29 JULY 1854, Page 29

RIO'S CHRISTIAN ART. * Tax author's original design in this work

evidently exceeded the limits of its execution. According to the first, a survey would naturally have been taken of the general field of Christian pictorial art, including, if not the Spanish school, at any rate the German, the Flemish, and the later schools of Italy, so far as they can be brought within the designation of the title. This would not only be the legitimate range of the subject, but it was manifestly, to a certain extent, the first scope of the author. He speaks on more than one occasion of developments of his views which are to be given, but do not come, especially in relation to the Roman school. As it is, the volume consists of a review of Christian art from its rise in the Catacombs, through the Byzantine, Romano- Christian, and Germano-Chnstian schools of the "dark ages," to those of Italy from the revival of the arts till past the beginnitig of the sixteenth century—the schools of Siena, Florence, Umbria, and Venice. The review may be said to close substantially with the early style of Raphael, although the Florentine and Venetian schools are brought down to a somewhat later date. The details promised as to his change of style, leading to the establishment of the Roman school, do not appear, as we have observed: Michel Angelo, Da Vinci, Titian, Tintoret, are mentioned only incident- allY ; Correggio, the Caracci, and their accomplices in the degra- dafion of art, scarcely at all. Thee" was of Christian axt " may indeed legitimately ignore the last, as men who were neither poets nor Christians in any strict sense of the words; but some of the exclusions' more particularly that of the early German and Flemish schools, so far as systematic treatment is concerned, leave the design but partially completed. /tie rationally defines the great aim of painting to be "the poetic expression of the profound affections of the soul." Nothing is more natural than that this view of art, entertained by a sin- cere Christianand devout son of the Catholic Church, should lead him to fix his heart upon the religious works of the middle ages, to the neglect and even reprobation of later productions, wherein, to such a mind, the jaunty self-confidence with which sacred sub- jects are selected, and the hollow feeling, empty display, or un- disguised apathy with which they are treated, must be yet more than the open licentiousness and Pagan prilections The Poetry of Christian Art. Translated from the French of A. F. Rio. Pub% Esbed IX, Bosworth, , evinced in other works from the selfsame hands. The author is an enthusiast for the religious element in art; which he finds touchingly and wonderfully conveyed in the early works, and, on the whole, merely burlesqued in the later. At the present day, most persons who think about art are very much of his opinion on the two fundamental points, that the thing to be expressed is para- mount to the means of expression, and that what modern art gained in the facility of the latter it more than equivalently lost in the depth and dignity of the former. In Rio's eyes, every step made by Pagan art in its encroachment upon the Christian art of the middle ages was pure loss ; its final triumph the abomination of desolation ; and the works of Raphael in his second period are worthy of "indifference, or even a sort of repugnance." While Rio's book has presented these views to Continental readers, Ruskin has been expounding the like to the En lish. The leading principles of both writers are almost identical. Even par- ticular statements bear a close analogy. Rio's definition of the " profane tendencies " of the Renaissance—" classical pedantry, luxury, frivolity, and patrician vanity "—are not unlike the " pride of science, pride of life, and pride of state," of Ruskin : colour is vindicated by the former, although less amply than in the great passage from the latter, as " a kind of excellence which is much less superficial, and even less material, than it is generally thought to be, and which in fact belongs to a very elevated order ' of psychological phenomena ": and the deeply religious tone of the Venetian character at the noblest period of its history is insisted on with the same decision as in The Stones of Venice. Rio is not, however, the master of burning words, the subtilly discursive theorizer, or the crushing critic, that Ruskin is. lie loves the holy and the beautiful in art, thinks independently, and speaks warmly ; but he has more emphasis than eloquence. He wants Ruskin's power of fascinating the reader from his own resources Here the interest is in the theme, the positive information which abounds, and the writer's point of view and earnestness of purpose. Rio describes enthusiastically, and with an enlightened insight into art, but occasionally in well-worn phrases and the tripping commonplaces of French fine writing. His Catholic orthodoxy also is not unfrequently as lief as Ruskin's Protestantism is bristling. The two bugbears of Rio in mediteval religious art are Byzan- tinism, which he contemns, and naturalism, which he abhors. His ideal is the "mysticism," as he rather vaguely terms it, of Fra Angelico and the Umbrian school, Perugino and his pupils— Raphael, while yet an unfallen Lucifer, the greatest man of all. He advocates the claims of Siena to priority over Cimabue and other Florentine painters in the revival of art ; and a chapter is devoted to the career of Savonarola, whose Catholic orthodoxy be upholds, at the same time that he paints in fervent panegyric his daring efforts for reform, and to whom he ascribes a potent in- fluence on the destinies of art. The sympathy and knowledge which he brings to bear on his theme will appear in the following abridged summary of what was effected by Giotto and his imme-

diate followers.

"In the first place, the Byzantine trammels have been broken through ; and, as if to render all return to these miserable traditions impossible, art has derived its principal nourishment from legends comparatively modern and exclusively in favour with the Christians of the West. The Crusades have commenced, and have had the effect of completely exposing the imbe- cility and baseness of the Greeks ; and so great has been the retrospective effect of this antipathy between the two peoples, that the fathers of the Greek Church have rarely been united to the fathers of the Latin Church in reli- gious representations. St. Jerome, St. Augustine, St. Gregory the Great, and St. Ambrose, have been placed immediately after the four Evangelists. Subsequently appears St. Francis and his sanctuary of Assisi, the centre of inspirations and pilgrimages during the whole of the fourteenth century : there all artists of renown have prostrated themselves in succession, and have left on the walls of the sanctuary the pious tribute of their pencil. The innumerable convents of the Franciscans have multiplied to an infinite extent the representations of the same subject ; with which painters, monks, and people have at last become k me ais familiar as with the passion of Jesus Christ itself. •

"The taste for dramatic subjects has not as yet showed itself. Notwith- standing the example given by the artists who had painted the calendar of the Emperor Basil, no use has yet been made of the materials of art con- tained in the acts of the martyrs,—an inexhaustible collection of germs, full of life, but lees in harmony than mystical subjects with the calm and ma- jestic simplicity of a period which may justly be termed primitive. Other times brought with them different subjects and new inspirations. Important improvements have been introduced in the technical processes, in the com- position of the colours, in the design of the figures, in the connexion of the groups, in lineal perspective, and even in expression, which has been suc- cessfully rendered more graceful and more varied. • • * " As to the objects on which art has been employed, they have been ex- clusively Christian, and may all be found in the litanies, which were at this time the favourite formularies of popular devotion. The artist who felt conscious of his high vocation considered himself as the auxiliary of the preacher ; and, in the constant struggle that man has to sustain against his evil inclinations, he always took the side of virtue. This is not only proved by the deeply religious impress with which the monuments still existing are stamped, but I find a more direct proof of it in these words of Buffalmuceo, one of the scholars of Giotto : We painters occupy ourselves entirely in tracing saints on the walls and on the altars, in order that by this means men, to the great despite of the dremons, may be more drawn to virtue and piety.'t "It was the same spirit of mutual edification which presided over the foundation of the confraternity of painters established in the year 1350, under the protection of St. Luke. They held their periodical meetings, not to communicate to each other discoveries or to deliberate on the adoption of

t "Non attendiamo mai ad altro die a far santi e sante per le mura e per le Wrote, ed a far pereih, coo dispetto dot deuionj, gli uomini pib divoti e mignon.— Pareri, Vita di Buffalmaceo."

[We suspect that Buffalinacco, the hairbrained painter who has come down to us so quaintly in Boccaccio, said this with a spice of fun, literally true as it may have been. Let us add, that "tavole" is not "altars," butpawels. Was the translator thinking of the Anglican communion-table rj

new methods, but simply to offer up thanks and praises to God. (Per ren- dere lode e grazie a Dio.)

This standard manual of early art and its genuine appreciation, which will appeal to the same class of readers as Lord Lindsay's vo- lumes, is extremely well translated—by a lady, as the preface indi- cates. The French manner is preserved, but generally within the right bounds. A few French idioms, however, occur,—as, for in- stance, "to fabricate a history," instead of to concoct a story ; and names and foreign quotations pay the usual penalty of transfer into English type. When shall we see Buonarroti supersede Buo- narotti ?