THE RENAISSANCE IN FRANCE.*
MIDWAY between the arts of Italy and of Flanders, influenced by both, but entirely formed by neither, grew up the French Art of the Renaissance. The seed was probably sown by Flemish Masters, when the Burgundian Court was in its splendour ; but the plant was growing, and had developed a distinctly native character some time before the enthusiasm of Francis I. for Italian art and artists formed that small Parnassus. of Fontainebleau which was far from exerting that shaping in- fluence, the credit of which is sometimes so liberally awarded to it, on that Renaissance of Art in France of which Mrs. Mark Pattison gives a clear, concise, and where her subject will allow of it, an eloquent account. In spite of the modest motto on her title-page, " On le peut, je l'essaie, un plus 'Nayarit le fasser the art history of the period comprised between the years 144() and 1595 is very completely told in chapters on the chief branches of ark—architecture, sculpture, painting, engraving,
enamelling, and pottery, and of the chief artists in each branch, with illustrations drawn from some works of each.
The opening pages give a general survey of French society, and of the forces at work in it which gave a new and distinct character to all its artistic products. They became eminently social and personal in character. Of the great ideal work that appeals to all time, there was little or none. Though the old religious subjects were not for a long time abandoned, Art her- self had left the service of the Church ; men had more leisure- from the toils of Mars, and leisure and wealth, combined with the new activity of freed thought, caused them to feel that life was lovely and to be enjoyed. Here, then, Art joined hands with kings and princes, to beautify their life of every day ; and great lords and ladies built, instead of churches and castles for saving of soul and body, chtiteaux and pleasure-gardens wherein for the enjoyment of soul and body were gathered all that art could produce in architectural beauty and convenience, painted and carved decoration, and all the luxuries that ever fertile invention kept devising. Here they gathered the great and rich, the learned and the beautiful, with the aids of music, poetry, and literature, the diversions of the salon and the sports of the field, for social enjoyment. A comparison is almost immediately suggested between this sixteenth-century "revival " and that of the nineteenth, whose spirit is the same, though it has grown with the world, and altered to altered circumstances. Arising, as of old, with the artist, the " aesthetic" spirit has made itself felt not only by the great and wealthy, but among the cultured of all classes, till its imitations degenerate into a " fashion " with some. Yet it is the real life and desire of not a few who, though they cannot, like the princes of old, command genius to build them "lofty pleasure-houses," yet seek the same ends, and must content themselves, disregarding the sneers and indignant criticism of surrounding philistinism, with building and fitting their private dwellings to their taste, cultivating their own perceptions by the study of art and literature, music and the society of those who sympathise with them, reforming dress even, from the absurdities of Parisian fashion ; living, in fact, in beauty of all kinds, as far as the briars of this work-a-day world will allow_ Lifein the nineteenth century is far more complicated than it was in the sixteenth ; but the conviction that all knowledge is to be desired, and that all man's powers are worthy of cultiva- tion in their proper sphere, is even stronger now than then, and acts on a wider field. The great difference that affects the Art of to-day is that it is not done for a single patron, but for the public, and therefore is far more varied in personal character. The artist, no longer employed on great public works, " looks into his own heart " to paint, or else paints to catch the favour of his many-headed patron, and produces accordingly. This latter result is often no art at all,—but when we speak of the- art of the day, we mean the works of the men of the highest aims in all branches.
That there was much poor work (perhaps as much, relatively} in old times as now, is very probable, but it has not all survived ; and the storms that destroyed master-pieces have also swept away some rubbish. Yet there is something melancholy in the effect left on the mind by reading a work of this kind, which in so many cases has painfully to reconstruct for us the life's work of a great man, from the few fragments which the carelessness or violence of after-times have left of it. Mrs. Pattison has spared. no pains in her inquiries, and sets before us her results and her authorities for them in a careful and yet readable form ; and
• The Renaissance of AN in France. By Mrs. Mark Pattison. 2 vole. London:. 0. Sagan Paul and Co. whenever the severity of her subject is relaxed, and allows her to describe what she has herself seen, she places it before her reader with great vividness indeed ; few describers of works of art are more eloquent, and accurate at the same time. Perhaps she may wax a little over-eloquent in discovering moral or emo- tional meanings beyond the intention of the artist, as in the Faces in Duvet's "Apocalypse":-
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We read the burden of a long past ; present action passes in a second life, side by side with the still current of previous being, run- ning fall with vivid recollections. It is this sense of a double ex- istence which tinges the expression of every one of Duvet's per- sonages. The secrets of other days are within their lips, the hidden treasures of a life over which the present has no hold. It is this consciousness which lends a marvellous, strange, haunting power to these faces, so that they follow after us or float before us, appealing to our imagination with a ghostly insistence, with the half-formed expression of their untold secret ever hovering on their lips."
But this style of writing belongs to a certain school of criticism, and can be allowed for ; and no writer could bring the work described more clearly before the eyes of the reader. Take, for example, this description of Jean Cousin's oil painting of " Eva prima Pandora" r-
" Eve, the fertile mother of nations, the source of all life,—in her the manifold forces of Nature herself are embodied. All desirable charm of beauty reigns in body and face. Latent passion lives in the quick compression of the lips, in the swelling curve of the throat; the lines of the supple limbs tell of bodily strength. But this woman rules not the dominion of sense alone ; she holds the keys which open the house of wisdom. The fruit of knowledge was plucked in deli- berate choice, not in lustful passion, and the sceptre which she bears in her right hand, the sceptre which speaks her sovereign and author of life, is the broken branch from which the golden apples hang. For her there is neither foul nor fair, but all things are seen with equal eyes. Stretched at length before us on the ground, she pillows her right arm on a Death's-head, whilst from her extended left her instrument, the serpent, having fulfilled her uses, is permitted to uncoil and pass into the vase at her side, from whose secret recesses he had been smmoned. She averts her head ; but her's is no sickly revulsion from the necessary means by which complete experience has been sought; no instinet'of feeble disgust colours the full and complex expression of the face ; her eyes are without choice or desire, of evil or of good, and the weight which hangs on their lids is no burden of melancholy regret born of a weak asceticism, but the profound quiet which is the gift of knowledge. Body and mind alike are poised in calm Notice the fine style with which the smallest details of structure are accented, and the skill with which the grave dignity and reserve of the sentiment are enhanced by the sombre mystery of the shades out of which the figure looms; the sudden relief and scope given to the imagination by the rift which cuts through the overhanging gloom of the forest background, and carries the eye over a far-reaching expanse of fertile land, and teeming with the life of cities, and washed by the perpetual movement of the sea."
It is much to be regretted that no copy has ever been taken o f this picture, and that its present owner, Madame Chaulay, of Sens, adheres to this evil tradition of former possessors " Write what you please, but draw a line you shall not," she says. Considering that at any moment an accident might deprive France of one of the most interesting remains of her former art, this seems to be almost a case for Government interference, in these days, when Governments are expected to look after everything. Perhaps even a richer bit of description is this of the "Judgment and Fall of Manlius," an illumination, probably from the hand of Jean Fouquet
"Across the lower half of the picture stretch the towered battle- ments of Rome. In a vacant space, edged by the frowning ramparts an the very centre of the picture, Manlius fronts us, standing in the midst of his accusers; he is bound and already condemned, but is still robed in ermine hire a prince, and carries himself with an air of proud despair. At last the people have pronounced, and do not relent. The expression of his face, as he looks out and away from all about him, is weighted with a terrible consciousness of forsaken desolation. Beneath the ramparts, crowding out from an open gate, a group of gorgeously-clad patricians press forward to the shore of the broad, slowly running Tiber. They are all gazing eagerly upwards, each figure showing some defined variety of interest. Fol- lowing the direction of their eyes, we see, high above the distant waters, the grim outline of the fatal Tarpeian rock, surmounted by the figure of the executioner. His hands are still outstretched, the last deadly thrust has just communicated the necessary impulse to his victim; the body of Manlius Capitoline falls with headlong plunge into the flood below. Behind the executioner, the judges, whose task it is to see the sentence carried into effect, stand with folded arms. The oppressive weight of the dread retributive justice which they bear seems to bow down their heads, and burden their limbs. Their garments are dyed in the blood-red reflections of the angry setting sun, which sinks on the horizon at their back. The crimson splashes fall all along the meeting-line between the cloud and water, interspersed with dismal indications of sedgy marsh-land ; the rest of the sky is dull, cold as the water in which Manlius finds his grave."
It is noteworthy that the most memorable of the artists were Huguenots, or of Reformed tendencies. Cousin was " accused" of being a Huguenot; Gougon died, chisel in hand, in the black days of St. Bartholomew ; Duvet, the engraver. who seems to stand half-way between Diirer and Blake, shows strong signs of Reformed opinions ; Delaulne went twice into forced exile, and probably died in Germany; Palissy, who was an active reformer, died in the Bastille, and was thrown to its dogs by his gaoler. Enlightenment and Art walked hand-in-hand; both had really left the service of the Church, though religious subjects long re- mained the favourites, even for cups and platters. Altar-pieces and church-windows were painted side by side with lay decora- tions ; but the spirit of them was altered, and they were done more in honour of the Court than the Church. The founda- tion-stone for yet another order of things was laid when Jean Cousin dedicated his book, as his life's work had been dedi- cated, " neither to king nor princes, as is customary, but to the public," The " Humanist Renaissance " died out with the deaths of its chief men under the pistol and the sword, smothered by the struggles of contending factions ; and what of their work. The taste of succeeding generations left unaltered was finally destroyed by the vengeful zeal of the Revolu- tion; so that little beyond fragments in museums remain. The Louvre itself, though sorely changed, is perhaps the largest that still stands; Ecouen and Anet, Chambord and the chAteaux of Tourraine survive but in name, in engravings, or in altered ruins of their once all-embracing splendour, on which kings, princes, and great ladies lavished the treasures of France, Bullant, Lescot, and De l'Orme the treasures of their intellect and experience, Gougon the power of his chisel, and Cousin of his brush. So runs the world away ; will our Renaissance fade and leave as little trace ? If growth and decay are the law of all human things, let us trust our growth may be a long one, as it has been long a coming, and our decay far off ; that the works England may produce when she has a really noble art established may be dedicated not merely to private luxury, but to the public good ; that those who have in abundance of the beauty of life may lay their treasures before those who have not ; and that Art may gather new life, using all her old ex- perience, thinking nothing common or unclean that may be made beautiful in the service of humanity.
Those who wish to study this important period of Art history will find its " picture in little " in Mrs. Pattison's careful pages, enlivened by graceful and accurate illustrations from the works of the masters, and completed by a good index, and a clear " chronological survey " of the whole ; which, together with its simple arrangement into chapters on the various branches of Art under the names of the chief artists, make it convenient as a book of reference for students, as well as agreeable to the general reader.
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