A THEORY OF ITALIAN ART.*

THE interest and importance of Mr. Berenson's last book are due to the fact that in it he sums up his theory of art.

In his previous volumes dealing with Venice, Florence, and Central Italy portions of the theory were set forth ; now the parts have been more or less joined together. We say "more or less," because even now the theory does not stand by itself, but forms an accompaniment to a discussion of the artists who worked north of the Apennines. It is to be hoped that Mr. Berenson will ultimately give us a book in which his view of the essentials of figure art will be treated in a less fragmentary way. The time has come when it would be to the advantage of art if what it is the fashion to call scientific criticism were replaced by a more philosophic method. Ruskin constructed a theory of aesthetics to his own satisfaction and to that of people whose interests were intellectual and moral rather than artistic. But in his writings concerning the

figure arts, if we go behind the fine and poet.° style, the playful charm, and the general loftiness of aim, there is little left except personal likes and dislikes, special pleading for

favourites, and abuse of enemies.

If we give up the position that figurative art is to instruct directly either by enforcing moral lessons or by teaching the true shapes and colours of the visible world, what is there left? Are we, then, to regard painting and sculpture as mere adornment, and reduce them to the level of jewels, or of decoration merely pleasing to the eye ? In answer to these questions we will try to give an insight into Mr. Berenson's theory.

According to his view of the question, the reason why art is

of permanent interest and value to humanity is because it is "life-enhancing." By pictures our vitality is stimulated, and by them the primal forces of life seem to be augmented. We are made to feel stronger, the range of our eyes is made greater, and thus our empire over the material world seems increased. The vast regions of space are no longer places where man is lost and his spirit dissipated. Rather we are made to feel that the limitless dome of the sky is the mansion in which we live and in which we move with the freedom of an heir. Mr. Berenson says :—

" All the arts are compounded of ideated oensations, no matter through what medium conveyed, provided they are communicated in such wise as to produce a direct effect of life-enhancement. The question then is what, in a given art, produces life-enhance- ment; and the answer for each art will be as different as its medium, and the kind of ideated sensations that constitute its material. In figure painting, the type of all painting, I have endeavoured to set forth that the principal if not sole sources of life-enhancement are TAcring VALUES, MOVEMENT, and SPACE COMPOSITION, by which I mean ideated sensations of contact, of texture, of weight, of support, of energy, and of union with one's surroundings Every other visible thing should be sub- ordinated to man and submitted to his standards. The standards concerned are, however, not primarily moral and utilitarian, although ultimately in close connection with ordinary human values. Primarily they are standards of happiness, not the • North Italian Painters of the Renaissance. Sy Bernhard Berenson„. London : 0. P. Putnam's Bons. Las.] happiness of the figure portrayed, but of us who look on and perceive. This feeling of happiness is produced by the way the human figure is presented to us, and it must be presented in such a way that, instead of merely recognising it as meant for a human being of a given type, we shall be forced by its construction and modelling to dwell upon it, until it arouses in ourselves ideated sensations that shall make us experience the diffused sense of happiness which results on our becoming aware of an un- expectedly intensified facilitated activity. The figures must be presented so that all their movements are really ideated, with none of the fatigue yet something of the glow of physical exer- tion. And, finally, each figure must be presented in such a relation to every other figure in the composition that it shall not diminish but increase the effect of the whole, and in such relation to the space allotted that we feel neither lost in a void nor jammed in a crowd : we must, on the contrary, have a kind of space in which our ideated sensations of breathing and moving, while increasing rather than diminishing our confidence in the earth's stability, shall almost seem to emancipate us from the tyranny of burdensome matter."

It may be said that to accept this theory is to reduce art to a purely material basis, making it merely a stimulation of physical forces. If this were so, we should not be inclined to

think that a contribution of value had been made to our powers of understanding what art depends upon. But is it not truer to say that by stimulating man's sense of movement and making him feel in harmony with space he is made to realise that he is the conqueror, not the slave, of the material world ? Enhanced life, like love, "Lives not alone immured in the brain; But, with the motion of all elements, Courses as swift as thought in every power, And. gives to every power a double power, Above their functions and their offices."

As we have already said, Mr. Berenson has not developed his theory fully, and its exposition is to be found scattered in three separate works. It is greatly to be hoped that some day we may have it given to us worked out in a continuous form.

Until then it is difficult to say whether all the varied develop- ments of art can be explained by this view of the subject.

Probably most people have been struck by the fact when going round a picture-gallery that some works of comparatively recent date, painted by artists with full technical equipment, look old and dead, while some pictures which have come down to us from remote times, and which are primitive in their execution, seem entirely living and modern. How are we to account for this ? The more modern work may show knowledge of reality and power of using the painter's methods, but the picture will be dead and useless if the artist has no feeling for those essentials of life which have been described in the quotations from the book we are considering. Mr. Berenson's theory certainly seems to explain why some pictures are living forces while others are dead.

Hitherto we have touched only on the general views expressed in the book before us, and have not alluded to the comments on the work of individual painters. There is to be found here a most interesting account of the strange art of CoFsimo Tura ; but the best and most detailed study is that of Mantegna.

The following is a happy summary of this master's attitude :— "Not only was he romantic in his feeling for Italy's glorious past, but naively romantic. His visual acquaintance with it being confined to a few plastic representations, he naïvely forgot that Romans were creatures of flesh and blood, and he painted them as if they had never been anything but marble, never other than statuesque in pose, processional in gait, and godlike in look and gesture."

We have not space to do more than call attention to Mr. Berensou's description of the manner in which beauty gives way to prettiness when art has become fully developed. Though agreeing with his theory, we cannot but feel that he is rather extreme in his application of it to Luini. This painter at his best had more real beauty, we think, than the critic seems willing to allow him. As was the case with Mr. Beren- son's other books, a large amount of space is devoted to lists of pictures by the various painters whose works have been the subject of the volume. These lists do not profess to include every known picture, but are largely representative.

The book we have been noticing is a great and pleasant relief from the ordinary art criticism of the day, which has become too microscopic. The hunting out of the chronology of a painter's works, the discovery of contracts with patrons, and the accumulation of biographical details have of late taken the place of the study of the general principles of art. Such

documentary exploration is no doubt much more within the range of those who usually write about pictures than would

be any attempt to explain the forces at work behind the actual manifestations. Mr. Berenson has the artistic, and not merely the archaeological, outlook.