catholic Art tends to Polytheism. - Classical Philosophical Art to Monotheism. Art - Deities of the Roman Church. Causes of Image-Worship.

T must be conceded that to the Greek artist is to be awarded the palm of superiority in the more perfect identification of idea and object, in accordance with the strict demands of high art, based upon his supersensuous idealism. Christian art failed, as we have shown, in one phase by its contempt for and abasement of the natural body, under the mistaken notion that future happiness was to be proportioned to present misery and sacrifice. The world, instead of being a place of enjoyment and happiness, had become one of denial and martyrdom. Eternal justice was made intelligible to the common mind chiefly by appealing to physical sensations. As illustrations from ordinary nature to depict the joy of heaven or the torment of hell failed to be sufficiently emphatic to arouse seared consciences, the imaginations of poets, artists, and

78 THE LOVE SIDE OF CHRISTIAN ART.

preachers were stimulated to the utmost to vividly portray supernatural degrees of each. Hence the future state of the Christian became the strongest incentive to the new and strange in art, embodying not only a greater scope for the horrible, but also its reverse.

AS FEAR had given rise to a demoniacal imagery, so at last did Love, by means of art, hint at a spiritual happiness, such as no religion had ever proffered to man. No sooner did the love side of the new faith begin to have weight, than there arose artists to make it familiar by song, sculpture, and painting. If Dante sang of a material hell, he equally opened new and more spiritual heavens to those that hungered and thirsted after righteousness. Contemporary with and rapidly succeeding him were artists whose imaginations were purified and invigorated by this everrenewing and exhaustless element of Christianity. Their topics were the triumphs of a pure faith, love, hope, and charity, the exchange of earthly treasures for the golden crowns and dulcet harps of paradise, whether by martyrdom, noble use of life, or lingering suffering, it mattered not, so that the good gifts of immortality were won. In season and out of season, through perils of body and temptations to soul, a select and godly few kept alive the spirit of true Christianity. Their lives became the new inspirations of art. Spiritual in their aspirations and elevated in their understandings, their influence lifted it into a new field, more pure, lofty, and comprehensive than had ever dawned upon Grecian intellect. Instead

HEAVEN BROUGHT DOWN TO EARTH. 79

of symbolized powers of nature, or an idealized, sensuous humanity, seeking to raise itself to a level with Olympus by the force of the human will, creating a beautiful and intellectual art, there grew up a class of men, who, in the singleness of faith in a perfect godhead, sought by prayer and purity to draw down from it into their works rays of its eternal and limitless joys. By them art was purified of its sensual dross, and suddenly arose clad in garments of promise and righteousness. The stone of the sepulchre was forever rolled away; and men for the first time were made to feel by the medium of art that there was in store for them immortal hope, and a peace that passeth understanding.

In this bringing down of heaven to earth, the artistic success was indeed more commensurate to feeling than knowledge. But no ingenuous heart can view the works of Cavallini, Giotto, Laurati, Simone Martini, Orgagna, Sano di Pietro, Fra Angelico, Francia, Bellini,* and other medieval artists, by whom the purest religious aspects of the human heart have been most touchingly and fittingly rendered, without an inward confession of the superiority of their spiritual vision, in its revelation of the moral possibilities and divine hopes of man, to the mythological glories and expositions of Olympian life as revealed in the intellectuality of the more subtileminded Greek.

Grecian art being finite in scope and aim, it of necessity came to an end with the exhaustion

* For an account of their lives and works, see Art-Studies.

80

CHRISTIAN LANDSCAPE.

of its mundane power. Not so with that of the artist-prophets of Christianity. Their range was in the Infinite; their prayers were to the Omnipotent. By them beauty was viewed in its more spiritual sense, as the means of expressing divine perfection and the perfect development of love, not, as with the Classical artist, for the pleasure of the creature, but for the glory of the Creator; and thus it was elevated to the highest purposes, and made the handmaid of holi

ness.

Witness the purity and simplicity of their primitive conceptions of landscape, and ignoring of all facts of the natural world which by their ugliness or horror might suggest falsehood or sin. Landscape to them had a symbolical meaning and spiritual significance. They surrounded their holy personages with all that was most lovely and enjoyable in nature, and gave them an atmosphere as bright and serene as their own countenances, which reflected, as art never had before, inward peace and joy. By their devout, untutored feeling they rent the veil which bars the sight of the natural eye, and suggested the progress that art may make when it shall unite to the faith that gave birth to their spiritual revelations as profound a wisdom, founded upon a knowledge of the principles and laws that connect the seen with the unseen. Inasmuch, therefore, as the underlying idea of Christian art, in its scope, moral purity, and spiritual significance, is so immeasurably beyond that of Classical art, it also contains within itself the germ of a corresponding progress.

As