CHAP. XIX.

REVOLUTION OF ART.

ANCIENT SCHOLASTICISM. A MODERN CONTRAST.

ONE of the most obvious facts in the history of ancient Art is that there is scarce such a being to be heard of as a self-educated artist. You have but to take up any Biography of Painters, and you find, beneath every illustrious name, the word “discepolo.” Go which way you will, you are in a line of heraldry, the genealogical order as strict and uniform as in Burke's "Peerage," or a German Stambaum.

Take a few well-known names by way of speci

Leonardo da Vinci was (with Pietro Perugino) the scholar of Andrea del Verrocchio; who was the scholar of Donatello; who was the scholar of Lorenzo Bicci; who was the scholar of Spinello Arretino; who was the scholar of Jacobo di Casentino; who (with Agnolo Gaddi) was the scholar of Taddeo Gaddi; who, with Simon Memmi and Andrea Pisano (the master of Orcagna), was the scholar of Giotto; who (with Ugolino, Gaddo Gaddi, Arnulf di Lapo, and Andrea Tafi) was the scholar of Cimabue.

Again, Michael Angelo was the scholar of Dominico Ghirlandajo; and he (with Cosimo Roselli), of Alessandro Baldivinetto; and he, of Paulo Ucelli; and he, of Antonio

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Veneziano; and he (with Gherardo Starnina), of Agnolo Gaddi, aforesaid; who, with Jacobo di Casentino, aforesaid, &c., &c., &c.

Again, The Prince of Painters was the scholar of Pietro Perugino, aforesaid, whose scholastic descent from Cimabue we need not trace again through all the aforesaids.

Again, Fra Bartolommeo was (with Mariotto Albertinelli) the scholar of Cosimo Roselli, aforesaid, whose antecedents we have already traced.

We will take just one more case; both because it is of special consideration with Mr. Ruskin, and because it threads a line it were unhandsome to leave unnoticed:

Tintoretto was the scholar of Titian; who (with Giorgione and Sebastian del Piombo) was the scholar of Giovanni Bellini; and he, of Jacobo Bellini; and he, of Gentile de Fabriano; and he (with Benozzo Gozzoli), of Fra Angelico; and he (with Fra Filippo Lippi, the master of Sandro Botticelli), of Masaccio; and he of Masolino; and he, of Gherardo Starnina, aforesaid, whose descent from Cimabue has been traced already.

Such are some of the tabular facts. These few lists embrace almost every star of the first magnitude in the firmament of ancient Art. But we must look a little closer into the meaning of this word "scholar."

Those whose notion of education is that of classes in an academy, have not the most distant glimpse of the scholasticism of ancient Art. The great scholars of the great masters not only worked beneath the instruction of one pledged to aid their progress,-not only worked where he worked, so as to get an in

sight into his practice,-but worked with him-saw and shared his resources-saw his first sketches from the life-models-helped to transfer them to the canvas, walked hand-in-hand with him as their powers permitted-and then stood by and traced his progress to the dizzy heights they were to emulate.

Such was ancient scholarship. To what precise limits it was carried in individual cases, it were vain, of course, to conjecture. Here are one or two facts that occur to memory.

All who know-as all should know-the works of Raffaelle, are no less familiar with the names of disciples who shared his labours in producing them, -Julio Romano, Perin del Vaga, Polidoro da Caravaggio, Primaticcio, Giovanni Penni, domestically called "Il Fattore." Mr. Ruskin thanks" Raffaelle for the flowers on the sacred beach of his Miraculous Draught of Fishes; "" he needs no one to tell him the actual hand to which we owe them*: nor how, to this very day, purchasers are puzzled by what their possessors call "Replicas" of Raffaelle, of which candour whispers that they are copies; but copies made by men who drank of his spirit ere they sat down to trace his living lines, and whose labours were not only moulded beneath his eye, but received, here and there, the Promethean fire from his actual touch.

So, I remember, that, of the two disciples of Cosimo Roselli, Vasari says that they worked together on the same pictures; the closest observer

*Giovanni da Udine.

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being unable to say which part was by Fra Bartolommeo and which by "il altro Bartolommeo," Mariotto Albertinelli.

But there is a story of Rubens that goes beyond all this. One day, during his absence, his scholars pranking about his studio, one of them tumbled against his easel, and effaced the head and arm of a Madonna. The consternation may be imagined. A council of war was held: John van Hock instantly exclaimed, "It's no use lamenting; some one must paint in the head and arm, and I give my vote for Vandyke." The thing was done: the master returned; resumed his place; looked over his morning's work; stopped some awful moments at the special spot; and observed quietly to his breathless pupils, "That head and arm are among the best things I ever did."

I am not bound to authenticate the story; though I never heard it questioned. I care not if it be called a "myth." Its existence as a fable is quite enough. Such a story could not be even invented in times like these.

Let me make here one general remark. This scholasticism of ancient art, whilst it placed the scholar in his master's track, and gave him, not cold rules and apothegms, but the very momentum of his master's spirit, seems never to have enslaved the genius, nor obliterated the individuality of any pupil who had genius or individuality about him. No one need be told that Vandyke became as much Vandyke as the above story would make him Rubens. Raffaelle walked in the very footsteps of Perugino, till

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he grew by natural growth into what the world has learned to know by the name of Raffaelle. Fra Angelico and Michael Angelo came forth idealists from the realistic schools of Masaccio and Ghirlandajo.

Let us turn now to a modern contrast. It shall be given, word for word, from Mr. Ruskin. He speaks of

"Pictures painted, in a temper of resistance, by exceedingly young men, of stubborn instincts and positive self-trust, and with little natural perception of beauty." (Pre-Raphaelitism, p. 24.)

I suppose few persons, standing at a distance from the scene, and alive to certain characteristics of the day we live in, could see such words made the pivot of a revolution, without a painful sense of the portent. Mr. Ruskin himself begins the last paragraph in the addenda to his "Edinburgh Lectures" with the admission that

"Among the many dark signs of these times, the disobedience and insolence of youth are among the darkest."

My own moral was rather hinted than uttered. I cannot, however, regret that, reading in a "Young Men's Society a preliminary Lecture on "The Use and Abuse of Art," I should have twice laid my finger on words so ominous. I had, of course, no personal feeling. I knew that the "youths" referred to were youths no longer; and I took the facts, for warning's sake, to the very letter as they were gievn

me.

The words above cited bear date 1851. In the spring of 1854 appeared the following: