COQUEREL'S FINE ARTS IN ITALY.* THERE is less of the
traveller's description than of the critic's deduction in these Letters from Italy ; and what description they contain is of the nature of premises to lead the author to his con- clusions. Landscapes, towns, people, manners, opinions, in short the appearances of men and things, are, with the exception of Church ceremonies, left unnoticed by M. Coquerel ; not that he disregards or undervalues them, but that they would interfere with his object. This is to examine Catholic art, in order to test the claims of the Romanists touching the patronage their Church has bestowed upon artists, and the favourable influence she has exercised in the advancement of art. In a general survey of Ro- manist architecture, sculpture, and painting, he denies that Catholicism, quoad the Catholic Church, has been of any use to either, but rather the reverse. The Christian spirit which ani- mates Catholics, and which their Church itself cannot altogether banish, has been the cause of what pious feeling is really trace- able in the fine arts of Catholicism. The direct effects of Papal patronage have been mischievous. They have fettered genius by the subjects ordered, by the limitation imposed upon the artist in prescribed symbols and modes of treatment, as well as by direct interference with the composition itself. The effects upon religion and popular opinion M. Coquerel considers purely mischievous. During the prte-Raphaelite period—in which, how- ever, he considers a really devout feeling is alone found, religion was materialized, not to say brutalized by the gross superstition displayed, and the frightful forms with which devils, and every supernatural being was depicted to the eye. The true spirit of the Gospel of love was banished from the popular mind, by the severe expression mostly given to Christ and the angels in con- nexion with the punishments of sinners, as in the last judgments. The ideas of the people were not merely accustomed to cruelty by these paintings. Cruelty was actually inculcated by the con- tinued spectacle of tortures inflicted not only on the damned but on martyrs ; and in many cases these exhibitions iemain for the popular gaze, working mischief to tne present day. With more enlightened times, hierarchal patrons as indifferent to religion as Leo the Tenth, and men of genius like Raphael and Michael Angelo, painting and sculpture emancipated themselves from barbarous ideas, as well as from the formal fetters of the early period. But though mere art improved by greater freedom and a closer study of the ancients, the paganism which is inextricably inter- mingled with Papal forms, and the classical studies of the artists, introduced a Pagan as well as a sensual spirit into later Christian art.
All this relates to what Catholic patronage produced. It has destroyed a great deal, not only from fanatical feeling, or to gra- tify the cupidity or vanity of particular churchmen ; which last is scarcely chargeable upon the church, since, though an abuse of hierarchal power, it was done for private Objects. M. Coquerel also maintains that Catholicism has spoiled by misapplying innu- merable remains of antiquity. Sometimes this has been accom- plished in the manner ridiculed by a poet professing Romanism.
• The Fine Arts in Italy in their Religious Aspect. Letters from Rome, Naples, Pies, &c., with an Appendix on the Iconography of the Immaculate Concep- tion. By Ath. Coquerel, Junior Suffragan Pastor of the Reformed Church, Paris. ' Translated from the French by Edward and Emily Iligginson ; with corrections
• sad additions and an English Preface by the Author. Published by Whitdeld.
" Till Peter's keys some christened Jove adorn, And Pan to Moses lends his Pagan horn ; See graceless Venus to a Virgin turn'd, Or Phidias broken, and Apelles burn'd."
Sometimes this perverted patronage of art goes furth pr. The conversions painted by the satirist may be detected by thel‘learned, but they are received by the mass of worshippers in goad faith. They are single figures too, and, if not improper in theimselves, tell no indecent story. The actual applications of Pagan art to Catholic purposes go beyond the satirist's illustration. In the " Cathedral at Salerno there are seen, among other ornaments far front suitable to the interior of a Christian temple, The Ptape of Proserpine, and a Bacchanalian revel." " If you go down into the crypt Of St. Januarius [Naples], a dark underground chapel in which the martyr rests, you will be shown some pagan sculptures which decorate the walls ; among them you will distinguish The Triumph of Venus, drawn by her worshippers yoked to herr car:' In the broad surveys from which M. Coquerel deduces his con- clusions he not only draws his instances from various parts of Italy, but from beyond the Alps. His more continuous and important illustrations are taken from Naples, Rome, and Pisa,—from which places his letters are dated ; and from a question, which on ac- acount of its extreme artistic difficulty, has always been a puzzle to the Catholic Church and its artists, namely how should the Virgin, under the theory of the immaculate conception be repre- sented. And of course this question has now grown of more im- portance than ever, since a dogma disputed among theologians his been advanced to an article of faith. These illustrations of M. Coquerel's main purpose, are various and numerous both in cha- racter and subject. Frequently they are single or minute, like the Paphian triumph or the Bacchanalian jollity, already quoted. Occasionally they take a broader character, as a consideration of the masterpieces of Raphael and Michael Angelo, the triumphs of early art at Pisa, or some of the gorgeous ceremonies of the Ro- mish Church. In the examination of the different illustrations which he presents to the reader M. Coquerel exhibits a spirit in the main liberal in religion and critically penetrating in art. He may show traits of the sternness which the French Huguenot seems to inherit from Calvin, and the tradition of the persecu- tions which his forefathers have undergone, but he does not deny religious merit to Catholicism, or merit of any kind to its pro- fessors, as for example his account of the Franciscan's sermon he heard in the Coliseum. His criticism is dispassionate. He draws a marked line between what is bad in religion and what is ex- cellent in art, merely as art, and classes art of different kind in-a true position. He has also both a Frenchman's and a preacher's power of description, telling the story and bringing the action and expression before the mind, and impressing upon the reader the feeling they produce. Many passages might be quoted, ex- hibitive of this power ; but perhaps the best specimen of M. Coquerel as at once a religious and artistic critic, will be found in his estimate of the failure of artists thoroughly to realize the face of Christ. But this survey of the efforts of the leading painters and sculptors from Giotto and Fra Angelico to Thor- waldsen, is too long for quotation. The Cemetery of Pisa is more available.
" Everybody knows, at least from books and engravings, this Campo Santo, the soil of which is said to have been brought from Jerusalem by Pisan sailors. This sacred ground is surrounded by arcades in open work of the purest elegance of design and of fairy lightness. Behind these arcades is a range of vast covered galleries, in which remains of sculpture have been collected together and funeral monuments set up ; the long high walls have been covered with paintings, (now half effaced by time,) in which the middle ages live again complete. There they are, with manners strange, barbarous and poetical, shameless and devout by turns ; their knights and noble ladies reappearing in the dress of the times down to its minutest de- tails; their monks, with all that profusion of devilries and miracles which the age cherished ; their cruel theology, in which Jesus Christ is an an judge ; Satan a brazier in human shape, red-hot and of gigantic size ; the demons unclean, hideous and absurd-looking executioners. These are im- mense compositions, including hundreds of figures, where the most incon- gruous scenes are heaped up in close contact, without any regard to propor- tion, or even, in many cases, to perspective. Some invite real interest as works of art ; others are below mediocrity, even for their time ; many are become almost invisible ; and lastly, some have been cut away at hazard, to make room for the monument of some local celebrity or great lord, some remnant of the Pisan nobility. As in a great epic poem, so here, we hare an entire age; but without its being evoked .by the poet's imagination, or laboriously restored by the researches and conjectures of the antiquary. It is an entire age, or ages rather; the middle ages painted by themselves. Passing, never to return, along the high walls of the Campo Santo, they have left their shadow, their living image, taken on the spot by the power- ful light of art.
" There let us study this art itself, and the religion to which it gave ex- pression.
" The general effect produced by this vast gallery of Death is a combina- tion of the sad and the monstrous. You are oppressed with a feeling of huge size and restless multiplicity, of efforts without result and movement to no purpose. Human life, as conceived by the Catholicism of the middle i ages, has in it nothing collective. The artists of the Pisan cemetery are destitute of the very idea now extolled among us under the name of ha- inanity; the idea ofreciprocal relations, the idea of progress, of general de- velopment in which all should take part, and of future amelioration which all ought to hasten. With them it is, every one for himself in this world, whether in joy or sorrow ' i the hermit first n the desert, then in heaven ; the voluptuary, now amid his pleasures, then in hell ; responsibility reduced to a hard and dismal law, the law of penitence and self-torture ; man a sin- ner, destined to suffer, and only appeasing his wrathful God, only avoiding an eternal hell, by making for himself a provisional hell in the present world. This terrible popular theology has no more to do with love than
i with progress. In it, God is merciless ; Jesus Christ is a judge not un- moved, but angry ; and the difference between angels and daemons is only that which exists between the constable who arrests the criminal and the executioner who flogs or tortures him. " If God is charity; if Christianity is love; if moral holiness is its end, and pardet.: through Christ the means; this is quite a different religion from that of the Campo Santo, which is much more like Judaism, except. indeed, iqr the added complication and terrors of an unfeeling dogmatic creed."
The literary merits of the "Letters" are considerable. Besides
bringintl; to his task a critical acumen and a familiarity with his
subject both as regards art and religion, the, author has a re- ective knowledge of history, comprehending its spirit, as well as qely knowing its facts. ihe Huguenot gravity has tempered stfational vivacity not destroyed it ; and the same may be said thei French mode of personally embodying and French skill in ping an idea. The style is always clear and often weighty. the book is much more attractive than the nature of the
subject would lead people to imagine.
or41:te argument, too,, is supported. There may be traces of (hypercriticism, as when the author censures the uniformity of ctrietitinentai well as of subject which the church imposed; for this .iirliadhig incidents or persons was a necessity. One might as .Wdlubbject to the uniformity of bread in diet, as to the uniformity 98f-t &fist, the Apostles, the Virgin, or Scriptural scenes, in con- nection with Catholic art. Some of the gross and sensual "lies of exhibiting actions he censures may truly enough be !;13 sited upon the Romish Churchmen's ignorance of Scripture, dqr unspiritual interpretation of it ; but much of the fault is owing to the rudeness of the age, from whose influence no man, not even Patriarchs and Apostles can escape. Other objections of a some-. what similar kind might be noticed but upon the whole the leading principle is established ; thenceforth the Romish Church should cease to receive that unqualified praise for the encourage- ment of art, which hitherto she has claimed without challenge.
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