in milan we spent most of our time in the vast and beautiful arcade or gallery, or whatever it is called. blocks of tall new buildings of the most sumptuous sort, rich with decoration and graced with statues, the streets between these blocks roofed over with glass at a great height, the pavements all of smooth and variegated marble, arranged in tasteful patterns—little tables all over these marble streets, people sitting at them, eating, drinking, or smoking—crowds of other people strolling by—such is the arcade. i should like to live in it all the time. the windows of the sumptuous restaurants stand open, and one breakfasts there and enjoys the passing show.
we wandered all over the town, enjoying whatever was going on in the streets. we took one omnibus ride, and as i did not speak italian and could not ask the price, i held out some copper coins to the conductor, and he took two. then he went and got his tariff card and showed me that he had taken only the right sum. so i made a note—italian omnibus conductors do not cheat.
near the cathedral i saw another instance of probity. an old man was peddling dolls and toy fans. two small american children bought fans, and one gave the old man a franc and three copper coins, and both started away; but they were called back, and the franc and one of the coppers were restored to them. hence it is plain that in italy, parties connected with the drama and the omnibus and the toy interests do not cheat.
the stocks of goods in the shops were not extensive, generally. in the vestibule of what seemed to be a clothing store, we saw eight or ten wooden dummies grouped together, clothed in woolen business suits and each marked with its price. one suit was marked forty-five francs—nine dollars. harris stepped in and said he wanted a suit like that. nothing easier: the old merchant dragged in the dummy, brushed him off with a broom, stripped him, and shipped the clothes to the hotel. he said he did not keep two suits of the same kind in stock, but manufactured a second when it was needed to reclothe the dummy.
in another quarter we found six italians engaged in a violent quarrel. they danced fiercely about, gesticulating with their heads, their arms, their legs, their whole bodies; they would rush forward occasionally with a sudden access of passion and shake their fists in each other’s very faces. we lost half an hour there, waiting to help cord up the dead, but they finally embraced each other affectionately, and the trouble was over. the episode was interesting, but we could not have afforded all the time to it if we had known nothing was going to come of it but a reconciliation. note made—in italy, people who quarrel cheat the spectator.
we had another disappointment afterward. we approached a deeply interested crowd, and in the midst of it found a fellow wildly chattering and gesticulating over a box on the ground which was covered with a piece of old blanket. every little while he would bend down and take hold of the edge of the blanket with the extreme tips of his fingertips, as if to show there was no deception—chattering away all the while—but always, just as i was expecting to see a wonder feat of legerdemain, he would let go the blanket and rise to explain further. however, at last he uncovered the box and got out a spoon with a liquid in it, and held it fair and frankly around, for people to see that it was all right and he was taking no advantage—his chatter became more excited than ever. i supposed he was going to set fire to the liquid and swallow it, so i was greatly wrought up and interested. i got a cent ready in one hand and a florin in the other, intending to give him the former if he survived and the latter if he killed himself—for his loss would be my gain in a literary way, and i was willing to pay a fair price for the item—but this impostor ended his intensely moving performance by simply adding some powder to the liquid and polishing the spoon! then he held it aloft, and he could not have shown a wilder exultation if he had achieved an immortal miracle. the crowd applauded in a gratified way, and it seemed to me that history speaks the truth when it says these children of the south are easily entertained.
we spent an impressive hour in the noble cathedral, where long shafts of tinted light were cleaving through the solemn dimness from the lofty windows and falling on a pillar here, a picture there, and a kneeling worshiper yonder. the organ was muttering, censers were swinging, candles were glinting on the distant altar and robed priests were filing silently past them; the scene was one to sweep all frivolous thoughts away and steep the soul in a holy calm. a trim young american lady paused a yard or two from me, fixed her eyes on the mellow sparks flecking the far-off altar, bent her head reverently a moment, then straightened up, kicked her train into the air with her heel, caught it deftly in her hand, and marched briskly out.
we visited the picture-galleries and the other regulation “sights” of milan—not because i wanted to write about them again, but to see if i had learned anything in twelve years. i afterward visited the great galleries of rome and florence for the same purpose. i found i had learned one thing. when i wrote about the old masters before, i said the copies were better than the originals. that was a mistake of large dimensions. the old masters were still unpleasing to me, but they were truly divine contrasted with the copies. the copy is to the original as the pallid, smart, inane new wax-work group is to the vigorous, earnest, dignified group of living men and women whom it professes to duplicate. there is a mellow richness, a subdued color, in the old pictures, which is to the eye what muffled and mellowed sound is to the ear. that is the merit which is most loudly praised in the old picture, and is the one which the copy most conspicuously lacks, and which the copyist must not hope to compass. it was generally conceded by the artists with whom i talked, that that subdued splendor, that mellow richness, is imparted to the picture by age. then why should we worship the old master for it, who didn’t impart it, instead of worshiping old time, who did? perhaps the picture was a clanging bell, until time muffled it and sweetened it.
in conversation with an artist in venice, i asked: “what is it that people see in the old masters? i have been in the doge’s palace and i saw several acres of very bad drawing, very bad perspective, and very incorrect proportions. paul veronese’s dogs to not resemble dogs; all the horses look like bladders on legs; one man had a right leg on the left side of his body; in the large picture where the emperor (barbarossa?) is prostrate before the pope, there are three men in the foreground who are over thirty feet high, if one may judge by the size of a kneeling little boy in the center of the foreground; and according to the same scale, the pope is seven feet high and the doge is a shriveled dwarf of four feet.”
the artist said:
“yes, the old masters often drew badly; they did not care much for truth and exactness in minor details; but after all, in spite of bad drawing, bad perspective, bad proportions, and a choice of subjects which no longer appeal to people as strongly as they did three hundred years ago, there is a something about their pictures which is divine—a something which is above and beyond the art of any epoch since—a something which would be the despair of artists but that they never hope or expect to attain it, and therefore do not worry about it.”
that is what he said—and he said what he believed; and not only believed, but felt.
reasoning—especially reasoning, without technical knowledge—must be put aside, in cases of this kind. it cannot assist the inquirer. it will lead him, in the most logical progression, to what, in the eyes of artists, would be a most illogical conclusion. thus: bad drawing, bad proportion, bad perspective, indifference to truthful detail, color which gets its merit from time, and not from the artist—these things constitute the old master; conclusion, the old master was a bad painter, the old master was not an old master at all, but an old apprentice. your friend the artist will grant your premises, but deny your conclusion; he will maintain that notwithstanding this formidable list of confessed defects, there is still a something that is divine and unapproachable about the old master, and that there is no arguing the fact away by any system of reasoning whatsoever.
i can believe that. there are women who have an indefinable charm in their faces which makes them beautiful to their intimates, but a cold stranger who tried to reason the matter out and find this beauty would fail. he would say of one of these women: this chin is too short, this nose is too long, this forehead is too high, this hair is too red, this complexion is too pallid, the perspective of the entire composition is incorrect; conclusion, the woman is not beautiful. but her nearest friend might say, and say truly, “your premises are right, your logic is faultless, but your conclusion is wrong, nevertheless; she is an old master—she is beautiful, but only to such as know her; it is a beauty which cannot be formulated, but it is there, just the same."
i found more pleasure in contemplating the old masters this time than i did when i was in europe in former years, but still it was a calm pleasure; there was nothing overheated about it. when i was in venice before, i think i found no picture which stirred me much, but this time there were two which enticed me to the doge’s palace day after day, and kept me there hours at a time. one of these was tintoretto’s three-acre picture in the great council chamber. when i saw it twelve years ago i was not strongly attracted to it—the guide told me it was an insurrection in heaven—but this was an error.
the movement of this great work is very fine. there are ten thousand figures, and they are all doing something. there is a wonderful “go” to the whole composition. some of the figures are driving headlong downward, with clasped hands, others are swimming through the cloud-shoals—some on their faces, some on their backs—great processions of bishops, martyrs, and angels are pouring swiftly centerward from various outlying directions—everywhere is enthusiastic joy, there is rushing movement everywhere. there are fifteen or twenty figures scattered here and there, with books, but they cannot keep their attention on their reading—they offer the books to others, but no one wishes to read, now. the lion of st. mark is there with his book; st. mark is there with his pen uplifted; he and the lion are looking each other earnestly in the face, disputing about the way to spell a word—the lion looks up in rapt admiration while st. mark spells. this is wonderfully interpreted by the artist. it is the master-stroke of this imcomparable painting.
i visited the place daily, and never grew tired of looking at that grand picture. as i have intimated, the movement is almost unimaginably vigorous; the figures are singing, hosannahing, and many are blowing trumpets. so vividly is noise suggested, that spectators who become absorbed in the picture almost always fall to shouting comments in each other’s ears, making ear-trumpets of their curved hands, fearing they may not otherwise be heard. one often sees a tourist, with the eloquent tears pouring down his cheeks, funnel his hands at his wife’s ear, and hears him roar through them, “oh, to be there and at rest!”
none but the supremely great in art can produce effects like these with the silent brush.
twelve years ago i could not have appreciated this picture. one year ago i could not have appreciated it. my study of art in heidelberg has been a noble education to me. all that i am today in art, i owe to that.
the other great work which fascinated me was bassano’s immortal hair trunk. this is in the chamber of the council of ten. it is in one of the three forty-foot pictures which decorate the walls of the room. the composition of this picture is beyond praise. the hair trunk is not hurled at the stranger’s head—so to speak—as the chief feature of an immortal work so often is; no, it is carefully guarded from prominence, it is subordinated, it is restrained, it is most deftly and cleverly held in reserve, it is most cautiously and ingeniously led up to, by the master, and consequently when the spectator reaches it at last, he is taken unawares, he is unprepared, and it bursts upon him with a stupefying surprise.
one is lost in wonder at all the thought and care which this elaborate planning must have cost. a general glance at the picture could never suggest that there was a hair trunk in it; the hair trunk is not mentioned in the title even—which is, “pope alexander iii. and the doge ziani, the conqueror of the emperor frederick barbarossa”; you see, the title is actually utilized to help divert attention from the trunk; thus, as i say, nothing suggests the presence of the trunk, by any hint, yet everything studiedly leads up to it, step by step. let us examine into this, and observe the exquisitely artful artlessness of the plan.
at the extreme left end of the picture are a couple of women, one of them with a child looking over her shoulder at a wounded man sitting with bandaged head on the ground. these people seem needless, but no, they are there for a purpose; one cannot look at them without seeing the gorgeous procession of grandees, bishops, halberdiers, and banner-bearers which is passing along behind them; one cannot see the procession without feeling the curiosity to follow it and learn whither it is going; it leads him to the pope, in the center of the picture, who is talking with the bonnetless doge—talking tranquilly, too, although within twelve feet of them a man is beating a drum, and not far from the drummer two persons are blowing horns, and many horsemen are plunging and rioting about—indeed, twenty-two feet of this great work is all a deep and happy holiday serenity and sunday-school procession, and then we come suddenly upon eleven and one-half feet of turmoil and racket and insubordination. this latter state of things is not an accident, it has its purpose. but for it, one would linger upon the pope and the doge, thinking them to be the motive and supreme feature of the picture; whereas one is drawn along, almost unconsciously, to see what the trouble is about. now at the very end of this riot, within four feet of the end of the picture, and full thirty-six feet from the beginning of it, the hair trunk bursts with an electrifying suddenness upon the spectator, in all its matchless perfection, and the great master’s triumph is sweeping and complete. from that moment no other thing in those forty feet of canvas has any charm; one sees the hair trunk, and the hair trunk only—and to see it is to worship it. bassano even placed objects in the immediate vicinity of the supreme feature whose pretended purpose was to divert attention from it yet a little longer and thus delay and augment the surprise; for instance, to the right of it he has placed a stooping man with a cap so red that it is sure to hold the eye for a moment—to the left of it, some six feet away, he has placed a red-coated man on an inflated horse, and that coat plucks your eye to that locality the next moment—then, between the trunk and the red horseman he has intruded a man, naked to his waist, who is carrying a fancy flour-sack on the middle of his back instead of on his shoulder—this admirable feat interests you, of course—keeps you at bay a little longer, like a sock or a jacket thrown to the pursuing wolf—but at last, in spite of all distractions and detentions, the eye of even the most dull and heedless spectator is sure to fall upon the world’s masterpiece, and in that moment he totters to his chair or leans upon his guide for support.
descriptions of such a work as this must necessarily be imperfect, yet they are of value. the top of the trunk is arched; the arch is a perfect half-circle, in the roman style of architecture, for in the then rapid decadence of greek art, the rising influence of rome was already beginning to be felt in the art of the republic. the trunk is bound or bordered with leather all around where the lid joins the main body. many critics consider this leather too cold in tone; but i consider this its highest merit, since it was evidently made so to emphasize by contrast the impassioned fervor of the hasp. the highlights in this part of the work are cleverly managed, the motif is admirably subordinated to the ground tints, and the technique is very fine. the brass nail-heads are in the purest style of the early renaissance. the strokes, here, are very firm and bold—every nail-head is a portrait. the handle on the end of the trunk has evidently been retouched—i think, with a piece of chalk—but one can still see the inspiration of the old master in the tranquil, almost too tranquil, hang of it. the hair of this trunk is real hair—so to speak—white in patches, brown in patches. the details are finely worked out; the repose proper to hair in a recumbent and inactive attitude is charmingly expressed. there is a feeling about this part of the work which lifts it to the highest altitudes of art; the sense of sordid realism vanishes away—one recognizes that there is soul here.
view this trunk as you will, it is a gem, it is a marvel, it is a miracle. some of the effects are very daring, approaching even to the boldest flights of the rococo, the sirocco, and the byzantine schools—yet the master’s hand never falters—it moves on, calm, majestic, confident—and, with that art which conceals art, it finally casts over the tout ensemble, by mysterious methods of its own, a subtle something which refines, subdues, etherealizes the arid components and endures them with the deep charm and gracious witchery of poesy.
among the art-treasures of europe there are pictures which approach the hair trunk—there are two which may be said to equal it, possibly—but there is none that surpasses it. so perfect is the hair trunk that it moves even persons who ordinarily have no feeling for art. when an erie baggagemaster saw it two years ago, he could hardly keep from checking it; and once when a customs inspector was brought into its presence, he gazed upon it in silent rapture for some moments, then slowly and unconsciously placed one hand behind him with the palm uppermost, and got out his chalk with the other. these facts speak for themselves.
