If the figures are full-length, a certain symmetry being required, they are either both standing or both kneeling; it is only in later times that the Virgin sits, and the angel kneels. When disposed in circles or semicircles, they are often merely busts, or half-length figures, separated perhaps by a framework of tracery, or set on each side of the principal subject, whatever that may be. Hence it is that we so often find in galleries and collections, pictures of the Annunciation in two separate parts, the angel in one frame, the Virgin in another; and perhaps the two pictures, thus disunited, may have found their way into different countries and different collections,–the Virgin being in Italy and the angel in England.
Sometimes the Annunciation–still as a mystical subject–forms an altar-piece of itself. In many Roman Catholic churches there is a chapel or an altar dedicated expressly to the mystery of the Annunciation, the subject forming of course the principal decoration. At Florence there is a church–one of the most splendid and interesting of its many beautiful edifices–dedicated to the Annunciation, or rather to the Virgin in her especial character and dignity, as the Instrument of the Incarnation, and thence styled the church _della Santissima Nunziata_. The fine mosaic of the Annunciation by Ghirlandajo is placed over the principal entrance. Of this church, and of the order of the Servi, to whom it belongs, I have already spoken at length. Here, in the first chapel on the left, as we enter, is to be found the miraculous picture of the Annunciation, formerly held in such veneration, not merely by all Florence, but all Christendom:–found, but not seen–for it is still concealed from profane eyes, and exhibited to the devout only on great occasions. The name of the painter is disputed; but, according to tradition, it is the work of a certain Bartolomeo; who, while he sat meditating on the various excellences and perfections of our Lady, and most especially on her divine beauty, and thinking, with humility, how inadequate were his own powers to represent her worthily, fell asleep; and on awaking, found the head of the Virgin had been wondrously completed, either by the hand of an angel, or by that of St. Luke, who had descended from heaven on purpose. Though this curious relic has been frequently restored, no one has presumed to touch the features of the Virgin, which are, I am told–for I have never been blessed with a sight of the original picture–marvellously sweet and beautiful. It is concealed by a veil, on which is painted a fine head of the Redeemer, by Andrea del Sarto; and forty-two lamps of silver burn continually round it. There is a copy in the Pitti Palace, by Carlo Dolce.
It is evident that the Annunciation, as a mystery, admits of a style of treatment which would not be allowable in the representation of an event. In the former case, the artist is emancipated from all considerations of locality or circumstance. Whether the background be of gold, or of blue, or star-bespangled sky,–a mere curtain, or a temple of gorgeous architecture; whether the accessories be the most simple or the most elaborate, the most real or the most ideal; all this is of little moment, and might be left to the imagination of the artist, or might be modified according to the conditions imposed by the purpose of the representation and the material employed, so long as the chief object is fulfilled–the significant expression of an abstract dogma, appealing to the faith, not to the senses or the understanding, of the observer.
To this class, then, belong all those church images and pictures of the Annunciation, either confined to the two personages, with just sufficient of attitude and expression to place them in relation to each other, or with such accompaniments as served to carry out the mystical idea, still keeping it as far as possible removed from the region of earthly possibilities. In the fifteenth century–that age of mysticism–we find the Annunciation, not merely treated as an abstract religious emblem, but as a sort of divine allegory or poem, which in old French and Flemish art is clothed in the quaintest, the most curious forms. I recollect going into a church at Breslau, and finding over one of the altars a most elaborate carving in wood of the Annunciation. Mary is seated within a Gothic porch of open tracery work; a unicorn takes refuge in her bosom: outside, a kneeling angel winds a hunting horn; three or four dogs are crouching near him. I looked and wondered. At first I could make nothing of this singular allegory; but afterwards found the explanation, in a learned French work on the “Stalles d’Amiens.” I give the original passage, for it will assist the reader to the comprehension of many curious works of art; but I do not venture to translate it.
“On sait qu’an XVI siecle, le mystere de l’Incarnation etoit souvent represente par une allegorie ainsi concue: Une licorne se refugiant au sein d’une vierge pure, quatre levriers la pressant d’une course rapide, un veneur aile sonnant de la trompette. La science de la zoologie mystique du temps aide a en trouver l’explication; le fabuleux animal dont l’unique corne ne blessait que pour purger de tout venin l’endroit du corps qu’elle avoit touche, figuroit Jesus Christ, medecin et sauveur des ames; on donnait aux levriers agiles les noms de Misericordia, Veritas, Justitia, Pax, les quatre raisons qui ont presse le Verbe eternel de sortir de son repos mais comme c’etoit par la Vierge Marie qu’il avoit voulu descendre parmi les hommes et se mettre en leur puissance, on croyoit ne pouvoir mieux faire que de choisir dans la fable, le fait d’une pucelle pouvant seule servir de piege a la licorne, en l’attirant par le charme et le parfum de son sein virginal qu’elle lui presentoit; enfin l’ange Gabriel concourant au mystere etoit bien reconnoissable sous les traits du venenr aile lancant les levriers et embouchant la trompette.”
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It appears that this was an accepted religious allegory, as familiar in the sixteenth century as those of Spenser’s “Fairy Queen” or the “Pilgrim’s Progress” are to us. I have since found it frequently reproduced in the old French and German prints: there is a specimen in the British Museum; and there is a picture similarly treated in the Musee at Amiens. I have never seen it in an Italian picture or print; unless a print after Guido, wherein a beautiful maiden is seated under a tree, and a unicorn has sought refuge in her lap, be intended to convey the same far-fetched allegory.
Very common, however, in Italian art, is a less fantastic, but still wholly poetical version of the Annunciation, representing, in fact, not the Annunciation, but the Incarnation. Thus, in a picture by Giovanni Sanzio (the father of Raphael) (Brera, Milan), Mary stands under a splendid portico; she appears as if just risen from her seat her hands are meekly folded over her bosom; her head declined. The angel kneels outside the portico, holding forth his lily; while above, in the heavens, the Padre Eterno sends forth the Redeemer, who, in form of the infant Christ bearing his cross, floats downwards towards the earth, preceded by the mystic Dove. This manner of representing the Incarnation is strongly disapproved of by the Abbe Mery (v. Theologie des Peintres), as not only an error, but a heresy: yet it was frequently repeated in the sixteenth century.
The Annunciation is also a mystery when certain emblems are introduced conveying a certain signification; as when Mary is seated on a throne, wearing a radiant crown of mingled gems and flowers, and receives the message of the angel with all the majesty that could be expressed by the painter; or is seated, in a garden enclosed by a hedge of roses (the _Hortus clausus_ or _conclusus_ of the Canticles); or where the angel holds in his hands the sealed book, as in the famous altar-piece at Cologne.
In a picture by Simone Memmi, the Virgin seated on a Gothic throne receives, as the higher and superior being, yet with a shrinking timidity, the salutation of the angel, who comes as the messenger of peace, olive-crowned, and bearing a branch of olive in his hand. (Florence Gal.) This poetical version is very characteristic of the early Siena school, in which we often find a certain fanciful and original way of treating well known subjects. Taddeo Bartoli, another Sienese, and Martin Schoen, the most poetical of the early Germans, also adopted the olive-symbol; and we find it also in the tabernacle of King Rene, already described.
The treatment is clearly devotional and ideal where attendant saints and votaries stand or kneel around, contemplating with devout gratitude or ecstatic wonder the divine mystery. Thus, in a remarkable and most beautiful picture by Fra Bartolomeo, the Virgin is seated on her throne; the angel descends from on high bearing his lily: around the throne attend St. John the Baptist and St. Francis, St. Jerome, St. Paul, and St. Margaret. (Bologna Gal.) Again, in a very beautiful picture by Francia, Mary stands in the midst of an open landscape; her hands, folded over each other, press to her bosom a book closed and clasped: St. Jerome stands on the right, John the Baptist on the left; both look up with a devout expression to the angel descending from above. In both these examples Mary is very nobly and expressively represented as the chosen and predestined vehicle of human redemption. It is not here the Annunciation, but the “_Sacratissima Annunziata_” we see before us. In a curious picture by Francesco da Cotignola, Mary stands on a sculptured pedestal, in the midst of an architectural decoration of many-coloured marbles, most elaborately painted: through an opening is seen a distant landscape, and the blue sky; on her right stands St. John the Baptist, pointing upwards; on her left St. Francis, adoring; the votary kneels in front. (Berlin Gal.) Votive pictures of the Annunciation were frequently expressive offerings from those who desired, or those who had received, the blessing of an heir; and this I take to be an instance.
In the following example, the picture is votive in another sense, and altogether poetical. The Virgin Mary receives the message of the angel, as usual; but before her, at a little distance, kneels the Cardinal Torrecremata, who presents three young girls, also kneeling, to one of whom the Virgin gives a purse of money. This curious and beautiful picture becomes intelligible, when we find that it was painted for a charitable community, instituted by Torrecremata, for educating and endowing poor orphan girls, and styled the “_Confraternita dell’ Annunziata_.”[1]
[Footnote 1: Benozzo Gozzoli, in S. Maria sopra Minerva, Rome.]
In the charming Annunciation by Angelico, the scene is in the cloister of his own convent of St. Mark. A Dominican (St. Peter Martyr) stands in the background with hands folded in prayer. I might add many beautiful examples from Fra Bartolomeo, and in sculpture from Benedetto Maiano, Luca della Robbia, and others, but have said enough to enable the observer to judge of the intention of the artist. The Annunciation by Sansovino among the bas-reliefs, which cover the chapel at Loretto is of great elegance.
I must, however, notice one more picture. Of six Annunciations painted by Rubens, five represent the event; the sixth is one of his magnificent and most palpable allegories, all glowing with life and reality. Here Mary kneels on the summit of a flight of steps; a dove, encompassed by cherubim, hovers over her head. Before her kneels the celestial messenger; behind him Moses and Aaron, with David and other patriarchal ancestors of Christ. In the clouds above is seen the heavenly Father; on his right are two female figures, Peace and Reconciliation; on his left, angels bear the ark of the covenant. In the lower part of the picture, stand Isaiah and Jeremiah, with four sibyls:–thus connecting the prophecies of the Old Testament, and the promises made to the Gentile nations through the sibyls, with the fulfilment of both in the message from on high.
THE ANNUNCIATION AS AN EVENT.
Had the Annunciation to Mary been merely mentioned as an awful and incomprehensible vision, it would have been better to have adhered to the mystical style of treatment, or left it alone altogether; but the Scripture history, by giving the whole narration as a simple fact, a real event, left it free for representation as such; and, as such, the fancy of the artist was to be controlled and limited only by the words of Scripture as commonly understood and interpreted, and by those proprieties of time, place, and circumstance, which would be required in the representation of any other historical incident or action.
When all the accompaniments show that nothing more was in the mind of the artist than the aim to exhibit an incident in the life of the Virgin, or an introduction to that of our Lord, the representation is no longer mystical and devotional, but historical. The story was to be told with all the fidelity, or at least all the likelihood, that was possible; and it is clear that, in this case, the subject admitted, and even required, a more dramatic treatment, with such accessories and accompaniments as might bring the scene within the sphere of the actual. In this sense it is not to be mistaken. Although the action is of itself so very simple, and the actors confined to two persons, it is astonishing to note the infinite variations of which this favourite theme has been found susceptible. Whether all these be equally appropriate and laudable, is quite another question; and in how far the painters have truly interpreted the Scriptural narration, is now to be considered.
And first, with regard to the time, which is not especially mentioned. It was presumed by the Fathers and early commentators on Scripture, that the Annunciation must have taken place in early spring-time, at eventide, soon after sunset, the hour since consecrated as the “Ave Maria,” as the bell which announces it is called the “Angelus;”[1] but other authorities say that it was rather at midnight, because the nativity of our Lord took place at the corresponding hour in the following December. This we find exactly attended to by many of the old painters, and indicated either by the moon and stars in the sky, or by a taper or a lamp burning near.
[Footnote 1: So Lord Byron:–
“Ave Maria! blessed be the hour!
The time, the clime, the spot, where I so oft Have felt that moment in its fullest power Sink o’er the earth so beautiful and soft, While swung the deep bell in the distant tower, Or the faint dying day-hymn stole aloft, And not a breath crept through the rosy air, And yet the forest leaves seem’d stirr’d with prayer”]
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With regard to the locality, we are told by St. Luke that the angel Gabriel was sent from God, and that “he came _in_ to Mary” (Luke i. 28), which seems to express that she was _within_ her house.
In describing the actual scene of the interview between the angel and Mary, the legendary story of the Virgin adheres very closely to the scriptural text. But it also relates, that Mary went forth at evening to draw water from the fountain; that she heard a voice which said, “Hail thou that art full of grace!” and thereupon being troubled, she looked to the right and to the left, and seeing no one, returned to her _house_, and sat down to her work, (Protevangelion, ix. 7.) Had any exact attention been paid to oriental customs, Mary might have been working or reading or meditating on the roof of her house; but this has not suggested itself in any instance that I can remember. We have, as the scene of the interview, an interior which is sometimes like an oratory, sometimes a portico with open arcades; but more generally a bedroom. The poverty of Joseph and Mary, and their humble condition in life, are sometimes attended to, but not always; for, according to one tradition, the house at Nazareth was that which Mary had inherited from her parents, Joachim and Anna, who were people of substance. Hence, the painters had an excuse for making the chamber richly furnished, the portico sustained by marble pillars, or decorated with sculpture. In the German and Flemish pictures, the artist, true to the national characteristic of _naive_ and literal illustration, gives us a German or a Gothic chamber, with a lattice window of small panes of glass, and a couch with pillows, or a comfortable four-post bedstead, furnished with draperies, thus imparting to the whole scene an air of the most vivid homely reality.
As for the accessories, the most usual, almost indispensable, is the pot of lilies, the symbolical _Fleur de Marie_, which I have already explained at length. There is also a basket containing needle work and implements of female industry, as scissors, &c.; not merely to express Mary’s habitual industry, but because it is related that when she returned to her house, “she took the purple linen, and sat down to work it.” The work-basket is therefore seldom omitted. Sometimes a distaff lies at her feet, as in Raphael’s Annunciation. In old German pictures we have often a spinning-wheel. To these emblems of industry is often added a basket, or a dish, containing fruit; and near it a pitcher of water to express the temperance of the blessed Virgin.
There is grace and meaning in the introduction of birds, always emblems of the spiritual. Titian places a tame partridge at the feet of Mary, which expresses her tenderness; but the introduction of a cat, as in Barroccio’s picture, is insufferable.
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The archangel Gabriel, “one of those who stand continually in the presence of God,” having received his mission, descends to earth. In the very earliest representation of the Annunciation, as an event (Mosaic, S. Maria Maggiore), we have this descent of the winged spirit from on high; and I have seen other instances. There is a small and beautiful sketch by Garofalo (Alton Towers), in which, from amidst a flood of light, and a choir of celestial spirits, such as Milton describes as adoring the “divine sacrifice” proclaimed for sinful man (Par. Lost, b. iii.), the archangel spreads his lucid wings, and seems just about to take his flight to Nazareth. He was accompanied, says the Italian legend, by a train of lower angels, anxious to behold and reverence their Queen; these remained, however, at the door, or “before the gate,” while Gabriel entered.
The old German masters are fond of representing him as entering by a door in the background, while the serene Virgin, seated in front, seems aware of his presence without seeing him.
In some of the old pictures, he comes in flying from above, or he is upborne by an effulgent cloud, and surrounded by a glory which lights the whole picture,–a really _celestial_ messenger, as in a fresco by Spinello Aretino. In others, he comes gliding in, “smooth sliding without step;” sometimes he enters like a heavenly ambassador, and little angels hold up his train. In a picture by Tintoretto, he comes rushing in as upon a whirlwind, followed by a legion of lesser angels; while on the outside of the building, Joseph the carpenter is seen quietly at his work. (Venice, School of S. Rocco.)
But, whether walking or flying, Gabriel bears, of course, the conventional angelic form, that of the human creature, winged, beautiful, and radiant with eternal youth, yet with a grave and serious mien, in the later pictures, the drapery given to the angel is offensively scanty; his sandals, and bare arms, and fluttering robe, too much _a l’antique_; he comes in the attitude of a flying Mercury, or a dancer in a ballet. But in the early Italian pictures his dress is arranged with a kind of solemn propriety: it is that of an acolyte, white and full, and falling in large folds over his arms, and in general concealing his feet. In the German pictures, he often wears the priestly robe, richly embroidered, and clasped in front by a jewel. His ambrosial curls fall over this cope in “hyacinthine flow.” The wings are essential, and never omitted. They are white, or many-coloured, eyed like the peacock’s train, or bedropped with gold. He usually bears the lily in his hand, but not always. Sometimes it is the sceptre, the ancient attribute of a herald; and this has a scroll around it, with the words, “Ave Maria gratia plena!” The sceptre or wand is, occasionally surmounted by a cross.
In general, the palm is given to the angel who announces the death of Mary. In one or two instances only I have seen the palm given to the angel Gabriel, as in a predella by Angelico; for which, however, the painter had the authority of Dante, or Dante some authority earlier still. He says of Gabriel,
“That he bore the _palm_
Down unto Mary when the Son of God Vouchsafed to clothe him in terrestrial weeds.”
The olive-bough has a mystical sense wherever adopted: it is the symbol of _peace_ on earth. Often the angel bears neither lily, nor sceptre, nor palm, nor olive. His hands are folded on his bosom; or, with one hand stretched forth, and the other pointing upwards, he declares his mission from on high.
In the old Greek pictures, and in the most ancient Italian examples, the angel stands; as in the picture by Cimabue, wherein the Greek model is very exactly followed. According to the Roman Catholic belief, Mary is Queen of heaven, and of angels–the superior being; consequently, there is propriety in making the angel deliver his message kneeling: but even according to the Protestant belief the attitude would not be unbecoming, for the angel, having uttered his salutation, might well prostrate himself as witness of the transcending miracle, and beneath the overshadowing presence of the Holy Spirit.
Now, as to the attitude and occupation of Mary at the moment the angel entered, authorities are not agreed. It is usual to exhibit her as kneeling in prayer, or reading with a large book open on a desk before her. St. Bernard says that she was studying the book of the prophet Isaiah, and as she recited the verse, “Behold, a Virgin shall conceive, and bear a son,” she thought within her heart, in her great humility, “How blessed the woman of whom these words are written! Would I might be but her handmaid to serve her, and allowed, to kiss her feet!”–when, in the same instant, the wondrous vision burst upon her, and the holy prophecy was realized in herself. (Il perfetto Legendario.)
I think it is a manifest fault to disturb the sublime tenor of the scene by representing Mary as starting up in alarm; for, in the first place, she was accustomed, as we have seen, to the perpetual ministry of angels, who daily and hourly attended on her. It is, indeed, said that Mary was troubled; but it was not the presence, but the “saying” of the angel which troubled her–it was the question “how this should be?” (Luke i. 29.) The attitude, therefore, which some painters have given to her, as if she had started from her seat, not only in terror, but in indignation, is altogether misplaced. A signal instance is the statue of the Virgin by Mocchi in the choir of the cathedral at Orvieto, so grand in itself, and yet so offensive as a devotional figure. Misplaced is also, I think, the sort of timid shrinking surprise which is the expression in some pictures. The moment is much too awful, the expectance much too sublime, for any such human, girlish emotions. If the painter intend to express the moment in which the angel appears and utters the salutation, “Hail!” then Mary may be standing, and her looks directed towards him, as in a fine majestic Annunciation of Andrea del Sarto. Standing was the antique attitude of prayer; so that if we suppose her to have been interrupted in her devotions, the attitude is still appropriate. But if that moment be chosen in which she expressed her submission to the divine will, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord! let it be unto me according to thy word!” then she might surely kneel with bowed bead, and folded hands, and “downcast eyes beneath th’ almighty Dove.” No attitude could be too humble to express that response; and Dante has given us, as the most perfect illustration of the virtue of humility, the sentiment and attitude of Mary when submitting herself to the divine will. (Purg. x., Cary’s Trans.)
“The angel (who came down to earth With tidings of the peace to many years Wept for in vain, that op’d the heavenly gates From their long interdict) before us seem’d In a sweet act so sculptur’d to the life, He look’d no silent image. One had sworn He had said ‘Hail!’ for SHE was imag’d there, By whom the key did open to God’s love; And in her act as sensibly imprest
That word, ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord,’ As figure seal’d on wax.”
And very beautifully has Flaxman transferred the sculpture “divinely wrought upon the rock of marble white” to earthly form.
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The presence of the Holy Spirit in the historical Annunciations is to be accounted for by the words of St. Luke, and the visible form of the Dove is conventional and authorized. In many pictures, the celestial Dove enters by the open casement. Sometimes it seems to brood immediately over the head of the Virgin; sometimes it hovers towards her bosom. As for the perpetual introduction of the emblem of the Padre Eterno, seen above the sky, under the usual half-figure of a kingly ancient man, surrounded by a glory of cherubim, and sending forth upon a beam of light the immaculate Dove, there is nothing to be said but the usual excuse for the mediaeval artists, that certainly there was no _conscious_ irreverence. The old painters, great as they were in art, lived in ignorant but zealous times–in times when faith was so fixed, so much a part of the life and soul, that it was not easily shocked or shaken; as it was not founded in knowledge or reason, so nothing that startled the reason could impair it. Religion, which now speaks to us through words, then spoke to the people through visible forms universally accepted; and, in the fine arts, we accept such forms according to the feeling which _then_ existed in men’s minds, and which, in its sincerity, demands our respect, though now we might not, could not, tolerate the repetition. We must also remember that it was not in the ages of ignorance and faith that we find the grossest materialism in art. It was in the learned, half-pagan sixteenth and the polished seventeenth century, that this materialized theology became most offensive. Of all the artists who have sinned in the Annunciation–and they are many–Nicolo Poussin is perhaps the worst. Yet he was a good, a pious man, as well as a learned and accomplished painter. All through the history of the art, the French show themselves as the most signal violators of good taste, and what they have invented a word for–_bienseance_. They are worse than the old Germans; worse than the modern Spaniards–and that is saying much.
In Raphael’s Annunciation, Mary is seated in a reclining attitude, leaning against the side of her couch, and holding a book. The angel, whose attitude expresses a graceful _empressement_, kneels at some distance, holding the lily.
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Michael Angelo gives us a most majestic Virgin standing on the steps of a prie-Dieu, and turning with hands upraised towards the angel, who appears to have entered by the open door; his figure is most clumsy and material, and his attitude unmeaning and ungraceful. It is, I think, the only instance in which Michael Angelo has given wings to an angelic being: for here they could not be dispensed with.
In a beautiful Annunciation by Johan Van Eyck (Munich Gal., Cabinet iii. 35), the Virgin kneels at a desk with a book before her. She has long fair hair, and a noble intellectual brow. Gabriel, holding his sceptre, stands in the door-way. The Dove enters by the lattice. A bed is in the background, and in front a pot of lilies. In another Annunciation by Van Eyck, painted on the Ghent altar-piece, we have the mystic, not the historical, representation, and a very beautiful effect is produced by clothing both the angel and Mary in robes of pure white. (Berlin Gal., 520, 521.)
In an engraving after Rembrandt, the Virgin kneels by a fountain, and the angel kneels on the opposite side. This seems to express the legendary scene.
These few observations on the general arrangement of the theme, whether mystical or historical, will, I hope, assist the observer in discriminating for himself. I must not venture further, for we have a wide range of subjects before us.
THE VISITATION.
_Ital._ La Visitazione di Maria. _Fr._ La Visitation de la Vierge _Ger._ Die Heimsuchung Mariae. July 2.
After the Annunciation of the angel, the Scripture goes on to relate how “Mary arose and went up into the hill country with haste, to the house of her cousin Elizabeth, and saluted her.” This meeting of the two kinswomen is the subject styled in art the “Visitation,” and sometimes the “Salutation of Elizabeth.” It is of considerable importance, in a series of the life of the Virgin, as an event; and also, when taken separately in its religious significance, as being the first recognition of the character of the Messiah. “Whence is this to me,” exclaims Elizabeth, “that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” (Luke i. 43); and as she spoke this through the influence of the Holy Spirit, and not through knowledge, she is considered in the light of a prophetess.
Of Elizabeth I must premise a few words, because in many representations relating to the life of the Virgin, and particularly in those domestic groups, the Holy Families properly so called, she is a personage of great importance, and we ought to be able, by some preconceived idea of her bearing and character, to test the propriety of that impersonation usually adopted by the artists. We must remember that she was much older than her cousin, a woman “well stricken in years;” but it is a, great mistake to represent her as old, as wrinkled and decrepit, as some painters have done. We are told that she was righteous before the Lord, “walking in all his commandments blameless:” the manner in which she received the visit of Mary, acknowledging with a glad humility the higher destinies of her young relative, show her to have been free from all envy and jealousy. Therefore all pictures of Elizabeth should exhibit her as an elderly, but not an aged matron; a dignified, mild, and gracious creature; one selected to high honour by the Searcher of hearts, who, looking down on hers, had beheld it pure from any secret taint of selfishness, even as her conduct had been blameless before man.[1]
[Footnote 1: For a full account of the legends relating to Elizabeth, the mother of the Baptist, see the fourth series of Sacred and Legendary Art.]
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Such a woman as we believe Mary to have been must have loved and honoured such a woman as Elizabeth. Wherefore, having heard that Elizabeth had been exalted to a miraculous motherhood, she made haste to visit her, not to ask her advice,–for being graced with all good gifts of the Holy Spirit, and herself the mother of Wisdom, she could not need advice,–but to sympathize with her cousin and reveal what had happened to herself.
Thus then they met, “these two mothers of two great princes, of whom one was pronounced the greatest born of woman, and the other was his Lord:” happiest and most exalted of all womankind before or since, “needs must they have discoursed like seraphim and the most ecstasied order of Intelligences!” Such was the blessed encounter represented in the Visitation.
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The number of the figures, the locality and circumstances, vary greatly. Sometimes we have only the two women, without accessories of any kind, and nothing interferes with the high solemnity of that moment in which Elizabeth confesses the mother of her Lord. The better to express this willing homage, this momentous prophecy, she is often kneeling. Other figures are frequently introduced, because it could not be supposed that Mary made the journey from Nazareth to the dwelling of Zacharias near Jerusalem, a distance of fifty miles, alone. Whether her husband Joseph accompanied her, is doubtful; and while many artists have introduced him, others have omitted him altogether. According to the ancient Greek formula laid down for the religious painters, Mary is accompanied by a servant or a boy, who carries a stick across his shoulder, and a basket slung to it. The old Italians who followed the Byzantine models seldom omit this attendant, but in some instances (as in the magnificent composition of Michael Angelo, in the possession of Mr. Bromley, of Wootten) a handmaid bearing a basket on her head is substituted for the boy. In many instances Joseph, attired as a traveller, appears behind the Virgin, and Zacharias, in his priestly turban and costume, behind Elizabeth.
The locality is often an open porch or a garden in front of a house; and this garden of Zacharias is celebrated in Eastern tradition. It is related that the blessed Virgin, during her residence with her cousin Elizabeth, frequently recreated herself by walking in the garden of Zacharias, while she meditated on the strange and lofty destiny to which she was appointed; and farther, that happening one day to touch a certain flower, which grew there, with her most blessed hand, from being inodorous before, it became from that moment deliciously fragrant. The garden therefore was a fit place for the meeting.
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1. The earliest representation of the Visitation to which I can refer is a rude but not ungraceful drawing, in the Catacombs at Rome, of two women embracing. It is not of very high antiquity, perhaps the seventh or eighth century, but there can be so doubt about the subject. (Cemetery of Julius, v. Bosio, Roma sotterana.)
2. Cimabue has followed the Greek formula, and his simple group appears to me to have great feeling and simplicity.
3. More modern instances, from the date of the revival of art, abound in every form. Almost every painter who has treated subjects from the life of the Virgin has treated the Visitation. In the composition by Raphael (Madrid Gal.) there are the two figures only; and I should object to this otherwise perfect picture, the bashful conscious look of the Virgin Mary. The heads are, however, eminently beautiful and dignified. In the far background is seen the Baptism of Christ–very happily and significantly introduced, not merely as expressing the name of the votary who dedicated the picture, _Giovan-Battista_ Branconio, but also as expressing the relation between the two unborn Children–the Christ and his Prophet.
4. The group by Sebastian del Piombo is singularly grand, showing in every part the influence of Michael Angelo, but richly coloured in Sebastian’s best manner. The figures are seen only to the knees. In the background, Zacharias is seen hurrying down some steps to receive the Virgin.[1]
[Footnote 1: Louvre, 1224. There is, in the Louvre, another Visitation of singular and characteristic beauty by D. Ghirlandajo.]
5. The group by Pinturicchio, with the attendant angels, is remarkable for its poetic grace; and that by Lucas v. Leyden is equally remarkable for affectionate sentiment.
6. Still more beautiful, and more dramatic and varied, is another composition by Pinturicchio in the Sala Borgia. (Vatican, Rome.) The Virgin and St. Elizabeth, in the centre, take each other’s hands. Behind the Virgin is St. Joseph, a maiden with a basket on her head, and other attendants. Behind St. Elizabeth, we have a view into the interior of her house, through arcades richly sculptured; and within, Zacharias is reading, and the handmaids of Elizabeth, are spinning and sewing. This elegant fresco was painted for Alexander VI.
7. There is a fine picture of this subject, by Andrea Sabattini of Salerno, the history of which is rather curious. “It was painted at the request of the Sanseverini, princes of Salerno, to be presented to a nunnery, in which one of that noble family had taken the veil. Under the form of the blessed Virgin, Andrea represented the last princess of Salerno, who was of the family of Villa Marina; under that of St. Joseph, the prince her husband; an old servant of the family figures as St. Elizabeth; and in the features of Zacharias we recognize those of Bernardo Tasso, the father of Torquato Tasso, and then secretary to the prince of Salerno. After remaining for many years over the high altar of the church, it was removed through the scruples of one of the Neapolitan archbishops, who was scandalized by the impropriety of placing the portraits of well-known personages in such a situation.” The picture, once removed from its place, disappeared, and by some means found its way to the Louvre. Andrea, who was one of the most distinguished of the scholars of Raphael, died in 1545.[1]
[Footnote 1: This picture is thus described in the old catalogues of the Louvre (No. 1207); but is not to be found in that of Villot.]
8. The composition by Rubens has all that scenic effect and dramatic movement which was characteristic of the painter. The meeting takes place on a flight of steps leading to the house of Zacharias. The Virgin wears a hat, as one just arrived from a journey; Joseph and Zacharias greet each other; a maiden with a basket on her head follows; and in the foreground a man unloads the ass.
I will mention two other example, each perfect in its way, in two most opposite styles of treatment.
9. The first is the simple majestic composition of Albertinelli. (Florence Gal.) The two women, standing alone under a richly sculptured arch, and relieved against the bright azure sky, embrace each other. There are no accessories. Mary is attired in dark-blue drapery, and Elizabeth wears an ample robe of a saffron or rather amber colour. The mingled grandeur, power, and grace, and depth of expression in these two figures, are quite extraordinary; they look like what they are, and worthy to be mothers of the greatest of kings and the greatest of prophets. Albertinelli has here emulated his friend Bartolomeo–his friend, whom he so loved, that when, after the horrible execution of Savonarola, Bartolomeo, broken-hearted, threw himself into the convent of St. Mark, Albertinelli became almost distracted and desperate. He would certainly, says Vasari, have gone into the same convent, but for the hatred be bore the monks, “of whom he was always saying the most injurious things.”
Through some hidden influence of intense sympathy, Albertinelli, though in point of character the very antipodes of his friend, often painted so like him, that his pictures–and this noble picture more particularly–might be mistaken for the work of the Frate.
* * * * *
10. We will now turn to a conception altogether different, and equally a masterpiece; it is the small but exquisitely finished composition by Rembrandt. (Grosvenor Gal.) The scene is the garden in front of the house of Zacharias; Elizabeth is descending the steps in haste to receive and embrace with outstretched arms the Virgin Mary, who appears to have just alighted from her journey. The aged Zacharias, supported by a youth, is seen following Elizabeth to welcome their guest. Behind Mary stands a black female attendant, in the act of removing a mantle from her shoulders; in the background a servant, or (as I think) Joseph, holds the ass on which Mary has journeyed; a peacock with a gem-like train, and a hen with a brood of chickens (the latter the emblem of maternity), are in the foreground. Though the representation thus conceived appears like a scene of every-day life, nothing can be more poetical than the treatment, more intensely true and noble than the expression of the diminutive figures, more masterly and finished than the execution, more magical and lustrous than the effect of the whole. The work of Albertinelli, in its large and solemn beauty and religious significance, is worthy of being placed over an altar, on which we might offer up the work of Rembrandt as men offer incense, gems, and gold.
As the Visitation is not easily mistaken, I have said enough of it here; and we pass to the next subject,–The Dream of Joseph.
* * * * *
Although the feast of the Visitation is fixed for the 2d of July, it was, and is, a received opinion, that Mary began her journey to the hill country but a short time, even a few days, after the Annunciation of the angel. It was the sixth month with Elizabeth, and Mary sojourned with her three months. Hence it is supposed, by many commentators, that Mary must have been present at the birth of John the Baptist. It may seem surprising that the early painters should not have made use of this supposition. I am not aware that there exists among the numerous representations of the birth of St. John, any instance of the Virgin being introduced; it should seem that the lofty ideas entertained of the Mater Dei rendered it impossible to place her in a scene where she would necessarily take a subordinate position: this I think sufficiently accounts for her absence.[1] Mary then returned to her own dwelling at Nazareth; and when Joseph (who in these legendary stories is constantly represented as a house-carpenter and builder, and travelling about to exercise his trade in various places) also came back to his home, and beheld his wife, the suspicion entered his mind that she was about to become a mother, and very naturally his mind was troubled “with sorrow and insecure apprehensions; but being a just man, that is, according to the Scriptures and other wise writers, a good, a charitable man, he would not openly disgrace her, for he found it more agreeable to justice to treat an offending person with the easiest sentence, than to render her desperate, and without remedy, and provoked by the suffering of the worst of what she could fear. No obligation to justice can force a man to be cruel; pity, and forbearance, and long-suffering, and fair interpretation, and excusing our brother” (and our sister), “and taking things in the best sense, and passing the gentlest sentence, are as certainly our duty, and owing to every person who _does_ offend and _can_ repent, as calling men to account can be owing to the law.” (v. Bishop Taylor’s Life of Christ.) Thus says the good Bishop Taylor, praising Joseph, that he was too truly just to call furiously for justice, and that, waiving the killing letter of the law, he was “minded to dismiss his wife privily;” and in this he emulated the mercy of his divine foster-Son, who did not cruelly condemn the woman whom he knew to be guilty, but dismissed her “to repent and sin no more.” But while Joseph was pondering thus in his heart, the angel of the Lord, the prince of angels, even Gabriel, appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife!” and he awoke and obeyed that divine voice.
[Footnote 1: There is, however, in the Liverpool Museum, a very exquisite miniature of the birth of St. John the Baptist, in which the female figure standing near represents, I think, the Virgin Mary. It was cut out of a choral book of the Siena school.]
This first vision of the angel is not in works of art easily distinguished from the second vision but there is a charming fresco by Luini, which can bear no other interpretation. Joseph is seated by the carpenter’s bench, and leans his head on his hand slumbering. (Milan, Brera.) An angel stands by him pointing to Mary who is seen at a window above, busied with needlework.
On waking from this vision, Joseph, says the legend, “entreated forgiveness of Mary for having wronged her even in thought.” This is a subject quite unknown, I believe, before the fifteenth century, and not commonly met with since, but there are some instances. On one of the carved stalls of the Cathedral of Amiens it is very poetically treated. (Stalles d’Amiens, p. 205.) Mary is seated on a throne under a magnificent canopy; Joseph, kneeling before her and presented by two angels, pleads for pardon. She extends one hand to him; in the other is the volume of the Holy Scriptures. There is a similar version of the text in sculpture over one of the doors of Notre-Dame at Paris. There is also a picture by Alessandro Tiarini (Le repentir de Saint Joseph, Louvre, 416), and reckoned by Malvasia, his finest work, wherein Joseph kneels before the Virgin, who stands with a dignified air, and, while she raises him with one hand, points with the other up to heaven. Behind is seen the angel Gabriel with his finger on his lip, as commanding silence, and two other angels. The figures are life-size, the execution and colour very fine; the whole conception in the grand but mannered style of the Guido school.
THE NATIVITY.
_Ital._ Il Presepio. Il Nascimento del Nostro Signore. _Fr._ La Nativite. _Ger._ Die Geburt Christi. Dec. 25.
The birth of our Saviour is related with characteristic simplicity and brevity in the Gospels; but in the early Christian traditions this great event is preceded and accompanied by several circumstances which have assumed a certain importance and interest in the artistic representations.
According to an ancient legend, the Emperor Augustus Caesar repaired to the sibyl Tiburtina, to inquire whether he should consent to allow himself to be worshipped with divine honours, which the Senate had decreed to him. The sibyl, after some days of meditation, took the Emperor apart, and showed him an altar; and above the altar, in the opening heavens, and in a glory of light, he beheld a beautiful Virgin holding an Infant in her arms, and at the same time a voice was heard saying, “This is the altar of the Son of the living God;” whereupon Augustus caused an altar to be erected on the Capitoline Hill, with this inscription, _Ara primogeniti Dei_; and on the same spot, in later times, was built the church called the _Ara-Coeli_, well known, with its flight of one hundred and twenty-four marble steps, to all who have visited Rome.
Of the sibyls, generally, in their relation to sacred art, I have already spoken.[1] This particular prophecy of the Tiburtine sibyl to Augustus rests on some very antique traditions, pagan as well as Christian. It is supposed to have suggested the “Pollio” of Virgil, which suggested the “Messiah” of Pope. It is mentioned by writers of the third and fourth centuries, and our own divines have not wholly rejected it, for Bishop Taylor mentions the sibyl’s prophecy among “the great and glorious accidents happening about the birth of Jesus.” (Life of Jesus Christ, sec. 4.)
[Footnote 1: Introduction. The personal character and history of the Sibyls will be treated in detail in the fourth series of Sacred and Legendary Art.]
A very rude but curious bas-relief preserved in the church of the Ara-Coeli is perhaps the oldest representation extant. The Church legend assigns to it a fabulous antiquity; but it must be older than the twelfth century, as it is alluded to by writers of that period. Here the Emperor Augustus kneels before the Madonna and Child and at his side is the sibyl, Tiburtina, pointing upwards.
Since the revival of art, the incident has been frequently treated. It was painted by Cavallini, about 1340, on the vault of the choir of the Ara-Coeli. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it became a favourite subject. It admitted of those classical forms, and that mingling of the heathen and the Christian in style and costume, which were calculated to please the churchmen and artists of the time, and the examples are innumerable.
The most celebrated, I believe, is the fresco by Baldassare Peruzzi, in which the figure of the sibyl is certainly very majestic, but the rest of the group utterly vulgar and commonplace. (Siena, Fonte Giusta.) Less famous, but on the whole preferable in point of taste, is the group by Garofalo, in the palace of the Quirinal; and there is another by Titian, in which the scene is laid in a fine landscape after his manner. Vasari mentions a cartoon of this subject, painted by Rosso for Francis I., “among the best things Rosso ever produced,” and introducing the King and Queen of France, their guards, and a concourse of people, as spectators of the scene. In some instances the locality is a temple, with an altar, before which kneels the Emperor, having laid upon it his sceptre and laurel crown: the sibyl points to the vision seen through a window above. I think it is so represented in a large picture at Hampton Court, by Pietro da Cortona.
* * * * *
The sibylline prophecy is supposed to have occurred a short tune before the Nativity, about the same period when the decree went forth “that all the world should be taxed.” Joseph, therefore, arose and saddled his ass, and set his wife upon it, and went up from Nazareth to Bethlehem. The way was long, and steep, and weary; “and when Joseph looked back, he saw the face of Mary that it was sorrowful, as of one in pain; but when he looked back again, she smiled. And when they, were come to Bethlehem, there was no room for them in the inn, because of the great concourse of people. And Mary said to Joseph, “Take me down for I suffer.” (Protevangelion.)
The journey to Bethlehem, and the grief and perplexity of Joseph, have been often represented. 1. There exists a very ancient Greek carving in ivory, wherein Mary is seated on the ass, with an expression of suffering, and Joseph tenderly sustains her; she has one arm round his neck, leaning on him: an angel leads the ass, lighting the way with a torch. It is supposed that this curious relic formed part of the ornaments of the ivory throne of the Exarch of Ravenna, and that it is at least as old as the sixth century.[1] 2. There is an instance more dramatic in an engraving after a master of the seventeenth century. Mary, seated on the ass, and holding the bridle, raises her eyes to heaven with an expression of resignation; Joseph, cap in hand, humbly expostulates with the master of the inn, who points towards the stable; the innkeeper’s wife looks up at the Virgin with a strong expression of pity and sympathy. 3. I remember another print of the same subject, where, in the background, angels are seen preparing the cradle in a cave.
[Footnote 1: It is engraved in Gori’s “Thesaurus,” and described in Muenter’s “Sinnbilder.”]
I may as well add that the Virgin, in this character of mysterious, and religious, and most pure maternity, is venerated under the title of _La Madonna del Parto_.[1]
[Footnote 1: Every one who has visited Naples will remember the church on the Mergellina, dedicated to the _Madonna del Parto_, where lies, beneath his pagan tomb, the poet Sannazzaro. Mr. Hallam, in a beautiful passage of his “History of the Literature of Europe,” has pointed out the influence of the genius of Tasso on the whole school of Bolognese painters of that time. Not less striking was the influence of Sannazzaro and his famous poem on the Nativity (_De Partu Virginis_), on the contemporary productions of Italian art, and more particularly as regards the subject under consideration: I can trace it through all the schools of art, from Milan to Naples, during the latter half of the sixteenth century. Of Sannazzaro’s poem, Mr. Hallam says, that “it would be difficult to find its equal for purity, elegance, and harmony of versification.” It is not the less true, that even its greatest merits as a Latin poem exercised the most perverse influence on the religious art of that period. It was, indeed, only _one_ of the many influences which may be said to have demoralized the artists of the sixteenth century, but it was one of the greatest.]
The Nativity of our Saviour, like the Annunciation, has been treated in two ways, as a mystery and as an event, and we must be careful to discriminate between them.
THE NATIVITY AS A MYSTERY.
In the first sense the artist has intended simply to express the advent of the Divinity on earth in the form of an Infant, and the _motif_ is clearly taken from a text in the Office of the Virgin, _Virgo quem genuit, adoravit._ In the beautiful words of Jeremy Taylor, “She blessed him, she worshipped him, and she thanked him that he would be born of her;” as, indeed, many a young mother has done before and since, when she has hung in adoration over the cradle of her first-born child;–but _here_ the child was to be a descended God; and nothing, as it seems to me, can be more graceful and more profoundly suggestive than the manner in which some of the early Italian artists have expressed this idea. When, in such pictures, the locality is marked by the poor stable, or the rough rocky cave, it becomes “a temple full of religion, full of glory, where angels are the ministers, the holy Virgin the worshipper, and Christ the Deity.” Very few accessories are admitted, merely such as serve to denote that the subject is “a Nativity,” properly so called, and not the “Madre Pia,” as already described. The divine Infant lies in the centre of the picture, sometimes on a white napkin, sometimes with no other bed than the flowery turf; sometimes his head rests on a wheat-sheaf, always here interpreted as “the bread of life.” He places his finger on his lip, which expresses the _Verbum sum_ (or, _Vere Verbum hoc est abbreviatum_), “I am the word,” or “I am the bread of life” (_Ego sum panis ille vitae._ John vi. 48), and fixes his eyes on the heavens above, where the angels are singing the _Gloria in excelsis._ In one instance, I remember, an angel holds up the cross before him; in another, he grasps it in his hand; or it is a nail, or the crown of thorns, anticipative of his earthly destiny. The Virgin kneels on one side; St. Joseph, when introduced, kneels on the other; and frequently angels unite with them in the act of adoration, or sustain the new-born Child. In this poetical version of the subject, Lorenzo di Credi, Perugino, Francia, and Bellini, excelled all others[1]. Lorenzo, in particular, became quite renowned for the manner in which he treated it, and a number of beautiful compositions from his hand exist in the Florentine and other galleries.
[Footnote 1: There are also most charming examples in sculpture by Luca della Robbia, Donatello, and other masters of the Florentine school.]
There are instances in which attendant saints and votaries are introduced as beholding and adoring this great mystery. 1. For instance, in a picture by Cima, Tobit and the angel are introduced on one side, and St. Helena and St. Catherine on the other. 2. In a picture by Francia (Bologna Gal.), the Infant, reclining upon a white napkin, is adored by the kneeling Virgin, by St. Augustine, and by two angels also kneeling. The votary, Antonio Galeazzo Bentivoglio, for whom the picture was painted, kneels in the habit of a pilgrim.[1] He had lately returned from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and Bethlehem, thus poetically expressed in the scene of the Nativity, and the picture was dedicated as an act of thanksgiving as well as of faith. St. Joseph and St. Francis stand on one side; on the other is a shepherd crowned with laurel. Francia, according to tradition, painted his own portrait as St. Francis; and his friend the poet, Girolamo Casio de’ Medici, as the shepherd. 3. In a large and famous Nativity by Giulio Romano (Louvre, 293), which once belonged to our Charles I., St. John the Evangelist, and St. Longinus (who pierced our Saviour’s side with his lance), are standing on each side as two witnesses to the divinity of Christ;–here strangely enough placed on a par: but we are reminded that Longinus had lately been inaugurated as patron of Mantua, (v. Sacred and Legendary Art.)
[Footnote 1: “An excellent likeness,” says Vasari. It is engraved as such in Litta’s Memorials of the Bentivogli. Girolamo Casio received the laurel crown from the hand of Clement VII. in 1523. A beautiful votive Madonna, dedicated by Girolamo Casio and his son Giacomo, and painted by Beltraffio, is in the Louvre.]
In a triptych by Hans Hemling (Berlin Gal.) we have in the centre the Child, adored, as usual, by the Virgin mother and attending angels, the votary also kneeling: in the compartment on the right, we find the manifestation of the Redeemer to the _west_ exhibited in the prophecy of the sibyl to Augustus; on the left, the manifestation of the Redeemer to the _east_ is expressed by the journey of the Magi, and the miraculous star–“we have seen his star _in the east_.”
But of all these ideal Nativities, the most striking is one by Sandro Botticelli, which is indeed a comprehensive poem, a kind of hymn on the Nativity, and might be set to music. In the centre is a shed, beneath which the Virgin, kneeling, adores the Child, who has his finger on his lip. Joseph is seen a little behind, as if in meditation. On the right hand, the angel presents three figures (probably the shepherds) crowned with olive; on the left is a similar group. On the roof of the shed, three angels, with olive-branches in their hands, sing the _Gloria in excelsis_. Above these are twelve angels dancing or floating round in a circle, holding olive-branches between them. In the foreground, in the margin of the picture, three figures rising out of the flames of purgatory are received and embraced by angels. With all its quaint fantastic grace and dryness of execution, the whole conception is full of meaning, religious as well as poetical. The introduction of the olive, and the redeemed, souls, may express “peace on earth, good will towards men;” or the olive may likewise refer to that period of universal peace in which the _Prince of Peace_ was born into the world.[1]
[Footnote 1: This singular picture, formerly in the Ottley collection, was, when I saw it, in the possession of Mr. Fuller Maitland, of Stensted Park.]
I must mention one more instance for its extreme beauty. In a picture by Lorenzo di Credi (Florence, Pal. Pitti) the Infant Christ lies on the ground on a part of the veil of the Virgin, and holds in his hand a bird. In the background, the miraculous star sheds on the earth a perpendicular blaze of light, and farther off are the shepherds. On the other side, St. Jerome, introduced, perhaps, because he made his abode at Bethlehem, is seated beside his lion.
THE NATIVITY AS AN EVENT.
We now come to the Nativity historically treated, in which time, place, and circumstance, have to be considered as in any other actual event.
The time was the depth of winter, at midnight; the place a poor stable. According to some authorities, this stable was the interior of a cavern, still shown at Bethlehem as the scene of the Nativity, in front of which was a ruined house, once inhabited by Jesse, the father of David, and near the spot where David pastured his sheep: but the house was now a shed partly thatched, and open at that bitter mason to all the winds of heaven. Here it was that the Blessed Virgin “brought forth her first-born Son, wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger.”
We find in the early Greek representations, and in the early Italian painters who imitated the Byzantine models, that in the arrangement a certain pattern was followed: the locality is a sort of cave–literally a hole in a rock; the Virgin Mother reclines on a couch; near her lies the new-born Infant wrapped in swaddling clothes. In one very ancient example (a miniature of the ninth century in a Greek Menologium), an attendant is washing the Child.
But from the fourteenth century we find this treatment discontinued. It gave just offence. The greatest theologians insisted that the birth of the Infant Christ was as pure and miraculous as his conception; and it was considered little less than heretical to portray Mary reclining on a couch as one exhausted by the pangs of childbirth (Isaiah lxvi. 7), or to exhibit assistants as washing the heavenly Infant. “To her alone,” says St. Bernard, “did not the punishment of Eve extend.” “Not in sorrow,” says Bishop Taylor, “not in pain, but in the posture and guise of worshippers (that is, kneeling), and in the midst of glorious thoughts and speculations, did Mary bring her Son into the world.”
We must seek for the accessories and circumstances usually introduced by the painters in the old legendary traditions then accepted and believed. (Protevangelion, xiv.) Thus one legend relates that Joseph went to seek a midwife, and met a woman coming down from the mountains, with whom he returned to the stable. But when they entered it was filled with light greater than the sun at noonday; and as the light decreased and they were able to open their eyes, they beheld Mary sitting there with her Infant at her bosom. And the Hebrew woman being amazed said, “Can this be true?” and Mary answered, “It is true; as there is no child like unto my son, so there is no woman like unto his mother.”
* * * * *
These circumstances we find in some of the early representations, more or less modified by the taste of the artist. I have seen, for instance, an old German print, in which the Virgin “in the posture and guise of worshippers,” kneels before her Child as usual; while the background exhibits a hilly country, and Joseph with a lantern in his hand is helping a woman over a stile. Sometimes there are two women, and then the second is always Mary Salome, who, according to a passage in the same popular authority, visited the mother in her hour of travail.
The angelic choristers in the sky, or upon the roof of the stable, sing the _Gloria in excelsis Deo_; they are never, I believe, omitted, and in early pictures are always three in number; but in later pictures, the mystic _three_ become a chorus of musicians Joseph is generally sitting by, leaning on his staff in profound meditation, or asleep as one overcome by fatigue; or with a taper or a lantern in his hand, to express the night-time.
Among the accessories, the ox and the ass are indispensable. The introduction of these animals rests on an antique tradition mentioned by St. Jerome, and also on two texts of prophecy: “The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib” (Isaiah i. 3); and Habakkuk iii. 4, is rendered, in the Vulgate, “He shall lie down between the ox and the ass.” From the sixth century, which is the supposed date of the earliest extant, to the sixteenth century, there was never any representation of the Nativity without these two animals; thus in the old carol so often quoted–
“Agnovit bos et asinus
Quod Puer erat Dominus!”
In some of the earliest pictures the animals kneel, “confessing the Lord.” (Isaiah xliii. 20.) In some instances they stare into the manger with a most _naive_ expression of amazement at what they find there. One of the old Latin hymns, _De Nativitate Domini_, describes them, in that wintry night, as warming the new-born Infant with their breath; and they have always been interpreted as symbols, the ox as emblem of the Jews, the ass of the Gentiles.
I wonder if it has ever occurred to those who have studied the inner life and meaning of these old representations,–owed to them, perhaps, homilies of wisdom, as well as visions of poetry,–that the introduction of the ox and the ass, those symbols of animal servitude and inferiority, might be otherwise translated;–that their pathetic dumb recognition of the Saviour of the world might be interpreted as extending to them also a participation in his mission of love and mercy;–that since to the lower creatures it was not denied to be present at that great manifestation, they are thus brought nearer to the sympathies of our humanity, as we are, thereby, lifted to a nearer communion with the universal spirit of love;–but this is “considering too deeply,” perhaps, for the occasion. Return we to our pictures. Certainly we are not in danger of being led into any profound or fanciful speculations by the ignorant painters of the later schools of art. In their “Nativities,” the ox and ass are not, indeed, omitted; they must be present by religious and prescriptive usage; but they are to be made picturesque, as if they were in the stable by right, and as if it were only a stable, not a temple hallowed to a diviner significance. The ass, instead of looking devoutly into the cradle, stretches out his lazy length in the foreground; the ox winks his eyes with a more than bovine stupidity. In some of the old German pictures, while the Hebrew ox is quietly chewing the cud, the Gentile ass “lifts up his voice” and brays with open mouth, as if in triumph.
One version of this subject, by Agnolo Gaddi, is conceived with much simplicity and originality. The Virgin and Joseph are seen together within a rude and otherwise solitary building. She points expressively to the manger where lies the divine Infant, while Joseph leans on his staff and appears lost in thought.
Correggio has been much admired for representing in his famous Nativity the whole picture as lighted by the glory which proceeds from the divine Infant, as if the idea had been new and original. (“_La Notte_,” Dresden Gal.) It occurs frequently before and since his time, and is founded on the legendary story quoted above, which describes the cave or stable filled with a dazzling and supernatural light.
* * * * *
It is not often we find the Nativity represented as an historical event without the presence of the shepherds; nor is the supernatural announcement to the shepherds often treated as a separate subject: it generally forms part of the background of the Nativity; but there are some striking examples.
In a print by Rembrandt, he has emulated, in picturesque and poetical treatment, his famous Vision of Jacob, in the Dulwich Gallery. The angel (always supposed to be Gabriel) appears in a burst of radiance through the black wintry midnight, surrounded by a multitude of the heavenly host. The shepherds fall prostrate, as men amazed and “sore afraid;” the cattle flee different ways in terror (Luke ii. 9.) I do not say that this is the most elevated way of expressing the scene; but, as an example of characteristic style, it is perfect.
THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS.
_Ital._ L’ Adorazione del Pastori. _Fr._ L’Adoration des Bergers. _Ger._ Die Anbetung der Hirten.
The story thus proceeds:–When the angels were gone away into heaven, the shepherds came with haste, “and found Mary, and Joseph, and the young Child lying in a manger.”
Being come, they present their pastoral offerings–a lamb, or doves, or fruits (but these, considering the season, are misplaced); they take off their hats with reverence, and worship in rustic fashion. In Raphael’s composition, the shepherds, as we might expect from him, look as if they had lived in Arcadia. In some of the later Italian pictures, they pipe and sing. It is the well-known custom in Italy for the shepherds of the Campagna, and of Calabria, to pipe before the Madonna and Child at Christmas time; and these _Piffereri_, with their sheepskin jackets, ragged hats, bagpipes, and tabors, were evidently the models reproduced in some of the finest pictures of the Bolognese school; for instance, in the famous Nativity by Annibale Caracci, where a picturesque figure in the corner is blowing into the bagpipes with might and main. In the Venetian pictures of the Nativity, the shepherds are accompanied by their women, their sheep, and even their dogs. According to an old legend, Simon and Jude, afterwards apostles, were among these shepherds.
When the angels scatter flowers, as in compositions by Raphael and Ludovico Caracci, we must suppose that they were not gathered on earth, but in heaven.
The Infant is sometimes asleep:–so Milton sings–
“But see the Virgin blest
Hath laid her Babe to rest!”
In a drawing by Raphael, the Child slumbers, and Joseph raises the coverlid, to show him to a shepherd. We have the same idea in several other instances. In a graceful composition by Titian, it is the Virgin Mother who raises the veil from the face of the sleeping Child.
* * * * *
From the number of figures and accessories, the Nativity thus treated as an historical subject becomes capable of almost endless variety; but as it is one not to be mistaken, and has a universal meaning and interest, I may now leave it to the fancy and discrimination of the observer.
THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI.
_Ital._ L’ Adorazione de’ Magi. L’ Epifania. _Fr._ L’Adoration des Rois Mages. _Ger._ Die Anbetung der Weisen aus dem Morgenland. Die heiligen drei Koenige. Jan. 6.
This, the most extraordinary incident in the early life of our Saviour, rests on the authority of one evangelist only. It is related by St. Matthew so briefly, as to present many historical and philosophical difficulties. I must give some idea of the manner in which these difficulties were elucidated by the early commentators, and of the notions which prevailed in the middle ages relative to the country of the Three Kings, before it will be possible to understand or to appreciate the subject as it has been set before us in every style of art, in every form, in every material, from the third century to the present time.
In the first place, who were these Magi, or these kings, as they are sometimes styled? “To suppose,” says the antique legend, “that they were called Magi because they were addicted to magic, or exercised unholy or forbidden arts, would be, heaven save us! a rank heresy.” No! Magi, in the Persian tongue, signifies “wise men.” They were, in their own country, kings or princes, as it is averred by all the ancient fathers; and we are not to be offended at the assertion, that they were at once princes and _wise_ men,–“Car a l’usage de ce temps-la les princes et les rois etoient tres sages!”[1]
[Footnote 1: Quoted literally from the legend in the old French version of the _Flos Sanctorum_.]
They came from the eastern country, but from what country is not said; whether from the land of the Arabians, or the Chaldeans, or the Persians, or the Parthians.
It is written in the Book of Numbers, that when Balaam, the son of Beor, was called upon to curse the children of Israel, he, by divine inspiration, uttered a blessing instead of a curse. And he took up this parable, and said, “I shall see him, but not now: I shall behold him, but not nigh: there shall come a star out of Jacob, and a sceptre shall rise out of Israel.” And the people of that country, though they were Gentiles, kept this prophecy as a tradition among them, and waited with faith and hope for its fulfilment. When, therefore, their princes and wise men beheld a star different in its appearance and movement from those which they had been accustomed to study (for they were great astronomers), they at once knew its import, and hastened to follow its guidance. According to an ancient commentary on St. Matthew, this star, on its first appearance, had the form of a radiant child bearing a sceptre or cross. In a fresco by Taddeo Gaddi, it is thus figured; and this is the only instance I can remember. But to proceed with our story.
When the eastern sages beheld this wondrous and long-expected star, they rejoiced greatly; and they arose, and taking leave of their lands and their vassals, their relations and their friends, set forth on their long and perilous journey across vast deserts and mountains, and broad rivers, the star going before them, and arrived at length at Jerusalem, with a great and splendid train of attendants. Being come there, they asked at once, “Where is he who is born king of the Jews?” On hearing this question, King Herod was troubled, and all the city with him; and he inquired of the chief priests where Christ should be born. And they said to him, “in Bethlehem of Judea.” Then Herod privately called the wise men, and desired they would go to Bethlehem, and search for the young child (he was careful not to call him _King_), saying, “When ye have found him, bring me word, that I may come and worship him also.” So the Magi departed, and the star which they had seen in the east went before them, until it stood over the place where the young child was–he who was born King of kings. They had travelled many a long and weary mile; “and what had they come for to see?” Instead of a sumptuous palace, a mean and lowly dwelling; in place of a monarch surrounded by his guards and ministers and all the terrors of his state, an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid upon his mother’s knee, between the ox and the ass. They had come, perhaps, from some far-distant savage land, or from some nation calling itself civilized, where innocence had never been accounted sacred, where society had as yet taken no heed of the defenceless woman, no care for the helpless child; where the one was enslaved, and the other perverted: and here, under the form of womanhood and childhood, they were called upon to worship the promise of that brighter future, when peace should inherit the earth, and righteousness prevail over deceit, and gentleness with wisdom reign for ever and ever! How must they have been amazed! How must they have wondered in their souls at such a revelation!–yet such was the faith of these wise men and excellent kings, that they at once prostrated themselves, confessing in the glorious Innocent who smiled upon them from his mother’s knee, a greater than themselves–the image of a truer divinity than they had ever yet acknowledged. And having bowed themselves down–first, as was most fit, offering _themselves_,–they made offering of their treasure, as it had been written in ancient times, “The kings of Tarshish and the isles shall bring presents, and the kings of Sheba shall offer gifts.” And what were these gifts? Gold, frankincense, and myrrh; by which symbolical oblation they protested a threefold faith;–by gold, that he was king; by incense, that he was God; by myrrh, that he was man, and doomed to death. In return for their gifts, the Saviour bestowed upon them others of more matchless price. For their gold he gave them charity and spiritual riches; for their incense, perfect faith; and for their myrrh, perfect truth and meekness: and the Virgin, his mother, also bestowed on them a precious gift and memorial, namely, one of those linen bands in which she had wrapped the Saviour, for which they thanked her with great humility, and laid it up amongst their treasures. When they had performed their devotions and made their offerings, being warned in a dream to avoid Herod, they turned back again to their own dominions; and the star which had formerly guided them to the west, now went before them towards the east, and led them safely home. When they were arrived there, they laid down their earthly state; and in emulation of the poverty and humility in which they had found the Lord of all power and might, they distributed their goods and possessions to the poor, and went about in mean attire, preaching to their people the new king of heaven and earth, the CHILD-KING, the Prince of Peace. We are not told what was the success of their mission; neither is it anywhere recorded, that from that time forth, every child, as it sat on its mother’s knee, was, even for the sake of that Prince of Peace, regarded as sacred–as the heir of a divine nature–as one whose tiny limbs enfolded a spirit which was to expand into the man, the king, the God. Such a result was, perhaps, reserved for other times, when the whole mission of that divine Child should be better understood than it was then, or is _now_. But there is an ancient oriental tradition, that about forty years later, when St. Thomas the apostle travelled into the Indies, he found these Wise Men there, and did administer to them the rite of baptism; and that afterwards, in carrying the light of truth into the far East, they fell among barbarous Gentiles, and were put to death; thus each of them receiving in return for the earthly crowns they had cast at the feet of the Saviour, the heavenly crown of martyrdom and of everlasting life.
Their remains, long afterwards discovered, were brought to Constantinople by the Empress Helena; thence in the time of the first Crusade they were transported to Milan, whence they were carried off by the Emperor Barbarossa, and deposited in the cathedral at Cologne, where they remain to this day, laid in a shrine of gold and gems; and have performed divers great and glorious miracles.
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Such, in few words, is the church legend of the Magi of the East, the “three Kings of Cologne,” as founded on the mysterious Gospel incident. Statesmen and philosophers, not less than ecclesiastics, have, as yet, missed the whole sense and large interpretation of the mythic as well as the scriptural story; but well have the artists availed themselves of its picturesque capabilities! In their hands it has gradually expanded from a mere symbol into a scene of the most dramatic and varied effect and the most gorgeous splendour. As a subject it is one of the most ancient in the whole range of Christian art. Taken in the early religions sense, it signified the calling of the Gentiles; and as such we find it carved in bas-relief on the Christian sarcophagi of the third and fourth centuries, and represented with extreme simplicity. The Virgin mother is seated on a chair, and holds the Infant upright on her knee. The Wise Men, always three in number, and all alike, approach in attitudes of adoration. In some instances they wear Phrygian caps, and their camels’ heads are seen behind them, serving to express the land whence they came, the land of the East, as well as their long journey; as on one of the sarcophagi in the Christian Museum of the Vatican. The star in these antique sculptures is generally omitted; but in one or two instances it stands immediately over the chair of the Virgin. On a sarcophagus near the entrance of the tomb of Galla Placidia, at Ravenna, they are thus represented.
The mosaic in the church of Santa Maria Maggiore at Rome, is somewhat later in date than these sarcophagi (A.D. 440), and the representation is very peculiar and interesting. Here the Child is seated alone on a kind of square pedestal, with his hand raised in benediction; behind the throne stand two figures, supposed to be the Virgin and Joseph; on each side, two angels. The kings approach, dressed as Roman warriors, with helmets on their heads.
In the mosaic in the church of Sant’ Appollinare-Novo, at Ravenna (A.D. 534), the Virgin receives them seated on a throne, attended by the archangels; they approach, wearing crowns on their heads, and bending in attitudes of reverence: all three figures are exactly alike, and rather less in proportion than the divine group.
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Immediately on the revival of art we find the Adoration of the Kings treated in the Byzantine style, with few accessories. Very soon, however, in the early Florentine school, the artists began to avail themselves of that picturesque variety of groups of which the story admitted.
In the legends of the fourteenth century, the kings had become distinct personages, under the names of Caspar (or Jasper), Melchior, and Balthasar: the first being always a very aged man, with a long white beard; the second, a middle-aged man; the third is young, and frequently he is a Moor or Negro, to express the King of Ethiopia or Nubia, and also to indicate that when the Gentiles were called to salvation, all the continents and races of the earth, of whatever complexion, were included. The difference of ages is indicated in the Greek formula; but the difference of complexion is a modern innovation, and more frequently found in the German than in the Italian schools. In the old legend of the Three Kings, as inserted in Wright’s “Chester Mysteries,” Jasper, or Caspar, is King of Tarsus, the land of merchants; he makes the offering of gold. Melchior, the King of Arabia and Nubia, offers frankincense; and Balthasar, King of Saba,–“the land of spices and all manner of precious gums,”–offers myrrh.[1]
[Footnote 1: The names of the Three Kings appear for the first time in a piece of rude sculpture over the door of Sant’ Andrea at Pistoia, to which is assigned the date 1166. (_Vide_ D’Agincourt, _Scultura_, pl. xxvii.)]
It is very usual to find, in the Adoration of the Magi, the angelic announcement to the shepherds introduced into the background; or, more poetically, the Magi approaching on one side, and the shepherds on the other. The intention is then to express a double signification; it is at once the manifestation to the Jews, and the manifestation to the Gentiles.
The attitude of the Child varies. In the best pictures he raises his little hand in benediction. The objection that he was then only an infant of a few days old is futile: for he was from his birth the CHRIST. It is also in accordance with the beautiful and significant legend which describes him as dispensing to the old wise men the spiritual blessings of love, meekness, and perfect faith, in return for their gifts and their homage. It appears to me bad taste, verging on profanity, to represent him plunging his little hand into the coffer of gold, or eagerly grasping one of the gold pieces. Neither should he be wrapped up in swaddling clothes, nor in any way a subordinate figure in the group; for it is the Epiphany, the Manifestation of a divine humanity to Jews and Gentiles, which is to be expressed; and there is meaning as well as beauty in those compositions which represent the Virgin at lifting a veil and showing him to the Wise Man.
The kingly character of the adorers, which became in the thirteenth century a point of faith, is expressed by giving them all the paraphernalia and pomp of royalty according to the customs of the time in which the artist lived. They are followed by a vast train of attendants, guards, pages, grooms, falconers with hawks; and, in a picture by Gaudenzio Ferrari, we have the court-dwarf, and, in a picture by Titian, the court-fool, both indispensable appendages of royal state in those times. The Kings themselves wear embroidered robes, crowns, and glittering weapons, and are booted and spurred as if just alighted from a long journey; even on one of the sarcophagi they are seen in spurs.
The early Florentine and Venetian painters profited by the commercial relations of their countries with the Levant, and introduced all kinds of outlandish and oriental accessories to express the far country from which the strangers had arrived; thus we have among the presents, apes, peacocks, pheasants, and parrots. The traditions of the crusades also came in aid, and hence we have, the plumed and jewelled turbans, the armlets and the scymitars, and, in the later pictures, even umbrellas and elephants. I remember, in an old Italian print of this subject, a pair of hunting leopards or _chetas_.
It is a question whether Joseph was present–whether he _ought_ to have been present: in one of the early legends, it is asserted that he hid himself and would not appear, out of his great humility, and because it should not be supposed that he arrogated any relationship to the divine Child. But this version of the scene is quite inconsistent with the extreme veneration afterwards paid to Joseph; and in later times, that is, from the fifteenth century, he is seldom omitted. Sometimes he is seen behind the chair of the Virgin, leaning on his stick, and contemplating the scene with a quiet admiration. Sometimes he receives the gifts offered to the Child, acting the part of a treasurer or chamberlain. In a picture by Angelico one of the Magi grasps his hand as if in congratulation. In a composition by Parmigiano one of the Magi embraces him.
It was not uncommon for pious votaries to have themselves painted in likeness of one of the adoring Kings. In a picture by Sandro Botticelli, Cosmo de’ Medici is thus introduced; and in a large and beautifully arranged composition by Leonardo da Vinci, which unhappily remains as a sketch only, the three Medici of that time, Cosmo, Lorenzo, and Giuliano, are figured as the three Kings. (Both these pictures are in the Florence Gal.)
A very remarkable altar-piece, by Jean Van Eyck, represents the worship of the Magi. In the centre, Mary and her Child are seated within a ruined temple; the eldest of the three Kings kneeling, does homage by kissing the hand of the Child: it is the portrait of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy. The second, prostrate behind him with a golden beaker in his hand, is supposed to be one of the great officers of his household. The third King exhibits the characteristic portrait of Charles the Bold; there is no expression of humility or devotion either in his countenance or attitude; he stands upright, with a lofty disdainful air, as if he were yet unresolved whether he would kneel or not. On the right of the Virgin, a little in the foreground, stands Joseph in a plain red dress, holding his hat in his hand, and looking with as air of simple astonishment at his magnificent guests. All the accessories in this picture, the gold and silver vessels, the dresses of the three Kings sparking with jewels and pearls, the velvets, silks, and costly furs, are painted with the most exquisite finish and delicacy, and exhibit to us the riches of the court of Burgundy, in which Van Eyck then resided. (Munich Gal, 45.)
In Raphael’s composition, the worshippers wear the classical, not the oriental costume; but an elephant with a monkey on his back is seen in the distance, which at once reminds us of the far East. (Rome, Vatican.)
Ghirlandajo frequently painted the Adoration of the Magi, and shows in his management of the accessories much taste and symmetry. In one of his compositions, the shed forms a canopy in the centre; two of the Kings kneel in front. The country of the Ethiopian King is not expressed by making him of a black complexion, but by giving him a Negro page, who is in the act of removing his master’s crown. (Florence, Pitti Pal.)
A very complete example of artificial and elaborate composition may be found in the drawing by Baldassare Peruzzi in our National Gallery. It contains at least fifty figures; in the centre, a magnificent architectural design; and wonderful studies of perspective to the right and left, in the long lines of receding groups. On the whole, it is a most skilful piece of work; but to my taste much like a theatrical decoration,–pompous without being animated.
A beautiful composition by Francia I must not pass over.[1] Here, to the left of the picture, the Virgin is seated on the steps of a ruined temple, against which grows a fig-tree, which, though it be December, is in full leaf. Joseph kneels at her side, and behind her are two Arcadian shepherds, with the ox and the ass. The Virgin, who has a charming air of modesty and sweetness, presents her Child to the adoration of the Wise Men: the first of these kneels with joined hands; the second, also kneeling, is about to present a golden vase; the Negro King, standing, has taken off his cap, and holds a censer in his hand; and the divine infant raises his hand in benediction. Behind the Kings are three figures on foot, one a beautiful youth in an attitude of adoration. Beyond these are five or six figures on horseback, and a long train upon horses and camels is seen approaching in the background. The landscape is very beautiful and cheerful: the whole picture much in the style of Francia’s master, Lorenzo Costa. I should at the first glance have supposed it to be his, but the head of the Virgin is unmistakably Francia.
[Footnote 1: Dresden Gal. Arnold, the well-known print-seller at Dresden, has lately published a very beautiful and finished engraving of this fine picture; the more valuable, because engravings after Francia are very rare.]
There are instances of this subject idealized into a mystery; for example, in a picture by Palma Vecchio (Milan, Brera), St. Helena stands behind the Virgin, in allusion to the legend which connects her with the history of the Kings. In a picture by Garofalo, the star shining above is attended by angels bearing the instruments of the Passion, while St. Bartholomew, holding his skin, stands near the Virgin and Child: it was painted for the abbey of St. Bartholomew, at Ferrara.
Among the German examples, the picture by Albert Durer, in the tribune of the Florence Gallery; and that of Mabuse, in the collection of Lord Carlisle, are perhaps the most perfect of their kind.
In the last-named picture the Virgin, seated, in a plain dark-blue mantle, with the German physiognomy, but large browed, and with a very serious, sweet expression, holds the Child. The eldest of the Kings, as usual, offers a vase of gold, out of which Christ has taken a piece, which be holds in his hand. The name of the King, JASPER, is inscribed on the vase; a younger King behind holds a cup. The black Ethiopian king, Balthasar, is conspicuous on the left; he stands, crowned and arrayed in gorgeous drapery, and, as if more fully to mark the equality of the races–at least in spiritual privileges–his train is borne by a white page. An exquisite landscape is seen through the arch behind, and the shepherds are approaching in the middle distance. On the whole, this is one of the most splendid pictures of the early Flemish school I have ever seen; for variety of character, glow of colour, and finished execution, quite unsurpassed.
In a very rich composition by Lucas van Leyden, Herod is seen in the background, standing in the balcony of his palace, and pointing out the scene to his attendants.
As we might easily imagine, the ornamental painters of the Venetian and Flemish schools delighted in this subject, which allowed them full scope for their gorgeous colouring, and all their scenic and dramatic power. Here Paul Veronese revelled unreproved in Asiatic magnificence: here his brocaded robes and jewelled diadems harmonized with his subject; and his grand, old, bearded, Venetian senators figured, not unsuitably, as Eastern Kings. Here Rubens lavished his ermine and crimson draperies, his vases, and ewers, and censers of flaming gold;–here poured over his canvas the wealth “of Ormuz and of Ind.” Of fifteen pictures of this subject, which he painted at different times, the finest undoubtedly is that in the Madrid Gallery. Another, also very fine, is in the collection of the Marquis of Westminster. In both these, the Virgin, contrary to all former precedent, is not seated, but _standing_, as she holds up her Child for worship. Afterwards we find the same position of the Virgin in pictures by Vandyck, Poussin, and other painters of the seventeenth century. It is quite an innovation on the old religious arrangement; but in the utter absence of all religious feeling, the mere arrangement of the figures, except in an artistic point of view, is of little consequence.
As a scene of oriental pomp, heightened by mysterious shadows and flashing lights, I know nothing equal to the Rembrandt in the Queen’s Gallery; the procession of attendants seen emerging from the background through the transparent gloom is quite awful; but in this miraculous picture, the lovely Virgin Mother is metamorphosed into a coarse Dutch _vrow_, and the divine Child looks like a changeling imp.
In chapels dedicated to the Nativity or the Epiphany, we frequently find the journey of the Wise Men painted round the walls. They are seen mounted on horseback, or on camels, with a long train of attendants, here ascending a mountain, there crossing a river; here winding through a defile, there emerging from a forest; while the miraculous star shines above, pointing out the way. Sometimes we have the approach of the Wise Men on one side of the chapel, and their return to their own country on the other. On their homeward journey they are, in some few instances, embarking in a ship: this occurs in a fresco by Lorenzo Costa, and in a bas-relief in the cathedral of Amiens. The allusion is to a curious legend mentioned by Arnobius the Younger, in his commentary on the Psalms (fifth century). He says, in reference to the 48th Psalm, that when Herod found that the three Kings had escaped from him “in ships of Tarsus,” in his wrath he burned all the vessels in the port.
There is a beautiful fresco of the journey of the Magi in the Riccardi Chapel at Florence, painted by Benozzo Gozzoli for the old Cosmo de’ Medici.
“The Baptism of the Magi by St. Thomas,” is one of the compartments of the Life of the Virgin, painted by Taddeo Gaddi, in the Baroncelli Chapel at Florence, and this is the only instance I can refer to.
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Before I quit this subject–one of the most interesting in the whole range of art–I must mention a picture by Giorgione in the Belvedere Gallery, well known as one of the few undoubted productions of that rare and fascinating painter, and often referred to because of its beauty. Its signification has hitherto escaped all writers on art, as far as I am acquainted with them, and has been dismissed as one of his enigmatical allegories. It is called in German, _Die Feldmaesser_ (the Land Surveyors), and sometimes styled in English the _Geometricians_, or the _Philosophers_, or the _Astrologers_. It represents a wild, rocky landscape, in which are three men. The first, very aged, in as oriental costume, with a long gray beard, stands holding in his hand an astronomical table; the next, a man in the prime of life, seems listening to him; the third, a youth, seated and looking upwards, holds a compass. I have myself no doubt that this beautiful picture represents the “three wise men of the East,” watching on the Chaldean hills the appearance of the miraculous star, and that the light breaking in the far horizon, called in the German description the rising sun, is intended to express the rising of the star of Jacob.[1] In the sumptuous landscape, and colour, and the picturesque rather than religious treatment, this picture is quite Venetian. The interpretation here suggested I leave to the consideration of the observer; and without allowing myself to be tempted on to further illustration, will only add, in conclusion, that I do not remember any Spanish picture of this subject remarkable either for beauty or originality.[2]
[Footnote 1: There is also a print by Giulio Bonasoni, which appears to represent the wise men watching for the star. (_Bartsch_, xv. 156.)]
[Footnote 2: In the last edition of the Vienna Catalogue, this picture has received its proper title.]
THE PURIFICATION OF THE VIRGIN, THE PRESENTATION, AND THE CIRCUMCISION OF CHRIST.
_Ital._ La Purificazione della B. Vergine. _Ger._ Die Darbringung im Tempel. Die Beschneidung Christi.
After the birth of her Son, Mary was careful to fulfil all the ceremonies of the Mosaic law. As a first-born son, he was to be redeemed by the offering of five shekels, or a pair of young pigeons (in memory of the first-born of Egypt). But previously, being born of the children of Abraham, the infant Christ was submitted to the sanguinary rite which sealed the covenant of Abraham, and received the name of JESUS–“that name before which every knee was to bow, which was to be set above the powers of magic, the mighty rites of sorcerers, the secrets of Memphis, the drugs of Thessaly, the silent and mysterious murmurs of the wise Chaldees, and the spells of Zoroaster; that name which we should engrave on our hearts, and pronounce with our most harmonious accents, and rest our faith on, and place our hopes in, and love with the overflowing of charity, joy, and adoration.” (v. Bishop Taylor’s Life of Christ.)
The circumcision and the naming of Christ have many times been painted to express the first of the sorrows of the Virgin, being the first of the pangs which her Son was to suffer on earth. But the Presentation in the Temple has been selected with better taste for the same purpose; and the prophecy of Simeon, “Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also,” becomes the first of the Seven Sorrows. It is an undecided point whether the Adoration of the Magi took place thirteen days, or one year and thirteen days after the birth of Christ. In a series of subjects artistically arranged, the Epiphany always precedes, in order of time, that scene in the temple which is sometimes styled the Purification, sometimes the Presentation and sometimes the _Nunc Dimitis_. They are three distinct incidents; but, as far as I can judge, neither the painters themselves, nor those who have named pictures, have been careful to discriminate between them. On a careful examination of various compositions, some of special celebrity, which are styled, in a general way, the Presentation in the Temple, it will appear, I think, that the idea uppermost in the painter’s mind has been to represent the prophecy of Simeon.
No doubt, in later times, the whole scene, as a subject of art, was considered in reference chiefly to the Virgin, and the intention was to express the first of her Seven Sorrows. But in ancient art, and especially in Greek art, the character of Simeon assumed a singular significance and importance, which so long as modern art was influenced by the traditional Byzantine types, modified, in some degree, the arrangement and sentiment of this favourite subject.
It is related that when Ptolemy Philadelphus about 260 years before Christ, resolved to have the Hebrew Scriptures translated into Greek, for the purpose of placing them in his far-famed library, he despatched messengers to Eleazar, the High Priest of the Jews, requiring him to send scribes and interpreters learned in the Jewish law to his court at Alexandria. Thereupon Eleazar selected six of the most learned Rabbis from each of the twelve tribes of Israel, seventy-two persons in all, and sent them to Egypt, in obedience to the commands of King Ptolemy, and among these was Simeon, a priest, and a man full of learning. And it fell to the lot of Simeon to translate the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when he came to that verse where it is written, “Behold a Virgin shall conceive and bear a son,” he began to misdoubt, in his own mind, how this could be possible; and, after long meditation, fearing to give scandal and offence to the Greeks, he rendered the Hebrew word _Virgin_ by a Greek word which signifies merely a _young woman_; but when he had written it down, behold an angel effaced it, and substituted the right word. Thereupon he wrote it again and again; and the same thing happened three times; and he remained astonished and confounded. And while he wondered what this should mean, a ray of divine light penetrated his soul; it was revealed to him that the miracle which, in his human wisdom he had presumed to doubt, was not only possible, but that he, Simeon, “should not see death till he had seen the Lord’s Christ.” Therefore he tarried on earth, by the divine will, for nearly three centuries, till that which he had disbelieved had come to pass. He was led by the Spirit to the temple on the very day when Mary came there to present her Son, and to make her offering, and immediately, taking the Child in his arms, he exclaimed, “Lord, _now_ lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word.” And of the Virgin Mother, also, he prophesied sad and glorious things.
Anna the Prophetess, who was standing by, also testified to the presence of the theocratic King: but she did not take him in her arms, as did Simeon. (Luke ii. 82.) Hence, she was early regarded as a type of the synagogue, which prophesied great things of the Messiah, but, nevertheless, did not embrace him when he appeared, as did the Gentiles.
That these curious legends relative to Simeon and Anna, and their symbolical interpretation, were well known to the old painters, there can be no doubt; and both were perhaps in the mind of Bishop Taylor when he wrote his eloquent chapter on the Presentation. “There be some,” he says, “who wear the name of Christ on their heads, to make a show to the world; and there be some who have it always in their mouths; and there be some who carry Christ on their shoulders, as if he were a burthen too heavy to bear; and there be some–who is me!–who trample him under their feet, but _he_ is the true Christian who, _like Simeon_, embraces Christ, and takes him to his heart.”
Now, it seems to me that it is distinctly the acknowledgment of Christ by Simeon,–that is, Christ received by the Gentiles,–which is intended to be placed before us in the very early pictures of the Presentation, or the _Nunc dimittis_, as it is always styled in Greek art. The appearance of an attendant, bearing the two turtle-doves, shows it to be also the so-called Purification of the Virgin. In an antique formal Greek version we have the Presentation exactly according to the pattern described by Didron. The great gold censer is there; the cupola, at top; Joseph carrying the two young pigeons, and Anna behind Simeon.
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In a celebrated composition by Fra Bartolomeo, there is the same disposition of the personages, but an additional female figure. This is not Anna, the mother of the Virgin (as I have heard it said), but probably Mary Salome, who had always attended on the Virgin ever since the Nativity at Bethlehem.
The subject is treated with exquisite simplicity by Francia; we have just the same personages as in the rude Greek model, but disposed with consummate grace. Still, to represent the Child as completely undraped has been considered as a solecism. He ought to stretch out his hands to his mother and to look as if he understood the portentous words which foretold his destiny. Sometimes the imagination is assisted by the choice of the accessories; thus Fra Bartolomeo has given us, in the background of his group, Moses holding the _broken_ table of the old law; and Francia represents in the same manner the sacrifice of Abraham; for thus did Mary bring her Son as an offering. In many pictures Simeon raises his eyes to heaven in gratitude; but those painters who wished to express the presence of the Divinity in the person of Christ, made Simeon looking at the Child, and addressing _him_ as “Lord.”
THE FLIGHT INTO EGYPT.
_Ital._ La Fuga in Egitto. _Fr._ La Fuite de la Sainte Famille en Egypte. _Ger._ Die Flucht nach AEgypten.
The wrath of Herod against the Magi of the East who had escaped from his power, enhanced by his fears of the divine and kingly Infant, occasioned the massacre of the Innocents, which led to the flight of the Holy Family into Egypt. Of the martyred children, in their character of martyrs, I have already spoken, and of their proper place in a scheme of ecclesiastical decoration. There is surely something very pathetic in that feeling which exalted these infant victims into objects of religious veneration, making them the cherished companions in heavenly glory of the Saviour for whose sake they were sacrificed on earth. He had said, “Suffer little children to come unto me;” and to these were granted the prerogatives of pain, as well as the privileges of innocence. If, in the day of retribution, they sit at the feet of the Redeemer, surely they will appeal against us, then and there;–against us who, in these days, through our reckless neglect, slay, body and soul, legions of innocents,–poor little unblest creatures, “martyrs by the pang without the palm,”–yet dare to call ourselves Christians.
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The Massacre of the Innocents, as an event, belongs properly to the life of Christ: it is not included in a series of the life of the Virgin, perhaps from a feeling that the contrast between the most blessed of women and mothers, and those who wept distracted for their children, was too painful, and did not harmonize with the general subject. In pictures of the Flight into Egypt, I have seen it introduced allusively into the background; and in the architectural decoration of churches dedicated to the Virgin Mother, as Notre Dame de Chartres, it finds a place, but not often a conspicuous place;[1] it is rather indicated than represented. I should pass over the subject altogether, best pleased to be spared the theme, but that there are some circumstances connected with it which require elucidation, because we find them introduced incidentally into pictures of the Flight and the _Riposo_.
[Footnote 1: It is conspicuous and elegantly treated over the door of the Lorenz Kirche at Nuremberg.]
Thus, it is related that among the children whom Herod was bent on destroying, was St. John the Baptist; but his mother Elizabeth fled with him to a desert place, and being pursued by the murderers, “the rock opened by a miracle, and close upon Elizabeth and her child;” which means, as we may presume, that they took refuge in a cavern, and were concealed within it until the danger was over. Zacharias, refusing to betray his son, was slain “between the temple and the altar,” (Matt, xxiii. 35.) Both these legends are to be met with in the Greek pictures, and in the miniatures of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.[1]
[Footnote 1: They will be found treated at length in the artistic subjects connected with St. John the Baptist.]
From the butchery which made so many mothers childless, the divine Infant and his mother were miraculously saved; for an angel spoke to Joseph in a dream, saying, “Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt.” This is the second of the four angelic visions which are recorded of Joseph. It is not a frequent subject in early art, but is often met with in pictures of the later schools. Joseph is asleep in his chair, the angel stands before him, and, with a significant gesture, points forward–“arise and flee!”
There is an exquisite little composition by Titian, called a _Riposo_, which may possibly represent the preparation for the Flight. Here Mary is seated under a tree nursing her Infant, while in the background is a sort of rude stable, in which Joseph is seen saddling the ass, while the ox is on the outside.
In a composition by Tiarini, we see Joseph holding the Infant, while Mary, leaning one hand on his shoulder, is about to mount the ass.
In a composition by Poussin, Mary, who has just seated herself on the ass, takes the Child from the arms of Joseph. Two angels lead the ass, a third kneels in homage, and two others are seen above with a curtain to pitch a tent.
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I must notice here a tradition that both the ox and the ass who stood over the manger at Bethlehem, accompanied the Holy Family into Egypt. In Albert Durer’s print, the ox and the ass walk side by side. It is also related that the Virgin was accompanied by Salome, and Joseph by three of his sons. This version of the story is generally rejected by the painters; but in the series by Giotto in the Arena at Padua, Salome and the three youths attend on Mary and Joseph; and I remember another instance, a little picture by Lorenzo Monaco, in which Salome, who had vowed to attend on Christ and his mother as long as she lived, is seen following the ass, veiled, and supporting her steps with a staff.
But this is a rare exception. The general treatment confines the group to Joseph, the mother, and the Child. To Joseph was granted, in those hours of distress and danger, the high privilege of providing for the safety of the Holy Infant–a circumstance much enlarged upon in the old legends, and to express this more vividly, he is sometimes represented in early Greek art as carrying the Child in his arms, or on his shoulder, while Mary follows on the ass. He is so figured on the sculptured doors of the cathedral of Beneventum, and in the cathedral of Monreale, both executed by Greek artists.[1] But we are not to suppose that the Holy Family was left defenceless on the long journey. The angels who had charge concerning them were sent to guide them by day, to watch over them by night, to pitch their tent before them, and to refresh them with celestial fruit and flowers. By the introduction of these heavenly ministers the group is beautifully varied.
[Footnote 1: 11th century. Also at Citta di Castello; same date.]
Joseph, says the Gospel story, “arose by night;” hence there is both meaning and propriety in those pictures which represent the Flight as a night-scene, illuminated by the moon and stars, though I believe this has been done more to exhibit the painter’s mastery over effects of dubious light, than as a matter of biblical accuracy. Sometimes an angel goes before, carrying a torch or lantern, to light them on the way; sometimes it is Joseph who carries the lantern.
In a picture by Nicolo Poussin, Mary walks before, carrying the Infant; Joseph follows, leading the ass; and an angel guides them.
The journey did not, however, comprise one night only. There is, indeed, an antique tradition, that space and time were, on this occasion, miraculously shortened to secure a life of so much importance; still, we are allowed to believe that the journey extended over many days and nights; consequently it lay within the choice of the artist to exhibit the scene of the Flight either by night or by day.
In many representations of the Flight into Egypt, we find in the background men sowing or cutting corn. This is in allusion to the following legend:–
When it was discovered that the Holy Family had fled from Bethlehem, Herod sent his officers in pursuit of them. And it happened that when the Holy Family had travelled some distance, they came to a field where a man was sowing wheat. And the Virgin said to the husbandman, “If any shall ask you whether we have passed this way, ye shall answer, ‘Such persons passed this way when I was sowing this corn.'” For the holy Virgin was too wise and too good to save her Son by instructing the man to tell a falsehood. But behold, a miracle! For by the power of the Infant Saviour, in the space of a single night, the seed sprung up into stalk, blade, and ear, fit for the sickle. And next morning the officers of Herod came up, and inquired of the husbandman, saying, “Have you seen an old man with a woman and a Child travelling this way?” And the man, who was reaping his wheat, in great wonder and admiration, replied “Yes.” And they asked again, “How long is it since?” And he answered. “When I was sowing this wheat.” Then the officers of Herod turned back, and left off pursuing the Holy Family.
A very remarkable example of the introduction of this legend occurs in a celebrated picture by Hans Hemling (Munich Gal., Cabinet iv. 69), known as “Die Sieben Freuden Mariae.” In the background, on the left, is the Flight into Egypt; the men cutting and reaping corn, and the officers of Herod in pursuit of the Holy Family. By those unacquainted with the old legend, the introduction of the cornfield and reapers is supposed to be merely a decorative landscape, without any peculiar significance.
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In a very beautiful fresco by Pinturicchio, (Rome, St. Onofrio), the Holy Family are taking their departure from Bethlehem. The city, with the massacre of the Innocents, is seen in the background. In the middle distance, the husbandman cutting corn; and nearer, the palm tree bending down.
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It is supposed by commentators that Joseph travelled from Bethlehem across the hilly country of Judea, taking the road to Joppa, and then pursuing the way along the coast. Nothing is said in the Gospel of the events of this long and perilous journey of at least 400 miles, which, in the natural order of things, must have occupied five or six weeks; and the legendary traditions are very few. Such as they are, however, the painters have not failed to take advantage of them.